ABOVE: Detail from Paul Cézanne’s Houses in Provence: The Riaux Valley near L’Estaque(circa 1883). The U.S. National Gallery of Art has announced a Cézanne show for the new year, to celebrate the 100th year since the painter’s death.

Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839. He spent an idyllic French childhood, according to the National Gallery of Art, “lying under great pine trees; exploring the ruins of a Roman aqueduct; swimming and fishing in the River Arc; or climbing the rocky canyons to the Zola Dam.” Then he perfected post-impressionism, painted some stuff, and died in 1906. Instead of waiting 33 years and change to celebrate the bicentennial of little Paul’s Provençal birth, the National Gallery has timed its newly-announced exhibit, “Cézanne in Provence,” to coincide with the somewhat less joyous centenary of the painter’s death (he was found unconscious beside his easel in a field in 1906 and died several days later).

The show will run in Washington from January 29 to May 7, 2006, and then hop the Atlantic to Musée Granet in Provence for a June-September run. It includes more than a hundred oil paintings and watercolours, focusing on the artist’s lifelong traipses around the jolly coastlines, rolling hills, and quaint villages of Provence, the place that gave him life. And later took it. Cosmic.

LINK: National Gallery of Art > Cézanne in Provence press release

ABOVE: The Louvre, left, announced yesterday that Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has donated $20 million to fund construction of an Islamic art wing for the already sprawling Paris museum.

Two posts on the Arab world in two days: civilizations might be clashing elsewhere, but here at ADD it’s like one big Benetton ad, all feel-good inclusion and togetherness. They had that kind of day at the Louvre yesterday, as the museum announced a donation of US$20 million from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, to help build a new wing for Islamic art. The Louvre has some 10,000 pieces of Islamic art in its collection but rarely gets to show them, having cluttered up the place with old paintings already.

Bin Talal is one of the richest men in the world, worth an estimated US$21.5 billion. Given that he’s already ponying up almost a third of the total construction cost of the new galleries, it seems like he could probably pull the extra $47 mil from behind his ear if he wanted to, but perhaps that would be a bit ostentatious (ostentation, of course, being totally foreign to the Saudi royal family). Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti are the primary architects, and their design, like the I.M. Pei pyramid, will partly submerge the structure underground, so as not to disturb the facades of the surrounding Cour Visconti, one of the Louvre’s two main courtyards.

LINK: al Jazeera > Saudi funds Islamic gallery at Louvre

ABOVE: the Ka’abah, the spiritual centre of Islam. German Artist Gregor Schneider’s plan to install a strikingly similar structure in St. Mark’s Square for the Venice Biennale were kiboshed by nervous organizers, fearing violent responses.

We finally read the first satisfactory explanation of the flap at this year’s Venice Biennale over Gregor Schneider’s sculpture, which was rejected by organizers at the last minute with sketchy explanation. Schneider said at the time that it was a political decision to cancel the display, and lo, he was right. The Art Newspaper published recently a look at the controversy over Schneider’s work Cube Venice 2005, which would have been a 50-foot cube draped with black fabric in St. Mark’s Square. In this sense, it would have resembled the Ka’abah, the physical centre of Islam in Mecca.

Fears of a terrorist strike in response to the work—Artforum wouldn’t have hated it that much, would they?—prompted the Biennale organizers to strike the work from their dance card. The part that makes it all so ridiculous, however, is that Schneider apparently did all his homework first, actually sending a colleague to Saudi Arabia to consult imams about the theological dos and don’ts regarding the Ka’abah. And they were totally cool with it, told him that nothing in the Quran forbids reconstructing an imitation Ka’abah in Venice or anywhere else. If only the terrorists could be so accommodating; a U.S. curator, who curiously refused to give a name, said that fundamentalists with bombs would probably not be interested in the finer points of Quranic interpretation, and so Cube Venice 2005 was shelved. It’s a reason. A bit of a cop-out, but it’s a reason.

LINK: The Art Newspaper > Art in the age of global terrorism

ABOVE: a painting from the exhibit “A Creative Merger: Lawyers and Artists.” It depicts lady liberty chained to the walls of a cell, with the infamous silhouette of an Abu Ghraib prisoner in the lower right corner. And it closely involves the Attorney General of California! Outrage!

As a staunch member of the “shameless liberal media,” intent on the “bashing of America” and all she stands for—you’re shocked, shocked!, right?—we must point out this particularly laughable and cripplingly lame effort to counter one exhibit of bad seditious art with a whole truckload of bad patriotic art. Move America Forward, a radical right pentagon-poking fan-club, is outraged at a display of “anti-American” art that was displayed as part of “A Creative Merger: Lawyers and Artists,” at the Calif. DOJ which included things like a painting of a map of the U.S. filled in with the American flag being flushed down a toilet, and which was indirectly supported by the Attorney General of California. Pretty trenchant social commentary, huh?

