Art Of The Day Weekly
#459 - from 9 February 2017 to 15 February 2017
Salvador Dalí, Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages, 1936, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, photography: Studio Tromp, Rotterdam. © Pictoright
IN THE AIR
When Dalí was in the kitchen
ROTTERDAM – More than any other artistic movement of the 20th century, Surrealism lent itself to collective creativity. The cadavres exquis and other automatic drawings gave way to many an evening of friends wishing to explore the subconscious –with a little help from alcohol. It was therefore natural that many of these productions would remain in closed circuits. The importance of these private collections is enhanced by this one, which groups together four of them. While one is rather recent – that of the Pietzsch, a German couple – the other three bring back to life romantic personalities. Roland Penrose (1900-1984) for example was the biographer of Picasso and Lee Miller’s husband; Edward James (1907-1984), an eccentric English man who built himself a wild house in Mexico; and last but not least, Gabrielle Keiller (1908-1995), a golf player who became “queen of marmalade” after inheriting one of the famous Dundee marmalades. Their biographies are surely worth the works of the artists they admired. The list is expected –including Bellmer, Brauner, Leonor Fini, Masson, Miró, Picabia, etc. – but the works have rarely been seen or have unknown stories of their own: who knows for example that the famous portrait from the back reflected in a mirror by Magritte (Reproduction interdite, 1937) represents Edward James? In order to add some spice to an overly serious visit, the curators have foreseen a “surrealist night” on 4 March and a “surrealist dinner” concocted by four of the best chefs in the Netherlands, who will cook up some Dalí (from his famous cookbook Les Dîners de Gala) for some 160 happy few on 22 March. Back in 1970, Dalí had his first European retrospective here at the Boijmans van Beuningen and that looks as a perfect celebration.
• Mad About Surrealism at the Boijmans van Beuningen museum, from 11 February to 28 May 2017.
EXHIBITIONS
David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972. Private Collection © David Hockney Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter
The crystalline world of David Hockney
LONDON – Since Lucian Freud passed away in 2011 David Hockney is often referred to as “the greatest British painter”. In any case, at nearly 80, he is a sure value. Retrospective exhibitions bloom everywhere. After the one at the Royal Academy in 2012, the Tate Britain announces a historical event with some 160 works. Of course one will find the light-filled world of California from the 60s and 70s that made him famous – pools, lawns and gay love stories - as well as his early works with a surrealist touch and his latest incursions in the world of video or digital painting, to sketch his native Yorkshire. Whether he tips towards the ancient masters as when he wrote about the secret of their technique, or towards Picasso, it is questionable whether Hockney will be immortalized next to Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. But his ability to try such a number of styles makes our heads turn.
• David Hockney at Tate Britain, from 9 February to 29 May 2017.
Kirchner, a Berlin period
ZURICH – This exhibition offers the viewer an explosion of color: it covers the six years -1911-1917 - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner spent in Berlin. They began in a creative maelstrom, having been one of the founders of the expressionist Die Brücke movement, and were sadly ended by the war. In his own way, he found inspiration in this conflict, following his colorful women and summers on the sunny Baltic Sea by the daily life of the soldiers and the downward spiral of alcohol and drugs.
• Kirchner, the Berlin Years at the Kunsthaus, from 10 February to 7 May 2017.
Otto Dix, Reclining Woman on a Leopard Skin, 1927, oil on wood, 68 x 98 cm, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2017.
Dix, no sentimental
DÜSSELDORF – While Zurich focuses on a given period of Kirchner’s art, Düsseldorf does the same on an even shorter period, with Otto Dix. It was during the three years 1922-1925 that he gave birth to his famous series of prints on the war, after thinking about them for a decade. Those were also the years during which he became the one of the flagships of “New Objectivity”, with his precise portraits of the bourgeoisie and his artist friends. Had lines, saturated colors, appalling poses: he was without pity, like the times he lived in.
• Otto Dix at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen , from 11 February to 17 May 2017.
Italy Art déco
FORLÍ – Italy seems to be specializing in themed exhibitions. First there was the Liberty and Pop Art last autumn, and now we are invited to admire Art deco, the dominating style of the 20s and 30s. While Italy was impressed like the rest of the world by Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb and by the large Paris exhibition in 1925, the country knew how to preserve a style of its, from Ernesto Basile’s architecture in Palermo to Carlo Bugatti’s furniture in Milan.
• Art déco. Gli anni ruggenti in Italia at the San Domenico museums, from 11 February to 18 June 2017.
AUCTIONS
Jacques Loysel, La Grande Névrose, circa 1896, white marble, 35x93x48 cm. Estimate: £120,000-180,000.
In praise of eroticism
LONDON – The date of course was not chosen by chance, but purposely to coincide with Saint Valentine’s Day. Sotheby’s cooked up this spicy auction on the theme of eroticism. One will find love and sex over the ages. It will surprise no one to find drawings by Grosz and Picasso. But some beautiful marble figures from the turn of the XXth century will brighten up the day for many. Our ancestors during the Third republic used to ‘lose control’ in front of such beauties. Like the perfect lying nude, well named the Grande Névrose. The work was created by young, 21-year old artist, Jacques Loysel, and was a success - and a scandal- at the 1900 World Exposition. France is considered as a provider of abundant works of this type. Hence another curiosity made of a beautiful mahogany from Cuba, with a sculpted mermaid and swans: it is estimated at €600 000, and it is said to be the bed of Esther Lachmann, better known as the courtesan la Païva. She bequeathed it to a lovely private property on the Champs-Elysées.
• Erotic: Passion & Desire at Sotheby’s on 16 February 2017.
BOOKS
Ode to cafés
Coffee is picked, roasted, ground and drunk. But it is not only a beverage for consumption. The temples that were created around its use and which took on its name - our cafés – played an important role in the cultural and political avant-gardes for the last three centuries. From the Bosporus to London (sadly not including Slovenia where this book was printed!), from the Capsa in Bucharest so dear to Morand to the Café Américain where the soul of Joseph Roth still roams in Amsterdam: some one hundred cafés are presented here. Of course there is Montparnasse, with the Dôme, the Coupole and so many temples, where Pascin and Kertész met, as well as Montmartre and the Rat mort Toulouse-Lautrec preferred. There are descriptions of wanderings in which we see such permanent fixtures as Umberto Saba, Tristan Tzara, Karel Capek, Pessoa or Lampedusa who wrote Il Gattopardo, his Leopard. It is the essence of Europe with its loyal customers for coffee and Viennese chocolate right in front of our eyes. The rich iconography reminds the reader that modern painting goes hand in hand with coffee - Boldini and Juan Gris are proof enough. In a continent that seems to question its opening towards the world, we can only hope these venues of socializing and creation will live on, in spite of the threat hanging over them due to concerns such as profitability and the invasion of tasteless chains.
• Les cafés littéraires, by Gérard-Georges Lemaire, La Différence, 2016, 640 p., €45.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
HARRY GRUYAERT
11 February 2017 - ANTWERP - Gallery 51
A photographer with a cinematographic frame of mind
IN BRIEF
NEW YORK - The MoMA has reacted to Trump’s anti-immigration decree by exhibiting artists from the seven Muslim countries targeted by this measure. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts/design/moma-president-trump-travel-ban-art.html
POMPEII – A famous home in the ancient city, the Casa dei casti amanti, will open to the public from 11 to 14 February 2017, before renovation works are launched.
ROTTERDAM - The modern and contemporary art fair Art Rotterdam is being held from 9 to 12 February 2017.