Art Of The Day Weekly

Why Gauguin touches us so

PARIS - 230 = 67+54+35+34+29+14. When you add it up, the figure is quite impressive: 230 works by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) have been brought together for three months at the Grand Palais, of which 67 engravings, 54 paintings, 35 sculptures, 34 drawings, 29 works in ceramic, and 14 wood blocks. A whole universe lies behind those figures, a universe that was already exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the museums with the best and largest collection of works by the artist. A universe that is not limited to “naked breasts and mangos”, as the American curator Gloria Groom summed it up so nicely, backed up by her counterparts from the musée d’Orsay. But Gauguin’s universe did find its sources of inspiration elsewhere than in Tahiti. Aside from the influence by his Impressionist colleagues, we can add those of Peruvian art - he spent his childhood in Lima- , the art forms of the West Indies, Japan, Cambodia or the Far North, which all fascinated him. Hence, it is not surprising to find next to his master pieces from fifteen countries, Mochica or Huaxteca sculptures, French wooden decoys, Norwegian mugs, etc. His “great itch for the unknown”, as he himself defined it to his friend Pissarro, is also expressed in his experiments in various supports, engraving, ceramics in particular in the Chaplet workshop on rue Blomet in Paris, or wood carving –like a superb polychrome cabinet from Hamburg. The tropics and their influence remain very present: a special area gives details on his work of art Noa Noa, a sort of artistic confession; another rebuilds through holograms his Maison du Jouir in the Marquises islands, where he lived his last two years. Gauguin seems to touch us more today than some of his contemporary artists, such as Monet or Renoir, it is most probably due to hi shaving been such a tortured soul, which pushed him constantly to flee others, including his wife and children, and escape tot eh end of the earth. Indeed, he fled away from himself, to the end of his days.
• Gauguin l’alchimiste at the Grand Palais, from 11 October 2017 to 22 January 2018.

Know more

Ferlinghetti, the Beat came from Italy

BRESCIA – Why should we talk about one of the champions of the Beat Generation in a wealthy town in the Lombard region, known in particular for the Beretta weapon manufacturer? That’s because Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the founder of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, was a native of the northern city through his father, an Italian immigrant who settled in the USA. The exhibition shows his personal itinerary –literary as well as pictorial- in detail, and the way Beat literature was welcomed in Italy. But it also speaks of his search for an identity. Ferlinghetti, who is now 99 years old, only discovered at age 86, in 2005, the family home his father, who died before he was born, left to sail off to the big American adventure.
• A Life: Lawrence Ferlinghetti a t the Museo di Santa Giulia, from 7 October 2017 to 14 January 2018.

Know more

Dali and Duchamp, two trouble makers

LONDON - Certain couples seem obvious: Picasso/Matisse, Van Gogh/Gauguin, Monet/Renoir. Others are less so, therefore it is interesting to dig in a little. Such is the case of recent exhibition of Derain/Giacometti/Balthus at the musée d’Art moderne in Paris. Here we have two other giants of the 20th century we rarely approach: the inventor of ready-made and of conceptual art (Duchamp), and the free spirit of Surrealism and of the “paranoid-critical method” (Dali). Works by each one of them, as well as their letters to one another and photos (often with a chess game nearby) document this friendship which was not steady but lasted a long time. This is also an opportunity to recall that one of the versions of the scandalous Mona Lisa L.H.O.O.Q. by Duchamp will be up for auction on 21 October at Sotheby’s in Paris.
• Dalí/Duchamp at the Royal Academy of Arts, from 7 October 2017 to 3 January 2018.

Know more

• Surrealist auction at Sotheby’s in Paris on 21 October 2017.

Know more

The taste of the MoMA

PARIS – Few people remember that in 1939, one of the exhibitions that attracted the greater number of visitors in Paris was the one of the American collections of the MoMA. The museum of modern art was then very young: only ten years old. It was founded in 1929 by the will of three strong –and wealthy- women, among them a Rockefeller; steered by a juvenile director -Alfred Barr was 27 years old. And it was set up to prove that old Europe did not have the exclusiveness of modern art. Under the sound of the military boots of the time, the new American art was snickered at. Eighty years later things have really changed. Pollock, Rauschenberg, and Warhol, set up US art at the top of the podium, and the MoMA contributed largely to that story. Contrary to the exhibition of 1938, the retrospective that opens today reads more like an assessment. Of course it looks into the complex game of the pendulum between Europe and the USA, but also shows how the MoMA was built on a curiosity that had many aspects: it was there that architecture, design, photography, and cinema were admired for the first time as noble disciplines. From a helicopter propeller to the drawings by Frank Lloyd Wright, from Mickey Mouse to the movie of stills by Cindy Sherman, the museum has helped to widen the perimeter of modern art. It truly deserves its name.
• Etre moderne : le MoMA à Paris at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, from 11 October 2017 to 5 March 2018.

Know more