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Speculations on the Production of Social Space in Contemporary Art, With Reference to Art Fairs

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Speculations on the Production of Social Space in Contemporary Art, With Reference to Art Fairs
English

The arrival of Frieze in New York last week provided the occasion for a number of important commentators to ruminate on the new prominence of fairs in general in the business of art. Most striking was Peter Schjeldahl's lengthy piece for the New Yorker, with the punchline being provided by an unnamed dealer who foundered after abstaining from art fairs: “I thought I could do without them. I couldn't.” Well, I am going to go one better, and say that the fair experience reflects not just the new "event-based" way art is sold, but also of the new "event-based" way that art itself functions, in how we experience it and how it relates to society.

Racing around Frieze’s big tent, I had a sort of epiphany, the equivalent of the moment when you realize that the outline of the vase is actually two faces looking at each other. I suddenly had the very strong sense that the art, the supposed point of all this, was the excuse for the event itself, rather than the other way around. Background and foreground switched places.

Many dealers that I talked to said that they were selling mainly to collectors they already knew. That’s a heck of an ordeal to put yourself through, and a heck of an expense, just to get people to buy things you had on offer anyway. But art fairs are where art gets its social articulation, and it is the social cachet of owning art that collectors are there for. And not just collectors; I kept running into colleagues who said variations on the following: “I didn't really come for the art; I’m here to catch up with people who are in town.” Hence the “Stockholm syndrome-like mentality” that Holland Cotter in the Times, where even people who lament fairs' effect on art show up anyway.

In some ways this is just a further distillation of the culture of art openings, where people often seem to show up more for the social spectacle than for whatever is on view. The whole complex of openings and dinners and events feels like its own rolling attraction, semi-autonomous from the art, and semi-overpowering it.

Now, there has been plenty of chatter about art becoming an appendage of “event culture” lately. To understand why I think this is so interesting, I guess I should explain that for some time now I have been operating under the assumption that contemporary visual art, when thought of as the production of images, is not actually that contemporary. It is, rather, kind of old-fashioned, oriented on a notion of the unique object inherited from craft traditions, the tribal rituals of bohemians, and the rarified argot of university intellectuals — all of which seems particularly small-scale and self-limiting when compared to the full-throated populism of other culture industries like films or video games. In my opinion, art’s minor-ness is actually its strength, since it still holds onto traces of countercultural values and a human perspective.

But here’s the thing: You can’t argue that there's anything minor about Frieze New York, with its astounding bespoke tent, its transformation of a whole new region of the city into a destination, and of course its airy, unapologetic determination to break union labor in the City. So what gives contemporary art its cultural potency, so different from other old-school cultural forms (can you imagine an equivalent for poetry?) or other collectable and investment-grade objects (stamps? gold bars?)

Well, there's the sheer spectacle of money on view, of course — but I actually believe that that's only half the story. In a kind of reversal, in some ways art’s very backwardness, its local-ness, gives it its magical contemporary power: You have to go to experience art, it doesn't come to a theater near you, isn't delivered to a screen in your living room, and so it naturally makes the perfect material to build a destination event around. Meanwhile, it is the very tribalism and cliquishness of the art world that allows it to project a kind of mythologized, fungible aura of exclusivity and cachet.

In this way art is, unexpectedly, avant garde again, in that it is working on a problem that other, more ubiquitous cultural industries are trying to solve: Hollywood is trying to make going to the cinema an event again with 3D film; the music industry is reemphasizing the concert experience now that it's harder and harder to monetize recordings. 

We still think of what we are involved in as “visual art,” because we still think of it as fundamentally about the production of images. Even the academics who drone on about Duchamp’s “anti-optical” radicalism still frame his anti-art in a tense, negative dialogue with its identity as an image. Yet as a mechanism for the production of visual imagery, all but the most lavish contemporary art tends to be minor and parasitical on other, more technologically sophisticated industries of image-manufacture.

