Flash News: Vincent Van Gogh – Francis Bacon – Monaco

[08/07/2016]

 

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news: Vincent Van Gogh: finally, a retrospective in Arles. Francis Bacon in Monaco.

Vincent Van Gogh: finally, a retrospective in Arles
Vincent VAN GOGH… It’s a name that thrills art lovers and makes the market tremble (at US$75 million the Portrait of Dr. Gachet has remained one of the most expensive artworks in the world since it was sold 26 years ago). An all too rare artist whose artistic treasure is difficult to move around outside of the great museums whose fame rests on his works. An artist who still has surprises in store, more than a century after his death, such as the recent discovery of an unpublished book of drawings, which will be published in November 2016 by Editions du Seuil under the title Vincent Van Gogh, le Brouillard d’Arles, carnet retrouvé. This new treasure has not been displayed anywhere. Not yet… The exhibition of the moment is taking place in the Bouches du Rhône (France): Van Gogh en Provence, La Tradition modernisée. Throughout the summer and until 11 September 2016, a set of 31 works are on display at the Van Gogh Foundation in Arles, where Van Gogh spent 15 years of his life, creating over 300 paintings and around 200 drawings, so approximately 500 works out of the 3 000 of his known paintings and drawings. This exhibition is a first for the Foundation dedicated to the famous Dutch artist – which paradoxically owns none of his canvases – it has been organised thanks to valuable loans from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller museum in Otterlo. It also guarantees a renewed influx of visitors to Arles, which is the cultural city of Bouches du Rhone, famous for the Rencontres de la photographie photography festival (Arles 2016, until 25 September) but usually lacking major tributes dedicated to the Dutch master.

Francis Bacon in Monaco
The French cultural landscape this summer is already jam-packed, and is this year focusing on the great artists. Less than 300 kms from the Van Gogh retrospective in Arles, the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco has just opened an exhibition dedicated to the English painter Francis BACON: Francis Bacon, Monaco et la culture française. What is the relationship between the artist and the principality? Well Francis Bacon lived in Monaco between 1946 and the early 1950s. He painted ​​his first pope there, inspired by the Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velazquez. Obsessed with this picture of the Pope whose portrait he transformed into a deafening scream, Bacon explored this theme until the early 1960s, through a series of 45 variations. His time in Monaco marked a turning point in his work, contributing to the legend forged around this great British painter.
The ambitious exhibition at the Grimaldi Forum brings together sixty works, including major triptychs and paintings that are some of the artist’s most significant, with the help of the Francis Bacon estate in London and the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation in Monaco. Just like the Van Gogh exhibition in Arles, the Francis Bacon exhibition is guaranteed to be a great success – even more so as the artist has a very strong market. His astronomical prices make him one of the most sought-after and most expensive artists in the world. In fact, three years ago he became the most expensive artist in the world, with the announcement of the sale of his triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which went for $ 142.4 million at Christie’s in New York.