Home > ArtoftheDay Weekly > #150 - from 12 November 2009 to 18 November 2009

Art Of The Day Weekly

#150 - from 12 November 2009 to 18 November 2009

IN THE AIR

Did you say Turkey?

The Turkish Season is in full swing in France, with the difficulties this represents for the current President, since he has to show his interest in Turkish culture while maintaining his opposition to that country’s entry to the European Union… We can simply hope this will have at least one positive effect, that of pushing everyone to travel to Istanbul, to show that Constantinople is not only Topkapi and Sainte-Sophie’s, but also one of the continent’s most vibrant nests of contemporary art. While the biennale closed its doors last week, the city intends to multiply the initiatives to maintain its place as European culture capital for 2010. One venue could symbolize that vitality, Santralistanbul, the city’s former power plant. Five years ago it was an industrial wasteland, and today it is a unique medley, including a university, a park and restaurants, all settled in buildings designed by talented local architects (in particular Nevzat Sayin and Emre Arolat). This museum of modern art, which could well be awarded the Europe prize in 2010, currently exhibits a gigantic retrospective (500 paintings) by Yüksel Arslan. This worthy heir of the Surrealists has pursued discreetly, for over fifty years, a unique, erotic and esoteric work. Where? In Paris, where only the initiated know of his existence. Hence the importance of cultural bridges…

More about Santralistanbul

EXHIBITIONS

Botticelli, shadows and light

FRANKFURT – In a few months, on 17 May 2010 precisely, we will celebrate the 500th anniversary of his death. The Städel museum has anticipated the commemorations with a retrospective dedicated to Sandro Botticelli, whose feminine ideal marked the Renaissance. While the exhibition starts with one of the museum’s most famous paintings, the idealized portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, it is enriched by loans from the most important museums to retrace the itinerary of this brilliant painter who was a friend of Lorenzo de' Medici and the Aristotelian circles. Aside from the forty paintings done personally by him and by his workshop helpers, there are just as many works by his contemporaries, among them his master Filippo Lippi and Verrocchio. The Florentine artist started his creative itinerary with delicate portraits and then continued with pleasant mythological scenes. He ended it in real religious throes, at the time of the rise of Savonarole.

  • Botticelli at the Städel Museum from 13 November 2009 to 28 February 2010

    Know more

  • Sweet Josephine

    PARIS – Some nearly 13,000 bottles are not the inventory of a wine cellar following the decease of a great Bordeaux wine merchant. No, indeed. It is that of Joséphine, the wife Napoleon repudiated. And there is a lot more than rum from the Bourbon Island, as can be seen in the exhibition mounted on this original subject at the château de Malmaison. One could trace an ideal mapping for wine at the beginning of the XIXth century, going through Bordeaux and Bourgogne of course, but also through the Champagne region, Italy and Hungary (with the Tokay). But the aim, much larger, is to show how consumption of wine oriented a whole part of decorative arts, with the production of crystal and instruments increasingly refined to uphold the prestige of French taste.

  • La cave de Joséphine at the musée des châteaux de Malmaison and Bois-Préau, from 18 November 2009 to 8 March 2010

    Know more

  • All of Niki

    ROME – She loved Italy, where she created the sculpture garden of des Tarots, in Capalbio. It was only natural that Italy should love her in return: in the exhibition the Fondazione Roma museum dedicates to Niki de Saint-Phalle, this period (1979-86) is the object of a special section. This presentation of nearly one hundred works includes the ones that made her famous world-wide – the Nanas. But it does not ignore what preceded them, that is her first paintings, in the fifties, which helped her pull out of a nervous breakdown, nor the Tirs, a part of the famous performances in the sixties. The exhibit also presents what followed, in particular her large colored sculptures, in which the viewer can see the influence of her companion, Jean Tinguely. To underline the special rapport children have with her work, admission is free for children under the age of 14.

  • Niki de Saint-Phalle at the Fondazione Roma, from 4 November 2009 to 17 January 2010

    Know more

  • Artoftheday also recommends these new exhibtions ...

    •After showing in New York, the retrospective dedicated to architect Frank Lloyd Wright is presented at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Until 14 February 2010.

    Know more

    •With L’Esthétique des pôles, le testament des glaces, the Regional contemporary art Fund of Lorraine (FRAC) asks artists to express themselves on the theme of climate changes. Until 7 February 2010.

