Home > ArtoftheDay Weekly > #132 - from 7 May 2009 to 13 May 2009

Art Of The Day Weekly

#132 - from 7 May 2009 to 13 May 2009

IN THE AIR

Art to the trash

A few years ago, at the Tate Britain, a work of art by German artist Gustav Metzger was thrown out to the bin without much tact. We must add that it did look like a trash bag and that the cleaning woman had not been able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Metzger, born in 1926 in Nuremberg, stateless since the end of the war, a member of Fluxus, inventor of "self-destructive" art, did not take this misadventure badly. Just like Damien Hirst, in 2001, when an over-zealous employee from the Eyestorm gallery had treated one of his creations in the same manner – it was a pile of used, plastic ash trays. England definitely has a weakness for these iconoclastic actions. Last week, it was the turn of the citizens of Glastonbury who committed a blunder. During their anti-graffiti mission, they erased a mural painting by Banksy, one of the most pricedstreet art contemporary artists. The lovely Paddington bear has disappeared. Since then, the owner of the wall has sleepless nights. A court case could follow.

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EXHIBITIONS

Germany, year 60

BERLIN – She is 60 years old. She went through the difficult post war years, the joys of the baby-boom, the era of abundance, the new recession… The Federal Republic of Germany is celebrating its 60th anniversary by presenting a choice of significant artists, decade after decade. Of course we have Beuys, Baselitz and Wols, then Richter, Immendorf, Lüpertz, the Becher couple, Penck, up to Rosemarie Trockel, Thomas Struth and Jonathan Meese. Sixty works of art – symbolically one per year – show the evolution of the artistic scene, and the oscillating movement between a deeply socio-political context, the conceptual temptation and the call to painting. Everything is defined in multiples of 60, including the videos that filter through the major moments of these first six decades.

  • 60 Jehre, 60 Werke at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, from 1st May to 14 June 2009

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  • Green is in art

    FLORENCE – Palazzo Strozzi rhymes with Renaissance and the Medici family… The Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina has been put in charge of eliminating this prejudice and has launched an avant-garde programme of events. The environment theme is quite in fashion, and here is a new version: artists from various horizons have developed their creations based on this theme in an area bathed in artificial light. There is Amy Balkin, who bought a piece of land along the California highway to turn it into an international ecologic area; Lucy and Jorge Orta, who created an installation on water, as well as Michele Dantini, whose study subject is the pipeline in Chad and wrote a real-false diary. These artists who are active in this register are very close to politics. They tackle questions directly, such as the exhaustion of resources, global warming or the loss of biodiversity.

  • Green Platform at the centro di Cultura Contemporanea, Palazzo Strozzi, until 19 July 2009

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  • Eiffel's Turn

    PARIS – The Eiffel tower, of course, the tallest monument in the world when it was inaugurated in March 1889. But there is also the Garabit viaduct, that of Porto in Portugal, a train station in Budapest, the internal structure of the statue of Liberty. There is even the house of the Portuguese general governor of Maputo in Mozambique! Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), an engineer of genius, left traces of his know-how everywhere, and it was then exported in particular with the system of portable bridges. An exhibition tries to give a complete idea of the person and his legacy, by unveiling another facet of his talent: at the end of his life, weakened by a financial scandal, Eiffel «recycled» himself into the field of aeronautics, and designed prototypes of fighter planes for Farman or Bréguet.

  • Eiffel, le magicien du fer - Eiffel, the iron magician- at the Hôtel de Ville, Saint-Jean room, from 6 May to 31 August 2009

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  • Artoftheday also recommends...

  • In Bonn, the Bundeskunsthalle is dedicating a major exhibition to Modigliani with 40 paintings and 80 drawings that cover his major creative decade up to his death in 1919. Until 30 August 2009.

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  • In The Louvre during the war , the major Parisian museum offers, with some fifty photographs, a retrospective on the black years between 1938 and1947. Until 31 August 2009

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  • In Rennes, the museum of Bretagne brings back to life the Odorico, a dynasty of mosaic artists of Italian origin who greatly marked the Art deco period. Until 3 January 2010.

