Je Suis Charlie !

Charlie Hebdo 

3 million copies ready for publication

"All is forgiven."

 "Je Suis Charlie" — "I Am Charlie."

Muhammad is forgiving the cartoonists for lampooning him !

Art Beijing's 2010 Contemporary Art Fair to kick off

Art Beijing's 2010 Contemporary Art Fair and 2010 Photo Beijing will open their doors tomorrow in time for the May Day holiday with organizers promising the largest and most varied events yet. (File Photo)

By Leng Mo

BEIJING, April 28 -- Art Beijing's 2010 Contemporary Art Fair and 2010 Photo Beijing will open their doors tomorrow in time for the May Day holiday with organizers promising the largest and most varied events yet.

Now in its fifth year, Art Beijing aims at bringing together Asia and the world's best art galleries and artists in a variety of platforms and this year's contemporary fair and photo exhibition are already shaping up to be a success.

The contemporary fair will occupy an unprecedented 13,000-square-meter space and provide an ideal environment to view and buy the current trends in contemporary art, according to Art Beijing's executive director Dong Mengyang.

Attendees will have the chance to view and purchase works by some of China's leading contemporary artists including Wang Huaiqing, Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun, alongside their Western counterparts.

"This year's art fair is the most diverse and international art fair Beijing has seen to date," Dong told the Global Times.

A total number of 70 exhibitors from 18 countries and regions are taking part, almost double last year, signifying a strong recovery after the financial crisis, Dong said.

According to Dong, all 70 exhibitors are leading galleries from Asia and the world and are bringing their very best to the fair.

"We participated in Art Beijing since it first launched in 2005 and it didn't disappoint. We brought five pieces this year and hope to achieve a 50% sales increase from last year," said Fu Chen from Pekin Fine Arts Gallery.

Tokyo Galley+BTAP is bringing works by top Japanese artists Shinjiro Okamoto and Suzuki Hiroyuki, and Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang.

"With 60 years experience, our gallery has participated in Art Basel and many other world's top art fairs," Zhang Jun from Tokyo Galley+BTAP told the Global Times, adding that they expected excellent sales in Beijing.

London's Olyvia Fine Art Gallery is bringing the best of their collection including Marc Quinn's Sravasti River Delta.

As well as the exhibition, Art Beijing is encouraging everyone to enjoy the event by holding a public art display outside the main fair. A number of works by top international and Chinese artists will be on display, including Sui Jianguo, Peng Hongzhi, B?rd Breivik and Saint Clair Cemin.

"Public art is an important form of the contemporary, to support both Chinese and international works, as well as letting the public have a direct engagement with the art world," Dong commented.

Art Beijing's Photo Beijing 2010 will run concurrently to the contemporary fair with this year's event involving over 20 embassies and cultural centers in Beijing.

"Photo Beijing is a good platform for us to introduce Italian artists to China and the world," commented Luo Rui from the Italian Culture Center. "We are happy to have Alessandro Rolandi's exhibition in Photo Beijing," he added.

Rolandi is an Italian artist based in Beijing who took photos on his mobile phone and has edited them with words and text.

Dutch artist Kristiina Koskentola was invited by the Netherlands' embassy in Beijing to take part in the event, her installation Urbanization Gargoyles will be on display. The work is a wall built from construc-tion materials with small sculptures of dead dogs representing gargoyles.

"It investigates the interconnections between urbanizing Beijing, its socio-political context and the loss of traditional values, environment and social conditions due to rapid urbanization," Koskentola told the Global Times.

Fashion photography has its own section in Photo Beijing with several leading publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Vision and Photographers' Companion contributing works.

Art Beijing 2010 Contemporary Art Fair and Photo Beijing 2010 will be held at the National Agriculture Exhibition Center in Beijing for VIP viewing on April 29 and to the public from April 30 to May 2.

