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Boot Print Volume 2/Issue 1 - June 2008
Georgia Kotretsos
Boot Print Volume 2/Issue 1 covers recent Boots exhibitions; goes to the source to talk about the role of the collector in contemporary art; discusses with two curators the US landscape in an election year; speaks with the author of Pablo Helguera's Manual of Contemporary Art Style; and features a translation by Walid Sadek from the autobiography of Moustafa Farroukh. This season's exhibitions at Boots Contemporary Art Space kicked off with guest curator DanaTurkovic's group show, Amass; followed by the solo exhibition of Kansas City artist Dylan Mortimer, aptly titled Amen Bitch; and finished up with the second installment of the Ped
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First Open Post-War And Contemporary Art Including 45 Works From The Peter Norton Collection And 5 Works Of Art Sold To Benefit The Trevor Project
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Volume #1 Issue #1
Issue Number 2
38195609 Le Corbusier
Burne Jones Masterpiece at Christie's in July
LG Williams at HI Gallery
Introduction to Museums Power Point Presentation
ChouLivingLegacy_InsideFlap
Art Nouveau in England
Architect Marco Aldaco Gomez
california key content for visual art
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CVAnastasiaRyabova_2017
a publication dedicated to contemporar y ar t
Deutsche Bank Collection Sindika Dokolo Foundation Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex The Pulitzer Foundation Nato Thompson Charles Esche Pablo Helguera and much more...
Shannon Fitzgerald
Guest contributor Interview with Collector, Sindika Dokolo St. Louis, MO, United States Shannon Fitzgerald is an independent curator and writer based in St. Louis. She recently curated the exhibition Our Commodity: Juan William Chvez, Sarah Frost, Leslie Mutchler for the Regional Arts Commission, St. Louis and is curating an upcoming exhibition, Brandon Anschultz; Transmission/Destination for the Center for Creative Arts, St. Louis, 2008. She has published works in many museum catalogs; most recently, she contributed an essay in Karyn Olivier: A Closer Look, a catalog accompanying the exhibition of the same title at Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis (2007). She was Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, where she worked from 2000-2007, where her exhibition credits include the thematic group exhibitions Staging: Janieta Eyre, Julie Moos, Zwelethu Mthethwa and the Contemporarys inaugural and traveling exhibition A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad co-curated with Tumelo Mosaka. She has curated solo exhibitions of new work by international artists: Polly Apfelbaum, Michael Paul Britto, Dzine, Yun-Fei Ji, Larry Krone, Michael Lin, Ruby Osorio, Keith Piper, and William Pope.L, among others. Prior to moving to St. Louis, Fitzgerald worked at the Institute of Visual Arts (inova), University of WisconsinMilwaukee. Fitzgerald has taught in the department of Art and Art History at Webster University, St. Louis.
Seoidn OSullivan
Guest contributor A Contested Collection Dublin, Ireland
Tommy Lanigan Schmidt
Guest contributor Amen Bitch New York, NY, United States
Seoidn OSullivan is an artist who is currently living and working in Dublin, Ireland. She grew up in Zambia and South Africa where she completed a degree in Fine Art. In 2003 she completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Development Studies through which she investigated models of thought that are based on a concern for social and ecological justice. In 2007 she completed her Masters in Fine Art study at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Her practice is largely project based. Seoidn s research investigates socio political and ecological narratives and presents them in critically engaged and poetical ways. She was artist in resident in Studio 468, St Andrews Community Centre, Dublin last year where she developed a community food garden project. Her collaborative lm project Trespass with Irish artist Aoife Desmond was recently awarded Irish Arts Council funding. She will be traveling to The Land Foundation in Thailand in August and September this year to develop further work for Trespass project.
Tommy Lanigan Schmidt teaches at the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work has been included in the American Century show at the Whitney, the Venice Biennale, and the Whitney Biennial in 1991. He is represented by Pavel Zubok Gallery in NY, and is included in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, the MOMA, and collections around the world.
Boot Print
A biannual publication dedicated to contemporary art June 2008 VOL 2 / ISSUE 1 Georgia Kotretsos Athens, Greece Editor-in-chief Timothy Ridlen Chicago, IL, United States Senior Editor Juan William Chvez St. Louis, MO, United States Creative Advisor Elizabeth Wolfson St. Louis, MO, United States Editorial Assistant Juozas Cernius New York, NY, United States Proof-reading Bryan Reckamp Saint Louis, MO / San Franscisco, CA United States Layout/Design Publisher Boots Contemporary Ar t Space, Inc. Copyright 2008 Boots Contemporary Ar t Space, Inc. All rights reserved For submissions and ad oppor tunities contact Georgia Kotretsos at: georgia@bootsar t.com Boots Contemporary Art Space 2307 Cherokee St. St Louis, MO 63118 United States Juan William Chvez St. Louis, MO, United States Director Bryan Reckamp Saint Louis, MO / San Franscisco, CA, United States Agent Georgia Kotretsos Athens, Greece Agent Jon Peck Miami, FL, United States Agent www.bootsar t.com boots@bootsar t.com 314.772.BOOT (2668)
Dana Turkovic
Guest contributor Amass St. Louis, MO, United States Dana Turkovic teaches in the art department at Webster University. She is a recent graduate of the Masters course at Goldsmiths College - University of London in curatorial studies. Though she spent many years as the senior designer for the UCLA Hammer Museum, she has turned her attention to creative curatorial endeavors. She has organized exhibitions in Los Angeles, London and Oxford in the United Kingdom and in St. Louis at the Contemporary Art Museum, Boots Contemporary Art Space, Ellen Curlee Gallery and White Flag Projects. She is also a regular contributor to Review Magazine and St. Louis Magazine. She lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri.
Walid Sadek
Guest contributor Ill with Home: on the autobiography of Moustafa Farroukh Beirut, Lebanon Born in 1966, Walid Sadek is an artist and writer living in Beirut. His early work investigates the violent legacies of the Lebanese civil war partially and inadequately experienced by a young Christian-born Lebanese: Home Play (1996); The Last Days of Summer (1997). He later began to posit, mostly in theoretical texts, ways of understanding the complexity of lingering civil strife in times of relative social and economic stability: A Matter of Words (2002); From Excavation to Dispersion: Congurations of Installation Art in PostWar Lebanon (2003); The Acquisition of Death: the Ends of Art and Dwelling in Lebanon (2004). His recent written work endeavors to structure a theory for a post-war society incapable of, or at least reluctant to, resume normative living: From Image to Corpse (2006); Place at Last (2007); Seeing Rude and Erudite (2007). Concomitantly, a number of art installations propose a poetics for a social experience governed by uneasy contiguity with the remnants and consequences of violence: Love is Blind (2006); Knowledge of the Expelled (2007); and Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse (2007). Walid Sadek is assistant professor at the Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut.
Guest contributor Speech as Strategy St. Louis, MO, United States Laura Fried currently serves as the Assistant Curator at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. In addition to collaborating with Paul Ha and Anthony Huberman in exhibition research and planning, and as a co-curator of the Contemporary Front Room, Laura Fried is also responsible for overseeing a number of ongoing exhibition programs at the Contemporary, including Great Rivers Biennial, Flat Files, and the Emerson Visiting Critics and Curator series. Fried joins the Contemporary from MASS MoCA as a two-year curatorial fellow, where during her tenure she organized two exhibitions, including Adam Cvijanovic and Peter Gareld: Unhinged. In collaboration with MASS MoCA, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Fried acted as a coordinator of the 2007 Berkshire Conference, a forum that brings together international leaders in the arts and business communities to address issues facing the current cultural landscape. Prior to her graduate work and tenure at MASS MoCA, Fried managed an art gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Fried received her Bachelors degree in English and Art History with Distinction from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and she holds a Master of Arts in the History of Art from Williams College and the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
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Pedestrian Project Amen Bitch: Light-Love-Life...BLING!
by Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt by Juan Wlliam Chvez
by Dana Turkovic
The Power of 4: St. Louis by Boots Contemporary Art Space
questions by Juan William Chavez, Georgia Kotretsos and Tim Ridlen
Creating Public & Private Art Collections: Interview with Helene Zucker-Seeman
by Georgia Kotretsos
The Fair View: Interview with Christos Savvidis Between the Bosporus and Madison Avenue: A Conversation with Orhan Taner
by Juozas Cernius
A Collectors Carte Blanche: An Interview with Barbara Steiner of Leipzigs Galerie fr Zeitgenssische Kunst A Collection at Work: An Interview with Friedhelm Htte of the Deutsche Bank Collection In the Spirit of Mutual Funds: Interview with Collector Rik Reinking
by Tim Ridlen
Taking Matters Into Ones Own Hands: Interview with Collector Eugenio Lpez Alonso
Building a Collection of Contemporary Art in Africa: Interview with Collector Sindika Dokolo
by Shannon Fitzgerald
A Contested Collection
by Seoidn OSullivan
The Artist Who Told on the Art World: Pablo Helguera
Speech as Strategy: Laura Fried IMs Nato Thompson on Discursive Space and Democracy in America
by Laura Fried
Expedition into the Heartland: Interview with Charles Esche, Kerstin Niemann and Stephanie Smith Ill with Home: on the autobiography of Moustafa Farroukh
by Juan William Chavez
by Walid Sadek
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Note from Juan William Chvez
director of Boots Contemporary Art Space
After a triumphant freshman year, Boots returned from the summer sabbatical ready not only to sustain the first years intensity, but also to stoke the engines even hotter for the sophomore effort. We accomplished this by kicking off the season with two exhibitions and a Pedestrian Project. We took a trip down south for Art Basel, and then finished off 2007 by ringing in the New Year, where your humble Boots director curated White Flag Projects annual New Years Eve party, which went off in fine style. In addition, 2007 brought new faces to town, and a bevy of new plans that will further fuel the ongoing rocket ride that is Boots Contemporary Art Space. Our first show of the season was brought to us by Kansas City-based artist Dylan Mortimer, whose show Amen Bitch explored the results of Christianity and hip-hop meeting at the pulpit. In addition to the obligatory bling, fallen hip-hop martyrs Biggie the Notorious B.I.G. Smalls and Tupac Shakur were depicted in bulletproof stained glass. Next, local independent curator Dana Turkovic along with artists Brandon Anschultz and John Watson collaborated to create a cohesive viewing environment. In their show Amass, Anschultz and Watson designed viewing stations where audience members could watch the myriad video pieces, which Turkovic selected, including Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard among others. With the return of the Pedestrian Project, Brett Williamss Future Hole gave street level viewers the opportunity to jump into the Boots DeLorean and explore the future through animation. Since all work and no play makes directors dull boys, we headed to sunny Miami for Art Basel with fellow artist-director Matthew Strauss from White Flag Projects. It was a great chance to meet up with Boots agent Jon Peck, who invited us to the release party for the book Miami Contemporary Artists, in which Peck was recently featured. Besides the blinding and overwhelming amount of art, I do recommend the sandwich shop across the street from the Deuce. We sent 2007 out in fine style with White Flag Projectss Juan William Chavezs Communist New Years eve party, featuring video projected propaganda, the Bay of Pigs roast, Lenins Tomb open ice bar, and yes, the ride-able atom bomb. It was a facemelting fiesta, Commie style, of the sort never to be forgotten. Thanks again White Flag for the invitation. Boots looks forward to shedding the inaugural booster and beginning our voyage to explore and expand our mission as an art lab. Our freshman year demonstrated the dynamic potential and importance of a contemporary art space located in the middle, serving as a weigh station for artists and curators as they travel the byways of the national and international art community. Boots is always open to those who wish to contribute to the dialogue, and we look forward to new conversations. On that note, Boots would like to extend a warm, curatorial man-hug to Anthony Huberman, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louiss new chief curator. We welcome the curatorial vision he brings to St. Louis. Starting in 2008, a new way to stay informed and support Boots activities is to become a member. Memberships will make possible the continuation of our exhibitions, bring international artists-in-residence to St. Louis, and keep your Boot Print coming. For further details, see the back page of this issue. BP
Special thanks this season goes out to: Ryan Hess, Mike McKinley, Brandon Anschultz, Brett Williams, Dana Turkovic, and Dylan Mortimer.
Pedestrian Project
by Juan William Chvez
Brett Williams Future Hole street view and detail
Once a g a i n succumbing to the desires of the wandering pedestrian, Boots has invited St. Louis based artist Brett Williams to participate in our second installment of the Pedestrian Project and Future Hole was his vision. The name says it all. From the glowing windowpane, like a prescient dream, the future comes to those who peer through the looking glass. A microscopic view into an undetermined time and place where moving geometric shapes juxtaposed with organic form, rippled and vibrated to electronic sounds. In response to the first Pedestrian Project, Theres nothing to see here, by Mike Shuh, which beckoned and shooed away visitors with a calm and playful demeanor, Williams installation is decidedly more inviting. Pedestrians
are drawn by the 60s sci-fi sound compositions played on an outdoor loudspeaker and set to the glowing abstractions from several short video animations. Inspired by his day job where he installs video projections of views through a microscope, Williams brings an unconventional and controlled viewing experience that crack heads, antique shoppers, hipsters on bikes, building rehabbers and anybody else that walks by can enjoy. For those of you that are unfamiliar, the Pedestrian Project is Boots way of problem solving and pays homage to the returning street traffic of Cherokee while taking the month to focus on the upcoming Boot Print release, artist residency, or institutional collaboration, all of which collided this winter. Although the gallery is closed, the Pedestrian Project is still a reason to come and peer in as you walk down and visit Cherokee Street. BP
Amen Bitch: Light-Love-Life... BLING!
by Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt
Above: Amen Bitch brass, aluminum, rhinestones 2007
Contemporary Hip Hop culture concelebrates the dialectic between celebrating life and underscoring survival. Suffering and celebration are two sides of the same coin. Just as in Christs day, that coin is minted by and belongs to Caesar. Christ usually spoke in parables, but this is no parable. Jesus uses the coin, a real piece of money. It could buy food, a lawyer, flattery, a fake smile, and pay the rent. This raw analogy refuses to gloss over all the vulgarity of that saying keeping it real. Hip Hop culture is cool. As art, great art, it seduces and affects its lovers. But, that raw reality of Caesars coin points to an economy that once enslaved the progenitors of Hip Hop. The power of art speaks for itself. This musical synthesis of Africa and America parts the waves of the Red Sea of slavery. Freedom is on the other side, not fully achieved yet fully existing in art. Vulgarity, the language of the slave quarters and the projects is the music that defines American culture to the world. The Resurrection comes continually through a Crucifixion, but it is not the Crucifixion of the missionary position. African Americans never gave up their own cultural roots, these living words, make transcendence as immanent heart-beats that keep the body-soul unity from being torn apart. The inner person struggles to stay free. Dylan Mortimer intuits this range of sorrow/joy through his borrowing of subject matter and materials. Gold as price tag flaunts success in Caesars face. Gold as color proclaims celebratory presence. Gold as color in Christian Art signifies the types of light, reflective, refractive, redemptive. Christ is redemptive pre-eternal light. The light of Genesis 1:3 is Physical essence. The light of Genesis 1:14-18 is the sun, moon, stars, etc. Arthur Dantos book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace takes the peak moment of Christs earthly ministry before the Resurrection to be, not just the crucifixion but the Transfiguration. Why? Because the Divine-Human artist in Christ used this moment as a way to show himself as the preeternal light source itself. Why? Because the fragile humanity of his apostles would have to have something huge to get them through the Crucifixion to the Resurrection. This for Danto becomes a metaphor for all that is best in Art. Now, back to Vulgarity. Here Vulgar means everyday usage. The Vulgate was St. Jeromes translation of the Bible. He translated it from Koine Greek into street Latin. Originally the gospels were all written in Koine-Greek. Christ spoke Aramaic. He read Hebrew. And may have spoken Koine, because this was the lingua franca of the entire Mediterranean world during his lifetime. Hip Hops visuals are called Bling. As you can see, Mortimers art is as classically Christian as a stained glass window, and strongly representative of the Hip Hop aesthetic of Bling. Vulgarity? HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH- yes. The gallery presents the art, but the street is the cooker. From a formal visual perspective these gold-glowing spangled rhinestone pendants are definitely not within the aesthetic proscriptions of
Bernard of Clarivaux or Christopher Wren. They are more like the pizazzy blings that Vegas brings, or even a Christmas tree. This Light is delight, the delight of living, desperate living; if the sun goes out so do we. Concurrently, it signifies the enlightenment through a God that becomes human. Vulgarity is an essential part of this art. This is the eternal honeymoon of paradise. Biblically, Christ is not the husband of the Church. He is the bridegroom forever. This is the crux of Western Mysticism. Heaven is not merely a dry concept. Yet sadder realities are always present. A bullet-proof preachers robe underscores the extremely focused sobriety of the inebriation of Christs love. Some people actually do practice the interpenetration of life and love. Love unlimited can lead to the ultimate sacrifice. The preachers robe reminds us all of the heroic death, the martyrdom of Martin Luther King. Christ-like not only in word, but in truth and deed. The bullet-proof stained glass windows of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls visually sing as they Bling a more solemn chord. Both Biggie and Tupac are placed in that zone of luminosity, luminous with the primal light of enlightenment. The sky is blue, but neither is it day nor night. The lead lines, which actually function to hold the pieces of glass together, are visually held in a tension that seems simultaneously to break the picture apart. The push-pull between explosive fragmentation and cohesive composition is one of Hip Hops most meaningful and enigmatic appeals. Here it becomes an object of contemplation. These fragile shards of glass, while vulnerable, each on its own can also cut. This is the extreme pathos of male posturing. The balance of power in the undeclared wars of the streets is just as influenced by the invisible hand of real estate as gangspeak. The irony is that Caesar owns the turf cynically Caesar will denounce displays of machismo, yet still need troops for Caesars wars. The middle class is shielded from the vulgarity of any direct impact by a more subtle system of power plays. Yet in these windows, it is the halo on both men that amplifies the visual hymn of sanctity into a symbolically glowing emblem of sainthood: The Crucifixion of life, the Resurrection from death, and the Transfiguration through art. Something inside and outside of Church-speak, street-speak, and art-speak is here. Every one of us needs heroes or Saints. These hallows say it all, like crowns, or laurel leaves given at the end of the Greek Olympics. Their race is over. Both Biggie and Tupac are saying individually the same quote from St. Paul: I have fought the good fight I have finished the race I have kept the faith Therefore there is for me, a Crown of Righteousness. 1 Timothy 4:7 HALLEFUCKINGLUJAH Amen, Amen, Amen.
Bullet-Proof Preachers Robe bullet-proof vest, preachers robe 2007
Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur during installation stained glass, bullet proof glass, light 2007
In an interview talking about his art practice, Rikrit Tiravanija once said, It is not what you see that is important but what takes place between people. Building on the ideas behind Tiravanijas practice, my exhibition hosted by Boots Contemporary Art Space last November sought to address three key issues of connectivity and containment: inner complexity, evolution of exhibition design and display, and cooperation. The exhibition expressed the connective possibilities with both evolutional displays and dynamic interactive social environments. Paired with a group exhibition of current video art, I invited many shows into the show, the effect reminiscent of a Russian Matryoshka doll by concealing other exhibitions within the exhibition, using collective encounter, collaborative structures and the gallery space as outer shell. This provided both a physical and metaphysical containment, a current preoccupation of the gallery space as social environment. Amass included artists Brandon Anschultz and John Watson as exhibition designers and new video work by Sarah Baker, Kim Collmer, Chris Doyle, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Wendy Mason, Brandon Morse, and Pascual Sisto. The title is a reference to, in its most direct translation, a metaphor for curating an exhibition: to gather artwork, to assemble ideas, to group, and to collect. By commissioning two local artists to design sculptural support that invited, and in some ways, compelled the audience to assemble and come together as viewers, Amass offered a series of smaller interactions within a larger shared experience.
move, the museum as a setting for crossings of art and life, and the museum as a laboratory, which he hoped would turn everyday life into an architecture of situations.2 For Amass, unlike traditional film and video installation, I invited Anschultz and Watson to design objects that were functional and served as conceptual support, that provided an engagement between the architectural objects and the artworks, presenting a formal dialogue between artists. On this same point, art critic Christopher Knight said of a like-minded exhibition in LA in 2004, Art is a social activity rather than a discrete object. In the end the curatorial project is primarily about materials, otherwise it might as well be called anthropology or sociology.3
The final result was video and object interacting, presenting an atmosphere combining both pure collaboration and relational encounter, touching upon Bourriauds thoughts on coherent units or structures: the sculpture and video providing the independent entity, and the exhibition design i.e. seating arrangements for viewers supplies its inner dependency.4
In 2004, while studying in London, I attended an exhibition at MOT International that explored a variation of these ideas. Aptly titled, Russian Doll, the installation was a series of works with an overly literal definition of containment. Writing about his concept, director Chris Hammond writes: MOT acted as a vessel for its curatorial project, accommodating the artist, then extended that thought so that an artists work might, physically or conceptually, accommodate or be accommodated by that of anothers.1 My particular interest in the Matroyshka model in reference to Amass was that it provided the structure to present complex associations, a puzzle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, the center as soul, a more poetic and ephemeral situation. I was also interested in a sort of institutional critique: Boots as the outer layer with a projected mission, myself as curator, then the two exhibition designers reveal themselves as the mediating figures, and the artists at the center that cover the core finally the receiver or viewer as soul. The challenge was creating an exhibition that illustrated this system and provided a visual effect for each of the complimentary transferences. Even before French art critic and curator Nicholas Bourriaud coined relational aesthetics, Alexander Dorner, who in the 1920s directed the Hanover Museum, supported early relational models. Some of his original ideas included museums on the
Amass, however, kept this in mind by brutally extending my role as curator, by providing a curatorial framework for layers of inner complexity to reveal themselves through the concept of a unique situation for both response and conversation. For example, in Boots main space, Anschultz built beautifully crafted functional items such as benches, pedestal inspired tables, and headphone stands. In one instance he created a circular video stand that hosted three monitors and nine headphones. By wearing the headphones the viewer slipped into a singular, private experience, yet fully aware of the group growing around them, creating an encounter that was both private and public. Additionally, Anschultzs sculptural intervention provided other inter-subjective encounters in both the production of his own work (the pedestal), the artists video piece, and ultimately the viewers reception of it experienced together as a social entity. His installation allowed for complex associations to come together in one space, connecting the video work with display. Anschultz pinpointed and exploited the meeting place between these art forms, yet he maintained his own artistic and material language. The entry gallery housed a sculptural collaboration between artists John Watson and Brandon Morse that illustrated my intention behind the combination of collaborative structures and the phenomena of collective spectatorship challenging them to act as both artist and enabler, and opening up their practice to facilitate each others visual language. Watson worked closely with Morse to create an installation that incorporated, housed and accommodated his video work. Watson constructed furniture that encouraged viewers to sit and engage with one another while having a simultaneous viewing experience of Morses videos. He cobbled together sports inspired bleachers of found wood and other structural fragments, a pseudo-entertainment center and white washed projection screen tying perfectly to the content of Morses work. Both artists reference architecture in their work, by using a combination of evolving linear shapes and collapsible obsessively built forms, they both employ an ability to create and define space.
