Art Of The Day Weekly
#457 - from 26 January 2017 to 1 February 2017
Claude Monet, View of Bordighera, 1884. Oil on canvas, 66 x 81,8 cm. The Armand Hammer Collection, Schenkung der Armand Hammer Foundation, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
IN THE AIR
Monet, the patriarch of the 20th century
BASEL - To organize a retrospective of Monet you must expect a miniature trip around the world. Consequently the paintings brought in for this one do come from Cincinnati and Chicago, London and Ottawa, Lille and Paris, and even Australia and Japan. But what is most interesting is that many –one quarter of the sixty-two paintings shown- also come from private collections. Also interesting because they are usually very jealous about sharing their cherished belongings. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s mature age, following the poorer years of Impressionism and before the later years of his sumptuous water lilies. It strives to demonstrate how Monet’s eye conditioned the way the 20th century looked at art. Didn’t Kandinsky see an abstract motif-before abstract art appeared- in one of his haystacks? Monet’s paintbrush traveled and represented the Seine, the Mediterranean, Normandy, Paris and London. But sometimes his most beautiful trips were static: the two steps going down to his garden…
• Monet at the Fondation Beyeler, from 22 January to 28 May 2017
EXHIBITIONS
Horse-rider, 16th c., Dogon style, Mali, wood, metal, 75 × 17,5 × 40,5 cm. Coll. Laurent Dodier.
A compass for Africa
PARIS – The black continent has been considered for years as being landlocked and unchangeable. Actually very early on in its history it was the scene of a wealth of trips, exchanges and movements. This exhibition covers a period of five whole millennia to reach a good diagnosis. Religions, commerce, explorations: we see things we know, such as slavery, the expeditions of Livingstone and Brazza, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and other less known facts, such as the links with the Orient, all the way to Japan, or the extraordinary salt mines in Sierra Leone that were sculpted for the Portuguese merchants. At a certain time, the richest man in the world was African: Moussa I, the Emperor of Mali in the 14th century, who sat on mountains of gold. The wheel of fortune has turned but Africa has never ceased, even in its darkest hours, to be linked to globalization.
• L’Afrique des routes at the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, from 31 January to 12 November 2017.
Will Eisner, a genius of comic strips
ANGOULÊME – The son of Jewish immigrants from central Europe, Will Eisner (1917-2005) was one of the pillars of cartoons of the 20th century. He was a true innovator in the field of detective stories and was able to totally reconvert forty years later to become one of the inventors of graphic novels.
In praise of time
CHARLEROI – What is time? What does it teach us? How do we read time? The Centre d’innovation et de design (Center for innovation and design) looks into this essential matter which strangely enough does not worry us. We seem conditioned by the tyranny of times, rings and alarms… From 22 January to 30 April 2017.
A passion in the desert
PARIS – This poorly known novel by Balzac has the honor of being one of the starting points of the movement called Narrative Figuration. Indeed, Aillaud, Arroyo and Recalcati illustrated it in 1964. They were not alone though as can be seen in the exhibition at the Maison de Balzac. From 27 January to 21 May 2017
AUCTIONS
Lot 17 : Portrait of Antonin Artaud, photograph, ca 1920. 13,3 x 8,5 cm. Original silver print. Estimate: €4,000-5,000.
Antonin Artaud, his intimacy
COMPIÈGNE – He had blue eyes, an oval face, brown hair, an average nose, round chin, ordinary eyebrows and complexion. He was 1.71 m tall. Who is he? Antonin Artaud, as described in his passport n° CS 01333 dated 22 November 1935 in a way very influenced by physiognomy, as practiced by Beccaria and Bertillon. He was given this document meant to protect him right before his famous trip to visit the Tarahumaras, in Mexico. It is now being auctioned next to other surprising documents, such as other surprising documents belonging to his family. There are various letters, to Balthus, to French president Lebrun and even, in 1939, to Hitler (that he never mailed) in which he refers to a meeting in 1932 in a café in Berlin. There is also a lovely landscape in pastels, photos of him as a child next to his mother whom he adored (born in Smyrne) and autographs poems. The most touching lot is undoubtedly a torn identification photograph, in the format of a postcard, which – according to legend- he kept in his wallet all his life. Estimated at €4,000, it is a very affordable price for such a symbolic relic.
• Fonds Antonin Artaud at the auction house of Compiègne, 28 January 2017.
BOOKS
Confessions of an eye
It is of common knowledge that so-called “noses” preside over the preparation of fragrances for perfumes. Fewer people know that “eyes” are capable of recognizing the hand of a master in a painting or an anonymous drawing. Philippe Costamagna, a curator at the Fesch museum in Ajaccio, is one of them. As he details his personal memories –such as the famous identification of a Bronzino at the museum of Nice in 2005, with his friend Carlo Falciani-, he traces the history of those art detectives, through famous figures such as Bernard Berenson, Roberto Longhi and Federico Zeri. Connoisseurship means the training of the eye, the hours spent in drawing cabinets, trips throughout the planet to look at a significant page and to carry out a reference monograph on Pontormo, friendships, as well as petty rivalries. The author speaks honestly about the ambiguous role of said knowledge in an art market that has become absurdly speculative (the attribution of a painting can multiply its value by 100%) but he repeats that his profession can only be nourished by passion. While his heart can skip a beat when discovering a work by Andrea del Sarto, he can be just as energized by extending the corpus of forgotten artists from the Renaissance such as Tommaso di Stefano or Giulio Clovio. The contents of his book clearly reflect the promise included in its title – a transparent reference to Georges Bataille -, but of course we regret the absence of an index.
• Histoires d’œils, by Philippe Costamagna, Grasset, 2016, 272 p., €20.
IN BRIEF
ANGOULÊME - The 44th Festival international de la bande dessinée (44th International cartoon festival) will take place from 26 to 29 January 2017.
GENEVA – The 6th edition of artgenève, a modern and contemporary art fair will take place from 26 to 29 January 2017.
POTSDAM - The Barberini museum, founded by the founder of SAP software company, Hasso Plattner, opened to the public on 23 January 2017.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
DUNCAN CAMPBELL
26 January 2017 - BRUSSELLS - Wiels
How to determine the truth, the factual evidence? A good question to address in our day and age