(Source: Global Times)

Editor: Jiang Yuxia
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/culture/2010-04/28/c_13270604.htm

TATTOOED

Tattooed

Spring 2010 - China

Han Bing Kang Jian-Fei, Installation, 2009. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of Yun Gallery. In the second half of the 19th century, due to the rise of the Industrial Revolution, traditional handicraft manufacturers in Europe were outraced by factories, where large machines were used. Crude machines mass-produced cheap but less-qualified products. People who were obsessed with fine and exquisite handwork became worried that traditional techniques and creativity might vanish someday, and a number of artists and intellectuals started looking for a style that was unique. And the Arts and Crafts Movement began in England. John Ruskin (1819-1900, British writer, artist, and critic), a chief spokesman of the movement, made his efforts in The Stones of Venice linking the ethical and social wellness of a country to the quality of its architectures and art. He believed that the techniques and creativity of mankind should be respected and highlighted in a healthy society. Ruskin’s idea projected a far-reaching influence then, and even went beyond the domain of art. He was depicted by Tolstoy as one of the few who thought with their souls. Wilde and Proust were also passionate about Ruskin’s philosophy with the latter translating his works into French. As a prelude to Modernism, the movement had a sweeping impact on the Art Nouveau, De Stijl in the Netherlands, and the Vienna Secession; the result was the birth of Bauhaus, a new school of artistic design that had a profound influence on people’s life in terms of architecture, industrial design, modern theater, and fine arts. In fact, the world today is no different. The booming electronic and information technology makes it difficult for people to feel anything is worth cherishing. It used to take us a long time to pose in front of the camera before a picture was taken, and all that is replaced with an easy succession of snapshots. Music and movies, old or new, are downloaded at ease, and those old collections become anything but precious. Time progresses at an unpredictable pace. It seems that it is jeering at people who are nostalgic: you have nothing but a mobile phone that would soon become out of style and some sentiment that may be gone any moment. There is nothing revolutionary in a conversation with Kang Jian-Fei. Nor will you feel bitter radical emotions when seeing his new works. He seems to quietly put forward a question without aiming at IKEA or any other industrial or electronic products. Even his attitude in raising the question is not aggressive at all, but with certain warmth and tenderness. The materials employed in his new works are no longer two-dimensional; he uses products of IKEA, a famous international brand. He engraves images and words on daily consumer goods with his sophisticated and expressive gravers, endowing them with an unexpected poetic quality. Since it was founded in 1948, the Sweden-based IKEA has grown into a global manufacturer with approximately 300 stores in 36 different countries. The largest consumer group is located in Germany, a country smaller than Sichuan Province, where there are 45 IKEA stores. Apparently the simple, practical aspect of IKEA products appeal to Germans. The hot business also gives rise to acrimonious jealousy and there goes the German interpretation of “IKEA”: Idiot Kaufen Eben Alles! (Idiots Buys It All!) People often go crazy shopping at IKEA: you start out wanting to get a quilt, and then you get some covers, then you get some pillow cases, some candles, some plates, some photo frames, and then an ice cream and a pack of Swedish meat balls on your way out. When you’re ready to leave the store, you realize all you really needed was a cup. Why do people become idiots and want to buy whatever there is when they go into IKEA? Actually IKEA is a beneficiary of the Arts and Crafts Movement. By taking the advantages and abandon the shortcomings of industrialization, IKEA produces a variety of goods in high quality at lower costs, combined with modern design concepts. The famous Bauhaus design of Freischwinger, a type of chair without rear legs, has been one of the best-selling products of IKEA. IKEA’s machine-based production and plate-type packaging help reduce labor and transportation costs. There are two sides to everything, however. What is good may become bad someday and vice versa. At a time of excessive consumption, the environment is seriously damaged and environmental protection has been an important matter in every country. Cheap goods from mass production will generate more garbage and a lot more energy would be consumed in dealing with recyclable waste. Kang Jian-Fei is good at bidirectional thinking. He is an idealist without renouncement of the world and a materialist who attaches equal importance to spiritual growth. He acknowledges that mass production may result in cheap, democratic art, but at the same time regards mass production as a threat to creativity and individuality. Engraving and mechanical manufacturing are different in approach but similar in purpose. Both can be duplicated in a large number for wide distribution and are relatively less expensive. The new works by Kang Jian-Fei are still traditional in techniques: the engravings on chopping boards are produced with techniques similar to those of traditional wood carving. What distinguishes Kang’s engravings is a way of thinking. The individuality and humanity of the artist becomes more outstanding in Kang’s work than in traditional art. With his new works, Kang Jian-Fei seems to be asking: shall we slow down a little in a time of great changes and think about how we should balance creation and life? Tattoos are popular in both the East and the West. Young people object to uniformity, hoping to be unique and different. Kang’s engravings are like tattoos, and these “tattoos” are different from the ones we usually see; there is no defiance in these works. He transforms life with traditional wood carving in a good will and in a constructive manner, not rebelling against mechanical products that are “free of souls,” but subtly endowing them with grace.

