Art Of The Day Weekly
#78 - from 21 February 2008 to 27 February 2008
IN THE AIR
Duchamp at every floor
The visitors at the Giacometti exhibit at the Centre Pompidou will surely have noticed that even before it closed, certain pieces had already been taken down: the small labels mentioned they had been lent to the Louisiana museum in Copenhaguen, where a retrospective on Cézanne-Giacometti will open on 20 February. Such is the life of the superstars: the rotation speed of their works makes us dizzy! Take Duchamp for example, the leading god of the avant-gardes. His urinal is everywhere (even under the hammer of its vandals), just like his bicycle wheel: in Paris and New York yesterday (Dada exhibit), back to Paris (Airs de Paris exhibit), in London tomorrow (together with Picabia and Man Ray, as of 21 February, at the Tate). These «blockbuster» gatherings are the unavoidable price to pay for globalization and we should not avoid mentioning them. But who will speak about all the small, well thought-out, slowly matured exhibitions, that have trouble attracting the necessary visitors for they are far from the beaten paths? For example, the grouping together of all the Saint Sebastians by Guido Reni at Dulwich. Or the retrospective on the «multiple» at the Louisiana Museum, mentioned earlier.Or even the Italian Belle Epoque at the Roverella museum of Rovigo. We did, now we have a clearer conscience…
ARCHITECTURE
The museum triangle gains strength
MADRID – While the French banks are in a turmoil, the Spanish ones -and in particular the savings banks - continue to pursue their cultural objective in a decisive manner. The Caixa, the giant in Barcelona, inaugurated on 15 February its centre in Madrid: a real symbol at a time where the media insist on the autonomist drift in the Catalogne province. Located in the district of the museums, just a few meters from the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, the large cube of the Caixa Forum is a former electric plant bearing a modern head dress in brown metal and enriched wih a vegetable wall. It required an investment of 60 million €, and was designed by architects Herzog and Meuron. With various shows and exhibition rooms, it will host for its inauguration, as of 21 February, a retrospective dedicated to the sculptor Igor Mitoraj.
EXHIBITIONS
Batoni, pompous?
LONDON – Almost no one, or hardly no one, knows today who he was. And yet, during the XVIIIth century, Pompeo Batoni (1708-1787) was one of the most famous European painters. A native of Luca, he quickly went beyond the Tuscan borders to settle in Rome. After his mythological paintings(the Hercules' choice from the Hermitage) and panels of history in a cold and detailed neo-classic style, he found his call in portraits, where he was more free and «baroque». Many British aristocrats passing through Rome, during their Grand Tour, would make a stop at his workshop. The exhibition assembles some sixty paintings, among them colonel Gordon in his kilt in front of the Colesium, acteur David Garrick, writer David Swinburne… and all their dogs. Batoni's aura faded away during with the XIXth century, and symbolises the dullness of an overdone style, too mechanically inspired by the Ancients (Michael-Angelo, Carracci). The time has come to reevaluate him.
Keith Haring: the golden age
LYON – 50 years old: one would never have thought he would he could reach that age, as his work is so youthful. Yet, Keith Haring would be 50 years old today, had his very brief creative career not have been shortened by AIDS in 1990. The musée d’Art contemporain in Lyon, that now reopens following the dismounting of the Biennale, offers a new insight into this career with the most important exhibition dedicated to the New York artist in France. Rather than follow a chronological order, the pieces are grouped together by themes, by their supports or their techniques: vinyl canvas, ink, chalk or felt pen, paint on metal. With a few exceptional elements such as the paintings on fences ill-known in France or the «Pop Shop» boutique in Tokyo, created in 1985 and remounted for this event. Keith Haring's symbols litterally fill the space. In Lyon itself, one will be able to skip over to the musée de Fourvière where his Altarpiece is shown, a bronze sculpture from 1990.
