FINISSAGE @ La B.A.N.K // Julien Carreyn - Punitions cannibales
October 19th, 2007La B.A.N.K. gallery,
Deborah Zafman
September 15th, 2007Deborah inaugurated her new gallery space 3-5 passage gravelliers in the 3rd arrondissement with a grand party on Saturday 15 september. The event that took place in the courtyard and inside was memorable by its unique location which took a while finding, in a neighborhood now studded with an increasing amount of art galleries, removed from the “hub†of parisian gallery circuit historically pegged around the rue de Seine, in Saint Germain des prés, and rue du faubourg Saint Honroré, avenue Matignon, in the chic 8th arrondissement.
Here, not far from the affluent Marais, she has opened a space large enough to be able to expose great artists with pomp and glamour. On the white walls still smelling of fresh paint, where some excellent young artists, as well as some established classics, like Maurice Roder’s 1956 painting of herings, called “Harengsâ€. The fish on a table are painted in a realistic style rather like a Caravaggio with a flair of nouveau.
Most of her cotoirie of young painters have provided work done this year, of which Marcos Carrasco’s “Habeas Corpus†stands out with the Chilean painter exposing a wild orgy scene in a Bruegelesque style on a large canvas. A quiet chaos filled with sex and emotion.
Pascal Pillard “Lapin à l’avant†is perhaps one of his best paintings on three panels stacked vertically, a mixture of joyous colors and kid-like prank, a remarkable impression of euphoria.
“The bread of life in time of death†by Delfine and Delacroix, Hans Gissingen’s photographs, as well as her other paintings are worth passing by and buying.
Excellent was also “De-composition†- vegetables bought at Rungis that morning laid out on a baby grand piano, an organic installation - of Angnieska Dellfina who walked around like a star of a Fellini movie with her self-made black dress revealing her doubly pierced belly-button inside a horizontal rectangle framed in silver. She also provided a still life photograph “Vanitas†with a technique called “lenticolorâ€.
Banquet is a video installation that takes place in a small booth, where you watch a vertically placed screen and fiddle with japanese food over screens set underneath a table.
Nearly at the finish, when the dinner is being prepared grilling a dozen hens in a rotating stove underneath surrounded by Dell flat screens, arrive Lynn Cohen-Solal, Deputy mayor from the Vth arrondissement, with her husband, eager to reach out and propose their new political vision in a world of art.
For all her work and dedication to art, her intuition and selection, it is clear that Deborah Zafman is an important new player in the parisian art market.
Galerie Deborah Zafman opening new space
September 5th, 2007Bacchanale pataphysique. Galerie Deborah Zafman.
Shelomo Selinger
July 13th, 2007A visit with Shelomo Selinger never leaves you indifferent. There are always new sculptures to discover, new light shining both from within these sculptures and from without, the sky that is today blue like an ocean on a sunny day.
The Titan I call him for he reminds of Michelangelo Buonarotti when he sculpted his slaves.
Shelomo steps out from behind his latest “discovery†whose name he hasn’t found yet, but it is hope and the woman you would love to embrace, both mother and lover, tender and loving.
Shelomo is bare-chested and covered by sweat. His mallet and chisels are in a bucket, yet he wanders around his creation wondering when he should stop. The moment when the figures inside his wooden sculpture come alive. Alive they are already and the small finishing touches will probably occur before his departure to Israel, in a week.
The sculpture will then rest in his atelier, waiting for his return, when the final polish will turn it into the goddess of faith, truth, love and generosity. Or so we hope.
Pierre-August Renoir
July 4th, 2007Pierre-Auguste Renoir is for today’s public - even those amateurs with little knowledge or art and artists - the Master of Impressionism and his paintings are not only valued at astronomical prices, but also hang in some of the greatest museums and galleries the world over.
Renoir was born in Limoges, in the center of France, on the 25th of February 1841 and died in 1919 at Cagnes, in the south of France. His talent was quickly recognized and proven when he started working in a pottery factory in Limoges painting the decoration of their excellent pottery.
He later studied in an art school and came to Paris during the time when upheaval was in the air, a war was taking place, the commune nearly took over, and he was nearly thrown into the river suspected of being a spy while painting on the quai of the Seine, had not a friend recognized the painter and saved his life for posterity.
Most of his inspiration came from visiting the Louvre and studying the great masters. His recognition, however, took a while to come. Yet he befriended the Bernheim brothers who had started a gallery in Paris and thus his relationship with them lasted to his death - and one may state well beyond.
It took the decedents of Bernheim-Jeune, Michel and Guy-Patrice Dauberville, over 20 years to work on the catalogue raisonné of Renoir, which carries the legitimate imprint of serious work, since most of Renoir’s paintings at one point where at the gallery.
The forword of the catalogue explains the reason for this laborious and passionate work of research:
When we decided to start the preparation of our Catalogue Raisonné of PierreÂAuguste Renoir’s works, an art historian had long since begun a similar book. He published the first volume of his Catalogue Raisonné at the beginning of the 1970s, against the wishes of Renoir’s heirs. Not being totally satisfied with the work of this art historian, our family felt it had to take up the challenge and prepare another catalogue raisonné of this great artist’s work, friend of our grand-parents, Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune who were actively involved in the promotion of this Master of Impressionism as early as the end of the XIXth century. May we note in passing that Bernheim-Jeune is the last of Renoir’s three great art dealers still continuing their activity.