Nevertheless, every flourishing discipline needs something to specialize in, to make its own, in order to win its place in the world. And it seems to me that contemporary art's actual specialty has become the production of a certain kind of social space. In other words, we shouldn’t think about the world we participate in as being devoted to “visual art”; we should think about it as devoted to "social art."

The big institutions have realized this, or are in the process of realizing it. Marina Abramovic made performance art — the stereotypically mocked example of crazy-eyed contemporary-art weirdness — into a door-busting blockbuster for MoMA by turning it into a space for people to experience themselves as part of her special circle of narcissism. Up next is Martha Rosler’s interactive garage sale, and don’t be surprised if MoMA’s atrium becomes the museum's rotating home for these kind of tribal experiments. The New Museum had its biggest hit ever with Carsten Höller’s goofy slide, and at least one marketing guru praised the museum for demonstrating that what the contemporary cultural "consumer" needs is constant social engagement. And, lest we forget, the most popular show in the world last year was a Brazilian M.C. Escher exhibition that was, more than anything else, an optical illusion theme park, where people could experience themselves actually becoming part of Escher's trippy works.

“Relational aesthetics,” that do-goodery theory about redeeming everyday social processes as art — eating, sleeping, etc. — may prove simply to have been the mediating conceptual device by which art institutions realized their strength as intellectual carnival attractions (much the way we all thought the Huffington Post was some kind of place for overlooked liberal voices to get exposure, and it turned out to be a model for journalism in an age where journalists don’t get paid). That’s what Hegel called the “ruse of reason,” by which, while thinking you were doing one thing, you were actually acting out some deeper unfolding logic.

But how, finally, to square this observation — that the contemporary-ness of contemporary art is the social form in which it is presented, not the visual objects that it creates — with the fact that art is still, largely, about the production of visual objects? As Schjeldahl noted, with his characteristic acuity, the art of art fairs tends to be flashy objects, very much in the old sense. Well, every performance needs suitably interesting props. The increasingly explicitly social and performative dimension of contemporary art makes explicit what is only implicit in "event-based" art carnivals like Frieze; or, rather, the art fair's aesthetic achievement is to become the vehicle to grant some of this jocular aura to art that is otherwise introspective, esoteric, or mute. Embedded in the environment of the art fair or the art opening, the objects on view realize their status as “conversation pieces,” as excuses for a very specific social interaction. In the future, we may remember this epoch of art as being, above all, about the production of some very clever theme parties.

Interventions is a column by ARTINFO executive editor Ben Davis. He can be reached at bdavis[at]artinfo.com.


In Five: Dinklage Gets His Due, Britney Joins “X Factor,” and More Performing Arts News

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In Five: Dinklage Gets His Due, Britney Joins “X Factor,” and More Performing Arts News
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1. Peter Dinklage will appear on Rolling Stone’s next cover. [io9]

2. Britney Spears will join Simon Cowell and L.A. Reid as a judge next season on “The X Factor.” [Vulture]

3. Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” loses another cast member, Sacha Baron Cohen. [Vulture]
Related: The Story Behind Quentin Tarantino’s Slavery Revenge Drama “Django Unchained”

4. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann, an original member of the Grateful Dead, will publish a memoir in 2015. [Yahoo!]

5. A melancholy rundown of the affairs on “Mad Men.” [Vulture]

Previously: Todd Solondz, Tom Gabel, G. Dep, “The Dictator,” and Bobby Brown

Hoberman: Wit Lurks in Tim Burton’s Enigmatic “Dark Shadows”

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Hoberman: Wit Lurks in Tim Burton’s Enigmatic “Dark Shadows”
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Over the past two decades, Tim Burton has cast Johnny Depp as a succession of Anglo-American archetypes: Ed Wood, Ichabod Crane, Willy Wonka (an interpretation many thought inspired by Anna Wintour), Sweeney Todd, the Mad Hatter, and now Barnabas Collins, the reluctant vampire hero of the beloved TV soap opera “Dark Shadows” (ABC, 1966-71), lavishly revisited, although not in 3D, by Burton.

