Art Of The Day Weekly
#383 - from 9 April 2015 to 15 April 2015
Alain Delon and Monica Vitti, Eclipse (L’Eclisse) by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962 © Sergio Strizzi
IN THE AIR
Antonioni, a master movie maker
PARIS - He was born in a town that challenges all the Italian stereotypes, the one of Ariosto and Frescobaldi, the one of the garden of the Finzi-Contini and of Visconti's first movie (Ossessione), combining the fog of the Pô valley, Jewish memories and splendors of the Renaissance. Did the original character of Ferrara grow on Antonioni? The movie director (1912-2007) followed a very personal path in Italian cinema after WWII, far from Neorealism and comedy Italian style. He embodied a form of existentialism in which the absurd, alienation and the lack of communication play a major role. He left a few major works, from L’Avventura to The Passenger including Blow-Up. This retrospective, following those dedicated to Truffaut or Pasolini, takes advantage of the recent opening of its archives and exhibits his scenarios, his correspondance, his watercolors. It shows how Antonioni, whether he shot his movies in London or in Rome or in Death Valley, represented a Europe that is open and demanding, capable of synthesizing its colossal patrimony of images into a new creation, as rigorous as it is impossible to classify.
• Antonioni at the Cinémathèque française, from 9 April to 19 July 2015.
EXHIBITIONS
Leonardo da Vinci, St Jerome in the wilderness, 1482 ca, oil on wood, 103x74 cm. Pinacoteca Vaticana.
Leonardo from Milan
MILAN – Of course he was from Vinci, a small town in Tuscany, but also from Florence, where his star shone, and even from Amboise where legend has he died in the arms of king Francis I. But Leonardo da Vinci also had an important time in Milan, which is just perfect for the 2015 Expo and certainly justifies this large retrospective, the most important one ever organized in Italy. The famous Last Supper alone justifies that one go Lombardy but Leonardo did a lot more during the two stays and over twenty years. While the equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza never came to be, he drew weapons and siege machines for Lodovico il Moro, he designed canals, decorated a part of the castles of the Sforza, and created some of his major works such as Lady with ermine or the two versions of Virgin of the Rocks. Tours are planned inside Milan but the exhibition itself is aims at being encyclopedic, bringing together paintings and especially drawings (over one hundred) as well as rebuilt machines, in twelve «sections», from the anatomy to the movements of the soul: it could not have been smaller if one wishes to do a complete tour of Leonardo!
• Leonardo 1452-1519 at the Palazzo Reale, from 16 April to 19 July 2015.
Don Eddy, Untitled (Detail), 1971, acrylic on canvas, 121,9x167,6 cm. Photo © Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. On loan by Österreichischen Ludwig Stiftung.
Hyper-realism, alive and well
GRAZ – All our dreams of the 60s were filled with chrome cars, the neon lights on Times Square and the motels on Route 66. The marriage between getting away from it all through the endless road and the wide open spaces, and the consumer society with its toasters, beer cans and Coca-Cola bottles. For over half a century artists have made the portrait of this America as loyal as possible, through paintings or photographs, from John Baeder to Stephen Shore, from Don Eddy to Richard Estes. A new form of the American dream (or is it as, Henry Miller thought, an “air-conditioned nightmare”?) that takes shape in a landscape where the signs of human beings are present everywhere.
• Hyper America. Landscape-Image-Reality at the Kunsthaus Graz, from 9 April to 30 August 2015.
What is a US icon?
PARIS – This exhibition tries to answer exactly that question by presenting major classics from the post war era from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: of course there are works by Warhol, Dan Flavin, a beautiful mobile by Calder as well as monumental portraits in trompe-l’œil by Chuck Close and serpentines by Brice Marden, the youngest of the group (born in 1938).
• Icônes américaines, chefs-d’œuvre du San Francisco Museum of Modern Art et de la collection Fisher at the Grand Palais, from 8 April to 22 June 2015.
AUCTIONS
Lot 262, 6 posters, 1848. Estimate: € 400-500.
1848 as if you lived it
PARIS – “Over 5000 prints per year. One issue, two cents. Three months 7 francs. Ask any paper-boy for a copy.” The press has certainly changed its arguments over the last century and a half. The one we just quoted was that of the Pamphlet in 1848, which covered themes that are just as much in vogue today: “The jokes of political life– News of the world– Living-room gossip”. This poster, estimated at €200, is one of the lots that brings back to life the feverish atmosphere of the Revolution of 1848. It is accompanied by political campaign posters (among them that of Lamartine), lists of candidates, a decree from the Préfecture on posting bills in Paris, a public poster regarding an “extraordinary tax of 45 cents”. As well as manuscripts, like that of feminist Catherine Rémy who called for a bus strike. At a time when we tend to forget our history, here is a way of remembering it and of measuring how fragile our current public freedoms are.
• Manuscrits, autographes, affiches de la Révolution de 1848, on 9 April 2015 at hôtel Drouot (F.L. Auction).
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
View of the exhibition © Marc Domage
Jérôme Zonder, dark drawing
We usually conceive drawing in restrictive terms, like a preparatory, intermediary or minor phase. Jérôme Zonder (born in 1974) on the contrary sees drawing, the only discipline he is totally dedicated to, as a total experience. The Maison rouge is occupied from floor to ceiling by his original works – the ones on the floor are covered by a varnish to protect them from the visitors’ steps – that draw a labyrinth interrupted by black tunnels. This virtuoso of graphite (but who even draws with his finger) has created for himself a pot-pourri universe that is hidden by the initial bucolic forest. He is greatly impacted by contemporary violence, like that of Jacques Callot: cruel, murderer children, on a backdrop of mass killings, massacres, summary executions, images of gas chambers, etc. Like a modern encyclopedia always in the making in which mankind shows infinite creativity.
• Jérôme Zonder, Fatum at Maison rouge, from 19 February to 10 May 2015.
BOOKS
Air from Siena
Luca di Tommè, Cennino Cennini, Taddeo di Bartolo: so many well-sounding names that make us think of an Italy of our dreams, that of free municipalities, of altarpieces with gold backgrounds, of “condottieri”, of the first lights of the Renaissance. This is the Italy of Siena. In the XIVth century the small town in Tuscany was in competition with neighbouring Florence and invented a precise style of painting, full of concrete details, with architectures, tables set and draperies. The perspective was far from perfect but the story it told was solid: the Martyrdom of saint Laurence (Bartolo di Fredi) or the Lamentation by Gregorio di Cecco can be read like an open book – it was the Biblia Pauperum, the Bible of the poor of the time. This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at the musée des Beaux-Arts of Rouen (until 17 August 2015), and mentions some of the great names such as Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers but also gives the minor masters the place they deserve.
• Peinture de Sienne, Bozar Books/Silvana Editoriale, 248 p., €39.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
Felice Varini
15 April 2015 - PARIS - La Villette
A contemporary master of in situ trompe-l'œil
IN BRIEF
LONDRES - Neil MacGregor, at the helm of the British Museum for 13 years, has announced he will step down next December.
PARIS - The 1st edition of the Do Disturb Festival is taking place at Palais de Tokyo from 10 to 12 April 2015.
SAO PAULO - The modern and contemporary art fair sp-arte is taking place from 9 to 12 April 2015.