Art Of The Day Weekly
#306 - from 6 June 2013 to 12 June 2013
The MUCEM in Marseille © Lisa Ricciotti
IN THE AIR
How to tell MUCEM from MUMOK or MAMBO?
MARSEILLE - The MUCEM will open this week, right in the limelight of Marseille’s position as European capital of culture and of the “larger than life” personality of its designer, Rudy Ricciotti. Unfortunately the latter is under judicial supervision at this key-moment, for a matter of illegal work in his personal residence. But who really knows what this strange acronym stands for? Aside from a happy few who know the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, the heir of the collections of the former Musée des arts et traditions populaires. For the rest of the ignorant mortals, the MUCEM is just one more of the many onomatopoeia southern countries so enjoy. The V&A in London and the New York MoMA are legitimate due to their seniority, the MAMBO in Bologna owes her favoritism to the humorous side. But what can we say about the dozens of MALBA, MACBA, MUMO, MUMOK, MART, SMAK, MACRO, MAXXI and even DIA? We can get them confused –in the best of cases- with the popular dances of the fifties, and if one is not as generous, they sound more like a supermarket chain or a brand of design sofas. Come on, let’s make an extra effort! When we will finally say MBA rather than the boring Musée des Beaux-Arts (Museum of Fine Arts), then we will really be modern!
• The MUCEM opens on 7 June 2013.
VENICE BIENNALE
Assessing the Encyclopedic Palace
Dispatch 2 from our correspondents Preston Thayer and Marjorie Och
EXHIBITIONS
Giorgio Morandi, Still life, 1936, oil on canvas, 32 x 37 cm, Mamiano di Traversetelo (Parma), Fondazione Magnani Roca
A session of show and tell with Morandi
BRUSSELS – He is one of the masters of still lives, a sort of Chardin of the XXth century. Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), discreet and homely, has produced in his workshop in Bologna an unlimited number of bottles, pots and pitchers that have all become icons of the silent life of things. He is watchful of all the avant-gardes he has rubbed elbows with - Surrealism, Futurism, metaphysical painting. But he has always remained deeply independent. He was defended by Roberto Longhi, the deus ex machina of Italian art, and won the Grand Prix of the Biennale of Venice in 1948. Yet he never changed his firm old bachelor ways. Some one hundred works from the best collections, in particular from Museo Morandi, MART, fondazione Magnani Rocca, fondazione Longhi, will be confronted to contemporary interpretations by Luc Tuymans and Claudio Parmiggiani.
• Morandi at Bozar from 7 June to 22 September 2013.
These exhibitions also open this week
Faking it...oh really?
HOUSTON - Photos were never retouched prior to the existence of Photoshop. Wrong! It has been done since photography exists, and not only for dictatorial regimes. Should any doubts remain, this show Faking It at the Museum of Fine Arts will convince you. From 2 June to 25 August 2013
British stars
LONDON - Two British painters of two different generations, Patrick Caulfield (photo, Portrait of Juan Gris), a contemporary of Hockney’s, and Gary Hume, a member of the highly media oriented Young British Artists, will be the focus of a detailed retrospective at the Tate Britain. From 5 June to 1 September 2013Publication, 2013, 1008 p., €35.
Not really a Looser
ZURICH – The Collection Hubert Looser of contemporary art, which shall add to the museum’s holdings in 2017, will be the object of a “preview” at the Kunsthaus (photo: Untitled XI by Willem de Kooning). From 7 June to 8 September 2013.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Penone, the man-torso
The time of Arte Povera has arrived! First Pistoletto was celebrated at the Louvre. Now it is the turn of his friend Giuseppe Penone. A major institution is going to pay him homage. Indeed, after Murakami or Koons, the château de Versailles is hosting his work. His raw material has not changed over the years as he continues to use wood in its natural state –in branches or whole trunks, bronze elements worked with the lost wax technique, marble or ceramics, that he presents in galleries, underlining the contrast between natural and artificial, or outdoors. The invitation is part of the program of the year of Le Nôtre, the genius garden creator, who will thus be confronted to an epigone three centuries younger … Twenty of his most emblematic and monumental works will be set up in the paths of the park and in the Bosquet de l’Etoile.
• Giuseppe Penone at the château de Versailles, from 11 June to 30 October 2013.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
AUCTIONS
Very Arty Erté
PARIS – His life is a real novel: Romain de Tirtoff (1892-1990) was an aristocrat from Saint-Petersburg who fled the Revolution and found his chosen land in France. Here he led a widely creative life, under a transparent pseudonym, Erté, for his initials R.T. He drew for fashion designer Paul Poiret and for the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, was a refined painter, and was even a costume designer for the Folies Bergères. It is the latter that are up for sale now and they unveil another character of great fiction. Hélène Martini was born in Poland, put into prison during the war in Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg), and would then become the queen of Paris nightclubs– together with her husband – the enigmatic Syrian agent Nachat Martini who disappeared as of 1960. She owned more than a dozen nightspots, including the Sphinx, the Palladium, the Raspoutine and the famous Folies Bergères. It was for the latter that Erté produced a great number of costumes. Three hundred of them, representing princesses, gigolettes, thugs, tamers and Mexican dancers are up for auction starting at €300 a piece. Two future sales are scheduled to finish scattering over one thousand leaflets of this collection.
• Collection Hélène Martini, dessins d’Erté on 8 June 2013 at the hôtel-Drouot (SVV Bailly Pommery et Voutier)
BOOKS
Le Corbusier as told by Le Corbusier
The first volume of the Correspondance of Le Corbusier had already taken us by surprise when we discovered how distant the author seemed to be from a deus ex machina of modern architecture. It is true he was young then, not yet forty, which entitled him to a certain freedom of speech. Yet, in the twenty years that followed –the object of the present volume (1926-1946)- the intimate Le Corbusier remains touching in his detailed letters to his “dear little mommy”, in which he writes of the death of their dog Pinceau, about the garden “shot” by the below-zero temperatures, about the swims in the Allier river. One has to look at the war period carefully, as Le Corbusier has been accused of anti-Semitism and of having sympathies for Pétain’s government. His settling in Vichy for more than a year, from the end of 1940 to July 1942, did not help! One cannot deny he was attracted by the authoritarian temptation, or at least that he was an opportunist. But it is not easy to make a definite judgment based on quotes taken out of their context… Two years ago the UBS had taken Le Corbusier out of an advertising campaign given certain declarations such as: “Hitler can crown his life with a grand accomplishment, the planning of Europe” (letter dated 31 October 1940). But the previous year, he was the one to ask his family “Would that dreadful Hitler go through Switzerland?” (28 October 1939). This gaping difference is the reflection of the man himself, a protean artist, ambitious, calculating, a man who holds as many gray areas as he sheds light …
• Le Corbusier, Correspondance, lettres à la famille 1926-1946, Infolio publication, 2013, 1008 p., €35.
IN BRIEF
BASEL – The contemporary art fair of Volta will be held from 10 to 15 June 2013.
LODZ – The 12th edition of Fotofestiwal (the international photography festival) will be held from 6 to 16 June 2013.
LONDON – The Serpentine Pavilion, the annual architectural commission, has been entrusted for the 2013 edition 2013 to the Japanese Sou Fujimoto. It will be inaugurated on 8 June 2013.
MADRID –The festival Photo España, created in 1998, will be held from 5 June to 28 July. The program of 74 exhibitions will present 328 different artists
PRAGUE – The 6th Biennale of contemporary art will be held from 6 June to 15 September 2013.
VIENNA – The Vienna Photobook Festival, dedicated to photography books, will be held on 8 and 9 June 2013.