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Art Of The Day Weekly

#485 - from 5 October 2017 to 11 October 2017


Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard, 1596-1597, oil on canvas, 65,8 x 52,3 cm. © Fondazione di Studi di Storia dell'Arte Roberto Longhi di Firenze.

IN THE AIR

Caravaggio, genius and bad boy

MILAN – It is more than surprising that painters who are universally acclaimed today such as Caravaggio, Georges de la Tour and Vermeer fell into oblivion before being rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century. Caravaggio (1571-1610) is undoubtedly the most brilliant ambassador of this brigade of re-born painters. He was greatly admired in his time, when his art fascinated and his private life scandalized society –and vice versa. He renewed painting by using the theatrical chiaroscuro technique, and by his choice of models. Indeed, he always gave preference to the lower class and chose bums and prostitutes to re-create holy scenes, and even gave the Virgin dirty feet. He was almost as agile in handling the dagger and left more than one drinking companion flat on his nose, abused most easy young girls, and he was constantly fleeing his numerous enemies: his creditors, judges, the knights of Malta, among others. He was a sort of James Dean of the 17th century, running at one hundred miles a minute, and this dramatic life ended miserably on a beach in Tuscany. But an elegant Tuscan art historian, Roberto Longhi, dug him out of the ashes in the 1920s. Since then Caravaggio’s popularity has not faded, on the contrary, and each of his exhibitions is sure to be an immense success. In the magnificent setting of the castle of Otranto in the summer of 2017, it took one single painting - the Boy Bitten by a Lizard - to attract the crowds. This time, we have a selection of some twenty works of art, on loan from different horizons - Italy, New York, London, Detroit, etc. – coupled with an X-ray. The aim is to analyze the painter’s technique as closely as possible, by showing for example his regrets (a lamb which disappears in the Saint John the Baptist from Palazzo Corsini; or to show that sometimes Caravaggio did drawings under his works, which has always been refuted. One hundred years of studies on Caravaggio have not exhausted the subject!
Dentro Caravaggio at Palazzo Reale, from 29 September 2017 to 28 January 2018.

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EXHIBITIONS


André Derain, The Dance, 1906, oil on canvas, 185 x 228 cm, private collection © Adagp, Paris 2017

Derain, an energetic force

PARIS - Derain (1880-1953)? At moments he was a Fauvist artist, at others a Cubist. But mostly, he carried with him the consequences of the famous trip to Germany in the autumn of 1941, organized by the collaborationist government, and which drew a permanent shade over his career. This is truly unfortunate, for he had been a brave soldier during the First World War, and had taken the trip against his will and best judgement, without imagining the consequences he would suffer. Derain was stigmatized at the moment of the Liberation, and was more or less evacuated from the official history of the avant-gardes. The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou gives him his place once again, as it shows how he, like Matisse, was the soul of the Fauvist movement in 1905. Right after that period his role was just as determining in the development of Cubism. In two fields he was actually ahead of Picasso and Braque, in the use he made of photography (a whole room is dedicated to that aspect in the exhibition), and his attraction to far-away arts, from Africa and Oceania. The paintings focus on one, founding decade, that of 1904-1914. They are a true explosion of color, in particular the series on the bridges of London in 1906, and include some rare works such as the immense Dance, on loan from a private collection. Derain was a womanizer, a lover of fast cars, a bulimic reader, a writer, a brilliant do-it-yourselfer (he perfected small, flying objects), and had a passion for Japanese philosophy and Christian esotericism. He was a man with a multitude of facets, far from the monolithic, academic, and gruff character he was often described as.
André Derain, la décennie radicale. 1904-1914 at the Centre Pompidou, from 4 October 2017 to 29 January 2018.

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America in the jazz era

CLEVELAND – The growth of American cultural hegemony is often dated to the Abstract Expressionism period of the 40s and 50s. Some believe it is older and started with the great collectors of the period between the two wars, and the world success of jazz. This exhibition is aimed in any case to prove just that, as it shows the major role European immigrants played in this particularly impressive production in decorative arts.
The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s at the Cleveland Museum of Art, from 30 September 2017 to 14 January 2018.

