Art Of The Day Weekly
#443 - from 6 October 2016 to 12 October 2016
IN THE AIR
Picasso and friends
LONDON - Each month of October, on the anniversary of the artist's birthday - 135 years ago-, celebrations seem to sprout up everywhere. This year the London museum has brought together all those who meant something to him: Kahnweiler his art dealer, Casagemas, his childhood friend whose suicide triggered off his Blue period, Apollinaire his close friend and Sabartés his faithful secretary. His wife Olga and his other companions as well of course, Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot. Picasso, who people claim produced one work of art every day over an 80-year period, gave special importance to portrait (and to self-portraits). The exhibition presents a series that has rarely been presented, from all his peridos, from the most experimental Cubism to the most Ingres-style classicism. This proves his capacity to reinvent himself and to confuse art historians!
• Picasso Portraits>/i> at the National Portrait Gallery, 6 October 2016 to 5 February 2017.
EXHIBITIONS
Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), Self Portrait, 1921. Oil on canvas, 82,5 x 72 cm, Kunsthaus Zürich, Alberto Giacometti Stiftung
Picasso versus Giacometti
PARIS - They are two giants of XXth century art and their works today are worth more than €100 million at auctions. They were both sons of artists and both lived in Paris at the same time Picasso in various places (at the Bateau Lavoir, rue Emile-Schoelcher, rue La Boétie, rue des Grands-Augustins, etc.), while Giacometti was faithful to his atelier in the XIVth arrondissement (rue Hippolyte-Maindron). They weren't exactly close as Picasso was twenty years older and had arrived in Paris twenty years before the Swiss artist. But as of 1931 they met regularly, either in their respective studios or at a cafe - the Flore, Deux Magots, Lipp-, and wondered about sculpture, the sense of Realism. The exhibition refers to their work in parallel and multiplies their confrontations, showing how they were close but never identical!
• Picasso Giacometti, at the musée Picasso, 4 October 2016 to 5 February 2017.
When Cubism met war
BARCELONA - World War I was an hécatombe for artists as much as it was for the population in general: Franz Marc, August Macke, Boccioni and Gaudier-Brzeska died, while Braque, Léger and Dix underwent traumatizing wounds. Artsits contineud to produce as much as they could, on the front or behind the ranks, but the conflict put a stop on the avant-gard movements. But nourished others. By presenting various cases - non-committed foreigners such as Picasso or Rivera, women like Maria Blanchard or fighters such as Braque or Léger -, the exhibition demonstrates the impact of the conflict on Cubism by Picasso and his friends
• Cubismo y Guerra. El Cristal en la Llama at the Picasso museum, 21 October 2016 to 29 January 2017.
The Picasso ephemeris
VERONA - The idea is quite simple: one work of art for each year of his life as an artist, i.e. 90 drawings, paintings, sculptures (Picasso actually lived 91 yeas, from 25 October 1881 to 8 April 1973, and the exhibition decided to limit itself to the period from 1895 to 1972. This is an original way of reviewing the very many movements and tendencies the artist was associated to, from an initial Symbolism to the Blue and Pink periods, up to the very personal experiemnts he carried out during his last decades.
• Picasso Figure (1895-1972) at the AMO-Palazo Forti, 15 October 2016 to 12 March 2017
Hergé, The Aventures of Tintin, The Crab with the Golden Claws, 1942. Cover illustration, watercolour and gouache on print, 42 x 30 cm Collection Studios Hergé © Hergé/Moulinsart 2016.
Hergé, a life behind Tintin
PARIS - Hergé in a way is to comic strips in the XXthe century what Picasso is to painting. In an original manner, it is the author and not his famous creatures Tintin and Milou (nor, by the way, Jo and Zette, Quick and Flupke) who is brought forward with a profusion of drawing sheets and his unique "bleus de coloriage". It shows how Hergé (whose pseudonym is the result of the inverted initials of his real name, Georges Rémy) was obsessed with the truth of documents. This can be seen in the letter for example set to a specialist in astronautics at the time, Alexandre Ananoff (1910-1992), asking for a detailed explanation of a space ship. His genius is also the result of of his almost cinematographic approach to comic strips. In this aspect, an excerpt from a TV program by Michel Drucker in 1978 in which movie director Yves Robert decyphers the different boxes of a drawing sheet is a true gem. Hergé wanted to succeed in a more "noble" form of art and in his later years took painting lessons and produced works in the like of Poliakoff, but which would never go on to posterity. Over thos elast years he was truly interested in contemporary art as can be read i his personal collection (Lichtenstein, Warhol, etc.) and in the last, unfinished adventure, of his hero, Tintin et l’Alph-art, the sketches of which cover a whole wall.
• Hergé, at the Grand Palais, 28 September 2016 to 15 January 2017.
BOOKS
Robillard, his weakness for weapons
This is a real weaponry: rifles - be it Chinese, with a Russian atomic head, combat from Germany, quick American -, as well as B-52 bombers, tanks and even sputniks! It was not found in a rogue country but rather in the secret garden of an artist, André Robillard. This champion of art brut, noticed by Jean Dubuffet, is now 85 years old. He created his first rifles in 1964. But these were "non-offensive" rifles, full of colours and Scotch. He had never wished to go too far away from the psychiatric hospital where he had once been interned (he was cook and then dish washer). Today he is famous and appears in the Collection de l’art brut in Lausanne. In this book made up of interviews which he organised in themed chapters, from Animals to Old age, including the Cosmos, Martians and Television, he unveils his vision of the world, his origins (his youth at La Mal Tournée, his father who was a game keeper and his mother who was the gate keeper), his influences (Picasso, Yvette Horner, the stars). One could see some Prévert in him, and would not be wrong.
• André Robillard, la fleur au fusil, interviews with Françoise Monnin, la Bibliothèque des arts, 2016, 176 p., €19.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
OLIVIER DASSAULT
8 October 2016 - NANCAY - Galerie Capazza
One of the members of the famous industrial dynasty pursues his own artistic career
IN BRIEF
BEAUVAIS - Photaumnales, the photography event, wlil be held from 8 October 2016 to 1 January 2017.
BERLIN - The Photo Biennale is being held from 6 to 30 October 2016.
LISBON - The MAAT, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, was inaugurated on 5 October 2016.
LISBON - The Triennial of architecture will be held from 5 October to 11 December 2016.
LONDON - Frieze Art Fair is being held in Regent's Park from 6 to 9 October 2016.
NAPLES - The Museo Archeologico will open its Egyptian rooms on 7 October 2016.
VIENNA - The Photo Vienna fair will be held from 12 to 16 October 2016.