Art Of The Day Weekly
#71 - from 20 December 2007 to 9 January 2008
This is our last issue for 2007. Our next newsletter will appear next year, on January 10 2008 MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!
IN THE AIR
Extension of the period of youth
Until what age can we create? This question is not new and we know a few famous examples. Michel-Angelo worked until the age of 89. Titiano only accepted to stop when he was a little younger (86 years old) under the presssure of the plague. And Harpignies (1819-1916), a small master of the XIXth century, celebrated his 97th birthday with a brush in his hand. With the lengthening of life expectancy the number of cases seems to increase. In the movie world, Mario Monicelli, born in 1915, director of the unforgettable Pigeon, still seems young next to Manoel de Oliveira, who is shooting a movie at this moment at age 99 (not to mention Resnais who at 85 is still an adolescent). The golden palm should be rewarded to architect Oscar Niemeyer, who celebrated his first century on December 15 He recently finished important buildings, among them a museum in Curitiba last year. But the man, who has just married his secretary, has warned that one of his most ambitious projects - the cultural center of Avilés, in Spain - is still to come…
MAJOR CONSTRUCTION SITES
Very dear excesses
PARIS – The report from the Cour des comptes (national Court of Accounts) on the "major cultural construction sites”, published on 12 December, has had a resounding efffect. Indeed, though it admitted the architectural quality of the 61 projects launched since 1998, it points at the quasi systematic excesses in the initial deadlines and budgets. The most emblematic were those of the Grand Palais (which has not yet finished being renovated) and the museum of Quai Branly. The site of the latter, estimated at 204 million €, cost nearly 300 million € , i.e. an increase of nearly 50% in regard to the first envelope. The Court underlined the strangling effect of this heavy commitment for major construction works (in total, a quarter of the Ministry's investing expenses) : it endangers the upkeep of historical monuments and projects in the province, the poor relatives of an excessively Parisian focused policy. On page 51 of its report, the Court criticizes in particlar a promise that was not kept: the 100 million € received in 2006 from the privatization of the highways which the Minister at the time, Donnedieu de Vabres, had promised to the monument heritage, were reoriented towards the construction sites of the Paris region.
EXHIBITIONS
The museums of tomorrow
LISBON – It is mandatory to explore at the end of the year. Here it is done in a didactic exhibition at the current cultural flagship, museums. The Culturgest foundation presents 27 projects of museums that have marked (or will mark, once they are finished) the first decade of the XXIth century. The heirs of the Guggenheim of Bilbao, these new cathedrals are for the time being rather anchored in America and Europe, from the Denver Art Museum all in points (Libeskind) to the future Centre Pompidou in Metz (Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, 2008), including the museum of Hellenistic Civilization in Athens (Morphosis, 2011) or that of Archeology (Gigon and Guyer, 2005) at Osnabrück in Germany. But the current developments in Abu Dhabi, the projects in China, in Thaïland or in Mexico (where billionaire Carlos Slim is having an immense glass jib built to house his collection) should bring about a geographic rebalance.
Chavaz, between watercolors and ball point pen
MARTIGNY – The Valais, sunbathed land of Switzerland, its hills, its wineyards, its light… The site has inspired various artists but they are hardly known beyond the Confederation. Albert Chavaz, who lived in Savièse, is one of them. He was born in 1907 and died in 1990, so the famous fondation Gianadda is celebrating his centennial by grouping together 160 works. With great varied talent, Chavaz produced nudes, landscapes, still lives, portraits in a great variety of techniques, from oil to watercolor, from prints to frescoes. As it now seems to be the fashion (it was done for Giacometti at Beaubourg), a wall of is workshop has been rebuilt. His sketch books and his letters are presented. And to give justice to the thousands of ball point made drawings, they have been digitized and are shown in a loop on a screen.
Words in art
TRENTO - The sculpture Love by Robert Indiana - four big colored letters - is one of the best-known of the pop era. Joseph Kosuth, a representative of conceptual art, has multiplied phrases in neon, just like Ben left numerous boards with definite formulas traced in chalk. Letters and words have been independent now for a long time, they have liberated themselves from the image to be considered as works of art in their own right. The MART, a museum of art in Trento and Rovereto, celebrates the 5th anniversary of its new building (designed by Mario Botta), with an exhibition that deals with this matter, from the surrealists to visual Brazilian poetry, from Dada to Sophie Calle. Collages, drawings, paintings or videos: over 800 works are presented with a strong Italian quota, Futurists in particular.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
A is for Umbrella, acrylique sur aluminium, 200 x 200 cm © Michael Craig-Martin. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.
Michael Craig-Martin, the spirit of objects
Simple objects of daily life: coffee pots, baskets, cameras, sunglasses, rubber gloves, sprays, belts, pipes, office chairs, earphones, cell phones … Michael Craig-Martin proves it, our environment gives sufficient matter for artistic creation. Born in 1941 in Ireland (like Bacon), educated in America, active around the world (he has just signed one of is works on the itinerary of the tramway in Nice), Craig-Martin is often mentioned by Damien Hirst and the YBAs (Young British Artists) as one of their main influences. On the canvas, on walls with trompe-l’œil or in installations in museums: the artist likes to vary the presentation of the always very colorful tools of his universe. The last version is shown at the Gagosian gallery in London.
BOOKS
Write, something will always remain
Since e-mails and word processing have practically eliminated pen writing, the manuscripts of important writers, aside from their obvious interest as documents, tend to aquire an aesthetic value. This work, in the line of the so fashionable anthologies at the time of Christmas, shows that an infinite variety exists, from Camus' loose pages to the golden book used by Musset, from the scribbling on checkered or striped paper (Proust, Sartre) to the free pages full of drawings by Saint-Exupéry or René Char. One remains traumatised when facing the pages greatly scratched out by Flaubert (one can see the manuscript of the Education sentimentale in the exhibition dedicated at the Cinémathèque to Sacha Guitry, who was the lucky owner) or, on the contrary, when facing the tiny and impeccable lines by Vladimir Jankélévitch.
IN BRIEF
BAGHDAD – The Museum of Baghdad presented on 16 December to a group of journalists two of its sixteen galleries. A partial reopening to the public is under consideration in the next months, five years after the Americna invasion.
A slide show of the works of art (of which 2/3 were plundered)
LONDON-Nicholas Penny is the new director of the National Gallery. He comes from the museum with the same name in Washington, and replaces Charles Saumarez-Smith who has gone to the Royal Academy, and will take up his new responsibilities in the Spring of 2008.
NEW YORK- The copy of the Magna Carta - the English constitutional text from 1297 we spoke to you about in our letter dated 3 December -put up for sale at Sotheby’s on 19 December was sold for 21.3 million $ to David Rubinstein, the adviser to former American President Jimmy Carter. The charter will be deposited at the national archives in Washington.
PARIS- A few significant works from the former Marcel Lefèvre collection will be up for sale at Aguttes' on 21 December, among them Blue Star by Miró, estimated between 5 and 7 million €.
PARIS-The exhibition “Trésors du delta du Gange”, presenting the collections of the museums of Bangladesh, that has been delayed a number of times, will open at the musée Guimet on 27 December.
ON ARTOFTHEDAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
CHINA UNDER A ROOF
BRUSSELS -The tombs of Henan, one of the craddles of Imperial China, have delivered an extraordinary archeologic collection: small scale models of homes, farms, pavilions on the water or simple latrines, that the dignitaries had buried with them. The rich selection presented at the Musées royaux d'art et d'histoire sheds a unique light on the Chinese architecture of two thousand years ago.