Art Of The Day Weekly
#115 - from 8 January 2009 to 14 January 2009
IN THE AIR
The program...
We are definitely in the midst of a crisis, but the wealth of the calendar for the major exhibitions in Europe does not seem to have taken it into consideration. The first semester will have a beautiful conceptual connotation in Paris at the Grand-Palais, with the study of the issue of the double (on 6 April) while the Centre Pompidou will approach a rather delicate theme, that of the void (24 February). Great artists will be in the program, among them de Chirico (12 February, at the musée d’Art moderne), William Blake (1 April, at the Petit-Palais) and Kandinsky (8 April, at the Centre Pompidou). The musée du quai Branly will confront fetishes and their nails (3 February) while the Louvre will make the census of hundreds of Egyptian amulets (6 March). London museums, which have specialized in the study of the major art movements, will review Russian constructivism (12 February, at the Tate Modern), Iranian civilization of Shah Abbas (19 February, at the British Museum) and baroque art (4 April, at the Victoria & Albert Museum). In Amsterdam, Van Gogh is still used as a driving force (13 February, at the musée Van Gogh) with, for a change, his night visions. As for Italy, it is getting ready to experience a major Futurist season (20 February will be the centennial of the Marinetti Manifesto) with exhibitions in Rome, Trento, Venice and Milano.
EXHIBITIONS
Will the accused please stand up!
FRANKFURT – The history of art and detective stories have something in common. In particular the fact that it can sometimes take centuries to find the «guilty one»… Take the master of Flémalle, a great Flemish artist from the beginning of the XVth century, who espoused the revolution of oil painting and naturalistic precision. A genius. Yet, five hundred years after his death we still do not know whether he really existed. Some like to believe it was Robert Campin, who had his workshop in Arras. The curators of the exhibition in Frankfurt refute this theory. They believe Flémalle is a hybrid creature hiding alternatively behind Campin, for the more archaic compositions, or his brilliant disciples – Jacques Daret and the young Roger van der Weyden – for the more audacious works. The heterogeneous style of the Master of Flémalle is enhanced through some twenty works, of which some (such as the Mérode triptych from the Metropolitan Museum in New York) are much closer to what van der Weyden would do later. A series of autographic works by the latter allow us to be convinced of this.
Einstein, my nephew
MADRID - In retrospective exhibitions, artists and artistic movements are always at their best. One forgets too often to look at the other important actors in the world of art: critics. In 2006, an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery had been a perfect example. It was dedicated to the review «Documents» published by Georges Bataille in the thirties, and had allowed for a healthy breeding of genres, from literature to photography, from music to painting. This time the Reina Sofia museum is looking at another companion of the Surrealists (and incidentally a collaborator at «Documents»): Carl Einstein (1885-1940), the nephew of the great Albert. His life was quite adventurous, since it combined aesthetic thought and action – in the International Brigades during the Spanish civil war. A true «discoverer» of African art, Carl Einstein followed the Dada, Cubist and Futurist movements closely. Some one hundred works by Dali, Grosz, Braque or anonymous artists from Africa and Oceania accompany his writings, which include a fundamental history of the art of the XXth century as well as novels and plays. Like Walter Benjamin, Carl Einstein committed suicide in Southern France during the chaos of 1940, by throwing himself into the Gave in Pau.
Premier de Cordier
PARIS – He lived many lives. He enrolled in the Resistance at the age of 20, and was the secretary of Jean Moulin. Then he rubbed elbows with the jet set as he was the adoptive father of singer Hervé Vilard, the author of “Capri, c’est fini”. And it is yet another aspect of the character, the one that undoubtedly left the richest inheritance, which the Centre Pompidou focuses on. Daniel Cordier, born in 1920, was also a great art dealer who defended Dubuffet, Dewasne, Réquichot, Matta. He closed his Parisian art gallery in 1964, denouncing the flaws that some still consider to obvious today such as the absence of tax incentives or the timidity of French collectors. His collection never ceased growing and he donated nearly five hundred of his works on paper to the Centre Pompidou (of which he was one of the founding members). By lending them to the Abattoirs in Toulouse since the year 2000, the institution has made them its most important deposit outside of Paris. Grain flails from Asia, fetishes, African justice sticks, corals, whale brains: this is an unexpected aspect today of the Cordier collection. These objects of primitive or ready-made art are confronted to modern works of art, thus renewing a comparison that has been very fertile throughout the Xxthe century.