Thanks to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” juggernaut, Depp has been the most bankable Hollywood star of the late aughts and early teens (ranked first, second, or third in the Quigley exhibitors poll every year since 2005) and with good reason. In his way, this preternaturally smooth-faced 48-year-old is as suavely unflappable as Cary Grant — and he’s had to handle far more ludicrous dialogue than Grant ever did. Burton’s gentleman vampire, returned to his ancestral New England mansion after two centuries in the grave, looks like a combination of Dr. Caligari’s somnambulist and late Michael Jackson but, even more importantly, he can deliver his lines with grandiloquent confidence of a Shakespearean ham.   

The original “Dark Shadows” was a mildly spooky gothic soap when, in mid-1967, show-runner Dan Curtis decided to add a lovesick vampire to the mix. Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) was the original ambivalent, introspective bloodsucker, anticipating both Anne Rice and the “Twilight” series. Galvanizing the audience, Frid became an improbable sex object and the show, whose run coincided more or less with the High Sixties, was an afterschool favorite for late-born baby boomers — extensively merchandised for kids and housewives alike with board games, Halloween costumes, LPs, bubblegum cards, comic books, and paperback novels.

Like its near tele-contemporary “Star Trek”, if not to the same degree, “Dark Shadows” would live on for decades in the undead realm of fanzines, conventions, and video reissues. The show was briefly resurrected in early 1991 but Burton’s version, from a script by Seth Grahame-Smith (best-selling author of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) drawing on the two early ‘70s “Dark Shadows” movies, “House of Dark Shadows” and even the much maligned, de-vampired “Night of Dark Shadows,” is the first to give this underleveraged material full-blown epic treatment.

At the very least the original has not been embalmed. “Dark Shadows” is often quite witty, particularly in its details and casting. Hammer Drac Christopher Lee has a cameo, Cat Lady Michelle Pfeiffer looks splendid as a Collins descendent, and Burton axiom Helena Bonham Carter is, per usual, a pip, as the resident mad doctor. The prize conceit, however, was the decision to set the movie in 1972, just after the TV show ended its run. It’s highly entertaining to see the early ‘70s as Rip Van Barnabas’s future (he’s spooked by a troll doll, fascinated by a lava lamp, dumbfounded by the Carpenters). The time frame enables Burton to make excellent use of classic rock chestnuts like “Nights in White Satin,” “Season of the Witch,” and “The Joker” (which Depp sonorously recites to his lost Lenore, Australian dolly bird Bella Heathcote). There are hippies in the woods around Collinwood Manor and, like the movie, Barnabas feasts on them — after first quoting Eric Segal.

Were Burton content to suck the blood of “Austin Powers,” “Dark Shadows” might have been, as, snapping shut her smart phone, the woman seated next to me at the All-Media exclaimed to her friends, “the best movie I’ve seen all year!” I fear she spoke too soon. Sad to report, the Burton opus is an unnecessarily complicated tale involving too many characters (the Addams Family plus the Munsters), not to mention an unresolved moral conundrum that has us happily rooting for an unapologetic mass serial killer — and perhaps lusting after the evil baggage (Eva Green) he unaccountably jilts (twice).

The addition of this eternally young wicked witch plays havoc with the already problematic rules of the vampire universe which may be why, after an hour or more of fun, all pretense of logic is overwhelmed in the clamor of digital sturm und drang. Still, the bucket of blood is at least half full. Depp’s outfit aside, “Dark Shadows” wouldn’t add much to the Burton chachka show that packed the Museum of Modern Art two years ago, but it’s something only Burton could do.

