Art Of The Day Weekly
#194 - from 25 November 2010 to 1 December 2010
The new Soumaya Museum in Mexico © Fernando Romero and TwitPic
IN THE AIR
Slim gets bigger
MEXICO – In the classification of the world’s greatest fortunes, Carlos Slim has the honor of preceding Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the guru from Omaha. Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecommunications magnate, used to keeping a low profile, has come out to the limelight. By inaugurating a Pharaonic museum he will be showing a part of his collections (over 60 000 works from all ages, from the Pharaohs to the French XVIIth century, including Aztec art and souvenirs from the Mexican revolution) and he thus gives unto society a fraction of his wealth. The building, in the shape of a colossal ship, will be inaugurated on 30 November 2010 with exhibitions on painting at the time of the vice-royalty and on Auguste Rodin, as Slim possesses the most beautiful collection out of France. It reigns in the district of Polanco, where it will be an essential landmark in the new art promenade that will include in a few months another essential element: the new building of the Jumex contemporary art collection. Mexico is active, and not only in the field of drug trafficking…
• The Soumaya museum will be inaugurated mid-december 2010 in Mexico City
EXHIBITIONS
Marcel Broodthaers, Pense-Bête, 1964, books, paper, plaster, plastic spheres, wood, 232.5 x 139.5 x 59.5 cm, collection S.M.A.K., Stedelijk Museum voor Actuelle Kunst, Gand
Looking down Aby's road
MADRID - The man was quite a character. He was the oldest son of bankers but refused to follow in their steps, so he reached a special agreement with his brother: he renounced to his rights over the bank’s capital but was assured he could buy all the books he needed. He lived in America and in Florence, and spent long periods in the insane asylum. But Aby Warburg’s (1866-1929) real glory is to have created the foundations of iconology, the science that studies the sources of images. This particular exhibition, of which Georges Didi-Huberman is the curator, doe snot draw the portrait of the man but was inspired by him to write up an impossible atlas, a catalogue of images of the West, allowing himself to make unexpected connections. His aim is to see behind the looking glass and to decipher the sources of our visual culture.
• Atlas, cómo llevar el mundo a cuestas? at the Reina Sofía museum, from 26 November 2010 to 28 March 2011.
Frederick Kiesler, View of the installation City in Space, Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of modern decorative and industrial arts) , Grand Palais, Paris, 1925. Colored glass sheet. © 2010 Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna
Piet Mondrian and the knights of the straight angle
PARIS - Rendez-vous at the «poem of the right angle»! That was the name Le Corbusier gave to Piet Mondrian’s workshop, at 26 rue du Départ, in Paris. It is here that the Dutch artist (1872-1944), who started his career with country-scapes and sacred decorations, perfected his «neo-plastic» revolution. Today his grids, blue and red squares are famous the world over and the Centre Pompidou is exhibiting a large series for the first time since 1969. But the interest of the exhibition resides in showing of all Mondrian’s crowd, those who helped him expand his obsession with abstract reality, that is the De Stijl group with Theo Van Doesburg and designer Gerrit Rietveld as well as Georges Vantongerloo or Vilmos Huszar. In all some one hundred works of art on loan from The Hague, Utrecht, Vienna, London, Chicago or Zurich, to match the international nature of the movement.
Mondrian de Stijl at the Centre Pompidou, from 1st December 2010 to 21 March. 2011.
Dream-like Licini
TORINO -His painting is usually described as lyrical, poetic or fantastic. Osvaldo Licini, born in 1894 in the Marche region died the same year on which he was awarded the great prize of painting at the Biennale of Venice in 1958. He had been very impressed by his stay in Paris. The young Futurist had lifted his fist in defence of Cocteau and Picasso in 1917 during the famous representation of Parade at the théâtre du Châtelet. The abstract research he had carried out almost simultaneously to the European avant-gardes had a very personal result, giving birth to a universe of ethereal characters, who resembled micro-organisms with filaments, knitting colourful systems, his famous Amalassunte. The exhibition shows a selection of them, next to a complete itinerary of his production, including his figurative beginnings as well as his rigorous geometric compositions from the thirties.
