Art Of The Day Weekly
#435 - from 16 June 2016 to 22 June 2016
© Tate Photography
IN THE AIR
When the Tate Modern gains some perspective
LONDON – Over 250 artists, from more than 50 different countries: that is almost as good as the Olympic Games! The new Tate Modern is breaking all sorts of records, among them the 60% increase of its total surface. The extension to the former Bankside electric plant, transformed in 2000, is also designed by the Herzog & de Meuron agency and it takes on the shape of a ten-story building. Named Switch, with a beautiful panoramic terrace, it doesn’t only stage novelty: it is set up on the former reservoirs, the Tanks, which contribute a stimulating industrial setting for large installations. The Tate Modern no longer needs to spare its space and now it can offer new monographic rooms, dedicated to Magdalena Abakanowicz and her jute bags, or Cildo Meireles and his digital tower of Babel, or to Sheela Gowda. The opening, year-long exhibition is dedicated to Louise Bourgeois whose giant spider had already inaugurated the Unilever Series in the turbines hall in 2000.
• The extension of Tate Modern will open to the public on 17 June 2016.
EXHIBITIONS
Louis Stettner, Aubervilliers, 1947, coll. Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris. Purchased 2013. © Centre Pompidou/Dist. RMN-GP © Louis Stettner
Stettner, the last humanist
PARIS – He is of the same calibre as Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson, Ronis. American photographer Stettner, born in 1922, is no longer very young, and he started photographing before the age of 15. He is a lover of France where he has lived intermittently since 1946. There are not too many living photographers who shot the world before World War II! He was the photographer of US troops in the Pacific and more than the documentary aspect, his aim was always to charm the world. He looked with empathy at the streets in Paris and Brooklyn, the artisans, the workers and café clients. But he also immortalised fishermen in Ibiza (with an unpublished book) and more recently – for Stettner is still active -, the landscapes and tortured tree trunks of the Alpilles region.
• Louis Stettner, ici ailleurs at the Centre Pompidou, from 15 June to 12 September 2016.
Morales, a mystic
BARCELONA – They called him the Divine, for the mystic image his paintings gave of religion. Luis de Morales (1510-1586) was in his time as well-known as El Greco. This retrospective, already shown at the Prado and in Granada, overflows with Holy Families, Ecce Homo and a great number of variations of the Virgin, sometimes even wearing a gypsy hat.
• El Divino Morales from 17 June to 25 September 2016
The pioneers of cartoon strips
FRANKFURT - Winsor McCay, George Herriman and Cliff Sterrett contributed at the beginning of the XXth century to define a new art form, cartoon strips. They never suspected the importance this genre would acquire one hundred years later. Slightly Surrealists, a bit Symbolists, they always kept a strict sense of narration and some of these pioneers were real stars in their time: Frank King had a life-long contract with Randolph Hearst and his Uncle Wald was avidly read by Picasso.
• Pioneers of the Comic Street, a Different Avant-Garde at the Schirn Kunsthalle, from 23 June to 18 September 2016.
Georgiana Houghton, Glory be to God, c.1868 © Victorian Spiritualists' Union Melbourne, Australia.
The medium who invented abstraction
LONDON - Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884) is a real discovery. She was a painter as well as a Spiritualist medium. Therefore, great artists of the past –some from the Renaissance – express themselves through her watercolours. Some of her works come from places as mysterious as the artist herself (many come from the Victorian Spiritualists Union of Melbourne, in Australia), and they push the origins of abstraction back in time, way before Kandinsky.
• Georgiana Houghton, Spirit Drawings at the Courtauld Gallery, from 16 June to 11 September 2016.
Rome, the Romantic icon
NEW YORK – Few cities have excited the inspiration of artists over the centuries as the Eternal City has. Poussin, Lorrain and many Flemish artists chose it as their home, and Rome increased its Romantic aura – nourished in particular by its ruins – during the XVIIIth century when Piranese, Hubert Robert and Turner chose it as their hunting grounds.
• City of the Souls: Rome and the Romantics at the Morgan Library, from 17 June to 11 September 2016.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Olafur Eliasson, Deep mirror (yellow), 2016, installation at Versailles Palace, 2016. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy l'artiste ; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. © 2016 Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson plays castles and Louis XIV
VERSAILLES – Following the upheavals in the 2015 edition (and the vandalised sculptures of Anish Kapoor), Olafur Eliasson was the ideal artist to renew the sometimes difficult relations between the castle of Versailles and contemporary art. His installations manipulate superior and appeasing forces such as water (we remember his New York waterfalls) or the sun (his veiled heavenly body at the Tate Modern). At Versailles, the connection with the Sun King and his ego was an obvious leading thread. He expresses himself both through oversized works , such as the water jet over the Grand Canal, the fog of the grove of the Etoile and the mirror effects –a symbol of surveillance, of exhibitionism – in particular in the Galerie des Glaces (gallery of Mirrors). Eliasson is a real business entrepreneur (he employs close to one hundred persons) who has a social conscience and finds concrete derivatives to his artistic intuitions. He created for example the company called Little Sun, which produces a solar energy lamp for populations with no or little access to electricity.
• Olafur Eliasson at the château de Versailles, from 6 June to 30 October 2016.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
Le Studio Lévin
16 June 2016 - GENTILLY - Maison Robert Doisneau
A famous postwar photo studio who shot the likes of Bardot, Lollobrigida or Vince Taylor (photo)
THE CORNER OF THE BOUQUINISTE
When churches were wealthy
With 878 numbers, from the Virgin and Child from the church of Saint-Vaast in Bailleul to the cross for the processions from the church of Wolxheim (Bas-Rhin), the catalogue reflects the over-dimensioned objective of the 1965 exhibition (5 February to 24 May) at the musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris: to testify to the wealth y heritage of churches in France. Organised around the treasure of Conques brought up in its totality to Paris (the Majesty of saint Foy decorates the front cover), the exhibition allows to show the public reliquary arms, chasubles, sculpted ivories, calices in embossed silver, Charlemagne’s famous talisman (kept in Reims), which hung for a certain period of time around empress Josephine’s graceful neck, or the Paraclet crown from Amiens. What is truly impressive - and is so well summed-up in the forward by curator Jacques Dupont (1908-1988) -, is the very long time the organisers imposed on themselves. Indeed it was a true labour, an in-depth work that is no longer possible today. It took a total of fifteen years to prepare this retrospective that was accompanied by a colossal work of inventory, restoration, writing of detailed notes and regional exhibitions. In spite of its wealth, the exhibition was also a reminder of the vicissitudes of history: the major part of the church treasures has been melted down over the centuries and there only remains a modest sample. This too is still the target of vandalism and robbers.
• Les trésors des églises de France, Caisse nationale des monuments historiques, 1965, 464 p. with 254 plates without any text.
IN BRIEF
BASEL - The modern and contemporary art fair Art Basel will be held from 16 to 19 June 2016.
BASEL - The contemporary art fair Liste is being held from 14 to 19 June 2016.
LONDON - Two major paintings by Picasso (Femme assise, 1909) and Soutine (Jeanne Hébuterne au foulard, 1919) are on sale at Sotheby’s on 21 June 2016.
PARIS - To celebrate the 80th birthday of the Front populaire, the 36/36 exhibition presents the works of 36 artists at the National Assembly, from 17 to 20 June 2016.