Read more J. Hoberman in Movie Journal

Furious Dealers Contemplate Legal Action as the Cancelled Red Dot Art Fair Withholds Refunds

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Furious Dealers Contemplate Legal Action as the Cancelled Red Dot Art Fair Withholds Refunds
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NEW YORK — A group of disgruntled dealers are considering taking legal and potentially criminal action against George Billis, the director of Red Dot Art Fair, after he allegedly neglected to provide refunds for the fair’s New York edition, which was cancelled days before it was set to open during the recent Frieze Week in New York. Two participating dealers told ARTINFO that although Billis promised them full refunds when he announced the cancellation, he has since informed them that he does not have the money and is under no obligation to issue any refund.

The dealers, who asked to remain anonymous because they are preparing legal action or still in negotiations with Billis, respectively, said that the director offered them a 40 percent discount to participate in Red Dot’s Miami edition in the place of a swift refund.  “It’s a shocking situation, honestly,” said one of gallerists, who estimated Billis owed him around $7,000 for booth fees, electricity, and lighting. “Some dealers I know accepted that offer [to participate in Red Dot Miami], because they’d rather do that then lose the money altogether.”

The fair was cancelled three days before it was set to open on May 3 after the venue, 82Mercer, pulled the plug in the wake of mounting protests by local unions. At the time, a partner at 82Mercer, Vincent Fung, told ARTINFO, “We have a clause in our contract saying the client has to hire the correct labor so there are no pickets or strikes.” Fung said he had encouraged Billis to negotiate with the unions months before the fair was set to open, but Billis said he couldn’t afford organized labor. Asked whether he planned to provide refunds at the time of cancellation, Billis told ARTINFO, "Of course."

Now, however, circumstances seem to have changed. "He’s taking a very aggressive position, saying he’s not responsible and it’s not his fault. He isn’t conciliatory. He just says, 'There is no money, you have to be patient,'" said a dealer. Another gallerist estimated he spent a total of $20,000 on the fair, including a $7,500 booth rental fee, shipping, airfare, and hotel costs. He added that a number of his artists also paid to ship their own work to the fair, and several flew in from out of town to attend the event. Booths at Red Dot cost between $5,000 and $20,000, according to the dealers.

Gallerists reported having difficulty getting in touch with Billis after the initial cancellation. Currently, phone calls to the Red Dot offices go directly to an automatic recording and then to a message machine. When contacted at his eponymous New York gallery, Billis said, “It’s a rumor,” but added that he could not comment further and directed any additional inquiries to his lawyer. When asked for his lawyer’s contact information, the line went dead, and a subsequent phone message at his gallery and e-mail to Red Dot went unreturned. 

VIDEO Exclusive: ARTINFO's Interview With Helmut Lang About His First-Ever Sculpture Exhibition in New York

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VIDEO Exclusive: ARTINFO's Interview With Helmut Lang About His First-Ever Sculpture Exhibition in New York
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In 2005, the renowned luxury designer Helmut Lang left the fashion world to fully dedicate himself to creating visual art. Since then his provocative sculptures ­– often made from repurposed and found materials like rubber, tar, plastic, and foam – have been shown in such venues as Kestnergesellschaft, in Hanover, Germany; MUAR National Museum of Architecture in Moscow; and the Fireplace Project in East Hampton, N.Y. His current exhibition, on view in a town house at 24 Washington Square North, marks his first art showing in New York City. Curated by Mark Fletcher and Neville Wakefield, the display is open to the public Tuesday through Friday, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. On the occasion of the exhibit, Lang spoke with ARTINFO about his transition from fashion to art and his recent work.

 

 

 

 

Heroic Architecture Fanatic Buys Frank Lloyd Wright House for $1 — But Has Only Two Weeks to Save It

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Heroic Architecture Fanatic Buys Frank Lloyd Wright House for $1 — But Has Only Two Weeks to Save It
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A dollar can't buy you much these days. But for Joseph Catrambone, a contractor, real estate manager, and self-proclaimed architecture buff living in Oak Brook, Illinois, one dollar secured him a 594-square-foot historic Prairie Style cottage, churned out by Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio in its 1920 heydays. The only caveat: He has about two weeks to devise a plan and acquire the permits to dismantle and remove the building from its present location. "I wake up in the morning thinking how crazy I am," Catrambone told the Chicago Tribune. "It's exciting and crazy all at the same time."

