Art Of The Day Weekly
#301 - from 2 May 2013 to 8 May 2013
Models inspired from paintings by Zurbarán : Saint Dorothea (by María José Predrosa) and Saint Margaret (by Francis Montesinos). Photographs by Fernando Ruso (exhibition at Espacio Santa Clara, Sevilla).
IN THE AIR
Be modern, go back to the 17th century
SEVILLA – The organizers of this exhibition have an original initiative. Rather than serve us the eternal (and otherwise remarkable) Zurbaran as always, they have taken the freedom to update him. This initiative is somewhat sacrilegious since his saints and martyrs, who in their time went through some difficult moments, being decapitated like saint Catherine of Alexandria, or strewn with arrows as saint Ursula, or even given to the bears as saint Euphemia), now have been models for contemporary designers. And for the top designers mind you, such as Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, well-known abroad, as well as other Spanish stars such as Francis Montesinos, the duo of Luchino and Vittorio or the well-respected Elio Berhanyer. The result is an interesting ‘mano a mano’ between the canvases of the somber master, equal to Vélasquez in his time, and the superb interpretations of the fashion in the XXIeth century. This pleasant exhibition allows us to clear up a misunderstanding: the somber Zurbarán, locked up in his convent of Guadalupe in Estremadura, was also a magician of color.
• Santas de Zurbarán, devoción y persuasión at the Espacio Santa Clara, from 3 May to 20 July 2013.
EXHIBITIONS
Herbarium by Dominique Perrin : Conservatoire et jardins botaniques de Nancy © CJBN.
Nancy looks at the Renaissance
NANCY – She is known as a capital of Art nouveau with the works by Gallé, Majorelle, Grasset and others. Or even as a conservatory of the 18th century with its square Stanislas. But few people would spontaneously consider this city a foyer of the Renaissance, even of the later period… Yet this is the leading thread of the year of culture that will open in the city of Lorraine on 4 May. It reminds us that this city really picked up during the reign Charles III, the duke of Lorraine who, from 1590 to the moment of his death in 1608, built the Ville Neuve, thus giving birth to monuments that have been restored for this occasion, such as the Porte Saint-Georges. The restoration of the Musée Lorrain the former palace of the dukes of Lorraine is along term project that has already begun and will last another fifteen years. For those who do not wish to wait that long, a series of exhibitions will be opening on 4 May, such as Trésors de Meuse, L’automne de la Renaissance, d’Arcimboldo à Caravage that will all bring back to life the splendors of the princely courts, or Prima Botanica, that shows the important role botany played in the genesis of modern science.
• Nancy 2013: l’effet Renaissance, from 4 May to 4 August 2013 in various venues throughout the city.
Mattia Preti, Saint George, oil on canvas, 1658, co-cathedral Saint John, Valletta.
Mattia Preti, another Caravaggio
VALLETTA – Caravaggio was definitely damned. He never managed to have the recognition of the Order of Malta nor a peaceful death in his bed. One of his epigones did… That was Mattia Preti, a brilliant artist of Roman and Neapolitan baroque. He was born in 1613 in Calabria and was a national glory in Malta where he died in 1699. Once he had the protection of the great master Martin de Redin, commissions poured in: his paintings adorn the chapel de la Langue d’Aragon, that of Castilla and Leon as well as in Saint John’s co-cathedral, where he left his greatest masterpiece, the frescoes in the vault. We can well understand that the exhibition organized for his fourth centenary at the palace of the Grand Masters, including loans from the Uffizi, the Prado, the Louvre, from Capodimonte or the museum of Taverna, his native town, must absolutely be accompanied by a visit to the island’s churches. We can see works by Preti at La Valette as well as at Vittoriosa, Rabat, Mdina, Sliema…
• Mattia Preti, Faith and Humanity at the palace of the Grand Masters, from 4 May to 7 July 2013
Jacques Linard, Les cinq sens aux deux oiseaux, oil on oak panel, 48x65 cm, 1642. Courtesy galerie Eric Coatalem, Paris.
The 17th, but in the galleries
PARIS – It has almost become a ritual to complain about the ‘drying-up’ of the market. Some pretend masterpieces are regularly siphoned by the museums, obeying to the principle of inalienability, never to be recuperated by private collectors. Eric Coatalem, an antiques dealer in Paris, belies that idea. ‘Ever since my last exhibition in 2006, a certain number of wonderful paintings from the French 17th century have reappeared on the market. This proves that it just takes a little patience and it is still possible today to build collections today worthy of the greatest museums’ he writes, in the preamble of the catalogue that documents this retrospective, mounted in partnership with Patrice Bellanger, a sculpture specialist. The demonstration is fully made with the moving Dead Christ on copper by Jacques Stella, mythological landscapes and compositions by Sébastien Bourdon, Lubin Baugin or Philippe de Champaigne. And also but mostly with the beautiful ensemble of stil lives on canvas or wood, the French version of the Spanish bodegones: flowers, oysters, lemons or asparagus on a dark background, often with allegorical meanings and signed by Louise Moillon, a master in the genre, François Garnier or Jacques Linard.
• Tableaux français du XVIIe siècle at the galerie Eric Coatalem (93 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris), until 11 May 2013 (catalogue
Do not miss:
• Sculptures des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles at the galerie Patrice Bellanger (136 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré)
• Parfum d’Italie at the galerie Perrin (98 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré)
BOOKS
Georges de la Tour, saved from oblivion
The author says it was necessary to ‘be on the watch, to use many twists and turns, and to say it simply, to use all the delicate tricks of piety’. One wonders what for. It is what he did to reconstruct the biography of one of the great French masters of the 17th century, together with Poussin and Lorrain. That is because there is hardly any information on Georges de La Tour (1593-1652): neither a diary nor a book of accounts, no mention of him in the correspondence of third parties. We only have the minutes of a trial in which the plaintiffs accused him of keeping too many dogs… and a few documents of this same type. They are buried under heaps of papers in the archives of Vic-sur-Seille or of Lunéville. It was only between 1863, the date on which a study in a learned magazine was published in Lorraine, and 1934 with the exhibition of Peintres de la réalité at the Orangerie, that his name finally emerged from two centuries of silence. In this book published in 1992, which quickly became a ‘must-read’, Jacques Thuillier (1928-2011) pursues this investigation that nearly resembles a police inquest. He disentangles the biographical elements, the different versions of the Vielleurs and the Madeleines, the taste for the Nuits, for reality and for half-body figures. It is a shame that the fascinating text is in such small print: that is the price to pay for it to be easy to handle…
• Georges de La Tour by Jacques Thuillier, Flammarion Compact, 2013, 320 p., €35.
IN BRIEF
ALEP - The minaret of the great mosque of the Omeyyades crumbled down on 24 April 2013, following the launch of rockets.
MEXICO -A robot has discovered three funerary chambers in the pre-Aztec complex of Teotihuacán. Their future exploration could reveal remains from local dynasties
MUNICH – The Lenbacchaus, one of the city’s most important museums, famous for its collection of Blaue Reiter, will reopen on 8 May 2013, after four years of being closed and a renovation carried out by Foster + Partners.
