Art Of The Day Weekly
#127 - from 2 April 2009 to 8 April 2009
IN THE AIR
Irish nudes
DUBLIN – No matter how often we warn politicians that if they censure derision all they do is increase its audience, they never learn! It was the case of the voodoo doll of President Sarkozy. Here we have another example yet: we would never have known there was a portrait of the Irish Prime Minister in his lightest attire had it not been for this reaction out of proportion. By sending the police to carry out a search of the computers in a radio station, we were lucky to hear about this story. It is very simple: an unknown painter did two portraits of Brian Cowen, one in his briefs, the other with a roll of toilet paper in his hand. Shocking! It is difficult to attack as freedom of expression is sacred in Anglo-Saxon countries. But Conor Casby, the audacious artist who happens to be a school teacher, committed a blunder: when he hung up the paintings in one of the most famous institutions in Dublin, the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Society, he damaged the wall with the glue, he became automatically eligible to an accusation of vandalism…
MUSEUMS
The return of Whitechapel
LONDON – It is one of the emblematic cultural institutions of London’s East End: Whitechapel Gallery, designed by architect Charles Harrison Townsend in 1901 with a beautiful Arts & Crafts facade, was to bring art to the poor populations of the workers’ districts. A century later, after hosting Picasso’s Guernica in 1939, Gilbert & George as well as Tuberculosis in art (in 1907) or Images of cricket in 1935, it is off to a new beginning. It engulfed the adjoining library and thus doubled its space with a remodelling by the Belgian architecture firm Robbrecht en Daem. The exhibition spaces have greatly increased as well as the «facilities» (a café, the archives, an educational centre). Various inaugural exhibitions are offered, of which one dedicated to artist Iza Genzken, noted for her sculptures during the last Biennale of Venice, and another to the Whitechapel Boys, a group of Jewish artists who gave a fundamental boost to the English modern movement.
EXHIBITIONS
Baroque worlds
LONDON – In the beginning, they say it was a pearl of an irregular form. In the end, the Baroque style marked Europe - and maybe even more Latin America - in a lasting manner, with its profusion and its extravaganza. The Victoria & Albert Museum is dedicating a themed retrospective full of pitfalls, to this period. Indeed, there is so much to embrace, what should one chose? There is a profusion of pieces from the time of Louis XIV and Versailles, Bernini and Borromini are of course present as well (the plans for Saint-Peter’s and the Cornaro chapel with The Ecstasy of S. Teresa di Avila), as well as works by Rubens and Tiepolo. The interest lies in the lighting given to lesser-exposed baroques: examples from Bohemia with decorations from the Cesky Krumlov theatre, others from the British Isles with silverware, from Sweden with costumes from the royal court, even from Indonesia, from the Philippines, India and Brazil. This exhibition is the perfect appetizer: the best way to admire any artistic current - and the Baroque above all - is at the source…
Image and its double
PARIS - Look. What do you see? An image? Or the other? Dalí was a master of these visual hallucinations. In one of his paintings, we first only see a gallery of personalities. When looking more carefully, we distinguish a bust of Voltaire. Another, Endless enigma, can be deciphered in six different ways. The double image– a register of trompe-l’œil – well deserves an exhibition. Now the Grand Palais has done it by bringing together 250 works to explore it. Old art work with Arcimboldo and his portraits, which we can read in both senses like the images of Epinal. Very contemporary art as well with Markus Raetz and his sculptures, that use the technique of the anamorphosis (the image can only be discovered if it is looked at under a certain angle). There are works for the public at large, with countless images by Escher, reproduced in posters in millions of copies. But there are also erotic photographs, Persian miniatures, movie scenes…
AUCTIONS
The hidden aspect of Nan Goldin
