Home > ArtoftheDay Weekly > #151 - from 19 November 2009 to 25 November 2009

Art Of The Day Weekly

#151 - from 19 November 2009 to 25 November 2009

IN THE AIR

Mole skeletons and Peter Doig

The dream of any and all speculators would be to buy a Peter Doig for 10 000 dollars and resell it fifteen years later for one thousand times the price … In the midst of the excesses of the contemporary art market, there is one sector that is an absolute antithesis - objects remain accessible and almost incapable of this type of financial escalation. It is the one of the «cabinet of curiosities» which the learned of the XVIth century, as well as the Surrealists, were so fond of: groups of objects – human creations, wonders or aberrations of Nature – with secret correspondences knitted between them. This approach seems to be experiencing a new revival. Jean-Jacques Lebel’s suspended hammers at la Maison rouge to Mark Dion’s accumulations of broken amphorae at the musée de l’Arles antique are enjoying the same success. The tendency is the same in auctions: we have just seen the thousands of objects of the Yves Saint Laurent – Pierre Bergé collection: African walking sticks, corral reliquaries, Clichy crystal paper weights … And this week we are expecting the sale of the Giraudon fund: objects set in acrylic (done in the past for the French Ministry of Education) such a lamb hearts, snake heads, moulted cicadas, mole skeletons, obelisks in dry flowers. For an investment of a few hundred € and poetry is affordable to all …
Lab Book by Mark Dion in the exhibition César, le Rhône pour mémoire until October 2010 at the musée de l’Arles antique.

•M usée de l’Arles antique

EXHIBITIONS

Hockney in the beginning

NOTTINGHAM - David Hockney is one of the «major» figures in art today. The new British museum, the Nottingham Contemporary, has decided for its inaugural exhibition to concentrate on one of the artist’s most important periods, that of the Swinging Sixties, in London, and then in the Californian freedom (Hockney settled in Los Angeles at the end of that decade), which had a determining influence on his style. While shifting from abstract tests to a type of figuration close to Pop Art, Hockney produced the emblems of his time, combining declared homosexuality (the bathers) and icons of the consumer society (pools and lawns). Some sixty works are gathered here, among them the famous A Bigger Splash, which makes it the most important retrospective on British soil since the one at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1970.
David Hockney, 1960-68 at Nottingham Contemporary from 14 November 2009 to 24 January 2010.

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Marianne Werefkin, a blue-blooded expressionist

ROME – She is one of the amazons of painting at the beginning of the XXth century. A discreet amazon though– she is the daughter of the governor of the fortresses of Saint-Peter-and-Paul in Saint-Petersburg – who was not granted the attention given to her male equals, such as Kandinsky or Jawlensky. Marianne Werefkin (1860-1938) was nevertheless part of the same great Abstraction and Expressionist adventure with them, in particular inside the Blaue Reiter. Nearly 80 works are brought together on the main periods of her life, during which she absorbed the influences of Kubin, of the Nabis or Edvard Munch. Some twenty notebooks of drawings help us understand her creative process.
Marianne Werefkin at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, from 25 November 2009 to 14 February 2010.

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Mannerist folly in Prague

VIENNA – He was one of the most important collectors at the end of the end of the XVIth century, totally dedicated to mannerism, the current at the later period of the Renaissance which enjoyed going against the canons of classic art. Rodophe II, the Emperor of the Saint Empire, that moved the capital of the Habsburgs to Prague, is the object of an exhibition at the Lichtenstein Museum. The works of art come both from public and private funds, as the retrospective gives a large role to the major interpreters of mannerism such as Adrian de Vries, Bartholomeus Spränger or Hans van Aachen (among them Diane et Actéon, recently restored). It also brings together beautiful examples of decorative arts such as as these compositions in mosaic of hard stone, made by Florentine artists who settled in Prague upon the sovereign’s request.
L'entrée des arts en Bohème at the Liechtenstein Museum from 20 November 2009 to 12 January 2010

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Artoftheday also recommends these new exhibtions ...

• In Dijon, the musée Magnin brings back to life the daily life of a large family of centuries past in Les heures du jour (The hours of the day). From 19 November 2009 to 14 February 2010.

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• Near Paris, the castle of Ecouen tells the relations between Soliman the Magnificent and François Ier and shows how diplomacy helped the transfer of works of art. From 18 November 2009 to 15 February 2010.

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• In Paris, the musée du quai Branly focuses, in Artistes d’Abomey, on the dynasties of court artists in the kingdom of Benin from the XVIIth to the XIXth centuries. Until 31 January 2010.

