Art Of The Day Weekly
#429 - from 5 May 2016 to 11 May 2016
Chaumont-sur-Loire Castle © E. Sander
IN THE AIR
Gardens galore
CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE – Long, long ago there was a Garden of Eden. But our memories waver. We know more or less what medieval gardens looked like, those of Le Nôtre and our contemporary ones, a result of planet-wide cross breeding. But what about the gardens of the future? That is the prospective exercise the international garden festival is making a try for, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. Some themes have been enticing, such as eroticism, the capital punishments, delirium. The one of 2016 is just as captivating. It confronts us with a series of techniques and progress, with titles worthy of ‘Questions for a champion’: permaculture, aquaponics, phyto-remediation or grain bombs… Fortunately “vertical farms” are easier to visualize. Plants that store water, produce electricity or light, eliminate pollution but know how to remain beautiful. Acanthus mollis, butomus umbellatus, borago officinalis: in Chaumont, they are the stars and they hold a part of our future…
• Festival international des jardins at the domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, from 21 April to 2 November 2016.
EXHIBITIONS (ABOUT GARDENS)
Marguerite Nakhla, Scene in a Park, ca 1940 © Image courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah
The Far East, fountains and birds chirpings
PARIS – It is not innocent to remember that the word paradise comes the Persian word that means garden. Our vision of the oriental garden rhymes with gurgling fountains, basins, shades and freshness, and we visualize beautiful women and poets strolling through to the rhythm of birds’ songs. The exhibition puts back into perspective this well engrained idea by giving details of its genesis – by using charts, models and photographs – and shows that even the most populated and polluted metropolis are capable of finding inspiration in them to renew themselves. The example of Cairo with the Al-Azhar Park financed by the Aga Khan Foundation. A temporary garden designed by landscape artist Michel Pena closes the itinerary with perfumes, colors and perspectives – among them an anamorphosis.
• Jardins d’Orient at the Institut du monde arabe, from 19 April to 25 September 2016.
Carl Spitzweg (1808–1885), Morning Concert, ca 1848/1850, oil on plywood. Kunsthaus Zürich, Sammlung Johanna und Walter L. Wolf, 1984 © 2016 Kunsthaus Zürich
The world in a garden
ZURICH – In the Spring gardens are definitely in fashion, and the Rietberg museum, the Swiss equivalent of the quai Branly (it is dedicated to non-European cultures) gives us its own interpretation. From ancient Egypt to contemporary artists (like Wolfgang Laib who personally gathers the pollen for his golden compositions), the exhibition follows a guiding thread that goes back thousands of years. A specific accent is put on Indian miniatures that are literally obsessed with the theme of the garden, which hosts the love encounters between gods as well as the dreams of human beings.
• Gardens of the World at the Rietberg Museum, from 13 May to 9 October 2016.
Roberto Burle Marx, mineral roof garden, Banco Safra headquarters, São Paulo, 1983. Photograph © Leonardo Finotti
Burle Marx, a tropical landscape artist
NEW YORK – He contributed to the design of the Unesco headquarters in Paris, he collaborated with Niemeyer and Lucio Costa to the design of Brasilia, he left his famous waves on the pavement of Copacabana and even planted a garden on the roof of the Safra bank. Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) was an important figure in Brazilian modernism, which he applied to gardens by combining tropical exuberance with precepts of abstraction. “He approached the matter of the garden as a painter”, the critic of Jornal do Brasil, Mario Pedrosa wrote in 1958 (as we saw in a beautiful exhibition at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris in 2011). Of course this exhibition shows that aspect of his creation. There is a place of honor for his own garden, the Sítio, in Guaratiba, near Rio de Janeiro, but also for his other passions as a painter, sculptor, set designer, jewelry designer, etc.
• Roberto Burle Marx at the Jewish Museum, from 6 May to 18 September 2016.
OTHER EXHIBITIONS
Turner, a master of color
AIX-EN-PROVENCE – His seas have golden reflections and his skies are symphonies in grayish green. Turner (1775-1857) is known as one of the great color artists of European art, nourished both by the influence of Lorrain and Poussin, by his numerous travels and his curiosity for techniques. It is this aspect of the English master that is explored with 130 works.