Whitney Biennial  

Josephine Meckseper, Mall of America, 2009, video transfered to DVD, color, sound, 12 minutes, 48 seconds. COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST/COURTESY VG BILD-KUNST, BONN

A review of "2010"

by Barbara Pollack

This year's biennial, titled simply "2010," is concise, elegant, and far tamer than previous editions of the show, which purports to take the temperature of American art every two years. The geographic constraint has generated increasing confusion in recent years, as so many artists now move all over the world, rarely confining themselves to their country of origin. In their efforts to navigate around that issue, curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari decided to focus on artists whose works reflect the American spirit at this moment in history. Their search resulted in a succinct gathering of 55 artists, many of whose artworks convey both the high hopes that surrounded the last presidential election and the diminished expectations following the downturn in the economy.
Suburbia, once seen as the fulfillment of the American Dream, is here presented as a setting fraught with disappointments. Photographer James Casebere, with his brightly colored pictures of models of suburban developments, captures the vacuity of these builder-designed communities, while Maureen Gallace, in her modest paintings of empty summer homes, reflects on the disconsolate landscape produced by the deflated real-estate market. In one room, Jessica Jackson Hutchins's Couch for a Long Time (2009)—a sofa laminated with newspaper pages and topped with sloppily glazed ceramic pots—faces off against Jim Lute's Tool (2009), a paranoiac abstract painting in which a man's face peers out from behind a surface of swirls. The energy of this warped rec room is intensified by Nina Berman's 2006 series of photographs of a severely disfigured ex-marine preparing for his upcoming wedding.
With the contraction of the art market over the past two years, many artists have turned inward and recommitted themselves to experimentation, a trend the curators describe in the catalogue as "personal modernism." This attitude is best demonstrated in a roomful of Charles Ray's joyous flower paintings—a departure from his usual funny, hyperrealist sculptures. The exhibition reflects a return to painting by many artists. Several explore new approaches to minimalism, such as Tauba Auerbach, with large-scale two-dimensional depictions of folded and creased canvases; Roland Flexner, with miniature Sumi-ink splatters; and Sarah Crowner, with stark black-and-white sewn-together canvas triangles. R. H. Quaytman contributes a beautiful and challenging series of conceptually based paintings with optically engaging patterning. Meanwhile, stalwart minimalist-colorist Suzan Frecon presents two huge and subtle architectonic canvases.
Although many of these gestures may feel modest and circumspect, as if the artists were resisting making a heroic statement, spectacle is certainly not absent from the show-witness Pae White's monumental tapestry Smoke Knows (2009), a stunning composition of plumes of smoke that greets visitors as they step onto the third floor.
But the biennial most comes into focus when it returns to the theme of the American spirit. In one room, the Bruce High Quality Foundation, an artist's collective that stages Happenings and other activities, offers We Like America and America Likes Us (2010)—an actual 1960s white Cadillac hearse with video clips depicting the American landscape, from movies such as North by Northwest and Ghostbusters, playing on its windshield. Nearby, Lorraine O'Grady pairs portraits of Charles Baudelaire with pictures of Michael Jackson in her work The First and the Last of the Modernists (2010). Among the video artists grouped on the third floor, Josephine Meckseper stands out with her Mall of America (2009), a chilling presentation of the largest shopping mall in the country. At one point, the camera zooms in on a television screen in a store window playing the action movie Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag, a Hollywood version of the war in Iraq. Probably the most topical work in the show, and certainly the least forgettable, is Stephanie Sinclair's 2005 series of documentary photographs of women who have set themselves on fire in Afghanistan.
For the first time, women make up more than half of the participating artists in the biennial, but none of them are using this opportunity to promote an aggressively feminist agenda. Instead, the artists here—both men and women—usually take a more subtle approach, addressing American society without attacking any particular political leader or belaboring any issue. Some observers might mistake this for apathy. But actually, this biennial, while low-key, is almost Whitmanesque in allowing so many artists to present themselves as complicated, idiosyncratic individuals. Impeccably installed, giving all the artists plenty of room to express themselves, this exhibition offers an optimistic vision of American art. Despite the problems in the world, evidenced in a few of the artworks, nuance and metaphor characterize many of the pieces here, making 2010 a very good year for the Whitney Biennial.
The Whitney Biennial is at the Whitney Museum in New York through May 30.
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Telescope Takes a Long View, to London

