Home > ArtoftheDay Weekly > #180 - from 24 June 2010 to 30 June 2010

Art Of The Day Weekly

#180 - from 24 June 2010 to 30 June 2010


Giovanni del Fora, The Fight between Love and Chastity (exhibition at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)

IN THE AIR

For or against the invisible artist...

Art is to know how to sell one self. Damien Hirst’s success seems to prove this saying right. In order to avoid any possible lack of attention the artist produces disconcerting initiatives at regular intervals: he managed a restaurant (The Pharmacy), created a skull in diamonds for sale at 100 millions €, organized at Sotheby’s the first large sale dedicated to a contemporary artist (himself). His last trick is to convert into a gallery owner and thus complete the cycle of art professions. According to the British press his gallery should be set up at Hyde Park, in lieu of a former munition depot, and be designed by architect Mike Rundell. To be present every where or not to appear at all in public, once again it is a British artist who teaches us the second strategy to be on everyone’s mind and lips. In the same manner as Salinger, Banksy, an author of frescoes and stencil paintings, has decided to be an invisible artist. It did him well: from 2006 and 2008, the value of his work multiplied by ten, going from 100 000 Euros to one million Euros. This strategy is not void of any risks, since an 89 year old lady has just announced that Bansky, is no one else but she … In order to belie her the “real” Bansky has no other choice now than to identify himself. As for Damien Hirst, on the contrary, his next move is all dictated to him: to stage his own disappearance.

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EXHIBITIONS


Photo © François Halard

Three colors Barceló

AVIGNON – In the XIVth century, the kings of Majorca visited the pope in Avignon. Today, another prince of Majorca is being celebrated in the noble town: Miquel Barceló. The artist is indeed the subject of an ambitious retrospective in three emblematic locations: the Palais des Papes (with an ensemble of sculptures and ceramics), the Lambert collection (the conductor of this exhibition, with a series of large paintings from the years 2000 and never seen before) and at the Petit-Palais. In this last venue and under Barceló’s own insistence, the link with the past is the main subject as medieval masters from Majorca are presented for the first time in France. This is a relation Barceló is sensitive to, as can be witnessed in the recent altarpiece he did in the cathedral of Majorca…
Miquel Barceló, Terra-Mare at the Palais des Papes, at the Collection Lambert and at the musée du Petit-Palais, from 27 June to 7 November 2010.

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Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, oil on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Ghirlandaio, profile

MADRID – The Thyssen-Bornemisza museum organises a retrospective on Florence’s Renaissance starting with an iconic painting – the Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni. The author, Domenico Ghirlandaio, one of the favorites of the city’s high bourgeoisie, seemed to be perfectly documented from the beginning of his work (1490). It was dedicated by the husband to his young wife died in childbirth, and has recently been studied closely by the museum’s restorers: the pigments, the quality of the poplar board, the preparatory drawings practically hold no more secrets … This archaic portrait (pure profile), at a time when the elites started to fancy three quarter representations, introduces one of the three sections of the exhibition (the portrait). Together with the other two – love, religion – enriched by loans from international museums, there is a total of sixty works present in the exhibition – Botticelli, Cosimo Rosselli, Pollaiuolo…
Ghirlandaio and the Renaissance in Florence at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum from 23 June to 10 October 2010.

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Giacometti-Maeght, a friendship

SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE – Today he is really worth a lot: with his Walking man, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) became the most expensive artist of the XXth century when the sculpture sold for 58 million £, i.e. 66 million € at Sotheby’s in London on 3 February 2010. Before meeting this posthumous glory, Giacometti «survived» in hotel rooms and small workshops. Those who believed in him then can be defined as visionaries, such as art dealer and collector Aimé Maeght, who enjoyed a twenty-year long friendship with the artist. We can gauge its extent in this large summer retrospective: 170 works and among them two other versions of Man walking , the only ones Giacometti painted, as well as a great number of those «long and slender» statues he created after 1946 and which are inextricably associated to his name. But there are also paintings, drawings, painted plasters, prints or letters, most of them from the collection of the Maeght family.
Giacometti & Maeght 1946-1966 at the Fondation Maeght from 27 June to 31 October 2010.

