Italics - Palazzo Grassi

PALAZZO GRASSI, VENICE

'ITALICS. ITALIAN ART BETWEEN TRADITION AND REVOLUTION, 1968-2008'

from 27/09/2008 to 22/03/2009


Covers a time span of over forty years, Italics is one of the most important exhibitions dedicated to contemporary Italian Art ever organized. Bringing together 250 works by 107 artists.

Curator Francesco Bonami

Exhibition will show in Chicago in 2009 after a stop in Asia (to be confirmed)


Check out !

Cool flash site

Catalogue

Shots

Video1; video2 ; video3

report1 ; report2; report3; report4; report 5;

Exihibitions in Paris

Picasso and Masters - Grand Palais (book in advance)

Picasso - Manet @ Orsay

Centre Pompidou: Ron Arad, Sottstass, Futurism in Paris

Kristallnacht @ Shoah Memorial

Mantegna @ Louvre

Jeff Koons @ Versailles

Raoul Dufy @ Palais Tokyo

Van Dyck @ Jacquemart-Andre

Gainsbourg @ Cite de la Musique (Villette)

And a little piece of Quai Branly

Mois de la Photo

The complete programme can be found here.

As always there is a lot to see. Here is a little (personal) selection:

Jeu de Paume: Lee Miller (@ Concorde) hot... as a model and as a reporter, Erich Solomon (@ Sully) snap-shot taken at the international conferences of the 30', I find it great.

Centre Pompidou: Photographic Experiments in Europe (assembled from its collections)

Bibliotheque Nationale: American Photography in the Seventies (check out the video)

Musee d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris: Dusseldorf - neue objectivitet (Becher & co)

Fondation Cartier-Bresson: Cartier-Bresson/Walker Evans Photographing America, 1929-1947, an excuse to show HCB and Evans pictures again

Maison Europeenne de la Photo: McDermott & McGough vintage style photography - funny but nothing special (150 pix!); Sabine Weiss - Photo humaniste less prominent member

Other interesting minor exibitions: Werner Bischof, Post-War; Pierre Verger Spain; Robert mcCabe Greece; Erwin Blumenfeld

Italians at Mois de la Photo: Basilico Moskow, Jodice , Collezzione Reggio-Emilia (Ghirri's)

Remarks on Mois de la Photo Programme

- There is no blockbuster exhibition

- Lee Miller's Ok but not such a big name

- HCB in America hardly his best work (maybe also loosely related to MdlP)

- Sarah Moon - somebody explain why this is considered one of MdlP top exhibitions

- Many exhibitions hardly correspond to the theme "European photography tradition and transformation", actually rather to American Photography (BNF, Evans, Miller)

- I don't really see anything major or really representing the status of the European cultural production - except for the Dusseldorf gang, who are really establishment now. Add to this a small selection (4) of "Helsinki school" representatives

- The foreign countries cultural center's fare is a bit of a sideshow - maybe the most interesting is the Slovak one

- The MdlP has been trapped by the concomitant French EU Presidency. Hence desperate attempts to link the programme to vague concepts of changing European identities and frontiers disappearing

- The rest is commercial photography with the usual array of minor photo reporters, publicity and fashion photographers or government sponsored

- BNF 70's- nice and well presented, draws from BNF collection and is assembled to illustrate some themes like street photo, snapshot, etc. Also Beaubourg's on experimental photography draws from its collections

- Crypto/sub theme 1 - the 30's-40's (Miller's war works, Solomon, Bishof, parts of BDIC at Invalides, 30's satirical photomontages, maybe also the Kristallnacht exhibition at the Shoah memorial)

- Crypto/sub theme 2 - travel and landscape photography

- Crypto/sub theme 3 - Cityscapes and urbanism

Avant-garde russe au Musée Maillol

Une grande exposition titrée “L’avant-garde russe dans la collection Costakis” est accueilli par le musée Maillol à Paris du 13 novembre au 2 mars 2009 couvrant la période de l’art russe depuis la fin du 19^e siècle jusqu’aux années 1930. La prestigieuse collection Costakis, comptant 1300 œuvres, est la plus importante au monde consacrée à l’abstraction russe et sera présentée pour la première fois en France. A travers plus de 200 œuvres, essentiellement des peintures à l'huile, des aquarelles, des gouaches et des dessins, le Musée Maillol présentera l'essentiel et le plus surprenant de cette collection, tant les œuvres des artistes les plus célèbres tels Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Tatline, Popova, que les œuvres d'artistes méconnus, tels Kudriashev, Redko, Anders, Nikritin. Cette collection privée, aujourd'hui conservée au Musée d'Art Contemporain de Thessalonique et à la Galerie Tretyakov à Moscou, a été patiemment rassemblée par Georges Costakis, chauffeur de l’ambassade de Grèce à Moscou, amateur éclairé et passionné de l’art.

(source: Press release Musee Maillol)