Exciting, crazy, and heroic. Catrambone's plan to relocate the cottage from its original site has saved one of two endangered Frank Lloyd Wright-connected buildings in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette from imminent destruction. The cottage, which currently sits on 1320 Isabella Street, was designed by Austrian-born architect Rudolph Schindler, who was working in Wright's studio at the time, propagating the American architect's patented style before striking out on his own as a prominent modernist architect with an entire platform frame system attributed to his name (the Schindler Frame).

Meanwhile, adjacent to the Schindler cottage is another relic of Wright's influence: a John Van Bergen-designed house that touts the horizontal lines, sunlit rooms, overhanging eaves, and earthy hues pioneered by Wright with his Prairie Style architecture. Though both 1318 and 1320 Isabella Street are stamped with elegant hallmarks of Wright's tutelage, they garner far less attention than, say, the Robie House or Fallingwater. Not surprisingly, when Schaumburg-based developer George Hausen signed a contract to purchase both properties early this year, he had no idea he was treading on hallowed ground.

As soon as talks of demolition began, alarm bells went off. Preservationists swiftly entered the scene, tracing the two buildings back to Schindler, Van Bergen, and Wright and meticulously unearthing original blueprints that would qualify the works as Wright creations. While any Wright association is usually enough to earn a reprieve for buildings facing ruin, Wilmette, unlike Chicago, does not have a landmark ordinance. Like the recently razed Palos Verdes beach house built by Lloyd Wright, Wright’s son, the Isabella Street houses are sitting on prime real estate for aspiring McMansion owners.

Fending off the stereotype of the big, bad developer, Hausen opened the door to the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Together, they arrived at an agreement, which placed the Van Bergen-designed house on the market for four months starting on May 1 at a listing of $599,000. The Conservancy is taking careful measures to monitor potential buyers, determined to find a future owner who will preserve the existing residence.

Meanwhile, the Schindler cottage has fallen into the hands of Catrambone, one of a few architecture enthusiasts who jumped at the chance to inherit the impressive artifact. The ceremonious one-dollar purchase fee hides a host of expenses and headaches the new owner now faces: Catrambone must remove each individual wall panel and roof sheath — an estimated $7,000 endeavor — carefully number and organize them, and then store them in pieces until he can embark on the estimated $40,000 reconstruction project in the neighboring suburb of Wauconda.

The venture brings to mind the recent relocation of the Lieb House, a quintissentially postmodern beachside box designed by Robert Venturi and his firm in 1969. Fifty years after its completion, developers began salivating over the building’s original site in Barnegat Light, New Jersey, and it was almost too easy for the community to wish away Venturi’s kitschy construction. But architecture fans dashed onto the scene, dodging the wrecking ball by sending the Lieb House — by boat, no less — to its present safe haven in Glen Cove, New York. The move attracted extensive media coverage and inspired a 2010 documentary entitled "Saving Lieb House."

If all goes according to plan, the Schindler cottage will be reconstructed on Catrambone’s private property by next summer. The proud new owner foresees the one-bedroom cottage serving as a multipurpose room for his family. "The only way you can understand Prairie School architecture is to stay in it," he told the Chicago Tribune. Catrambone hopes to share this understanding as well, with tentative plans to rent out the cottage to equally passionate Wright aficionados. In instances such as these, it seems abundantly clear that architecture, much like a painted canvas or a precious sculpture, can slip from the shadow of its maker and truly take on a life of its own.

