Art Of The Day Weekly
#409 - from 3 December 2015 to 9 December 2015
Maître de la Fertilité de l'œuf, The Temptation of the Owl, 17th century. Oil on canvas, 62 x 88 cm. Musée Fesch, Ajaccio. Photo Bertrand Rieger.
IN THE AIR
Letter from Corsica
Sometimes we feel like “running away from it all”, all being current events. How about Corsica in the autumn? The beaches are deserted, sailing harbours are resting and traffic is flowing. It is the season of chesnuts, of urchins and squid, and of cultural promenades. One too often forgets the island of beauty also deserves a visit for it heritage and wealth: the chapels nestled in the hills, its Genovese towers, its dolmens and menhirs that easily compete with those of Brittany and Sardinia (a new interpretation centre will open at Filitosa in the spring of 2016). Its museums are really worth a detour: the Archeology one in Sartène and the Museum of Corsica in Corte that offers a real immersion in knowledge and traditions; the FRAC at Corte as well, with a turn towards contemporary art) or the Museum of Bastia, which with photographs presenting until December the events of Aléria in 1975 which crystalized the nationalist movement. All these museums are ill-known and hardly visited. At a time when huge exhibitions monopolise the energy of cultural travellers, this is a moment to remind everyone that an institution like the Fesch palace in Ajaccio, founded by Napoleon’s uncle, has a collection of Italian art that is worth all the retrospectives presented elsewhere. Works by Daddi, Bellini, Cosmè Tura, Véronèse, Titien and Santi di Tito; a number and quality that would fascinate any foundation on the Western Coast of the USA. And enigmatic and unknown paintings such as The Temptation of the Owl by the Maître de la Fertilité de l’œuf. To decipher this mystery could fill long winter afternoons …
EXHIBITIONS
Diptyque d’Areobindus, Constantinople, 506 A.D. Ivory, height 36 cm, width 23 cm © Collection Musée national suisse, property of the Bibliothèque centrale de Zurich. Inv. A-3564
Byzantium-on-Leman
GENEVA - The mysterious title of the exhibition is quickly cleared: Byzantium was never built in Switzerland but the mythic city of the Bosporus, which took on many names such as Constantinople or Istanbul has always fascinated the Swiss, whether travellers, archaeologists or painters. The exhibition brings together the collections kept on Swiss soil and offers a few close-ups of remarkable characters. From the Fossati brothers, two architects from the Ticino region, who carried out surveys on monuments that today no longer exist, to photographer Fred Boissonas, who left a whole testimony on Thessalonica before the fire in August 1917. Liturgical scrolls, gold work, Virgins of tenderness as well as vinegar amphora, silk boots in lampa or legal manuscripts: these objects, most of them from the sacred repertoire, do not ignore the civil and profane world.
• Byzance en Suisse at the musée Rath, from 4 December 2015 to 13 March 2016.
Puppet head, wood and diverse material, Néron de Bellencourt, France, Paris, circa 1868 © MuCEM
Like walking on nails
MARSEILLE –Nails are such simple objects and yet so symbolic since they were used to crucify Christ. 3 or 4 nails, the discussion goes on but the nails of the Real Cross, which have travelled throughout Europe, are so numerous they could have been used to crucify many more than just Christ and the two thieves. The MUCEM, which keeps 4000 of them, retraces the luck of “the smallest common denominator of material culture”, on clogs, coffers, pétanque balls, up to the recreation of a forge in the Queyras region. Very recently it inspired artists such as Gunther Uecker, Yves Klein’s brother in law, who built a whole corpus on its use. Other creators of the XXth century are also present, from Man Ray to Lawrence Weiner.
• Le clou at the MUCEM and at FRAC PACA, from 30 November 2015 to 24 June 2016.
Letter from Providence
SÈTE - For those who complain about an excess of mitch-matched, aimless exhibitions, where anything goes, here is a rejoicing one to belie all that. This exhibition focuses on creations by artists from Providence, Rhode Island, inspired by the fantastic universe of the most famous local author, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). From Mat Brinkman to Francine Spiegel, they all refer to spirits, curious creatures, mysterious worlds and obsessions of all types, in a city with a name that is not easy to carry, inherited from a preacher from way back in the XVIIth century.
