Art Of The Day Weekly
#118 - from 29 January 2009 to 4 February 2009
IN THE AIR
Master Putin and his easel
We have already had examples of politician artists. Churchill, who painted some mediocre watercolours of the cliffs in Madeira, is the best known one. There was also the Ukranian Tarass Chevchenko or David, who was a representative during the Revolution as well as the bard of neo-Classicism. Now there is a new candidate to the club. In spite of his heavy schedule, former Russian president and neo-prime minister Vladimir Putin has just shown he has a good hand. In just a few minutes he painted a rare scene: a window all white with frost and framed by pretty curtains. This vigorous composition has touched the apparatchiks, who competed with one another to buy it at a Moscow charity sale. Many complained about the absurdly low starting price for a masterpiece of this type: only 5 million rubbles. These experts demonstrated admirable perceptiveness: on 16 January 2009, the oil painting was indeed sold for 37 million rubbles (nearly one million euros), the highest bid in eastern Europe this year. This is surely an encouraging sign for the market: Russian art continues to be an engine and the oligarchs continue to invest.
EXHIBITIONS
Palladio and Co.
LONDON –The fate of Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is surely a surprising one. He hardly drifted away from his native region but few architects in his time had such a far-reaching and enduring influence. The concepts he perfected, in particular his famous window in the middle of an arch or his villas with porticos and centred plan (the Rotonda), were taken up in England (the Burlington House) and in the United States (the White House), up to the XVIIIth and XIXth century. The exhibit at the Royal Academy, already presented in his native Vicenza, shows through plans, models and paintings by his contemporaries that is genius alone is not the reason. Palladio was also the object of great admiration by his peers, who served as go-betweens, inspired by his plans and et disclosing his treatise, the Four Books on Architecture. The kingpin of this passage of the baton was the no less talented Inigo Jones, who took the master’s drawings to England at the beginning of the XVIIth century and turned Palladio into an unmistakable reference.
Asia on my American mind
NEW YORK – It has always been believed that a special relation linked the United-States to Europe in the artistic field. This may be so, but it is not the only one, as the curators of this huge exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum answer provocatively. And they proceed to prove, with 250 works by 100 artists, the equally special links that have been built between the United States and Asia. Ever since commodore Perry anchored in Japanese waters in 1853, examples abound, from Mary Cassatt and Whistler’s Japanese tendency to Ad Reinhard’s minimalism and Bill Viola’s video art, incorporating the techniques and concepts of Oriental meditation. Not to mention of course the influence calligraphy had on the production of Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell or Sam Francis. At a time when China has become the privileged partner of the United States, the exhibition clearly has a political dimension …
Fetishism is back
PARIS – They have finally brought out of the reserves the objects that have so fascinated Europeans! Protective, divinatory or destructive objects. Objects covered with nails, strung or that are the result of unbelievable hotchpotch of saliva, finger nails, eggs and iguana heads… We are referring of course to fetishes, which for a long time resumed African religion – a primitive religion of course – to the eyes of Western civilizations. The museum of Quai Branly is showing its most beautiful specimens, reinforced by loans from the museum of Tervueren. The mystery that emanates from them (the element that gives strength, whether a powder or a manuscript, is generally hidden in the heart of the object), their sculptural aspect, their shaping in patchwork fascinated the surrealists. The magic remains intact as we have so few keys to understand them. An example is this extraordinary ever evolving boli from Mali: a sort of ball, constantly completed by new contributions of bone, bark, fresh blood and chewed cola nut. Or these divinatory bags full of crab claws, shells, pebbles. Or this Algerian cross with a hand and mirrors to push away the bad eye. It is an infinite arborescence: 92 fetishes are presented, each a universe to itself, inviting us to decrypt them patiently…
AUCTIONS
London, the big gamble
LONDON – What is in store for auctions in 2009? Will they be mediocre? Bad? Or very bad? The major London sales of modern art in the beginning of February will give the new direction. One thing is sure: the number of lots has been reduced and the auctioneers try to offer only indisputable works. As is well known, masterpieces continue to sell in periods of crisis. That is what Sotheby’s and Christie’s will try to check. The former, on 3 February, will present a Street scene from 1913 by Kirchner (5-7 million £) and the last privately owned bronze by Degas on the theme of theThe little fourteen-year-old dancer, that created a scandal in 1878-80 (9-12 million £). The auction (only 47 works) at Christie’s the next day is estimated at 60 million £. Vuillard’s The seamstresses and Abandonment (the two friends) by Toulouse-Lautrec are the two strong elements (between 5 and 7 million £ each). The real test will be a beautiful Monet from 1876, In the prairie, presented at the third Impressionist show in 1877. The organizers expect 15 million £.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Fred Kleinberg, Nick Cave, 2007, oil on canvas, 150 x 150 cm, courtesy gallery Polad-Hardouin, Paris.