The installation sought to produce a combination of experiential situations, not allowing itself to be reduced to an individual object, but relying solely on the cooperation of these experiential elements. Through a multiplicity of complex physical and conceptual associations, it worked to traverse the boundaries of artistic and everyday occurrence, creating an acute awareness of the notion between public and private, and questioning the conventional configurations or expectations of how we view video art. At the heart of Amass was a preoccupation with some of the concerns voiced by architect Cedric Price, whereby he writes: there is a need for more collaboration between different models which might cultivate a spirit of difference and allow disparate conditions to thrive both through protection and exposure.5 Taking Prices idea as a point of reference, its the particular notions of protection, and exposure that I find most suitably defines the exhibitions ultimate purpose. What I mean by using these complimentary terms in reference to Amass, is that it sought to recognize and/or utilize the built in layers of both institutional, curatorial, and artistic endeavor, protecting each role, yet working to reveal new ways of viewing. These models of conceptualization were communally driving the exhibition, using the Matroyshka doll as a metaphor, and combining its physical structure with the ideas of collaboration. Amass was a collection of things within a thing, which opened to another thing, containing some other thing. Amass will be traveling to Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles in February 2009.
Bourriaud, N. (1998) Relational Aesthetics. Dijon, Les Presses du Reel. Hammond, C. (2004) www.motinternational.org/russian-doll.html Knight, C. (July 9, 2004) The Thought That Counts, Gallery Reviews, LA Times. Accessed April 2008, available from www.sisterla.com Obrist, H. (1998) Eyebeam, Blast, Alexander Dorner. Accessed April 2008, available from www.thing.net/eyebeam/msg00373.html Steenson, M. (August 2007) Cedric Prices Generator. Accessed April 2008, available from www.conceptualdevice.com/2007/08/cedric_prices_generator.html
Chris Hammond, Russian Doll (2004), www.motinternational.org/russian-doll.html (Accessed April 2008) Hans Ulrich Obrist, Eyebeam, Blast, Alexander Dorner (1998), www.thing.net/eyebeam/msg00373.html (Accessed April 2008) 3 Christopher Knight, The Thought That Counts, LA Times, (July 9, 2004) www.sisterla.com (Accessed April 2008) 4 Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon, Les Presses du Reel, 1998) 5 Molly Steenson, Cedric Prices Generator (August 2007), www.conceptualdevice.com/2007/08/cedric_prices_generator.html (Accessed April 2008)
The Power of 4: St. Louis
by Boots Contemporary Art Space (Questions by Juan William Chavez, Georgia Kotretsos and Tim Ridlen)
With an increased number of reputable and well-established arts institutions, St. Louis has a burgeoning class of arts professionals and institutional laborers. Despite this influx, there is a tendency to consider only the careers of a few key personas; however, every institution consists of a team including curators, board members, directors, visitor services personnel, etc.. From top down or bottom up, everyone puts a bit of him or herself into creating the face of a museum, gallery, foundation, or artist-run space. For better or worse, a collective identity emerges from the efforts of every individual. It is that identity we hope to reveal by conducting these interviews with the institutions themselves The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the Laumeier Sculpture Park, and the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, respectively. To do this, we have asked several employees of each institution one question, and we hope that each will keep in mind the mission and aims of the larger institution, while still providing individual and sincere answers. What will appear in print is a question and answer text presented as the Institutional voice. In a way, these interviews are meant as an experiment to solidify and contextualize the identity of each of St. Louiss admirable institutions, and to reflect critically on what an institutional identity is in St. Louis today.
Vito Acconci Face of the Earth
Photo: Stan Strembicki
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is one of the leading voices in the world of contemporary art. The Contemporary is dedicated to exhibiting the visual arts and artists of our time and to producing nationally recognized education programs. As a non-collecting institution, the Contemporary focuses its efforts on showing three to six major exhibitions a year, in addition to a number of shorter projects, featuring local, national and international, well-known and newly established artists from diverse backgrounds, working in all types of media. Paul Ha, Director BP: The Contemporarys programming invests a great deal in the interest of the young and emerging artists of St. Louis by creating the Emerson Visiting Critics and Curators Series, the Great Rivers Biennial, the City-Wide Open Studios, and much more. In addition it also creates outlets of parallel activities for young patrons such as the Contemporary Collectors program. Why are these activities also important to the mission of the Contemporary? PH: As the Director of a contemporary art museum, I feel that supporting young and emerging artists should be one of the main focuses of this institution. Additionally, we recognize the important responsibility of supporting the local artists, through exhibitions, financial support, and access. The Emerson Visiting Critics and Curators series is not only great for the general audience members who attend the lectures, but also because the critics make studio visits with the local artiststhis is a great way for artists here to introduce their work to the curators. Weve had critics and curators visit us from all over the country New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Boston, and Miami Through our Flat Files program, the locals (both artists and non-artists) have a resource for connecting to continued on page 9
Photo: Helene Binet
Photo: Robert Pettus
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando and situated in St. Louis Grand Center district, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts presents changing exhibitions and engages in a variety of programming initiatives involving the visual, literary, and performing arts. The Pulitzer possesses some of the same characteristics of a traditional museum: it has galleries that are open to the public, it presents changing exhibitions, and it aims to educate the public in various facets of the arts. However, the Pulitzer is a non-collecting institution whose mission also focuses on presenting programs that explore the interrelationship of art and architecture, principles of museum practice, and a personalized experience with the arts. Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Founder & Chairman BP: Why did you found the Pulitzer Foundation? Why in St. Louis? And why Tadao Ando? ERP: To answer your questions in reverse order: Tadao Ando was selected by my husband and me to renovate a former automobile factory and showroom which was on the site now occupied by Channel 9. We chose him because his work and aesthetic appealed to both of us. We wanted to help with the redevelopment of Grand Center, a part of St. Louis that meant a great deal to my husband. I, like my late husband, live in St Louis and care that the city thrives. The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts evolved from these early plans. William Bush, President BP: The Pulitzer has played a pioneering role in the rebirth of the St. Louis art community. What were the goals in the beginning, and what are the goals now? What have been the great successes, and what great successes are yet to come? continued on page 9
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
Laumeier Sculpture Park was born from a gift made by Mrs. Henry Laumeier of her 72-acre estate to the people of St. Louis County and the greater metropolitan area. With direct support of a group of innovative community leaders and many generous friends, Laumeier has developed into what it is today an internationally-recognized openair museum. It is Laumeiers mission to initiate a lifelong process of cultural awareness, enrich lives, and inspire creative thinking by actively engaging people in experiences of sculpture and nature simultaneously. Glen Gentele, Director BP: Laumeier Sculpture Park was founded in 1977, before any of the other contemporary art institutions existed in the city. How has the institution evolved with time, what role does it fill in St. Louis today and what should we look out for in the near future? GG: At the heart of Laumeier Sculpture Park is the interplay of people, sculpture, nature, and education. The institutional vision is to create a cultural legacy for art and nature that future generations will experience in one of Americas great open-air museums. Laumeier evolved out of the environmental art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The institution was founded in 1976; incorporated in 1977; and has developed into an important international cultural entity offering perspectives on the art of today and about the history of important issues in art specifically in the field of sculpture. As a destination, people come to experience ingenuity, community, and current examples of contemporary sculpture merged with, and complemented by, the beauty and timelessness of nature. Laumeier is accredited by the American Association of Museums and serves over 300,000 guests annually with free admission to the 105-acre site. The museum continues to preserve the concept of free access to cultural enrichment for all; park land for family fun; and continued on page 9
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, is committed to developing and preserving its fine art collection with a continued emphasis on the art of our time; inspiring social and intellectual inquiry into the connections between art and contemporary life through excellence in scholarship, education, and exhibition; and engaging audiences on campus, in the local community, and beyond. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum dates back to 1881 with the founding of the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts at Washington University. Its collection was formed in large part by acquiring significant works by artists of the time, a legacy that continues today. Carmon Colangelo, Dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts BP: How has the New Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum affected the San Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University and particularly the MFA program? CC: The New Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum has had a profound impact on the MFA program in the Graduate School of Art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. The thoughtfully curated exhibitions of contemporary art present a consistently high level of work by leading national and international artists. The new media series such as [Grid < > Matrix] and Window | Interface have provided significant examples in many genres of this medium, from work by Peter Campus, a pioneer in both video art and computer-enhanced digital photography, and Julius Popps entrancing installation, Bit Fall, to the provocative video pieces of Andrea Fraser. Reality Bites and On the Margins each have continued on page 9
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
the artists that live and work in the Midwest. The City-Wide Open Studios program allows the regular Joe and Jane who normally wouldnt get to do a studio visit or to interact with an artist to do just that. Almost everything we do is to recognize and to celebrate the artists of our generation and to provide ways to introduce them and their work to the general public. Our openings have become quite the scene and it is a great night for the local artists to meet the visiting out-of-town artists and for the locals to meet other local artists who are making this city so vibrant. The Collectors group is important to us in that, through travels and visits, I want to show that many cities outside St. Louis have created a huge economic boon for those cities. Weve traveled to Miami, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York, where art has positively impacted the economy. It is also important for us as a contemporary art museum to instill upon the potential art collector the joy of collecting contemporary art. The thrill of buying that painting or drawing comes from the direct impact you might have on that artists life that you may be helping that artist to pay rent or to buy paint to create their next piece. I feel one of the greatest perks in being involved in contemporary art is that we get to interact with the artists directly. Through the Great Rivers Biennial, we expose the works of local artists to the visiting jurors, and we support them financially by giving each of the three artists $20,000. But most importantly, we give the artists the experience of working with a museum and its staff in producing an exhibition. Many of the artists havent had the experience of working with a curator or considering what should be written about their work. The experience is invaluable in helping them grow as artists. There is positive energy in St. Louis right now for the visual arts. There is an important encyclopedic collecting institution (St. Louis Art Museum), a distinguished university art museum (Kemper), exciting alternative spaces (Boots Contemporary Art Space, White Flag Projects), a great space solely committed to local art (Regional Arts Commission), and then you have the Contemporary an institution committed to contemporary art. I feel fortunate to be here now and I know that everyone at the Contemporary is eager and looks forward to doing more for our community. Anthony Huberman, Chief Curator BP: As the most recent curatorial hire, what new attitudes, ideas, projects, or positions have you brought to the Contemporary? AH: Ive been in Saint Louis since August and have been working on putting together a new curatorial program for the Contemporary. I was inspired by the city and the paradoxical reality of our split personality: an interest in addressing a local audience and that of reaching a national and international one. Our program needs to be both here and there; we face two directions simultaneously, and our curatorial program is focused on serving those audiences side-by-side.
WB: We only opened in October of 2001. Our development in this short period of time is very different from that of other art institutions: instead of following existing role models, we are defining ourselves institutionally as we go. Initially, the only givens were: the Founders desire to create a sanctuary for the public and a laboratory for the arts, the outstanding building by Tadao Ando (who, interestingly enough, called it a place of possibilities), and the location, Grand Center, St. Louis emerging arts district.
the art of our time in an environment like no other. The institution provides an alternative to the white-cube experience and offers significant opportunities for emerging, mid-career and established artists. In addition, Laumeier is proud to serve a broad constituency that includes art advocates, families, school and travel groups, children, young adults, seniors, professionals, park lovers, leisure seekers and fitness enthusiasts.
Laumeier
Since the opening, we have constituted a track record, which, I believe, fulfills the initial expectation and vision. The Pulitzer has created a sustained program of ambitious exhibitions: each of them strongly reacts to the architecture and receives conceptual and visual strength in return. In relation to these exhibitions, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Pulitzer have developed a distinguished program of contemporary chamber music, and we are currently exploring collaborative possibilities with the Poetry Foundation in Chicago and with Cinema St. Louis. We also have very strong ambitions for the development of our website and are playing an increasing role in the community of museums and universities. If you will, we continuously create particular formats for pilot projects, which go beyond the possibilities of most traditional arts institutions. Besides maintaining an experimental approach in our ongoing programs, we are now exploring our potential in the field of community engagement in this endeavor, the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University is joining forces with us. On the long run, both institutions hope to create a web forum for a discussion of this question on a national level. Further aspects of expansion are also being discussed, including increased collaboration with several institutions such as the Saint Louis Art Museum and Harvard University. Matthias Waschek, Director BP: Going through the members of the staff on the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts website for our interviews, it became apparent that there wasnt a Chief curatorial position filled within the institution. How are the exhibitions curated and do individual roles ever shift among the staff? MW: Indeed, we dont have a curator in the traditional sense. The main reason for this is that our building has a very strong architectural presence, which makes Tadao Ando a silent co-curator. The different sizes of our galleries, their respective ambient light (we avoid artificial light wherever and whenever we can) and the relationship between the gallery spaces dont allow for a traditional museum narration. Every work is placed with a specific architectural context in mind no curatorial intent can ever breach that. The reward is remarkable, as every art work we have been installing in our galleries springs to life in a phenomenal way. In that sense, the aesthetic experience of art is more important to us than the visitors learning about an art historical concept or a curatorial idea. All this said, our exhibitions are nevertheless based on concepts, though they are viewer or perception-oriented concepts. The material we make available, in essence web-catalogues and hard copy brochures, are supposed to help our visitors without directing them. As we dont provide labels (considered as intrusions in the aesthetic experience) we specifically train our gallery assistants to respond to questions that visitors might have.
Laumeier Sculpture Park (the non-profit organization) works in partnership with St. Louis County Parks and Recreation. Current and future work focuses on providing an integrated framework for the flexible growth and development of the institution as a unique, sustainable community asset and attraction. Initiatives include park land preservation; new facilities; improved infrastructure; and expanded exhibition, education and public programs. We look forward to seeing you and to your continued support and enjoyment of the park. John Wuest, Board of Directors Chair BP: Given that the Sculpture Park deals in permanent and large scale sculptures as well as exhibitions, what is the relationship of the institution to benefactors, donors, and collectors in the community? JW: Laumeier Sculpture Park has a thirtyyear history of working with amazing artists, patrons, collectors, corporations, foundations, community groups and government officials. Our supporters have embraced initiatives that range from launching the institution to developing the organization over the years on every level. These partnerships underscore the institutions core belief, which is to serve and support, mentor and enrich the lives of others, and in doing so positively affect the community as a whole. I believe important relationships continue to develop because supporters of Laumeier share the commitment, enthusiasm and advocacy for the institution that ultimately helps to make St. Louis great. Our friends are our ambassadors to the larger local, national and international community. We are honored by these rewarding relationships. Jennifer Duncan, Deputy Director BP: What kind of special events or programs does Laumeier partake in that might be unique to an outdoor sculpture park? What kind of special considerations are there in the planning of such events? JD: Laumeier Sculpture Park produces several special events and public programs in the course of a year. In May, on Mothers Day weekend each year, we hold our annual Art Fair where 150 artists from across the country exhibit and sell their work to 15,000 event visitors. When planning this large-scale event, we try to place the grand-scale tents, entertainment and concessions in harmony with our collection of monumental sculptures. We select artists whose work is of high quality and accessible to the general public for viewing and purchase. With inclement weather, which is a frequent occurrence in the springtime, the impact on our grounds from 15,000 people can be significant. We make sure to plan, prepare for and address those situations with the help of the St. Louis County Parks operations staff who partner with us to maintain and preserve the park for the public. In early summer, the Music + Movies series at our amphitheatre pairs a local band and a movie under-the-stars, presented on a large, inflatable screen. People bring lawn chairs or blankets, and either picnic or purchase conces-
presented responses to political change, war and disaster while Beauty and the Blonde examined an ubiquitous American cultural phenomenon. In the context of the unique structure of the Sam Fox School that includes the Colleges of Art and Architecture, hosting shows such as the retrospective, Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (spring 2009) and other upcoming exhibitions curated by architecture as well as art faculty, the Kemper Art Museum provides unique, collaborative learning opportunities for students and faculty alike.
So, the over-arching method of the exhibitions program is based on a system of pairs and parallels and unfolds with two artists at a time and in two distinct rhythms juxtaposed and encountered side-by-side. In the Main Galleries will be shows by two artists. Its a kunsthalle model of artist-centered projects, featuring newly commissioned works, largescale, site-specific installation, surveys or existing works, and significant publications. Lasting three months and changing three times per year, each exhibition features two artists conceived as a single show, as two separate monographs, or as a collaborative project. Running alongside the Main Galleries is The Front Room, a space for short exhibitions by artists and others. These projects remain reactive, nimble and provisional. From a two-week exhibition to an hour-long performance, projcontinued on page 10
Sabine Eckmann, Director and Chief Curator BP: How crucial is the first year to a cultural institution of this caliber and how can it lay a foundation of a distinct vision and identity among the other institutions in the city in such a short period? SE: I believe that the first year is quite important insofar as it has to be used to convey new programmatic initiatives to the local, national, and international public. They make up the specific identity of the Kemper as distinct from other cultural institutions in St. Louis laying the ground work for meaningful collaboration. On a local level, we presented the Kempers identity through exhibitions that have a strong conceptual and thematic focus, yet also aim to introduce to St. Louis audiences to important international artistic practices. On a national and international level, we have voiced our identity through scholarly contributions in exhibition catalogues. The overall goal for exhibitions was to develop a diversified, vigorous, and stimulating program that balances modern and contemporary art and speaks to the Washington University academic community as well as local, national, and international audiences. We launched three programmatic initiatives: First, the Museum organizes permanent and temporary exhibitions of the institutions collection that explore the collection through a variety of interpretive frameworks, highlighting its depth and contemporary relevance. Second, the Museum is developing, implementing, and hosting national and international loan exhibitions that engage in new scholarship and bring to campus important artworks. Third, as one unit of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, the Museum organizes exhibitions that explore significant practices and ideas in contemporary art and architecture with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary approaches and new media. All of these programs share the common aim to further discussion about the impact of aesthetics on ourselves, and the institution of the museum and its practices. The first round of exhibitions focused on the specificity of new media arts ([Grid < > Matrix], Window | Interface), the contemporary trajectory of political avant-garde aesthetics (Reality Bites), an exploration into the artistic significance of painting today (Thaddeus Strode), as well as artistic positions that embrace institutional critique (Andrea Fraser). These thematic and monographic exhibitions and accompanying publications, are meant to visualize contemporary approaches to historical art, stimulate innovative art historical and theoretical inquiries, and encourage visual and intellectual engagements with the object of art. Lutz Koepnick, Curator of New Media BP: Among institutions in the city, the Kemper is unique in its focus on new media. Was there a conscious effort to take up where other institutions left off with regard to new media?
ects by lesser-established artists will include site-specific interventions, events, continuous screenings, as well as short exhibitions of paintings, drawings, or sculptures. The gallery also becomes a site for a carte blanche, whereby local, national, and international artist-run spaces, record shops, publishers, freelance curators, designers, and others occupy and inhabit an independent space within the museum. These ongoing projects encourage improvisation, collaboration, and speculation and as a series they follow loose associations from one to the next.
In the past, we worked with artists, such as Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly and Hiroshi Sugimoto, who installed their works in our galleries. A lot of installations have been developed by myself (and in close connection with the board), whereas the current one, Dan Flavin: Constructed Light is the first to be installed by a guest curator. Tiffany Bell, who also wrote Flavins catalogue raisonn, presented two different exhibition concepts in reaction to initial conversations. We opted for the version that was the most in tune with Andos architecture. All this said, my directorial duties, as different as they might be from the duties of directors at institutions where fundraising is concerned, dont end with the conception of installations. All our programs are closely related to these installations and, along with our very small team of collaborators, we are continuously preparing for activities outside our building. Camran Mani, Curatorial Assistant BP: Is Tadao Andos architectural vessel taken into consideration in the exhibition programming? Is there a dialogue between the artworks and the architecture desired by the curatorial team?
sions once they arrive. For these events, we light several of our largest sculptures, which provide the audience with an experience they wouldnt have at any other venue. Other events include a fall fundraiser each year, as well as smaller public programs. For each event and program, the goal is to bring people to Laumeier for a memorable experience that enhances their time here and delights them in unexpected ways.
