Art Of The Day Weekly
#268 - from 2 August 2012 to 22 August 2012
Georges de La Tour, Le tricheur à l'as de carreau, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre © RMN/Gérard Blot
SUMMER EXHIBITIONS IN FRANCE: THE BEST OF
From Arles to Vézelay, 25 exhibitions to be seen in August 2012, along the Art shows not to be missed in Beauvais and Noyon (right column).
Fratelli Alinari, Messina, street salesman, circa 1895. With authorization from Archivio Alinari, Florence. Exhibition at the Rencontres d'Arles 2012.
Arles looks back on its past
ARLES - Thirty years after the opening of the ENSP (National Higher School of Photography), what has happened to the graduates of this pioneer institution? The oldest of all the festivals, the Rencontres international dedicates monographic exhibitions to 25 of them, from Grégoire Alexandre – graduated in 1995 – to Aurore Valade – graduated in 2005 -. All other exhibitions – whether it is the Alinari funds, the collections of the Société française de photographie (French Photography Society), Koudelka or the editorial adventure of Contrejour – all follow the same guiding thread. That is, the curators or the photographers have all gone through the ENSP or in some way represent a certain “French school” .
• Rencontres d’Arles from 2 July to 23 September 2012
A feast for kings
BLOIS – What did people eat in the times of François Ist? And according to what ritual? And what about forks? At the royal castle, which hosted the best writers and artists, Festins de la Renaissance makes things clear about the golden age of French gastronomy. From 7 July to 21 October 2012.
Tobeen, the unknown Cubist
BORDEAUX -The exhibition decrees he is “the poet of Cubism”. Tobeen (1880-1938), a native from Bordeaux and friend of Lhote and Gleizes, is more the forgotten member of the artistic movement. The musée des Beaux-Arts pulls him out of this anonymous state by presenting various works on loan, in particular from Dutch collections. From 8 June to 16 September 2012.
Majerus the meteorite
BORDEAUX – The CAPC presents Michel Majerus, a Luxembourgeois artist who died too soon (in 2002 in a plane accident), and in particular with one of his major works, the huge skateboard ramp If you are dead, so it is. From 31 May to 23 September 2012.
The art of loving
EVIAN – From Courbet to Pierre & Gilles and including Picasso, L’art d’aimer, at the palais Lumière, shows the representation of sentimental and carnal love throughout the last two centuries. From 16 June to 23 September 2012.
Contemporary art on the beach
LES SABLES D'OLONNE - The museum of the Abbaye Sainte-Croix puts periods side by side in its two exhibitions this summer: a selection of works from the Centre national des arts plastiques in Explorers and XIX century seaside architecture in l'heure du bain. From 18 July to 10 November 2012.
Du Zhenjun, Independence of the Country Super Tower, 2010, Galerie RX, Paris © Du Zhenjun / Galerie RX, Paris
Babel, 2012 version
LILLE – The tower of Babel, made popular by Brueghel the Elder in the XVIth century, has also excited the creativity of contemporary artists as can be seen in the selection presented. There are stimulating versions such as the 15 000 books placed in a spiral by Jakob Gautel, or depressing ones like the nightmarish movements of human larvae in No Woman No Cry by the Chapman brothers. There are also comic books (Schuiten), videos, photographs (Rauzier), sculpture, painting (Kiefer) and even in bee wax as John Isaacs’.
• Babel at Palais des beaux-arts, from 8 June 2012 to 14 January 2013.
Félix Édouard Vallotton, Verdun. Tableau de guerre interprêté [sic], black projections colored in blue and red of devastated fields, gaz clouds, 1917 - Oil on canvas, 114 x 146 cm - Paris, Musée de l’Armée © Paris - Musée de l'Armée, Dist. RMN / Pascal Segrette
1917, a black year?
METZ – The year 1917, probably the most horrific one of World War I was strangely enough one of great artistic production, from Picasso (the theater curtain of Parade), to Brancusi (Madame X) or of Duchamp (Fontaine). We then see two strategies that seem to sum up human character: on the one hand, those who go up to the front (like Otto Dix), and on the other hand, those who like De Chirico or Matisse practiced a strategy of avoiding, preferring to recreate an ideal world far from ‘the sound and the fury’.
• 1917 at Centre Pompidou Metz, from 26 May to 24 November 2012.
