Art Of The Day Weekly
#432 - from 26 May 2016 to 1 June 2016
Simon Velez, Temple Without Religion. Courtesy Biennale d'architettura di Venezia
IN THE AIR
Architecture faces world challenges
VENICE - Architecture is everywhere and some of those who practice it have risen to the rank of world superstars. The premature decease of Zaha Hadid is the most recent illustration of this. The Venice architecture biennale – born in 1980 and a long time the little sister of the venerated visual arts biennale – has taken on a growing authority. Under the title “Reporting from the Front”, the one of 2016, directed by Chilean Alejandro Aravena, digs right into hot major themes. Segregation, refugee housing, migrants, victims of natural catastrophies (how to build quickly and at a low cost, efficient, recyclable and dignified shelters?), pollution, requalification of industrial areas, etc. There are many questions and all concern burning issues: architecture has never been at the core of events as it is today.
• The Biennale of architecture will open to the public on 28 May 2016 and will last until 27 November.
EXHIBITIONS
Vincenzo Scamozzi, tarvel notebook from Paris to Venice, 1600: basilica of Saint-Denis. Vicenza, Pinacoteca Civica, Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe.
Scamozzi, an architect and an intellectual
VICENZA - He left us some of the best known sites in the world – piazza San Marco in Venice (the side of the Procuratie Nuove) -, was painted by Veronese and defined by Wittkower as being the father of neo-classicism. In spite of that, he has fallen to oblivion. Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616) was with Palladio (the basilica and the Olympic Theatre of Vicenza, the beautiful villas in the Venetian hinterland) and Longhena (the Salute church in Venice) one of the greatest architects of the XVIth century. This small exhibition shows the demanding concept he had of his profession, combining the study of the great classics, the carefully executed drafts for the cathedral of Salzburg in 1606 for example, his travel notes (his Parisian notebook from 1600 is exhibited). One of the strongest points of the exhibition is the recreation of his library – a studious atmosphere that cradled him since childhood (he was the son of a well-to-do entrepreneur) – of which some of the scattered editions have been patiently brought together.
• Nella mente di Vincenzo Scamozzi at Palladio Museum, from 25 May to 20 November 2016.
Édouard Manet, The Lunch, 1868, oil on canvas, 118,3 x 154 cm, München Neue Pinakothek © bpk/Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Special looks and glances with Manet
HAMBURG - Manet is famous for a few icons that founded modern art, in particular Olympia and the Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Instead of bringing out those classics, this retrospective examines in which manner the painter, while creating a surprising relationship between painting and the spectator, transforms the latter into a voyeur. It is not necessarily a direct and brazen look, like in Nana, but rather a subtle game of side glances, like in The Lunch. At another time, Georges de La Tour had already used this talent very artistically.
• Manet. Painting the Gaze, at the Hambuger Kunsthalle, from 27 May to 4 September 2016.
Rouen 1431, at the times of Joan of Arc, sketch © Asisi.
Joan of Arc at the panorama
ROUEN – History sometimes turns around. In the XIXth century the Panorama was a very popular source of entertainment. It helped relive major battles and discover the large world metropolis. A sign of that popularity can be seen in a street in Paris along the ‘grands boulevards’, in front of the musée Grévin, named to this day the “Passage des Panoramas”. But there are very few original panoramas – mostly of battles. First and foremost, Waterloo (on the site itself), (in Wroclaw), (in Jettysburg). But tastes are visibly cyclical: following the exhibit in Geneva and then at the Mucem in Marseille, the metropolis of Rouen inaugurated in December 2014 a permanent panorama, baptised XXL to underline its dimensions (32 mts. tall, 101 mts. round). The designer, Yadegar Asisi, has become over the last decade the specialist in the discipline, leaving one in Berlin, one in Dresden and one in Leipzig. His latest composition brings back to life the town in Normandy at a key period, the spring of 1431 with the trial and the burning on the stake of Joan of Arc.
• Rouen 1431 will open at the Panorama XXL on 28 May 2016.
AUCTIONS
Finn Juhl, rare armchair with high back, 1957. Estimate: €50 000 - €70 000.
Boreal design
PARIS – The prices of modern design can really scare beginners: the price of a well-known doctor’s leather armchair can go beyond that of a landscape of Barbizon. This will be proven once again in this auction of Scandinavian objects. Danish designer Finn Juhl (1912-1989) is present with an elegant armchair with a tall back from 1957, which should not go for less than €50 000. His floating cabinets, that look vaguely familiar with the wall closets by Charlotte Perriand, are much more affordable (“only” €25 000). Curved sofas by Viggo Boesen, lamps by Pool Henningsen, an ottoman by Vilhelm Lauritzen: design from the cold North is visual and sound …
• Design scandinave on 31 May 2016 at Artcurial.
BOOKS
Velazquez, the mystery of the nude
It is one of Velazquez’s masterpieces – and also a mystery: his only nude, sensual, very different from the moral canons of the Royal Courts in the Spanish Golden Age. This Rokeby Venus , painted during a rather libertine year in Rome (1650), had a very strange destiny. Aside from a list of highly original owners (among them the duchess of Alba, Goya’s mistress), it was lacerated in June 1914by suffragette Mary Richardson (the same one who shortly after was attracted by English fascism as seen by Oswald Mosely), at the National Gallery. This attack is the plot of the book, and gives us the opportunity to follow the painting’s history. Who was this greatly surprising painting done for? Why did it create such hate among the feminist movement? How was it restored, and what was discovered when it was? Among the clues that allowed experts to date it without a doubt, the presence of azurite from Hungary, then under Ottoman domination, is a new mystery.
• Qui veut la peau de Vénus ?, by Bruno Nassim Aboudrar, Flammarion, 2016, 260 p., €20.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
INVISIBLE BEAUTY - PAVILION OF IRAQ
28 May 2016 - GHENT - S.M.A.K.
A museum version of the Iraq pavilion at Venice 2005 Biennale
IN BRIEF
BUCHAREST - The 7th contemporary art Biennale is being held from 26 May to 30 June 2016.
LISBON - The 1st edition of contemporary art fair Arco Lisboa is being held from 26 to 29 May 2016.
MADRID - The 16th edition of Photo España is being held from 1st June to 28 August 2016.
PARIS - Sotheby’s is holding on 31 May 2016 an auction of Proust manuscripts from the collection of his great-grandnephew.
TOULOUSE - The MAP photo festival is being held from 1 to 30 June 2016.