Art

KEITH HARING
The Political line
Nice and chunky retrospective exhibit of Keith
Haring at the MAM will get anyone nostalgic
of the roaring 80´s when Andy, Keith and Jean Michel
where hanging out and doing art on the streets
of downtown Manhattan. His palette is definitely colorful
and joy full, his painting full of youthful energy. His involvement
in public space courageous.
This exhibit makes you think of the world of art
if this trio of NY art divas had survived the 80’s.

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DYNAMO
Grand Palais
Following Hopper's exhibit at Grand Palais is Dynamo.
An exhibition centered on movement and abstraction in
art during the 20th century. The exhibit links the work
of early pioneers like Duchamp to mid-century kinetic artist
like Julio Le Parc and Jesús Soto to the work of contemporary
artists.

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DE L'ALLEMAGNE 1800 - 1930
Le Louvre
This exhibit at Le Louvre explores different currents and movements
in German visual arts and culture from early 19th century until
the late thirties.
Remarkable paintings by Friedrich, Von Klenze, Bocklin, Marres,
Carus, Max Beckman, Lovis Corinth, Ansel Kiefer.
Certain visual experiments by Goethe are remarkable too.
It is clear that German art is emotionally and spiritually different
from the classical Mediterranean art canon that is present in Atlantic art.

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EILEEN GRAY
Musée Pompidou
Comprehensive exhibit at the Pompidou covering all the career of
modernist British furniture designer and architect Eileen Gray.

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RAPHAEL Les dèrnieres années
Louvre
Great retrospective about a major
renaissance painter that decorated
many of the Vatican´s buildings and
private chambers.

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CANALETTO - GUARDI. Les deux maitres de Venise
Musée Jaquemart-André
Great combination to juxtapose many of Canaletto´s urban
paintings of Venice with all their exhilarating details with Guardi´s
more atmospheric paintings of the same city.

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La Photograhie en 100 chefs-d'oeuvre
BNF
This exhibit consists of a nice selection of photographs
and daguerreotypes from the BNF's in-house collection.

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Salvador Dalí
Pompidou

Comprehensive and extensive exhibition
that includes many masterpieces of the surrealist
Spanish artist Salvador Dalí who is, without doubt,
one of the major figures of 20th century art.

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Wim Delvoye
Louvre 2012

Belgian artist who has neo-pop sculptures
that follow Jeff Koons footsteps of
over refined pop humor shows his new work
in the apartments of Napoleon III in the Louvre.
Sculptures are playfully placed
within the 19th century decor.

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Intense/Proximité

The first triennial of art in Paris in Palais de Tokio
curated by superstar curator Okwui Enwensor is weaved
with ethnography and anthropology as main linking threads.
Through the delicate and skillful placement of art works of
different artist from different epochs and styles the exhibition
takes a very critical position of the dominance of European
culture in art and general culture.
This happens right in the very heart of the Europe, Paris.
Because yes, Paris was the Mecca of western culture at its
mightiest, namely late 19th century when now extinct European
empires covered the whole world and when the foundations
and canons of modern western visual arts and culture
where established.
Euro centrism and European culture have already been
criticized long ago by European and American critics,
writers and philosophers alike.
Many western artists also through their work have
questioned European dominance and have been highly
auto-critical of western culture as a whole, its institutions,
the art market and of art in itself as a practice.
Therefore this curatorial exercise on already well chartered
grounds bring up the question of what is the real
purpose of this anthropological/ethnographical exhibition in a
post-racial world especially considering that Mr Ewnensors is of
African origin and that we are not in the 60s or 50s when being
critic of European canons and moors was a novelty.
If Mr Enwensor wants to criticize Western dominance from within
western institutions is fine, just that in order to do so, he should
come up with new arguments or novel angles and perspectives
that might bring something fresh to the long ongoing critical
discussion of Eurocentric dominance in art. Because by recurring
to worn off anti-Eurocentric clichés that have been bouncing
around in the West since long ago could make one think that a
bigoted anti-white-European is Mr. Enwensor’s main curatorial
punch line in this exhibition.

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Daniel Buren. Monumenta
Paris
This huge installation in Le Grand Palais by Daniel Buren
left a lot to be desired because it lacked both conceptual
and visual strength.
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Robert Crumb
Paris
I was not very familiar with Robert Crumb’s work but this exhibit
at the MAM of Paris is well supplied with his incredible drawings
and comics filled with hilarious and often extremely
neurotic black humor.
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Tim Burton
Paris
Tim Burton is more a film maker than a visual artist and
that is evident on this uninteresting exhibition of his
drawings and models at La Cinematheque de Paris.
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Gerard Richter
Berlin
This monumental Gerard Richter exhibition at Mie’s museum
in Berlin had important works of all Richter’s career from the early
60’s till the 00’s. He is an excellent executioner and his work can change
from geometric abstraction to lyrical abstraction, from portraits and
landscapes to still life. Seeing all these genre mixed together you get
the sensation that Mr Richter’s work is but an accumulation
of genre achievements. If the paintings alone are very captivating
seeing them assembled makes you wonder what is he looking for
exactly. Seems that he is just doing a long and very well executed
encyclopedic art exercise. Like if he wanted to
make all paintings technically perfect in order to transcend
technicality. I just wonder if it is just well executed gymnastics ??

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Foto/gráfico
Paris
Excellent art book exhibition with many exceptional photo books
printed and edited in Latin America during the 20th century.
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Yayoi Kusama
Paris
Her exhibition at the Pompidou Museum was magnificent.
Her early paintings in Japan on the 50 s, her videos installations
and performances during the sixties and her late paintings
all where very coherently assembled.

Edward Munch
From this exhibition of the Norwegian painter in the Pompidou
it is obvious that The Scream is just the tip of the iceberg of a
very complex artist who lived in a very complex times.

Walking in Park Slope is like walking
into an Edward Hopper painting.

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Artists can travel, move and go to far, far away
places without having to physically displace
themselves one inch from where they happen
to be at.