Art Of The Day Weekly
#395 - from 2 July 2015 to 8 July 2015
IN THE AIR
Eternal Audrey
LONDON – She left us - much too early - twenty two years ago. But the fascination Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) exerts on the public remains intact. Her freshness, her ingenuity, her twinkling and yet melancholic eyes survive in the multiple portraits she inspired. The greatest photographers caught her in their lens– Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, Norman Parkinson or Irving Penn -, and they ensure her universal fame almost as much as her filmography (from Roman Holiday to Charade including Breakfast at Tiffany’s). The exhibition presents some 70 images of the star, some of which show her debuts as a dancer in the night club Ciro’s in 1949. The venue now houses the archives of the National Portrait Gallery. It pushes us to decipher the process of the making of a modern icon. These images are always slick, perfectly built, excluding any intimacy, any sloppiness or any false familiarity. Will today’s stars age as well?
• Audrey Hepburn at the National Portrait Gallery, from 2 July to 18 October 2015.
EXHIBITIONS
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Self-Portrait, 1984. Acrylic and oil bar on paper, mounted on canvas, 100 x 70 cm. Yoav Harlap Collection. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Basquiat, the meteor
BILBAO - Jean-Michel Basquiat, a dissenting icon of the 80s, a true Jimi Hendrix of painting, died in 1988. He would be in his fifties today. How did his work resist the passage of time? Close to one hundred paintings and drawings, of which some done in collaboration with Andy Warhol or Keith Haring, bring his violent urban universe back to life. The city –Brooklyn-, the subway and the traffic, the racism, boxing and drugs, poverty and the ever-present consumers society, in bright colors, stick letters and paint drippings.
• Basquiat, le moment est venu at the Guggenheim, from 3 July to 1 November 2015.
Sweet Dolci
FLORENCE - Once we have reviewed Masaccio, Leonardo, Michael-Angelo, Bronzino and Pontormo, what do we know about Florentine painting? Nearly nothing: the creators of the XVII and XVIII centuries are particularly ill-known. It is clearly the case of Carlo Dolci (1616-1687), event hough his works were scattered all over Europe – there is a drawing in the Louvre, paintings in Brest and Marseille, Madrid, Stockholm and Dresden. The Medici adored the artist, the English greatly appreciated his still lives, his drawings of natural history, his repentant Magdalenes and his portraits of the aristocracy. Most of the British ambassadors posted in Florence had him brush up their portrait. But he was also capable of referring to the great names of the past, such as Dante or Fra Angelico and left touching representations of his dear ones, one of his daughter in particular, who was also to become a painter.
• Carlo Dolci at the Galleria Palatina, from 30 June to 15 November 2015.
These exhibitions also open this week
In the name of Zero
AMSTERDAM – This is the key number. It is also the name a group of avant-garde artists in the 50s and 60s chose for themselves, who wanted to start from the very beginning. Fifty years after a retrospective that made history, the Stedelijk brings together once again Otto Piene, Gunther Uecker, Yayoi Kusama, Lucio Fontana, and the others.
• Zero at the Stedelijk, from 4 July to 8 November 2015.
François I, a king and a scholar
BLOIS – We all know he was a great amateur of art, the protector of Leonardo da Vinci, and that he loved architecture. François I, who during his reign pushed through the decree of Villers-Cotterets which imposed French as the administrative language, was also a book lover. This exhibition brings together a part of the volumes of his library.
• François Ier, trésors royaux de la bibliothèque at the castle of Blois, from 4 July to 18 October 2015.
Pollock in black
LIVERPOOL – Next to his famous colored “drippings”, Jackson Pollock’s “black pourings” are more recent and less known. The Tate Liverpool presents a beautiful series.
• Jackson Pollock, Blind Spots at the Tate Liverpool, from 30 June to 18 October 2015.
Garouste down South
SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE – An enthusiast of a very personal figuration, while not hiding his fight against this own demons, and nourishing himself on religious and profane texts, Gérard Garouste personifies a certain independence in face of the mechanisms of the art market.
• Gérard Garouste, en chemin at the Fondation Maeght, from 27 June to 29 November 2015.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Jean-Baptiste Belley, série Diaspora, 2014. Avec l’aimable autorisation de l’artiste et de la galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris
The Rencontres at 46
ARLES - A new phase is opening for the Rencontres de la photographie in a very symbolic year: one of its founders in 1970, Lucien Clergue, passed away a few months ago while was taking place the delicate transition between François Hebel, the general commissar since 2001, and his successor, Sam Stourdzé, who just left the musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. The latter wishes to mark his mandate with the breaking-down of boundaries: photography crosses with music (the encounter between Martin Parr and Mathieu Chedid), with cinema (the photos by Paul Ronald on the shooting of Fellini’s 81/2) and even with architecture. Some unexpected collectors are staged, such as Tony Oursler or Jean-Marie Donat. And the future seems to be assured with the foundation stone of the École nationale supérieure de la photographie and the construction site of the Luma foundation: it is a 56 meter tall building designed by Frank Gehry which is finally going forward after all the debates it gave birth to.
• Les Rencontres de la photographie wil be held from 6 July to 20 September 2015.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Alfredo Jaar, installation, Biennale di Venezia 2013. Courtesy Alfredo Jaar.
Alfredo Jaar, memory and reality
Alfredo Jaar was born in 1956 in Santiago de Chile and left his country to flee the military dictatorship. He is artist, architect and movie director. Settlend in New York for over thirty years, he questions the reality that transmits images, the expression of memory –in particular in the countries of the Southern hemisphere which went through totalitarian periods -, and the marketization of art. He became famous with his first “performance” in 1979 in which he asked the residents of Santiago if they were happy. Used to the Biennales of São Paulo and Venice, he presented at the latter in 2013 a model of the Biennale sunken under a blanket of green water. The worst is always possible.
• Alfredo Jaar is present at the Musée d’art contemporain de Marseille, from 4 July 2015 to 10 January 2016.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
Shepard Fairey - Superman is dead
4 July 2015 - PARIS - Galerie Magda Danysz
The well-known street artist pays tribute to Sid Vicious, the iconic bassist of the Sex Pistols
BOOKS
Horvat, a voyeur of Maillol
The musée Maillol closed unexpectedly at the beginning of 2015, and declared bankruptcy under conditions that are far from being clear. Its future is uncertain, and its collections are now invisible. This book by photographer Franck Horvat allows us to plunge into a series of terracotta figures that exalt the female body, Maillol’s eternal obsession, from his first Baigneuses in 1899 to the lewd Dina from 1937. Horvat was a long-time friend of Dina Vierny, the artist’s model and friend, then the founder of the museum. Now 87 years old, the artist - whose long career spanned fashion articles and photography - turned around these voluptuous statuettes to seize them from all angles. A feminine ideal born from clay, just like in the Bible.
• Maillol Horvat, Gallimard, 2015, 94 p., €32.
IN BRIEF
MELLE - The International Biennale of Melle will be held from 4 July to 27 September 2015.
NANTES - The multidisciplinary festival Voyage à nantes, will be held from 3 July to 30 August 2015.
PARIS - The members of the SNA (national union of antique dealers) voted on 29 June 2015 the principle of a yearly cycle for the famous Biennale des antiquaires.