Art Of The Day Weekly
#231 - from 20 October 2011 to 26 October 2011
Vito Acconci, City of Words, 2010 Photographie, courtesy GDM (FIAC 2011, Paris)
IN THE AIR
Trip to the center of the FIAC
A FIAC without any controversies would not be a FIAC… This year the big debate is the loss of the Cour carré in the Louvre. As the prestigious area is covered with scaffoldings, the selection is restricted and the more sophisticated gallery owners have been eliminated from the competition (such as Suzanne Tarasiève or Eric Dupont). We will nevertheless have distinguished representatives (a total of nearly 170 galleries), some for the first time, others back once again and much awaited for such as White Cube, Lisson, Gmurzynska, Pace. As every other year, the program is not limited to an accumulation of stands: 2011 has a bonus of a mobile museum for children (the MuMO) and installations in the Jardin des Plantes. And the satelite fairs are more energetic than ever. They host younger galleries, that are less institutional, often more reactive, and are maybe closer to an unseizable and yet constantly present creature, art in the making.
• FIAC 2011 au Grand Palais, du 20 au 23 octobre 2011.
EXHIBITIONS
View of the Kunstkammer © me Collectors Room Berlin, Photo Bernd Borchardt
Somewhere between Dürer and the Chapman brothers
PARIS -The word today is genre contamination: mixed blood, zapping, flash-back, pot-pourri, fusion concerning populations, cuisine, music and literature. We therefore logically expected a strong return of the « cabinet de curiosités », the obsession of educated persons during the Renaissance who saw in the masterpieces of Nature and man an instrument of marvel and knowledge. The Berlin collection of Thomas Olbricht, rich with 2500 pieces, confirms this. This enlightened man, an endocrinologist by profession, collected everything he could put his hands on, through periods and continents, trying to knit links between an African mask, a print by Dürer, an installation of the Chapman brothers or a contemporary écorché in glass pearls by Liza Lou. The source comes not only from the emotion felt in front of beauty but also the surprise, the fear, be it the indignation in face of a sacrilege …
• Mémoires du futur, la collection Olbricht at the Maison rouge, from 22 October 2011 to 15 January 2012
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Art of the day also recommends...
MALAGA – The museo Picasso hosts a very rich selection of works (close to 200) by Giacometti, that come form the Alberto and Annette Giacometti foundation in Paris. From 17 October 2011 to 5 February 2012
PARIS – With Napoléon III et l’Italie, naissance d’une nation 1848-1870 (Napoleon III and Italy, the birth of a nation 1848-1870), the musée de l’Armée wishes to present in detail the role of the Emperor in the Italian Unity. From 19 October 2011 to 15 January 2012.
PARIS – A neo-Impressionist painter unjustly forgotten, Henri-Edmond Cross will enjoy a retrospective at the musée Marmottan Monet, and be confronted with his contemporaries Matisse and Seurat. From 20 October 2011 to 19 February 2012.
VIENNA – The Belvedere museum brings face to face two great figures of the avant-gardes of the XXth century: Klimt and Hoffmann. From 25 October 2011 to 4 March 2012.
AUCTIONS
Lucien Hervé, Montage de la Structure nomade à Villejuif (Mounting Nomad Structure at Villejuif). Courtesy Artcurial, Paris.
Furnish your home with Prouvé
PARIS - Fetishists of modern architecture must not be close to their wallets when you see this auction dedicated to Le Corbusier, Prouvé or Jeannereau. To walk away with a light fixture by Le Corbusier in a cement mono-bloc designed in 1954 for Chandigarh, it will be necessary to pay 20 000 €. For the doors of the Palais des congrès-Convention Hall- in Royan, designed by Jean Prouvé, with their handles in folded raw aluminium sheet, count on the same amount … and hardly less for the Brazzaville retractable consoles by Charlotte Perriand. But the main object of this sale is of course Structure nomade by Jean Prouvé, lacquered in corsair red with five asymmetric crutches and its twenty-five perforated poles. In was originally designed in 1957 to serve as a school in Villejuif, it was recently seen on the terrace of the Centre Pompidou. It is estimated between 1.5 and 2.5 million €. A consolation for the buyer, mentioned on p. 114 of the catalogue: «The nomad structure may be mounted at the buyer’s address, without any cost, by experienced teams»…
• Structure nomade et autres œuvres par Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier, etc. on 24 October 2011 at Artcurial.
