Art Of The Day Weekly
#158 - from 21 January 2010 to 27 January 2010
IN THE AIR
Breasts forbid!
While the Canadian government authorized – and even partly financed – the installation for the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, of the statue of a nude hockey player, meant to be a gay icon, the sheriff of Las Vegas has taken a very different position regarding nudity. He succeeded in covering the visible tits of two women painted on a fresco, for reasons of obscenity. Ready to fend off the argument of freedom of artistic expression, the elected officials chose a round-about way. The painting is the sign indicating the way to the Erotic Heritage Museum, and as such is submitted to a strict code that constrains it to be increasingly prudish. In a city where entertainment is anything but innocent and where neon signs are often quite daring, the local authorities must have deemed it necessary to maintain a certain idea of morality…
EXHIBITIONS
David Chipperfield, Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany, © Christian Richters. Courtesy Design Museum, London, exposition Form Matters
Chipperfield, the architect of asceticism
LONDON – A new generation of British architects is making itself a place in the sun, behind Richard Rogers and Norman Foster. David Chipperfield (born in 1953) is not one of the least interesting and is surely one of the most visible. His austerity confronts the exuberant tendencies of Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, as he expresses himself in a great number of typologies which this exhibition brings back to life via photographs, films, drawings and models. Chipperfield redesigned the Neues Museum in Berlin, gave life to a museum of Literature, in Germany as well (in Marbach), and dares
bring back the classic colonnade so often warped by authoritarian regimes. But he is also working on an extension– how to enlarge an island! - of the cemetery of San Michele in Venice, on a huge City of justice in Barcelona and on a private home in Belgium. And he finds the time to design dishes and furniture.
•David Chipperfield at the Design Museum until 31 January 2010
Madeleine Vionnet, a forgotten star
PARIS – In her time she was as famous as Chanel, and employed in her private hotel at 50, avenue Montaigne up to one thousand apprentice seamstresses. The name of Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975) is only known today by fashion historians. The museum of Decorative arts pays a tribute to the woman who went from being a simple linen maid to be the pioneer in abandoning the corset, in the cut on the bias, in the draped look and geometric motives. Another great woman, Andrée Putman, has set up a quarter of a century of this designer’s career. One hundred and thirty models retrace her revolutions from 1912, when she enriched her experience next to Jacques Doucet and the Callot sisters, up to the closing of her couture house, at the beginning of World War II.
•Madeleine Vionnet, puriste de la mode at the Arts décoratifs until 31 January 2010.
Michelangelo, a builder in Rome
ROME – «I have two loves, Florence and Rome» Michel-Angelo could have declared. His long life (1575-1564) was almost equally divided between his native Tuscany and the Pope’s city, where he lived from 1505 to 1516 and from 1534 to his death, in 1564. The museums of the Capitol bring together the traces of his activity as an architect in Rome. Some thirty autographed drawings as well as prints, volume models and drawings by other artists concern Saint-Peter’s basilica, the Farnese palace or the Capitol piazza. The interest of this exhibition is to also show the disproportionate aspect of his later projects. Indeed when the artist was already eighty years old and very busy with the work on the Vatican, he accepted to work on the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, on the Sforza chapel at Santa Maria Maggiore, on the transformation of the tepidarium of Diocletian’s thermal baths in the basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli and last but not least, on the monumental entrance of Porta Pia. In spite of his remarkable longevity, he did not follow all of these projects to the end, and some of them never came to be …
•Michelangelo architetto a Roma at the Musei Capitolini until 7 February 2010
Artoftheday also recommends ...
• At the box in Bourges, Italian artists at the service of Fascist propaganda is a small but fascinating exhibition due to its contents: based on a few examples, it shows how the Italian works of art donated to French museums between 1932 and 1936 served Mussolini’s propaganda. From 21 January to 20 February 2010.
•In Versailles photographié 1850-2010, presented at the castle’s Galerie de pierre haute, photographs from all times, including Atget, Doisneau and Polidori, show the evolution of the domain. From 26 January to 25 April 2010.
•Chris Ofili, one of the main representatives of the current Young British Artists, who caused a scandal with a Virgin in elephant dung, is exhibited at the Tate Britain in London. From 27 January to 16 May 2010.
AUCTIONS
Clichy paperweight. Diam. 7,7 cm, haut. 4,7 cm. Estimate: €400-500. Courtesy Boisgirard.