Rob Bennett for The New York Times

In the wee hours of Tuesday, a giant drill pokes up from the depths in Dumbo (or does it?).

By MELENA RYZIK

Published: May 21, 2008

Before sunrise on Tuesday morning, a strange sight began to appear on Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn: a six-foot-tall metal drill bit seemed to emerge from the wooden pier, covered in genuine East River mud and revolving slowly beneath the glow of the Manhattan skyline. On Wednesday it will grow into a 12-foot-tall industrial-looking behemoth erupting just in front of the quaint Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. And on Thursday? Imagine an enormous brass and wood telescope, 37 feet long by 11 feet tall, connected to a mirrored dome, like a child’s drawing of something that will see into the future. Voilà: the Telectroscope will have materialized.

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Related

telectroscope.net

From the Archives of The New York Times:

"That New Telectroscope," Apr. 3, 1898

"Avers He Is An Inventor," Jan. 12, 1902

Matthew Andrews

Paul St George, a British artist whose Telectroscope will allow New Yorkers and Londoners to wave to one another.

A fanciful device born equally of history and imagination, it will visually connect New Yorkers to people in London, where an identical scope will sit on the banks of the Thames in the shadow of Tower Bridge. Spectators who step right up will have a real-time, life-size view across the pond 24 hours a day, until June 15, thanks to ... no spoilers, yet. (The queue will generally be first come first served, but to make an appointment to connect with a friend in London, visit telectroscope.net.)

The Victorian-looking contraption is the invention of Paul St George, a 53-year-old artist based in London — or, if you believe the gadget’s supposed history, of his great-grandfather Alexander Stanhope St George. According to his very own fake Wikipedia entry, Alexander (born July 8, 1848; died Oct. 12, 1917) was “a British inventor and researcher” who came up with a feasible design for a device to connect places on opposite sides of the world visually through a very long tunnel, and even began digging under the Atlantic to make his creation work. According to Paul St George — well, all of this is according to Paul St George.

And some of it is true, sort of. Mr. St George did have a relative named Alexander — his grandfather, a tailor. The extra generation was added, as was the Stanhope; it’s the name of a type of magnifying lens. And the Telectroscope is a real 19th-century creation — sort of. It was written about, Mr. St George said, by a reporter who misheard a story about an electroscope, a device used to measure electrical current.

The apocryphal 19th-century account of this futuristic, far-seeing invention that worked on telegraph wires drew the attention of Mark Twain, who wrote about the Telectroscope around the turn of the last century. Several other publications — including scientific journals and The New York Times — followed suit, and a century before the Internet, a meme was born.

Fast-forward to about five years ago. Mr. St George, a fan of public art and projects that play with scale — his other work includes “Minumentals,” well-known monumental sculptures recreated in centimeters — started thinking about the childhood notion of digging through the earth and reaching the opposite end of the globe.

He said he was quite taken “with the idea that if you just had a hole in the ground, and you’re looking down, you’d see up because the person you’d see is on the other side of the world,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in London. And since he studies 19th-century chronophotography — sometimes called precinema or pre-cinematography — for his day job as a professor of animation at London Metropolitan University, he knew where (and when) to begin looking for model machinery.

But Mr. St George realized the project was too big for him to undertake alone. Two years ago he was introduced to the British arts organization Artichoke, known for bringing the Sultan’s Elephant, a 42-ton mechanical animal, for a walkabout in London in May 2006.