Juxtaposed and encountered side by side, the pairs of artworks, artists, and exhibitions offer a richer and more dynamic relationship to contemporary art. This approach to building an exhibition program will create a more recognizable identity for The Contemporary and will strengthen its reputation as an artist-centered institution that presents the most relevant and experimental developments in contemporary art through an ambitious schedule of dynamic programs. Laura Fried, Assistant curator
Kim Humphries, Director of Installations and Collections Management BP: The museum is a unique visual library of large-scale outdoor sculptures. What special attention is required from works in an outdoor setting? Also, how is this collection used to inspire the young generation of artists in the city and what opportunities are presented to local and international artists? KH: An outdoor sculpture collection requires an approach as varied as the types of work, materials and conceptual underpinnings that artists choose to work with. Earthworks by Ian Hamilton Finlay, Frances Whitehead and Beverly Pepper art that is nature (plants, trees and grass) are sculptures that require a kind of care most indoor-oriented museums do not need to address. Other works of steel, paint, stone and ceramics require more traditional approaches to their conservation and maintenance. We have unique works fabricated in wood as well. Robert Stackhouse describes his piece (St. Louie Bones) in the collection as permanent. To assure that is the case, he has supplied Laumeier with precise plans for the sculpture and the empowerment to rebuild and resurface the work as required into the future. On the other end of the spectrum are works in the collection that include notions of age and decay as part of their core concept. Laumeier has exhibited artwork of significant art historical importance as well as challenging work coming from a current critical discourse. The collection contains works of great range from Alexander Libermans monumental steel sculpture The Way (1980), to Ursula von Rydingsvards site-specific installation, Untitled (1988), to Tony Tassets glaring, surreal 12 foot Eye (2007). Indoor exhibitions present a varied and informative point-of-view that enriches the scope of the outdoor experience. Recent solo exhibitions by international artists seen for the first time in the region include Robert Chambers, Joseph Havel, Karyn Olivier, Tobias Putrih, and Deborah Aschheim, among others. The Kranzberg Exhibition Series each summer is dedicated specifically to artists from the Saint Louis region. Laumeiers innovative programs make featured artists accessible through workshops, studio visits, lectures and tours. We provide opportunities for local artists to work directly with us on the creation and installation of these exhibitions. In addition, professional internships are offered to students seeking greater knowledge and experience in museums. Clara Collins Coleman, Curator of Interpretation BP: We find the title of your position particularly interesting; please take us through the role of the Curator of Interpretation. How do you negotiate the sensitivity of such a role? CC: As Curator of Interpretation for Laumeier Sculpture Park, I am responsible for the Docent training and tour program, educational community collaborations, partnerships and volunteers as well as the development and implementation of future integrated programs for audiences of all ages. I work continued on page 11
BP: From a curators perspective, what are the added benefits and challenges of a contemporary institution given the variety of new and strange media that artists use today? (Everything from video art, to billboards, to installations, to performances, etc.) LF: Indeed, in recent decades artists have continued to broaden the possibilities for and boundaries of contemporary art practice. In response, the curating, teaching, and reception of art and visual culture are no longer necessarily rooted to traditional aesthetics or forms of presentation. As you say, the breadth of new media in contemporary art challenges us to negotiate how that work is presented, and how it captures the imagination of the viewer, within the space of our galleries. As a curator, a particular challenge with much of todays innovative and charged art from performance, to off-site, guerilla-style displays on wheat-pastes or billboards, to net art or design becomes the presentation of those images and ideas within our walls. At the Contemporary, we strive to showcase new art and ideas in a series of shows structured on the kunsthalle model of rigorous, artist-centered and often artist-driven exhibitions. In our commitment to supporting new commissions, site-specific installations, and artist-museum collaboration, we aim to engender a rich and productive dialogue between the art and the space and the public. And yet, our mission to celebrate and support a visual culture that is both fluid and unstable also challenges us to respond with perhaps a more reactive curatorial program, one that also exists off-site or in-circulation, outside and alongside our main galleries. In particular, I am thrilled and inspired by our brandnew Front Room gallery a space designed for just such flexibility and experimentation. Lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, these Front Room projects, presented in tandem but never in conjunction with our larger sustained exhibitions, aim to echo the elasticity and simultaneity of contemporary culture, as we feature a wide range of artists in a restless series of installations, screenings, performances, and interventions. Kathryn Adamchick, Director of Education BP: As the director of Education, what demographics is the Contemporary actively reaching out to? Who is the main audience of an institution like the Contemporary? How would you characterize the challenges of a contemporary Midwestern US art institution when it comes to addressing and/or educating an audience? KA: As an educator my goal is to reach out to the widest possible audience. Limited resources sometimes require me to make
CM: The Pulitzer was founded on dialogue between art and architecture on collaboration between Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra, and Tadao Ando and that kind of dialogue remains a guiding principle for us. Hopefully that came across with our exhibition Water unless you saw the artwork in relation to the water in our building, the selection of artworks were arbitrary to the point of absurdity. But thats not to say we want all the art to look site-specific. I think we would just as soon have the site seem art-specific. Rachel Gagnon, Public Relations and Website Coordinator BP: Are any steps taken towards making alliances and collaborations with other institutions or art spaces in St. Louis? Is this in the foundations agenda? RG: It is very much a part of the Pulitzers mission to build strong ties with other arts institutions in the St. Louis area. One of the ways were currently involved in this is through our co-authored weblog with our neighbor, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. With alternating posts each day, we try to give readers a candid look at the behind-the-scenes workings of both of our institutions and showcase our similarities and differences. We have also started working with a group consisting of public relations coordinators from various not-for-profit visual art spaces in St. Louis. Meetings are held regularly to discuss ways we can strategically raise the profile of the arts in St Louis, both collectively and for our individual institutions. The idea is to not only build awareness about what we all have to offer, but to also further connect our institutions to each other and create a network we can all rely on and learn from. So far through these meetings, weve created an Arts Map for visitors to use, and it will be exciting to see how we continue to grow from there. Lisa Harper Chang, Manager of Community Engagement BP: Your position was recently created and is co-financed between the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University. How did this collaboration come to be and what should we be expecting to see in relation to the broader continued on page 11
LK: The Kempers focus on new media since its opening was indeed a conscious effort to bring work in new media to the attention of a larger public and initiate productive conversations about what we might want to call new media (as compared to old ones) in the first place. In the continued absence of firmly developed and shared standards about the quality, success, and meaning of new media work, the Kemper has decided to pursue its series of exhibitions on new media aesthetics in order to explore the general relationship between technologies and the arts today and incite fruitful debates about the aesthetic specificity of work done with the help of advanced technologies. Because the exhibition of such work is often in need of substantial conceptual framing, the Kempers role as a university museum was perceived as an ideal platform to launch such an exploration. The exhibition of new media work is accompanied by various publications, educational programs, lecture series, workshops, and seminars in order to connect diverse audiences with each other and provide a space for critical reflection about the material on display. All this is indeed meant to take up where other institutions in the city have left off with regard to new media. We are now also discussing the possibilities of acquiring new media work more systematically in order to fill another perceived gap: the absence of any extensive new media collection in the area, public or private. Critics and scholars today often argue about the newness of new media, about the boundary between old and new, about the curious rhetoric of progress that seems to energize the concept and practice of new media art. With its unique focus on new media, the Kemper seeks to insert itself into these debates. The focus is a product of a deliberate effort to help survey the terrain for university and non-university public alike, probe meanings and formal strategies of very recent artistic productions, and invite audiences to engage with work thatthough much talked-aboutcontinues to pose tremendous challenges to be exhibited and therefore has rarely been seen in museums in the area. Michael Murawski, Coordinator of Education and Public Programs BP: What level of viewer and audience mediation does the Kemper adopt as standard operating procedure? In other words, where is that threshold between first hand experience and historical object at the Kemper? MM: The ways in which people are accessing and experiencing art today are constantly changing, and I think that it is so important for museums to be actively involved in issues of how we view and think about art. The Kemper Art Museums educational programs are developed with the goal of creating an open learning environment that values the direct interactions and experiences visitors have with works of artand with each other. In my position as Coordinator of Education, I am constantly thinking about the visitor experience and the role that educational programs (docent tours, gallery talks, school visits, etc.) and interpretive materials (wall text, labels, podcasts, etc.) have in facilitating that experiencewithout getting in the way or becoming too didactic.
Especially with modern and contemporary artwhich is still a somewhat uncomfortable realm for some visitorsit is so important to value the experience of exploring and freely exchanging ideas about the works on display while providing for an informed perspective. Currently, Im teaching a University College course on the process of looking at art, and weve been engaging in some exciting discussions about empowering the role of the viewer/participant in this experience. Weve also continued on page 11
choices regarding priorities. As a result the primary audience that I program for is the teen and adult audiences. In doing so I hope the teens will stay engaged through their adult years, that adults will communicate the importance of the arts to their kids, and all will continue to stay involved in the arts throughout their lifetime. Of course were also involved in many school collaborations, community outreach initiatives, artist residencies, and other programs that serve younger and older audiences. I dont think the challenges I face are unique to being at a Midwestern contemporary art institution. Its more of an education, or socio-economic issue. I find visitors are looking for a dialogue. My role is to challenge them, to get them thinking differently.
community of St. Louis from the foundation?
LHC: My position is best described as an experiment in community building between the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. The Pulitzer Foundation is physically placed at the crossroads of cultural and economic revitalization efforts and neighborhoods that are suffering from neglect. We believe that the combination of social work, which is guided by a code of ethics rooted in the principles of social justice and community, and the arts, which, at various levels, run the risk of being viewed by the general populace as either extraneous or elitist, can be a powerful tool for social inclusion.
Katrina Hallowell, Program Assistant BP: As Program Assistant, your role is to act as a liaison between the exhibitions on view and the audience that visits the institution. How can curatorial practice meet with education at any given point within a museum setting? KH: When planning programs that support museum exhibitions, I think it is important not to be too literal in translation. There are plenty of resources available that address artistic practices and provide factual information about artists and I think programs should work to investigate concepts and raise questions that are brought up by the exhibition. It is more interesting to explore tangential relationships spurred by the exhibition, or artist, than to try and develop programs that explain theories and concepts. Programming works closely with Curatorial to understand their process in realizing exhibitions. However, as educators, we translate the curatorial rhetoric into concepts and theories that relate to everyday life. It is important to create programs that appeal to and engage a broad audience. I try to investigate and experiment different approaches to learning for various age groups, interests and demographics. My interest lies in the cross over between audiences and highlighting connections that are at times obscured. Kiersten Torrez, Visitor Services and Retail Operations Coordinator BP: Being the first person a visitor meets, what does an audience member expect upon entering the Museum? KT: Being in the foreground of the Contemporary, I strive to make our visitors experiences as enjoyable as possible. Guests to the museum are warmly greeted with a smile. I briefly orient them with the space and direct them towards the gallery guides, which accompany each of our exhibits. I then make myself available to answer a wide array of questions, be it exhibition related, a restaurant recommendation or directions to other art institutions in town. BP
As this experiment evolves, we hope to see a strengthening of the bonds between the various populations within St. Louis, an admittedly lofty and difficult outcome to measure. We also hope to create a forum to continue the practical, academic, and professional exploration of the historically-intimate and significant relationship between the arts and society. If this experiment succeeds, we will contribute to the development of a new community standard in which arts institutions develop meaningful partnerships with their community and through these partnerships promote the value of arts and culture in society. Tim Reichman, Visitor Services BP: The evident lack of signage in the galleries plays a vital role in retaining the high aesthetic of the interior, yet it may puzzle visitors at first. What does the Visitor Services do to assist, orient and inform the visitors? TR: The architectures serene and contemplative space permits artwork to be experienced in a very personal way. Our efforts are simply to provide visitors with a level of comfort that supports the idea of exploring our galleries from this personal point of view. We provide historical and curatorial information (if that is desired) both conversationally and through printed material, but even these come with a consideration for the visitors perspective. We dont wish to lead a guest to a specific conclusion, but rather we prefer them to find their own path to a more personal discovery. BP
closely with my colleagues to fulfill the museums mission by providing interpretation and education programs that serve various sectors of the public on a regular basis, both on site at the museum and in the community. My title embodies the essence of the museums educational role, communicating and inspiring dialogue about works of art in Laumeiers collection, and striving to expand visitor participation through stimulating learning experiences. I like the ArtLex definition; it is succinct and describes the basis of our docent-training program. Laumeier docents, as tour guides, act as interpreters of the collection, linking artists, curators and visitors. Interpretation is a stage in the work of art criticism following the describing and analyzing of an artwork, in which one identifies the works expressive qualities, or the meaning, or the mood, or idea communicated to the viewer. A work of art can be very complicated and may be interpreted in different ways by different people. www.artlex.com My interesting title reflects my role in creating a model to fulfill our mission to initiate a lifelong process of cultural awareness, enrich lives, and inspire creative thinking by actively engaging people in experiences of art and nature simultaneously.
been engaging in some open and interesting dialogues in the galleries about particular works of art. Throughout my experiences and research in museum teaching, I am increasingly finding that it is these in-depth dialogues, informed conversations, and shared experiences that can provide for the most meaningful visit to an art museum.
Kimberly Singer, Manager of Marketing, Visitor Services, and Events BP: How does the Kempers unique location on the campus of Washington University affect the educational and public programming goals? KS: The Kemper Art Museum enjoys a number of advantages due to its being a part of Washington University that impact our approach to education and public programming. Being a university museum has really allowed our institution to maintain a strong educational mission throughout its history, and we aim for programming to be intellectually challenging to both our campus and public audiences, which we balance with our intention to remain appealing and accessible to all. We also realize that we are in a sense a public face of the university and have a lot of direct public and community interaction through school tours and group visits and special events. We always try to remain aware of this role and we do hope that when people come away with a good experience that it reflects well on the university too. But we do consider the university community to be our primary audience, and tailor some events and educational opportunities as outreach to scholars or students. We think its important to be a part of the campus in meaningful ways, so we create opportunities to foster that interaction; one example of how this is put into practice is our Teaching Gallery, which allows faculty and students to integrate works from the Museums collection into undergraduate and graduate curricula through a designated installation space. BP
The Kenneth and Nancy Kranzberg Library at the Kemper Art Museum Photo: Stan Strembicki
Perhaps implicit in the role of a museum educator/interpreter is the ability or capability to perceive and respond in a sensitive manner to the attitudes, feelings, or circumstances of the artist and visitors as well as my role as part of a team to meet the goals and objectives of Laumeiers education department. Karen Mullen, Curator of Education BP: What is the educational focus of LSP? KM: Laumeiers Education Department believes students expand their critical and creative thinking skills through explorations with contemporary art. By interacting with the parks diverse collection and exploring a full range of artistic disciplines and media, students will acquire knowledge and understanding of a full range of artistic disciplines and media with which to express themselves clearly and effectively. As the Curator of Education at Laumeier Sculpture Park, I oversee all the activities of the education department. My primary responsibilities include development and management of Art Camp, art classes and special art projects for Art Fair and other public programs at Laumeier.Reaching underserved communities throughout the St. Louis area with educational opportunities and cultural programming is a priority for Laumeier Sculpture Parks education department. We strive to engage students of all ages with informal and formal learning experiences and seek to enrich the lives of individuals with these opportunities. BP
Creating Public & Private Art Collections: Interview with Helene Zucker Seeman
Helene Zucker Seeman has commissioned and implemented numerous large-scale public art installations, built a $20 million, 10,000work art collection, and published and lectured on contemporary art and archival research. She has expertise in the business of art marketing and art collections and has used that expertise to advise clients in the corporate and academic-institutional setting. Her course, Creating Public & Private Art Collections at New York University, on advising art collecting is one of the few attempts to actually teach the skills of building and acquiring an art collection. The course covers exactly how one could conceive of and create an art collection, how to define a collection and obtain, maintain, and display art (and deaccession when appropriate). Questions such as these are addressed and discussed in her class: Why do Individuals collect art? Why and what does corporate America collect? Who buys art for public and private collections? How does one obtain artwork for collections? Commissions? How does one determine the value of collections? How does one utilize collections for Public Relations purposes? And much more. Georgia Kotretsos: While reading the Creating Public & Private Art Collections course curriculum, I began to wonder why this isnt part of a basic BFA degree? The study of art should be grounded in a thorough knowledge of all its mechanisms and the collection of art is one of them. Traditionally, there would be a middleman between the artist and a collector, but grasping art from production to consumption at an early stage is invaluable to a young artist. Museums or auction houses occasionally may offer seminars, or talks on how one could build an art collection to their members or to the general public. Is a course specifically on how one can create a public or private collection a fairly new idea in tertiary education? Who are the students in this case and why do they sign up for this course? Helene Zucker Seeman: I do agree that this type of course should be a part of the basic BFA degree. The focus is just elsewhere and courses regarding creating collections (when and IF offered) seem to be electives. Maybe this focus is not perceived as being pure enough. But one of the major problems, I think, is that there is little discussion of how to look at art... How to see and absorb AND most importantly I am not sure that students really understand that fundamentally they need to be out looking all the time. Educating ones eye is the primary objective, and to do this takes time and energy and PASSION. As an aside, another course that should be REQUIRED of fine art majors is the business of art. I was director of the Prudential Art Program for 20 years and often I would lecture to university art students about the BUSINESS of art. Artists I found really need to be taught about the business side. There is definitely more of this now, (I found Dan Camerons essay in Boot Print Vol.1/Issue 2 interesting). Artists are, for the most part, doing studio courses, etc. and not learning how to market themselves because it was/is not considered pure. Many do not have the basic tools of how to approach the public/galleries etc. I spend time in my course discussing the issues of passion and the collecting mentality, i.e. what makes people collect. What makes some passionate about toys and others passionate about swords. This is a very important psychological discussion which I think needs to occur; it is basic to the understanding of collecting art. My students seem to be surprised by this concept, and very interested in the discussion. My course is offered in the School of Continuing Education, so not all of the students are enrolled in degree programs. I have from time to time lectured on the specifics of corporate collecting and art commissions. Having said the above, The School of Continuing Education at NYU attracts a very diverse, fascinating audience. The students who enroll in my class are from many backgrounds and numerous countries. The first thing we do is introduce ourselves and outline our backgrounds. It is a wonderful opportunity for the students to network, etc. Ages vary from graduate students to adults changing careers. Typically, there will be a group of students taking the course towards their appraisal degree/certification. The course is an elective. One of the particular challenges for me when teaching a Continuing Education course is that there is a wide degree of knowledge in each class. Some of the students have not had much exposure to the field of art, and are taking the course to determine if this is a profession for them to pursue. Some are already professionals with extensive art backgrounds. To elaborate further on the student body: I have had art gallery owners/directors from as far away as Spain and Columbia that want to learn more about the business of art, lawyers and investment professionals that are thinking about creating art collections for clients or their firms, corporate curators seeking additional professional information, a C.E.O.s wife who was contemplating starting up an art consulting service, designers looking to expand their expertise, individuals in private enterprise who are building art collections for their small corporations, private collectors that were seeking more knowledge, graduate students looking to become art advisors. In each class, I often also teach students from overseas (Asian countries). They are interested in the art profession and have been told that there are not any courses in their home countries that relate to their interest in this field. (Korea, Japan, China). I dont know why, but art collecting is perceived as mystical advisors are these magical beings who direct people to what they should be passionate about. The people signing up for the class want to demystify the process for themselves, and get some hard facts and procedural information. I hope I am helping towards this end. GK: What sort of qualities should one look for in a potential collector? What kinds of people make good candidates? HZS: Based on my experience, the best collectors have a PASSION for what they like. This passion is emotional, it is not something you can easily define. It is not concrete; it is a feeling that a person gets when they come across an object that excites their emotions, their senses. It is, as we all know, a very personal feeling. Often two people can share this passion together. Maybe one turned the other on to the interest. Some people I work with have not been looking at art for a long time; they are new to the collecting mentality. They hire me to educate them so they can develop an eye, and so they can determine what they personally respond to. There is a huge amount of material in this world, and it is important for a client to discern what is of interest to them. I am not interested in working with individuals who are collecting art for a future profit. This is not a true collector in my mind. They might as well be collecting stocks. I guess one could argue that there can be a passion here as well, but it is not one I relate to. I tell people to purchase an object because it speaks to them directly and personally, not because it may appreciate in value. Most contemporary art does not appreciate in value. It would be a wonderful bonus if the object/artist does become important, but that is not why it is being purchased. I am hired because my clients are familiar with my eye, trust my eye, and know I have a strong track record over many years, BUT not because I am guaranteeing that the work they purchase will appreciate. Good collectors spend a lot of time looking at many different types of art; they are passionate about the hunt and always excited to discover something new. GK: Once you help one of your clients to develop an eye, whats the next step? How often are they prepared to commit to what it takes to build and maintain a collection? Different budgets buy different art, what are the types of collections out there and to what kind of budgets do they correspond? HZS: A corporation and an individual work a bit differently when it comes to budgeting. In a corporation there is usually a finite amount of money they will give you to spend. The advisor is given a budget (or negotiates a budget) and it is up to that advisor to split the monies up and make it work. In other words, you are responsible for purchasing enough art for the locations you have identified as worthy. Sometimes, if I find something absolutely perfect and I know it will cause me to go over budget or run short on artwork, I will go to the executive and have a discussion. For a private client I begin by asking what kind of price range they are comfortable with; what did they have in mind. Sometimes it is a frightening concept for someone to think they are beginning a collection. This is a concept that grows over time as they acquire more work, and catch the collecting fever. Usually people give me lower numbers than they end up spending. Once a price range is defined and you show work in that range, you may often be asked to show the client works that are just a bit higher priced, etc. People like to feel they have seen a very wide scope of material & prices so they can judge for themselves what the art is worth to them. I think this is good, and I do encourage this type of research and looking. I do occasionally have a client who wont define a budget for me, so I need to define it for myself by showing a wide range of works with varying price levels. When people see something they love, even if it is more then they anticipated spending, they often make the stretch and purchase the work. During this process, certain aesthetic preferences will begin to be defined. Often what a client THINKS he/ she wants is not what is finally selected. I enjoy the challenge of visiting a clients surroundings (office or home), speaking with them about their interests, and then determining for myself what types of art they will enjoy most. There are as many types of collections as there are individuals! GK: What role do a) art dealers, b) art brokers and c) art consultants play in the art world? How much power do they really have in terms of whats sold and whats bought and by whom? HZS: Art professionals (art gallery owners, art advisors) have a huge amount of power when it comes to what is bought and sold in the marketplace. Artists are basically solitary individuals who create work in their studios but who need others to do their public relations for them. I have found in my experience, that it is a rare artist indeed who can create AND do his own marketing. Some artists are good business people, but generally this part of the profession diverts them from the work of creating. I am very supportive of the art gallery system. Art dealers put themselves on the line by representing or exhibiting an artists work because they believe in it. This is how people come to see the work. I believe art is experiential. One should be able to visit a space & spend time communing with the work(s). As I have traveled I have visited many towns where I learn about a famous artist. Sometimes this famous artist is just selling through word of mouth in his/her own immediate part of the world. They may even be profiting and living totally off the sale of their artwork. BUT often they are not known outside their small area because they have not had the opportunity to have a public exhibition. Their work has really not been marketed. Once an artist completes a series of works, he/she wants to get their message out into the larger world. Galleries and art advisors are very important in spreading the word to clients, museums and the press. As we all know, the processes of disseminating information are rapidly changing, and the Internet has become a major player in getting visuals of an artists work out into the world. Many people are now purchasing from the Internet, but I would caution anyone planning to proceed in this manner. One should never purchase a work without seeing it in person first. So if you see something online that you think you cant live without, do take it on approval before making the final commitment. Any reputable artist or gallery will be comfortable with this arrangement. GK: Even more now than ever before, collectors are constructing spectacular museum like settings to house their own art collections. How does this impact the artworks in the collection, the collected artists and the traditional museum industry? HZS: The issue of collectors constructing spectacular museums to house their personal collections has received an enormous amount of press in the past year. I think this is a very difficult subject. On one hand we can look at all the amazing collections that were formed in this manner (just here in New York: the Frick, The Guggenheim, The Whitney). It is wonderful if premier works of art will be together in a public setting. However, as far as contemporary art is concerned, one doesnt know just which works will be worth viewing in a few decades. I am just not totally convinced that all of these contemporary collections, each in a separate building, will attract enough visitors long term. I also think it is important to view works of different time periods. One moment in time informs another. For this reason, I often prefer visiting a larger museum where I can see different time periods of art in one location. I enjoy the process of comparing art of different generations and how artists learned from and played off each other. This continuity of education is important. Even if I am visiting the museum to see one specific exhibition, it is wonderful to glimpse others on the way to the show I will visit. In this way new interests are often born.
