Art Of The Day Weekly
#408 - from 26 November 2015 to 2 December 2015
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque, oil on canvas, 91 x 162 cm, 1814. Paris, Musée du Louvre, département des Peintures, acquired 1899 (exhibition at Museo del Prado, Madrid).
IN THE AIR
Ingres, a certain image of women
MADRID – While some would like us to believe that the female body is a vision from hell, it has always been painters’ main source of inspiration. Ingres would surely agree wit us, he who throughout his life (1780-1867) never ceased with surgical precision to draw it whether dressed or nude. His Grande Odalisque, his Bain turc have a special place in the Western imagination of the ideal beauty. To reach this end the artist did not hesitate to twist perspectives, lengthen arms and legs as the Mannerist artists had done three centuries before. Madrid hosts and this is a big event, for indeed, there isn’t one of his works in the Spanish public collections, even though the duke of Alba was also a close friend of his in Rome. Though Ingres haunted Delacroix, and even prevented him from being elected to the Academy of fine Arts, he excelled in many other genres, such as in portraits of high society –that of Countess d’Haussonville on loan from the Frick Collection in New York, as well as in mythological scenes, in sacred painting, in "troubadour" historical paintings, giving him an original position, somewhere between Neo-classicism, Romanticism and Realist painting.
• Ingres at the Museo del Prado, from 24 November 2015 to 27 March 2016.
EXHIBITIONS
Andrea Schiavone, The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, circa 1550, panel glued on masonite, 130.8 x 156.2 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art © 2015. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Firenze
The colours of Schiavone
VENICE - The exhibition is audacious and the museum protects itself with a very long title - Splendors of the Renaissance in Venice - capable of attracting a very wide public. Because actually the artist is ill-known by the public at large. Schiavone (1510-1563) was born in the Dalmatian territories of the Republic of Venice, hence his name (Schiavone means Slav). Born Andrea Meldola in Zadar, the artist was very influenced by Parmigiano and Titian, a friend of younger artist Tintoretto and enjoyed great fame throughout his life, and often was an object of contention. His mythological scenes, his lives of saints with, in the background, Venetian hillsides and heavy skies, were criticised by some and praised by many, among them Aretino. No one was indifferent to this art. For the first time, some 80 works scattered throughout the world, from Croatia to the Louvre, from Florence to the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna will pay tribute to this worthy drawer, this lover of “terrifying” colourings, this specialist of the “non-finished”. Some even claim he was a forerunner of informal painting…
• Schiavone at the museo Correr, from 28 November 2015 to 10 April 2016.
Golden Age in the Netherlands
AMSTERDAM - Some of them measure nearly 6 metres long. The exhibition, dedicated to the leading class of the Netherlands in the XVIIth century, includes few paintings but they are huge – as if to show the faith of this young nation in its capacities. Provosts and lieutenants, governors in dark suits and white ruff as well as surgeons: all the elite had its portrait made for the centuries to come by seasoned painters such as Jacob Adriaensz Backer or Nicolaesz Eliasz Piquenoy. Women are totally absent from this show. They will only come to power later…
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Théodore Géricault, Young man holding in his arms a woman he just saved from drowning: Paul and Virginie(?), vers 1816
Drawings from Anjou
ANGERS - The graphic arts department of the municipal museum has 13 500 drawings, the symbol of the wealth of certain institutions in the French provinces. A selection among these sheets by Vouet, Rembrandt, Parmigianino or David d’Angers, is put in dialogue with comparable works from private collections.
• La Fabrique de l’œuvre at the musée des Beaux-Arts, from 28 November 2015 to 28 February 2016.
Long live the Republic
MOULINS - Jean Geoffroy was an “official” painter dedicated to describe childhood and the humble classes and through his art the virtues of education – a founding ideal of the Third Republic. Géo, his nickname, is well forgotten today. The museum, specialised in academic painting, presents some one hundred works – studious schoolchildren, classes being et out, apprentices in the workshop…
• Jean Geoffroy (1853-1924), a Republican commitment , at the musée Anne-de-Baujeu, from 28 November 2015 to 18 September 2016.
Zhang Huan, Family Tree, 2000, The Walther Collection © belm Künstler
Indian ink
ZURICH – Chinese calligraphy is extremely codified and can only be mastered after a long learning period. Even for those who cannot decipher it, this universe of signs has an artistic dimension. The museum draws up a history of 30 centuries, up to the current adaptations of the most contemporary creators.