“Many, many people were knocking our door down after the elephant,” said Nicky Webb, a co-founder of Artichoke. Though the organization didn’t know Mr. St George’s work, the theatricality and playfulness of the idea appealed to its members immediately, Ms. Webb said. “Hilariously,” she added, “we thought it would be quite easy to do.”

It wasn’t. The project, which was underwritten by British government grants and private sponsorship, cost £400,000 (about $787,000). As a memento and to help offset the costs, Mr. St George designed a $320 limited-edition “minumental” Telectroscope, complete with a Stanhope lens. (Using the real Telectroscope is free in New York, £1 in London.)

Mr. St George visited the United States for the first time last fall. The waterfront sites were chosen for their iconic vistas of the cities; that the project could be timed to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge this week was icing. (“We’re looking forward to seeing whether we can see the fireworks down the Telectroscope from London,” Ms. Webb said.)

Katie Dixon, the director of planning and development in arts and culture at the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, which helped facilitate the installation, has already made an appointment to wave to London friends via the Telectroscope. “Projects like this give people the opportunity to experience their everyday paths in different ways,” she said. “It’s just the kind of public art we want to see more of in the area.”

Skip to next paragraph

Related

telectroscope.net

From the Archives of The New York Times:

"That New Telectroscope," Apr. 3, 1898

"Avers He Is An Inventor," Jan. 12, 1902

On Monday night and Tuesday morning, Peter Kohlmann, an event producer whose credits include the Millennium celebration in Times Square, supervised a crew of 15 as they assembled the drill; by 4 a.m. on Tuesday they were “dressing it,” as Mr. Kohlmann said — piling rocks and dirt around the base to make it appear as if the drill had just burst forth from below. For the time being, the site is surrounded by metal gates and yellow caution tape; when the Telectroscope finally takes its place, by dawn on Thursday, it will be watched 24 hours a day by a security guard and a staff member to explain how it works and give the invented back story.

“The interesting thing about it is, it’s almost true,” Mr. St George said. “There are many tunnels underneath London. It’s totally imaginable — at least to me it is — that one could find a number of tunnels and connect them to Brooklyn.”

In this case (spoiler time!) technology supplanted imagination: the Telectroscope, whose frame of vision is about six feet in diameter, is linked into existing fiber-optic networks. Mr. St George hopes that people will use his device in surprising ways — to hold dance-offs, say, or propose marriage via placards. (The Telectroscope has no audio component “because I thought then people would just stand still and use it like a telephone,” he said.)

Mostly, though, Mr. St George is charmed by the circuitous nature of public imagination. Much the same way that comic book tales of space travel helped people accept Sputnik, he said, the Twain story and other accounts of the Telectroscope helped spur an appetite for technology that didn’t exist yet, like TV and the Internet.

Now, he said, “I’m hoping people will find other inventions that could’ve been, or were almost, and think about completing those.”

.

IN THE AIR

Correggio plays football This is the fight to the end at the head of the Italian League 1: the Milan AC team beat the Inter and the suspense is at its climax. Will the AS Roma join Berlusconi's boys in first place? At the bottom of the classification, the FC Parma seems to haved saved the skin off its players' backs by beating Genoa 1-0. Is this little miracle due to the striker Lucarelli, who put in a goal at the 13th minute? Not at all, the hero of this lucky Sunday, May 4 is Corregg io. He is not the allenatore (the trainer) nor the portiere (the goal keeper) but a painter. Yes, Correggio, the one who painted the nude sfumati, the delicate necks of the pensive cherubs! Correggio won a football game! In any case that is the conclusion reached by the organizers of the retrospective dedicated to the painter from the Emilia region that will open on 20 September. In order to diversify the advertising media, they printed the poster of the exhibition on the players' shirts. T hey affirm this is the first time a great master of the Renaissance comes down in this manner to the field. It is not a bad idea, after all. Why not a Warhol exhibit in the locker rooms? Or photos by Bettina Rheims in the Kop stand at the Parc des Princes stadium? In face of the violence in the stadiums, let us demand art!

