Art Of The Day Weekly
#107 - from 30 October 2008 to 5 November 2008
IN THE AIR
The current tendency of museums, as being on the forefront of design and interactivity, with streamlined windows, tactile screens, videos to accompany the visitor, we believed would erase all traces of the past. We were getting ready for a requiem to the museums of our grandparents, with cracking floors, waxed shelves, and a profusion of objects with faded labels. And we had lost all hope of finding these types of museums elsewhere than in the Agriculture Museum in Cairo or the National Museum of Tirana. We were wrong. The cabinets of curiosities are resisting! In 2007 the museum of Human Anatomy and the Museum of fruit, in Torino, were renovated respecting the atmosphere of the XIXth century. This week the museum of the Veterinary school in Maisons-Alfort will reopen after undergoing the same treatment. Honoré Fragonard’s horseman of the Apocalypse, the frightening ecorche, is still surrounded by a calf with two heads, colored skulls, a dog’s dehydrated stomach, a mule’s salivary stones and even a «human mermaid», born in Maisons-Alfort in 1907. Who said nostalgia was no longer what it used to be?
EXHIBITIONS
Klee is back in Berlin
BERLIN - In 1923, Klee, an original go-between from figurative to abstract art, was celebrated in an unforgettable exhibition in Berlin at the Kronprinz palace. Since then the Swiss artist had not been the object of a similar event in the Swiss capital. This fault is being repaired by the Neue Nationalgalerie, in the context of a cycle dedicated to the cult of the artist in the XXth century. The 250 works are shown in various sections, of which one, the central one, examines Klee’s relations with ten of his contemporaries, from Ensor to Kubin, from Kandinsky to Picasso. The exhibition then looks at all the themes the painter approached through his life, from nature to landscapes, from the family to eroticism, from entertainment to the darkness of the war in which Klee lived in his last years, up to his death in 1940.
Henri Martin, a hero of the Third Republic
BORDEAUX-He enjoyed fame between the two wars. But his name is well-known today in particular as an expensive avenue in the game of Monopoly. Henri Martin (1860-1943) was a specialist of great decorations in the town-halls, police headquarters and chambers of commerce. He left a great number of examples (the Capitol of Toulouse, the Conseil d’Etat, the Chamber of Commerce in Béziers, sold at Christie ‘s last June). The exhibition that gave him a certain stature in 1935 also chose an hyperbole: a whole floor was dedicated to him at the Petit Palais. The retrospective in Bordeaux, following a first stop in Cahors, evokes his decors through various sketches. A symbolist, a pointillist, an interpreter of allegoric and literary scenes, Henri Martin also painted more intimate scenes – sewing session in the afternoon under the pergola –and landscapes. His views of the port of Collioure were a great success among the Anglo-Saxon public.
AUCTIONS
Armand Rassenfosse (1862-1934), Elégante assise, oil on canvas, signed and dated 19, 48 x 40 cm © Eve SVV
Back in Jacques Brel's dear flat country
PARIS-When speaking of Belgian art, we usually limit ourselves to a few icons such as Ensor, Spilliaert or, more recently, Alechinsky. The auction house Eve shows the diversity that hides behind these leaders of sales by organizing a specialized auction in Paris and not in Brussels. We see the damp or snow covered landscapes of the Ardennes, the silos filled with beets (Jan Stobbaerts), the major charcoal artists such as Armand Paulis, pencils and wash-painting experts as Xavier Mellery at less than 2000 €. Prices have gone up for a nude by George Morren (30 000 €) or an elegant woman by Arthur Navez (15 000 €) but remain modest for artists that have just enjoyed important retrospectives such as Armand Rassenfosse. A few important drawings by Félicien Rops or Théo Van Rysselberghe are estimated around 1000 € and those who are homesick for Africa can quench their craving with village scenes by Arthur Dupagne, Paul Daxhelet or Floris Jespers
Sotheby’s risks a big gamble
NEW YORK - A maxim says that quality art always sells, both in periods of growth and in periods of crisis. The persons in charge to Sotheby’s are surely crossing their fingers for the old maxim to apply … Their offer for the sale on 3 November is indeed flamboyant and a year ago would surely have led in a great euphoria, to a cascade of records. “The times they are a changing” and this could be a double bind. According to the guarantees granted to the sellers, if the sale slackens, Sotheby’s could pay a high price for it. Three or four paintings shall suffice to shift the situation: an Arlequin by Picasso (30 million $); a Vampire by Munch, the estimate of which doubled barely six months ago (estimated at over 35 million $); a Danseuse au repos by Degas which American financier Henry Kravis has put back on the market less than ten years after buying it (estimate: 40 million $); and Suprematist composition by Malévitch, the inventor of Black square on black background for which a price superior to 60 million $ has been quoted. The evening will surely be electric… P.S.: At the moment we are writing these lines, on 28 October, we learn that Arlequin by Picasso has been abruptly taken out of the sale.