The Fair View: Interview with Christos Savvidis
after having received warm feedback from international and local galleries. The fair will collaborate once more with Greek and international art professionals, among them Marina Fokidis, Bettina Busse, Sarah Belden, and Isabella Bortolozzi, in order to deliver a rich, stimulating program of projects and events that balance a commercial and curatorial approach. Art Athina: 23-25 May, 2008 www.art-athina.gr This online interview was completed in April 2008. Georgia Kotretsos: You were appointed the Art Director of Art Athina in 2006, yet you only launched the Restart of the fair with the 13th Art Athina in 2007. By that time and under your watch, the fair had undergone a major face-lift. You particularly focused on energizing important Greek and foreign collectors in order to achieve dynamic sales in a constantly expanding market. How does a courtship of this kind begin, evolve and grow? What does it take from your end to deliver the goods at the end of the day? Christo Savvidis: The best way for an art fair to attract and sustain a long-lasting relationship with collectors is to offer a high quality artistic program that includes good galleries of course but also a stimulating program of parallel events. When this is topped up with the fairs unique character, as well as with top quality services (warm hospitality and friendly environment), then the whole package can be very attractive. Another important factor is the profile of the collectors invited, which we try to match with the participating galleries profile. Towards this end, we collaborate with special VIP advisors who assist us in selecting the VIP guests. Specifically, Art Athina does not focus only on established collectors (Greek or foreign), but at the same time invests in fostering a relationship with an emerging class of young Greek buyers that may not have become conscious collectors yet, but are increasingly showing interest in contemporary art. My goal this year as Artistic Director of Art Athina is to raise the programs quality even higher in order to sustain a more lasting relationship with the Greek market. GK: Does an Art Director of an art fair need more than an art background? Are entrepreneurial qualifications part of the job requirements? And if so, why? CS: If entrepreneurial qualifications are a prerequisite for any business venture, it is also what is in great part demanded for the management of art and the art market. The role of an artistic director is not always exactly the same and does not always call for the same qualifications. In some cases, the artistic director is solely responsible for designing the artistic program. In other cases as in Art Athinas two most recent versions much more is required. The general directives and policy of the fair, its main program, the parallel exhibitions and events, and the coordination of those as a whole call for entrepreneurial qualifications that guarantee the organization of a demanding, complex and multifaceted short-term event, and at the same time help to construe the market implications that a fair is governed by. GK: Im particularly a big fan of the curated exhibitions at Art Athina. Why is this approach a good chunk of the fair itself? What do you wish to achieve by presenting art to the visitors of the fair in this manner? CS: I assume you are referring to Open Plan and the Garage Project, and not the offsite exhibitions. So lets have a closer look: Open Plan is Art Athinas curatorial section, with a strong exhibition approach. The invited curator Bettina Busse (Berlin) in the 2008 edition invites interesting international art galleries to exhibit sculptures and installations. The aim is to stretch the limits of the traditional art fair and to offer new opportunities to buyers. After 2007 when it was part of the newly introduced program and curated by Sotirios Bahtsetzis (Greece) and Cecilia Canziani (Italy), this years Open Plan comes back with an even stronger exhibition feel. The Garage Project on the other hand aims to present the dynamics of the local art scene. Through the exhibition that takes place in the venues internal parking lot (curated by Nandja Argyropoulou in 2007 and Marina Fokidis in 2008), it is made evident to the visitors local and international that there is a considerable mobility that energizes the Greek art scene. This section moves away from the typical exhibition format and presents art works installed in stimulating ways performances, music concontinued on page 23
photo: Vangelis Rassias
Photo of Christos Savvidis
Christos Savvidis has been the Director of ArtBOX since 1999, a creative arts management office in Thessaloniki, Greece. He is a founding partner of the Forum for European Cultural Exchanges a non profit organization also based in Thessaloniki; the artistic director of Action Field Kodra since 2004, an annual visual arts festival in Thessaloniki as well; and finally the Artistic Director of Art Athina, the international contemporary art fair of Athens, since 2006. Art Athina was first established in 1994 by the Hellenic Art Galleries Association, making it among the oldest contemporary art fairs in Europe. The fair played a decisive role in the creation of a dynamic art market in Greece. Art Athina successfully launched its Restart in May 2007, following a necessary one-year pause in order to regroup its forces and review its goals in relation to the international art market. This year, the fair makes a dynamic comeback
Between the Bosphorus and Madison Avenue: A Conversation with Orhan Taner
about business tactics, philosophies, and the challenges of starting a business in a sensitive political and cultural climate. Juozas Cernius: You mention on the Culture Ventures website that the process of buying an artwork is a significant part of the transaction. Along with the object itself, the buyer has an opportunity to connect to prestige, affluence, and pleasure. This is a promise and hope of many people transacting in the art world all the time, to varying degrees of success. As the professional facilitating the transaction, where do you find the art and where do you find the collector? What is the ideal candidate for a new collector? Orhan Taner: The ideal candidate for a new collector has multiple objectives, and thus needs to be multi-talented. She needs to possess the skill set to attach the ownership experience to the artwork. This experience starts with the whole hoopla around acquisition process and lasts until the eventual sale. We therefore see the value of an artwork becoming more independent from its creator, i.e. the artist, and becoming a function of the total experience, which can be attached to it by the collector. This is the general framework I use when I argue that the currencies in the art trade are no longer Euros or Dollars only, but also affluence, prestige, and pleasure. As a result of this bundling of experiences around the artwork, the artwork itself becomes almost a living creature. It develops a memory, and perhaps ambitions of its own. The new ideal collector (individual or institutional) therefore assumes a parental role. Dealers, critics, curators, sponsors what I call the contempreneurs, as a group - become the collectors best allies in her endeavor of raising this child. Where the artist stands in this model is yet to be seen. I say this because, unless the artist takes a proactive role in this new order, he will be no more than a surrogate mother. JC: The business of art is international; Turkey is in many ways a mix of East and West. However, the crossover can prove complex, as many aspects of contemporary art, as understood in Europe and the Americas, would be unwelcome or misunderstood. Are you taking an internationalist idea into your business and interest in art? Do you have a policy to address the cultural sensitivities of the countries you do business in? OT: I have a two-year old son, and we are in the process of shopping for pre-school programs. We recently attended a workshop organized by the International Community School in Istanbul, where the discussion was on the advantages and disadvantages of being a kid of an expatriate family, moving around the world every three to four years. I believe that what can be said for that kid can also be said for the artwork. I have earlier established my point about living art in my answer to your previous question. The more the art moves around, the better educated it will get. The art itself will learn the cultural sensitivities rather than the dealer. Of course, I am speaking here about the overall experience of the artwork. The owner, or the collector, is the parent, the ultimate mastermind behind bringing up this new creature. This phenomonon, by the way, is not limited to contemporary art. Specifically in Turkey, here, art is being produced which is thematically very appealing to the Western eye. It is exotic and sometimes controversial, but never too exotic and never too controversial. Its like having a great friend who loves to party but never gets sick and pukes. Art from Turkey and this region of the world will make great friends I am a believer. JC: If success in the art world is about cultivating relationships, and yet no relationship is unconditional, how do you weather the gloomy tidings of recession or an unstable economy? How do you bring comfort to the nervous collector? OT: Well, I believe it is better to have few friends than none during times of uncertainty. It is precisely those relationships cultivated around the artwork, which will act as a buffer during the gloomy tidings. Contemporary art in its classical sense is certainly not recessionproof, not only in terms of value, but in pure artistic sense as well. However, one would in a sense purchase insurance as the totality of the experiences around the art is bundled together. JC: Founding a new publication is a tremendous commitment. Over the years you must have discovered veins of interest linking many continued on page 23
Photo of Orhan Taner
Orhan Taner has acted as the Director of Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair since 2006 and has recently founded Culture Ventures (www.cultureventures.com), an international art advisory company based in Istanbul that counts among its clients art fairs, art events, sponsors, partners, collectors, museums, galleries, etc., worldwide. His business and art activities have led him to international centers, including frequent stops in New York where he once was the former Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company, a New York-based investment banking firm. Inspired to greater involvement in the art world, he began developing Contempreneur, a magazine for the art industry, loosely inspired by The Economist. In September 2007, Taner was selected and featured as being one of The 20 Most Powerful Figures in Turkish Contemporary Art Scene by Forbes Magazine. Based on all the above, I met with him online to ask him a few questions
A Collectors Carte Blanche: An Interview with Barbara Steiner of Leipzigs Galerie fr Zeitgenssische Kunst
Courtesy: Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig
KW Hommage Klaus Werner Curated by Heidi Stecker and Barbara Steiner
The museum is central to the perhaps old-fashioned idea of the collection. Most wealthy collectors have some relationship with one if not several institutions to which they bequeath their lifes thoughtful philanthropic gestures or fickle whims, whichever the case may be. In art world lore, this has taken the form of a delicate dance, a struggle for influence and patronage. When I heard about a series of exhibitions that throws caution to the wind and gives the museum over to the collector or so I thought from the overstated headlines and zealous comment threads I apathetically accepted it as the evolving condition of private influence and public interest. It was the Carte Blanche project at the Galerie fr Zeitgenssische Kunst (GfZK) in Leipzig, but it wasnt the conceit I initially took it to be. The collection of the GfZK is compelling in its own right. In the formerly East German city of Leipzig, the collection has a very particular relationship to history, but also to the public and private entities of the city. The GfZK is technically a Public Private Partnership, which means that funding comes equally from the City of Leipzig, the Free State of Saxony and the Supporters Group, consisting in principle of monies from Arend Oetker. The Museum
was founded in 1996 as a non-profit limited company; in 2003 it turned into a private foundation. Regarding the collection of the GfZK, the Carte Blanche project, and the relationship between the museum and the collector, I spoke via email with Barbara Steiner, the museums Director. Tim Ridlen: The Collection of the GfZK came about under unique circumstances after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic. The collection will always be framed by that particular historical moment. What potential do semi-public collections have for representing a collective history or identity that perhaps a private collection does not? Barbara Steiner: The history of our collection mirrors the social changes since the revolution in 1989. It ranges from an interest in West German art of the Cold War, dissident art from the GDR to Western and American art from the 1990s and contemporary art from post-communist countries. At its core are artworks donated by the Cultural Circle of the Association of German
Industry (BDI), which consists mainly of 50 WestGerman masterpieces from the late 1940s to 1960s by artists such as Willi Baumeister, Julius Bissier, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Hans Hartung, Gerhard Hoehme, Bernard Schultze, and Emil Schumacher. After the Second World War the Cultural Circle of the Association of German Industry decided to start a collection of at that time contemporary art, which stood for national recovery and an alliance with the international world. Informelle Malerei comparable to Abstract Expressionism embodied freedom and individualism exceeding the national borders. It formed the basis for the subsequent collection of our museum. Pieces of the former Zentrum fr Kunstausstellungen der DDR (Centre for art exhibitions in the GDR) were offered to the founding director of the GfZK. Klaus Werner decided for artists such as Hubertus Giebe, Hartwig Ebersbach, Werner Sttzel, Friedrich B. Henkel, who are, with the exception of Ebersnach, lesser known artists. Other acquisitions included outstanding works that had not been favored with official recognition in former East Germany, such as Harald Metzkes Tischgesellschaft. The same applies for Carlfriedrich Clauss drawings. Already in these founding years there was a clear aspiration for the rehabilitation of forgot-
ten or suppressed artistic positions such as Michael Morgner or Strawalde, together with the dream of building a bridge between East and West, the older and younger generation. During the 1990s pieces by widely known private German collectors such as Paul Maenz or Arend Oetker came into the gallery. Paul Maenz, who was in the 1960s and 1970s one of the leading German gallerists, donated significant pieces by the artists group Mlheimer Freiheit Georg Jiri Dokoupil and Walter Dahn. Arend Oetker brought pieces by Rosemarie Trockel, Gnther Frg and Martin Kippenberger to the collection. When the gallery opened its first building, pieces by young, internationally working contemporary artists were purchased, in most of the cases with the support of the Friends Organization of the GfZK. A number of artworks by Olafur Eliasson, Tobias Rehberger, Neo Rauch, Christine Hill, Sarah Morris, and Sarah Sze complemented the permanent loans including works by Andreas Gursky, Andreas Slominski and other pieces by Tobias Rehberger and Neo Rauch. This part of the collection clearly followed the tendency of bringing western art to the East. In 2003, the enhanced presentation of artists from post-communist countries in the continued on page 15
continued from page 14 Gallerys program was made a public issue, art works from these countries came into the collection. Now the collection policy is tightly connected to the exhibition program (temporary exhibitions). Pieces donated by artists such as Slaven Tolj, Zdenko Buzek, Sejla Kameric, Kristina Leko or Igor Savchenko came into the gallery. An additional focus lies on art works that were produced in Leipzig or are thematically related to Leipzig, such as Johanna Kandls painting Augustusplatz, Via Lewandowskys neon piece Socialism wins, Dorit Margreiters film about Leipzigs modern architecture and design or Dora Gracias work about the Stasipast (secret police). The aim is to connect global issues and globally working artists with the particular history and tradition that the GfZK is also a part of. The second building of the gallery designed by AS-IF architects opened new possibilities to the foundations collection. 2005 began the preparations for the pilot-project The New Collection. As any other collection, ours must be seen in its heterogeneity as an echo of specific social interests. The intention of the project is therefore to sketch out the changes and ruptures in the modes of perception, in criteria, and their impact on collecting art. The overall aim is to prompt a lively and public discussion about artistic quality, socio-cultural values and value systems, cultural consensus or dissent. The still conflicting relationship between east and west is taken as a (conceptual) starting point. In 2006, the first exhibition within The New Collection was named German Histories; the second is dedicated to the founding director, Klaus Werner (KW Hommage Klaus Werner). Following these presentations, further interpretations will be developed in close collaborations with artists, designers and teachers. The biggest difference I see between our collection and a private one lies in the notion of publicity, understood as public debate and negotiations of potential common concerns, values and areas of identification. TR: As you say, the GfZK is like any other collection an echo of specific social interests, but from an American perspective where museums depend mostly on private support even for public institutions (they are not public per se, but rather simply non-profit), on what ground does any collection defend its claim to the broader social interests? BS: The collection mirrors the changes, the hopes, the desire and expectations connected to it. Spheres of interest (one can also speak about ideologies) are unavoidably inscribed in collections, collections in the States are no exception. Publicness comes in the moment these interests are put on display gaining visibility and debate through a (heterogeneous) public. TR: Carte Blanche is an experiment in public and private resources for art institutions. Paraphrasing your comments elsewhere, the biggest problem in the public-private relationship has not been the influence of private collectors on the public interest, but rather a loss of interest in public institutions at all on the part of these private collectors. Is Cart Blanche a strategic move to retain the interest of private collectors in the public sphere? If so, is it a win for the private collector over the public? BS: The loss of interest is slowly but surely maneuvering public art institutions out of the limelight of social recognition and visibility. This is also having effects on the concept of a public sphere in which various social groups articulate, pursue and defend their interests. Private individuals may enter into such debates, but are not obliged to do so. The key-notion of our project therefore is again: publicity. The phenomenon we are examining is certainly not new but the way we are dealing with it in public tries to mark a methodological difference. But maybe I should first describe the project: For 2008/09, we invited enterprises and collectors to explain the basis of their commitment to art. Each of these embodies in exemplary form a particular position in their association with art. We look at them as model cases. All have a relationship to Leipzig and/or to GfZK but their activities spread beyond the local. The invited participants are indeed given carte blanche (CB). The museums infrastructure is made available to those invited, and in return the latter assume all the costs for their project. GfZK is providing an introduction to the fundamental issues under scrutiny in its opening exhibition (Friendly Enemies), preparing the conceptual framework in which the project is contained, communicating this to the outside world and holding a series of accompanying events (CB discursive, e.g. lectures, panels, trips) to examine the role and the significance of private commitment to art. The aim is to stimulate a debate on the working conditions of institutions, overt and hidden costs, the relationship between private and public involvement. CB is considered to be a research project in a line of projects we did before and will do in the future. After CB we want to focus on alternative economic models, which have been developed by artists. Economic questions will be constantly raised within the program, in relation to art, art institutions, art market, and the politics of visibility. Not all 4 private collectors want to show their collection, e.g. one decided for an older artist from West-Berlin, Dieter Finke, who was quite known in the 1960s and 1970s but who is nowadays as this collector says highly underestimated and almost invisible. The Circle of Friends of Hans Brosch promotes an artist who wasnt allowed to work in the GDR and left to the west of Germany in the 1980s. However, his expectations for financial success have not been fulfilled. Despite his unique role in the dissident scene of the GDR, Brosch hasnt exhibited his artworks in major museums since the political changes. The two collectors who will present parts of their collection want to raise a debate about collecting, the responsibility of the collector, and his or her relationship to the art market. One of the two commercial galleries involved is going to exhibit the strategic decisions of its participation at art fairs. The companies involved in the Carte Blanche project either show their initiatives (such as awards for younger artists), their (particular) collection and/or the way they work with the collection (for internal and external use). Apart from all this, we are interested in how such an interaction between the private and the public sector might look, and what the consequences of such forms of cooperation would be for the development of art and its institutions, especially when considered against the background of the establishment of our
Friendly Enemies Curated by Barbara Steiner, Ilina Koralova., Andreja Hribernik, Julia Schfer
museum. This relationship will have to become the subject for debate, argument and negotiation as I already mentioned conducted in public. I dont know who will be the winner the private or the public sector if there will be a winner at all. Maybe this is not the most important question but rather that we keep each other in sight, still having an interest in each other. TR: I have noticed several museums or institutions that include programs for educating and encouraging young collectors as part of their education initiatives. Presumably it is in the institutions interest to foster new collectors and private interests in the art world, as the public institution could not survive without new private interests in the arts. It seems to reflect the interdependency of private collectors and public institutions. Can you talk a little about the museums role and responsibility as an educator to the private sector? BS: I like the idea that the institution takes up an active role in education processes, although this should not be done on the basis of a patronizing attitude. I look at it more as education at eye-height. Let us take CB as an example: It has been a controversial project from the beginning. We and our partners are confronted with ideas each of us might not follow ourselves. People ask us quite often: What happens if one of our collaborators proposes anything we find morally problematic? First we would try to convince them NOT to do it, we would like to discuss the consequences for us and for him/her, exchanging arguments. If he/she insists to continue we would accept BUT we would also immediately start a public debate about the problematic aspects. Giving a Carte Blanche doesnt mean that we, the curators of the GfZK lean back and step out of the debate. To put it differently: We are challenging our partners and they are challenging us. You could also say this is a mutually educating process. During the course of the projects, expectations and limits will be constantly negotiated. And for sure there will be a lot of limitations on all sides. One more remark regarding our education program: Our education addresses more groups and individuals than the above-mentioned younger and older collectors (actually there are hardly any). We work at a very early stage with children (+3 years), young people and adults coming from various cultural backgrounds and we collaborate with schools and kindergartens.
TR: The complimentary program, CB discursive, is meant to be the place where the public interest can step in and discuss what is happening with the Carte Blanche exhibitions. I imagine this is where the public interest intends to hold its ground. Is this ground large enough for equal footing? Is this a further division of labor between public and private interests, relegating one to the production of exhibitions and the other to discourse around them? BS: The public process starts much earlier. We have set up and have communicated the project in public right from its beginning. CB discursive plays an additional important role. It allows us to bring in other voices and to discuss the art market, sponsoring, patronage, the labeling of art, cultural politics and private houses for art. It offers a platform, an extension to our program where we can comment on the CB exhibitions. I dont see a division between the production of exhibitions and the discourses around them. Please note: Most of the protagonists of CB didnt choose other curators, they chose us. This implies a direct involvement. TR: So, let me ask you about the role of curators then. Obviously this role is fluid in its history and context, but how does the CB project position curators and collectors in relation to one another? How is it different from or similar to the prevalent ideas about these roles as powerbrokers? BS: Well, it has a lot to do with power. Still. Correctly, the CB project positions curators and collectors in relation to one another, they are forced to negotiate their concerns. This implies the necessity to set up limits and borders and includes all kinds of irritations, which might result out of these processes. It is difficult to foresee the output of CB. Generally speaking I think art institutions shouldnt slip into a defensive role. I prefer a more active approach, which takes failures into consideration. If we dont take up any risk we will become dispensable, to put it differently: the institutions would lose their credibility and necessity. Who would need them any longer? I am very much interested in the (public) potential of art institutions, especially in museums, and our program can be seen as a contribution to find out what that potential is. BP
A Collection at Work: An Interview with Friedhelm Htte of the Deutsche Bank Collection
Courtesy: Deutsche Bank
Above: Deutsche Bank
It is often bemoaned that corporations across the globe have many of the same rights as individuals, yet they have so much power over concrete and cultural spaces that they forego a proportionate amount of responsibility. Like many collections, the corporate collection lies somewhere between the public and the private with its mixed bag of financial interest and good intention. For this reason, one must take them at their word when they say they work for cultural enrichment and not investment. Deutsche Bank spent almost 6.5 million on art in 2006, and judging from the Corporate Social Responsibility Report of that year, Deutsche Bank is optimistic about its financial commitment to the arts along with its other commitments to global sustainability and community development. Although I dont spend much time perusing the public initiatives of high-profile corporations, I must say it is impressive that they have a Corporate Social Responsibility Report at all, and their broad support of the arts as a part of that responsibility should not be overlooked. The bank launched its collection in 1979 and is presently the largest corporate collection in the world with over 50,000 works. They have exhibition spaces on five continents including a joint venture with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in Berlin aptly branded Deutsche Guggenheim. Besides the collection and exhibition of contemporary works, mostly on paper, the Deutsche Bank has been a long time sponsor of art fairs and biennial exhibitions, and for this reason likely needs no introduction to a European audience. Friedhelm Htte, the Director of Deutsche Bank Art, was kind enough to participate in this interview via email. Tim Ridlen: The Deutsche Bank Collection has branches in New York, Sydney, Tokyo, London, Zurich, Milan, Luxembourg, Dsseldorf, and Leipzig, in addition to its headquarters in Frankfurtnot to mention the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin. It is the largest corporate collection today with over 50,000
works. Deutsche Bank has built an identity as a great patron and exhibitor of the arts. Why does the Deutsche Bank collect art today? Friedhelm Htte: Arts ability to reflect upon the past, visualize current developments and open our eyes to the future are qualities that Deutsche Bank values. The collection offers a unique and memorable encounter with contemporary art and an opportunity to experience the work of some of the most important artists of our time outside of an art museum. TR: And furthermore, how does the collection express the brand identity of the bank? FH: Our company stands for pursuing excellence, leveraging unique insights, delivering innovative solutions and building long-term relationships. The Deutsche Bank Collection implements these outstanding qualities completely, for example we unite our energies and expertise by collaborating with Deutsche Bank branches and museums all over the world. Thus we generate the right results for our worldwide clients and leverage unique insights. Also, we want to stimulate, provoke and prompt discussion, show that we are a part of the modern world. TR: The focus of the Deutsche Bank Collection is works on paper. Why is that? FH: We focus on works on paper because paper is the general medium for first ideas. The innovative potential is in keeping with our motto Art works, because we believe in continuous change and improvements. Paper as an image carrier has links to all eras of the arts from architecture to music, and at the same time this medium reflects our close ties to the business world. TR: Does the current state of the DB Collection represent the vision of one individual, such as the founder, or a recent innovator, or has it grown so large as to efface any one vision?
FH: The DB Collection has always mirrored movements of contemporary art because we always adapt our collection to important developments in the current art world. Consequently, it consists of works on paper, paintings and sculptures spanning a century, from the post-war era to the present day. Due to the fact that we focus on work that responds to socially relevant topics, our collection reflects the developments of art as well as of society. TR: What kind of thought goes into the acquisition of new works with such a large collection? FH: Our main focus is on supporting young promising talents who experiment with their own creativity and with innovative ideas. Apart from that, we are also interested in new works by specific artists who are already represented in our collection to document their development. TR: The most important concern for an artist might be the life of an artwork in the hands of a collector. So, where is the collection shown? Is any of the work in storage or is it all on show? FH: Its very important for us to show as many works as possible because we want to give our clients and colleagues the possibility to experience and enjoy our artworks. Thus, we always try to put at least 90% of our collection on show. Currently you can see the works in our branches all over the world, in our own exhibitions (e.g. at the Deutsche Guggenheim) or in various museums that received loans. TR: Collections (in general) often serve to preserve works that might otherwise be lost. On the other hand, corporate and private collections potentially go unappreciated either because the collection is seen simply as an investment, or else the collection sits silently in the halls and offices of a few businesses. What social responsibility does the DB Collection have to the public and to the artists?
