Art Of The Day Weekly
#135 - from 28 May 2009 to 3 June 2009
IN THE AIR
Belgian glories
Could the Belgian stars of the XXth century be Jacques Brel, Jackie Ickx, Eddie Merckx? Well, and another two, who are at least at the same: Hergé (1907-1983), the creator of Tintin, and Magritte (1898-1967), the surrealist painter. Through a remarkable conjunction, the two are at the centre of attention at the same time, each with a new museum, inaugurated on 2 June. This perfect timing imposes a short trip to the "Plat Pays": Magritte, with 200 paintings, of which the Empire des Lumières (Empire of Lights), is now housed at the renovated, neo-classic Altenloh hotel, located on the place Royale in Brussels. As for Tintin, he has settled down at Louvain-la-Neuve, in a building by Christian de Portzamparc, made of full volumes and voids, similar to a cartoon-strip, in which one finds drawing sheets, drawings and reconstructed objects among which the submarine used in Red Rackham’s Treasure.
EXHIBITIONS
Psyche, forever contemporary
AZAY – Our ancestors knew the myth well, since it has always fed the imagination of artists, composers and writers (from Apulia to Rafaello and Clément Janequin). Beautiful Psyche so wished to see her lover’s face even though it was forbidden. She stared at him one evening, under the light of a candle. A drop of wax fell and woke him up. He ran away and took with him love that is so fragile. This is a Platonic theme if ever there was one, and has been dealt with over and over again, including by Cocteau, in la Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast). The castle of Azay has grouped together some one hundred different versions: Greek marbles, Etruscan bronze lamps, ivory cameos, enamels from Limoges, drawings by Jules Romain, hangings from Brussels, Wedgwood porcelains, even andirons from Thomire and the irreplaceable psyche, the much prized mobile mirror of the XIXth century …
Giacometti and the family
BASLE – While the public is getting ready to invade the city for the Art Basel fair, the Beyeler foundation is dedicating its summer exhibition to one to the large public’s favorite artist: Alberto Giacometti. He is also one off the artists who has most counted for the art dealer: he seems to have dealt with nearly three hundred of his works. The retrospective integrates the whole clan: his brother Diego, of course, who was his collaborator for decades, but his father Giovanni, one of the great Swiss post-impressionists with Segantini, his uncle Augusto who made precocious attempts in the field of Abstraction, and even his mother and sister who were his models. Femmes de Venise (Women from Venice), la Boule suspendue (The suspended ball), le Nez (The nose), la Main (The hand), le Chien (The dog): the main masterpieces are present, in a very original setting. His le Petit Homme sur socle (Small man on a pedestal) for example, truly minute, enjoys a whole room all to himself, to illustrate Giacometti’s very particular concept of what is monumental, which can be expressed independently from any effect of size.
Colors from Jodhpur
LONDON – Those who visit Rajasthan can not always suspect the treasures they may find there, hidden in the princely palaces. A special European exhibit focuses on the collection of the maharajah of Jodhpur, usually visible at the Mehrangarh Museum: some fifty paintings that resume the local production from the XVIIth to the XIXth centuries. In which one can measure all the importance of the patron: in the middle of the XVIIIth century, Bakhat Singh asked his artists to praise the art of living, sensuality, the beauty of Nature. His grandson Man Singh had less profane concerns: he wanted the major philosophical issues such as the origin of the cosmos or the religious myths to be clarified. The two «tendencies» are illustrated with the same profusion of colors and the same love for details.
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AUCTIONS
Seurat, the return?
PARIS – Last year, in the midst of the crisis, a drawing by Seurat had shattered the Paris art market. Estimated at 750 000 euros, it was sold for 4.4 million euros on 3 December 2008, a record for a work on paper. On 28 May this year, Sotheby’s, the house that succeeded in this performance, will of course dream of repeating such a feat. Indeed, it will be presenting two new drawings by Seurat, two Conté pencil works on paper. One of them, Assis (Sitting), part of a series of persons sketched during the year 1881, is estimated at 100 000 euros. The other, done a year or two later, Femme avec deux fillettes (Woman with two little girls), showing three persons from the back dissolving in the shadows, is not a discovery: it had already been one of the stars at the Seurat retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute in 1958. The auctioneers expect over one million euros.