Vlaminck, the Fauve period
PARIS – His untimely trip to Germany in 1944 ruined his reputation for a long time. Since, Vlaminck has recovered the important place he deserves in the genesis of Fauvism and the Musée du Luxembourg intends to confirm it with this retrospective. It opens on a symbolic date: 1900. At the time Vlaminck, then 24 years old, lived less from painting than from the prizes he was awarded in the bicycle rallies. In September, he settled in a workshop in Chatou, with Derain. This creative duo gave birth to some of the works that shook the critics at the Salon d’Automne in 1905 with their violent colors and the distortions imposed on motives. Some of the works of art come from Houston, from the MoMA or from the Bürhle collection in Zurich (recently the victim of a very mediatized theft). The Fauvist fever quickly subsided: though he only went to Provence in 1913, Vlaminck's work was influenced by Cézanne's as of 1907: portraits, landscapes and still lives then became tributes to the master of Aix.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Courtesy Ben / galerie Catherine Issert
Ben
« Here I am again, starting off at zero / I do not know what to do / It is easy to continue doing small wisecracks / To pontificate on art on a canvas is easy / One certainty: impossible for me to stop»: this is how Benjamin Vautier, known as Ben, born in Naples in 1938, gone through Switzerland, Smyrne, Alexandria before reaching Nice, introduces his exhibition at the Françoise Issert gallery. We know the iconoclastic artist: he loves to bawl (check out on
his website) and he produces hundreds of spiritual inscriptions that end up on school children's notebooks or on the tram stops in Nice. He has also created his Magasin -Shop- (shown at the Centre Pompidou), organized exhibitions, was the godfather of the Free Figuration, created radio programs. In short, a life with many dimensions in which the lapidary sentences, so well-known today (and of which we see a selection in Vence), are only a part.
BOOKS
The Spirit of Ferrara
A city that houses the frescoes of the Schfanoia palace, which inspired Frescobaldi, Tasso and Ariosto, Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico (they invented metaphysical painting there), Visconti (Ossessione) and Giorgio Bassani (The garden of the Finzi-Contini) can not be all bad. Churchill's parabol ends there: Ferrara is one of the wealthiest Italian art cities and this luxurioux edition has no trouble demonstrating it. It looks at all its monuments (the Palace of the Este family, the Diamond palace, the Duomo, the palazzina of Marfisa, the community Theatre…) with impecable photographs and refined texts. Fortunately, it does not say everything. In order to feel the very special atmosphere of the capital of the Romania region, between mystery and melancholy, to which the lights and fog of the Po river contribute, there is but one solution: take a trip to Italy.
IN BRIEF
COLOGNE – The Wallraf-Richartz museum has just announced that one of the paintings of its collection, until now considered as a Monet, The Seine at Port-Villez, was actually a fake.
COMPIEGNE - The Memorial of the internment and deportation was inaugurated on 22 February on the site of the Royallieu camp, where in particular Robert Desnos was interned.
COPENHAGUEN- The new National Theater (Skuespilhuset), designed by Boje Lundgaard and Lene Tranberg, was inaugurated on 16 February.
DUSSELDORF – The Contemporary art fair DC (Dusseldorf Contemporary), that was to hold its second edition in April 2008, has announced it is cancelled and that an approach with other German events is being studied .
GRASSE-The international Perfume museum, renovated for 4 years at a cost of 11 million €, will open again in the summer of 2008.
NEW YORK – The director of the MoMA, Glen Lowry, who was rumored to succeed Philippe de Montebello at the Metropolitan Museum, has had his mandate renewed until 2013.
PARIS - The daily Libération has revealed that the study of Georges Seurat for l'le de la Grande Jatte, painted on a cigar box and on the list of the works robbed during WW II, was confiscated at the house of the expert Eric Turquin by the Office central de lutte contre le trafic des biens culturels (Central Office that fights against the traffic of cultural goods).
WASHINGTON-Lincoln's Cottage, where president Lincoln resided and which has been restored for 15 million $, will open to the public on 19 February.
ZURICH – Two of the four paintings that were robbed on 10 February from the Bürhle foundation have been found again on the parking lot of the psychiatric hospital: The Seine at Vétheuil by Monet and Branches of a chestnut tree in bloom by Van Gogh. A Cézanne (the Boy with a red vest) and a Degas (Count Lepic and his daughters) are still missing.
ON ARTAUJOURDHUI.INFO
This week, do not miss
NEW ROOM OF ISLAMIC ART AT THE MUSEE DU CINQUANTENAIRE
BRUSSELS – The Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire inaugurate this week a new permanent exhibiton venue: hosting practically 300 works, that is a quarter of the collection of Islamic art, this large room over 50 metres long has been redesigned by architects Anne Pire and Jan Goots.