Art Of The Day Weekly
#422 - from 17 March 2016 to 23 March 2016
Vasily Kandinsky (Mosca 1866-Neuilly-sur-Seine 1944), Upward (Empor), October 1929, oil on cardboard, 70x49 cm. Venice, Collezione Peggy Guggenheim. Photo David Heald (exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence).
IN THE AIR
Travelling museums
FLORENCE – It is always better to visit the major museums on their territory. But not everyone is lucky enough to stroll through the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia or the Pouchkine museum in Moscow. Sometimes those institutions are closed for a long period for renovation. Hence the interest of having their collections travel, even if purists frown at these un-original retrospectives … In our very virtual world, visitors are strangely enough very attached to having direct contact with works of art, especially if they are “icons”. That is the one explanation we find in any case to the success of the tours and antennae of the Petit Palais in Japan, the Louvre in Atlanta, or the Hermitage in Amsterdam? From October 2015 to February 2016, the Monet exhibit at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Torino, completely based on the collections from the musée d’Orsay, attracted 313 000 visitors! The Centre Pompidou is particularly in favour of being present on all fronts. Aside from its front positions in Metz and Malaga, it is also present this month of March at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. It also knows how to pay back what it recieves. At the end of June the Centre Pompidou Metz will welcome the masterpieces from the Saarlandmuseum in Sarrebruck, in particular its Expressionists. As the old saying goes, if you can't go to the museum, have the museum come to you.
EXHIBITIONS
A Tuscan stop over for the Guggenheims
FLORENCE - With the Guggenheims, Palazzo Strossi will kill two birds with one stone, or said otherwise, it is hosting both the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation from New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection from Venice. It shows the role these two strong personalities, uncle Solomon (1861-1949) and Peggy (1898-1979) his eccentric niece, played in the evolution of Modern art. Kandinsky and Klee for the former, Pollock, Klein and Duchamp (with his Boîte-en-valise) for the latter, as well as de Kooning, Dubuffet, Burri, architect and scenographer Kiesler, Kertész and Bacon. There are so many stories behind each object: when Calder finally accepted Peggy Guggenheim’s request to design a bed headboard for her he did it with the material that was the easiest to find in 1946, a period of scarcity. It was neither wood not steel, but simple solid silver.
• Da Kandinsky a Pollock, la grande arte dei Guggenheim at Palazzo Strozzi, from 19 March to 24 July 2016.
From Nantes to Evian, fatal beauties
EVIAN – The museum of Fine Arts of Nantes is being renovated since 2011 and will be at least until 2017. The idea came up of sending its collection for a visit elsewhere, giving them a little sexy side. This is in a way the underlying idea of Belles de jour, a selection of feminine portraits in which Burne-Jones and Tamara de Lempicka stand side by side. In visiting it we discover the perfect know-how of Paul Baudry and Egard Maxence, or of attaching persons such as Jacqueline Marval or Andrée Karpelès. It has been proven before; the treasures of permanent collections often need a special staging or event to attract attention.
• Belles de jour at Palais Lumière, from 6 February to 2 May 2016.
Valentin Serov, Ivan Morozov, 1910, Tretyakov State Gallery, Moscow.
From Moscow to London, figures of Russian art
LONDON – Their names are known, and sometimes their faces are as well. They are easy to recognise with their very characteristics, their piercing eyes, their large beards or their small metal-rimmed glasses. The Tretyakov Gallery has lent the National Portrait Gallery 26 paintings that represent the giants of Russian art, Russian writers (Chekhov, Akhmatova), musicians (Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov) or collectors (Morozov). shows the Golden Age preceding the cataclysm of 1914.
• Russia and the Arts : The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky at the National Portrait Gallery, from 17 March to 26 June 2016.
József Rippl-Rónai, Woman with birdcage, 1892, oil on canvas, 185.5 x 130 cm © National Gallery, Budapest, 2016.
From Budapest to Paris, the Magyar spirit
PARIS – A sort of summary of the Magyar spirit, from statues of Middle Age saints to the flamboyant Fauvist of the Danube: that is how the show presents itself, selecting works from the greater museums of the capital, in particular from the museum of Fine Arts, under renovation until 2018. One discovers European stars, such as Dürer, Greco or Goya, as well as a sample of local glories, in particular the avant-gardes of Symbolism and of the XXth century (Vaszary, Rippl-Ronai, Bortnyik). From 9 March to 10 July 2016.
• Chefs-d’œuvre de Budapest at the Musée du Luxembourg, from 9 March to 10 July 2016.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Albert Woda, Paysage au creux de mes mains, oil on canvas, 195 x 130 cm.
Albert Woda, the colour of the landscape
His name means water in Polish, and his magnetic blue – made by using centennial old pigments of cobalt found at an old painter’s workshop – is a tribute to this etymology. Actually, this artist born in Nice in 1955 and who works in a calm workshop in the Pyrenees, knows how to vary colours. His landscapes of trees and clouds also depend on a golden brown that reminds us of Rembrandt. He excels in another particular colour as well. Indeed, in some of his prints, he highlights the « black manner, that is a difficult discipline that consists in starting with dark colours which are progressively made clearer. That is what graffiti artists did on façades or painters of icons who went from the darkness towards light.
• Albert Woda is exhibited until 22 May 2016 at the musée Paul-Valéry in Sète, next to Philippe Pradalié, Joël Leick and Nick Ervinck.
.The website of Albert Woda.
BOOKS
Art and the duck
What if Mona Lisa, instead of being a woman had been a turkey, or even a female duck? And if Napoleon had been a Mallard duck, Goethe a heron or Wagner a Pekinese? That is more or less the spirit that underlines this huge book: a world of ducks! Even Sumerian seals and hieroglyphs are revisited in this manner. Homo erectus is replaced by a anas erectus and the Venus of Willendorf turns into a Venus of Willenduck. One quickly gets dizzy: geishas looking at a mirror, reduced Jivaro heads, Manet characters, abstractions by Mondrian and even road signs undergo the same metamorphosis. What could have been a simple joke under the shape of a simple duck has become a true encyclopedia, animated by the group of Interduck artists. In front of the port of New York we have the duck of Liberty, holding its torch. Who knows, maybe the world would have been more peaceful under this patronage.
• L’art du canard, by the collectif Interduck, Glénat, 2016, 512 p., €45.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
EMMANUELLE JUDE, AN AFTERNOON IN COLLIOURE
18 March 2016 - COLLIOURE - Galerie Odile Oms
In the city that attracted Matisse, how do people eat icecreams?
IN BRIEF
CHERBOURG - The Thomas Henry museum of art will reopen on 18 March 2016 after 4 years of works.
LYON – The musée des Tissus, that was threatened to close very soon due to a poor financial situation, has received an exceptional donation of €1.75 million from the State, territorial authorities and the Chamber of Commerce in order to remain open until the end of 2016.
NEW YORK - The Met Breuer, designed by Marcel Breuer and which housed the Whitney Museum until recently, will open again on 18 March as the modern and contemporary art space of the Metropolitan Museum.
SYDNEY - The 20th Biennal of modern and contemporary art of Sydney will open from 18 March to 5 June 2016.