“Gangster Squad” Trailer: Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn Go Camping

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“Gangster Squad” Trailer: Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn Go Camping
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“Los Angeles is a damsel in distress,” quoth Nick Nolte. “And I need you to save her.” Josh Brolin: “I’ll need men.” (Tee hee.) “You gonna take me away from all this?” purrs Emma Stone. “No ma’am,” answers Ryan (Fuckin’) Goslin. “I was just hopin’ to take you to bed.” “He’ll kill you if he finds out, ya know.” This is “Gangster Squad” — where a team of L.A. cops toss their badges to better battle an East Coast gangster turned West Coast “god,” played by Sean Penn — and it appears to be pitched somewhere in between “Casino” and “Who Framed Roger Rabit.” Camp this extravgant may be why the rest of the world hates America, but … U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

 

Slideshow: Highlights from Phillips de Pury's Contemporary Art Evening Sale


Slideshow: Highlights from Bonhams: Contemporary Part I

Nude Art Controversy Raises the Question: Is it Art, Or Is it Naked Therapy?

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Nude Art Controversy Raises the Question: Is it Art, Or Is it Naked Therapy?
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NEW YORK — Earlier this month the Brooklyn-based artist Sarah White was suddenly removed from the roster of participants in this weekend's West Chelsea Artists Open Studios (WCAOS) after submitting an image pertaining to her planned performance at the Hotel Americano. The performance would have melded components of her artistic work and her actual therapeutic profession, so-called "Naked Therapy" — a hybrid practice that incorporates elements of relationship and sex therapy, often via live video chat. "I was removed from WCAOS after submitting my feature art piece," White explained to ARTINFO today, "by the director [Scotto Mycklebust] who stated in an email that my piece was an 'ad' and not art and that I am a 'commercial entity' and 'not an artist.'" Undaunted, she has decided to press ahead with an abridged performance and public discussion at the hotel on Sunday, the final evening of the open studios event.

"I decided to hold my one-night event to protest the censorship," White said, "to show my work and let people decide if it's art or not, if I am an artist and/or a commercial entity, and to hold an open public discussion forum on the issues of ads vs. art, commercial entities vs. artists, and the professional segregation of women who use the performative body provocatively."

Meanwhile, Mycklebust accused White of using WCAOS to advertise her therapy practice with the image featuring the Web site address TheNakedTherapist.org — which White claims is the title of her artwork and unrelated to her separate commercial site, SaraWhiteTherapy.com. In a statement he gave to DNAinfo, he specified that the event "is not open to commercial entities who take advantage of this free event to promote their own businesses." 

White — who cites Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman, and Laurel Nakadate as major influences, and has appeared on many television programs including as an expert on a Fox News segment at the time of the Anthony Weiner scandal — sees Mycklebust's objection as an earnest but troubling symptom of a broader, more systemic problem. "I actually take Mr. Mycklebust's assertion that he removed me from the event due to his thinking that my work was self-promotion as being an accurate statement of how he felt," she told ARTINFO, "but I also find it to be the exact issue that is so troubling."

"It's troubling because of what I believe the underlying issues to be," she continued. "I believe that I was removed so suddenly because what I do for a living is considered by some to be illegitimate and illegitimizing, because I am a woman using the performative body provocatively and unironically inside and outside my art, because some in the art world have yet to recognize the realities and modalities of the 21st century in which the Internet deeply blurs the lines between self-promotion, commerce, and art, because I am not yet a 'famous' (i.e. 'money-making') artist."

White specifies that at the time she was rejected from the event she had not yet settled on the format of her performance — which would have accompanied a hanging of her photography-based work in a hotel room — but she also admitted the blurry line between her artistic and therapeutic naked therapy practices. "There is a distinction, though they are at times in conversation," she said. "Naked Therapy is a therapeutic practice meant to help people feel better. And while I have made and still do make art entirely unrelated to my work as The Naked Therapist, some of my recent artistic practice draws on themes also found in Naked Therapy (arousal, sexuality, body, repression, the Internet, etc.)."

West Chelsea Artists Open Studios runs May 11-13. Sarah White's performance at the Hotel Americano takes place May 13 from 4-8pm.

