Art Of The Day Weekly
#58 - from 20 September 2007 to 26 September 2007
IN THE AIR
Jurassic skilift
We know how it goes: the pharaohs, the Incas, dinosaurs, the Chinese Emperor … It is rare that an exhibition on one of these subjects fail commercially. We told you already last week: the British Museum has met success with its Chinese terracotta soldiers. Over 150 000 tickets have been sold in advance, a record for the respectful institution. The show expected this Winter, also in London, in the former Millennium Dome seems to have 90 000 entrances. On what theme? Ancient Egypt, of course. Authorities in Andorra figured there was an example to follow, and that tourists could be attracted in other ways than with absinth or tax-free Ipods. So they have just set up at Encamp, at the summit of the ski runs of Grandvalira, some particular guests: a ursus spelaus, a rhinoceros tichorinus –, or in other words a bear from the caves and a wooly rhinoceros – as well as a mammoth and three dinosaurs. These large–and authentic - skeletons stare at you from the moment you step off at the cable car glass station. This is an excellent initiative to democratise paleontology… It is said that museums are nervous with this new type of competition, and are looking into an appropriate response. It could be to set up skateboard runs or mini-golf courses in their institutions.
EXHIBITIONS
Lee Miller, and the oracle became photographer
LONDON – New-York born Lee Miller (1907-1977) was famous in front and behind the camera lens. She was noticed by Condé Nast, the founder of Vogue, and developed a first career as a model. In 1929, she arrived in Paris, and met the person who would play a key role in her life, Man Ray. She became his model and then his assistant, replacing in doing so his companion at the time, Kiki de Montparnasse. That is when the second part of her career began: as she got initiated to the technical secrets, in particular to those of solarisation, she herself became a photographer. To commemorate the centennial of her birth, the Victoria & Albert Museum looks into the two aspects of her personality with some 140 images, from nudes to portraits (Picasso or Alfred Barr, the boss then at the MoMA), to landscapes (for a time she was based in Cairo, as the wife of an Egyptian businessman) some of the war (she was one of the few women photographers authorised to follow the Allied troops into Germany, where she completed a famous report on Hitler's bunker). She was advanced when she began, but she also retired very early, as she abandoned photography at the age of forty and ended her life bitterly, under the influence of alcohol and depression.
Picasso, Cubist or not Cubist?
PARIS – One associates him so intimately to the birth of Cubism, next to Braque, that one is always surprised to learn that Picasso tried for a long time to put his commitment in this new form of painting into perspective. It was only in the 20s that he asserted it completely. With many loans from America (Guitare et clarinette sur une cheminée from the Metropolitan, La Table de l’architecte from the MoMA) or from Europe (Guéridon from the Kunstmuseum in Basel), that complete the museum's own collection, all of the elements of the Cubist genesis are shown. We can see the well-known influences by African art as well as the sources from Spain, Oceania or even from Byzantine art. The exhibition is part of the celebrations of the centennial of the Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907, now at the MoMA), considered as one of the symbolic works of the movement.
Medardo Rosso
VENICE – His name no longer means much to many people. Yet Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) was a sculptor ahead of his time, modeling characters that announced those by Giacometti (such as his Yvette Gilbert from 1895 or his Madame X from 1896). One anecdote will be enough to place him back among the avant-gards: when Rodin presented his statue of Balzac in 1898, a definite muddle broke out between the two friends. Rosso was not scandalised by the monument the way most of the Parisian artistic world was. He simply accused Rodin of getting too closely inspired from his own works! Obviously the exhibition presents sculptures by the maestro of wax as well as some one hundred photographs. He was tortured and strange, and at the age of fifty Rosso stopped creating new forms, and simply reproduced those he had already modeled. To complicate the analysis of his work, he burnt all his correspondence before dying.
FESTIVAL
A new beginning for Toulouse
TOULOUSE – Le Printemps de Toulouse-The Toulouse Spring- (formerly at Cahors) calls itself a «Festival of contemporary creation». A way of pointing out it is not a mere accumulation of exhibitions but a rendez-vous that combines visual arts with the performing arts (with the Soirées nomades), that takes over dedicated locations (the Jacobins, the Abattoirs, the Château d’Eau) as well as auditoriums, book stores and galleries. The edition of 2007, which would undoubtedly like to equal the success in attendance they had last year (160 000 visitors), has as focuses «Hamsterwheel», a European exhibition, coordinated by artists such as Frans West and Urs Fischer, already presented at the Venice Biennale, and «Wheeeeel», a panorama of young French creators such as Dewar & Gicquel, the Chapuisat brothers, who wrap up large spaces, Emmanuel Lagarrigue, who creates networks with string, or Armand Jalut, who is faithful to an «old» medium, oil painting on canvas.
