Art Of The Day Weekly
#177 - from 3 June 2010 to 9 June 2010
The new museum of precolombian art Casa del Alabado, in Quito, Ecuador.
IN THE AIR
Quito, a pre-colombian capital
The public at large has a limited knowledge of the pre-Colombian world. It consists essentially in the Aztecs and the Mayas in Mexico and the Incas in Peru and Bolivia. Other countries also have a patrimony that is far from being common, but they have difficulties in having them being known. This is the case for Ecuador, where treasure hunters are still in search of Atahualpa’s gold: following the assassination of the Inca sovereign, half of the fabulous ransom was never delivered to the Spaniards and may still be hidden in the Llanganates mountains … A private museum in one of the most beautiful ensembles of colonial architecture in Latin America has just opened in the heart of Quito (May 2010). La Casa del Alabado houses the collections of the Klein, Viteri and Ribadeneira families, and exhibits Ecuador’s wealth of the Inca (very briefly) and pre-Inca periods. The non-chronologic itinerary tries to make the cosmic vision of the local cultures familiar to others. The museography is clear and full of light, in an old adobe home very properly restored. The 5000 pieces of the collection have been digitized and are visible over internet. This is a rare success but went by unnoticed in face of the big commotion created around the opening of such European giants as the Centre Pompidou Metz or the Roman MAXXI and MACRO. Let us give to David …
•La Casa del Alabado – the museum of pre-Colombian art is located at calle Cuenca 335, behind the convent of Saint-Francis.
EXHIBITIONS
Archaeology, long painstaking work
BORDEAUX – Another sector the public at large knows little of is preventive archaeology. Before carrying out large works (highways, urban developments, etc), it allows for safety diggings to take place. The large exhibition at the musée d’Aquitaine allows the visitor to measure its importance. Indeed, it brings together some two thousand objects dug out over twenty years of research in the region. Whether it is carved flints, bones of Cervidae used for hunting, or useful ceramics, these pieces give us fundamental information on the way of living and the housing of our distant predecessors, over a huge span of 300 000 years, up to the end of the Bronze period (IXth century B.C.). The sometimes non-communicative aspect of these remnants can be explained and made more accessible through a measure of video terminal and models.
•Aquitaine préhistorique at the musée d’Aquitaine from 2 June to 31 December 2010
Morandi, more than bottles
TOULON - Think Morandi, think bottles! The exhibition presented at the Hôtel des Arts, the first of such importance since the one in 1996 at the Maillol museum, will allow to ease this cliché of a painter centred on still lives. An heir of Cézanne, the artist of Bologna (1890-1964) with the very orderly existence, also expressed himself in landscapes and flowers. These represent a good contingent of the forty works exhibited. The influence of Morandi – formalized by his prize at the Biennale of Venice in 1948 or by his central role at Documenta in Kassel in 1955 – touched numerous contemporary artists. But his work also marked, by his architectural and pure dimension, movie directors like Antonioni and Fellini (who showed one of his paintings in a Bourgeois apartment in La Dolce Vita).
•Giorgio Morandi at the Hôtel des Arts from 5 June to 26 September 2010
Paar beim Ausdruckstanz
Nudes over 150 years
WUPPERTAL– How has the practice of the nude evolved over the last century and a half? The Von der Heydt museum answers this question by crossing two techniques: painting, as old as the world, and photography, which has just celebrated its 150th anniversary and which is illustrated by pieces from the museum in Munich. The evolution, from the academy - the ideal and disembodied representation still practiced in the XIXth century - up to the flux of pornographic images that today invade internet and symbolise the «tyranny of the intimate» (Richard Sennett), has been notable. Certain images, considered insignificant in the past, seem clearly less acceptable in our society, such as these young Mediterranean ephebes immortalized by Von Gloeden. Naturalism, New Objectivity and Hollywood glamour are some of the themes that rhythm this plunge into nudes.
•Nude visions at the Von der Heydt Museum from 1st June to 15 August 2010
Artoftheday also recommends...
• Those you missed it at the fondation Beyeler in Basle, can now see the retrospective dedicated to Douanier Rousseau at the Guggenheim de Bilbao. Until 12 September 2010.
• In the context of the «Normandie impressionniste» festival, the exhibition Entre tradition et modernité at the Eugène-Boudin museum in Honfleur gives the details of the privileged link between the Normand seaside town and the painters. From 2 June to 6 September 2010.
• To close the «Saison de la Turquie» (Season of Turkey) in France, Magie du Bosphore at the Maison de l’Armateur and at the Prieuré de Graville, in the Havre shows the fascination Istanbul had on painters during the XVIIIth century. Up to 30 August 2010.
