Art Of The Day Weekly
#235 - from 17 November 2011 to 23 November 2011
Wang Qingsong, 2010, 170x400 cm, festival Foto Lianzhou, from 19 November 2011
IN THE AIR
Casanova, between love and books
PARIS – His fame as a seducer has put a shadow over all his other talents. Casanova was indeed an entrepreneur as well (he opened a lottery in France under the Old Regime), an adventurer (he slipped out of the jail of Piombi, the Venitian Alcatraz of his time) and a writer among the great creators of the XVIII th century (his Life was written directly in French). The exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France of course insists on this last point for an obvious reason: the manuscript of this libertine (but not only) is art of its fund since February 2010. Its structure in ten books has nourished the itinerary of a man and accompanied this man of the Century of Lights, a citizen of the world who was as much at ease at home in Madrid as in London or in the castle of Dux, in Bohemia where he died in 1798. The «Casanova fans» have calculated that hem ost probably covered circa 67 000 kilometres during his life, the equivalent of a perimeter and a half of the Earth, scattering intrigues, love and good words …
• Casanova, la passion de la liberté, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (François-Mitterrand) from 15 November 2011 to 19 February 2012
EXHIBITIONS
Constantin Brancusi, Costume of the witch of Lizica Codreano for Gymnopédies by Erik Satie, 1922. Coll. François Fontenoy, Paris, Adagp, 2011.
Dance figures
PARIS – Dancing is not only for dancers. It has charmed painters such as Watteau, Degas or Matisse. Limiting itself to the XXth century, which is already a colossal time span, the Centre Pompidou dissects the relationts it kept with the visual arts. While the afore mentioned Matisse is in a good position with his Danse which made the short but exceptional trip from the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, we will also see the Futurists (Severini, Depero), Constructivists, German Expressionists (who influenced Pina Bausch) or American Abstracts (Rauschenberg who worked with Martha Graham). An avalanche of interpretations and comparative relations that seem to never end: Ange Leccia has focused on the Travolta of Saturday Night Fever while the visual artists such as Olafur Eliasson or Mai-Thu Perret continue to nourish the dialogue with today’s choreographers.
• Danser sa vie at the Centre Pompidou, from 23 November 2011 to 20 April 2012.
Art of the day also recommends...
• NEW YORK – The event is important as this is the first time the mural paintings from the great exhibition of 1931 by Diego Rivera are grouped together at the MoMA. From 13 November 2011 to 14 May 2012.
• PARIS –Rodin as a drawer? It is what is currently captivating at the musée Rodin, La saisie du modèle, 300 drawings from the artist’s last thirty years.
• TOULOUSE - L’image et le pouvoir. Le siècle des Antonins invites us to plunge back 2000 years at the musée Saint-Raymond, which has the most beautiful French collection of Roman marble portraits. From 19 November 2011 to 18 March 2012.
AUCTIONS
A passion for Guitry
PARIS – At the age of 13 a young boy from Arles fell in awe in front of the window of a bookstore at the sight of a book by Sacha Guitry. He went in and bought it with his allowance. It was the first step of a collection André Bernard enriched over 60 years. Affected today by Parkinson’s disease, he has decided to part with it, as he feels he is the «simple caretaker of a patrimony» which he says he is «happy to hand down». The 820 lots offer opportunities for each budget, Works dedicated to the master (starting at a few Euros) including movie posters and photos (The fish or le Roman d’un tricheur- Novel of a cheater-), autographed poems (lot 478, estimated at 200 €), typed manuscripts (lot 363, le Blanc et le Noir, his first movie with sound, estimated at 3000 €) to end with the drawings and paintings, that prove Guitry’s extraordinary versatility… An oil portrait of Yvonne Printemps (lot 264) is estimated for example at 12 000 €, one of the highest estimates together with Ma défense (lot 586), a manuscript written while he was a prisoner at Drancy in 1944 to defend himself from accusations of collaborating with the Germans.
