Home > ArtoftheDay Weekly > #124 - from 12 March 2009 to 18 March 2009

Art Of The Day Weekly

#124 - from 12 March 2009 to 18 March 2009

IN THE AIR

TEFAF at 22

MAASTRICHT – All one hears talk about is the crisis, but this major antiques event wants to demonstrate it is in no way affected. The TEFAF announces for its 22nd edition the presence of a record number of exhibitors – 239 – and the opening of a new department dedicated to XX century design. The very strict control of the works shown– 155 experts will be in charge – is obviously the main guarantee as to the seriousness of the TEFAF. The variety of the works presented is another asset – only challenged by the Biennale des antiquaires of Paris. Between Khmer sculptures and Black and White, an icon by Man Ray, the exhibit also includes an antiphonary from Bruges, Prairies at Eragny by Pissarro or Transfiguration, one of Bill Viola’s most recent videos. A report commissioned by TEFAF confirms the existing tendencies: Dubai has become the hub in the Near East and in an increasingly «global» market China’s part is close to 10%.

  • TEFAF Maastricht from 13 to 22 March 2009

    Know more

  • EXHIBITIONS

    A plunge into the subconscious

    LILLE – Themed or transversal exhibitions often leave good memories – just think of those on Melancholy (at the Grand Palais), on the Magicians of the Earth (at the Centre Pompidou), or on the Surrealist magazine Documents (at the Hayward Gallery). They rely on complicated organizations and on a more than uncertain public success than when one takes up a Courbet or a Picasso, and are unfortunately rare and few between. We therefore must congratulate the musée d’Art moderne Lille métropole for the initiative. While awaiting to reopen in 2010, it has organized outside of its site this retrospective on the world of the subconscious. The dive into this universe, launched with The interpretation of dreams by Freud, published in 1900, fascinated a great number of artists. From automatic drawing to spiritualist photography, including the Dadaist puppets, we see some one hundred works here, by Breton, Arp, Duchamp, Masson, Klee, with an «over-representation» from Central Europe – Brassaï, Sima, Moholy-Nagy, Toyen…

  • Hypnos, images et inconscients en Europe, 1900-1949 at the museum of the Hospice Comtesse, from 14 March to 12 July 2009

    Know more

  • Warhol, the portrait artist

    PARIS – « The Metropolitan Museum may want them some day » Andy Warhol thus expressed his ambition from the beginning of his project called Portraits of society. One single large portrait including hundreds of small portraits, all of the same dimensions and made according to the same procedure. The model was taken with a Polaroid and the image was then transferred in serigraphy. The Grand Palais museum has chosen some 250 images out of the one thousand produced over twenty-five years, from 1962 to 1987, at the New York Factory. One discovers strangers, entitled to their fifteen minutes of glory, or stars of the political and movie worlds. Between Jackie Kennedy, Liz Taylor and Marilyn some French personalities like Brigitte Bardot, Yves Saint Laurent or Commander Cousteau play a walk-on part.

  • Le grand monde d’Andy Warhol at the Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, from 18 March to 13 July 2009

    Know more

  • Going beyond Rodin

    PARIS – At the turn of the XXth century, Paris was a true crossroads for sculptors. Whether simultaneously or successively Brancusi, Epstein, Archipenko, Zadkine, Minne, Maillol, Bourdelle, Duchamp-Villon, Lipchitz were all there… And all tried to free themselves from Rodin’s influence by working on simplifying forms, by pondering the essential questions of volume and line. The musée d’Orsay presents some one hundred works of art by these artists from different horizons and has organized a series of (re)discoveries, such as that of German artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck or Polish artist Elie Nadelman, who became famous later on with his Art deco low-reliefs in Manhattan. This generation, that «reinvented» sculpture in all its materials - plaster, marble, bronze, stone, wood and cement ,- paid a heavy tribute to the war years: Gaudier-Brzeska died in 1915, Duchamp-Villon in 1918 and Lehmbruck in 1919… more or less at the same time as Rodin (1917).