FH: The Deutsche Bank does not collect for investment reasons, but merely for cultural enrichment. We collect to show artworks to an audience that otherwise wouldnt have the possibility to enjoy them in the original. Our second aim is to support young artists by buying and promoting their works. We do so, for instance, by supporting the Villa Romana in Florence. Each year the Patrons Association of Villa Romana makes it possible for artists from Germany to live in Florence for a period of study. Founded in 1905 by Max Klinger, the Villa Romana Fellowship is not just the oldest German art prize, but also represents Deutsche Banks longest cultural commitment: For more than 80 years now we have supported this renowned award for contemporary art in Germany. In April of this year, we will show works by the current fellows of the Villa Romana at the Deutsche Guggenheim, our Berlin-based jointed venture with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. TR: Has the DB Collection ever sold a work from the collection? FH: We normally dont sell any works because we see every single piece as part of the history of the collection representing a certain thought or idea. We only make rare exceptions, for example when an employee has lived together with the artwork in his office for several years and become so fond of it that he wants to buy it when he retires. In that case, we achieve our aim of helping our colleagues to become art lovers! We are now planning to sell some selected prints editions from the bank itself to colleagues and to donate the proceeds to a non-profit organization. TR: And finally, what is the annual budget specifically for the collection? FH: We prefer not to talk about simple figures, because they distract from what is really important: the artworks! BP
In the Spirit of Mutual Funds: Interview with Collector Rik Reinking
Rik Reinking is a German art collector, dealer and curator who reportedly acquired his first artwork at the age of 16, a self-portrait of the painter Horst Janssen, for 250 DM. 15 years later, in April 2007, Rik Reinking, along with Dr. Martin Bouchon, Kilian Bumiller, Prof. Dr. Ronald Moeder and Stefanie Laves de Gerbaldo founded the Artfonds 21 AG - a German stock corporation with a share capital of Euro 57,500 that collects and trades modern artworks of all kinds. Despite the entrepreneurial orientation of the company, it is the intention to acquire only art of outstanding artistic quality, and that goal has clearly prevailed. The artists and the artworks acquired by Artfonds 21 AG, are selected by Rik Reinking, himself. The corporation supports the artists by arranging contacts with galleries, other collectors and museums. After a considerable increase in the market value, the acquired artworks are then partly sold in order to realize the increase in value and to generate the financial means for new acquisitions. As stated on the Artfonds website (ww.artfonds-21.com), the artists and their gallery owners have two possibilities to participate in the increase of the market value. Firstly, they have the possibility to contribute pieces of art as a contribution in kind against shares in Artfonds 21 AG. Secondly, they can become a partner in the partnership Artfonds 21 Knstler GbR who shall receive 10 % of the annual profits of Artfonds 21 AG. The contribution to the partnership consists of a discount when Artfonds 21 AG purchases pieces of art from the respective artists. This online interview was completed in February 2008. Georgia Kotretsos: On one hand there is the Reinking Collection and on the other Artfonds 21 AG and Artfonds 21 Knstler GbR. The first represents a traditional method of building an art collection and the second a unique model of a German stock corporation that collects and trades art by seeking the active participation of artists and gallerists in the increase of the market value. Artfonds was only founded in April 2007 with a share capital of Euro 57.500, but my notes tell me youve been an aspiring collector since you were 16. I am interested in hearing how you got from point A to point B and why? Rik Reinking: My own personal collection is indeed a traditional way to build a private art collection and will remain so in the future. With Artfonds 21 AG I created together with Dr. Martin Bouchon, a capital markets lawyer, a new vehicle for a joint art collection. I am responsible for the selection, purchase and sale of the art whereas Dr. Bouchon is responsible for financial, legal and other administrative matters. We invite numerous private investors to make a capital contribution into the fund, enjoy the art we invest in and hopefully also profit from a growth in market value of the pieces of art we bought at the same time. At the same time we also invite the artists and their gallery owners in whose work we invest to join the company as shareholders. The clear advantage for the artists is that they continue to profit from a long-term increase in market value of their works by participating in the secondary market. GK: And finally, lets get down to business with the basics for those interested out there: What is the funds per share net asset value? RR: We have not yet spent money on an expert opinion on the question of net asset value (NAV), but according to our own careful estimates, the net asset value of the company consisting of the acquired pieces of art and the remaining cash amount of about EUR 30,000 amounts to at least EUR 300,000, i.e. about EUR 31.25 for each share. That is the reason why we sell the new shares for EUR 30. GK: Are the fund shares redeemable or saleable at the current NAV at any time? RR: As of today the shares are not redeem able but they are certainly saleable. Should any of the shareholders wish to sell the stock we will assist in this process. In the mid-term we intend to list Artfonds 21 AG shares on the Open Market of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The shares will therefore become tradable much easier then. GK: Is the trading of Artfonds 21 AG open to all shareholders and if yes, how? Can you please provide our Boot Print readers with a bar chart of the funds annual total returns? RR: Since we started our business only in April 2007, we currently only have a track record as to our first purchases. We have not yet made any exits and therefore cannot provide any return figures. We think, however, that it is quite obvious that the investment into young promising art positions can result in return opportunities that are above normal average provided the investor has some patience. GK: How could one get a hold of an Artfonds 21 AG prospectus, where the a) investment objectives, b) principal investment strategies, c) principal risks, d) performance, e) fees and expenses, f) after-tax returns, and g) investment requirements will be clearly stated? RR: So far the shares have only been offered by way of a private placement without a prospectus. Starting in mid-April 2008. The new shares will be offered by way of a public offering in Germany and private placements in other countries. We will therefore publish a properly filed and approved prospectus in mid-April 2008 in connection with the new capital increase. The prospectus and our first final annual accounts will be published on our home page www.artfonds-21.com. The prospectus will inform amongst others about the investments objectives and strategies and fees and expenses as well as the investment requirements. BP
Courtesy: Rik Reinking Collection Courtesy: Artfonds 21 Collection
Maurizio Cattelan Strategie, 1990. Zeitschriften und Aluminium (neunteilig), ca. 74,5 x 79 x 20,5 cm
We thereby aspire to create a dynamic unity of numerous investors and selected artists with the intention to democratize the collecting of art and the participation in market developments. GK: Artists are not particularly known to be the savviest business people in the art industry, yet you created an art fund that recognizes artworks as capital while still in the artists hands. I find the notion itself dynamite, but after looking at this carefully, it all comes down to plain and simple risky business, no? Is it an opportunity for artists to capitalize on their assets or a risky venture into the unknown? RR: We have created two ways for artists to participate in the company: they can either contribute their artworks into Artfonds 21 AG as a contribution in kind and receive shares in the company, or they can become a member of a separate partnership (Artfonds 21 Knstler GbR) which will receive 10 % of the profits of Artfonds 21 AG. In order to become a member of this partnership the artists sell us their pieces of art at a discount. As of now, three artists have become a member of this partnership: Dimitris Tzamouranis, Johannes Esper and Daniel Man. The idea behind this model is that the artists sacrifice a part of the income today in order to receive in the future regular profit distributions from Artfonds 21 AG. This model is highly accepted and appreciated by the artists. GK: One thing that paints quite an empowering picture for artists is that it includes them in the markets fun. If we take this a bit further, though, by thinking big in terms of number of artists involved in this, it could potentially have an impact on the market. Who do you think would be first to find this scenario threatening and why?
RR: It is certainly not our intention to threaten anyone. We rather want to create a new active market participant by inviting private investors, who for the largest part have never been active in the art market, to provide us with funds in amounts between EUR 2,400 and EUR 30,000. As of today the company is still small financially. We have collected EUR 239,000 and intend to raise an additional EUR 700,000 this year. About one third of the raised funds have been invested in well-established positions such as a sculpture of Maurizio Cattelan and the edition MAT from 1964 with pieces by Jean Tinguely, Man Ray, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri to name a few. The other two thirds have been invested in young promising artists such as Amie Dicke, Dimitris Tzamouranis, Johannes Esper, Mark Jenkins, Daniel Man, Baldur Burwitz or ZEVS. GK: What percentage of the shares do the founding members of Artfonds 21 AG, namely Dr. Martin Bouchon, Kilian Bumiller, Prof. Dr. Ronald Moeder and Stefanie Laves de Gerbaldo and you own? As of today, Artfonds 21 AG has about twenty shareholders. Dr. Martin Bouchon and one other private investor each hold about 22% of the shares. Kilian Bumiller, myself and another private investor each hold about 10% of the shares. The other 25% of the shares are held by 15 shareholders, amongst others Prof. Dr. Ronald Moeder (1%) and Stefanie Laves de Gerbaldo (4%). The shareholders meeting scheduled for March 15, 2008 will vote on a new capital increase. Each share with a notional value of EUR 25 will be sold at a price of EUR 30. The minimum investment will be 80 shares for EUR 2,400 and the maximum investment will be 1,000 shares for EUR 30,000. In exceptional cases we will also accept higher investments.
Violin Joe Jones
What began almost a decade ago with Eugenio Lpez Alonsos independent passion for art has evolved today into Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex, one of the leading contemporary art collections not only in Mexico, but also on the international scene. Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex is located adjacent to the juice factory complex operated by the Jumex Corporation, set in an industrial zone in Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico, on the outskirts of greater Mexico City. This site includes a main gallery with over 1400 square meters of exhibition space, as well as offices, a library, and storage for the entire collection, which now numbers more than 1,800 works of all disciplines. The permanent collection originally consisted of key works from the 1960s that belonged to movements like Minimalism and Conceptual Art. Over time, works by artists active in the 1990s were added to the collection with works from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, as well as new works by emerging artists from Mexico. In other words, La Coleccin is the largest private art collection in Latin America and the largest collection of Latin American art in the world. I feel its necessary to name drop a few Latin American artists in the collection such as Gabriel Orozco, Francis Als, Miguel Caldern, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Daniel Guzmn, Minerva Cuevas, Dr. Lakra, Pablo Vargas-Lugo, Luis Felipe Ortega, Gabriel Kuri, Jorge Mndez-Blake, Carlos Amorales as well as international ones: Douglas Gordon, Olafur Eliasson, Ugo Rondinone, Thomas Hirschhorn, Sharon Lockhart, Fischli & Weiss, Louise Lawler, Paul McCarthy, Urs Fischer, Doug Aitken, Vija Celmins, Wilhelm Sasnal, Wolfgang Tillmans, Sherrie Levine, Richard Pettibone and many more. Georgia Kotretsos: My research tells me that Latin American contemporary art as we know it today has a great deal to do with you, from backing grandiose experimental and conceptual installations to backing solo and group exhibitions in Mexico and abroad, as well as sponsoring Latin American-focused museum programs in the US, circulating Latin artworks, promoting exhibitions in the US and Europe, publishing catalogs/journals and even funding Latin American art courses at art colleges and art schools outside of Mexico. In addition, you invite twenty-five curators from abroad annually to visit your collection. Whats the fire behind this energy? Youve taken matters into your own hands, please enlighten the Boot Print readers on what youve accomplished... It might have gone underneath our radar an exhibition we all might have seen, or a book we might have read or even a class we might have taken, could have been the result of your passion for Latin American contemporary art. Eugenio Lpez Alonso: Id say that the force behind all this work, behind what we are doing at the Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex comes out of a conviction, out of a dedication to the arts in Mexico and in the world. When I began to get involved in contemporary art and to put together La Coleccin Jumex, I knew there was really nothing like it in the country and I wanted there to be a way for people in Mexico to get closer to international contemporary art, to participate in it. Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex has supported many great artistic projects such as Obstruction in the Highway, a Project by Santiago Sierra in Mexico Citys South Peripheral Ring; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer / Pabelln Mexico at The Venice Biennale; and Spider Galaxy, a PERFORMA and Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex commission featured in Mexico, New York and within a few months also San Antonio. About exhibitions, we supported Pocket Universe by Armin Keller at the Hammer Museum, Francis Als exhibition, and Gabriel Orozco at the Palacio de Bellas Artes just to mention a few, and we also provide annual support to contemporary art institutions in the form of grants so they can support their artistic and educational programming. Some of these institutions include Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporneo, Oficina para Proyectos de Arte, Museo Experimental EL ECO and Casa del Lago among others. Supporting editorial projects is very important for us because one of our main goals is to stimulate investigation and formal studies about contemporary art. Thats why we have supported artists books such as Show Titles Vol. 1 2000-2006, Stefan Brggemanns book; Ciudad Moderna by Terence Gower; Diez Cuadras alrededor del Estudio by Francis Als; Melanie Smiths Ciudad Espiral, and others. We have also supported publishing catalogs like Gabriel Orozcos Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Cadver Exquisito by Thomas Glassford, Goth by Dr. Lakra, and Visin antiderrapante by Pablo Vargas-Lugo, among others. About the curators you mentioned, every year about 150 curators, museum directors and artists from around the world come to visit our facilities and exhibits on their own. We dont have a specific tracking system about our visitors, but I could mention outstanding people such as Jol Girard from Centre Pompidou, Henry Muoz III, Museo Alameda, and members of the board of different institutions such as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MOCA, LACMA, and Tate among others. Weve also received important curators and collectors such as Frdric Bonnet, Phillipe Vergne, Yasmil Raymond and Doryun Chong, Olga Viso, Mari Carmen Ramrez and Richard Flood just to mention a few. For our curatorial program, once a year we invite a guest curator to do an interpretation of La Coleccin Jumex and organize an exhibition. Theory of Leisure was the first reading of the collection and had Dan Cameron as its guest curator, (January 31 - August 31, 2002). This year Jessica Morgan from the Tate Modern will be curating the sixth interpretation of La Coleccin Jumex opening in September 2008. Because of the subsequent creation of the Fundacin Jumex, which works hand in hand with La Coleccion Jumex. and the arrival continued on page 19
Photo courtesy of Fundacin/Colleccin Jumex Exterior view of Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex
Collector Eugenio Lpez Alonso and Executive Director of Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex, Abaseh Mirvali
Photo courtesy of Fundacin/Colleccin Jumex
Library of Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex
Reception area of Fundacin/Colleccin Jumex
expanding the field of contemporary art appreciation through diverse and innovative programming to create new alliances and enhance the ones we already made. Social responsibility is crucial for us, as we believe in sharing with our community what we have been privileged in creating. The people that visit us, whether they are art professionals or people from the neighborhood, are generally amazed by our space, by our programs and by the collection. So I think we have had a really positive impact on the vision people have of Latin America when they think of contemporary art. We have supported a lot of spaces and artists, enabling them to move forward, and through all these collaborations, weve also learned a lot about our own ideas and goals. As part of this learning process, our institution has grown, and with each new goal we meet we further expand our horizons. We see the new space that the Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex is building in Mexico City as a satellite of our current gallery in Ecatepec. We have built an important library focusing on contemporary art and well have a better facility for that, and students and others wont have to travel so far to consult these materials. Well also have more space dedicated to educational programming, for offices, and of course, there will be a cutting edge exhibition space for the Collection. We want to reach new audiences and a more central location is surely going to allow that, though we arent going to ignore our current space, which will still offer programming to all audiences. We hope to open the new space in 2011, and thus be able to celebrate the first decade of the Coleccin Jumex in two places simultaneously. GK: Is Mexico City the New York for Latin American artists or for everybody? ELA: I think Mexico City has a tremendous amount to offer artists. It is an excellent place to get work done, to learn new things and to show work because here we have such a wide variety of cultural institutions. And this opportunity doesnt only extend to Latin American
artists, but to those from across the globe. Definitely, I dont think of art as a matter of nations or frontiers. We cant compare ourselves to New York, but we really arent that far behind! GK: How well do you know your artists? Is it all business or do you party with them? ELA: Beyond just collecting works of art, I appreciate getting to know the artists, so yes, I am friends with several of those whose work Ive collected. I enjoy our conversations, which often allow me to understand their work in different ways; theres always a new way of looking at things, something new to learn. Besides, my team at La Coleccin has developed a great relationship with the artists because a nice group of them participate in the workshops, lectures and conferences in our educational programs. GK: Do you live with any artworks of La Coleccion Jumex? If yes, what is that like for you, living with the art, I mean? ELA: Art is one of the most important things in my life, and that is the reason I always try to have art around me wherever I am. I enjoy having pieces not only in my house or apartment but I also enjoy looking at them in some of the Grupo Jumex offices and at offices of some good friends who like myself, appreciate contemporary art. For me, living with art is a full day experience, I always find something new in each piece, selecting the pieces to be in my spaces, taking them to different places are very important decisions to me. The best and more adequate spaces are devoted to them in my house, theyre the stars! At this moment in my apartment in Mexico City I have different art pieces from artists such as Francis Als, Carl Andr, Louise Bourgeois, Andreas Gursky, Jim Hodges, Jasper Jones, Donald Judd, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Paul McCarthy, Gabriel Orozco, Raymond Pettibone, Rudolf Stingel and Cy Twombly to mention some of them. BP
continued from page 18 of Abaseh Mirvali to the team as Executive Director of both, weve been able to expand our support for other institutions, artists and exhibitions. It is an important part of our mission to be able to help Mexican students with their studies abroad, as well as to assist other art institutions in creating exhibitions, catalogs and exhibition programming. Beyond the Fundacin/Coleccin Jumex, I have become closely involved in a few major spaces in the US, including the New Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. I like to stay active and current to have a sense of what is going on in the art world, wherever it is happening. GK: What has taken you from the family business to the art world? Talk to me about your encounter with art dealer Estella Provas in Beverly Hills back in 1993. How old were you then? ELA: My life has always been connected to art, first as a side interest, really, and then as my absolute passion and my life. I began learning more about contemporary art in the 90s, and thats really when things got more serious and structured. All of this closely follows the expansion of the company, and actually, my family has always supported this project of mine, especially as it has grown over the past
decade. A few people have been crucial to its creation and I am grateful to them. I must also thank Abaseh as she has shaped the Fundacin Jumex, gave it a legal structure, and we are now growing much faster and expanding our programming in every area ambitiously. She is also the person that is leading the expansion project in the city. I met Estella when I was 26 and she helped me to get in touch with a lot of people around the artistic scene in LA. She, as many people Ive known through my life, shared her knowledge about contemporary art with me. GK: How did the closing of the Mexico Citys Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo in the late 90s impact the artists? How did the opening of La Coleccion Jumex exhibition space at the Jumex industrial complex impact the views of international art professionals on Latin American contemporary art? What is your vision and mission of the new space? ELA: To lose any space dedicated to art is really unfortunate, and even more so when that space organized exhibitions as important as those that appeared at the CC/AC. Yes, I do think it was a tremendous loss for artists and for the public. But our space hasnt really sought to replace any other institution or cast anyone else in our shadow; instead we are just focusing on
Courtesy: Foundation Sindika Dokolo
Fernando Alvim, Sindika Dokolo, Simon Njami
Sindika Dokolo is a Congolese-born, Luandabased businessman, community leader, activist, and art collector who began building upon one of the most important collections of contemporary art in Africa in 2003. He founded the Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art (SDACCA) based in Luanda, Angola with the goal of exposing the African public to its own contemporary production. Since its inception, the foundation has launched the first African Triennnial in the heart of the continent. Plans are underway for the Triennial De Luanda in 2010 and Mr. Dokolos dream of creating the first Centre for Contemporary Art in Luanda in 2012 is becoming a reality. Works from the collection were featured in the first official African Pavillion at the 52nd Venice Biennale of contemporary art in 2007 in an exhibition entitled Check List-Luanda Pop, curated by Fenando Alvim and Simon Njami. The collection boasts works by some of the most prominent African artists with international visibility such as Kendell Geers, Ghada Amer, Yinka Shonibare, Billi Bidjocka, Ingrid Mwangi, William Kentridge, Olu Oguibe, Marlene Dumas, Chris Ofili, and Pascale Marthine Tayou, among others. Of equal importance is the support and platform provided to artists not as well known and emerging Angolan artists. In addition to the African art collected, Mr. Dokolo is committed to including important art by artists such as Andy Warhol and Basquiat not before made accessible in Africa. With the rise in international group exhibitions across the globe, perhaps Luanda will become the next critical destination for curators, collectors, and art enthusiasts.