PARIS – It is rare to see a cabinet de curiosités at an auction, and further more a contemporary one. The interest in this one is not so much what it contains but rather the identity of the person who assembled it. It was photographer Nan Goldin, the memory keeper of the New York underground of the 1980s, marked by sexual freedom and the losses caused by aids. «My collection is as eclectic as I am» Nan Goldin declared, having dedicated thirty years searching for these articles, in particular in the flea markets and auction houses. There are some forty lots – reliquaries, sculpted ivory, eccentric furniture and curiosities such as these Siamese stuffed lambs – generally very inexpensive. While the ensemble sheds light on a person, do the objects on their own, separately, have any sense, an aesthetic value, capable of motivating the bidders? It is not an easy question to answer.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Rainier Lericolais, Japanese Electronic Music (from the series Prospective du XXIe siècle), 2009, painting on Heliophore, 35 x 35 cm, courtesy galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris
Rainier Lericolais
There are a lot of important people in the exhibition of Rainier Lericolais, a native from Castelroussin: Mallarmé, Marcel Broodthaers and quite a few Surrealist inspirers, we may presume. One cannot see them, nor can one hear them, but it is as if we did. Lericolais has thus produced a score, which is a transcription he had done based on the famous «A throw of dice will never abolish luck»… The artist’s installations often call for sound or the idea of sound for he himself is a renowned experimental musician. There are sculpture-rolls like the ones fed into the hurly-gurly and many «attempts»: attempt of a porcelain explosion, an attempt to mold water or an attempt of a record: the prints into the aluminum of old vinyl grooves. In the end, it is impossible to resume the work of this artist who, what is more, prefers materials that deteriorate quickly: glue, water, old images and references to the past. All that is meant to erase, and not to leave any lasting traces. A little geography of what is ephemeral.
BOOKS
The second sex
« Why have there not been any famous women artists? » Linda Nochlin asked in an essay that was published in 1970. That is because the history of art, in particular through the major myths, has limited woman to a passive role of a sexual object. As the author demonstrates, contemporary creators have seized this problem bodily. They have made up for the lost centuries by working on the feminine idea, generally through performances or installations. A few chosen examples illustrate an often complex speech: Rebecca Horn transforms into a unicorn, Ana Mendieta, using chicken feathers and blood, plays on the themes of sacrifice and of virginity, Mona Hatoum stages, with videos, the idea of rape, Ghada Amer embroiders – an eminently feminine activity – images of playmates, taken from pornographic magazines… For today’s woman artists, the question of gender remains a fundamental theme.
IN BRIEF
ANTWERP-Two autographed letters by Victor Hugo, describing the political situation in his time, have been discovered at the Hendrik Conscience library.
BRUSSELS-The Rosendor collection, an ensemble of architectural Brussels decors from the XIXth and XXth century, gathered for three decades by entrepreneur Max Rosendor, is exhibited and put up for sale (90 rue Navez) from 3 to 13 April 2009.
LILLE -The 2nd edition of Lille Art Fair, the European contemporary art fair, is held in Lille Grand Palais, from 3 to 6 June 2009, with 65 European galleries
NEW YORK-Gallery owner Lawrence Salander, whose gallery was closed a year and a half ago, was arrested on 26 March. He is accused of having extorted 80 million dollars from his clients by selling the same painting various times.
PARIS-The 120th edition of the Salon des artistes indépendants is held from 4 to 9 April 2009 at the Espace Champerret. Salvador Dali and the newspaper le Canard Enchaîné, through 13 of its drawers, will benefit from a special lighting.
PARIS-The musée Guimet, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the British Library launch the Dunhuang project by making accessible on line the manuscripts Paul Pelliot found in China in 2008.
TOKYO-Art Fair Tokyo holds its 5th edition from 3 to 5 April 2009 with nearly 150 galleries of contemporary art, with a strong representation from the Asian continent.
VERSAILLES-The VIIth Biennale internationale de la gravure d’Ile-de-France (International Biennale of prints of the Ile de France region), held at the Domaine de Madame Elisabeth, from 2 April to 12 July 2009, presents works by nearly fifty Indian artists.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
VEGETAL CITY
BRUSSELS-How can we remedy the deterioration of our environment while imagining innovating solutions of life in society? This is the challenge architect Luc Schuiten meets at the au musée du Cinquantenaire by using possible utopias that draw their inspiration from the leaf of the lotus or from the wings of dragonflies.