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AUCTIONS

Rediscover the avant-garde

PARIS – We know Cubism, Italian Futurism and Russian Constructivism thanks to the works that abundantly fill the major museums. It is less evident to know how these movements were looked at, commented or theorized at their time. A huge auction (nearly 600 lots) should help fill these gaps. It presents contemporary documentation made of magazines, manifestos and catalogues. While L’architecture d’aujourd’hui, published by André Bloc can be easily found, it is not the case for the magazine Bytova Kultura, published at Brno, in Czechoslovakia, in 1924-25, even though its collaborators were among the most respected figures in the art field, such as Theo van Doesburg or Gropius. From a catalogue on the Bauhaus published in Buenos Aires in 1970 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the movement, to the rare Futurist editions, from posters by Tatline to the Dada almanac from 1920, the pieces offered (most of them at less than 1000 euros) offer an interesting opportunity to reread the history of art «on the sport».
Avant-gardes du XXe siècle at Richelieu-Drouot on 23 and 24 November 2009 (SVV Binoche-Renaud-Giquello).

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ARTIST OF THE WEEK


Sarkis, Munch ~ Sarkis 19-5-2008, aquarelle, 2008, détail de l'installation (aquarelle encadrée accrochée sur poster), dimensions variables, courtesy galerieofmarseille, Marseille

The scream revisited by Sarkis

It is a real symbol to have an exhibition on Sarkis, a native from Istanbul, in Marseille, a city with a large Armenian immigration. But Sarkis is also at the Biennale in Lyon and at the Istanbul Modern museum, which is currently holding a retrospective of his work. This is proof that his work cannot be dissociated from a non-trite notion of cosmopolitism, of no borders. Sarkis has prepared in Marseille an installation around the Scream, Munch’s famous painting which he began to reproduce in 1959, exactly fifty years ago. On a table, newspapers held by bricks resist the aspiration of a fan.

From the beginning of the sixties, and with a growing audience since 1969 and the large exhibition by Harald Szeeman in Berne, «When attitudes become forms», Sarkis questions the memory, exile, light or the sacred by giving the viewer the possibility of interpreting his constantly renewed presentations.
Sarkis, le cri du paysage is presented at the galeryofmarseille (8 rue du chevalier Roze), from 21 November 2009 to 30 January 2010.

The website of the galerieofmarseille

BOOKS

The Botta touch

In France he is known for the cathedral of Evry, in the United-States for the SFMoma (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). But he is also the author of the Kyobo towers in Seoul to the Mart museum in Rovereto, in Italy. At the age of 66, the Swiss architect has produced a corpus of 300 projects. It is true that he started very young, since he signed his first creation – a house – at the age of 16 when he was a technical drawer at another architect’s firm. This book does not cover all of his creations but makes a census of the most significant. Whether we think of museums, of villas or of religious buildings (of which he is one of the greatest specialists – if we think of the Cymbalista synagogue in Tel-Aviv or the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Mogno Fusio in the Swiss Tessin), Botta is obsessed by a few simple volumes. Similar to certain antique architects, he works at them in an infinite number of variations: it is the case in particular of the circle, which he presents in solar disks, in portholes or in circular towers, often fit into a brick structure.
Mario Botta, par Alessandra Coppa, Actes Sud, 2009, 120 p., 23 €, ISBN : 978-2-7427-8342-7

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IN BRIEF

ABU DHABI – The Abu Dhabi Art contemporary art fair will be held from 19 to 22 November with some forty international galleries and is accompanied by an exhibition of monumental sculptures.

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PARIS – The Paris Photo event is held at the Carrousel of the Louvre from 19 to 22 November, and guests of honor this year are Iran and the Arab countries.

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PARIS – The MACParis event, in which over 120 artists exhibit their creation directly to the public, is held at the Espace Champerret from 19 to 22 November 2009.

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VATICAN CITY– The pope will meet with more than 500 personalities from the world of art on 21 November in the Sistine Chapel.

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VENICE – The Venice Biennale announced that Kazuyo Sejima (born in 1956, from the Sanaa agency, in charge of Louvre Lens) will be the curator of the next Biennale of architecture (2010).

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VIENNA – The Vienna Art Week will be held until 22 November 2009 with a program of cultural exhibitions and manifestations.

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ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO

This week, do not miss

JAN PETER THORBECKE

BEAUVAIS - The Musée départemental de l'Oise, which acquired a significant ensemble of works by the German artist, presents a series of paintings as well as prints, a domaine in which Thorbecke is particularly prolific since his production currently counts 650 engravings.

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