Art Of The Day Weekly
#12 - From 13 July 2006 To 6 September 2006
IN THE AIR
Gone today, back tomorrow...
Our newsletter is going off on holidays for a few weeks. It will give us all time to meditate on the events of this first semester with an art market that is euphoric (Picasso, Art déco and Klimt) and museums that put in their three cents (Pinault foundation, Quai Branly). In fact the pause will be short, as business will pick up as usual. Tradition has it that the action picks up on the second thursday of September. Indeed, on that date, the Paris Antique Biennial will open its doors and finally return to the Grand Palais. It will do everything to hold its place in face of the increasingly hard competiton from the Tefaf in Maastricht.
In fact, the schedule is pretty tight from the beginning of the month: on 2 September Visa pour l'image (Visa for an image), the press photograph festival will open in Perpignan, on the 4th the Biennial of Singapore, and on the 10th the Biennial of architecture of Venice. The squadron of biennial events will be completed by the one in Gwangju on the 8th, and the one in Liverpool on the 16th, while in France we will celebrate the Days of the national patrimony at the same time.
October will see various fairs with Art Forum in Berlin (from 30 September to 4 October) and the Frieze in London (from 12 to 15 October) that now is held before the FIAC (from 26 to 30 October).
Museums also move: the Arts décoratifs in Paris will finally "show it all" and open completely (on 15 September), the Albertina in Vienna will inaugurate new galeries (on 21 September) and the branch of the Louvre in Atlanta, a highly controversial project, will be a reality on 2 October. As far as major exhibitions are concerned, London leads by far with Leonardo (Victoria & Albert, 7 September), Rodin (Royal Academy, 23 September), Holbein (Tate Britain, 28 September) and Vélasquez (National Gallery, 18 October). Paris will answer back with Yves Klein at the Centre Pompidou (4 October), William Hogarth at the Louvre (20 October) and Maurice Denis at Orsay (31 October).
MUSEUMS
The Guggenheim looks towards the Orient
ABU DHABI - After seeing a number of its projects get bogged down or stuck (Soho in New York, Hong Kong with the Centre Pompidou, Guadalajara in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro), it looks as if the Guggenheim foundation is up again for another conquest. In any case it has just announced the signature of an agreement with the authorities in Abu Dhabi for the construction, in the five years to come, of a new branch abroad. Located on Saadiyat Island, an island destined to be cultural where various museums will live side by side, it will be the largest of the Guggenheim galaxy with a surface of 30 000 m2. And since old recipes are still the best, it will be the veteran Frank Gehry, the author of the famous titanium construction in Bilbao, who should design it. The timing of the announcement could not be better: the Guggenheim funds are currently in the limelight for a large retrospective at the Bundeshalle and at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn…
EXHIBITIONS
Klimt in five major
NEW YORK – The Neue Galerie is presenting a very small but very awaited exhibition. There will only be five paintings, but they are signed by "the most expensive in the world", Gustav Klimt. And among these five paintings there is the now famous Portrait of Adèle Bloch-Bauer, in which the model is all dressed in gold. This is the painting that sold for 135 million dollars just a few weeks ago. The buyer was none other than Ronald Lauder, the founder of the Neue Gallery, dedicated to Austrian and German art. The five works, robbed by the nazis in 1938, were only returned to the legitimate heirs recently and it is not certain there will be many opportunites in the future to see them all together (unless Ronald Lauder slips his hand back into his pocket…) So here we have, to complete the quintet: another portrait of Adèle Bloch-Bauer from 1912, Le Bouleau -The silver birch-(1903), Le Pommier -The apple tree-(1912) and Maisons à Unterach -Houses in Unterach-(1916).
Brilliant Moghols
PARIS-It was not such a bad idea after all to present these sumptuous jewels in the Summer, the season where one and all undress. What could we coordinate them with that would be better than the naked skin? The collection of sheik al-Sabah of Kuwait includes hundreds of jewels commissioned by the Muslim sovereigns of Northern India, from the XVIth to the XIXth century. It was started in the middle of the decade of the 1970s and was diminished in 1990 when Saddam Hussein took it off like a war trophy during his invasion of Kuwait. Whether it is the inventiveness of the forms, the techniques in enamel, in setting precious stones or in damascening, the silver and gold smiths of the Great Moghols left a great number of masterpieces. Sword sheaths in sculpted walrusq ivory, dagger ruby sheath, ring mounted with a gold bird, miniature cup cut in one single emerald… A British ambassador in the XVIe century, very impressed, spoke of the «treasure of the world», an opinion that was picked up again as the exhibition's title.
