Art Of The Day Weekly

Lyon, the broken dream of 1914

LYON – The town authorities had greatly hesitated before organizing a third International Exhibition. That of 1872 had been a true financial fiasco, the one in 1894 had seen the murder of President Carnot in the Tête d’or park. Understandably the young mayor, Edouard Herriot, was rather circumspect when he launched the city into this new adventure. We know the circumstances under which it took place: two months after its opening World War I broke out, confirming the bad omens! This exhibition recreates the historical setting and recalls all it left the city, lifting it to the status of a European metropolis: modern networks (roads, water, a sewage system), a technological leap in the textile industry, and a series of emblematic buildings marked by an “hygienist” approach. The most famous is the Halle designed by Tony Garnier, the true heart of the Exposition, surrounded by 60 pavilions over 50 hectares. This symbol of XXth century architecture reflects the turmoils of its time: it would close ahead of time to be transformed into a weapons factory ….
• Lyon, centre du monde, Exposition internationale urbaine de 1914 at the musées Gadagne, from 21 November 2013 to 27 April 2014.

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Rowlandson, a master of satire

EDINBURGH - Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), drawer, painter and cartoon pioneer is presented at the Queens Gallery (ill. : Billy Lackbeard and Charley Blackbeard playing football, Royal Collection Trust© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013). From 22 November 2013 to 2 March 2014.

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Bringing Pompei back to life

MUNICH - It is difficult to compete with the British Museum, which recently hit the jack pot with an exhibit on the dead city of the Vesuvius: the Hypo Kunsthalle will meet the challenge with another Pompéi (ill.: a burnt piece of bread). From 15 November 2013 to 23 March 2014.

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Eva Kotatkova: away with standards!

Conceptual art is alive and well! As long as we can include in this category all the forms of creativity that question our relationship to the world through installations and performances …Eva Kotakova (born in 1982), who was present at the last Biennale of Venice, is a representative of this current that has always flourished in Central Europe where it was a real form of resistance during authoritarian regimes. She is a student of conditioning through school, clothes, penitentiaries, etc., and accuses standards for being stifling. Her collages, interventions with autistic persons, animals, her questioning on sleep, on knowledge and on insanity may give some therapeutic and educational indications. But they often include an unexpected aesthetic and poetic value, which, according to the case, may bring to mind Calder’s mobiles or the collages of the New Realists.
• Eva Kotatkova is exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary art in Wroclaw (Poland), where another exhibit is equally dedicated to Jiri Kovanda.

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Wonderful, popular art!

PARIS – To collect popular art is not looked upon as a noble discipline. It has nothing to do with History nor Art with a capital H or A … But what a pleasure one has at times, when discovering these objects patiently polished during family meetings around the fire or polished one thousand times on an artisan’s workbench. They surely have an extra ounce of soul, due to their « poverty” and their use value. The amateurs who collect them often do so with bulimia. It is the case of Patrick Diant, whose collection, inherited and then largely enriched, occupies two days of sales. There are all sorts of canes in all sizes, forms and with all the motifs possible (one for example with the inscription « souvenir from the countryside in Mexico »), spoons, pet peeves, pipe ducts, tobacco graters, clogs …Of course wood is the star of the day, be it boxwood, beamtree, maple or black walnut, as well as metal (shovels for embers), horn (a tobacco snuffbox in the form of a heart). Half of these objects no longer have any meaning for us: bread markers, boards for calendering laundry, devices to straighten lace, spoons to take off cream or powder horns. This is an open door to the sociology of our past…
• Le monde merveilleux de Patrick Diant, at hôtel Drouot on 21 and 22 November 2013 (SVV Ferri).

Masonic paint brushes

Is there a Masonic-type painting and if so, how does one recognize it? These are the questions that more or less guide the author in this intriguing panorama that pretends to reveal some secrets, such as the idea that Géricault was a Mason and showered his famous Radeau de la Méduse with transparent symbols. As one reads on we learn that many other artists, such as Hogarth or Félicien Rops, all had a close tie with various lodges and that some suffered from that, like Alfons Mucha, brutally questioned by the Nazis in Prague when he was 80 years old, which precipitated his demise. Other less-known anecdotes and characters shed light on the theme: Joseph Vernet illustrated Paul et Virginie and convinced its author, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, whom he met in a lodge meeting, not to throw the manuscript into the fire after a first catastrophic public reading. Juan Gris, who was introduced into the obedience by Lipschitz in 1922, always started his paintings with a compass and a T-square … Grant Wood (1891-1942), who was from a devoted Quaker family in Iowa, joined the Masons in part to escape the stifling atmosphere of the conservative Middle West. Up to his death, the “painter with overalls” was systematically ostracized, which did not prevent him from producing one of the icons of American painting of the XXth century, American Gothic.
• De la loge à l’atelier, peintres et sculpteurs francs-maçons, by Nathalie Kaufmann-Khelifa, éditions du Toucan, 2013, 180 p., €39

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