AUCTIONS
Sotheby's year
PARIS – After many years during which Christie’s has dominated the auction scene, Sotheby’s this year has won the mano a mano between the two Anglo-Saxon houses in France as far as auctions of works of art are concerned. As is now their custom, their results are by no means astronomical: 155 million euros from sales at Sotheby’s, 150 million for Christie’s. The former sold the most expensive work of art of the year (Japanese sofa by Degas, 5 million euros), the latter succeeded in selling the most expensive piece of furniture as well as the most expensive furniture set (a Louis XIV dresser at 4 million euros and the Gillot collection at 18.5 million euros). The inexorable rise of the two auctioneers increasingly creeps up on Drouot, which has a revenue of 411 million euros while it had gone over the 500 million euro barrier in 2007. Competition is the toughest in the segment of the highest prices: Drouot sold nine lots for over one million euros while Christie’s and Sotheby’s each sold 18. In 2009, with the «Pharaonic» sale of the Yves Saint Laurent – Pierre Bergé collection, Christie’s should overcome its rival and get increasingly closer to Drouot.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Illustration : Elisabeth Bergner de la série Oddly, one lived the war in one’s mind more intensively than in a country at war, ink marker on watercolour bockingford paper, 19 x 28 cm, 2008 Courtesy galerie Blancpain art contemporain
Uriel Orlow (re)writes history
GENEVA – The Odeon Cafe is an important venue in Zurich. Karl Kraus, the author of cracked aphorisms, gave conferences there. It is where Lenin and Einstein read their newspapers, Brecht wrote. How can the history of this place be told? Either by accumulating old, «authentic» images? Or by bringing together the elements put through the filter of time, combining myths, the «it is said», subjective impressions, reconstitutions – all that, in the end, could be more explicit? Uriel Orlow (born in 1973) chose this second method in his exhibition at Blancpain. He is used to working on the memory and archives, which he grinds through the the most contemporary media, he put in videos, photographic diptycs, photocopies and some thirty drawings made with a felt pen.
BOOKS
The anatomy of a construction site
Architecture today is at the heart of the cultural debate. The public is updated on the projects of new buildings and inaugurations. But what happens between the two moments – what happens on the construction site itself – is very rarely described to them. Contemporary man suffers from the same amnesia when he goes to the Maldives islands: what matters is the take-off and the arrival on the lagoons, while the trip itself has lost any importance. Arnaud Théval’s project is interesting and welcome in so far as he does the opposite: for three years – from 2005 to 2008-the photographer followed the modernization works of the Archives of Loire-Atlantique. He used all the actors – workers, employees – on the site that had to learn to function under specific conditions. Secretaries, cement makers, archivists or scaffolding builders are systematically taken from behind. It is a shame that in the theoretical texts on this agreement there is no mention of John Philips, the American reporter photographer of the post-war period. He used this as his main means of operating. It is also a shame that this interesting window opened on a construction site does not act more as a documentary (which would not be incompatible with photographic creation): detailed captions would have allowed us to better understand each person’s role during this original phase.
IN BRIEF
BERLIN- From 9 to 18 January 2009, eleven galleries in Berlin will host thirteen Parisian contemporary art galleries in an exchange program which will include a "return" encounter in Paris, from 6 to 15 February.
CLERMONT-FERRAND- The basilica of Notre-Dame-du-Port opened its doors again on 23 December 2008 after a rehabilitation campaign that began in 1999.
LOS ANGELES- The Photo L.A. photography fair will hold its 18th edition from 8 to 11 January 2009.
PARIS-The curators of the Louvre museum announced on 18 December the discovery of three unkown drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, among them the head of a horse, on the back of the painting The Virgin and Saint Anne.
PARIS – Hotel Lambert, the private home built on the island of Saint-Louis at the time of Louis XIII by Le Vau, is the object of a disagreement between the Ville de Paris and the ministry of Culture regarding the major construction works planned by its new owner, the royal family of Qatar. Paris mayor Betrand Delanoë has announced he will not give his authorization.
PASSARIANO-Villa Manin, a contemporary art center set up in a Venitian Renaissance villa near Udine, will be closing on 19 January 2009 after five years of activity. It will now be a venue for large exhibitions.
VENICE- Palazzo Grimani opened to the public on 20 December 2008 after two decades of restoration. A remarkable example of XVIth century architecture, it will now function as a museum of Cinquecento civilization.
VERSAILLES - According to the figures released by the castle of Versailles, the Jeff Koons exhibition that ended on 6 January, attracted over 500 000 visitors.