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ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Tom Sachs, Miffy Foutain, bronze, 2008, 375x122x122 cm, courtesy galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
Tom Sachs: between Hello Kitty and Goethe
This is a great season for Tom Sachs in Paris. The American artist is presented over three floors at the galerie Thaddaeus Ropac as well as on the square of the Trocadéro, an honor that is not granted to many. We can see monumental sculptures that reproduce, at a colossal scale, icons of children’s cartoons, such as Hello Kitty. These characters that seemed unfinished, with seams coming undone and glued, are not in polyurethane foam, as it seems, but definitely in bronze. The whole figure is covered with white paint to give the illusion of a «cheap» product. Or how can one do what has already been done – give the statute of a work of art to symbols of the consumer society, by pulling them out of their context. But Tom Sachs’ art (born in 1966) has various aspects: at Ropac, one can also see sheets of golden plywood, pyrographed with animal motives taken from a work by Goethe. What we can call the wide balancing act…
BOOKS
Mingei, in praise of poor art
«The mingei spirit», this is an esoteric name for many. The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition at the museum at Quai Branly clears the subject a little. The mingei – a neologism formed by Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961) using the words «minshu» (people) and «kogei» (arts and crafts) – is a movement of thought and design that intended to reevaluate every day, non luxurious objects, made in an artisan matrix. The mingei is a useful object, long lasting and aesthetic, an «honest» object according to the words of Yanagi in its founding text. The book gives some examples, both from the Japanese past and neighboring peoples (recipients, platters, cushions, water kettles in cast iron, aïnu clothing in elm fiber) as well as from contemporary creation. Various exceptional designers who have compared themselves to the Japanese tradition benefit from a specific lighting: Swiss artist Bruno Taut (1880-1938), American Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), famous for his paper lamps, English pottery artist Bernard Leach (1889-1979) and Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999), whose long chair in bamboo is a European variation around this Japanese movement.
IN BRIEF
BERLIN-The 13th edition of the contemporary art fair Artforum will be held from 30 October to 3 November 2008.
LAS PALMAS-(Canaries) – The Canarias Mediafest festival, dedicated to digital art, will be held until 1st November 2008.
LOS ANGELES- The Dancing Fawn and Vénus Médicis, two bronzes by Florentine artist Pietro Cipriani, done in 1724 and previously in the collections of count de Macclesfiedl, were bought by the Getty Museum for a price estimated at 10 million $.
To see a reproduction of the bronzes in the Los Angeles Times
MADRID-Estampa 08, the 16th international fair dedicated to prints, will be held from 29 October to 2 November 2008 at the Recinto ferial Juan Carlos I.
NEW YORK- After Renzo Piano, who intervened on the Morgan Library, it is now the turn of Norman Foster who was chosen to renovate the New York Library, on 5th Avenue.
PARIS – In the context of the FIAC, artist Laurent Grasso (born in 1972) received the Marcel Duchamp prize, given by the Association for the international expansion of French art.
TORINO – The Parco Arte vivente, designed under the supervision of artist Piero Gilardi to explore the relations between nature and art, will open on 1st November 2008.
VENICE – Carlo Cardazzo (1908-1963), one of the great Italian gallery owners of the post war period (who leads the Cavallino gallery), is celebrated by an exhibition at the Guggenheim Collection starting on 1st November 2008.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
NEW GALLERIES OF OCEANIA AND EASTER ISLAND
BRUSSELS -The Musée du Cinquantenaire opens its new permanent rooms dedicated to Oceania and Easter island. The latter is especially well represented with, among others, an exceptional statue brought back from the scientific mission from 1934-1935.
COBRA
BRUSSELS -Born in 1948, the CoBrA movement attracted artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The experience only lasted three years but had a remarkable influence on European art in the post war period. A large retrospective at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts brings it back to life.