Art Of The Day Weekly
#292 - from 28 February 2013 to 6 March 2013
Benvenuto Cellini, Saliera, 1540-1543, Paris. Gold, enamel, ebony, ivory. 26,3 x 28,5 x 21,5 cm. © Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
IN THE AIR
Vienna, capital of the cabinets of curiosities
VIENNA – Our marked fondness for cabinets of curiosities leads us to celebrate with pleasure the new opening of the Kunstkammer in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Indeed it was closed for eleven years to the public. It has been completely reorganized over 2700 sq. meters and presents over 2000 objects that belonged in the past to the Habsburg family and were brought from such prestigious collections as that of Rodolphe II in Prague or the castle of Ambras. The remarkable effect it used to give of being an encyclopedic pot-pourri has somewhat dimmed since a part of the objects emigrated during the XIXth century towards different museums of natural history. But enough is left to still merit our wander, such as the Madone Krumau or the automat of Diana on her centaur, including of course the Salière de François Ier(François I salt shaker). It is the most famous piece, a true masterpiece of jewelry created by Benvenuti Cellini, whose erratic history has contributed to its fame. Indeed it was stolen in 2003 and made a triumphal return in 2006.
• The Kunstkammer of the Kunsthistorishces Museum will open again to the public on 27 February 2013.
EXHIBITIONS
Pablo Picasso, El viejo pescador, 1895. © Museo de Montserrat © Sucesión Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Málaga, 2013.
The young Picasso
MALAGA – What did Picasso look like before being Picasso? That is the question put forward by the museum dedicated to the artist in the city of Andaluzia where he was born on 25 October 1881. He left it when he was young, first for the Coruña , then to Barcelona and Paris, and he never returned after 1901. The 53 works presented show a promising but academic painter, trained in a cultivated but provincial family under the control of his father, both a drawing professor and the curator of the local museum. Most of the paintings present his family, the port, the fishermen and the artisans. In order to give a wider panorama of this city in southern Spain, the exhibition also includes works by some thirty artists from the same era.
• Picasso de Málaga at the museo Picasso from 25 February to 9 June 2013.
These exhibitions also open this week
Matisse and his cut outs
LE CATEAU-CAMBRESIS – During the second part of his career, an ageing Matisse reinvented himself with the extraordinary cut-outs that would give birth to Jazz. Matisse, la couleur découpée shows a rich donation in the museum dedicated to the painter. From 3 March to 9 June 2013.
Modernity according to Albin-Guillot
PARIS – She left her brand on modern photography in the 1920s and 1930s but Laure Albin-Guillot (1879-1962) is quite forgotten today. The Jeu de paume helps us rediscover her still lives, her nudes and her micrographics. From 26 February to 12 May 2013
The Spanish war in a suitcase
PARIS – The saga of the Valise mexicaine - The Mexican suitcase- the negatives of photographers Capa, Taro and Chim on the Spanish Civil War found by chance, has finally arrived in Paris, at the Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme. From 27 February to 30 June 2013.
AUCTIONS
Lot 42. Veil key, North-West of Azawagh, Niger, circa 1940-1950 Brass, copper, steel L. 17,5 cm. Estimate: €150. Courtesy Binoche Giquello, Paris.
The discovery of the Tuaregs
PARIS - The Tuareg? Lately they are mentioned as been a community in upheaval in Northern Mali. But what do we know of their art? Actually, very little. This sale, which is a selection of what we call “tribal art”, combining black Africa and pre-Colombian America, should not suffice to develop our taste but at least it gives us a sneak preview of works from Niger, Algeria and even Mauritania. The first 100 lots, from the Claude Brignone collection (born in 1930 in Sousse and a great traveler in the region), show series of amulets in tin or in brass, dagger-bracelets, lances from Hoggar, spoons in pyrographed wood, camel saddles, boxes in molded leather, veil keys or sugar hammers. These are all exotic objects that have not yet reached the status of works of art and which should be sold at very reasonable prices, except for the shields in antelope skin, a warrior souvenir that is not very handy in a modern war…
• Arts premiers at the hôtel Drouot on 1st March 2013 (SVV Binoche Giquello)
ARTIST OF THE WEEK
Azusilis Mindaugas, Happiness in Lithuania, 2011-2012.
Azulis Mindaugas, being happy in Lithuania
His work is somewhat the opposite view of the more disturbing one of his compatriot Rimaldas Viksraitis, who had show human decrepitude in his little town in Lithuania in an exhibition in Arles in 2009. It showed the miserable, the obsessed, the mentally deranged and the unhappy souls… According to young Azusilis, who was presented in Paris at the Circulations festival, one can be perfectly happy in this little Baltic country … He is 26 years old, works by series -which is rather indispensable if one wants to be considered - following his work on an unexpected subject, mildew, he has shot his fellow citizens in their daily life. The setting, the car, the apartment, the furniture, the leisure, everything can have a touch of decrepit, of artificial, kitsch, but inside one feels well. This conclusion is not necessarily reflected in the fashionable statistics on Gross national happiness, where Denmark and Costa Rica lead the way, far ahead from Lithuania… But he is a new talent we should keep our eye on in a little country that ahs a particular taste for photography, following in the footsteps of their patriarch Jonas Mekas.
• Azusilis Mindaugas is shown at the festival Circulations de la jeune photographie européenne (at Bagatelle, from 22 February to 31 March 2013).
OPENINGS OF THE WEEK
BOOKS
Courbet the hunter
Courbet is in fashion. His so-called Origine du monde has been spoken about the world over. This sort of publicity is very much of the liking of the musée Courbet in Ornans, which has just bought, through a subscription, a major painting, the Chêne de Flagey, from a Japanese collector. This respectable tree will be exposed as of 10 March 2013, and illustrates Courbet’s taste for nature, which has recently given way to this publication on a theme that is no longer very appealing, hunting. Le Cerf aux abois, l’Hallali, le Renard au piège, le Chevreuil mort, all these game themes which Courbet treated from all angles, especially after 1860 when hunting became the favorite pastime during the Second Empire. In total, some 130 works that are scattered among various museums in the world, including a beautiful Après la chasse at the Metropolitan in New York. This art book is also a history analysis that shows the irreversible disappearance of an activity that ensured the equilibrium of the species and a link that has largely disappeared with our environment.
• Les Chasses de Monsieur Courbet, coédition Musée Gustave Courbet/éditions du Sekoya, 2012, 152 p., €29.
IN BRIEF
LONDON – Art13, the new contemporary art fair will host some 130 international galleries, from 1st to 3rd March 2013 at the Olympia
MARSEILLE – The musée Regards de Provence, which hosts a collection of Mediterranean painters (Camoin, Guigou, etc.), will open on 1st March 2013 in the former Sanitary plant designed by Fernand Pouillon.
NEW YORK – The contemporary art fait Scope will be held from 6 to 10 March 2013.
PARIS - Galerie Nathalie Obadia has opened a second space in Paris for its 20th birthday on 21 February 2013 (18, rue du Bourg-Tibourg, 75003).
PARIS – The Bordeaux gallery Cortex Athletico has opened a new space in Paris (12 rue du Grenier Saint-Lazare, 75003) with an exhibition by Japanese artist Masahide Otani.
TORINO – The Galleria d’arte moderna will inaugurate on 6 March its Graphic art Cabinet with an exhibition taken from its funds, La seduzione del disegno