Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes, Discoveries at the National Gallery, London
The most sensational aspect of the attribution of paintings as far as the general public is concerned is the subject of fakes, despite the fact that few art historians ever encounter them. What, exactly, is a fake? A painting that appears to be something other than what it is? Not always. Traditional academic training involved copying, and a copy of one work by a student, no matter how close to the model, is not a fake. If a later owner offers the copy as the work of the master, one might use the term fake, providing the owner is aware of the deception. The exhibition Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes, Discoveries at the National Gallery, London (June 30-September 12, 2010) included a small painting on board, considered a variant by Courbet of a larger self-portrait painted in 1845-6; it was identified as a copy because the manufacturer’s mark on the reverse indicates a date at least three years after the artist’s death.
after Gustave Courbet 'Self Portrait' (after 1880)
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Under An English Sky [Part I ] : Wolfgang Tillmans At The Serpentine Gallery, London
I spent a week in London in August, and each day attempted to focus on a substantial outing, an interesting exhibition. My first jaunt was to cross Kensington Gardens to The Serpentine Gallery where the German artist Wolfgang Tillmans put on something of a retrospective, an expansive display of his alchemical results with photography. The 2000 Turner Prize winner, born in 1968, today a bona fide blue chip in the art world, offers a cornucopia of stolen, manipulated and performative photographic works in his first full-on exhibition in London in seven years. Each piece conspires to reveal the over-reproduced world we’re bound to while at the same time seeks some sort of philosophical escape from photography itself.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Serpentine Gallery, London, Installation View. Courtesy of the artist and The Serpentine Gallery.
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Extreme Painting at Joyce Yahouda
Extreme Painting has taken over Montreal. Sixteen galleries across the city have adopted the theme for the summer of 2010. While Division, Orange and Donald Browne galleries (among others) have opted for monumental proportions and excessive applications of paint, guest curator Nicolas Mavrikakis at Joyce Yahouda gallery has chosen a different route. Highlighting the work of an edgier collection of artists, Mavrikakis looks at the gesture of painting and its position in the twenty-first century. Are we indeed in an age of post-painting? Or, will painting live on as an eternal tradition?
Simon Bilodeau. Imagine ce que j’aurais pu peindre, 2010. Installation. Photo: Simon Bilodeau.
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Letter from Paris: White On White
The white monochrome painting, once a joke –”cow in a snowstorm” – at other times a beacon heralding modernism (Malevich’s White on White, 1918) has carved out a serious place in the canon of aesthetics. Nearly every art movement over the last 150 years, if only a shake or a jitter, has paused long enough to produce an all-over, single-color performance. There are thousands of monochrome works dotting the history of art, pointing to a kind of serial of reduction-minded dramas. Stripped down, these works, bold in their simplicity, end up being complex philosophical constructions gesturing to a manifest aesthetic destiny.
"Toile Blanche," Joël Ducorroy. One of three dozen white works at Marie Victoire Poliakoff's Galerie Pixi in Paris
Alex Marsolais at KAI Design Studio
The unveiling of Celsius, Alex Marsolais’s first collection of paintings, could not have been timed any better. Set in a cool refuge of KAI Design Studio, away from the sweltering heat wave of Montreal, some of the vividly textured canvases seemed to be melting. The untrained local artist presents a series of portraits of his favorite songs, a colourful exploration for a new artist.
Alex Marsolais. Silence - Jay Chou. Acrylic and latex on canvas. 2010.
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Ernesto Neto in London: The Edges of the World
Post by Judith Stein
To get to The Edges of the World, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s extraordinary installation at London’s Hayward Gallery, you first have to find the Hayward. It is situated above street level in the cultural complex known as the South Bank Centre. You might approach it from the Thames walkway, mounting one of three hulking stairways gamely painted yellow, blue or red, to arrive at the Hayward’s front door. Better yet, walk across Waterloo Bridge heading south and step down directly into its entrance courtyard.