major Belgian collector of pre-Colombian and what used to be called primitive African art. I used to spend all my week ends at his place in Waterloo near Brussels. I was only a child, but he took me in like a friend and shared his passion with me. He taught me that objects have a soul and can carry a meaning so strong they can mark your life in unexpected ways. He gave me the bug of collecting. Years later, in Paris, I stumbled upon a JeanMichel Basquiat while searching for an apartment. Being exposed to Basquiats painting for the first time was such an incredible moment, I remember it as if it happened in slow motion. Art had never made me feel that way before. The painting revealed very intimate and confused feelings, and yet in a deep and crystal clear way. It explored feelings in ways I never thought possible stress, strength, emotion, identity, fear, violence, sex. I realized at that moment how colours on a canvas could express human emotions in such an accurate way, while words seem too limited, too clumsy. Later, after much hunting and negotiation, I eventually acquired it, which I think must have cost as much as the entire collection. Pharynx is a very special piece to me. It has changed the way I look at art and relate to it, it has revealed to me how powerful, intense and yet beautiful and minimal contemporary art could be, it has taught me what African contemporary art should be : expressive, audacious, rhythmic, sensual, universal. SF: Until recently, the most important collections of contemporary African art were based in Europe: the Jean Pigozzi Collection in France and the Hans Bogatzke Collection in Belgium. In 2003, you acquired the private collection of the late German collector Hans Bogatzke based in Belgium. How did that come about? SD: It begins with my friendship with Angolan artist and curator Fernando Avlim. He is an incredible human being : very generous and yet demanding, highly productive, resourceful, and creative. He has an amazing ability to mix art, politics, philosophy, and identity at the same time. He introduced me to emerging artists and the Bogatzke collection. Right after 9-11, I received the terrible news of Bogatzkes passing. Soon after, Alvim contacted me and asked me to buy the collection. It was an urgent request based on his desire to protect the collection as a whole and bring it to Africa where it would be the first collection of that impor-
tance made available to the African public. I thought about it; it was ten times over my budget, but I realized it was important and decided to do it. I bought around six hundred pieces in one go and decided to incorporate 250 works in the Sindika Dokolo collection that I really liked. I decided to donate the rest to the future museum of contemporary art of Luanda. Since then, the collection grew, it has now about a thousand pieces. SF: Was the most important goal of acquiring this collection to return it to Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa? SD: I am very proud of the collection. Yet I think it manages to be more than a number of aesthetic objects put together because of how it is exposed to an African audience. It interacts with it, confronts it, celebrates it, challenges it. Try to imagine for a second a situation where none of the masterpieces of Indiana, Lichtenstein, Warhol, or Rothko would be available on American soil. What would be the impact on European societies and people if you took away Da Vinci, Vermeer, Vangogh, Manet, Schiele, Giacometti, Picasso, Gaudi, Duchamp on the one hand and Hirst, Soulage, Beuys, Fontana, Lucian Freud on the other hand. Well that is the cultural desert, the civilizational nightmare that the foundation is trying to eradicate. Angola, which has only been independent since 1975, has been destroyed by the several wars its had to face. First against the colonialist Portuguese, then against the racist South Africa of the 80s and finally against internationally backed rebels. Despite all the suffering and destruction, it is a country that is recovering from its wounds. Contrary to what people think, the reason for this spectacular rebirth is not the price of oil, but it is the inner strength of the Angolan people. Angolans are determined and lively, they are altruist and strong. They are also sensitive and passionate about their country and their culture. Our first president, Agostinho Neto, was a poet. His poems about his country and the fight for freedom not only for us but for Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe who only overruled apartheid in the 80s and 90s are taught in all the Angolan schools. At the peak of the war, when there wasnt enough food, the government was importing musical instruments from Bulgaria and bringing in Russian ballet professors from Russia. Such a people needs and deserves to
have access to the art world. My ambition is to constitute over the years the best possible contemporary collection in Africa. Not the most expensive one or the biggest one in volume, but the one that stimulates and enriches the best the African art scene. SF: Now that you have housed the collection in Luanda, Angola and created a public forum for ideas and exhibitions, moving forward, how do you build upon what you have acquired and have impact locally? SD: I am completely obsessed with the idea of creating a museum of contemporary art in Luanda. I think it is the next step. I am also interested in establishing a museum in Congo. Right now, the art market in Angola and Congo (less in Angola) remains decorative and scholarly with the only objective being able to make something beautiful, sell it, and make a living. If I could use the critical mass of the collection to create a market based on a stronger artistic perspective, I think it would already be an amazing achievement. SF: The collection has grown significantly since 2003 with your additions. What is the philosophy behind building the collection and creating the Sindika Dokolo Foundation in Luanda? SD: In the collection, I have a personal and intimate relationship with each object and at the same time the collection has an existence of its own because its main goal is to expose the African public to its contemporary creation. When I buy art, I dont imagine how it would look like in my living room, since its objective is to be exhibited. I also have to consider its pertinence with other pieces that I already have. Yet, at the end of the day Im not a museum, Im a collector. I like art in a very personal way. I would never buy art that I dont approve of or that doesnt seduce me or attract me. There are several aspects that I personally consider when I buy a work of art. The aesthetic has to please me of course, but most important for me are the artistic language of the artist ( is it dominated or still too intuitive), the meaning, the dialogue between the work and its audience, the elegance of the artist, his universal ambition and the credibility of his approach. SF: Your collection was recently featured in the exhibition Check List-Luanda Pop, for the continued on page 21
Shannon Fitzgerald: What first led you to begin collecting art? Sindika Dokolo: My parents had a lot to do with it. My father was Congolese, my mother is Danish, I grew up in Paris. Our house has therefore always been an interesting cultural mix. These different backgrounds have induced very early a strong subjectivity and personality in my taste. My parents took me to museums around the world, I had the chance to discover Athens and the Greek classical aesthetic, the Prado and the Louvre at a very early age. The second influence comes from one of my fathers closest friends, Mr. Jean Cambier, a
African Pavilion of the 52nd Bienale of Venice /How to blow up two heads at once, Yinka Shonibare, 2006
Triennial Luanda/Educational program at Soso Correio
continued from page 20 African Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. It was curated by Fernando Avlim and Cameroonian, Paris-based Simon Njami. What was the most significant thing about that experience that has stayed with you? SD: Alvim and Njami are strong curators with strong ideas, and they took a risk and created a great exhibition; I am proud of that. Our objective was to show what Luanda Pop is about, and to celebrate the fact that for once it was Africans (curators, artists, patrons) who got to invite and show Africa to a western audience and not the other way around. However, after all the controversy surrounding the African Pavilion in Venice, I decided to focus on the mission of the Foundation, its role in Africa, and how it could have the most impact there. For now, I strive to affect change on the ground, where it is so necessary and worthy. This trend of saying that Africas worst enemies are its elites is shameful, stupid and racist. Its all the more sad when these simplistic theories are developed by Africans. SF: Are you interested in expanding your collection to include artists of the European and/or American Diaspora in your collection? SD: The only reason why I differentiate African art from art in general is because I can not accept to live in a continent that has no reference, no point of view no perspective, past or present. Not only do I want to buy art from the Diaspora ( I never actually do it consciously), but I want to buy art without boundaries. Maybe not within the collection, but as I tried to express before, my point is to make an African collection of art, not a collection of African art. By the way, one of the greatest things I bought last year was a Chris Ofili. Its as big as a postage stamp. I love it, it is my favourite. His work inspires me to look further. I want to start a significant African-American collection and try to gain a larger perspective. I am beginning a long road trip in this endeavour that I hope will last a life time. SF: In addition to your Jean-Michel Basquiat, you have an Andy Warhol in your collection. What is your interest in that work specifically? SD: Muhammad Ali is without a doubt one of the most iconic persons of the twentieth century: first, I love boxing, I used to be a boxer and I was born in Kinshasa a little bit before the rumble in the jungle. Second, he is a living aesthetic statement and the ultimate romantic hero. I think he is even more iconic than Nelson Mandela. I was walking down the street in London and bumped into the picture in a gallery. It managed to convey everything Ali was about without even depicting his face. Wow! I thought it showed the genius of the subject as well as that of the artist. Lets not forget what a brilliant artist Warhol was before being recuperated as a show off artefact by yuppies who have no interest in art. It resonated on another level too. Why is it that Africans do not have access to universal culture? How come we have never seen Karel Appel, Calder, Basquiat, and Warhol? So I bought it, took it to Luanda, and included it in the Triennial. Its been printed on an out board in the street for months and people loved it. In this new context, it became a cultural reference, a symbol of the Luanda Pop experience. SF: Your collection includes many women artists women artists who are breaking down boundaries, challenging perceptions, and gaining visibility like no other time in our history. How do you see the role of women artists and their support improving in Africa? SD: Im interested in art that confronts society with its flaws, injustices, identity and moral issues. Whether because of culture, religion or more generally sub-development linked issues, womens status in Africa is, as the oppressed often are when they fight, in an ideal position for severe questioning and confrontation. Even more so when it comes to artistic practice. I like it when artists proposals disturb, challenge, create polemics. It induces a dimension of intensity and necessity that makes the artwork not only interesting in itself, but also pertinent within its historical and societal context. Confronting peoples established ideas requires courage. Without wanting to sound sexist, I think female artists are often more courageous than male and tend to be more accurate when exploring sensitive areas. The women artists Ive had the chance to meet seemed, as people, very coherent with their work, while men sometimes manage to take some distance more easily. Maybe because being a woman, whether you are African or American, is still a challenge in our modern societies. Artists like Ghada Amer, Tracey Rose, Ingrid Mwangi, Minnette Vri or Marlene Dumas are super skilled artists. As empowered African women, they also explore and confront the boundaries of our male controlled societies and invite us in their world where death, sex, gender or race are redefined by them with a unique accuracy and liberty of approach that is bound to make us evolve. The same works internationally with artists like Jenny Savile, Vanessa Beecroft, Tracey Emin, Shirin Neshat or Nikki de St Phale. SF: Do you envision your collection growing with more North African Artists in the future? SD: For various reasons, North Africa is a very prolific area for interesting art. First, its geographically linked to the Mediterranean region and is thus an interface between continents (Europe, Middle East, Africa) that have differences in culture, religion, perception of global issues. Topics such as religion and civilization gaps, geopolitics, migrations, social and cultural issues like womens status and self-affirmation constitute very interesting grounds for exploration for pertinent new artists. Northern Africa is also very interesting because of the importance of emigration towards Europe after the Second World War. A lot of young artists of Northern African origin who are European born with African background make stunning works and proposals related to issues such as identity and confront the old continent from within about its ethics, its capacity to absorb novelty and regenerate itself and to live the true meaning of the concept of global plurality. Artists such as Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Fatmi Mounir or Kader Attia are very interesting in that perspective. SF: What is distinct about the Triennial De Luanda, specifically in respect to the Dakar Biennial, the Cairo Biennial, and the now defunct Johannesburg Biennial? SD: The particularity of the Triennial is that it corresponds to an artistic movement that we called Luanda Pop. Luanda Pop was part of the name of the African Pavilion in the 52nd Biennale of Venice. This movement is conjecturally the result of several factors: peace after 30 years of war against apartheid in South Africa and civil war, reconstruction and economic stabilization mixed with urban explosion, and structurally, political approach of culture, a philosophical need for self-affirmation and identity and cultural determination. The other distinction has to do with the way the event interacts with the city and its population. There is such a thirst for novelty and national culture that the whole population without limits of age or social groups celebrates creativity and cultural richness. It happens in 15 different spaces in the city, it is very contemporary, and it promotes various media of expression: video, performances, theatre, contemporary dance, design, and even fashion. It works a little bit like a carnival in the sense that it is popular and inclusive, the whole city beats to the rhythm of the Triennial 3 months before and 3 months after. About 100 billboards in the city are offered to the Triennial community during 6 months. We expose art or cultural information everywhere in the streets. Art invites itself in the urban jungle of Luanda and feeds a new cultural fact: Luanda Pop. SF: Looking forward, what do you hope to achieve for the Triennial De Luanda 2010? SD: My hope is that it will be as good as the first one in terms of freshness and impact on Angolan society. My dreams are many: I want to organize a Basquiat exhibition in Luanda as soon as we have a proper venue; I want to launch an artist-in-residence program in the desert of Namibe (South of Angola) on a site that we identified with my friend Miquel Barcelo; I want to invite for the Triennial artists that dont necessarily have connections with the African Art scene but that I like, such as Anish Kapoor, Banksy, or even Damian Hirst, and why not living legends like Cy Twombly or Lucian Freud. I realize that it might be difficult to organize, but my paradox as a collector is that I have very little interest in the market. What I love is art and what interests me is how art works on people, how it impacts and interacts with them, and how it changes them. Art is universal, and the best possible art is the most universal one, the one that will constitute the common asset of human kind and mark its time. Therefore, by not considering the importance of sharing that fundamental asset with the Africans, the developed world confiscates a little bit of our humanity. My opinion, and the battle of my foundation, is that it is true that continued on page 22
continued from page 21 being very poor and still unable to provide for our own populations, we need food, medicines and assistance, but at the same time, as long as we dont get books, professors, and as long as the world doesnt help us create museums where we can see the treasures of our past cultures Delacroix, Picasso, Lucio Fontana or Warhol the need for assistance will never stop. That is also the logic of the Triennial and I hope it will be a success in bringing these important issues forward, both for the public and the art world. SF: Can you share with us names of artists that will be participating? SD: Being originally from the DRC, I would like to create some bridges with my country of origin where contemporary art is struggling so much to have a proper scene, market and public. Certain groups of young artists like Lybrists and Eza possibly in Kinshasa or the Vicanos in Lubumbashi are trying to organize the Congolese scene but are still fragile and need exposure. The Triennial de Luanda would be a great opportunity to invite them to join and become a part of Luanda Pop by receiving some of our experience and participating in our quest for our own contemporanety, aesthetic and Africanness. Luanda Pop and the Triennial are not about selling art or desperately trying to prove to the world that African contemporaneity exists. Its a time and a place that invites artists to interact with a public they never expected to exist. Its a place where art comes first and artists dont need to justify themselves or become merchants. Its the ideal place for experimental proposals and deep reflection on what art can be for people in our modern societies. Thats why one of the projects that has already been defined is a series of works by the Cameroonian artist Bili Bidjocka, where he reflects and echoes between his perspective as an artist and Joseph Beuyss. I would also like to invite Ghada Amer to make a landscape that could stay like a work of art for the city of Luanda, as well as Miquel Barcelo and Chris Ofili. Besides that, I would like some of the African artists that I find critically important for any young African to know about to participate in the Triennial and leave a trace of their passage. People like Kendell Geers, Ingrid Mwangi, Olu Oguibe, El Anatsui, Oladele Bamgboy, Tracey Rose, Julie Mehretu, Marlene Dumas, Wangeshi Mutu and Sue Williamson are fundamental. SF: Are there plans underway to document and publish your collection in a printed catalogue? SD: We are currently working on several projects regarding the content of the collection. First, there is a catalogue that should be ready for the end of the year. We are also working on a website that is almost finished, and on a documentary film about Luanda Pop. The difficulty with the catalogue is that there is too much to show and to explain. With the help of friends like Simon Njami and Iris Buchholz Im nevertheless very enthusiastic about that project. SF: This moment in contemporary art represents an exciting juncture as the visibility of a contemporary Africa and contemporary African art continues to shape and define perceptions about the aesthetic and cultural production within a vast continent. Do you see your work as contributing to the reposition of art historical discourse? SD: Strong and lively art expression existed in Africa before post modernists tried to analyze or categorize it. I think it is time for Africa, for good or for bad, to be defined by the Africans themselves. Curators and intellectuals like Okwui Enwezor, Simon Njami, and Olu Oguibe, artists like Bidjocka, Alvim, Tayou, Mofokeng, politicians and all Africans that have a strong opinion about the matter constitute and enrich the mosaic of Africanness in the twenty-first century. By creating an opportunity for all these people to gather and along with the African public reflect through their work on these fundamental and existential issues, the collection participates actively in enabling Africans to take back control of the discourse about African modernity. Fifty years after our independences, we are still looking at ourselves through the eyes of others. The way to correct that is, in the long term, to work on culture, awareness, and selfconsciousness That is why one of the aims of the Foundation is to make knowledge about our history, philosophers, and artists available to the public. With time, we might be able to free ourselves from the referent, the big brother inside ourselves that is constantly watching us and judging from a perspective that is not ours. In the art field, it is the same logic, trying to create a market by giving the opportunity to young artists to have access to the world, to the history of art, but also to confront them with their public, we are helping them to participate in that redefinition of ourselves by ourselves. SF: In conclusion, Is there anything else about your collecting philosophy or your foundation you would like to share? SD: One cannot understand Luanda Pop if they dont understand that I am a collector on a mission. My perspective is clearly political, the aim of the Foundation is to raise awareness within the African public opinion and set a battlefield where post independent Africans will be able to contribute to the well-being of future generations. The collection is a cultural weapon around which Luanda Pop gravitates. It works like an electroshock, questioning our perception of the established fact, wherever it prevents us from getting closer to our goal. I want my children, their cousins and friends, to have a clear consciousness of themselves. I want them to have an intelligent and demanding look on the world, and most of all, I want that look to be their own. SF: Such hope, optimism, vision, and hard work goes a long way. I look forward to the future of contemporary art in Luanda and beyond! Thank you Sindika!
For more information about the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, please visit the website at: http://www.sindikadokolofoundation.org/
Hugh Lane is best known for establishing Dublins Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, the first known public gallery of modern art in the world. This year, in an exclusive and momentous occasion, the Gallery will feature all 39 pieces of the Hugh Lane Gift. For the first time in a century the entire collection will be permanently displayed in Irelands capital, in accordance with the last wishes of Hugh Lane himself. Born in 1875 in Cork, Hugh Lane was a successful art collector and dealer. Passionate, driven and self-taught with a keen sense of the market, he quickly acquired a small fortune. With these profits, he built up an impressive modern art collection. As a collector, his intention was to expose his art collection to the public by removing it from the private collectors domain. His inspiration and motivation was that an Irish modern art gallery was important to inspire and develop young Irish artists. He claimed, Such a gallery of modern art would be necessary to the student if we are to have a distinct school of Irish painting in Ireland, for its ones contemporaries that teach one the most.1 The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art was established and opened on January 1908 in temporary premises in Clonmel House, Dublin. Hugh Lane offered his conditional gift of 39 paintings to the Dublin Municipality if a suitable permanent building was found to house the art collection and on the condition that they are always on view free to the public.2 Amongst the 39 works that made up Lanes gift were paintings by Corot, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Rousseau and Degas. Lane was a generous collector. Lucy Mc Diarmid states in The Irish Art of Controversy that, He removed all the modern paintings he bought, more than 39, from the capitalistic world of investments, risks, bargains, fortunes made and lost, and put them into the gift economy that was quite different. 3 Dublin Corporation, as the City Council was then known, formed a committee to raise the necessary funds for the new building, but over the five years, attempts to secure a building were largely unsuccessful. More than one third of Dublins poor lived in slums; support for the modern art gallery was met with complaints of wasted funds that support the cultural elite. The most successful idea for the proposed building was for a building over the Liffey River, like that of the Uffizi gallery in Florence. It was pointed out to Lane that nobody went across the river except the workers. Lane said that was the whole idea: the workers would help a) build the gallery and b) benefit by seeing the pictures. Both the Irish Independent and Catholic papers like The Standard said that if the workers were educated beyond the station in life that God had seen fit to call them, who then would work.4 The creation of employment through the building of a Municipal Gallery achieved the support of Irish socialist leaders, Plunkett and Connolly. (Both were later assasinated during the Easter Rising of 1916). Building the gallery was then alleged to be a communist plot. A frustrated Lane removed his conditional gift on 27 September 1913 in order to put the Dublin Corporation under pressure to build the gallery. He then offered his collection to the London National Gallery for display but some continued on page 23
Courtesy: Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane
Above: Hugh Lane
of the modern paintings including Renoirs Les Parapluies were deemed unworthy by London and not exhibited. Insulted, Lane withdrew his gift stating, I should never have dreamed of submitting my pictures to the board who have no competence as experts in Modern Painting.5 In February 1914, Lane was elected to the post of Director to the National Gallery of Ireland, where he chose to forgo his salary of 500 and put it into the grant for the purchase of the Irish National Gallerys pictures. On May 1, 1915, the Lusitanian passenger and cargo ship departed New York City bound for Liverpool. Hugh Lane was on his return from New York having just bought Sargents President Woodrow Wilson, which is now housed in the Irish National Gallery. Unknown to her passengers the cargo consisted of munitions and supplies destined for the British war effort. On May 7, as the ship neared the coast of Ireland, it was torpedoed by a German submarine. Hugh Lane was drowned with 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard. In his will Lane left his 39 paintings to Londons National Gallery in order to found a collection of modern continental art. Later a codicil to his will found in his desk at the National Gallery of Ireland stated: Hugh Lane. 3 February 1915. This is a codicil to my last will to the effect that the group of pictures, now at the London National Gallery, which I had bequeathed to that institution, I now bequeath to the city of Dublin, providing that a suitable building is provided for them within five years of my death.6 The codicil was signed but not witnessed and under British Law was not recognized. All 39 works went to the London National Gallery. I work part time in an art bookshop in The Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery. Visitors often approach me with postcards of Jean Augustus Renoirs painting Les Parapluies (The Umbrellas) or Theodore Rousseaus Moonlight and the Bathers or Degas Beach Scene, asking me where the paintings can be found, as they have not seen them. I explain the story of the contested collection.
return of Hugh Lane Collection attempted to negotiate the rightful ownership of the works. So how did Dublin eventually convince London to share the paintings? It was in 1959, 44 years after Hugh Lanes Death that the first agreement was made between the Irish and British governments regarding the collection. It seems like it was a long process of negotiation from 1908 to 1959. And indeed it was. Long enough to force action. On April 12, 1956, two Irish students stole one of the 39 contested Lane paintings from the Tate Gallery in London. Paul Hogan and his companion in theft stole the Jour DEte by Berthe Morisot. The paintings were hung on chains and providing you could unhook it, it was relatively easy to take it off the wall but taking it out the gallery was something else again. The approach we adopted was the most obvious one, the theory that normal behavior attracts no attention. I was an art student and I had a portfolio and I had established certain rights in the gallery but I had been working there for some days and I was a familiar figure so I was allowed to move through the gallery and extraordinarily out of the gallery with this valuable painting. Ultimately we intended giving it back because of course the intention was purely to attract attention and publicity. We expected to be apprehended, my friend and I, and to our surprise we were not apprehended and at that point you could say that the plan went seriously awry. We actually got away with it and showed a clean pair of heels to the gallery and to anyone who was in pursuit. But the aim was to attract publicity and get public bodies interested in passing votes and that sort of thing.7 They had a reporter waiting outside to record the theft for the English and Irish media. The statement they left made headlines: The authority for this action is the codicil to the will of Hugh Lane, dated 1915, bequeathing the 39 treasures to the City of Dublin. This action has been taken in the Irish National Interest. 8
When I ask Barbra Dawson, director of The Hugh Lane Gallery, if the theft at the Tate helped to accelerate the process of negotiation, she responds, Yes, definitely, reminding me that the Irish were seen to be a serious threat at this time in England. IRA bombings were going on in London, Belfast and the border regions of Ulster in the 1950s. My father tells me that when he was twelve he visited the Hugh Lane Collection in Dublin and remembers seeing Les Parapluies. He had read locally that at that time only a portion of the collection was displayed in Dublin, and it was seen as a point of national pride that the agreement had been won and that England had been made to share the collection. As a result, many people who had never visited a gallery made the effort and viewed some of the Hugh Lane collection displayed at the gallery. In June and July of this year, Hugh Lanes collection of 39 pictures can be seen in its entirety for the first time since 1908 (www.hughlane. ie). They will be hung in The Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery and for those two months when visitors ask for Renoirs Les Parapluies I can point them in the direction of where the painting is hung.
Les Parapluies Pierre-Auguste Renoir Sir Hugh Lane Bequest 1917 on loan from The National Gallery, London since 1979
On Easter Sunday I stepped out of the gallery for my lunch break. On the back of a truck outside was a man singing The Foggy Dew, with which you may be familiar (Sinead OConnor and The Chieftains do a great version of the song): As down the glen one Easter morn To a city fair rode I, There armed lines of marching men In squadrons passed me by. No pipe did hum, no battle drum Did sound its loud tattoo But the Angelus bells oer the Liffey swells Rang out in the foggy dew. People were amassed and waving Irish Tricolor flags for this was a celebration of the Easter Rising of 1916. A march commemorating the uprising took place, and afterwards, Sinn Fen president Gerry Adams addressed the gathering outside the General Post Office, the Headquarters of the Rising. It was during this revolutionary period that supporters of the
1 Corporation of London Art Gallery, Catalogue of Exhibition of a Selection of Works by Irish Painters, Guildhall, 1904. 2 Hugh Lane, Letter to the Town Clerk, 15 November 1912. 3 Lucy McDiarmid, The Irish Art of Controversy,Cornell University Press, 2005 4 Ciaran Mc Gonagle, RTE Radio archive John Bowman show, April, 2008. 5 Dawson , The National Gallery Archive , Images and Insights, 1993. 6 Hugh Lane, Letter, 1915 (Dawson , The National Gallery Archive , Images and Insights, 1993) 7 Paul Hogan, RTE Radio archive, John Bowman show, April, 2008. 8 Paul Hogan, RTE Radio archive John Bowman show, April, 2008.
Seeman
continued from page 12 In some way the advent of new, smaller more specialized museums is diluting the publics viewing experience. There are only so many hours in a day, visit one museum and you are choosing to forgo another. However, it can also be argued that it is educational as well as FUN to visit an entire museum devoted to a specific era or one artist. Established museums are very concerned about the popular trend towards creating ones own museum rather then donating to an existing institution, and it is interesting to observe the creative ways that our major museums are trying to buck this trend. BP
Savvidis
continued from page 13 certs, DJ sets etc. that aim to illustrate the rhythm of the Greek art scene. Also, it ultimately functions as a teaser for a younger and hipper audience that might not visit the fair otherwise. In 2007 especially, the Garage Project titled I Syghroni Elliniki Skini (The Greek Contemporary Arts Scene) discussed the tension between the local and the international that Greek artists experience through their work. GK: What role, if any, does Art Athina play in the Balkans and the broader European art fair map? CS: Art Athina does not specialize in the Balkans; however, we always keep a close eye in the region since there are a lot of interesting artists, even though there are not that many galleries. GK: What determines the success of an art fair? Does it all simply come down to sales? CS: No, it definitely does not come down to sales alone. A successful art fairs scope is much broader and the spill-over effects are multifarious; it is not just sales, but mostly the collaborations, contacts and networking during the art fair between local and international galleries (this benefits especially local ones that dont do art fairs abroad), artists, curators and art professionals that in the long run make the investment worthwhile. And by the term investment, I dont mean the time and money invested by participating galleries only, but the faith invested by the local art scene, especially when we are talking about a country that is off the beaten track. Art Athina is a huge opportunity for the local arts community to forge new relationships with international players and for the international art scene to broaden its scope of interest to new unexplored territories, and to renew itself.BP
Taner
continued from page 13 different types of people. Did you discover something that was neglected or overlooked in other publications? In an art world that can seem so saturated, what makes Contempreneur unique?