Slideshow: The Met's "Naked Before the Camera"

Art Handlers' Arrest in Beijing Raises Alarming Questions About the Future of the Chinese Market

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Art Handlers' Arrest in Beijing Raises Alarming Questions About the Future of the Chinese Market
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The risks run by Chinese artists critical of the country's government became a hot-button topic last year when Ai Weiwei was imprisoned for 81 days, but the challenges posed by the country's labyrinthine bureaucracy for workers in its art industry are only beginning to emerge. Last month two employees of IFAS Solutions — a company that specializes in art handling, storage, and installation throughout Asia — were arrested and charged with "trafficking." Now, more than 40 days later, the company's Beijing general manager and operations manager both remain in custody, and Chinese customs officials have offered no explanation or information regarding their status.

The two men, one of whom is a Chinese citizen while the other is German, were arrested after customs agents raided the company's Beijing offices (it also maintains bureaux in Shanghai and Hong Kong) on March 30. They were held them for questioning for 36 hours, IFAS director Torsten Hendricks told ARTINFO. The exact nature of the charges against them remains unclear.

"According to the German Embassy," Hendricks said, "they have been accused of under-declaring the value of the artworks for importation purposes, despite the fact that they should have had the knowledge of the 'real' value of the artworks."

The arrests are another symptom of the great disparities between Western and Chinese business practices, a clash of corporate cultures that has only become more problematic as Chinese authorities have sought to control the flow of art into and out of the country's booming art market. "Each artwork needs to be disclosed to the cultural authorities," Hendricks explained, "and [could] be declined from being imported or exported from China with such strange arguments [as] 'this painting is ugly,' 'Mao has not been in New York,' 'the painting is vulgar,' 'that does not represent China.' It makes it very difficult to work on the Chinese market."

IFAS isn't the only international art transportation firm being challenged by Chinese authorities' methods. "Many companies are currently being investigated and the focus switches now also to the collectors, consignees, and buyers of artworks," Hendricks told ARTINFO. "Various people have been arrested and according to some information in recent articles the investigation on the art world will last up to the end of this year." German gallerist Michael Schultz echoed Hendricks's sentiment in a recent Sueddeutsche Zeitung interview, saying that the level of bureaucratic "arbitrariness" in China was increasing. "They’re tightening the screws."

In addition to worrying for his employees' well-being, Hendricks is concerned about what this tightening of Chinese art shipping channels could mean for the continued growth of the country's art market. "China is already one of the most expensive countries in the world to ship art to or from," he said, "and with the new hurdles, it will become even more expensive."

Slideshow: Daniel Buren's "Excentrique(s)" at Paris's Monumenta

A Work of "Light, Volume, and Air": See Daniel Buren's Monumenta Pavilion of Floating Colored Circles

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A Work of "Light, Volume, and Air": See Daniel Buren's Monumenta Pavilion of Floating Colored Circles
English

PARIS — Following large-scale interventions by Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Christian Boltanski, and Anish Kapoor, it's French artist Daniel Buren's turn to have his eagerly-anticipated solo show for Paris's giant-sized Monumenta program of commissions. In this in situ piece, "Excentrique(s)" — which means both "elliptical" and "eccentric" — which opened to the public yesterday a the Grand Palais and remains visible through June 21, the artist started with the north entrance, building a true artificial landscape, a passageway that takes visitors under a canopy of circle-shaped colored pergolas, leading to a sort of clearing under the big space's large central dome. There, mirrors have been installed, reflecting the ambient colors of the installation in an extraordinary way.

The work cost €1.5 million ($1.9 million) and Buren spent two years designing it, with numerous sketches and the determination to rise above space constraints. Created with the assistance of architect Patrick Bouchain, it took seven days to install. "The primary characteristic is light, volume, and air," Buren told ARTINFO France. "[The circles] are eight feet high, which is the ceiling height of the average apartment. Physically, the circles are off-center. You can really see how my work functions with the sun and the mirrors in the middle: everyone starts to be backwards!"