Ernesto Neto installation detail at the Hayward Gallery in London
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Traffic Jam: Pascale Marthine Tayou at Gare Saint Sauveur, Lille
My travels this summer were plagued by museums undergoing restoration (the Stedelijk and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art at Villeneuve d’Ascq, just outside Lille, with its great but little-known modernist collection) but a surprise was the new art facility created by the city of Lille last year at the 1861 cargo rail station, Gare Saint Sauveur. Franklin Azzi used a light touch in converting two buildings on the almost 4-square mile site into a multipurpose art center that is glamorous and up-to-date while acknowledging the buildings’ industrial past. There’s a huge exhibition space, a cafe looking onto an outdoor space where children play and sculpture can be sited, and facilities for showing films and performance events.
The café and performance building at Gare Saint Sauveur
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Contemporary Art, Who Cares? A conference in Amsterdam
Those who care for modern art and particularly for art produced since World War II face challenges unknown from their experience with earlier artwork; not only materials known to be impermanent (newspaper, latex, chocolate) or of unknown permanence (plastics, color photographs, felt-tip pen inks) but also working parts, intentionally ephemeral work, and pieces involving hardware, such as cathode ray tubes, that become obsolete. Some works also include living material (animal and vegetable), current vernacular items, refuse and/or garbage. The presence of the artist, who inevitably retains a connection with the work, although not always one supported by moral rights law, also presents a profound change. Dead artists don’t talk back.
Dan Flavin - untitled, 1973. Fluorescent tubes are rapidly becoming obsolete; owners of Flavin's work are stock-piling them but eventually the stores will run out.
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Posted in artblog international, talks | Tagged andreas slominski, ann hamilton, christian scheidemann, conservation, foundation for conservation of contemporary art, marianne parsch, naum gabo, netherlands institute for cultural heritage, reinhard bek, susan lake, university of amsterdam, zoost zwagemann |
Letter From Paris: Dynasty. A Feast Of Disney, Dust & Dinner
The massive two-museum blast of Dynasty, an exhibition of 40 artists at the Palais de Tokyo and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, is something of a moveable feast of contemporary French art – a collision of dust and Disney with a bit of dinnertime thrown in. The concept, launched by directors Marc-Olivier Wahler and Fabrice Hergott was to invite youngish artists working in France to exhibit two sets of works in each museum. (The two art spaces sit side-by-side looking out towards the Seine River). A stereo effect was anticipated across the vast 5,000-square meters of exhibition space of the two institutions. And, I should note, a large inviting bar and café area offering cocktails and pumping hip-hop sits between the two museums – clearly the place you want to be after the art.
Yuhsin U. Chang's "Poussière dans le Palais de Tokyo" 2010 (Dust in the Palais de Tokyo).
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Posted in artblog international | Tagged Dynasty, fabien giraud, man ray, melanie delattre-vogt, musee d'art moderne de la ville de paris, nicholas milhe, Palais de Tokyo, paris, raphael siboni, theo mercier, yushin u. chang, Yves Klein |
Sigmar Polke (1941-2010)
PHOTO : Angelika Platen Sigmar Polke (in the air), Düsseldorf, 1971 silver gelatin print on Barytpapier mounted on aluminium; signed, dated and numbered on the back. 120 x 80cm. Edition: 5. Galerie Haas Ag.
Sigmar Polke (1941 – 2010), a German painter who for many recast pop art and revived painting in Europe, passed away on Friday, June 10.
The artist who used Ben-Day dots, old etchings and even potatoes (for sculptures), brought a new vibrancy to painting and art making in the 1980s. His first New York show at Holly Solomon led what many saw as a fresh and aggressive charge to pictorial expression. Americans like Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Richard Prince rode the oblique figurative + abstraction train for decades. Much of that owed to the oftentimes irreverent German artist. One can see Polke’s influence all over Europe and in the US – a feverish desire to combine everything and squeeze out a biting political juice. Polke was 69.
Click to view The NYT Slide Show of Sigmar Polke’s works.