Marilyn, the last clap
PARIS-«It is as easy to undress Marilyn as it is to go to Egypt and turn a pyramid into a martini glass». And yet… Bert Stern, a fashion photographer from Brooklyn, kept of his wild bet and had the star pose in the nude. That was in 1962, a few months before her death. This «last show», held in a suite at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles, has since been archived among the myths. It includes 2571 photos, and has often been shown in very tight selections. This one, of only 59 images, belonged to a musuem before being bought by its current owner, Leon Constantiner. The titles of these photos taken with a a Rolleiflex or a Nikon, «Marilyn biting the stripped scarf», «Portrait with a necklace», «Marilyn with roses, cuddly» are very evocative and bring back to life a star who was both provocative and fragil, vane and sincere. Nearly half a century after her death, the Marilyn magic still works…
The machine age
PARIS – Between The strenght of art and the Antiques Biennial soon to come, the totally renovated Grand Palais treats itself to a pleasant amusement by hosting the incredible machines designed by François Delarozière and his team for the Royal de Luxe theater troop. Following in the tradition of the serious and zany such as Leonardo da Vinci, Vaucanson, Marcel Duchamp and Tinguely, they really racked their brains for mechanisms that are highly improbable. Here for example is a machine to spread a nut based butter (nutella), a machine to strip-tease a chicken, a machine that lifts skirts, a bicycle to stamp cows (practical for the Cow Parade). Some of these pieces would not have been out of place in a medieval siege such as this piano catapult. Machines have become such a part of our daily lives that we have lost the innocence of our look in face of their magic performances. Here is an opportunity to gain it back.
The program of the Paris quartier d'été festival (Paris Summer season festival)
IN BRIEF
AVIGNON - Josef Nadj, the stage director invited for the 2006 edition of the Avignon festival, is face to face with painter Miquel Barcelò in a play, Paso Doble. From 16 to 27 July, in the church of the Célestins covered by "prehistoric" engravings by Barcelò, the two men build a wall out of clay and end up buried under a soft version of the same material…
LONDON - At Christie’s, a painting by Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619), Salmacis and Hermaphrodite, reached the pretty figure of 7.1 million pounds (nearly 11 million euros) on 6 June, setting a new record for the painter.
NEW YORK - The painting The Virgin with Child, bought last year by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an amount estimated at 50 million dollars and attributed to Duccio, is a crude fake. In any case, that is what art historian James Beck said, quoted by the Times.
PARIS - Drouot,the auction house is satisfied with its first semester of 2006 with a sales revenue at 280 million euros, up 20 % in regard to the same period last year.At 5.9 million euros, a Fang mask from the Vérité collection represented the highest bid.
PARIS – At Sotheby’s on 6 July, a Composition from 1959 by Soulages was sold 1.19 million euros, the highest bid to date for the artist.
SAN FRANCISCO -The 7th edition of the International Photo Fair SF will be held from 20 to 23 July at Fort Mason Festival Pavilion.
ST PETERSBURG (Florida) - The Salvador Dali Museum, that hosts one of the most important collections of works by the Spanish artist (nearly 1500 pieces) will soon be given a new building at the horizon of 2010. It will be able to resist hurricanes blowing at 250 km/h.
VILNIUS - The session of Unesco's Committee of world patrimony opened on 10 July. The Unesco has announced it has pulled off the list of endangered sites the cathedral of Cologne and the temples of Hampi in India, given the measures that have been taken to protect them. But it has threatened to include Dresden and the Elbe valley, threathened by construction of a new bridge.
ON ARTOFTHEDAY INFO
OUR EXHIBITIONS OF THE SUMMER
Your newsletter will be taking a short break after July 14. You will find us again as of Thursday 7 September. To keep busy and miss us less, here is a selection of fascinating exhibitions on the road to your vacations, in France and in all of Europe. Have a bright Summer!