The preface by Jacques Renoir is followed by memories of Jean Renoir, Jean Dauberville and Henry Dauberville, who all published works on Renoir.
The Bernheims were sincerely sorry to observe that Renoir’s condition was getting worse. ln 1912, during our stay in Paris, they decided to bring in a doctor of their choice. He was a truly great doctor. To find him, they had to make expensive enquiries all over Europe. He was their first choice after a rigorous qualifying exam. They had found him in Vienna. My father liked this doctor because he was lively, had small intelligent eyes, and did not understand a single thing about painting. The doctor promised that in the space of a few weeks he would revive the use of the paralysed legs. My father smiled, not incredulously, but philosophically. He already knew. But it was such a dream: to be able to wander in the country once again looking for the motif, moving around the canvas, with movement providing support for reverie. He promised to follow the doctor’s prescriptions without question. A fortifying diet was ordered that performed wonders.
He enjoyed teasing people and when Ambroise Vollard spent whole days with him in his villa “Les Collettes” in Cagnes, Renoir was happy to use him as his punching bag. Poor Vollard wanted the great artist to paint his portrait above all and he did all he could to
implore him, but Renoir did not like painting men. Moreover, Vollard absolutely yearned to have his portrait painted by all the great masters of the century. One day, his patience exhausted, Renoir said:
“Vollard, dress up as a bullfighter, and l’ll do your portrait! … ”
The next day, Vollard found a superb suit at a second-hand clothes dealer’s in Nice, and Renoir, who was a good loser, had to comply.
Renoir was painting a good looking German lady, very fat and with a low neckline. Her husband had been told that Renoir was above all a painter of “nudes” and that, out of all his paintings Renoir’s nudes were the most valued. The rich German financier regretted the fact that his painting would not be one of the master’s most valuable. So during one sitting, he went up to his wife and roughly undid her bodice: a beautiful and heavy breast sprang out. The husband walked over to Renoir and victoriously shouted:
“Paint the breast! … ”
When Renoir was in Naples in the 1880s he was told that Richard Wagner lived there. After quite a lot of complicated steps to obtain consent to paint his portrait, Renoir was finally authorised to do so. He painted two, seeing as the both first one and then the other were not appreciated by the Maestro of The Ring. One of them is in the Musée de l’Opéra the other is in the Jeu de Paume (National Museums).
My parents often spoke to him of this extraordinary meeting culminating point of two supermen encountering each other.
Renoir, with his usual frankness, confessed that the prevailing atmosphere during the sittings was very bad. Wagner was in a bleak mood, doubtless furious at having accepted the inconvenience just for a little-known French painter.
My parents’ friend did not want to take offence, he would have been very happy to paint him in a pleasant atmosphere.
Thanks to this chance meeting, the world possesses two effigies, of the highest quality, both very similar and with only slight variations, where he brilliantly arranges the colors ranging from pearly shades through to sapphire blue.
Wagner’s face is very impressive: it is neither heroic nor poetic, but has the calm and serene look of an old man, with the certitude of a genius who has taken on the form of the old and very human face, in which beauty reveals itself in great calm, of a human being who has filled his message with power.
Renoir hated women who wore make-up. The actress Lantelme, a famous beauty and wife of the very wealthy Edwards, wanted the Master to paint her portrait at any cost. He answered her through intermediaries, saying that she was already painted enough and that he had nothing more to add.
He did not like to give away his works. He was my grandmother’s guest for a month (at the Majorat de Bellune) in Fontainebleau, so that he could paint her two daughters’ portrait. She had to hire a manservant capable of nursing him, for already at that time, in 1901, he was completely paralysed and he was moved around in a wheelchair. My grandmother had organized the weddings of her two daughters on the same day and after the religious ceremony she was shaking hands with everybody when Renoir came and greeted her: “Ah! Mr Pissarro, you have been so generous to the children! Oh, sorry, my dear Renoir, I mistook you for someone else … “.
He had been taught a little lesson and that same evening my grandmother received a delightful painting of a basket of fruit.
Renoir always said: “A painting is something that hears the most nonsense … “.
One cannot imagine the power of his eyes. When he was painting, he would often screw them up to judge the painting’s general effect. His black eyes became so piercing at that point that they were difficult to withstand; it was as if a steel blade was plunging into your eyes. This is something I can still remember even though I was a child when he painted my portrait with my mother in 1910. That incandescent look had the brightness of onyx.
Gabrielle, who nursed him so faithfully and with such devotion, represented his feminine ideal, that is to say model, nurse and guardian angel. Mrs Renoir, after many years, suddenly became jealous of this dear and faithful carer and forced Renoir to dismiss her, which is what he had to do, albeit with a heavy heart, in order to have peace at home.
Lucky enough to have lived a long time, he was dismayed to notice how his nudes had whitened and this is why he began using violently strange red tones (carmine is the color that fades the most quickly) knowing that patina would bring about the desired color with time. This is how he refrained from increasing the number of the whitish nymphs he so disliked.
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Renoir in Fontainebleau
Mike Giant at Magda Danysz gallery
April 14th, 2007Magda Danysz gallery is showing Mike Giant, April 28th: “28 avril 2007 Ã partir de
18h au 78, rue Amelot 75011 paris.”