Art Of The Day Weekly
#463 - from 9 March 2017 to 15 March 2017
Andy Warhol, Vote McGovern. Colour screenprint, 1972. © 2016 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London.
IN THE AIR
What is left of the American dream?
LONDON – The calendars for museums and that of politics do not always coincide. But sometimes they echo one another in unexpected ways. The exhibition dedicated to the “American Dream” by the British museum was actually decided some years ago. But it is being inaugurated as the new POTUS (President Of The United States) tries to make this dream least accessible – through visas, deportations and future walls. At the same time, his Secretary of Housing, former candidate to the presidency Ben Carson, felt free to compare African slaves to the immigrants looking to America as the land of plenty. We can seriously question the content of that famous dream, or what is left of it. As a matter of fact, the exhibition does not go too far back, just 60 years, to the birth of Pop Art. But it was a crucial period, in which globalization had already developed and in which the American society of consumption, based on shiny cars, juke-boxes and Coca-Cola, became a universal model. Artists – while keeping their sense of criticism – became extraordinary vectors to diffuse this culture, in particular through prints. Warhol, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Ruscha inhabited the mythical sixties, but they have their worthy heirs in Willie Cole and Kara Walker, who continue to wonder, often in a caustic manner, about the future of this dream.
• The American Dream, Pop to the present at the British Museum, from 9 March to 18 June 2017
EXHIBITIONS
Friedrich Kiesler, Film Guild Cinema, Screen-o-Scope, New York 1929Photo: Ruth Bernhard, reproduced with permission of the Ruth Bernhard Archive, Princeton University Art Museum © Trustees of Princeton University
Kiesler, impossible to classify
BERLIN – Friederich Kiesler, born in Ukraine and died in New York (1890-1965), architect, decorator, scenographer and writer was a true world to himself. An exhibition in Vienna had already explored him last year. He is now the object of a new retrospective that examines his multiple talents. He led a surprising life, including his participation to the 1925 International Exhibition in Paris, the decor of the first Art Déco cinema theater in New York, the organization of Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery and the direction of the Design Lab for the University of Columbia. Did he spend too much time playing chess with Marcel Duchamp or was he the victim of too many urgent interests? Strangely enough Kiesler signed one single building, inaugurated in Jerusalem the year he died: the Book Shrine made to host the famous Scrolls of the Dead Sea.
• Friedrich Kiesler, Architect, Artist, Visionary at the Martin-Gropius Bau, from 11 March to 11 June 2017.
Photo © Pierre Antoine
Balenciaga hosted by Bourdelle
PARIS – Evening gowns, boleros, jewelry scattered among the goddesses and the archers: the idea of this exhibition was to invite the great Basque designer Cristobal Balenciaga (1895-1972) to the museum dedicated to Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929). The confrontation works out in the reduced areas, in the dark and mysterious labyrinths of the workshops on the courtyard in the back. The result is a poetic, Surrealistic Lautréamont-style feeling, diffused by the vicinity of hats and sketches with busts and heads stacked on shelves and stools. The chemistry does not work as well in the large hall where the systematically black pieces of material look like samples for elves next to the colossal equestrian statue of general Alvear.
• Balenciaga. L’œuvre au noir at the musée Bourdelle, from 8 March to 16 July 2017.
AUCTIONS
Lot 36, Christian Bérard, project for a costume for the Symphonie fantastique, 1936, 30.5 x 21.5 cm, original drawing in ink, watercolour and gouache highlights. Estimate: €300-€400.
Christian Bérard died too young
PARIS – How can we explain that the slightest line done by Picasso is worth a fortune while the drawings by Cocteau and Max Jacob, his contemporaries and friends, and even more since they were the witnesses of his marriage to Olga, are only estimated a few hundred Euros? Is it due to a lack of genius or to excessive fetishism? This is one of the questions that arise from this auction that brings back to us an endearing figure of bohemian Paris in the first half of the 20th century, Christian Bérard (1902-1949). His nickname was “Baby”, which had nothing to do with his large body and his bear-like appearance (close to that of Orson Welles). But this hid a lightness, a delicacy, a capacity to invent which he applied to theater decors or to fashion design (he was close to Dior). His companion Boris Kochno (1904-1990), the heir of Diaghilev, their friends Leonor Fini, Valentine Hugo, Jean Marais, Man Ray, the Noailles couple all rise from this vanished world which in spite of the years of crisis and war were rich in other aspects: letters, photographs, sketches, paintings, decorative gouaches, etc.
• Autographes et Manuscrits. Christian Bérard et Boris Kochno 13 March 2017 at Drouot-Richelieu (Auction Art Rémy Le Fur).
BOOKS
Lartigue by the sea
He was the son of the eighth fortune in France, and had no need to work to make a living so he dedicated his life to a major art, painting – without much success. Another leisurely activity made him famous, late in life, photography (he “burst out” with his monographic exhibition at the MoMA in 1963). His father gave him a camera at the age of 7, thanks to which Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986) was able to click away at his daily life for seventy five years of his life. The sea took up a lot of his time –and film. Being a wealthy man, Lartigue spent a lot of time on the Riviera in the twenties with the pioneers of the summer, much before the invasion of paid vacations. Together with his various female companions, all very photogenic (Bibi, Renée, Coco, Florette), he swam, played ball, sped in his convertible along the roads overhanging cliffs or rested in palaces in Antibes, ignoring the sound and the fury of the world, that of the war in particular. The book shows a pristine coast (from Etretat to Biarritz, from Saint-Tropez to Nice), and is also a diary of the high-society in which Cocteau, composer André Messager (Bibi’s father), Sacha Guitry and even young JF Kennedy.
• Jacques-Henri Lartigue, un dandy à la plage, by Bernard Toulier, Dominique Carré, 168 p., €28.
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
IN BRIEF
BRESCIA - The 1st edition of the Brescia Photo Festival is being held from 7 to 12 March 2017.
MAASTRICHT - The TEFAF fair is being held from 10 to 19 March 2017.
PARIS - The Shchukin Collection at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which cloded last week, attracted over 1.2 million visitors, making it the second most visited exhibition in France in the 20th century after Tutankhamun at the Petit Palais in 1967 (1.24 million).
PARIS - The Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo and the CEO of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, have announced a new project for the former musée des Arts et Traditions populaires, closed since 2005. It will become a «Maison LVMH - Arts - Talents - Patrimoine».
TOURS - The new Centre de création contemporaine Olivier Debré opens its doors on 11 Mars 2017.