•Turner et la couleur at the Hôtel de Caumont, from 4 May to 18 September 2016.
Between paintings and silver salts
LONDON – The relations between painting and photography in the XIXth century were not always easy but they were very prolific. The exhibition confirms this as it looks particularly into the use by the pre Raphaelites such as Rossetti and Millais of the new invention by Fox Talbot and Daguerre, and brings forward certain go-betweens such as Julia Margaret Cameron.
•Painting with Light at the Tate Britain, from 11 May to 25 September 2016.
Jean Lurçat, The Seasons - Spring, 1946, Aubusson tapestry, Tabard workshop, 3,25 x 4,78 m © Isabelle Bideau
Lurçat, a giant in tapestry
PARIS – He embodies tapestry, an art that has fallen out of fashion for it requires patience, abnegation, team spirit and large spaces. Jean Lurçat (1892-1966) produced huge cartons, woven by the workshops of Aubusson or the Gobelins, and which decorated the Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune as well as the French embassy in Rome or the 1st class restaurant in Orly when the airport was inaugurated in 1961! But Lurçat was also a painter, and a very committed one at that. In 1935, he was in the region of Asturias to support the miners’ strike. The exhibition at the Galerie des Gobelins traces his career, his freindships, the shock of the two wards by presenting pieces –should we say monumental ones, such as Le Vin that is more than 40 m2 big). His house in Paris, designed by his brother André (Villa Seurat, in the14e) is currently under renovation and will soon be open to visitors upon appointments.
•Jean Lurçat, au bruit seul du soleil, at the Galerie des Gobelins, from 4 May to 18 September 2016.
BOOKS
Lenoir, monuments men
If a cultivated person has heard his name, it is rather in a positive sense. Alexandre Lenoir (1761-1839) has the stature of a crusader who saved the art of the Ancient Regime from the excesses of the Revolution, saving statues and reliefs from the hammers of the vandals and protecting them in the musée des Monuments français. In the catalogue that accompanies an exhibition until 4 July 2016, the Louvre tells the story of its younger brother. Indeed it was created in 1795 in what today is the chapel of the école des Beaux-Arts in Paris and chronologically became the second national museum. It details the various phases, the architecture and the contents through paintings - that recall its surprising blue and red decoration –, engravings, letters, lists and appreciations (like that of Louis-Sébastien Mercier, charmed by the poetry of disorder). But this dense book also shows the man’s endearing complexity, whose knowledge was sometimes limited, whose vanity was invasive at times, whose interests were as varied as they were in disorder, whether it was Egyptology, the History of France, or painting on glass. The museum was closed in 1816 and its collections were scattered but the memory of things gone can sometimes be surprisingly lasting.
• Un musée révolutionnaire, le musée des Monuments français d’Alexandre Lenoir directed by Geneviève Bresc-Bautier and Béatrice de Chancel-Bardelot, Hazan/musée du Louvre éditions, 2016, 384 p., €45.
IN BRIEF
LIÈGE – La Boverie, the former palace of Fine Arts from 1905 transformed by Rudy Ricciotti, is inaugurated on 5 May 2016. It now houses the city's collections.
LONDON – The London Original Print Fair will be held from 5 to 8 May 2016.
NANCY – The Biennale internationale de l’image will be held from 7 to 22 May 2016.
NEW YORK – The Frieze contemporary art fair will open from 5 to 8 May 2016.
PARIS – Monumenta 2016 will welcome to the Grand Palais an installation by Chinese Huan Yong Ping, from 8 May to 18 June 2016.
PARIS - The stage curtain of Parade, designed by Picasso one hundred years ago for Diaghliev's Ballets russes, is to be shown during one week, from 7 to 15 May 2016, at the théâtre du Châtelet, the venue for whichit was created.
VERSAILLES – The galerie des Carrosses of the castle of Versailles, closed in 2007, will reopen to the public on 10 May 2016.
