Art Of The Day Weekly
#121 - from 19 February 2009 to 25 February 2009
IN THE AIR
Will Yves Saint Laurent bring the market back to life?
PARIS – It has been announced from the rooftops as «the sale of the century» and it is true that the collections scattered these last few decades - from Carlos de Beistegui to Hubert de Givenchy, from André Breton to Jeanne Lanvin – as beautiful as they may all be, suffer from their own influence. This sale combines the acquisitions carried out in perfect osmosis by Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint-Laurent over four decades, and which had been in their respective apartments, rue Bonaparte and rue de Babylone. The eclecticism of this fund is bound to attract amateurs of all types: the 700 pieces presented, some of which are exceptional, were chosen in the decorative arts (Eileen Gray dragon armchair) as well as among objets d’art (enamels from Limoges) and there are also paintings and sculptures. There are pieces from the Antiquity (a Roman Minotaur from the Ist century B.C., estimated at 200 000 euros), as well as from far away civilizations (a bronze rat head from the Qing dynasty, estimated 8 million euros) or of the most “classic” European art, from Géricault (Portrait of Alfred and Elisabeth de Dreux, estimated 4 million euros) to Picasso. The latter’s work, Musical instruments on a table , from 1914, should be the highlight of the sale, at 30 million euros.
EXHIBITIONS
The century and a half of the della Robbia
AREZZO – Their name is synonymous with glazed terracotta: Luca della Robbia perfected this process by covering medallions, statues and other visual creations with stanniferous enamel in the years 1430, and he held the secret for a long time. His descendants perpetuated the family tradition for another 150 years. The exhibition mounted at the birthplace of the dynasty shows how the work of ceramists quickly mingled with all the other disciplines of the Renaissance: sculpture, painting, gold and silver work, cabinetwork, glasswork and even architecture. Many other artists of the time have been called in to help, such as Ghiberti, Donatelo, Domenico Veneziano or Ghirlandaio. As is the custom in this sort of celebration in Italy, themed itineraries have been drawn out to explore the Tuscan countryside to discover the many samples the della Robbia left of their art.
Travelling exhibitions
BRUSSELS-MADRID – One is always wary when large media «buzz» is generated around exhibits that simply consist in displacing a group of works from one museum to another. But the principle works very well: we saw how it worked at the musée du Luxembourg with the Berardo collection from Lisbon, or in Dusseldorf a few years ago with the collection from the Guggenheim. Two new opportunities have shown up, with a certain logic to them. In the first case, the collection of the dukes of Savoie is being shown at the Palais des beaux-arts in Brussels. There will be no other opportunity, in the near futur, to see these Mantegna, Gentileschi and Van Dyck: indeed, the galleria Sabauda of Torino, which is the lucky owner of these works, is being restored, in view of its installation at the Palazzo Reale in 2011. In the case of the little exhibit at the Prado, dedicated to the Ponce museum, it is the distance that will make the event grow fonder. Usually, to see pre-Raphaelite masterpieces such as the Last Sleep of Arthur by Burne-Jones or the Roman widow by Rossetti, one has to go to Puerto Rico…
Shah' Abbas and the Iranian gold age
LONDON – The fifth sovereign of the Safavide dynasty, Shah’Abbas governed Iran for nearly half a century, from 1587 to 1629. He is known for having consolidated Shiism as the national religion, and he also carried out a politics of «great works», in particular in the new capital, Ispahan, and financed the production of various artists. The British Museum presents an anthology of works, of which some have never left Iran: gold thread carpets, watercolors, illuminated manuscripts, silk brocades and masterpieces in the work of metal. The calligraphists from the Royal workshop, directed by Ali Riza Abbasi have a central role in the exhibition that is part of a un cycle on «Empire and power», of which the two previous events, on the First Emperor of China and on Hadrian, were extremely successful.
When Tarsila do Amaral reinvented Brazil
MADRID – She is a «caipirinha dressed by Poiret», is how her companion poet Oswald Andrade described her. Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) is one of the icons of Brazilian modernism. Beautiful, cosmopolitan and cultivated, she produced - after her «Cubist military service» in Paris, which allowed her to know Gleizes, Léger and Blaise Cendrars – colored painting that combines landscapes and Brazilian ancestral myths with the avant-gardes of the Old Continent. The exhibition at the March foundation is one of the most important ever dedicated to her and it goes directly to the source, as nearly all of the 106 works exhibited come from Brazil. Most of them are from the decades of the 1920s and 1930s, when the «cannibalistic» movement intended to give birth to a deeply Brazilian art, after «killing the (European) father».
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Steve Hiett, Taxi, 1993 © Steve Hiett, courtesy galerie Maeght, Paris
Steve Hiett: art or ad?
Fashion photographers are …in fashion! For a long time they were considered as simple interpreters in the marketing of major brands; and now they are increasingly regarded as artists in their own right. Helmut Newton, Norman Parkinson and Guy Bourdin were the first to benefit from this new attitude and the movement has recently accelerated with Philippe Demarchelier or David LaChapelle. Steve Hiett is also one of these sacred monsters of the fashion world who transcend borders. In this specific case it is the
prestigious Maeght gallery that dubs him by presenting his traditional photos of women with long legs, straddled on motorcycles or getting out of a taxi, in an environment of saturated colors. Aside from the creations of the last forty years, the exhibition presents the images taken in the autumn of 2008 for L’Oréal, when Steve Hiett was invited to the Maeght’s private property in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Rarely has an affair between art and fashion been taken so far …
BOOKS
As simple as architecture
A double page on the houses in massive wood of Rio de Janeiro, another one on origami, the art of folding paper, more on Philibert de l’Orme’s structures, on the stool throughout the ages, and on composite panels. In one page we discover a little introduction to the block plan, lit up by watercolors, a little further the subject is bridges, light structures or openwork furniture. There is no logic progress in this book: it is clearly a suite of lessons that becomes increasingly pleasant to read as one jumps back and forth, according to one’s curiosity. Through the pedagogic style of a professor from the school of Grenoble, architecture loses its intimidating aspect. It almost becomes a game: a pleasant initiation that could inspire a number of vocations.
IN BRIEF
INNSBRUCK – The 13th edition of Art Innsbruck will be held from 19 to 22 February 2009 with the participation of some sixty international galleries of contemporary art.
LONDON – The architecture firm Foster & Partners announced on 13 February the laying off of 350 persons, i.e. one fourth of its employees.
MADRID – The Reina Sofía museum has announced it received from Brassaï’s widow (the artist died in 2005) a bequest of 200 works.
MANCHESTER –The monumental sculpture (56 meters tall) B of the Bang by Thomas Heatherwick, placed since 2005 in front of the stadium in Manchester, will be dismounted for security reasons.
PARIS – The international symposium on the future of the grotto of Lascaux will be held in Paris on 26 and 27 February 2009
PARIS – A letter from Napoleon to Josephine describing a storm in front of Boulogne was sold for 124 000 € at Piasa on 13 February 2009
WASHINGTON – The National Gallery is the happy buyer of Terbrugghen’s painting, The bagpipe player in profile , sold for over 10 million $ at Sotheby’s during the sales of ancient art in New York on 29 January this year.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
CHINETIK
BASEL – How can the evolution of the bicycle symbolize the accelerated changes in contemporary China? It is precisely what this exhibition wishes to demonstrate by placing side by side the country’s traditional means of transport and installations produced by 14 current artists, from Robert Rauschenberg to Xiao Yu and Guillaume Bijl.