• Sacha Guitry, la collection André Bernard 17 and 18 November 2011 at Drouot-Richelieu (Ader Nordmann).
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Erik Bulatov, Une grange en Normandie, 2011, oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm. © Erik Boulatov, courtesy Galerie Pièce Unique, Paris
Erik Bulatov: landscape, the last frontier
Born in Iekaterinbourg in 1933, when the city was still called Sverdlovsk, Erik Bulatov started his artistic career when the Soviet repression began to leave some space to move in. “Officially” he was an illustrator for children, and was also a member of the «club» of the conceptual artists from boulevard Sretensky (together, in particular, with Kabakov). He changed for his own use famous paintings in the history of art (Delacroix, Malevitch), played with slogans and the typography like at the time of the Constructivists, to create a new work that questioned power and of course did not win him any favors from the government. He first settled in the USA and then in France as of 1991, and his creation has taken other paths such as can be seen in this exhibition where he compares himself, as always in a conceptual manner, to the landscape.
• Erik Bulatov, œuvres récentes at the galerie Pièce unique (4, rue Jacques-Callot, 75006 Paris), until 10 December 2011
BOOKS
Drawing, out to help archaeology
Archaeology is often a very dry discipline of which Pompei is simply an exception: to give a testimony of our ancestors we usually do not have more than some pieces of pottery, holes in a post, blackened coins or traces in a wheat field… It is quite a challenge to make that past understandable. Jean-Claude Golvin, an architect by his training, has dedicated himself to that task for various decades now, giving us through attractive drawings the appearance of the temples of Karnak, of the amphitheatre of El Jem, of Arles in the 1st century or the Forum of Carthage… This catalogue, that accompanies an exhibition at the Musée de l’Arles antique, shows the work carried out upstream with the archaeologists. In spite of the mistrust of certain specialists, this approach has nevertheless a salutary effect: we see some concrete aspects of this (the aqueduc of Lutezia, the potters workshops in Sallèles-d’Aude) where the drawer’s contribution has allowed the renderings by the archaeologist on the field to be corrected and enriched.
• Jean-Claude Golvin, un architecte au cœur de l’histoire, collective, jointly published Errance/Musée départemental Arles antique, 2011, 208 p., 29 €.
IN BRIEF
ABU DHABI – The Abu Dhabi Art fair will be held from 16 to 19 November 2011 on the island of Saadiyat, in a pavilion designed by Norman Foster.
COLOGNE – The Cologne Fine Art & Antiques fair will be held from 16 to 20 November 2011.
EINDHOVEN – The STRP festival, dedicated to the links between music, the arts and technology, will be held from 18 to 27 November 2011.
LIANZHOU – The Lianzhou Foto Festival will be held from 19 November to 26 December 2011.
MADRID – The 35th edition of Feriarte, the ancient art fair, will be held from 19 to 27 November 2011.
PARIS – The Rencontres internationales Paris-Berlin-Madrid will be held from 18 to 26 November 2011 at the Centre Pompidou and the Gaîté lyrique theater.
PARIS - The fair of independent artists, Art en Capital, will be held from 22 to 27 November 2011 at the Grand Palais.
PARIS - A Vierge with Child, carved in ivory (ca. 1250), formerly in the Collection Martin du Vasselot, was sold for €6.3 million at Christie's on 16 November 2011, setting a new world record for a medieval piece at auction.
PARIS - The Cornette de Saint Cyr auction house will hold on 21 November 2011 the sale of the Kimyo Foujita heritage, the painter's last wife.
VIENNA – The Vienna Art Week is held until 20 November 2011
ZURICH - The 17th edition of Kunst 11, contemporary art fair, will be held from 17 to 20 November 2011.
ON ART-OF-THE-DAY.INFO
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J’AI DEUX AMOURS
PARIS - The Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration presents parts of its collection: 106 contemporary works to give another image of migratory movements.
