Art Of The Day Weekly
#153 - from 3 December 2009 to 9 December 2009
IN THE AIR
Irak, Google and the others
We all remember the shocking photos: the National Museum of Baghdad plundered the day following the arrival of the American troops in the city. Rooms were devastated, masterpieces were found later on the European markets and the reopening of the museum, repeatedly announced to the public was constantly pushed back. Fortunately, Google arrived and offered as an intermediary solution to digitize the museum’s collections and make them accessible to the whole world. The international press immediately echoed this unselfish initiative, communicated urbi et orbi in a press conference on 24 November given jointly in Baghdad by the boss of Google, Eric Schmidt, and the American ambassador. One has to closely look through the news to find an interesting fact that the New York Times reports: the Italian Consiglo Nazionale delle Ricerche has already digitized the collections of the museum of Iraq, through a contribution of one million euros from the ministry of Foreign Relations. If one enters the website, we can see the rooms, the objects, read the notices, visualise the films. In our virtual world, it is more important to talk about something than to do it. Without wishing to criticise Google, they seem to be champions in this sport …
EXHIBITIONS
The Gold of Peru
BRESCIA – The Lombard city is well-known for its arms manufacture. But now it wants to be the first European city to celebrate the bicentennial of the independence of the Spanish American colonies. To do so it will host a huge exhibition– 270 objects – from the best Peruvian public collections (museums of Lima, royal tombs of Sipán, Brüning museum of Lambayeque, etc). The theme – the gold of the Incas –covers a large array and therefore we will be lucky to see an abundance of gold threaded clothing, of earrings and narigueras, of tiaras, crowns, masks and human and animal statuettes… Knives used for sacrifices, dishes, ceramics and even a mummy, which has exceptionally been given permission to leave the territory, will complete a retrospective that intends to bring back to life the myth of Eldorado.
•Inca. Origine e misteri delle civiltà dell’oro at the Museo di Santa Giulia, from 4 December 2009 to 27 June 2010.
Crivelli, the passion for details
MILAN – To celebrate the 200th anniversary of its creation (through a decree by Napoleon in 1809), the Pinacoteca of Brera has organised throughout the year a series of commemorative events. The series will end with a painter of the Renaissance, Carlo Crivelli, known for his altarpieces full of details and wise perspectives. Indeed the Pinacoteca is responsible for the rediscovery of this poorly-known artist who was a contemporary of Bellini but was exiled in the smaller courts of the Marche region. The administration of the museum had some twenty works by Crivelli brought to Milan in 1811, thus giving him an international audience. Since then the golden polyptychs have again been divided and the interest in this exhibit lies in the reconstitution of the most famous of all, those of saint Dominic and of the Duomo of Camerino, the elements of which are dispersed between Paris, Avignon, Berlin, Denver or Montréal… In order to seize the realistic dimension of Crivelli’s work, models of ceramics, of daggers and rugs (named today «Crivelli rugs») that he had faithfully reproduced are placed next to the paintings.
•Crivelli e Brera at the Pinacoteca of Brera from 26 November 2009 to 28 March 2010
Group portrait with Virginia Woolf
ROUBAIX – One century after its creation, the Bloomsbury group continues to be one of the milestones of British culture. It takes its name from the district in London where, in 1904, the Stephen brothers and sisters (Vanessa, Adrian, Thoby and Virginia, who would become Woolf) settled and includes intellectuals of all sorts – writers (Aldous Huxley), economists (Keynes), painters and art historians (such as Roger Fry who produced in 1910 a memorable exhibition on post-impressionism). The exhibition of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and manuscripts has the ambition of defining the cultural perimeter of this group that developed in all directions. They were pioneers of feminism and anti-imperialism, and had also expressed itself in painting, graphic art and ceramics, and materialized this fusion of the arts by founding a workshop of applied arts, the Omega Workshops.
•Conversation anglaise : le groupe de Bloomsbury (English conversation, the Bloomsbury group) at the Piscine until 28 February 2010
Artoftheday also recommends these new exhibitions ...
• With Images saintes (Holy images), the Fondation Gianadda from Martigny has brought over some of the most beautiful icons from the Galerie Trétiakov in Moscow. From 3 December 2009 to 13 June 2010.
•The musée d’Archéologie nationale in Saint-Germain-en-Laye studies the trade that took place during the Iron age in the culture of Golasecca, near the current town of Como, in the north of Italy. until 26 April 2010.
• In London, the Royal Academy of Arts has created an alliance with the Glaxo Wellcome multinational corporation and traces, in Earth, a list of the environmental themes in contemporary creation. From 3 December 2009 to 31 January 2010.