  • Oublier Rodin ? La sculpture à Paris, 1905-1914 at the musée d’Orsay from 10 March to 31 May 2009

    Know more

  • AUCTIONS

    Gianni Versace's world

    LONDON – The sale on March 18 will allow all those who loved Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace to buy some of the symbolic objects that accompanied him through his existence, statues of nude men by Canova, miniatures from the XVIIth century or refined bookcases by Karl Roos (commissioned at the time by Pauline Borghese for her Roman palace). Even for those who will not take out their check book this is an interesting opportunity, since Sotheby’s has decided to recreate some of the interiors of the residence Versace had on lake Como and where most of the 550 lots of the sale come from. Villa Fontanelle, bought in 1977 and built in the XIXth century by an eccentric English man, would become the reflection of the designer’s taste, a mixture of Neo-classic and Empire styles, with special attention to marble pavements and mosaic decors.

  • Sale of furniture belonging to Gianni Versace at Sotheby’s New Bond Street, on 18 March 2009. Exhibition from 13 to 17 March.

    Know more

  • ARTIST OF THE WEEK


    Faisal Samra, Performance #32, 2007, Digital photo, lambda print 120 x 160 cm, Edition N° 1/3 + 1 AP, courtesy galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris

    Faisal Samra wraps his head up

    Faisel Samra is a specialist in crossing borders. He was born in Bahrain, studied in Paris at the Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts, was a decorator at the Saudi television, and graphic artist at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. He has lived in Beirut, in Amman and again in Paris, thus creating gangplanks between cultures that do not always understand each other. A man of images, he went from ink and a pen to video. He has produced large paintings, detached from their supports, he was worked with dolls, with feathers and clay. In his most recent works he has gone into animated images, with the hope of being increasingly symbolic. In his trilogy Distorted Reality, his performance consists

    in wrapping his head in a cloth, a bride’s veil or a chador, until he suffocates. The symbolic dimension can be read in many ways: a way of conjuring individual liberty, the artist’s autonomy, the intolerable submission to the mass-medias…

  • Faisel Samra is showing at the Nathalie Obadia gallery until 11 April 2009.

    The website of the artist

  • BOOKS

    How we built our collection

    The clamor has hardly subsided on the Yves Saint Laurent - Pierre Bergé sale, and people continue to wonder how does one build a collection worth 374 million euros? How does one choose the periods, the artists, the objects of art, how does one specialize-or not? The dialogue between Laure Adler and Pierre Bergé is a sort of excursion through the genesis of this collection. The great collector is a straight shooter who loves to tell anecdotes, so we are easily captivated by his story: whether it is the importance of having known the Noailles, how Yves Saint Laurent and Bergé entered for the first time the Kugel shop(famous antique dealers), how they discovered their first Brancusi in a basement, their love for Matisse, Chirico, Géricault, etc. In reading we learn that the bookshop owner in La Rochelle had refused to sell to the young 13-year old Bergé a book on Renoir because it was full of naked women … Some advice for collectors who are in search of excellence? It could be, «Beware of taste».

  • Histoire de notre collection de tableaux, (The history of our collection of paintings)

    Buy that book from Amazon

  • IN BRIEF

    DUBAI-The contemporary art fair Art Dubai will be held from 18 to 21 March 2009.

    Know more

    LONDON-The first specialized sale of Turkish art organized at Sotheby’s on 4 March 2009 brought in 1.3 million pounds.

    Know more

    PARIS-The city of Paris has named the commissioners for the next Nuits blanches (Sleepless Nights event): for 2009, Alexia Fabre and Frank Lamy, from the MacVal museum in Vitry-sur-Seine, and for 2010, Martin Bethenod, general commissioner for the FIAC.

    PARIS-During the «printemps de l’Avenue Montaigne» (Spring art event on Avenue Montaigne) on 18 and 19 March 2009, the most beautiful pieces of the future sales will be presented at Drouot-Montaigne. On the 18th, Artcurial will organize a contest of oratorical art – with prosecution and defence – around the most controversial photographs of the last 50 years.

    To know more about the contest of oratorical art

    PARIS-Founded in 1953 and dedicated to modern and contemporary art, the magazine Cimaise is putting an end to its publication. Its last issue, number 293 and including an interview with Pierre Soulages, is for sale since 1st March.

    Know more

    SHARJAH-(United Arab Emirates) – The 9th biennale of contemporary art in Sharjah will be held from 16 March to 16 May 2009.

    Know more