BOOKS
Images of the Wild West
An exhibition in Rouen will show us as of 26 September the vision painters had of the Wild West. Obviously photographers also played a major role in the construction of a common myth, built with covered wagons, large spaces, wild Indians and breathtaking landscapes (the Grand Canyon, the geysers in Yellowstone Park). Especially since following the Civil War they were systematically sent by the federal administration to accompany topographic and geologic expeditions. Timothy O’Sullivan, William Bell or William Jackson are some of the names who left large prints on albumin paper the book looks at from East to West, along brand new states (Texas and California entered the Union in 1845 and 1848 respectively). As France has always been closely interested in America – and not only because of La Fayette – many of these images ended up in French collections. That was the case for all the ones in the book, which come from the BNF (national library), la Société de Géographie (the French Geographic Society) or the musée Niépce de Chalon, and which are shown at the musée d’Art américain de Giverny until 31 October.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Kees Visser; this season's hits
PARIS - The Dutch artist, born in 1948, lives between Paris, Haarlem and Iceland, and rigourously pursues his work on color. His minimalist works are reduced to monochrome surfaces, often rectangular. He is very careful in preparing the pigments himself, just like artists in the past used to do. He is also used to monumental installations. The one he made last year for the chapel of Jeanne-d’Arc, in Thouars, is readapted to the church of Saint-Eustache, the largest in the capital. The installation consists in 320 metal pillars,6 metres tall, placed face to face with those of the great organs. They occupy 500 m2, and are painted on three of their sides, thus defining precise geometric forms according to the angle from which we look at them.
IN BRIEF
BASSANO DEL GRAPPA (ITALY) – The city of the Remondini dynasty – that included some of th emost important European publishers of engravings in the Baroque period – has dedicated a new museum to them. It opened to the public on 15 September.
BOLOGNA – The 4th Artelibro fair, dedicated to art books, will be held in the capital of Emilia-Romagna from 21 to 24 September.
LE HAVRE – The Museum d’histoire naturelle, particularly rich with the collection of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur's watercolors, will reopen following a refurbishing campaign.
LINCOLN (GREAR-BRITAIN) – The beach hut, an essential element in the English beach resorts in the XIXth century, is experiencing a renewal. An international contest has allowed for new models to be produced, and the most succesfull will be presented on 22 and 23 September on the beaches in Lincolnshire.
LONDON – The Rostropovitch-Vichnevskaïa collection, which was to be auctioned on 18 and 19 September, was bought "en masse" by Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov. It will be shown until 19 September at Sotheby’s.
NEW YORK – The collection of Indian art that belonged to Parisian antique dealer Ariane Dandois will be sold at Christie’s on 21 September.
PALMA DE MAYORCA – Following the example of Art Basel that «delocalised» to Miami, the German Art Cologne fair will open a branch in the Balearic Islands, from 19 to 23 September.
PARIS-The Theatre Mogador, an historical monument from 1919, will reopen its doors on 24 September after a year of renovations.
PARIS – The Fraysse agency will scatter an important fund of Himalayan statues (Schrimpf collection) at Drouot-Richelieu on 26 September.
REIMS – Czek sculptor Tomas Medek is the winner of the «Art is Steel» award, organised by Arcelor Mittal Distribution. The work will be shown on the site of the company's future European headquarters.
SAINT-LOUIS (United-States) – The St Louis Art Museum has just bought a painting by Degas, Les Modistes (1898), from Blondeau Fine Arts in Geneva for an amount estimated at 10 million $.
A reproduction of the painting on the website of St Louis Today
ON ARTOFTHEDAY.INFO
This week do not miss...
ROSSO: THE TRANSIENT FORM
VENICE - Medardo Rosso is a renowned artist, widely studied and firmly consolidated in the European scene of late 19th-century sculpture as a precursor of modernity. And yet Rosso remains unknown for the most significant part of his production. A systematic and detailed scrutiny of documents, papers and letters, has opened new unexpected horizons.
The mythology of the West in American art
ROUEN - The conquest of the West is one of the founding myths of the North-American civilisation. And yet, the painters who illustrated that epic are unjustly under-evaluated. From Bierstadt to Moran and from Catlin to Remington, the musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen helps us discover the main players.