Well, MAF is mobilized, according to the Sacramento Union: they’ve made an open call for submissions of wholesome, patriotic, military-industrial-complex-appreciating artworks. The whole project really reeks of its own low standards here, we couldn’t really top it: [Quoted from MAF] “No artistic ability required - just put your heart & soul into showing how proud and grateful you are to be an American and to be defended by such an exemplary collection of young men and women serving in our U.S. military.” Then—”here’s the best part!” they burble—they’re going to show off the art at the AG’s office and then mail it all to Iraq…”along with shipments of coffee & cookies!” Huzzah! Get scribblin’, folks! America’s brave soldiers need coffee and cookies way more than a competent president or a coherent foreign policy!

LINK: The Sacramento Union > Patriotic Art Show to Rival Lockyer’s

ABOVE: Detail of Rebecca Belmore’s White Thread (2003). Belmore, a Canadian, and James Luna of California are both aboriginal artists showing work at this year’s Venice Biennale, and both spoke to the Sunday Washington Post.

The Venice Biennale this year includes works by two Aboriginal artists: James Luna, whose installation of Catholic knick-knackery and several performance pieces appears courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and Rebecca Belmore, who has produced a video installation that is projected onto a falling curtain of water in the Canadian pavilion. Both of them chatted for the benefit of yesterday’s Washington Post with Blake Gopnik about their careers as native artists and how their heritage relates to their art. (It does, sometimes.)

The interview touches briefly on Luna and Belmore’s relationship with “traditional” aboriginal artists, who carve dancing walruses out of soapstone or paint shrieking eagles on to pottery; the traditionalists are apparently sometimes intimidated by Luna and Belmore’s aggressively conceptual and obliquely postmodern work, but also appreciate that native art is finally showing up in the pages of Artforum. Luna notes, however, that while his traditionalist acquaintances and colleagues may not be feted at the Venice Biennale, they’re selling a lot more bankable art than he is.

LINK: Washington Post > Indian Artists in Venice: Off the Traditional Path [via ArtsJournal]

ABOVE: details from portraits of Angolan refugees by South African photographer Guy Tillim. Mr Tillim’s work is part of “Africa Remix,” a show on at the Pompidou Centre right now about the emerging contemporary art scene in Africa.

Hey, how ’bout that Live 8? It turned out to be pretty much the square root of dick-all as far as helping Africa was concerned. And now, mere weeks after the 23 hours of terrible music and sanctimonious rock-star ass-kissing that made up the Live 8 experience, the whole thing has vanished off the cultural and political radar as quickly as it came, leaving the wheezing masses of Africa, once again, to their own wretched devices. It’s the same old song. The Christian Science Monitor, however, has found a wee glint of a silver lining, in an article in today’s issue reviewing Africa Remix: L’art contemporain d’un continent (”Contemporary Art of the Continent” for you francophobics), which is showing right now at the Centre Pompidou (”Pompidou Centre”) in Paris (”Paris”).

No tribal masks or mahogany giraffe candleholders here. Naturally, the market for contemporary art is—to put it charitably—underdeveloped in Africa; most of the artists in the show do the bulk of their business in Europe, although they continue to draw inspiration from their native lands. Their work includes all the mod cons, including video, installation, photography, and so on. There’s not much good news from Africa these days, but don’t worry: there’s no shortage of carved tribal masks.

LINK: The Christian Science Monitor > Eye on African Art

[Editor’s note: This is our 100th post—how time flies. To celebrate, have a beer on us*.]
[*buy the beer, and send us the receipt**.]
[**receipts will not be reimbursed.]

ABOVE: works by Avner Bar Hama, a Tel Aviv art professor and sculptor. The current Israeli disengagement plan is inspiring conservative artists like Bar Hama, says the L.A. Times.

If the old adage that pain is good for art holds true, then the rainbow of suffering that is the middle east must be churning out some doozies. The L.A. Times says that the Israeli disengagement plan in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of Jewish settlers are currently being relocated—with varying degrees of resistance—by the Israeli government, has galvanized conservative Jewish artists, who are responding with critical works concerned with themes of home, freedom, and the fickle vagaries of political geography.

Politics aside—we’re just a bunch of WonderBread goyim, after all, unqualified and uninclined to kvetch about the legislative twitches and jerks of God’s Chosen People—there is something curiously stirring about right-wing art, much like finding a Komodo Dragon under your car: rare, kind of mesmerizing, and not totally welcome. The Times says that right-wing artists are getting more recognition as the political landscape churns, noting that Israel is “a country in which culture is dominated by the left.” Uh, dudes: culture is dominated by the left everywhere. That’s why they call it culture. Zing!

