Art Of The Day Weekly

Heads by Manet

LONDON – Following the beautiful exhibition on Manet last year at the musée d’Orsay, here is a different approach of the painter’s work, focused on his portraits. He produced a large quantity of them, in particular at the end of his life, and the exhibition presents some fifty examples from major English and foreign museums. They are classified according to the distance between the painter and his models. First we have his family, his painter friends such as Eva Gonzales, and writers like Emile Zola, then the models such as Méry Laurent or famous people such as Clemenceau. These paintings show that Manet drew up a true who’s who of this period. But most of all, he went beyond the classic hieratic and static standing portrait and preferred to place his subjects in real life scenes.
• Manet, Portraying Life at the Royal Academy of Arts from 26 January to 14 April 2013

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Hodler's last hours

BASEL - In 1913, Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler was 60 years old. He was wealthy, well-known and respected. But the five years he was yet to live would be very dark: while Europe was torn apart by the war, he witnessed the illness of his companion, Valentine Daré-Godel, and her death following horrible suffering. The Fondation Beyeler presents the works of this last period – portraits of Valentine, self-portraits and large landscapes. From 27 January to 26 May 2013.

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Schwitters' English period

LONDON –With Kurt Schwitters in Britain, the Tate Modern looks into an unclassifiable artist, a free spirit, fond of collage and of permanent renewal. Once he fled Nazi Germany, Schwitters (1887-1948) lived the last eight years of his life in England. The 150 works presented here, form that period, have rarely been shown before.From 30 January to 12 May 2013.

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Will the real Mozart please stand up

SALZBURG – Mozart was probably the best known composer in the world and as such a myriad of portraits have been made, both while he was alive as well as after his demise. The Mozarteum brings together in Pictures of Mozart a selection of images of the author of Don Giovanni, from the XVIIIth century to our day and promises to unveil certain surprises … From 26 January to 14 April 2013

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Renaissance in winter

NEW YORK – Competition can be positive, such as the constant rivalry between Christie’s and Sotheby’s. It pushes them to be right behind one another constantly and this allows us to witness simultaneously top quality auctions. For some years now, for example, both major auctioneers dedicate the end of the month of January, the most bitter moment in the winter, to the ancient masters, those we enjoy looking at as we sit by the fireside in a comfortable living room … Christie’s organizes a true “Old Masters Week” from 26 to 31 January, while Sotheby’s has a tighter schedule with sales between the 29th and the 31st. In both cases major pieces will be up for sale. At Christie’s, an ensemble of engravings by Durer, a portrait of a young man by Bronzino, a Virgin and child by Fra Bartolommeo, while at Sotheby’s a Pompeo Batoni (Suzanne and the old men) or a portrait by Goya of his grandson Mariano. While these works are not affordable to all - the Bronzino is estimated $12 million- , these sales offer a major interest for amateurs who will get to take a look at works that are usually kept in private collections and therefore hardly accessible.

The auctions of ancient masters at Christie's

Jesse Fernandez, a universal Cuban

We have proof he was Cuban since we see him in a photograph accompanying Fidel Castro on the field in 1959, his Leica over his shoulder. But photographer Jesse Fernandez, who died relatively young at 61 in 1986 seems to have had various mother lands. He was a refugee in Spain with his parents during Machado’s dictatorship, a student in electronics in Philadelphia, an advertiser in Medellín in Colombia where he met Botero and García Márquez in the 1950s, he hesitated for a long time between the career of a painter –he produced “boxes” similar to those of Joseph Cornell and Charles Matton- and that of photographer. The book sheds light on the latter, showing his portraits, a genre he was excellent in, with snapshots of the Latin American intelligentsia in New York (Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig), European artists (Tápies, Saura, Kitaj, Francis Bacon), “stars” (Françoise Sagan, Elizabeth Taylor) and misanthropes (Cioran). He had the lightness of the one who takes photographs without really believing he is a photographer, but rather a mirror of souls.
• Tours et détours, de La Havane à Paris, by Gabriel Bauret and Juan Manuel Bonet, Filigranes, 2012, 200p., €29

See the exhibition at Maison de l'Amérique latine until 28 February 2013

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