• Osvaldo Licini at the GAM (Galleria d’Arte Moderna), until 31 January 2011.
AUCTIONS
In Brancusi's intimacy
PARIS – No millionaire in 1949 could have managed to have Brancusi design a night table or a lamp for him. The Rumanian artist of Paris was very well known but had a growing misanthropy, and only worked for himself. But in an unexpected way he took a liking for a couple of poor artists, two young compatriots who had just arrived in France, Alexandre Istrati and Natalia Dumitresco. He turned them into his emissaries (to check the exhibitions that were worth his going to) and his assistants, he housed them in his workshop, he offered them some of his works, and even produced a part of their furniture and named them his sole legatees. Their amazing collection is being presented today for auction: there are things at very small prices (for Brancusi, who has gone over the 20 million $ threshold in auctions) such as this lectern to read in bed or a plaster vase (estimated at 20 000 € each) as well as the Colonne du baiser. This interpretation of the theme he worked at all his life, in stone and plaster, is more expensive: it is expected to go for more than one million Euros.
• Œuvres de Contantin Brancusi at Artcurial on 30 November 2010.
BOOKS
Low cost Architecture
The economic crisis, pauperization and the squandering of resources are actually a golden opportunity for architects. They push them to seek viable and aesthetic solutions to meet tight budget constraints, lack of space and availability of materials. Various examples are brought forward here, showing a surprising inventiveness. From Japanese houses built on parcels less than 3 meters wide (Tehuto and Shuei Endo) to the low cost houses in Chile by Alejandro Aravena to substitute for illicit constructions, public housing in Mulhouse by Lacaton and Vassal, inspired by metallic markets, to the social centre in Burkina-Faso in bricks set up without mortar (Fare Studio), the range of possibilities is unlimited. As long as one does not refuse to recycle and intervene personally, one can live in something solid while feeling we are doing our share to protect the planet…
• Architecture Low Cost Low Tech by Alessandro Rocca, Actes Sud, 2010, 224 p., 29 €.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Segui, assessing half a century
An Argentine in Paris, Antonio Seguí is known for his paintings peopled by small colored men wearing hat and holding a cane. But the porteño, who has been living in France for nearly half a century, has produced a much more varied work than what it seems to those who have only referred to his last period. When he first arrived from the antipodes impressing Pieyre de Mandiargues and other demanding critics in the middle of the sixties, his painting was much darker, a vicious critic of society. At the time Soutine and Goya had slipped into his scenes of workers and artisans, in his meetings of notables sticking together, who infallibly make us think of García Márquez’s fossilized autocrats.
• Antonio Seguí is exhibited at the galerie Jeanne-Bucher (53, rue de Seine, 75006), from 25 November 2010 to 8 January 2011. Hazan catalogue.
IN BRIEF
BARCELONA -The MNAC, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, closed on 15 November until the summer of 2011, for renovation works.
ISTANBUL - The Contemporary Istanbul art fair will be held from 25 to 28 November 2010 at the Convention Centre.
LONDON -On 25 November 2010 the V&A will reopen its gallery of stained glass and European religious sculpture, dating from 1300 - 1600 AD.
PARIS-The MacParis contemporary art fair will present 125 artists without the intervention of galleries, from 25 to 28 November 2010 at the Espace Champerret.
PARIS-The rencontres de cinéma et d’art contemporain Paris Berlin Madrid (Paris Berlin Madrid film and contemporary art Forum) will be held from 26 November to 4 December 2010
STRASBOURG-The 15th edition of the St’Art contemporary art fair will be held from 26 to 29 November 2011 at the Parc des expositions.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
Kazakhstan, Men, animals and gods of the steppe
PARIS -The musée Guimet, the emblematic venue of «Asia in Paris», hosts for the first time in France an exhibition that introduces us to the history and heritage of Kazakhstan, a country of the Far-East, of steppes and nomadic horse riders …