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Opera, a world passion

LONDON – Opera is not only a show, it is a mythology. It has played a political role –think of Verdi for Italian unity, Wagner for the German nation; it has involved the greatest composers as well as the greatest artists when it came to the settings and decors - Dalí for a version of Salomé directed by Peter Brook in 1949. From Monteverdi, with the original score of L’incoronazione di Poppea , the first opera to be played in public, to Benjamin Britten and Shostakovich, the exhibition offers a trip around the world over 400 years with areas of course put to music, in particular an immersion in the Va’ pensiero by Verdi, the strong moment of Nabucco).
Opera, Passion, Power and Politics, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, from 30 September 2017 to 25 February 2018.

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Raphael, Portrait of Bindo Altoviti, ca. 1514–1515. Oil on wood. © National Gallery of Art, Washington

Raphael’s muscles

VIENNA - Raphael was Italian, but Austria loves him. 17 paintings and 130 drawings are kept in the country, of which an important number at the Albertina. This is the point of departure of this exhibition that brings together international loans (the Holy Family from the Prado, the Esterhazy Madonna from Budapest, etc.) to present the various facets of his talent. He is much too often presented as a fragile, delicate, diaphanous, and even disincarnated artist. But Raphael was also notoriously erotomaniac –his liaison with the the Fornarina nourished some of Picasso’s fantasies -, and was used to rubbing elbows with popes, bankers, ambassadors. At one moment he was even the project manager of a colossal project, the construction of the basilica of Saint Peter.
Raphael at the Albertina, from 29 September 2017 to 7 January 2018.

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AS WELL AS

BREMEN - The Kunsthaus dedicates an exhibition to Max Beckmann and his cruel “world theater”, from 30 September 2017 to 4 February 2018.

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PARIS – A Court painter as well as a confidant and a diplomat: Rubens was all of that at the same time. His portraits of princes are presented at the Musée du Luxembourg, from 4 October 2017 to the 14 January 2018.

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PARIS - The Musée Bourdelle studies the relation the sculptor had with antic art. From 4 October 2017 to 4 February 2018.

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TORINO - Palazzo Chiablese presents Miró’s last creative period with some one hundred works of art. From 4 October 2017 to 14 January 2018.

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BOOKS

Not so crazy after all

Dubuffet became famous through his “art brut”, presented as the production by artists who have never been in contact with the academic world. Mental hospitals were a choice reservoir in this quest. He was surely not the first to be interested in it - doctors like the psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn were pioneers long before him. In Paris, the hospital of Sainte-Anne made up a collection early on. It sheds a particular light on it for its 150th anniversary, celebrated this year, 2017. The collection was begun in an irregular manner, since the end of the 19th century. It then went much faster, in 1950, when doctor Robert Volmat (1920-1998), who had done his thesis on the subject, organized a large “psychopathological” art exhibition. Over 2000 works brought from 17 different countries (among them an interesting selection from a Brazilian, avant-garde hospital, Juquéri at São Paulo) were shown in the hospital as well as in the chapel of the Sorbonne. The works are naive or on the contrary technical (some beautiful charcoals by H.A.R. that resemble the work by Daumier), poetic or looking like technical drawings. The great variety of works shows that this art cannot be reduced to a unique category. Certain works correspond to the deep, permanent, psychotic ill being. Other works express the aesthetic tastes of a temporary patient. The catalogue accompanies an exhibition in two parts at Sainte-Anne, the first until 26 November, the second from 30 November 2017 to 28 February 2018, which will be more focused on the surprising retrospective in 1950.
Entre art des fous et art brut. La Collection Sainte-Anne, by Anne-Marie Dubois, Somogy, 2017, 160 p., €22.

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IN BRIEF

LONDON - The Frieze art fair is being held from 5 to 8 October 2017.

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MARRAKECH - The musée Yves Saint Laurent was inaugurated on 3 October 2017 with an exhibition dedicated to Jacques Majorelle.

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PARIS - The musée Yves Saint Laurent opened on 3 October 2017.

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PARIS - The Nuit blanche (White Night) will be held on Saturday 7 to Sunday 8 October 2017.

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PARIS - The museum 11 quai Conti, that presents the heritage collections of the Monnaie de Paris, opened on 30 September 2017.

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OPENINGS OF THE WEEK


FLUX

10 October 2017 - PARIS - Galerie du CROUS

A collective reflection on the flux

Our selection of new exhibitions in galleries