Caravaggio, an unlimited treasure
MONTPELLIER - TOULOUSE – He never wanted students but he left a major donation to European painting, the Naturalist revolution. Through the FRAME, that brings together 26 major museums in Europe and in the USA, this retrospective of 140 works of art is divided in two parts, the Caravaggio-style on the South at Montpellier and the Northern Caravaggio in Toulouse, where Nicolas Tournier was active. Next to the Master himself, with the Sacrifice d’Isaac brought from the Uffizi, we have Valentin, Georges de La Tour and the virtuosi of the school of Utrecht (Honthorst, Ter Brugghen).
• Corps et ombres, Caravage et le caravagisme européen (Body and shadow. Caravaggio and European Caravaggism) at the musée Fabre (Montpellier) and at the musée des Augustins (Toulouse), from 23 June to 14 October 2012.
Jean Prouvé in front of his house in Nancy, circa 1955. Archives Prouvé family © Adagp, Paris
Jean Prouvé in four dimensions
NANCY - He is one of the major builders of the XXth century, the pioneer of the wall-curtain - of which we can see an example at the Maison du peuple, in Clichy - the virtuoso of prefabricated homes- an example was exposed on the roof of the Centre Pompidou after breaking records in an auction. But Jean Prouvé was also a decorator, an artisan with iron, a humanist, concerned with contributing to the improvement of the living conditions of his contemporaries. All these dimensions are explored in an urban itinerary and in four exhibitions that each explores a facet of his talent.
• Jean Prouvé à Nancy, from 30 June to 29 October 2012 (musée de l'Ecole de Nancy, musée Lorrain, musée des Beaux-Arts, galeries Poirel).
Return to photography
ORNANS - Ath the Gustave Courbet museum, A l'épreuve du réel shows how painters faced one of the major revolutions of the XIXth century: the arrival of photography. From 30 June to 1st October 2012
Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988, oil on canvas, 102x72cm, Saint-Louis Art Museum Gerhard Richter 2012 © Gerhard Richter 2012
Gerard Richter, 80 years of resistance
PARIS - “I have no program, no style, no guideline.” When one is an artist it takes a certain amount of courage to make such a declaration. And yet, that is what Gerhard Richter confessed. At the age of 80 he is holding a large exhibition at the Centre Pompidou (150 works), accompanied by another exhibit at the Louvre. Half a century of creation will be reviewed, from the “photo-paintings” from the 60s, closely repeating reality, to the abstraction of the 1980s and 1990s; there are also the grey paintings of the later portraits after 2000 that demonstrate it is indeed impossible to “classify” the German artist. His father with a bookstore in Dresde and his aunt a victim of the Nazi eugenic practices seem to prove that his refusal to be inserted in any predefined box is not so much due to a lack of decision as much as a hymn to freedom.
• Gerhard Richter, Panorama at Centre Pompidou, from 6 June to 24 September 2012.
• Gerhard Richter, dessins et aquarelles, 1957-2008 at musée du Louvre, from 7 June to 17 September 2012
Félix Vallotton (1865-1925), Misia à sa coiffeuse, 1898, (Misia at her dressing table) tempera on cardboard.H. 36; L. 29 cm. Paris, musée d'Orsay, purchased with the participation of the Fondation Meyer, 2004 © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
Misia, a leading icon
PARIS – She was one of the great muses of the XXth century. Misia Sert (1872-1950) carried the name of her third husband, painter José Maria Sert, whose work we just admired in a retrospective at the Petit Palais. But that is only one aspect of her sentimental life, as she was first married to Thadée Natanson, the mind and soul of the Revue blanche, and then to Alfred Edwards, a press tycoon who financed the Ballets russes and in particular the Sacre du printemps. This exhibition demonstrates that the musician born in Saint-Petersburg was a lot more. Indeed she was an icon for a great part of the avant-garde, inspired poems to Mallarmé, a character to Proust in his Search, portraits to Bonnard and posters to Toulouse-Lautrec. Hers was an adventure-filled life in which intrigues and mystery played a large part: before being replaced in Sert’s heart by beautiful Roussy Mdivani, it seems she played an important role in the death of Geneviève Lantelme, one of her second husband’s mistresses …
• Misia, reine de Paris at the musée d’Orsay, from 12 June to 9 September 2012.