LINK: Los Angeles Times > Pro-Settler Israelis Stake Out a Place in Art

ABOVE: Images of Pablo Picasso’s Atelier De Cannes (1958), which is currently for sale at Costco.com for $129,999.99

Pseudorandom bulk retailer Costco has, according to the Wall Street Journal, sold original art works in the past. It started out innocently enough, with some isolated one-time-only sales of fine art prints, with a price ceiling of about $500. Like some perverse gateway drug, this led to sporadic sales of original art by mid-range artists, arranged with a Florida art dealer who acted as broker. Now, apparently, all of Costco’s common sense has gone straight up its nose and it is selling Picasso drawings. On its website. For $130,000. No, wait—it’s $129,999.99. Doesn’t that penny off really make the whole thing seem so much more affordable?

The WSJ, bean-counter that it is, says there’s a good financial reason for dealers to sell through a big-box store that is better known for selling pallet-loads of off-brand frozen fishsticks and discontinued plasma televisions: they don’t expect a big slice of the action. Costco, according to Jim Tutweiler, takes about a 14 per cent markup on sales, compared to legit galleries that can skim as much as half the final selling price. Ateliers De Cannes has been verified and got all its vaccinations from Maya Picasso, the painter’s daughter. “She is the world’s utmost authority,” proclaims Costco.com. Wonder if the Costco Executive Membership 2% kickback applies? That’s about $2,600—an awful lot of fishsticks.

LINK: The Wall Street Journal > No Gallery Needed: How an Art Dealer Sells Picasso Originals at Costco

ABOVE: Details from Cézanne’s Louveciennes (1872), left, and Pissarro’s Louveciennes (1871), both showing now at the Museum of Modern Art.

The New Yorker posted this review of the current “Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne & Pissarro, 1865-1885” exhibit at MoMA a while ago, but we missed it at the time. It hints rather slyly at what must be some slightly tense personnel issues in the museum’s Department of Painting and Sculpture, where Joachim Pissarro, the titular painter’s great-grandson, currently works as a curator. Pissarro The Younger is apparently put in the awkward position of writing enthusiastically in the catalogue about his ancestor’s work, despite the fact that Pissarro’s paintings are clearly and consistently outgunned by Cézanne’s works throughout the show.

Peter Scheldahl notes the show’s similarity to MoMA’s 1989 exhibit “Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism,” in which Braque, like Pissarro in the current exhibit, was forced to be Bob to Picasso’s Bing. MoMA has put up a good online exhibit of the show, illustrating the various technical and stylistic similarities between the two painters, who were friends and often painted scenes side by side, resulting in some strange but fascinating duplicates. Brings to mind that old laundry detergent commercial: “I can’t tell the difference. Can you tell the difference?”

LINK: The New Yorker > Two Views

ABOVE: detail from photographer Spencer Tunick’s Montreal 3 installation of hundreds of naked volunteers outside the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal. Tunick completed his first English shoot on Sunday morning.

Spencer Tunick, the photographer who has built his considerable reputation on photographs of hundreds or thousands of naked subjects posing all together in public urban settings, executed his first such project in England over the weekend. 1,700 people (or 1.7 MegaNudes—1.7 Mn on the Tunick Scale) showed up at 4 AM Sunday morning to take their place as either hill or dale in the Newcastle/Gateshead fleshscape.

Even the most serious arts reporters seem to dissolve like jelly when reporting on Tunick’s work, getting caught up in the breathless giggling that suffuses all the artist’s coverage. And the stories are all about the process of Tunick’s work, obsessed with the logistical and sociological chutzpah it implies, instead of the photos themselves, which are texturally impressive but kind of dull, like a close up of deep shag carpet. And the theme of juxtaposing public and private space—it’s the other crusty old theme that pops up alongside “time” and “memory” in the most listless and paint-by-numbers artists’ statements. Hats (and everything else, apparently) off to Spencer Tunick for his success, but please, let’s giggle quietly.

LINK: BBC News > Hundreds of nudes cross the Tyne

ABOVE: Weeping Woman, an etching by Picasso. Its acquisition was announced by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art yesterday.

Weeping Woman, an etching which is a sort of cousin to Picasso’s famous work Guernica, was acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art recently and unveiled yesterday. The Scotsman has been all over this story, noting that the etching is one of only 15 ever made and is worth roughly £1 million.

The piece was donated to the Gallery by the estate of Joanna Drew, an Edinburgh art doyenne and former director of the Hayward Gallery in London. Apparently, the British government opted to take the painting instead of the inheritance tax it normally levies, and passed it on to the Scottish National Galleries. Weeping Woman will join several other Picasso works already in the SNaGoMA (block that acronym!) collection.