AUCTIONS
The great Alitalia sell off
ROME – We recently saw the collection of the Lehman Brothers bank auctioned in Philadelphia. Now it is the turn of another company forced to declare bankruptcy (before being bought up in 2009 by a consortium). It is the Alitalia airline company which had the ambition during the years of plenty of being a great patron. It favoured Italian art and acquired a coherent ensemble of post-war works, some of which hung in the planes themselves, under the initiative of Corrado Cagli, to «stimulate» the passengers’ aesthetic sensitivity. There are works by Giulio Turcato and Piero Dorazio as well as Lucio Fontana. The auctioneer was asked to sell everything and therefore had not hesitated to put in estimates worthy of a pawn shop: 20 € for an etching by Ardengo Soffici or a colour lithograph by de Chirico, 50 € for a small oil painting by Ernesto Treccani, 500 € for a large pastel by Mirko. The showpiece that could largely surpass the estimate of 350 000 €, is a large panel in tempera by Gino Severini, done in 1954 for the Paris office: this is the proof that Alitalia’s commitment was not a simple infatuation but rather a policy applied for many decades, which the buyers undoubtedly have no intention of repeating …
•Sale of the Alitalia collection at Finarte-Semenzato on 8 December 2009
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Jacques Le Noane, ink on paper, 48cm x 31cm, courtesy, galerie Talbot, Paris
Jacques Le Noane, a 1968 version of Surrealism
He has something of Brauner, a touch of Dali, a pinch of Léonor Fini, a zest of Tanguy. Once we have listed all the influences that could have converged on the canvases he painted unequivocally with acrylic paint, we feel that these fantastic landscapes, these thick forests, these characters with huge eyes correspond quite well to the definition Jacques Le Noane likes to give of him, as a «new surrealist». Actually, born in 1928, he could easily have joined the barons of the movement. But his first life was spent in the ministry of
Economics (he was one of the first graduates from the ENA, in 1949) before launching himself into art. But more than one miracle took place in May 68. At the time, Breton was no longer in this world, but the pope of Surrealism would have fancied the mechanism that triggered off the conversion: as he was forced to walk home due to the transportation strike, Le Noane passed in front of a hardware store, he pushed open the door …
•Jacques Le Noane is presented at the galerie Talbot (11 rue Guénégaud, 75006) from 3 to 31 December 2009.
BOOKS
Eroticism as seen by Pascin
More than a book, this is a (treasure) chest that is not easy to handle. On the left, an introduction to the work «Watteau des bordels» (Watteau of the brothels), as it was comically described by a commentator at the time, is illustrated by erotic water-colours and wash drawings. The reader quickly learns about the founding elements of Pascin’s (1885-1930) sensuality, from his liaison with a madam in Budapest to the atmosphere of Munich in the 1900s, up to the libertine life in Paris during the Roaring Twenties. To the right, a «reprint» increases the interest of the collection of texts. It is the series of erotic poems, Abécédaire des filles et de l’enfant chéri published anonymously in 1924 by the éditions de la Fanfare de Montparnasse publishing house. Actually Pierre Mac Orlan hides behind these brief and encrypted texts to which Pascin added lascivious images our current standard of morals could not approve of (the characters performing a number of acrobatic movements are shameless children). The afore-mentioned Mac Orlan turned out to be an inconsolable companion when Pascin committed suicide in 1930 as he wrote a Tombeau(Tomb) to pay for the tombstone of Bulgaria’s child prodigy.
•Pascin libertin by Stéphan Lévy-Kuentz, Biro publisher, 2009, 30 €, ISBN : 978-2-35119-053-1
IN BRIEF
BEIJING – The record for a Chinese classical work was broken by a roll of calligraphy from the Ming era, by painter Wu Bin (XVIth century). Part of Guy and Myriam Ullens’ collection, it was sold for 169 million yuans (16.4 million €) on 22 November 2009 by the auction house Poly Auction.
LONDON – The London underground inaugurated on 27 November 2009 its first artistic commission since the Paolozzi mosaics done in 1984. The Full Circle by Knut Henrik Henriksen, is now set up at the King’s Cross St Pancras station.
LONDON - The collection of Fabergé objects that belonged to the great-duchess Maria Pavlova, went for 7 million £ at Sotheby’s on 30 November 2009, that is seven times the highest estimate.
MARSEILLE – The French Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, lay the the first stone of the future MUCEM, the museum of Civilisations of Europe and the Mediterranean that should open its doors in 2013. The building was designed by Rudy Riciotti
MIAMI – The Art Basel Miami Beach contemporary art fair brings together 250 galleries from 3 to 6 December 2009.
PARIS - Twelve persons have been arrested in Drouot auction house on 1st December on grounds of art-trafficking. A painting by Courbet, Paysage marin sous un ciel d'orage, has been recovered
VENICE - The 53rd International Biennale of visual arts, which closed on 22 November, received 375 000 visitors, i.e. 55 000 more than the previous edition.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
This week, do not miss
BRUSSELS – As it continues its renovation, the musée du Cinquantenaire unveils its new rooms dedicated to the Gallo-Roman civilization and the Merovingian era. Exceptional funerary furniture has been put into place in a suggestive manner, with the help of drawer Rosinski, the author of Thorgal.