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Art Of The Day Weekly

#396 - from 9 July 2015 to 9 September 2015


Adelita Husni-Bey, Working for a World Free of Poverty, 2014. Courtesy Thessaloniki Biennale.

Our next issue will appear on 11 September 2014. Have a wonderful Summer!

10 EXHIBITIONS FOR THE SUMMER

Believing in Europe...

Many of the exhibitions mentioned in our previous newsletters will remain open during July and August: Basquiat at Bilbao, Audrey Hepburn in London, Piero di Cosimo in Florence, Frederick Kiesler in Vienna, Man Ray in Copenhagen. But there is such pressure for contemporary events that each day new openings are announced. Consequently, here is a new choice, partial and biased, that may at least allow you to criss-cross a continent full of doubts, from Paris to Budapest, from London to Ostend. With a trump card at a moment where the future of Greece dangles from a string: the fifth Thessaloniki Biennale of contemporary art which takes as its emblem a beautiful phrase by Antonio Gramsci: “Between the Pessimism of the Intellect and the Optimism of the Will”. The future will tell which one won.

The 5th Thessaloniki Biennale


Julio Le Parc, Continuel lumière cylindre, 1962, wood, metal and engine, 49 x 31 x 14 cm © Collection Lélia Mordoch.

Multiple visions

AIX-EN-PROVENCE – Behind the logo of GRAV hides the group of research of visual art, which brought together six artists at the end of the sixties, among them Julio Le Parc and François Morellet. They were fond of experiments in the visual field, and were all influenced by Vasarely, the inventor of Op Art (Yvaral, the creator of the Renault logo, is even his son). So many reasons for bringing them together in the Fondation dedicated to Vasarely since 1966 and which finally comes out of a period of great turbulence.
L’œil phénomène at the Fondation Vasarely, from 19 June to 20 September 2015.

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Yan Pei-Ming, Patrice Chéreau, 2015 oil on canvas, made specially for the exhibition. Courtesy Massimo De Carlo, Milan/London and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg © Yan Pei-Ming, Adagp, Paris, 2015/photo André Morin.

Chéreau, a lifetime

AVIGNON – How can we retrace an itinerary like that of Patrice Chéreau (1944-2013), a man of theatre and opera, a writer and a movie director? From his famous production of Macbeth at Avignon in 1988 to Queen Margot, the very successful movie with Isabelle Adjani, he knew how to touch all genres. Based on his archives, entrusted to the IMEC, this exhibition marks the reopening of the Collection Lambert in an area twice as large and traces a portrait according to the reflection of those who loved him. Chéreau is defined by his visual passions, from Adel Abdessemed to Bob Wilson, including classic masters such as Chassériau, Géricault or Renoir.
Patrice Chéreau, un musée imaginaire at the Fondation Lambert, from 14 July to 11 October 2015.

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Olga Tobleruts: Modèles (detail), polyptych, 6 parts, 1995-1996, impression on canvas, 90 x 60 cm © Courtesy Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow

Fresh neo-Classic gusts in Russia

BUDAPEST – It is of common knowledge that Russia love to celebrate its imperial grandeur and to look for reasons of national pride. From this perspective, the success of the movement launched by philosopher-artist Timur Novikov in the 90s baptised “neo-academism” can be seen like a strong sign. In the XXth century, the glorification of classicism and historicism was surely due to totalitarian regimes. Contemporary artists know this well enough. Will they be able to keep the necessary distance, the indispensable sense of humour?
Absolute Beauty – Neoacademism in Saint Petersburg at the Ludwig Museum, from 10 July to 13 September 2015.

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Pieterjan Ginckels, A-shovelin South, 2015.

Art to the sea

KNOKKE and BELGIAN COAST – Every three years, the Belgian coast hosts installations by some thirty artists, throughout the summer, and some of them remain beyond that period. This “triennal of contemporary art on the sea” presents its fifth edition. From Martí Anson to Mark Wallinger, the participants combine confirmed and younger artists. Among the most awaited there is A Dog Republic, a collective movement that includes above all a veteran of utopia, Yona Friedman (92 years old).
Beaufort, from 21 June to 21 September 2015.

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Joseph Cornell, Habitat Group for a Shooting Gallery, 1943, box construction, 39,4x28,3x10,8 cm. Nathan Emory Coffin Collection, Des Moines Art Center. Photo Rich Sanders © The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Found.