AUCTIONS
Treat yourself to the Feuilles mortes!
PARIS - After André Breton’s Manifeste du surréalisme was sold for 3.6 million € at Sotheby’s in May 2008, another significant piece of the literary heritage of the period between the two wars will be up for sale. Jacques Prévert was probably the most loved poet in France, but also one of the great script writers of his time. One of his masterpieces, the manuscript of Quai des brumes, filmed by Marcel Carné, will be the highlight of the Ader auction on 9 June (estimate: 200 000 €). The illustrated sheet of the scenario of Visiteurs du soir (40 000 €) is a superb visual object. The mythical Feuilles mortes, sung by Yves Montand, also appears in its original, hand-written version (30 000 €). The letters exchanged with Chagall, Matisse or Brassens, and the dedicated books will also be present, and affordable, at lesser prices. The sale is orchestrated by his granddaughter, Eugénie Bachelot Prévert, and includes a part of the art collection from the apartment near Moulin-Rouge, in particular a gouache by Miró and a painting by Picasso. • Prévert sale on 9 June 2010 at Richelieu-Drouot (SVV Ader)
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Rokni Haerizadeh, Bury your heads in the lap of heaven (Fictionville), 2010, Mixed media on paper, 29.5 x 21 cm, courtesy galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris.
The Haerizadeh, an Iranian family
The Western world has always shown a keen interest in Iranian photography and cinema – of which Kiarostami is one of the leading figures. But Iranian plastic arts have not enjoyed that privilege, in spite of it being one of the means of expression the protest movement uses. We can be convinced of this in the exhibition the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery dedicates to three young Persian artists. Two brothers, Ramin (born in 1975) and Rokni (born in 1978) Haerizadeh use the current reality as a source of inspiration and devote themselves, as authoritarian regimes like to do, to retouch images. But in this case Rokni uses gouaches to accentuate televised instant images while Ramin proceeds by photomontages, both with the aim of demonstrating the repression and to underline the extent of the popular mobilisation.
•Ramin et Rokni Haerizadeh, Bita Fayyazi at the galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (rue Debelleyme, Paris) from 3 to 30 June 2010.
BOOKS
Full steam ahead
Surrealism, Futurism, Cubism, these all ring a bell for most of us and they are movements we automatically associate to the concept of avant-garde. But what about Vorticism, Acmeism, Stridentism or even Anthropophagism? The latter are cousins of the former, and sometimes come from more exotic regions (Latin America and Brazilfor the last two). The interest of this large volume by Serge Fauchereau is to dig out other avant-gardes than the ones which have become big classics, and to present them by keeping the too often evaded close link they maintained between literature and plastic arts. We therefore stroll between painters and writers, juggling from scenic installations by Popova to prints on wood by Norah Borges (Jorge Luis’s sister). Behind the dense texts the iconography offers rare gifts: paintings by DH Lawrence, covers of Spanish literary reviews, photograms of the Golem or of Russian films decorated by Alexandra Exter. The notion of avant-garde becomes intimidating, deep like an ocean: so much the better …
•Avant-gardes du XXe siècle, arts & littérature 1905-1930 by Serge Fauchereau, Flammarion, 2010, 594 p., 49 €.
IN BRIEF
LONS-LE-SAULNIER - The French food company Groupe Bel is opening on 4 June 2010 its "Lab'Bel", an artistic "laboratory" aimed at supporting contemporary art through exhibitions, mainly at Maison de la vache qui rit.
MADRID – The photography festival Photo España opens on 9 June 2010 and will be held until 25 July 2010.
NEW YORK - The Paris-born artist Louise Bourgeois died on 31 May 2010, aged 98.
PARIS – The event Jardins, jardin, dedicated to the new fashions in urban gardens, will be held from 4 to 6 June 2010 at the Tuileries gardens
PARIS – The Malingue gallery presents until 17 July some twenty paintings rarely seen from Émile Bernard’s synthetist period, lent by private collections and grouped together around his unforgettable Bretonnes dans la prairie.
PARIS – The Parcours Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an itinerary dedicated to contemporary art, will be held from 3 to 6 June 2010 in the galleries of the left-bank quarter
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
Atmospheric enamels. Ceramics
ROUEN -- The pieces shown by the musée de la Céramique in this retrospective offer a griping transposition on ceramic of the Impressionist pictorial technique and translate, through a game of colored oxydes and the brightness of enamel, the effects of light.