Not to be missed...
• PARIS - The collection Fabius Frères including in particular exceptional works by Carpeaux and Barye, is up for sale by both the Piasa and Sotheby’s houses on 26 and 27 October 2011.
• PARIS - A venerated writer, a companion of the Surrealists, he was an enlightened art amateur, oscillating between Man Ray, Tanguy, De Pisis (the uncle of his wife Bona) and art brut. The collection Pieyre de Mandiargues will be up for sale 24 October 2011 chez Christie’s.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Julian Schnabel, Untitled, Self Portrait, 2008, 51x69 cm. Courtesy galerie Magda Danysz, Paris.
Julian Schnabel the unreachable
A former hot-head from the 1980s, the paladin of neo-Expressionism, Julian Schnabel (born in 1951) had his golden age when his paintings sold for more than 500 000 € at auctions and that he was chosen, before he was even 30 years old, for the Biennale of Venice or for a retrospective at the Royal Academy in London. He was less appreciated during the following decade (a lack of interest that affected the similar movement of the Italian Transavanguardia), he took his enemies by surprise by living a second career as a movie director, crowned by various rewards among which the prize from the jury at the Mostra in Venice in 2000 for Before Night Falls. Now in his sixties, Schnabel confirms he does not have a predefined «career plan». His last works are poetic, blurry variations, in black and white or sepia, taken with a Polaroid.
• Julian Schnabel, Polaroïds at the galerie Magda Danysz (78, rue Amelot, 75011 Paris), from 22 October to 3 December 2011.
BOOKS
The Paris that was
Everyone knows the central market of Baltard. Less people will raise their hands regarding the Palais-Rose of Boni de Castellane, or the prison of la Petite Roquette or the hotel Hesselin? What about the presbytery of Saint-Séverin? And the courtyard of the Dragon? The author, a fine connoisseur of Paris, traces an illustrated report of various centuries of urban destruction (which Alfred Fierro, at the same publishing house, had dealt with in a different manner with his Dictionnaire du Paris disparu). In doing so accuses alignment and the habit of keeping the façade of buildings while destroying all that is behind, and analyses the role of conservation associations, such as the Commission du Vieux Paris. The elegant silver background he chose for his pages shines too much and makes the reading more difficult but the photographic testimonies remain remarkable, in particular the ones linked to the Haussmann period and the destructions by the Commune.
• Paris détruit, du vandalisme architectural aux grandes opérations d’urbanisme, by Pierre Pinon, Parigramme, 2011, 320 p., 49 €.
IN BRIEF
AIX-EN-PROVENCE – The Rencontres photographiques d’Aix-en-Provence will be held from 19 October to 30 November 2011.
CHAUMONT – Designed by architect Patrick Bouchain and presented as the «first nomadic museum in the world», the Centre Pompidou Mobile opened to the public on 18 October 2011. Its next stop will be in 2012, at Cambrai.
DRESDEN – The Musée d’histoire militaire (Museum of Miitary History) re-opened on 15 October 2011, with the addition of a building by architect Daniel Libeskind.
MADRID – Estampa, the fair of the multiple, will hold its 19th edition, from 20 to 23 October 2011.
PARIS – The musée d’Orsay will inaugurate on 20 October 2011 its renovated galleries, with in particular the colored cyma and an Impressionist gallery redesigned by Jean-Michel Wilmotte
PARIS – The Quotidien de l’art, a daily digital publicatione,was launched on 10 October 2011. It is directed by Philippe Régnier and Roxana Azimi, formerly at Journal des arts.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss…
ONE IS NOT VERY SERIOUS AT … 50
LE HAVRE – The Musée d’Art Modern André Malraux is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Two large retrospective exhibitions are programmed to celebrate the even t and the public is invited to return each week to discover a new exposition-dossier (12 are programmed).
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
More than 100 new exhibitions!
Each Thursday morning, art-of-the-day.info posts an extensive list of openings in galleries and museums in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Monaco and Luxembourg. Alex Katz, at galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, is one of them.