• Providence, fracas psychédélique en Nouvelle-Angleterre at the MIAM, from 4 December 2015 to 22 May 2016.
Olle Olsson Hagalund, Victor, oil on canvas. Photo Björn Petrén. © Olle Olsson Hagalund /BUS 2015
Olsson, a naive Swede
STOCKHOLM - This sparkling museum that opened in 2011 and its brass walls, hosts the collection of its founder, construction magnate Sven-Harry Karlsson. The works of art are set up in a strange building set on the roof and meant to be the replica of his mansion in Ekholmsnäs. The rest of the building is left free for temporary exhibitions, and it is currently occupied by a national favorite, Olle Olsson Hagalund (1904-1972). In spite of his popularity in his native country, where the house in which he was born in Hagalund, a district in Northern Stockholm, has been converted into a museum, Olsson is almost completely unknown abroad. He did travel a few times to Paris in the thirties, and was gladly influenced by Dufy, Utrillo and Douanier Rousseau as well as by the jazz clubs. Once he was back home he painted in a very naïve style and gave the little people –fishermen, cart drivers, or street musicians – the front place in an orgy of colors.
• Olle Olsson Hagalund, a colorful romantic at the Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, from 28 November 2015 to 7 February 2016.
AUCTIONS
Lot 7: Geoffroy Tory, Champfleury, 1529, in-folio. Estimate: €20 000 - €30 000.
Bergé's books
PARIS – Once the art has been taken care of, we can turn to the books! Everyone remembers how the auction of the Pierre Bergé Yves Saint Laurent collection had set the market on fire in 2010. The scattering of Pierre Bergé’s library will undoubtedly generate a comparable interest among connoisseurs. Once the manuscript of André Breton’s Nadja was taken out and sold directly to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, there still remain quite a few precious items, as can be seen in the 476 pages of the catalogue and 188 lots for this – first - sale. It is not easy to part with friends of more than 40 years, the collector says rightly so. Among these ‘friends’, an originator edition of the Confessions by Saint Augustin printed in 1470 in Strasbourg, the first editions from 1580, 1588 and 1595 of Essais by Montaigne, Les Journées de Florbelle, theoretically Sade’s last manuscript still in circulation, Dickens’ personal copy of David Copperfield, the copy of Salammbô Dumas junior read, a copy of Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel (with a message to Proust), an album of original drawings by a very young Apollinaire or the Scrapbook-3 that belonged to William Burroughs.
• La bibliothèque de Pierre Bergé at Drouot-Richelieu on 11 December 2015.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
VENDANGE TARDIVE 20155
6 December 2015 - MEYMAC - Centre d'art contemporain
The works of young international artists that were in residence last summer (Photo: Giulia Andreani)
BOOKS
Kafka, a survival manual
Our world resembles the one described by Kafka more than ever: massacres, corruption, inequality, and true darkness. Some mornings we feel like Gregor Samsa when the news leads to the most nightmarish interpretations. Maybe Kafka himself could give us the antidote? That is the spirit of Anne Gorouben, who for decades has found in the Journal reasons to be comforted, and sometimes even a certain empathy with humanity. “Franz Kafka writes like one draws”, she says, and she herself draws like he writes. References to dreams, like, for example with a knife in the heart, locked in a lamb park or smothered by the a woman’s wax bust, moments of anguish and insomnia as well as atmospheres of warm afternoons, of fleeing visions, such as a little girl coming out of a church, two boys carrying sheaves of straw. These personal reconstructions drawn with lead, with a soft trait, sfumato, that help embody the memory and souvenirs.
• Mon Kafka by Anne Gorouben, Les Belles Lettres, 2015, 128 p., €35.
. Actress Muriel Piquart will read fragments from the Journal at la Halle Saint Pierre on 6 December 2015, at 3 p.m.
IN BRIEF
LONDON - The v&A Museum inaugurates on 9 December 2015 its new galleries dedicated to European art 1600-1815.
MIAMI – The Art Basel Miami Beach fair will be held from 3 to 6 December 2015 with 267 galleries of modern and contemporary art.
MIAMI - Scope, the contemporary art fair, will be held from 1 to 6 December 2015.
MIAMI - The Design Miami fair will be held from 2 to 6 December 2015.