Art Of The Day Weekly
#335 - from 27 February 2014 to 5 March 2014
Michel Giniès, Actor Robert Redford, with movie director Costa-Gavras, as they leave Paris restaurant Lapérouse, September 1976 (Paparazzi exhibition at Centre Pompidou Metz).
IN THE AIR
Paparazzi, a profession with a future
METZ – Here is one profession that does not suffer from the crisis. The front cover of the magazine Closer of President Hollande on a scooter is there to prove it. It was Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, in part inspired from photographer Tazio Secchiaroli, that gave the paparazzi their definite glory and their name (Paparazzo was the name of a young photographer in the movie). The exhibition shows a few of the warnings, such as the photo of Bismarck on his death-bed in 1898, that of Erich Salomon drawing Aristide Briand and other statesmen in 1931 or the New York instant photos by Weegee. But it could not really start before the technical progress of the 50s and 60s, and in particular in the field of zooms and the sensitivity of the film. The paparazzi then became a sub-product of the culture of celebrity and their favourite targets deserve full sections, such as Liz, Brigitte, Jackie, Caroline, Diana. Questions are put forward to the current paparazzi – Rostain, Apesteguy, Angeli – and the interest of the dialogue is to show how the paparazzi aesthetics (images on the fly, decisive instant shots, intrusion of intimacy) has marked whole sectors of creation, from fashion to movies, from publishing to contemporary art publications.
• Paparazzi, stars et artistes at Centre Pompidou, from 26 February to 9 June 2014.
EXHIBITIONS
Barbara Ker-Seymer, Portrait of Nancy Cunard © The Estate of Barbara Ker-Seymer
Nancy Cunard, a forgotten model
fPARIS – Her life reads like a novel. She was a rich Anglo-American heiress: her father was from the famous Cunard cruiser line, her mother from the business aristocracy of the West Coast. She broke off from her family and led a bohemian existence, being the mistress to Aragon and Pablo Neruda. But such a description of the High Society would not be enough to ensure her celebrity: Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) was above all the promoter of artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century, printing Beckett’s first works on her manual press as well as Auden’s famous poem Spain or defending L’Âge d’or by Dalí and Buñuel, during epic screenings in London. The exhibition is focused though on another aspect of Nancy Cunard: her commitment to the black cause in the USA. She had a ‘scandalous’ love affair with musician Henry Crowder, and she also and in particular expressed her thoughts in the publication of a unique book The Negro Anthology, published in 1934.
• Nancy Cunard, l’Atlantique noir at the musée du quai Branly, from 4 March to 18 May 2014
Emil Nolde, Frau T. with Red Necklace, 1930. Watercolor on paper, 47,9 x 35,5 cm. © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll
Nolde and the storms of the 20th century
FRANCFORT– His long life (nearly 90 years, from 1867 to 1956) allowed Emil Nolde to be a contemporary of all the avant-gardes, from Impressionism up to Lyric Abstraction, including Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism, which influenced him the most. But he was also marked by the fact of having lived right next to the greatest tragedies of his time and not having always made the right choice. For a time he flirted with Nazism, without being accepted. It is no easy task to do the full picture of such an artist, who started making water colours of the Swiss mountains, then plunged into the burning coals of Berlin and the Belle Époque, was influenced by primitive art following a scientific expedition in to Papua New Guinea in 1913 and finished with his ‘non-painted images’ in order to bypass the censure imposed on him by the Third Reich. Among the 150 works from all his periods, a certain number are being shown for the first time.
• Emil Nolde at the Städel Museum, from 5 March to 15 June 2014.
Léger built his own world
BIOT – Having first gone through the filter of Surrealism, Fernand Léger (1881-1955) created his imaginary word in which objects without importance (umbrellas, hats, fruit), deformed, enlarged, humanised, live a new life and create new proportions in a process that is very close to that of Magritte.
Léger, reconstruire le réel at the Musée national Fernand-Léger, from 1st March to 2 June 2014.
Cima and friends
CONEGLIANO – Cima da Conegliano (1459-1517) set up his paintings on the rolling landscapes of his native region, around Treviso. A neglected master of the Renaissance, he is called in with his contemporaries Lorenzo Lotto or Andrea Solario to give a wider image of the local 16th century, which excelled in all the fields, from painting to altarpieces or ceramics.
Un Cinquecento inquieto in various locations in the region, among them the Palazzo Sarcinelli, from 1st March to 8 June 2014
Long live the ruins!
LONDON – The fascination of ruined buildings had already excited Piranese and the Romantics – Hubert Robert the first. The Tate Britain studies the development of this attraction over four centuries, from the 17th to our day, including the obvious stars Turner and Constable as well as our contemporaries such as Eduardo Paolozzi or Tacita Dean. The heavy price of the 20th century is put forward with photos of the Atlantic Wall or the destruction of innovating projects from the twenties.
Ruin Lust at the Tate Britain, from 4 March to 18 May 2014.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Bill Viola, The Dreamers (detail), 2013, video and sound instalation, seven vertical plasma screens, four continuous stereo channels, private collection, Photo Kira Perov
Bill Viola, video art at an adult age
PARIS – Bill Viola, born in 1951, the great priest of video art, has contributed to the affirmation of this emblematic art form of the 21st century with great ‘classics’ such as The Greeting, Observance or The Passions, which reinterprets medieval art. What we don’t know is that Viola, before producing these major works of art, had trained his eye and his technique through a long residence in Italy, in Florence, and then through work trips to the Solomon Islands, to Bali or to Japan – and even in the Sahara to chase after mirages! He has a curiosity for others, with an interest in the great metaphysical questions such as life, death, space, nature and time. Here we have nearly forty years of creation, with the indispensable collaboration of his closest associate and wife, Kira Perov. The clock turns and soon video art will be an ancient art…
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OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
BOOKS
Lipnitzki, one million images
He was a Jewish Ukrainian from Odessa – and changed his name once he settled in France with his family. Haïm Lipnitzky, born in 1887, was a violinist for a brief period in the Istanbul of white Russians, became Boris Lipnitzki in 1920. He also changed profession and became a photographer. Thanks to his ease to talk to people and to socialize, he quickly knit relations with ‘people’ that count, first of all the great couturier Paul Poiret, then Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa Schiaparelli, and he contributed to give their collections a wide audience. He also photographed Louis Jouvet, Joséphine Baker, Serge Lifar, Antonin Artaud, who all appear in this book. How could he not see ‘la vie en rose’ with a very young, 21 year old Edith Piaf -in 1936-, with an equally youthful Charles Trénet, who swallowed the world in his convertible - in August 1939. But the war is around the corner and the Lipnitzki studio becomes Aryan and he himself must once again flee, first to Cuba then to the USA. But he came back to France, constantly renewing is style, now photographing writers or the new singers for the covers of the 45 records… When he died in 1971, his studio owned nearly one million images and represented one of the most important archives of a French half-century.
• Boris Lipnitzki le magnifique by Françoise Denoyelle, Nicolas Chaudun Publishers, 2013, 208 p., €39.