MUSEUMS

Lisbon, new capital of the Orient LISBON – The closing of the Kwok-On museum in Paris a few years ago had not gone by unnoticed. And where did its beautiful collection of Oriental puppets go? We have had the answer for some time now and we can go check our information: it was all taken to the Museu do Oriente, the new Portuguese institution that will open on 9 May in a renovated building in the dock area of Lisbon. Next to the Kwok-On fund – the aforementioned puppets as well as porcelains, sculpted heads and music instruments – the museum has an important fund on the Portu guese presence in the Orient (a theme that recently nourished an exhibition at Bozar, in Brussels). It will be exhibited by rotation, the first show being dedicated to Asian masks. The opening week will offer a program filled with concerts, ballets and Japanese movies. Le Museu do Oriente, dependent on the Fundação do Oriente, will open on 9 May on Avenida de Brasilia, Doca de Alcantara Know more

EXHIBITIONS

How to give Michelangelo a face FLORENCE – He is somehow the Salinger of the Renaissance: Michelangelo did not like to be represented. We have very few self-portraits of the artist, aside from a few appearances under the traits of someone else (saint Bartholomew in The last Judgment at the Sistine Chapel or Nicodeme in the Pietà at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo). It is just as rare to have descriptions by other artists. Casa Buonarroti, the family house built by one of his descendants in the first half of the XVIIth century, presents an obviously concise e xhibition on the difficult theme. Next to the four pieces that are a part of the collection – a medal by Leone Leoni, two paintings by Giuliano Bugiardini and Jacopino del Conte and a bronze bust by Daniele da Volterra – we can admire the fiery Michelangelo at 23 in a Roman engraving or the artist in his sixties in a watercolor by Portuguese artist Francisco de Hollanda. Federico Zuccari represented him observing his own brother at work and Van Dyck recreated him by memory, fifty years after his death. To find this star who carefully avoided all spotlights, thera are a few group portraits to be seen elsewhere, in particular the frescoes by Vasari or Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura at the Vatican. Il volto di Michelangelo at Casa Buonarotti, from 8 May to 30 July 2008 Know more

Loth, a German Caravaggio? MUNICH – We know his French emulators, from Georges de La Tour to Valentin de Boulogne, or his Italian companions, such as Battistello. On the other hand we know nothing, or very little, on the influence Caravaggio had in Germany. The Alte Pinakothek sheds light on an artist long forgotten, Ulrich Loth (1599-1662). He was mostly active in Munich, where he contributed to decorate numerous churches. A four-year study trip to Italy had a great influence on him and after that he completed many commissions for Maximilian I of Bavaria, in particular for historical scenes. The altarpieces and portraits assembled here show how the lessons given by Caravaggio on light or the realism of the characters combined with a baroque sensitivity inherited from Rubens to produce a «militant» painting in favor of the Catholic Counter-Reform. Ulrich Loth, between Caravaggio and Rubens at the Alte Pinakothek, from 8 May to 7 September 2008. Know more

Steinberg, orchestra-cartoonist PARIS – Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) is an institution: six decades of good and loyal services as the star cartoonist in another institution, the most stylish American magazine, The New Yorker. The exhibition at the Cartier-Bresson foundation (Steinberg was a friend of the photographer's, whom he frequently spent time with from 1947 to his death) gives us the opportunity to see a part of this wonderful, forever funny production – drawings for smart people according to the an appropriate expression well chosen by a commentator. It also illustrates his nomadic life – born in Romania, his years of architecture studies in Italy (and the first drawings published in the antifascist press), his settling in New York in 1941 after waiting for a visa in Santo-Domingo – and his artistic activity aside from his illustrations. Steinberg made masks from brown paper bags, collages (among them a famous one on the walls of the Maeght gallery in 1966), portraits from finger prints, was also a scenographer… His great number of interests made him -as he himself said- an orchestra director more than a «painter painting». Saul Steinberg, Illuminations at the Fondation Cartier-Bresson, until 27 July 2008 The website of the Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation

The website of the Saul Steinberg Foundation

ARTIST OF THE WEEK

Richard Serra under the vaults of the Grand Palais Courtesy Ministère de la Culture / Heymann Renoult