Fred Kleinberg, rock attitude
Like so many others he too flirted with music and was marked by such sacred monsters as Tom Waits or Lou Reed. When he painted he remained loyal to a figurative representation, obsessed by the face (his own or that of the other, in Paris, Moscow or Pondichery), and it was foreseeable that Fred Kleinberg (born in 1966) would again be attracted by these battered personalities. The craggy faces -as used to be said before, - marked by excesses were his ideal material. The faces of Nick Cave or Iggy Pop, in large dimensions (squares of 130 cm), charcoal drawn to accentuate the shadows, reveal a surface of bags under the eyes, wrinkles and crevasses that make them look like real landscapes.
BOOKS
Cartier-Bresson, master of the Monde
Henri Cartier-Bresson is the first French photographer to be published in Le Monde, the first to have a report on his exhibition accompanied by a photograph, the only one to be interviewed twice over three pages, and finally the only artist to be granted the headline (at the moment of his death, in 2004). Neither Picasso nor Matisse enjoyed such treatment. It is therefore a very special relation that unites the daily Parisian evening paper and Cartier-Bresson, the photographer who loved to say «I read the Monde, and the New York Times (…) because they have no photographs. I can find the photographs myself (…) ». Michel Guerrin, currently in charge of the Culture pages, has compiled an inventory of the main articles dedicated to him in over half a century, from 1955 to 2006. They include in particular the «historical» article by Yves Bourde in 1974 and the purple passages by Hervé Guibert, represent a fascinating biography and help define the creed of a man who used to say: «Painting is my obsession».
IN BRIEF
ANGOULEME -The 36th festival of cartoon strips will be held from 29 January to 1st February 2009.
BOSTON-Brandeis University has announced that for budget reasons it will close its museum -the Rose Art Museum, founded in 1961-and sell all 8000 pieces of its art collection, including works by De Kooning, Jasper Johns and Matthew Barney.
COPENHAGUEN-The new Concert Palace of the Danish capital, designed by Jean Nouvel, opened on 17 January 2009.
LONDON-The Contemporary Art Triennial at the Tate Modern, of which Nicolas Bourriaud is the curator, will open on 3 February with the name Altermodern.
LOS ANGELES-Collector Eli Broad has called in five architects for the future museum he intends to build in Malibu. They are Thom Payne, Shigeru Ban, Rafael Viñoly and French architects Jean Nouvel and Christian Portzamparc.
PARIS-Minister of Culture Christine Albanel has announced three sites have been pre-selected for the future center of reserve, research, restoration and study of the patrimony: Cergy-Pontoise, Nanterre and Neuilly-sur-Marne.
PARIS-Herve Lemoine, the author of the recent report on the creation of a museum of French history, has just been named curator of the museum of French Monuments.
WASHINGTON- Composer and musician Quincy Jones has launched a petition for the creation of a Secretary of the Arts in the Obama administration. The petition has been signed by over 200 000 persons.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
art.metz 2009 9th art fair of the great region
METZ- At the heart of a bassin of 11 million residents, less than half an hour from Luxemburg or Germany, art-metz enjoys a unique geographic location. The 9th edition of the contemporary art fair is marked by the creation of a new gallery space with a museum-style setting.