Art Of The Day Weekly
#257 - from 3 May 2012 to 9 May 2012
Charles and Ray Eames, Clown Face, 1971 © Eames Office, Courtesy Eames Office (exhibition The Circus as a Parallel Universe at Kunsthalle Wien)
IN THE AIR
Circus, mirror of our society
Can we look at the circus as a parable of our society? Politicians could be the clowns, athletes would be the acrobats, football trainers as tyranical trainers, the winners of Survivor as heroic canon ball men. The entertainment society thought up by Guy Debord increasingly resembles a gigantic Barnum wher has to be seen rather than read, heard rather than listened to, in a debauchery of images, of postures and effects… We may find this evolution disquieting or amusing - like a paper to scratch to find the truth – but it gives back this mirror dimension to the "real" circus world, which he had momentarily lost. The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien includes the great classics such as Chaplin, Calder and Fellini as well as contemporaries Rondinone, Firman or Peter Blake, who continue to seek under the Big Top a warped but revealing portrait of our world.
• The Circus as a Parallel Universe at the Kunsthalle Wien, from 4 May to 2 September 2012
EXHIBITIONS
Walter Gropius, Graph of the educational curriculum at the Bauhaus, 1923, Letterpress, 25 x 24.8 cm, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany
Bauhaus, on a daily basis
LONDON- It is undoubtedly one of the founding movements of modernity and the Barbican's presentation is very ambitious, with 400 objects and documents that sythesize the contribution by Bauhaus during fifteen tumultuous years, from its foundation at Weimar in 1919 to its closing in 1933, in Berlin, under Nazi pressure. Of course there is Wassily's armchair that Marcel Breuer designed after observing his bicycle and putting together nine unmountable steel tubes. There are also different manifestos by Gropius the founder, a work by Moholy-Nagy after putting orders through over the phone, thus obeying to one of the school's mottos, the merge of art and industry . There is also a painting, Gifts for J., where Paul Klee expresses his gratitude to his students who had litterally covered him with airborne gifts for his 50th birthday…
• Bauhaus : Art as Life at the Barbican Center, from 3 May to 12 August 2012.
These exhibitions also open this week
New information on the Vikings
ASSEN (Pays-Bas) – In We call them Vikings !, the Drents Museum presents the latest archaeological findings regarding the Viking world. From 2 May to 28 October 2012.
Louise Bourgeois and Michelangelo
FLORENCE – Contemporary works pop-up right next to Michael Angelo's David. At the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Arte torna arte Louise Bourgeois (ill. Arch of Hysteria, © Louise Bourgeois TrustImage) and thirty other artists confront the masters of the Renaissance. From 8 May to 4 November 2012.
Cubist stories
PARIS - The Adresse Musée de la Poste wonders how an artist can evolve after the founding experience of Cubism in Gleizes-Metzinger, du cubisme et après (ill. Metzinger, Odette, La fille de l’artiste, Galerie des Modernes, Paris © photo Jean Bernard). From 9 May to 22 September 2012.
AUCTIONS
Lot 34: Franz Eybl (Vienna, 1806-1880), Comte François Henri Schlick de Bassano de Weisskirchen (1789-1862), watercolour and gouache on black pencil. 22,5 x 17,5 cm. Estimate: €6,000-8,000. Courtesy Beaussant-Lefèvre, Paris.
Metternich's friends
PARIS - Before Niépce's and Daguerre's invention, how could one keep a record of mundane evenings and the guests included? Those who had the means had artists draw the portraits as we can see in this original collection of portraits commissioned by the Metternich spouses in Vienna at the time, precisely, when photography was at its beginnings. Over 200 guests of the Chancellor and former "gendarme of Europe" and his third wife, young countess Mélanie Zichy-Ferraris, the ture commissioner of the series. So Daffinger, Kriehuber and a few other artists represented Czars, Kings, princes, aristocrats, the Sultan's ambassadors, writers, heroes of cloak and dagger adventures. All these watercolors bring back to life a whole era for a modest price (starting at €1000 with an estimate at €15 000 for the beautiful portrait of Czar Nicholas I).
• Portraits at Richelieu-Drouot on 4 May 2012 (Beaussant-Lefèvre).
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Chiharu Shiota, Memory of Books, presented in 2011 at the Fondazione Gervasuti in Venice.
Shiota, the spell of the thread
We have already seen her thread constructions, spider-like and ephemeral, at the Maison rouge or at the galerie Templon, in Paris. Chiharu Shiota (born in 1972 in Japan, settled in Berlin) now takes on a much more ambitious area: 1700 m2 in the former plant of the Sucrière, a venue known for the Biennale in Lyons. She has hung sixteen white dresses by designer Mongi Guibane on kilometres of black thread to and this labyrinth-like installation questions the notion of a "second skin". She opposes the flexibility and thiness of the textiles to the square angles of industrial architecture, occupying the void with her spider web, which reminds her, according to her state of mind, of a reassuring cocoon or a diabolic trap…
• Labyrinth of Memory by Chiharu Shiota is presented at the Sucrière, from 4 May to 31 July 2012.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
BOOKS
History of art through anecdotes
Though we have regretted for a long time the lack of history of art classes in secondary school in France (contrary to Italy for example), the recurring question is how can we create an interest in a distrustful public with very little knowledge? Most probably by using light and very amusing boooks that could be used as an initiation. This short anthology of anecdotes is an example. The fake will by Bonnard in lieu of his wife? Rouchomovsky's false scythe tiara? The case made by Merson the artist against the use of one of his works on the French banknotes? The sculpted snow statue by Falguière on the walls of the fort during the siege of Paris in 1870? Enough to open up the reader's appetite for more...
• Petites histoires de l’histoire de l’art by Jean-Jacques Breton, Hugo & Cie, 2012, 240 p., €17.99.
IN BRIEF
MILANO- MIA, the Milan Image Art Fair, the fair of contemporary photography, will hold its second edition from 4 to 6 May 2012.
MONTROUGE - The Salon de Montrouge presents over 100 contemporary artists in its 57th edition, held from 3 to 30 May 2012.
NEW YORK – Frieze Art Fair, inspired from the contemporary art fair in London, will hold its first New York edition from 4 to 7 May 2012.
QUEBEC - Manif 6, the Biennale of contemporary art of Quebec, will be held from 3 May to 3 June 2012.