LINK: The Scotsman > £1m etching by Picasso acquired by Scottish gallery

ABOVE: detail from what we think is Cao Fei’s video work Hip Hop (2003) in which passersby on a city street are asked to do spontaneous dance moves. The work is part of the Mori Art Museum’s “Follow Me!” show, on right now in Tokyo.

Like everyone else these days, we’re cuckoo for everything Chinese right now. But what caught our eye about this review of “Follow Me!: Chinese Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium” is that the review is a) from the Japan Times, and b) the show is in Japan. Now, China and Japan aren’t enjoying the most harmonious of diplomatic relations lately, what with all the accusations of war crimes and the smashing of embassy windows in Beijing. Obviously, the show in question, on now at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, was planned well before all that revisionist textbook ruckus a few months ago, but it still strikes us as odd. Still, art exhibits in the aid of mutual understanding can only be a positive good, right?

The Japan Times review focuses on what sound like the most crowd-pleasing pieces in the show, which in Japan means crazy pop-culture sincerely-ironic video installations and model skyscrapers that race around like bumper cars by remote control. There are two China shows on at the same time at the Mori, the other being “China: Crossroads of Culture“. Both shows run through September 4.

LINK: The Japan Times > Interesting times in China

ABOVE: detail from Paul Signac’s Les Andelys, les laveuses (1886). The piece sold in June to an unknown but obviously wealthy Ukrainian collector for £3,648,000 as part of a one-night binge of bidding that peaked at £12 million.

The Art Newspaper reported yesterday that a previously unknown Ukrainian collector purchased approximately £12 million worth of art all in one go at Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale on June 20, setting off speculation as to who the mysterious stranger could be. For most of us, having someone to do our bidding is a figure of speech; in this case, the Ukrainian, working remotely with paddle LO22, had a Swiss bidder doing the dirty work on the floor.

The apparent newness of this collector is the most interesting part, it seems, with “art advisor” Daniella Luxembourg quoted as saying that there are very few such buyers at the top end of the pay scale, so that even one more entering the scene can change the rules of the game for everyone else. How exactly The Art Newspaper knows that this Ukrainian character is new when they don’t know his or her identity is a mystery, but nevertheless, it certainly spiced things up at Sotheby’s in June.

LINK: The Art Newspaper > New Ukrainian buyer spends £12 million on Modern paintings

ABOVE: works by Richard Tuttle on display at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. From Left: Purple Octagonal (1967), Four (1987), and W Shaped Yellow Canvas (1967).

There’s an entertaining look at the current Richard Tuttle retrospective taking place at SFMoMA right now, in Time magazine of all places. It’s a little break from the “What Diet Would Jesus Go On?” cover stories that normally grace the ripe newsweekly, looks like. Anyway, the article discusses Tuttle’s improbable career arc and the various obstacles therein, most notably a curt dismissal by New York Times art poobah Hilton Kramer in the mid 70s, who summarized the general consensus of critics by declaring that “so far as art is concerned, less has never been as less as this.”

Well 30-odd years later, Tuttle’s art—small, precise, straightforward—is big, so to speak. The current show in San Francisco will make its next stop at the Whitney as part of its two-year itinerary, which will also take it to Des Moines, L.A., Chicago, and Dallas. The SFMoMA has a good online exhibit so you can let your fingers do the walking if you aren’t going to San Francisco. Wear flowers in your hair anyway, if you like.

LINK: Time Magazine > The Man of Small Things

ABOVE: details from portraits of America’s presidents. From left to right: Richard Nixon, Calvin Coolidge, Rutherford Hayes, and Andrew Johnson. The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery is sponsoring a contest to try to reinvigorate portraiture in the U.S.

“FACE IT,” the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery shrieks in the introduction to its 2006 Portrait Competition. “PORTRAITURE IS BACK.” That all-caps headline is the first salvo in the NPG’s explanation for its Outwin Boochever 2006 Portrait Competition, a high-profile attempt by the Smithsonian to breathe some life back into the depiction of dudes and chicks in paint and sculpture—it’s, like, totally retro. The whole deal is a ripoff of—sorry, inspired by—similar contests in England and Australia, and a bold new step for the gallery, which isn’t in the habit of collecting portraits of living people.

Speaking of living people, the contest was made possible by a donation by the presumably DAR-eligible Virginia Outwin Boochever, who volunteered for twenty years at the NPG and is possibly no longer alive. It’s difficult to tell from the website, which talks about her in both the past tense (”she was”) and the present perfect tense (”she has”). Wherther Mrs. Outwin Roochever has shuffled off this mortal coil or not, her cheque still cleared, obviously, so the gallery is going to give $25,000 to the best portrait they receive, and the contest is open to “all artists age 18 and older who are living and working in the United States,” which seems to include illegal immigrants. That’d make for one awesome acceptance speech. The contest closes Sept. 6, so start tomorrow.

LINK: National Portrait Gallery Competition