The paperweight, the big comeback
Prior to the arrival of the computer, civilizations dependent on paper needed a simple instrument, the paper weight. It is now practically useless, except for the place it takes in our collective nostalgia. In the XIXth century, the indispensable model was the spherical, crystal ball, stuffed with inclusions called «millefiori» or «British candies» and, pushing further, could be decorated with ceramic figurines (the «glazed crystal»). Baccarat and Saint-Louis produced them but a new manufacture, the one of Clichy, was propelled to success in a few years, much to the admiration of all at the Universal Exposition of the Crystal Palace in 1851. The Boisgirard auction offers dozens of these pretty balls, at reasonable estimates, starting at 50 or 100 Euros (and culminating at nearly 2000 Euros in the case of the most sophisticated models). The technique experienced an unexpected revival in the XXth century in Scotland, in the Pertshire, initiated by a French family, the Ysart. These modern, less expensive balls, are equally on the program.
•Verrerie, cristaux, presse-papiers, opalines at Richelieu-Drouot (SVV Boisgirard) 25 January 2010 at 2: 15 PM.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Dario Escobar, Kukulkan, 2009, tires. Variable dimensions. © Dario Escobar Photo. Charles Duprat. Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris
Dario Escobar, the tires behind the forest
He did not go by unnoticed at the Biennale in Venice where his fantastic forest succeeded to adapt well to the large spaces of the Arsenal. Its strips of tires, seen from far, resembled a tropical jungle, the type this Guatemalan artist has trouble finding in his own country, devastated by savage deforestation. Having studied architecture, Dario Escobar (born in 1971) enjoys using the symbols of the consumer society for other uses. His symmetric way of functioning is similar to that of Wim Delvoye, who makes cement mixers in precious wood or gas tanks in porcelain. A ping pong racket is decorated with the heart of Jesus and it becomes a religious icon, a skate-board is divided like a centipede while Nike and Adidas shoes as well as McDonald’s become unavoidable references.
•Dario Escobar is exhibited at the galerie Kamel Mennour (47, rue Saint-André-des-Arts, 75006) until 23 January 2010.
BOOKS
Staudenmeyer, the meteor of design
Pierre Staudenmeyer (1952-2007) appears in the portrait made by those who knew him as a likeable person, with unleashed vitality, capable of being interested in a number of things simultaneously. His name is forever linked to that of the galerie Neotu that marked the 80s and 90s. This apparently Italian name actually hid a neologism in disguise: neo-tout (neo-everything). The gallery made a synthesis of the current tendencies in the world of design. Staudenmayer was very interested in lamps, chairs and rugs, and collected them compulsively. He published some of the greater names in the discipline, from Martin Szekely to Christian Biecher or Mattia Bonetti. The lavish work, with a very distinguished layout (an elegance we could not do without), makes the link between his various adventures (that also include the RE and Mouvements modernes galleries) and the evolution of French design.
•Les années Staudenmeyer, 25 ans de design en France, directed by Chloé Braunstein-Kriegel, Norma éditions, 2009, 528 p., 50 €, ISBN : 978-2-9155-4225-7.
IN BRIEF
BERLIN – The Paris-Berlin exchange between galleries of contemporary art, to be held in Berlin until 23 January 2010, will be continued in Paris from 29 January to 6 February 2010.
BRUSSELS – The 55th edition of the Brussels Antiques & Fine Arts Fair (BRAFA) will group together at the Tour & Taxis center some one hundred galleries from 22 to 31 January 2010.
DUNDEE – The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has launched an architecture contest for a future exhibition centre in Scotland, to open in 2014.
LONDON – The Decorative Fair, dedicated to ancient furniture and textiles, will be held at Battersea Park from 19 to 24 January 2010.
NEW YORK – According to the Crain’s newsletter, the Triennale of Milano, an institution of Italian design for nearly a century, is about to open a space of nearly 2000 m2 in lieu of the former Museum of Art and Design, on 53rd Street.
PARIS – The exhibition «Shanghai 2010» will be held at the Carrousel du Louvre from 26 to 28 January 2010 and will present in particular a giant model (60 m2) of the Universal Exposition that will open in May 2010
PARIS – The Museum Expressions fair, dedicated to cultural gifts and their by-products, will be held on 21 January 2010 until 7 PM at the Parc d’Expositions, at Porte de Versailles.
ROME – A monumental installation by Enzo Cucchi, Costume Interiore, will be inaugurated at the MACRO (Museum of Contemporary art in Rome) on 23 January 2010.