Richard Serra weighs it on PARIS – The first edition of the Monumenta event, dedicated in 2007 to Anselm Kiefer, had ended with a very good level of attendance – 135 000 visitors in 5 weeks. Just as many are expected for the second edition. Richard Serra, the sculptor who fancies monumental sized works, who drew a «Promenade» under the vaults of the Grand Palais, made of large volumes of steel, will be the star. The California artist, who last year enjoyed a retrospective at the MoMA in New York, is also in the limelight in Spain: the

Reina Sofia museum, that had lost one of his pieces – a surrealist exploit if one simply considers the 38 tons it weighs - Equal-Parallel / Guernica-Bengasi, has agreed to a reedition. To coincide with Monumenta, the sculpture in the form of parenthesis that Serra had made for his exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 1983, Clara-Clara, has been set up again in the Tuileries Gardens. Monumenta 2008 at the Grand Palais, from 7 May to 15 June 2008. Know more

BOOKS

Parr, a world apart In the sixties a pioneering collection of small, original, well-written books on travels published by Le Seuil was named "Petite planète" ("Small World"). Martin Parr took up this title, undoubtedly not aware of the filiation. According to the preface it was Henri Cartier Bresson who used this expression when visiting an exhibit by the British photographer. What ever the origin, it is definitely a reduced world, like in miniature, that transcends from these photographs: he shows the erasing of local distinctive signs in all venues touched by massive tourism . Everywhere one sees the same clothes, the same T-shirts with the stupid prints, the same advertising. The worst part is probably something else: the visitor -one does not dare say the traveler-is usually a group animal, has an empty look (or frightened when a native holds him too close), arms dangling (or busy taking the enth useless photograph). Even if we have often seen them, these shots always make us smile at our own ridiculous attitudes. We can regret though that the critical aspect is so reduced : aside from the subjective preface by Geoff Dyer and the cryptic captions, there is no text nor biography. Petite Planète, photographs by Martin Parr, Hoëbeke publishing house, 2008, 96 p., 38 €, ISBN : 9782-84230-319-8.

IN BRIEF

BASEL-While Samuel Keller, director of the Basel Fair, gets ready to leave the stage (he will preside from now on at the Beyeler Foundation), it seems even more difficult to find him a successor than it was believed. Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, who had been named artistic director at the beginning of the year, has just resigned unexpectedly, a month before the opening of the next edition. Know more

BARCELONA-The Loop fair, dedicated to contemporary video art, will be held from 8 to 10 May in the Ramblas Catalonia hotel. Some forty international galleries will take part. Know more

FONTENAY-The water ram of the forge of the abbey at Fontenay, dating back to the XIIIth century, was rebuilt by the students of various European technical highschools. It will be inaugurated on 9 May. Know more

JOUY-EN-JOSAS - Les Environnementales, a biennial on contemporary art dedicated to landscapes, will hold its 5th edition from 13 May to 21 July in the Tecomah park of the chamber of commerce and industry. Know more

NEW YORK - A new record price has been set on 6 May for a painting by Monet: Pont de chemin de fer à Argenteuil was sold at Christie’s for $37 million. Know more

NEW YORK- The International Fine Art Fair, with some fifty international galleries (among them Aaron, Bérès, Boulakia and Taménaga from Paris), will be held from 9 to 14 May at the Armory. Know more

VILLANDRY-The castle of Villandry is enriched by a new composition, the Sun garden. Designed by landscape artist Louis Benech and botanical artist Alix de Saint Vernant, it is inspired from the plans published in 1924 by Joachim Carvallo, the creator of the gardens. Know more

Cold Bare Bums for Global Warming

Nearly 600 naked people braved the cold on the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland for the New York photographer Spencer Tunick recently. 600 people may not sound like much when compared to the amount of people that got naked for Tunick in Mexico, but the weather was probably a little more bearable in Mexico too!

Spencer Tunick and Greenpeace teamed up to make a point about the vulnerability of the environment and people.

Greenpeace says "Without clothes, the human body is vulnerable, exposed, its life or death at the whim of the elements. Global warming is stripping away our glaciers and leaving our entire planet vulnerable to extreme weather, floods, sea-level rise, global decreases in carrying capacity and agricultural production, fresh water shortages, disease and mass human dislocations." Greenpeace

Greenpeace has more information on the day, along with a short video here. There's more info on Climate Change here.
from art news blog