Art Of The Day Weekly

As Thom Mayne( Pritzker prize 2005) is about to deliver his latest creation - a tower for the city of Francisco - he is acclaimed by one and all. Yet one can legitimately wonder what contemporary architectural elements will survive the test of time. A survey carried out by Harris Interactive for the 150th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects shows that the American public has rather conservative tastes. In this hit parade, the great classics such as the Empire State Buiding, the Chrysler Building, the White House or the Capitol have no reason to fear being dethroned. Frank Lloyd Wright classifies 8 buildings in this top 150 while Richard Meier is the most noted living architect (5 times). One single creation of the post WWII period makes it into the Top Ten. The case is famous: the Memorial of the Vietnam War (1982). It was the work, at the time, of a student, Maya Lin (born in 1959), who to date continues to suffer from this excess of glory. The current star system of the major architects, whose projects are excessively mediatised, is therefore not enough. To ensure one's place in the public's heart, nothing has yet replaced a good old method: the passage of time…

P.S.: The French presence in the list is unexpected. Aside from Philippe Starck (39th for the interior decoration of the Delano hotel, in Miami), the award is for Jean-Paul Viguier, 82nd place for the… Sofitel Chicago.B

The list of the 150 buildings Americans prefer

Munch, beyond The Scream

BASEL – The painting stolen three years ago in Oslo - the Scream recently found - is so famous it ends up by blocking out the rest of the work by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944)… The Scream is not show at Basel but other works, in particular from the Berlin period (1892-95) are, marked by the obsession of death, of insanity and solitude, such as Puberty or Vampire. The aim of the exhibition is to document all of Munch's career. Consequently it looks into his beginnings, in a naturalist atmosphere, at his many trips that so influenced his art (in Nice, Paris or Italy) at the psychological and sentimental tramas (nervous depression in 1908, alcoholism). It shows the diversity of a work that is essential in the expressionist current , that expresses itself through painting, as well as through drawings, engravings (of which Munch was a master) or even photography. To celebrate in a beautiful manner its 10th anniversary, the Beyeler foundation has brought together more than 200 pieces, of which 130 paintings, all from some fifty institutions and as many private collections. A record!

Another Monet

LONDON – An unknown Monet? Is it even conceivable? One can still wonder, as the Impressionist artist has been so overused in posters of all sorts…Yet, this is the challenge the Royal Academy has decided to meet by dedicating a whole exhibition to his production of pastels and drawings. It follows more or less the same logic as the one that led a recent exhibition-dossier on Millet at the museum of Orsay, that consists in showing that this painter of immediateness, one we imagine systematically painting «on the motif», actually produced many from preparatory drawings. Among the nearly 80 works shown, and rarely seen before, one sees many landscapes in Normandy, of which some date back to the artist's youth, views of London and sketches for an aborted project, a Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Lunch on the lawn).

Juan Munoz, the sculptor who also drew

GRENOBLE – The museum of Grenoble invites us to a beautiful retrospective. It is dedicated to Juan Muñoz, one of the «wonderboys» of Spanish art, who died prematurely in 2001 at the age of 48. A «heavyweight» we are more used to seeing at the Tate Gallery or the Guggenheim than in a regional museum. But curator Guy Tosatto is very familiar with the artist's work and is a friend of his widow of Cristina Iglesias. This allowed him to bring a great number of works from the workshop. Such is the case of many of the very skilfull chalk drawings on paper or canvas. Portraits, profiles, they seem to reveal a classic education and the blackness seems to hide an influence by Goya or Vélasquez. And yet, Muñoz is a semi-self-taught artist…His sculptures are contemporary to his drawings since Muñoz' first known work, in 1984, is a small metal staircase. There are also more disquieting works, hand rails behind which an open flick-knife is hidden. The itinerary ends with Muñoz' most spectacular creation, with the title Many Times: some one hundred resin statues of laughing, identical Chinese men, standing but with their feet cut off, and the spectator walks in the middle of them in awe and slightly worried…

Michel Potage: in the intimacy of the workshop

PARIS – A demanding artist, one who followed a difficult path, is back at the gallery Lélia Mordoch. Last we saw him was in March 2003, when he slamed the door on us with the illustration of a whole number of the magazine «Monde diplomatique» at the beginning of the war of Irak. He is back with some wiser compositions, at least by the theme – his workshop – if not necessarily for their craftmanship. The forms are not recognizable, geometric constructions in brown and black that remind us of easels, windows and canvases filled with stretchers, glued on their surface. « I work by series, the artist explains, they occupy my mind totally and I am uncapable of starting a new one before finishing the one I am working on. I feel the need to give this one a dimension in volume, to treat it as a sculpture. » As he nears the age of sixty, Michel Potage symbolises those artists who are not very present in auctions (significant value at the end of the 1980s after which he disappeared for a long time) but who could rely on faithful collectors on the «primary market». Why not come rediscover him?

The thousand and one passions of Bruni-Tedeschi

LONDON – The character is an emblem of those captains of industry of another era, good managers of family businesses (the CEAT, a competitor of Pirelli, in the car tire sector) as well as remarkable scholars. But Alberto Bruni-Tedeschi (1915-1996), the father of model Carla Bruni and actress and director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, was a dodecaphonic musician, and reknowned composer of it… as reknowned as he was in the field of fine arts. Indeed he had a remarkable collection, a part of which, the miniatures, was given to the Palazzo Madama, the museum of Ancient art of Torino which reopened recently after nearly twenty years of works. The rest of the collection will be auctioned at Sotheby’s to finance the foundation dedicated to his son, who died not too long ago of cancer. Aside from piemontese furniture, a beautiful ensemble of tapestries, Les Indes galantes (The galant Indies) that once belonged to Charles de Beistegui at the palazzo Labia, in Venice, and paintings of the XVIIIth century, the "pièce de résistance" is a chandelier that illuminated the Quirinale Palace (residence of the President of the Italian Republic) when Napoleon slept there, estimated at 370 000 €.

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