Art Of The Day Weekly
#31 - from 25 January 2007 to 31 January 2007
IN THE AIR
Beaubourg, the roaring thirties?
PARIS – The Pompidou Center is going to celebrate its thirtieth birthday this month of January. There will be a great number of events, among them the reopening of the 5th floor and the showing of a video by Pipilotti Rist on the square in front of the museum. Aside from the inevitable assessment that is rather flattering in terms of attendance – 150 million visitors in three decades – and of landmark exhibitions (Paris-Moscow, Paris-Berlin, Vienna 1900, the Magicians of the Earth, Dada), the institution has let it be known, through its president Bruno Racine, that it is now turned towards the Orient. Following the failure of an attempted set up in Hong Kong, continental China will probably host the first Beaubourg out of France, in the city of Shanghai. Is this a symbol? The other major project - the Pompidou Center in Metz designed by Shigeru Ban, with the help of Jean de Gastines - will indeed have the shape of a Chinese hat. Probably , to show that it has no intentions of losing its soul nor of selling it to the merchants of the temple (the type of accusation the Louvre is facing these days…), Beaubourg has announced initiatives in France, among them a contemporary art festival for children in June that we await with interest.
MUSEUMS
The Louvre of records
PARIS – While a delegation from the Ministry of Culture is in Abou Dhabi to sign the very juicy contract that will give birth to a «Louvre in the sand» (certain rumors refer to 700 million euros in royalties), the French museum has published its attendance figures for 2006. They have reached a new threshhold: after 7.5 million visitors in 2005, 8.3 million went through the institution's doors -or under its pyramid- in 2006. This allows it to easily keep its sceptre of the museum with the highest attendance level in the world. The temporary exhibitions performed quite differently, a pale result for Rembrandt and Hogarth (together they attracted 212 000 visitors), Ingres did much better (379 000 entrances). Management feels this excellent attendance level is due to a good tourism situation, to the number of temporary exhibitions (17), to the program (in particular around writer Toni Morrison) and to the late closing on friday nights including free admission for those under the age of 26. Not to mention a fondamental factor, the movie Da Vinci Code that is to come out in the month of May… The Louvre absorbs over 20 000 visitors per day. Can it do any better? May purists forgive us, but the highly criticized scattering of its treasures throughout the world could be a security valve…
EXHIBITIONS
Redon: black is on
FRANCFORT – While Cezanne has been considered for a long time one of the fathers of modern Western painting, Odilon Redon has trouble trying to reach that status. Margret Stuffmann though, the curator for the retrospective the Schirn Kunsthall is dedicating to the painter, with 200 paintings, drawings and prints, believes he deserves this recognition. Maybe his individualism is to blame. Or else his attraction for esotericism and mystery, that make him an artist difficult to approach. The exhibition puts forward his taste for the color black, which marked the first part of his career. Redon,a great drawer and great printer, was born in 1840 and grew up in solitude in the countryside near Bordeaux. He was a close friend of Clavaud, the botanist who initiated him to science and to the wonders of the vegetable world, algea at the top of the list. Spiders, crows and charcoal- colored amoeba built a world of dreams(or nightmares). Strangely enough, as he grew older, Redon little by little put black aside and used more color, guided by the myths of religion and of classic Antiquity.
How tall can the Defense be?
PARIS - While we are still awaiting a precise date for the opening of the Cité de l’architecture (planned for March and then pushed back), we can admire at the palais de Chaillot a few great names in the discipline. The projects competing with one another for a new, 300 metre tall tower at La Défense – a contest launched by Unibail – are put face to face. The building that should fit in right next to the famous volt of the CNIT had to be the latest state of the art technique in terms of energy saving and as an «environment friendly» operation. The winner, Thom Mayne, from the agency Morphosis, and thanks to his brutalist compositions all in angles, has graduated from being semi-anonymous to the status of «classic» thanks to his recent Pritzker Prize. His tower follows a curve: it contrasts with the neighboring vertical lines but fits in elegantly with the lines of the CNIT. The compass by Fuksass or the lace column by Manuelle Gautrand are equally projects of high quality. Out of the ten contestants, only one seems to have left the commentators cold. That is Jean Nouvel who accompanied his heavy building with giant mobile screens.