OT: I am still working on developing Contempreneur. This is a term I coined for all actors of the contemporary art world, globally, with an entrepreneurial sprit and approach to things. I am a contempreneur, so are the publishers and the editor of Boot Print. So are the tens of thousands of art dealers, fair or museum directors, curators, auctioneers, publishers, editors, you name them. It is a big industry with hundreds of thousands of players around the globe. There is still no common publication or web portal. Contempreneur aims to be the industry magazine, and not an arts magazine God forbid. No art critiques, but a lot of business news and philosophical discussions as we are now involved in. I would also envisage that a huge number of peripheral readership among wanna-bes to develop which will force us to soften the industry focus. In that sense it is very similar to The Economist. You find the best job postings and statistics in there, but can still read it casually on an airplane. I am open to ideas.BP
Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing and performance. His work considers the relationship, between history, cultural production and language. Helguera fictionalizes the real, generating commentary and discussion about our surrounding cultural reality and relationship to time. His work often adopts the form of lectures, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction. On this note, Helguera is also the author of The Pablo Helgueras Manual of Contemporary Art Style, a pretty puzzling reading for those who do not read between the lines. I am personally a devoted fan, simply because constructive dialogues and preposterous art arguments can depart from this book. Picking it up, reading it, writing on the margins, drawing on the diagrams and graphs, laughing out loud, disagreeing with it was easy, but letting go before talking to the artist himself was not. It has a unique bird-watching quality to it from an artist whos looked closely at the art world. Its an essential guide for artists, curators and critics, as it says on the cover, or a one-of-a-kind conversation art piece, and plausibly a great tool to sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists. This online interview was completed in March 2008. Georgia Kotretsos: Is this book based on your own speculations of the Art World (AW) or is it an example of artistic research? And if it is the latter, what was your method, your time frame, the form in which all this information was collected and then analyzed? Pablo Helguera: I never speculate speculating is a risky business, especially if you are writing a how to book. Nor did I do any scientific research to write my book. Rather, after having been involved in the art world for two decades, I realized I had accumulated a number of insights and information that could be useful to share, particularly for young artists. I felt that the art world was governed by unspoken social rules that no one seems to explicitly talk about, and I thought it would be useful to spell it out. I suspected that once I did so the result would automatically show the contradictions and absurdities of social life in the art world. The information flowed freely, quickly, and orderly, once I set to work. I tried to maintain the didactic tone of traditional social manuals and that was perhaps the hardest part. Judging from the overwhelming response for the book, I think it must have touched a nerve of some kind. GK: Speaking of unspoken social rules, there is a topic a traditional art guide wouldnt touch on: sexuality. You discuss it, you offer your fair opinion when it matters, you have fun with it; however, your approach still rates PG. So, lets take this a step further by thinking outside the book for a moment, how big of a role do sexual relationships and sexual orientation play in career-building in the AW? PH: The book does describe pretty clearly what happens with the lover of a successful artist, curatorial assistants who sleep with famous artists, and other explicit situations. But ok, lets speak about sex. Some contemporary art etiquette theorists argue that artists who excel at oral sex have greater chances at getting into the Whitney Biennial. Similarly, if you happen to be bisexual, you have the added advantage of seducing both female and male curators. Artists of exotic origin have an advantage at seducing global conceptualist type curators. However, none of this is true. Wouldnt it be wonderful, though? While sexual seduction does work to expedite certain professional relationships, straight quid pro quo sex-career favors have more limitations than one would imagine. For one thing, if the artist or curator in question is decidedly mediocre, no sexual prestidigitation will get them very far. Unless you make that part of your work, such as when Andrea Fraser offers herself as a sexual prize to an eager collector. But that is more of a metaphor of the actual prostitution that we all engage in, in the art world, isnt it?
Pablo Helgueras Manual of Contemporary Art Style
conversation piece. You go in great length covering a broad spectrum of AW interactions and social scenarios ranging from bodily propriety, decorum, code of artistic civility, to form of dress, address and demeanor. Arent you curious why all these rules serve as the cannon? Whats behind the AW etiquette? PH: That is indeed a fascinating question one that would be best answered by someone who would be simultaneously versed in anthropological, sociological, economical and art theory but so far I havent found many people like that. Social behavior in the art world results as a combination of factors, such as career motivations, financial interests, psychological obsessions, and the always intangible interest in art. But because the global phenomenon of things like art fairs, the 24/7 cycle of biennials, and the festivalist artist is so new, we have very little critical tools to analyze and understand how all these factors intermix to make the art world behave the way it does. This is partially why the book somewhat launched another project of mine, the Helguera Center for Artworld Studies, which puts forth the notion that the art world has become a sufficiently large communal entity to demand its own field of academic studies (not to be confused with art history, art education or studio art). I am currently looking for scholars with interests in this new field that may want to submit papers to a conference that this Center will organize sometime in the Fall in New York. The conference, as you may gather, is a bit in the same spirit as the manual trying not to take ourselves too seriously while at the same time being completely serious just like art tends to be. GK: Lets take a close look at art schools then. You define art schools as institutions that teach nineteenth century art techniques, twentieth century art history, and ask students to pay tuitions at the rate of the upcoming century, with the assumption that art students will be able to navigate the present on their own. Nice! Why isnt the content of the Manual taught at art schools? Isnt this the age of the Pop Idol, where one has to sing good, look good, dance good? Why isnt the educational system frank with aspiring artists? PH: Actually, I am now afraid of the opposite: that the manual will be taken as the word on how to make it in the art world. I happened to read blog entries written by two random art students who had gotten their hands on the manual, saying to each other that the manual had told them everything they needed to know about the art profession. The underlying irony of the text had been completely lost to them. And the truth of the matter is that while the manual truthfully exposes quite a variety of situations in the art world, in its instructional format also tries to exemplify, as some reviewer rightfully observed, how to attain the worst kind of success the one that is solely driven by blind ambition, careerism, insincerity and affectation, of which the art world is saturated. This is partially a byproduct of the ineptitude of the art school system, which provides you tools that are mostly irrelevant when you have to deal with the reality you encounter out there when you graduate. The moment an artist leaves art school is, I think, the most difficult of ones career it certainly was like that for me. You face very difficult questions about your personal relationship with art, and usually you have no choice but to take the cues from the world around you. And it is clear that for most young artists the meaning of art simply is inextricably linked to the need of joining an elite. Schools seem to place little emphasis on what should be the most important part of everything, which is to learn how to appreciate art and look at an art career not as an art race, but as a language that must fulfill ones intellect and creativity before it fulfills ones ego. In other words, my greatest wish would be that everyone would do exactly the opposite of what the manual suggests they do, because otherwise you fall again into continuing the same ridiculous behavior that the art world encourages and rewards. My brother, who was a writer, once wrote: If I ever wrote a book about how to succeed in life, and if the book turned out to be successful, I would feel a total failure. And that is exactly how I feel. BP
Courtesy Jorge Pinto Books Inc.
GK: Fair enough! Nonetheless, you manage to tap into the career anxiety and neurosis of the contemporary A, B, C or D level artist in an amusing manner. It has an older brotherly kind of tone to it enlightening young artists on whats ahead of them on an emotional and professional level if they choose to commit to a career in the AW. Was the manual actually written for that kind of audience, or is it an inside joke for people already invested in the scene? PH: It was actually written for both. As someone who has been doing art education for two decades, one of the principles that guides me is that nothing is more revelatory for a self-proclaimed connoisseur than a discussion about the very basic ideas about his or her profession, because those simple questions tend to address the most difficult issues (this is why explaining the world to a child tends to be very hard). So an introductory book for the art world novice can be equally educational to the expert, in the sense that it can reveal new insights on how we regard the basic rules of it which is what the manual tries to do. I always wished that someone had written this book when I was in my student years it would have saved me a lot of aggravation and embarrassment. The actual tone of the book is borrowed from traditional etiquette manuals, most particularly from the one of Antonio Carreo, a Venezuelan etiquette expert who wrote the social etiquette manual in the 1930s and which has since then been the manual de rigueur in the Spanish language. The tone of Carreos manual is professorial and stern, and of course oldfashioned, with some regulations and claims that are outright ridiculous and entertaining (such as a lady shall never sit on the windowsill of her apartment, because people may think she is a lost woman, or husband and wife must turn off the lights of their bedchamber before undressing,). Julio Torri, a Mexican writer from the beginning of the century who no one reads anymore today (but me, I guess) once wrote that melancholy is the complement of irony. Without necessarily intending it to be so, I simply wrote a book that complained about the cynicism in the art world while at the same time trying not to take it too seriously, and only in retrospect I realize that the tone of the book is a mixture of the conflicted sentiments that Torri addresses. It is nothing other than my own (and I would say our collective) mixed feelings about the art world and its social rules: they tend to be absurd and conservative and careerist, and yet we agree to conform by them. GK: It is apparent that the book has been modeled after traditional etiquette manuals, and thats what makes it a great
In the Spring of 2008, Nato Thompson, Curator and Producer at Creative Time, traveled to Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and back to New York to host a series of Town Halls on the subject of democracy in America. Through a series of Town Hall Meetings, commissioned projects around the country (including the Democratic and Republican National Conventions), and a mobile Convergence Center that will travel to different boroughs in New York City this fall, Democracy promises active participation and discussion. On the eve of the November elections, Thompson investigates the nations democratic tradition through an array of artistic and activist strategies that take shape in a multi-faceted, national program of exhibitions and events. Here, Thompson and Laura Fried catch up via Instant Messenger after Thompsons statewide, town-hall tour LF: Exactly. This is a particular practice youve long engaged as a curator from the Interventionists to your 2004 Art Journal piece (if you dont mind my citing it), where you commissioned four artists/collectives to operate within the traditionally narrow art historical textual frame... You are quite explicit in your move beyond mere institutional critique, which historically operated to examine the power structures of cultural institutions. In this move, it seems natural that visuality as a strategy isnt necessarily the only option. NT: Well right. I think institutional critique benefits from Pierre Bourdieus analysis of discursive formations. That is, he understood that power is produced within particular niches of society. The term art world already implies a sort of kingdom within a larger kingdom; however, institutional critique also suffers from being so dependent on that which it criticizes. That is to say, while power does exist inside the white cube, it exists outside of it as well. To be quite honest, this awareness of how one can move between discursive fields is amazing and complicated. For capital and other forms of power exist as an umbrella as well as within the walls of our separate fields of operation. LF: Switching gears a wee bit, I wonder if I might ask about the function and conditions of speech-making in contemporary art practice/cultural production right now. Some of these artists in Democracy are clearly invested in this strategy... and Creative Time, as I understand it, will also be hosting a series of programs and events centered on speechmaking in New York City this spring. Might I ask you to address this... well, certainly not a new phenomenon but this kind of practice right now? NT: My fellow curator at Creative Time, Mark Beasley, is working on a great project on the voice in contemporary art titled Hey Hey Glossolalia. We realized that we are both interested in work dealing with speech and speech acts and it has forced us to consider why so much work like this is being made. I think this interest comes out of a tradition of the political (the soap box) as well as the inter-disciplinary (the lecture) and also on the desire to communicate. I think we are feeling out of touch with each other, and the speech is often a way of connecting with a sense of urgency. Currently, 1968 is very much in the air and this enthusiasm for a period filled with speeches and an activated civic body is tinged with both nostalgia and envy. How do we deal with these conditions in the contemporary moment? How do we speak to each other? How can we make sense of the times we live in? I think these questions motivate this focus on speech. LF: Indeed. I think the Town Hall talks offer a particularly apt strategy for pressuring this very issue our urgent need and desire to communicate... NT: Something that became apparent in our talks was the degree to which much art activism has turned to conditions produced inside the cities they live in. The question of gentrification came up quite a lot. As did worries about jobs and what is often referred to precarity in Western Europe (the political condition produced through neo-liberalism of keeping people in a state of financial ruin). It is interesting to see this in a time of an unpopular war as many people are wondering, Why arent people protesting the war? Well, I think a lot of folks are feeling a type of very personal domestic war happening in their neighborhoods. I guess it makes me wonder: how can we link these battles in the city to the larger geopolitical battles like Iraq and neoliberalism? LF: These participants in the Town Halls might I ask what strategies they themselves are adopting to address these concerns, ask these very questions, for instance? NT: Currently I think many are working on issues they can focus on. There are so many from prisons, to AIDS, to gentrification, to youth education, to post-Katrina New Orleans, to survival. At the same time, I felt a profound return to the local. That was very much in the air. LF: Well... it seems we might have hit our word limit here. A provocative note to end on though, I think. NT: Ok Laura. I should run. This was fun. BP
Photograph by Meghan Boudreau. Courtesy the artist and Creative Time.
Laura Fried: Nato! Nato Thompson: oh! NT: hello NT: I had the wrong IM. LF: Oh right, absolutlmf... a sad IM screen name from college NT: So how do we do this? LF: Well I guess Ill start NT: Fair nuff LF: First, thanks so much for meeting with me over IM for this interview. NT: Well you are quite welcome. It is my first IM interview ever. LF: Me too! So, are you officially returned from the first leg of the Democracy in America tour? NT: Yes. We just finished the first phase, which we are calling the Town Hall talks. LF: Right. We ran into each other in sunny Los Angeles recently, where you were just about to host another town hall meeting with local artists and activists... NT: Yes, in sunny Los Angeles. LF: Could you tell me a little about the group make-up? I remember that you seemed pleased that a condition of these town halls was that they operated somewhat to the exclusion of your typical art world personalities. LF: (btw: is that a Yinka Shonibare IM icon you have there?) NT: yup. NT: I wouldnt say at the exclusion of art world types, but more that we put an emphasis on bringing a diverse range of approaches (both cultural and political) that work in what might be called the infrastructure of political cultural production. I should say that I organized these talks with Daniel Tucker who edits an incredible magazine in Chicago named AREA. Our hope was to take the psychic temperature of a wide variety of practitioners ranging from youth media to education to theater to post-MFA critical art practice to community based work to radio and web-based. Ultimately, there is a deep politics in who is in the room so we were aware that we wanted to keep a wide array of approaches so as to not hem in what we meant by culture or politics. LF: Of course. I understand these conversations took place with you and Daniel also in Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles and NYC, in part to measure a consciousness at the end of this presidential era and looking forward to the November elections. But could you elaborate on the structure of these town halls?
Mark Tribe, Port Huron Project 3: We Must Name the System 2007.
NT: Sure. So, we invited about 15 to 20 people from each city and asked them five questions. We tried to achieve a range of practices (like I said), as there are tons of folks one could invite. We also wanted to have a range of scale, so cities like Baltimore and New Orleans have a different composition than cities like L.A., Chicago and New Orleans. Our questions focused on parts of political practices that can be shared across disciplines (audience, economies, history and social movements). In essence, it could be seen as a group interview but amazing things came from it. LF: And what, as we look forward to this projects upcoming events and programs, can we anticipate in the next months leading up to November? NT: Well, the second phase of this project involves commissioning three sets of artists to do projects on the subject of democracy across the United States. We have Mark Tribe doing speech reenactments of New Left speeches, we have Sharon Hayes doing a project on public space and the role of the queer figure in public speech in the cities where the Republican National Conventions and Democratic National Conventions are happening (St. Paul and Denver) and finally, we are doing a project in Austin, Texas collaborating with the Blanton Museum on a project on capital punishment and the prison system with artists Rodney McMillan and Olga Koumoundouras. Wheh! It is a lot. Each location in the country has an institutional partner and its part of an overall strategy of Creative Time to do projects across the country as well as in New York City. LF: which is a thrilling new direction for Creative Time, it seems, particularly on the heels of the incredible success with Waiting for Godot in New Orleans with Paul Chan. I remember that you and Paul hosted a series of workshops and town halls there in New Orleans, as well... To me, Democracy seems like a natural development of your focused curatorial practice in particular, a practice that seeks to move outside the museums walls and into the realm of what I have often heard you refer to as the broader sphere of cultural production and participatory practices. NT: Yes, absolutely. Working at Creative Time (I previously worked at MASS MoCA) has allowed some flexibility in engaging with work outside. Not simply in terms of just being outside the walls of a museum, but also, to some degree, outside a discursive frame. We can engage with culture on a more abstract level that doesnt have to mean just art but can also mean multiple other things that have political resonance.
Expedition into the Heartland: Interview with Charles Esche, Kerstin Niemann and Stephanie Smith
photo: Yuriy Rumiantsev
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Heartland is an interdisciplinary project in Eindhoven featuring existing and newly commissioned art works and an international music program called Into the Heart of Music. The project is dedicated to art and music that emerges out of the areas rich cultural and geographic diversity. The program also includes a series of debates and lectures, two publications, an artists-inresidency program and various special projects with local and international partners. It is the first time that a project of this scope has been initiated in Eindhoven. The official premiere / opening is scheduled October 3 and 4 in Eindhoven where the project will run until January 25th, 2009. After that, part of the exhibition will travel to Chicago. The collaboration between the Van Abbemuseum and the Smart Museum promises to combine insider and outsider perspectives on visual culture in the region in which individual artworks will be related to each other while being able to speak clearly about particular cultural, social and natural phenomena. Curators Charles Esche (director Van Abbemuseum), Kerstin Niemann (research curator, Van Abbemuseum) and Stephanie Smith (cocurator of Heartland and director of collections and exhibitions curator of Contemporary Art Smart Museum at the University of Chicago) took some time out to talk to Boot Print about the Heartland. Juan William Chvez: In recent years, the U.S. heartland has been the focus of international media, from the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina to the swing states in the past elections. How does contemporary art fit into all of this? What triggered the project? Why the Heartland and why now? Charles Esche: The project grew out of two contrasting motivations. The first is related to the history of the Van Abbemuseums collection and the way it has represented US art in the Netherlands since the 1960s. The museum was the first to show artists such as Warhol and Nauman in our country and was instrumental in establishing an interest in such work here. In the 1990s, my predecessor at the museum Jan Debbaut switched his attention to the west coast and collected Kelley
and Rhoades. The first purchase I made when I arrived was a completion of this project with a major Paul McCarthy. This background made me curious about what was happening in the zone between the east and west coasts of the U.S. Such a speculation rhymed with other changes that I was introducing to the museum, following new geographic leads into the former socialist part of Europe and the Middle East. These areas are rich in history and recent socio-political change, and this has given the artists renewed energy and possibility. I wondered if the same was true in the centre of the Unites States and was anyway fascinated by this huge geographic area which was so little represented in our cultural understanding of the worlds major artistic (and economic) power. So, curiosity was a big part of it. and why now? Well, I wanted to do this show about the region at the same time as the presidential elections were happening. For many people in Western Europe, these elections have a direct effect yet there is a large degree of ignorance about the cultures and places that make up the majority of the United States. I thought it would be thought provoking to look at the Heartland just at this moment and hopefully to find a more nuanced picture than we currently have of the middle of America. JWC: Lets focus on your research approach and the fact that you and colleagues went out on the road. This goes beyond and challenges the usual exhibition research approach. Is this the first time you took this direction? Have you employed this method in previous projects? CE: The idea of going out on the road seemed crucial if we were to get behind some of the more obvious stereotypes or clichs of the region. I am used to this way of working, having done it in central Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East for projects before. It is basically a way to experience the context and make decisions for yourself that you can stand behind. The alternatives would be to rely on secondary sources such as magazines or on the filtering process of the commercial galleries. Both of these are valid systems of information and, in part,
we will arrive at the same conclusions they did, but doing it for yourself adds another dimension. This is not only in finding a few artists who are not on the existing radar, but also, more importantly, being able to represent the exhibition to our audiences in a more complex way. Having spent time in Detroit or Memphis helps us to understand an artist more fully, and even to challenge my existing parameters of art by learning a new context. It therefore becomes refreshing for me as a curator and challenges my own assumptions. I hope this works also for Kerstin and Stephanie Smith, who came with us to Detroit recently. Part of the project was also to invite artists from the Netherlands who might be interested in making a work for the show based on a residency in different parts of the region. Our first trip was with an artist, Otto Berchem, who subsequently has had a twomonth stay in Memphis. Other artists will be staying in Lowndes County, Alabama; Chicago and Minneapolis. We might also try to get a Saint Louis residency for the return of the exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago in autumn 2009. JWC: Looking at the research trip blog and viewing the images of the different places you went and the variety of people that you met, there is a strong social component. Will this social data be included in the exhibition? If so, how? CE: I think there is inevitably a strong social component in our experience of the research trips. You cant spend time in Saint Louis or Mississippi without trying to come to terms with the history of European settlement, racial division, economic hardship and urban or rural change. Some things were very striking, especially when you are first confronted with the history of segregation or the dramatic development of city centers. This was fascinating and compelling to discover and I am very pleased we were able to document it in the blog. It also forms part of the background knowledge that the research trip offered to us. In the exhibition, much of this will not be so visible because at that stage the curators hand over to the artists and their works. It is important that the curatorial work informs but does not continued on page 27
continued from page 26 get in the way of the imaginations of the audience members. They will be encountering the works and probably the subject matter for the first time and need to be able to make their own sense of it all. However, there will be two aspects of the project that will include more of the contextual material we discovered. One will be in the publication that we will make for the presentation in Chicago in 2009. The current plans for this are to make it more of a reader in which we can ask various thinkers from urban planning to politics to write about our heartland. These essays would form a parallel narrative to illustrations of the artists work. The second more social element will be a critical archive of independent or self-organized spaces from various cities including, we hope, Boots in Saint Louis. This archive will occupy a room within the Van Abbemuseum exhibition and be modified for the presentation at the Smart Museum. JWC: One thing I found fascinating was the Mark Twain approach to the Research trip. By that I mean following the Mississippi River and going by word of mouth, all of which was nicely documented on the Heartland Research Trip Blog. Why this approach, and what were the pros and cons? Kerstin Niemann: Following the Mississippi River seemed to be the most logical red thread for our research trip since we had already decided to investigate the arts, culture and music in the heart of America. The Mississippi resembled for us something like the 3rd coast, in opposition to the cultural identity of the west and east coast, an overlooked area of cultural potentials. Referring to the word of mouth strategy was definitely something that was inspired by Mark Twains main premises in Huckleberry Finn, that he wants to get across the young boys belief in the right thing to do even though the majority of society believed it was wrong. This meant that we tried to avoid contacting and planning around established institutions (e.g. galleries, private collections, museums, etc.) and relied upon a more informal network that we tried to discover. Trying to find our own strategies of communication and travels though they sometimes seemed to drag us off our main course and took longer than expected meant reaching out to word-ofmouth contacts and recommendations of others. This method certainly allowed and still is allowing us to get to know a variety of art related spaces that we would have initially never thought of (performing art centers, centers for the development of the arts, intentional art communities, interdisciplinary institutions and other forms of associations and foundations) and culturally engaged people that you will not find during research on the internet. The disadvantages of this method certainly are that if you only follow one line of recommendations and communications you may only stay in this circle of art lovers or culturally interested people. Though at the end I think we engaged as much in both the off-scene and the established art world. Nevertheless, we followed the Mississippi from South to North, what some people referred to as the opposite direction! JWC: All contemporary art related visits aside, I couldnt help noticing the exotic feel of the research trip documentation (Bellevue Christian Baptist Church, hometown of Mark Twain and Graceland) on the blog. Surely these photos play into a clich image of the Heartland, but Im curious what role did these visits play in the research? KN: Among others, we decided to start out the research of this project upon our own preconceptions and stereotypes about particular histories and social structures in the Heartland region. During the first research trip in summer 2007, we were amazed by the density of churches per square foot in comparison to the number of inhabitants. To go to Bellevue Christian Baptist Church was actually a recommendation of a local Memphian. I took the chance and visited and was amazed by this yet unknown to me world of commercialized way of featuring certain religious beliefs. It is indeed amazing to hear people talk about attending church-planter programs and establishing churches in areas of communities that are less established in the city. Maybe one can perceive the growing number of small community churches in the last years as a new form of gentrifying less developed areas of a city. Looking back, I assume this was the fascination of a European with a protestant upbringing finding out more about diverse religious identities and the contemporary growth of small community churches as real estate development businesses. Certainly riding on clichs and stereotypes that already exist about a particular place or institution does not help to further an exchange of knowledge and understanding for the specificity and diversity of this region, but it enables us to contextualize it within the process of our research. We can apply it as a tool with which we are able to develop profound references or use it to approach a subject from another angle. I would be curious to know what you would go and visit if you arrive the first time in Berlin or Amsterdam. JWC: What role did your Midwest background, cultural as well as professional, play in the Heartland project? You grew up in St. Louis and you live in Chicago did you find any new discoveries in these two locations through the Heartland research? Stephanie Smith: Ive been in Chicago since 1998, and yes, I grew up in St. Louis. As co-curator of the project along with Charles and Kerstin, one of my roles has been to serve as local informant and interlocutor, sharing my own knowledge and also asking questions to help shape the parameters of the project, the directions of the research, and the form of the shows. (It will open first in Eindhoven and then well work together to re-conceive the show for the Smart Museum in Chicago in fall 2009.) My knowledge is biased and partial, of course, but I know its been helpful in bringing key artists and ideas into the mix. By the same token, Ive learned a great deal from my colleagues. Our research and ongoing conversations are helping me to rethink many things about my own sense of the region, and its
been quite exciting to learn together about whats happening in other cities that none of us knew in advance, like Detroit and Memphis. To answer the second part of your question: Yes, through the lens of this research Ive been thinking differently about things in both Chicago and St. Louis. Its helped me to look at familiar places, people, and art in fresh ways and with a different quality of attention. Its sparked some fascinating conversations with my family and with my colleagues. Ive never before spent so much time talking about questions like these: what does it mean to be based in the Midwest right now? How does that help or hinder the work that we do? How does it feed into a sense of self? How does it shape the nature of ones practice as a cultural producer? The research has also introduced me to artists and spaces in each city. This is less true in Chicago. Still, the process has shifted me out of some of my usual patterns of circulation which range from studios, galleries, and museums to more exploratory spaces like the Experimental Station, Von Zweck, and Mess Hall and into some of the newer spaces like Incubate and Alogon. Theyre both run by young artists as doit-yourself projects, albeit with quite different agendas: Incubate seems to me to be a new generations take on the sociallyengaged, generosity-based practices that have such a rich history in Chicago, where Alogon seems more of a classic apartment space. In St. Louis, the process has had a different flavor. Its been less about seeing my home turf in a new way. Instead, Im starting to triangulate a sense of the citys cultural geography based in part on childhood memories and in part on two kinds of experiences as an adult time in the suburbs with my family, and time in the city looking at art. The Heartland research has given me new fodder for the latter, for Ive been following the activities of the Pulitzer and the Contemporary for a long time, but only learned about Boots and Matt Strausss gorgeous White Flag Projects through the Heartland research. Because of the overall frame of the project, Im starting to bridge these facets of my experience of the city. And that ties right back into those questions about what it means to make work in and/or about these places right now. JWC: In one of your Blog entries you mentioned that ...One of our other big conversations of late has been about how one might rethink notions of centers and peripheries in relation to places like the Midwest. Could you please share with the Boot Print readers your take and thoughts on the notion of center and periphery and has there been any changes or confirmations in your thoughts during the Heartland research trip? SS: This is a crucial conversation and one that I think hooks into the way you are approaching Boots and Boot Print. Especially
Scene from the Heartland
with our current communications technologies, its becoming ever-easier to base influential cultural activities in places that have traditionally either functioned as cultural centers, or been perceived as such. Of course, we have to be careful not to make empty claims or those that could be perceived as boosterism or propaganda. Still especially in a globalized moment when so many different kinds of experiences are getting blended into one relatively undifferentiated field, theres a real power supporting specific kinds of local knowledge. Theres a power in seeing what exists right here, right now that is distinct and fertile and worth tending. Theres a real power in making the most of local resources. Theres a real power in using that base and building alliances with others around the world, whether in historical centers or in other newly-revitalized peripheries. That last part is one of the keys, I think: making work that happens in regions like the Midwest visible to our peers in the region and to others around the world, opening and maintaining a flow of critical dialogue so we both contribute to and are inflected by a larger conversation and dont slide into more of a blindered, old-school sort of regionalism, (e.g. The New York School).