Robert Crumb, Crumb and the amazone with plaits © Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb, in tribute to the underground
PARIS – Robert Crumb (born in 1943) is not as well-known as his emblematic character, Fritz the Cat. Yet, the New York drawer who settled in France over two decades ago has not limited himself to draw record covers and underground fanzines. He has salvaged a crude and iconoclastic vein and produced with his wife Aline Kominsky Parlez-moi d’amour, in which together they decipher married life. But he has known at the same time how to approach a monument such as the Genesis, which required a good number of years. The exhibition also shows the notebooks with his sketches and his rarely shown drawings, which help us understand his way of working.
• Robert Crumb at the musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 13 April to 19 August 2012.
Julien Salaud, Grotte Stellaire, Room Alice Guy, Palais de Tokyo (Paris). © Photo: André Morin.
A contemporary Triennale
PARIS - The reopening of the Palais de Tokyo, now that it has been renewed and enlarged (the areas available have gone from 8 000 to 22 000 m2) will be accompanied by the launching of the new “Triennale” to give Paris an event of the type of the Biennale founded by André Malraux in 1959. The event is led by Okwui Enwezor, a veteran in these types of manifestations (documenta 11 at Kassel, biennales in Seville, Gwangju and Johannesburg), and has already chosen a motto, “Intense Proximité/y” that reflects the dilemmas of identity and of globalization.
• The Triennale d'art contemporain wil be held from 20 April 2012 to 25 August 2012.
After Helmut, it's Alice's turn
PARIS – After Helmut Newton at the Grand Palais, it is the turn of his wife Alice Springs to be celebrated at the Maison européenne de la photographie, next to Charlotte Rampling, Paul Thorel, Anderson & Low and Jérémie Nassif. From 27 June to 26 August 2012.
Gleizes and Metzinger, other Cubists
PARIS - How can an artist evolve after the founding experience of Cubism? In Gleizes-Metzinger, du cubisme et après explores this theme based on two concrete itineraries. From 9 May to 22 September 2012.
7000 years of Chinese cuisine
PARIS – China’s new economic power often makes us forget it is also an ancient civilization. At the musée du quai Branly, Les séductions du palais (Seductions of the palate) gives us a perfect demonstration in the field of gastronomy by presenting seven millenniums of culinary art. From 19 June to 30 September 2012.
Rodin face to face with marble
PARIS -At the musée Rodin, the rooms of which are closed for renovation, Rodin, la chair et le marbre shows how the artist whom we erroneously considered “traditional” in his marble sculptures, on the contrary submitted the noble material to a treatment as audacious as the one plaster received. From 8 June 2012 to 3 March 2013.
Modigliani and the spirit of Montparnasse
PARIS - Modigliani, Soutine et l’aventure de Montparnasse presents at the Pinacothèque a little-known collection of masterpieces of the XXth century. It was brought together by Jonas Netter, a simple brand representative, and includes works by Modigliani and Soutine as well as some by Utrillo, Valadon, Kisling… From 4 April to 9 September 2012.
Kerouac before Walter Salles
• PARIS – In the midst of the media deluge that surrounds Walter Salles’s movie, On the Road, the musée des Lettres et Manuscrits has had the good idea of presenting Kerouac’s original manuscript, the famous roll in the shape of the Torah.
At the musée des Lettres et Manuscrits From 16 May to 19 August 2012.
Wolinski, top 500
PARIS – From Charlie Hebdo to the French Bibliothèque nationale: Georges Wolinski, press drawer, caricaturist, a fine observer who exposes contemporary society has made the big leap. In the fund he recently donated to the institution, 500 of his original drawings are being shown. From 28 June to 2 September 2012.
Gasiorowski in his proper dimension
SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE - Monory had named him the «man mad about painting». Gérard Gasiorowski, who died too young in 1986, is finally enjoying a retrospective that will be a reference: the fondation Maeght has made him its guest star for the summer of 2012. From 30 June to 26 September 2012
Clavé, the other artist from Catalunia
TOULON - Among the Catalan artists who recently died, next to Saura and Tàpies, we too often forget Antoni Clavé (1913-2005), presented now at the Hôtel des Arts. This great friend of Picasso's had explored canvas as well as bronze. From 30 June to 2 September 2012.
Georges Bataille and eroticism
VÉZELAY – Georges Bataille, an unusual surrealist and author of Histoire de l’œil had great influence on the artistic movements of his time. In Sous le signe de Bataille, the musée Zervos pays tribute to him by bringing together erotic drawings and prints by Masson, Bellmer and Fautrier. From June to 15 November 2012.