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  • AUCTIONS

    Masks from Africa

    PARIS – The title of Capital of the primitive arts is something Paris likes to boast of, but that needs to be fought for every day, and not only with major sales like those at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Over 200 African lots form a varied ensemble here, starting at very accessible prices (a few hundred Euros for wooden spoons, pipes, a door from a wheat loft or zoomorphic stools) but can climb quite rapidly. For example, an Oba head from the kingdom of Benin, in black aged wood , and a female Dan mask from the Ivory Coast (Simone de Monbrison collection) are expected to go up to 8 000–10 000 Euros and a Kota reliquary figure from Gabon to 12 000 Euros. The star of the sale should be the Senufu Seated Mother and child with head dress with pendants, at more than 20 000 Euros.

  • Art et ethnographie d’Afrique, collection d’un amateur - African Art and Ethnography, the collection of an amateur - at Richelieu-Drouot (SVV Massol) Wednesday 13 May 2009 at 2 PM.

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  • ARTIST OF THE WEEK


    Alun Williams, Garibaldi revisiting Caprera, circa 1977, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, diptych: 152,5 x 274 cm, courtesy galerie Anne Barrault, Paris

    Alun Williams, portraits and variations

    What is a portrait? And how about a resembling portrait? For centuries, Western art has turned around this fundamental question, suggesting a great variety of answers, from the Renaissance to Cubism. Can we still ponder this matter? Alun Williams (born in 1961 in Manchester) seems to think so, and does by referring to canvases of recognizable people as well as shadows, be it total parfaits ectoplasms. We can recognize Garibaldi but not necessarily Jules Verne. Beyond that, these paintings and collages leave us with the question of decrypting a work of art. In the past, the life of the Saints had no secrets for the any slightly curious person. While our cultural know-how has shrunk in a mind-boggling manner, our cultural knowledge has grown in parallel. It should allow us to read these paintings like simple charades…

  • Alun Williams is exhibited at the Anne Barrault gallery (22, rue Saint-Claude, 75003) until 13 June 2009.

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  • BOOKS

    The Bible of quai Branly

    At the museum of quai Branly, behind Jean Nouvel’s architecture, only 1% of the nearly 290 000 objects of the collection are presented to the public: it is so little! And yet, there is already so much to be said of these pieces exhibited, as it is so laborious for a European eye to decipher them. This catalogue which once again, in spite of its size, did not chose to be exhaustive, tries to do just that by detailing some 150 essential pieces. In figures, that only represents 5% of the 1% exhibited, which in any case gives a respectable volume of 500 pages…From the over-modeled mask to the Japanese New Year’s rope, from the magic stone to the pendant, from the lamp for rituals to the doorstep of the Indonesian house, each object is the object of a long index card which details its use and its function. The whole presentation is organized by continent and according to a chronologic scale to avoid mixing up the rare points of reference the honest man of the XXIst century has regarding extra-European civilizations…

  • Musée du quai Branly, la collection, Skira/Flammarion, 2009, 482 p., 55 €, ISBN : 978-2-0812-0876-6

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  • IN BRIEF

    ARLES- According to art historians Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, Van Gogh did not mutilate his ear all alone. It seems it was Gauguin who cut it off during a sword fight.

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    BORDEAUX- The museum of Aquitaine will inaugurate on 10 May 2009 a new space dedicated to Atlantic trade and slavery.

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    LONDON – The London Museums and Heritage Show, a fair dedicated to the products and services for the world of museums, will be held at Earl’s Court on 13 and 14 May 2009.

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    MADRID – The first edition of the specialised fair Madrid Foto, that brings together some fifty galleries, will be held from 7 to 10 May 2009.

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    NEW YORK – Rauschenberg, Kippenberger and Basquiat are included in the sale of contemporary art at Sotheby’s on 12 and 13 May 2009. At Christie’s, Betty Freeman’s collection, including works by Hockney, Flavin and Sam Francis, will be up for sale on 13 and 14 May 2009.

    The website at Sotheby's

    PARIS - The Deyrolle store, one of the landmarks in taxidermy, and which suffered from a fire a year ago, has reopened its doors following a restoration campaign.

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    VIENNA – The Viennafair contemporay art fair will be held from 7 to 10 May 2009 at Messe Wien. It will bring together more than 120 galleries from 18 different countries.

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    ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO

    This week, do not miss

    ARMOUR & EVENING DRESS

    BASEL -The Tinguely museum, dedicated to the modern magician of iron, is presenting an audacious juxtaposition. It welcomes metal creations that are just as remarkable but quite more ancient, the Renaissance armour of the Habsburgs. They accompany the «armoured-dresses» by Italian designer Roberto Capucci.

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