• The Magic of Characters: 3000 years of Chinese Calligraphy at the Rietberg Museum, from 20 November 2015 to 20 March 2016.
COP 21
L'eau qui dort, installationbye Michael Pinsky. Photo Piers Rawson.
Artists for the planet
The heavy atmosphere that reigns after the murderous attacks of 13 November complicates the COP21 meeting. While many events have been cancelled, most of the artistic aspect is maintained: installations, symposiums, exhibitions, that intend to enhance visually and symbolically our exaggerated use of rare resources. At the Gaîté Lyrique, at Centre Pompidou, at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers as well as in town. Shephard Fairey will suspend a mandala globe under the Eiffel Tower, with a very evocative name: Earth Crisis. Michael Pinsky, in L’eau qui dort, has objects float – rubble and pieces of wreckage – fished out of the canal de l’Ourcq. The “Fukushima mon amour” collective will group together in an area at 18 bis boulevard Beaumarchais some sixty artists, among them Castelbajac and Pras and Vilmouth, who intend to draw attention to the Japanese catastrophe, much too quickly forgotten and filed away with the classified matters. At the Maison de l’architecture, the exhibition “Villes potentielles” shows, based on models and drawings, how architects see the city in this new era of the Anthropocene, where man has succeeded to endanger memorable balances.
AUCTIONS
Lot 13 : Horacio García-Rossi (1929-2012), Couleur lumière en cage, 2010. Estimation : 12 000 / 15 000 €.
Pioneers of kinetic art
PARIS – If you want to live to be old, go into kinetic art! Those who practice this form of art have a remarkable longevity and some of those who took part in the founding exhibition at Denise René Gallery in 1955 are still alive – and remain active. The "patriarch" Vasarely died at the age of 91 in 1997, before Denise René herself, who left us in 2012 at the age of 99. The others? Cruz-Diez, 92 and in great shape; Vera Molnar, 91 years old; Takis, 90 years old; Morellet, 89; Agam, 87; Le Parc, 85 and he received the grand prix of the Venice Biennale 49 years ago… The auction presented at Piasa draws up a balance sheet of this very attractive art, which now fills the main institutions (Dynamo at the Grand Palais, recent retrospectives Le Parc and Takis at the Palais de Tokyo, etc.). Rotating motors, light disks, Plexiglas and neon are also used by less-known artists, especially in Latin countries (Italy, Argentina, Brazil). These works are often produced in multiples and are affordable starting with a few hundred euros to increase undoubtedly until €100 000 for the Excitables E7008 by Sérvulo Esmeraldo.
• Art cinétique – Light Show at Piasa on 25 November 2015.
• Not to be missed: the exhibition Let's Move, which presents 80 works of kinetic art (1955-1985), at the Patinoire royale de Bruxelles, as of 25 November 2015.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
André MAIRE
28 November 2015 - MARSEILLES - Galerie Alexis Pentcheff
A travel painter (1898-1984) fascinated by far away places like Indochina
BOOKS
Eames, two to design
The contemporary designers questioned in the insets all place them in their personal pantheon. Giulio Cappellini believes they are the greatest designers of all times. Who are the Eames, Charles (1907-1978) and Ray (1912-1988), a couple in their private life like in work? Perfectionists, believers in details, capable of designing chairs that have become great classics (Wire, Lounge Chair & Ottoman, Aluminium Group) as well as of developing an airport, children’s games or motives for prints or the whole IBM Pavilion at the New York Exhibition in 1964. The book reviews four decades of creation, enhancing certain key moments, such as the construction of their home on the heights of Pacific Palisades, and offers a complete panorama. It talks of their relations with big industry (Alcoa) or the intelligentsia (Billy Wilder) but lacks two must-have elements: a real chronology and an index.
• Charles & Ray Eames, by Maryse Quinton, published by La Martinière, 2015, 256 p., €45
IN BRIEF
PARIS – The macparis contemporary art fair will be hold at the Espace Champerret from 26 to 29 November 2015.
PARIS - The Art Capital fair will be held at the Grand Palais from 25 to 29 November 2015.
STRASBOURG - St-art, the European contemporary art fair, will be held from 27 to 30 November 2015.
VERONA - 17 very valuable paintings were robbed on 19 November 2015 from the museum of Castelvecchio, among them three Tintoretto and the Madona with a quail by Pisanello.