    Know more

    •The musée Matisse in Nice shows off its photographic fund in Matisse à Tahiti, which underlines the artist’s attraction towards the Polynesian island through a series of photos taken in 1930. Until 18 January 2010.

    Know more

    AUCTIONS

    Madame Leica

    PARIS – Since the mythical camera had become a true extension of her eye, Ilse Bing was named the «Leica queen». Though she died at the age of 99, in 1998, photography only occupied her first fifty years. A very full half a century as can be seen in this sale that brings together 500 photographs from her different periods: her beginnings in Berlin in the euphoria of the roaring ‘20s, of the Bauhaus and the research on the graphic properties of industrial objects; the Parisian episode of the ‘30s, during which she questions the city, its monuments (such as the Eiffel tower) and its inhabitants; last but not least, the New-York apotheosis after her settling in the USA in 1941, when she looked into the worlds of fashion and architecture. The alter ego of Germaine Krull or Lee Miller, Ilse Bing does not share their market value: the lots are estimated between 300 and 15 000 € (which would set a new record for her work).

  • Ilse Bing sale at Drouot-Montaigne (SVV Millon Cornette de St Cyr) on 16 November 2009 at 7:30 PM.

    Know more

  • ARTIST OF THE WEEK


    Anders Petersen, Paris, 2006, courtesy Château d’eau, Toulouse

    Anders Petersen: looking for humanity

    The relegated, the disoriented, those who are locked up (in prison, in psychiatric hospitals, in retirement homes), he knows that world, if nothing else but for having chosen to share their destiny for some time. Anders Petersen (born in Stockholm in 1944) is one of those photographers whose own life is deeply in tune with their work. His mentor Christer Strömholm, as well as Antoine d’Agata or Christian Poveda, recently murdered in El Salvador are part of that same family. « To me, encounters are encounters that are important, images are less » the author wrote in 2009. The series that made him famous, « Café Lemithz » describes every day life, between 1967 and1970, of an underground bar in Berlin. At the time, the snapshots had been presented in the bar itself, pinned on the walls. At the Château d’eau in Toulouse, the series is presented in counterpoint of a much more recent work, «City Diary», on the major European cities, with an obvious relationship with the preceding work: what Petersen is most interested in, above all is man, his fellow men.

  • Anders Petersen is presented at the galerie du Château d’eau until 13 December 2009

  • BOOKS

    Good words on art

    Rilke wrote Letters to a young poet. Addressing himself to visual artists, the author also chose in this case to give advice. He is wise and picks them out, not from his own experience but rather from that of the painters of the past. Advice you say? Aphorisms would be more like, which one can follow or not… and which in any case show that artists have known how to use a pen almost as well as the paintbrush. Aside from Fromentin, William Blake or Victor Hugo, whose polyvalence is well known, now we have David d’Angers, Bourdelle, Archipenko or Arman. A few expected entries such as white, color, woman, light, are next to unexpected paragraphs such as spit, United States or parasite. After reading maxims on style, talent or taste, one just has to chose sides between Rodin who claimed that «beauty is everywhere» and Martial Raysse who answered «beauty is bad taste»…

  • Conseils à un jeune peintre by Thomas Schlesser, published by Arléa, 2009, 192 p., 15 €, ISBN : 978-2-86-959865-2

    Buy that book from Amazon

  • IN BRIEF

    COLOGNE – The Cologne Fine Art & Antiques Fair, a manifestation dedicated to ancient and modern art, and to the decorative arts, will be held from 19 to 23 November 2009.

    Know more

    AIX-EN-PROVENCE – The Image en ville festival, in which lighting designers are asked to stage the city’s emblematic facades, will be held from 13 to 17 November 2009

    Know more

    LISBON – The Arte Lisbona contemporary at fair will be held from 18 to 23 November 2009.

    Know more

    NOTTINGHAM – A new museum of contemporary art, Nottingham Contemporary, designed by the Caruso St John agency, will open on 14 November 2009. The first exhibition is dedicated to David Hockney.

    Know more

    PARIS – The second Yves Saint Laurent – Pierre Bergé sale, with 1200 objects from their homes in Normandy (château Gabriel at Bénerville) and in Paris will be held from 17 to 20 November 2009 at the Marigny theater, by the Christie’s auction house.

    Know more

    PARIS – As a tribute to Dina Vierny who died last January, the Maillol museum brings together in one exhibition to be held until the end of January 2010 three of the artists she made famous at the end of the ‘60s: Rabine, Boulatov and Yankilevski.

    Know more