Light and airy, this display of 377 lofted plastic circles (plus three outside the Grand Palais), designed to be on a human scale and held up by very slim columns, constitutes a fun work, facilitating all manner of encounters. It's an intimate space, where you see life through rose-, blue-, green-, and yellow-colored glasses, and also a public space, where you can casually stroll — without, however, any sense of the bucolic, given the flamboyant artificiality of this work's environment. The circles give a psychedelic feel to the monumental building, especially at night.

"The show starts outside at the ticket office and ends on the roof," Marc Sanchez, Buren's artistic director for Monumenta, told ARTINFO France. "The very process of the work is this path that takes hold of you without you realizing it, and following the arrows at the entrance is already being in the exhibition." The colored ticket you have to carry to get in is the first introduction of color, according to Sanchez, and, at the end, the massive glass roof of the Grand Palais appears as a blue grid and is accompanied by a large flag with a blue circle in the middle. As Sanchez puts it, "it's an exhibition that begins on the Champs-Elysées and ends in the sky."

Flashy and delicate, the installation also recalls a summer house. In fact, the cafeteria and the bookstore are included in the piece. "Buren wants this space to be a place in which people spend time and are immersed, not for them to see it as a sculpture," Sanchez said. A camera has been placed above the canopy so that the work can be seen from above. "If it had been possible to go up onto the passageways of the Grand Palais, I would have loved it," Buren said.

A very discreet soundtrack accompanies the show, with 37 people speaking 37 different languages reading the numbering system by which the red, yellow, blue, and green colors are arranged. Purposefully mysterious, it is played by high-tech speakers that continually turn 80 degrees so that the sound does not dominate. As you might lean down to hear the sounds of nature, here you walk while listening to sometimes imperceptible sounds.

To see images of Daniel Buren's "Excentrique(s)" at Paris's Grand Palais, click on the slide show.

by Juliette Soulez, ARTINFO France,Contemporary Arts,Contemporary Arts

Slideshow: Hermes's "Leather Forever" Exhibition in London


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Hermes Pays Tribute to Its Favorite Material With "Leather Forever" Exhibition in London

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Hermes Pays Tribute to Its Favorite Material With "Leather Forever" Exhibition in London
English

As far as materials go, leather is extremely malleable, each kind carrying its own trademark — the pebbled texture of Mysore goatskin, the oval scales of the ring lizard, or the uneven rows of quadrilaterals on crocodile skin. Its ability to absorb a rainbow of rich colors and take on different shapes makes it an ideal ingredient for handbag. Since 1837, leather has served as the center of the Hermès universe, functioning as the base for its luxurious accessories.

Hermès is paying homage to the material through the London exhibition “Leather Forever,” on display at the Royal Academy Galleries through May 27. Sprawled across 12 rooms, the show takes visitors from a library of the various skins used by the fashion house to the artisan’s studio, where handbags are created, and on through an in-depth exploration of leather’s place in the French luxury goods company. It highlights a number of historic pieces, including the two most iconic Hermès bags: the Kelly, named after Princess Grace, and the Birkin, created for Jane Birkin, who wanted a bag big enough to fit all her possessions. Towards the end, the show visits the brand’s origins as a modest saddle workshop intended to elegantly outfit the horses in 19th-century Paris.

The exhibition finishes with a tribute to Great Britain, represented by four specially-designed Passe-Guide Hermès handbags for each British nation — a green bag adorned with a shamrock charm for Ireland, a plaid-patterned design with a kilt pin for Scotland, a forest green piece decorated with a winged dragon for Wales, and a brick-colored purse with a guardsman’s bearskin for England. The bags will be auctioned off online by Christie’s from May 16 to May 31 to benefit the Royal Academy of Arts.

Click on the slide show to see highlights from “Leather Forever,” on view at the Royal Academy Galleries in London through May 27.

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