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Pascal Pesez, Déposition et démesure, oil on canvas, 250 x 200 cm, 2005, Photo Centre d'arts plastiques et visuels (Ville de Lille) / Olivier Dupont, 2006, Courtesy La Galerie particulière
Pascal Pesez's art is more than skin deep
The unpleasant habit of classifying artists forces us to find various influences in Pascal Pesez: the informal, Tachisme, Gutai’s physical debauchery, Pollock’s abstract expressionism, as well as the representation of pieces of flesh, in Soutine for example. His compositions have that pink color and those nearly human forms that make it almost uncomfortable, or at least disquieting: one searches for injuries, for organs… or for flowers. His latest creations are increasingly monumental, taller and larger than a man, and take on the shape of polyptychs that unfold. The whole is produced by a technique he detailed in a recent interview, and that consists in saving on the means: a table, five pots of paint (black, white, red, blue, yellow), a few brushes and rags, some white spirit… Pascal Pesez, born in 1964, in whom we can see the incarnation of a crossroads of international influences, lives and works in Valenciennes where he has created the H du Siège, a venue of art and encounters,.
BOOKS
Picasso in the attic
A renowned artist who lacks space to work in, an enlightened curator who has too much space for his small collection: the ideal encounter took place with the intervention of Michel Smajewski, an Auschwitz survivor. The history of art is sometimes written by strokes of chance more than that of a pen … On the one hand then, Picasso, on the Côte d’Azur in the Summer of 1946, with his new flame, Françoise Gilot; on the other, Romuald Dor de la Souchère, the director of the Antibes museum who has an unused attic. He handed the keys to Picasso for various months, and the latter in turn used the space to create Nature morte au compotier de raisin, à la guitare (Dish of grapes, guitar and two apples on a plate) then Ulysse et les sirènes (Ulysses and the mermaids). Michel Smajewski, called Sima, followed the various phases with an old patched up photographic chamber (the shutter was made with a piece of floating bamboo). This gives us a very original «photo love story»: Picasso in nude torso, in shorts or in cotton pants, wearing an old sweater with a hole in it or in his stripped T-shirt, with sandals, sitting, standing, with Sabartés or Eluard, posing with a brush, with ceramic works, with an owl in his hand, his look slightly hallucinated…
To know more about Michel Sima's career, mentioned too briefly
IN BRIEF
ABU DHABI - On 26 May 2009, a ceremony with President Nicolas Sarkozy and crown prince Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nayan marked the official start of the Louvre Abu Dhabi project. The museum, designed by Jean Nouvel, will open by 2013.
ATHENS-The minister of Culture, Andonis Samaras, has announced that the admission price to the museum of the Acropolis, to open on 20 June 2009, will be set at 1 euro for the first six months.
BOSTON-The Administration Board of the Isabella Gardner Stewart museum approved on 18 May the extension project presented by Renzo Piano.
LONDON-According to The Observer, which quotes the results of the investigation by British police, Henry Moore’s monumental sculpture, Reclining Figure, that was robbed in 2005, was surely melted down and sold at the price of crude metal– in other words for less than 2000 euros.
MADRID-The Photo España festival, which attracts nearly 600 000 visitors each year, will be held from 3 June to 26 July 2009. Over 70 exhibitions will be organized between Madrid and the two antennas in Cuenca and Lisbon.
OVIEDO - Architect Norman Foster received the 2009 Prince of Asturias prize
PARIS - The Nocturne Rive droite, with late openings in 75 art galleries of the Right Bank is held on 3 June 2009.