Bourdelle invigorated by Sarkis
PARIS - Various museums have gotten into the habit of inviting contemporary artists to compare themselves to creators of the past. The musée Bourdelle suggests a rather successful program in this aspect. The new guest is Sarkis, who has been working for a long time on the theme of memory and heritage. The fact he is of Armenian origin and was born in Istambul unvoluntarily gives another dimension to his research, just a few days after the murder of journalist Hrant Dink. In the monumental hall of the Casts, where the Dying Centaurus and the Monument to Bolivar are, Sarkis has designed a luminous installation, Inclinaison. It is followed by 41 watercolor bombs and their sugarbowls, that are a questioning of color. Music (with Ravel) and odors are equally called in to participate. Sarkis wanted two artists to collaborate. They are 25 years younger than he is: Jean-Marie Perdrix (his totems are derived from recycled plastic bags) and Patrick Neu (his drawings from smoke black). A way of illustrating symbolically the necessary links between generations.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Jan Fabre: the carnival strolls by, the dogs bark
He is polymorphic, active in plastic arts, choreography, theatre. He crated a scandal in Avignon and covered a ceiling of the Royal Palace in Brussells with one million beetle elytrons. Last Summer, Jan Fabre, 48 years old, was lavishly celebrated with five simultaneous exhibitions in Antwerp. He is coming to Paris, to the Templon galery, with one of them, a Carnival of roaming dogs in which dogs (whose bodies he picked up along the highways) stuffed and suspended, wait indefinitely with pointed hats, next to lumps of butter. « The dog is in a way a metaphore of the artist, Jan Fabre explains. Society wants him and then, one day, drops him. » His latest sculptures are the proof of his obsession with the themes of the animal and death. The Beheaded messengers of death show five owl heads rebuilt a feather at a time, with glass eyes. Jan Fabre never slackens, and in his agenda he already has planed an installation at the Louvre and another in the palace of the Grand Canal for the Biennale of Venice, in June. That one too will be on the theme of the animal carnival. « But the dogs will be replaced by cats, with a twinkling light deep in their eyes. »
BOOKS
Marcel Duchamp
For years now he has been considered a chromo. He symbolizes all avant-gardes to such a point that we only know a few fragments of his identity, which in turn have become universal symbols: the urinal, the bicycle wheel, as many chess games as you can take, the angular profile of an old wise man in which a pipe is set. The public does not know much more than that and Duchamp has remained a total mystery. Now a new biography will unveil it for us. A newcomer in the publishing world has met the challenge, writing in a nervous style and accumulating references and anecdotes, and thus offering us a book that is very pleasant to read. The pleasure is derived from the discovery of another, non-transfixed Duchamp. Through these pages rises the obedient son of a notary who visits the brothels together with the butcher's son. When he is no longer a spring chicken and rather a confirmed bachelor we see him falling in love with Mary Reynolds and then with Teeny, abandoned by Pierre Matisse. We discover the depth of his friendships as he corresponds for many decades with Picabia and Pierre-Henri Roché. We even become familiar with an accomplished careerist, doing all he can to have his works grouped together in a few, essential collections (such as that of the Arensberg couple, in Philadelphia)… and with a clever art dealer as he gets rid of his inheritance to buy 19 of Brancusi's sculptures. When one of them, Bird in space, is blocked in 1926 by the American customs, he played an important role in the modern definition of a work of art. Duchamp is truly a major figure in the art world…
IN BRIEF
ABOU DHABI – Art Paris, the contemporary and modern art fair that is held at the Grand Palais from 29 March to 2 April, has just announced it will have an edition in Abou Dhabi from 26 to 29 November 2007. Forty galleries are expected.
BOLOGNA - The 31st edition of Arte Fiera, one of the main Italian fairs in modern and contemporary art, is being held from 26 to 29 January with 200 exhibitors. About 40,000 visitors are expected.
HOLLYWOOD – A movie on Dali's last years, taken from the book by Stan Lauryssen, Dali and I, will soon be shot by Andrew Niccol. The main role will be played by Al Pacino.
LAREN (Netherlands) – Seven bronze sculptures were robbed on 19 January from the Singer museum. One of them, an edition of Rodin's Thinker, was found by the police the same day.
PARIS – The ministry of Culture has announced the creation in a near future of an International Agency for the museums of France. It will be responsible for accompanying French public institutions when they set up abroad (among them the Louvre at Abou Dhabi) and will provide consultancy and expertise to foreign museums that request it.
PARIS – The Grand National architecture prize for 2006 was rewarded on wednesday 24 January to Rudy Ricciotti, who has just delivered the Choreographic Center in Aix-en-Provence and won the contest of the MUCEM (Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée à Marseille) and of the department of Islamic art of the Louvre.
PARIS – Sotheby’s presents in Paris (76 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), from 25 to 28 January, the main pieces from its sale of impressionnist painting on 5 February in London, in particular the Two Sisters by Renoir, estimated between 9 and12 million €.
TOKYO - The Japanese capital has just opened one of the largest art centres in the world, designed by Kisho Kurokawa. The originality of this 48 000 m2 National Art Center of Tokyo lies in the fact that it has no collection of its own. It will present as of 7 February the exhibition Foreign Artists in Paris 1900-2005
ON ARTOFTHEDAY
this week do not miss
TINTORETTO
MADRID - It has been awaited for the last 70 years: the Prado is dedicating the first real retrospective to the painter of the Renaissance since the one held in Venice in 1937. Through 65 pieces, of which 49 paintings from all over the world, the Spanish museum shows all the aspects of an abundant production and succeeds in bringing together the Supper and the Christ washing the feet of his disciples. They were both formerly in the church of San Marcuola, and are now together again after four centuries…