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Artoftheday also recommends...

• Helmut Newton’s wife, Alice Springs also led a photographic career, traced at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin. Until 31 January 2011.

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• The musée Chagall in Nice presents Le monde renversé de Chagall (Chagall’s upside-down world) in which people challenge the laws of gravity… From 19 June to 11 October 2010.

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•The Kunsthaus in Zurich presents a complete retrospective of photographer Thomas Struth, known in particular for his images of museums, integrating a series of recent works. Until 12 September 2010.

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AUCTIONS

Vollard, total suspense

PARIS - Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) is surely one of the greatest art merchants in history. We owe him the first real Cézanne retrospective (1895), a similar operation for Van Gogh (1896) and the first large exhibition dedicated to Picasso in Paris (1901). Nearly three quarters of a century after his demise, the Vollard heritage reappears unexpectedly with the «Vollard coffer». The group of works had been bequeathed by Vollard, right before dying, to his young Yugoslav assistant (who according to some was his lover) Eric Chlomovic. Following the latter’s disappearance in a concentration camp in 1942 the iron coffer survived a train accident, the looting by Bulgarian soldiers, the curiosity of the Yugoslav State … before being found again in the safes of the Société Générale in Paris in 1979. The procedures were very long and finally the contents of this coffer reappeared on the market. On 22 June, a superb Fauve landscape by Derain was up for auction in London (Trees in Collioure from 1905, sold for £16.3 million). On 29 June the rest of the contents of the coffer will be up for sale in Paris. The treasures held in this coffer are surely interesting (such as a portrait of Zola by Cézanne, monotypes by Degas and Picasso), but definitely much less than their fantastic wanderings.
• Auction of «Vollard’s coffer» at Sotheby’s on 29 June 2010

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ARTIST OF THE WEEK


Nakis Panayotidis, La lumière fugitive de la mémoire, 2010, 85x112x6 cm. Courtesy galerie Tornabuoni, Paris.

The lights of Panayotidis

Nakis Panayotidis was influenced by the Arte Povera movement that he befriended in Italy at the turn of the ‘70s, in particular through his friendship with Mario and Marisa Merz, in the foyer of the movement – Torino – where he studied architecture. The use of «poor» materials by the artist born in Athens in 1947 (but who has been living for the last thirty years in Berne) means stone and metal, which can fusion with photographs and words. In the presence of neon bulbs and other sources of light – tubes or reflecting surfaces - in the juxtaposition of industrial backgrounds and natural landscapes, we seem to unveil analogies with Pistoletto or Kounellis.
•Nakis Panayotidis is exhibited at the galerie Tornabuoni (16 avenue Matignon, 75008 Paris) until 24 July 2010.

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BOOKS

The new paths in design

If one were to sum up the creed of «ecologic» design, we could say it consists in creating beauty and being practical while protecting the environment. To use recycled materials, select wood from renewable plantations, to favor water and energy-saving technologies … There are as many approaches as objects resulting from this research. This book presents a very wide selection in a very practical optic: in each instance a website is given to buy the part or learn more. One can be poetic when picking up detritus on the beach (lustre Tide by Stuart Haygarth), funny and colorful with egg boxes (Bailarina lamps), post-industrial by making benches with scrap from materials handling cars, or simply very original by reclaiming old porcelain vases and giving them a new identity (Karen Ryan)…
1000 nouveaux designs écologiques et où les trouver by Rebecca Proctor, Chêne, 2009, 29 €.

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IN BRIEF

CARRARA – The XIVe International sculpture Biennale will be held from 26 June to 31 October 2010 under the title «Postmonument».

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LONDON – Belgian curator Chris Dercon has been named director of the Tate Modern, to replace Vicente Todolí, who gave in his resignation..

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MILLY-LA-FORÊT –Jean Cocteau’s home, bought by Pierre Bergé, will open to the public on 24 June 2010 after five years of works. Aside from an important painting by Christian Bérard, the public will also be able to admire photographs and graphic works by Cocteau.

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PARIS – A stone Tête (Head) by Modigliani was sold for 48.2 million € (fees included) on 14 June 2010 at Christie’s, thus setting a new record for the artist and for a work of art sold in France.

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