Cornell, the man with the boxes

LONDON – Without ever moving from Times Square, he closed the world up in his little characteristic boxes. A New Yorker who never moves, a friend of Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell collected with greediness newspaper clipping and chromes of European paintings, stuffed African birds and coins from America, bottles, dolls and tops from elsewhere. They helped him recreate a strange cosmopolitan, enigmatic and poetic world. Proof that evasion does not always rhyme with movement and that one can make beautiful trips without moving. Something to meditate on at the time of wide summer migrations!
Joseph Cornell, Wanderlust at the Royal Academy of Arts, from 4 July to 27 September 2015.

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Paul Cézanne, Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses), ca. 1894-1905 © The National Gallery, London.

Cézanne's inner music

LONDON – What melody does one think of when looking at Holbein’s Ambassadors? Which harmonies with strings come out of the very ancient Wilton diptych? Which obsessive and fresh rhythm gives life to Cézanne’s Bathers? The National Gallery has looked for the answer to this question by ordering musical creations from great names of the contemporary scene among which Gabriel Yared, known for his sound tracks (Betty Blue, The British Patient), Chris Watson, the virtuoso of sound recording in nature (in particular for the documentaries by David Attenborough) or even DJ Jamie xx. An original approach to masterpieces.
Soundscapes at the National Gallery, from 8 July to 6 September 2015.

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Piotr Kowalski, Light (rainbow), 1992, holographic mechanism, halogen bulb, hyperbolic screen. Coll. Andrea Kowalski ©ADAGP, Paris, 2015/Piotr Kowalski/Photo Anzaï Shigeo.

The spirit of sciences

LUXEMBOURG – The mechanics by Tinguely, Panamarenko’s planes, Carsten Nicolai’s clouds, Mel Bochner’s graph paper: science has always fascinated artists, who look into the discoveries and research. The confrontation in this case is on a major scale: 70 objects from the Paris musée des Arts et Métiers are confronted to works by 130 artists from around the world. No better way to reconcile the Ecole du Louvre and mathematical studies.
Eppur si muove at the MUDAM, from 9 July 2015 to 17 January 2016.

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Boris Chaliapin, Standing Nude, 1929, oil on canvas pasted on panel, 116 x 81 cm. Courtesy MC Fine Art, Monaco.

Russians in France

MONACO – A rich but ill-known collection, built over three decades. It is the property of the Khatsenkov, husband and wife, who have a well-known gallery, and it is shown for the year of Russia in Monaco. Dedicated to Russian painters and sculptors active in Paris as well as on the Côte d’Azur, for which they have always had a special weakness. It brings together names such as Survage, Pougny or Archipenko. But not only; other artists worth discovering such as Georges Annenkov, a great movie costume artist, or Boris Chaliapin (the son of the opera singer), who produced hundreds of front covers for Time Magazine.
La Russie inconnue, Monaco Riviera Paris at the Salle d’expostion du quai Antoine Ier, from 25 June to 27 August 2015.

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Maurice Tabard, Punu mask © M. Tabard, Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/G. Meguerditchian

Images of Africa

OSTEND – The title of the exhibition is obviously a tip of the hat to Ghost of Africa by Michel Leiris. The exhibit tries to show how Europe fed itself during the XXth century on the African imagination and what fantasies, forms and images resulted from this. The exhibit is based both on the exceptional African collection of the Tervuren museum and on testimonies by writers and ethnologists such as Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire.
L’Europe fantôme at the Mu.Zee, from 4 July 2015 to 3 January 2016.

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JP Mika, Kiese na Kiese, 2014, Pas-Chaudoir Collection, Belgium © JP Mika.

All the colors of Congo

PARIS – Deep Africa remains as disquieting as it did one century ago. Its metropolis – true creative lungs –are badly known, aside from some short lived flashes like the movie Benda Bilili! five years ago. Consequently this exhibition that traces nearly one century of figurative art in the Republic of Congo (former Zaire) is a true discovery. Can we conceive that painting on paper began only in the 1920s? The country has made giant strides and its artists, contrary to ours (more attracted by conceptual art) are true commentators of contemporary events, like Chéri Samba.
Beauté Congo 1926-2015 at the Fondation Cartier, from 11 July to 15 November 2015.

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OPENINGS OF THE WEEK


Giuseppe Chiari

10 July 2015 - PARIS - Galerie Tornabuoni

An Italian artist (1926-2007) who was a composer, a performer and a member of Fluxus

Our selection of new exhibitions