My highlights of TEFAF 2011
March 27, 2011 1 Comment
Source: Maastricht Region blog
Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s advice: “Il ne faut peindre que ce qu’on aime” (Only paint what you like), I thought I too would only write about the paintings and works of arts that I particularly liked at this year’s edition of Maastricht’s prestigious Arts and Antique Fair TEFAF.
This painting by the French impressionist Gustave Caillebotte entitled “By the Sea, aka Seagulls” shows a distinguished gentleman walking calmly on a quiet and peaceful country road, with the sea at a distance in the background. The man looks relaxed yet slightly thoughtful, with one hand in his pocket and the other one holding a cane. The scene almost looks like a photograph in its straightforward simplicity and I wondered if it represented the artist himself.
The bright and colourful works by the young Japanese artist Ayako Rokkaku immediately caught my eye because they reminded me of the anime drawings I grew up with as a child in Japan. When I took a closer look at them, I was surprised to see that the naive figures, mostly young girls with large eyes and shy smiles, had been painted on simple brown cardboard. I later learned that Ayako Rokkaku does not use brushes but paints directly with her bare hands and fingers. She also gives live performance paintings at art fairs and is gaining increased international recognition for her talent.
“Where else than in France?” I thought to myself when I saw the French painter Emile Adélard Breton‘s Village at dusk. As a teenager in France I often used to accompany my parents on long walks in the countryside, especially in the Touraine region, and our paths took us through old and picturesque villages that seemed to come out straight from the novels of Balzac and Flaubert.
A visit to TEFAF is as gratifying as a visit to the greatest art museums in the world, with extraordinary master pieces at every corner, such as this Rembrandt’s Portrait of a man with arms akimbo priced at USD 47 million. The difference being of course that if the works are sold, we may never see them again.
The Haunch of Venison gallery was presenting a fascinating piece entitled Wind Woge by the German sculptor and installation artist Günther Uecker, who uses nails as a central material in his work. Uecker had hammered the nails in the canvas in such a way that the shapes they formed seemed to play with the light and move around in circles.
If I could have bought one work exhibited at TEFAF this year, I would have chosen this beautiful “Bouquet de fleurs” by Marc Chagall, my favourite painter. I had never seen it before, not even in print, and didn’t know of its existence. I looked at it for a long time, absorbing every detail, feeling privileged and grateful for the experience.
The painting that amused me the most was Bruegel’s Netherlandish Proverbs. I have a special attraction for works for art that make me come closer and almost drag me inside them, and this is exactly what happened with this one, which illustrates at least 100 identifiable Flemish idioms, some of which are still in use today.
This detail of the painting for example depicts the three following proverbs:
“Met je hoofd tegen een muur lopen“: banging one’s head against a brick wall, meaning trying to achieve something without success.
“De een scheert schapen, de ander varkens“: One shears sheep and one shears pigs, meaning that one takes all the profit, the other none.
“De kat de bel aanbinden“: putting the bel around the cat’s neck, meaning undertaking something too publicly.
There was a panel listing and explaining the many Flemish expressions that could be found in the painting and many visitors were visibly enjoying looking for them one by one.
The biggest surprise of the day came however at the Gana Gallery from Seoul, Korea, which featured the works of various modern Korean artists. I was particularly drawn by Ko Young Hoon‘s Purple Magnolia, a beautiful combination of modernity and tradition, as well as western and eastern influences.
As I came closer to the work and started reading the letters printed in the open book which served as background, I couldn’t believe my eyes when right in the middle of the canvas…
I saw the name “Maestricht”.
By Sueli Brodin
Crossroads editor
More photos? Take a look at Herman Pijpers’s Photo gallery TEFAF 2011
You’re spot on about the Caillebotte – the painter Gustave Caillebotte had a photographer brother, Martial, and often used his photographs as notes for paintings. Many of the impressionists used photography as a tool in their work – you can see in the casual poses and household scenes of Vuillard, Bonnard and many others that their models were caught on the fly, by the camera. This is part of why these works seem so intimate – the poses are not formal, as they were when people actually had to sit or stand for hours to be painted.
There is a show up now of paintings and photographs by the Caillebotte brothers at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris – through July 11th.