You asked about new discoveries. Theres one particularly interesting development that may not show up in the show itself, but certainly will intersect with the Heartland project in some way. Dan Wang and Brett Bloom, two artists who were once based in Chicago and who remain involved with the experimental space Mess Hall, have recently moved into Wisconsin and southern Illinois, respectively. These are areas that could be classified as peripheral within the larger region, which is usually itself thought of as peripheral to, say, the art scenes of the coasts. They and others have been thinking about how to link up radical cultural practitioners across the region. So, a group of locals and visitors including folks from 16 Beaver in NYC and the theorist Brian Holmes will be hosting a traveling series of events/conversations/activities around the region in June. Theyll be moving through cities like Chicago, towns like Champaign-Urbana, and rural areas. Ill be joining them for some of this. It dovetails quite beautifully into the conversations wed been having through Heartland about centers/peripheries. Ill blog about this as it happens. To wrap up, one of the wonderful things about the project has been the ways that its opened up lines of research that I think will remain vital and in flux through the whole course of the project as it opens in Europe and then is re-thought for presentation back in the Heartland itself. I feel that in some ways were just beginning to understand some of the potential implications of our research, and of course the process has raised many more possible topics to explore than weve had time to pursue. Its been a rich process so far and Im glad that it will continue over the coming years. BP
Charles and Kerstin in St. Louis
Ill with Home: on the autobiography of Moustafa Farroukh
Moustafa Farroukh1 is a story worth listening to. Born in Beirut in 1901 to a humble Muslim Sunni family, he managed through sheer diligence and the help of a few to travel, study and turn into one of the first Lebanese artists who could claim an operative ambition. Although prolific as a painter and draftsman, his most significant, because troubled, contribution is arguably his autobiography published posthumously in 1986 under the title Tariki Ilal Fen (My Path to Art).2 Farroukhs autobiography is strung tight across a river of failure. For him the Arab-Islamic past is a constant reminder of a decadent present oblivious to mourning. In chapter 21 of his autobiography entitled Rihla ila Bilad al Majd al Mafkoud (or Journey to the Land of Lost Glory), later developed into a separate book, he lays down the basis of his cultural despondency: The plain truth is that we live on the margins of life. We do not contribute effectually to the development of civilization, we merely exploit it.3 Such is the tenor of his statements jotted down throughout a journey made in 1930 during which he spent a week in Seville, five days in Cordoba, two days in Madrid, one day in Toledo, four days in Barcelona and a crucial nineteen days in Grenada. There, in Andalusia, he meets his origins. Belated, he describes as wondrous monuments and poignant history4 a world from which he is barred but which he will unwaveringly claim as his own. In Andalusia he beholds his true childhood, his innocence. There he discovers that he is in fact of a higher birth. There, he meets an ancient and lofty culture which he then claims as his true parent. Such is Farroukhs family romance in which he is finally discovered by an ideal and exalted parent, Andalusia, allowing him to finally turn his biological parents into foster parents.5 The exorbitant price to pay for such a childhood found and then forever lost in Arab-Islamic antiquity becomes for the artist his Medal of Honor. In the final chapter of his autobiography, translated here below, Farroukhs dilemma is exacerbated. Graduated, he is homebound. His words of farewell to European culture are anxiously soaked in unmitigated admiration. Paris, a metonym for Western culture, is idealized while the Orient, metonymically displaced unto defeatist fatalism, is a beautiful land irremediably lost to the ignorant few or many. Notable is Farroukhs insistence on salubrity. The impeccable streets of Paris and manners of Parisians he describes must be understood as the migrating ideal image of a city and a culture that most probably was but will never come to be again in the Orient. Factually speaking, Claude Dufresnes historical research on the city of Paris allows in part such an interpretation.6 For he argues that even with the noticeable progress beginning with the late 19th century and following regulations by Mr. Eugne Poubelle, prefect of the Seine, Paris was still and in many of its quarters an unregulated and unsalubrious city. Yet, Farroukhs words are more than actual observations. They are a declaration of love for a possible future well under way he saw in the West. His return home is therefore moreover a forced, or in the least an undesired, severance with a civilization on the march. Homebound he is also literally homesick, namely already in the throes of an Orient living in the past. So he procrastinates. He visits Italy to meet his teacher and declare yet again his allegiance to the true, the good and the beautiful. Farroukhs autobiography ends with his elegiac visit to his teachers studio. Yet he lives on. In Beirut, he continues to write and exhort his fellow countrymen to awaken. More importantly, he gradually finds a profound modesty and learns to paint from observation rather than rhetorically. His many small landscape paintings of Beirut and the vicinity stand as a testimony to a painter who, while remaining a moralist in his essays and public speeches, discovered how to paint the world in order to simply live in it. It was my fourth time in Rome, the cradle of art. There my soul dwells. There where art is so is my home and my chosen land. There where beauty is so is my country, my family and my kin; for I cannot comprehend country, neither love nor kin without the prerequisite and founding concept of a lofty and exalted beauty. There, and no where else, can one overcome the limits and obstacles of idols, racial discrimination and religious sectarianism concocted and then reproduced by a few miserly politicians. I say: were humans to sincerely espouse the love of the good, the true and the beautiful, they would have been blessed with unending felicity. And yet paltry, narrowly materialistic and oblivious to lifes beauty and pleasure as they are, they turned away from the truth in search of material wealth. Lost and spent, they wasted their lives licking rasps and drinking nothing but their own blood. In Rome, I sought the company of my teacher and found him as always diligently at work in his studio on which door he had written Pax E Sacrum. Yes, by God it is peace out of sacrifice. Is there anything more dignified than the sincere contemplation of Gods glorious work and of the beauty which lives in even the most insignificant detail? I found my teacher, still active while nearing his sixties, engrossed in the act of drawing a little branch with a few withered leaves. Astonished, I asked why he squanders his time with such a trifle? He laughed and then answered: I wish I could reach an understanding of this paltry desiccated branch and of the nonplussing precision, beauty and awe that it contains. There I was, in a sort of prayer raised towards Him the almighty creator by these modest and withered leaves in an anagogical manner. In their creases wisdom and philosophy, in their midst secrets, in their zigzagging silent praise, in their colors an eloquent sermon and in their cohesion all of wisdom and all of knowledge. What more could I ask for? In them I find my prayer niche, read my book, chant, learn my lesson and praise the almighty, benevolent and merciful Lord It is now, my teacher, that I understand the words you wrote on your studio door. I often asked my teacher if he thought or even suspected that we were lost in how we think, if it were all little more than futile delusions? Are we right in what we think, feel and perceive? Inevitably, we would concur that the examined life artists live, led by that furtive sensation which caresses their souls, is a life worth living!
1 Moustafa Farroukh (1901-1957) a Lebanese painter and essayist graduated from the Royal College of Fine Arts in Rome in 1927. He returned to Lebanon in 1932 and led a successful career primarily as a portraitist. Next to his autobiography, his most significant essays are published in Al fen Wal Hayat (Art and Life), Dar Al Elem Lil Malayeen, Beirut, 1967 and Rihla Ila Bilad Al Majd Al Mafkoud (Journey to the Land of Lost Glory) first published in 1932 by Dar Al Kashaf, Beirut and then in a second edition in 1982 by Dar Al Moufid, Beirut. 2 Farroukh, Moustafa, Tariki Ilal Fen (My Path to Art), Institute Nawfal, Beirut, 1986. 3 Tariki Ilal Fen, 178.
Book cover - Courtesy of Hanni Farroukh
Moustafa Farroukh (1901-1957), Bayna Yaday alAwda Ilal Watan (Homebound) in Tariki Ilal Fen (My Path to Art), Nawfal Institute, Beirut, 1986, pp. 188-191. Time to go home; I left Paris, a city which nourished me with art and science and taught me about life much I did not suspect. For her I harbor unending gratitude. The West is a commodious place of learning. Literature, science and the arts find a place therein as part of living. The West schools in how to tread sidewalks, how to sit in a club, how to enter an establishment and how to address others. It also teaches basic tenets of salubrity such as to follow posted directions and wipe the soles of ones shoes before stepping into an establishment. It also teaches one not to spit outside designated spots, respect others and take their comfort into consideration. Many countries in the West have by now forgotten that men do urinate against walls whenever and however they please. They forgot that a man can raise his voice late at night in a sudden whim to bellow an improvised song of lament without regard for the comfort of others be they infants or invalids. Even I, while in Paris, forgot the sight of rubbish heaped on roadbeds and pavements, forgot litter flung from windows on the heads of passersby. I even forgot how some dig into their nostrils with eager fingers burrowing and excavating in plain sight and for all to see. Also forgotten are shop owners who, with impunity, occupy sidewalks with stacked goods leaving no passage for pedestrians, or beggars who for alms do the same as they stretch their legs and around them sprinkle their children. The government here in Paris disallows mendicants who carry contagious diseases from freely mingling with the population, while the wheelers and dealers among our public health officials could not care less. In the Orient, a person is of no value and without a distinct presence. Fatalism, flippantly invoked, remains the basic operative modality in social interactions. For instance, a man lugging steel bars through a busy market knocks people around, could even pluck someones eye out and yet all he has to say is: La Hawla wa la Qoowwata Illa Billah (Ability and power is
nought unless by God). Or someone says that such a sorry incident is fated only to hear those around him repeat the same litany. Or someone jumps on the tram, wedges his soiled bags among the riders and says: Maleych choo Sar (No harm done) while still another walks the crowded aisle flicking a chain around his index finger hitting you in the face or on the hand. To show annoyance is useless for the reply is quick and repeated by all: Maleych choo Sar. And how often is one poked by a cane tucked under the arm of some bully hanging about the sidewalk shooting at the breeze with his fellows. A remark no matter how polite is quickly rebuked with a stern: Maleych choo Sar. Also on the tram, men and often women are quick to chide one another for not offering their seat to those supposedly more deserving but only in a hypocritical display of good manners. Such is the selfishness which characterizes this beautiful land Yes, beautiful it is and yes many are the unclean who live amidst her good folk. Yet a land where every wrong is remedied with the fateful Maleych choo Sar is a land unlucky and doomed. Perhaps Maleych choo Sar it is. For this land where the many are unable to deter the few from corruption is not worthy of living. Maleych choo Sar! And I say, strange as it may sound, that never when returning home from the West did I feel the happiness or felicity one usually expects or presumes. Quite on the contrary, it is a feeling of dejection that grips me. Not because of any hatred I harbor towards my country, but rather because I am pained by the spectacle of regression, decadence and that general reluctance to desist from bad habits which we seem to hold on to like a miser to a penny. It is what hurts every loyal native or at least him who respects himself and whishes to resemble humans I left Paris by way of Italy the birthplace of art. There I went to gather art. Can a student ever be quenched? Can an artist ever be satiated? Are there limits to art? And can an academic degree be terminal? Art is the image of life; incommensurable and fathomless. Is one short life span sufficient to grasp such a vast and welcoming life? Bacon, God rest his soul, was right when he said that the more I study the more ignorant I feel.
Tariki Ilal Fen, 178. Freud writes: Indeed the whole effort at replacing the real father by a superior one is only an expression of the childs longing for the happy, vanished days when his father seemed to him the noblest and strongest of men and his mother the dearest and loveliest of women... and his fantasy is no more than the expression of a regret that those happy days have gone. Freud, Sigmund, Family Romance in The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey ; in collaboration with Anna Freud ; assisted by Alex Strachey and Alan Tyson ; Editorial assistant: Angela Richards, Vol. IX, 241. 6 Dufresne, Claude, Paris, Capitale de la Pollution (Paris, the capital of pollution) in Historia, march, 2001, 20-24 which includes some astonishing photographs of the less than hygienic streets of Paris from between the two World wars.
The Ones Who Helped Get the Word Out!
On a rainy and cold night on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 the St. Louis community came to meet and greet the Boots Director, Juan William Chavez and Boot Prints Editor-in-Chief, Georgia Kotretsos at the Boots Contemporary Art Space. The evening was hosted by St. Louis-based Independent curator, Shannon Fitzgerald and Director of Community Art Programs & Public Art Initiatives of the Regional Arts Commission, Roseann Weiss. Brandon Anschultz, Harper Barnes, Emily Blumenfeld & David Lowey, Nanette E. Boileau, David Bonetti, Saskya & Michael Byron, Edna Campos Gravenhorst, Bill & Amy Carson, Jean Cavender, Sarah Colby & Kim Humphries, Ellen & Durb Curlee, Jill Downen, Jeff Edwards, Brigid Flynn, Malcolm Gay & Jasmine Aber, Glen Gentele, Stephanie & Web Homer, Meredith & Jeff McKinley, Cipriano Medina, Benton Park Associate - Lawrence Group, Jen & David Meyer, Susan & Rob Werremeyer joined us for a glass of wine that evening. It was the moment the St. Louis community came together to support Boot Print their generosity reflects the art community of the city we operate from. We thank them for caring, for wanting to sustain this art publication, and for aspiring to see it grow. As the editor of Boot Print, I thank you for believing in this project, for backing it up and for making it yours. It does take a village to raise a child, and this one has a long way to go. Your commitment alongside my dedication to this publication can only have promising results. I often refer to Boot Print as my Labor of Love, but from the moment Shannon and Roseann offered to organize and host the event to the moment I addressed you all that evening and saw you going back to the office raising the stakes for what we stand by at Boots, I was humbled. Special thanks goes to Shannon Fitzgerald for seeing value in Boot Print, to Roseann Weiss for recruiting supporters, to Katherine Chavez who is always there for Boots, to Patricia Daus for handling the event like a pro, to Carol Baker who made everybody feel welcome, to Mango who offered delicious hors doeuvres and Mangia Italiano for the wine we all cheered with that evening, and finally to Dan Cameron, Mary Jane Jacob, and David Bonetti for their encouraging words.
Boot Print is a refreshing and exciting addition to the national panorama of artist-run presses: both regional and international, it manages to cover a wide berth while staying true to St. Louis. A real find! Dan Cameron
Independent Curator, NY
Theres no course for contemporary art practice, if theres no discourse. For this, periodicals are a tested mode, at times causing shock waves on the scene. Theres often talk of starting a publication, but then things get bogged down. So why would anyone who cares about contemporary art discourse not want to see the success of bootprint continue! The by-the-bootstrap effort that made the gallery, makes the publication, and it needs to go on.... Mary Jane Jacob
Professor and Executive Director, Exhibitions and Events/Exhibition Studies School of the Art Institute of Chicago
In every generation, there are ambitious new voices that open galleries and publish books and magazines about art and culture. Usually, such efforts occur in major metropolitan centers - Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, Tokyo. Boots is one of those up-by-its-own-bootstraps nonprofit galleries. AND it also publishes Boot Print, a magazine that comes in both online and hard copy formats. One of the remarkable things about it is that it is happening in St. Louis, Missouri, a place not ordinarily noted for the sophistication of its cultural discourse. The gallerys programming and its publication add immeasurably to the cultural life of the local community, and, through the miracle of todays technology, that local community can exist anywhere theres an internet connection. David Bonetti
Visual arts critic St. Louis Post-dispatch
This issue of Boot Print was made possible by:
Boots Passport
Mary Strauss
Boots Benefactors
Ellen & Durb Curlee Nancy Kranzberg William C. Schiller
Boots Ambassadors
Jill and Dan McGuire
Boots Citizens
Nanette E. Boileau Jean Cavender Sarah Colby & Kim Humphries Jeff Edwards Shannon Fitzgerald Brigid Flynn Roseann Weiss
Boots Friends
Patrick Barlow Emily Blumenfeld Malcolm Gay & Jasmine Aber Glen Gentele Amy Drummond and Bill Carson Stephanie & Web Homer Meredith & Jeff McKinley Jen Meyer Karin Moody
Boots Artists
Brandon Anschultz Jill Downen Clyde Themal
SEPTEMBER 20 OCTOBER 26, 2008
w w w . w h i t e f l a g p r o j e c t s . o r g
4568 Manchester Avenue | St. Louis, Missouri 63110 | p. 314.531.3442
Betty Rymer Gallery
280 South Columbus Drive Chicago, Illinois 60603 312.443.3703 email: exhibitions@saic.edu Gallery Hours: TuesdaySaturday, 10:00 a.m.5:00 p.m.
Sullivan Galleries
33 S. State Street, 7th floor, Chicago, Illinois 60603 312.629.6635 email: exhibitions@saic.edu Gallery Hours: TuesdaySaturday, 11:00 a.m.6:00 p.m. www.saic.edu/exhibitions
Visiting Artists Program
37 S. Wabash Avenue, 12th floor, Suite 1220 Chicago, Illinois 60603 312.899.5185 email: events@saic.edu
www.saic.edu/vap
Dexter Sinister The Enamels
June-July
Hannes Schmidt
Frederic D. with Fubi Karlsson
Selections from the Collection of Jefferson Godard
NICE & FIT
Brunnenstrasse 13 / links & rechts / 10119 Berlin t +4930 440 45976 / www.niceandtgallery.com
The Kemper Art Museum features cutting-edge special exhibitions, exceptional educational resources, and an outstanding collection of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century European and American art. A stimulating and unique site to experience art, culture, and education in St. Louis, located on Washington Universitys Danforth campus near the corner of Skinker & Forsyth Blvds. FREE and open to the public 11-6 every day except Tuesday, open 11-8 on Friday. Visitor parking available; easy MetroLink access (one block south of Skinker station).
Short exhibitions by artists and others
kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu
above: Guests mingle at a Museum event as reected in Olafur Eliassons Your Imploded View (2001) in the Saligman Family Atrium. Photo by Whitney Curtis.
Upcoming in Fall 2008 Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury
3750 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63108 314.535.4660 www.contemporarystl.org
Support Boots. Become a Member. Boots Artist
Boots eNews, Receive exhibition postcards
www.bootsart.com
Boots eNews, Receive exhibition postcards, Invitation to Boots Patio Party
Boots Citizen
Boots eNews, Receive exhibition postcards, 2 Invitations to Boots Patio Party
Boots Ambassador
All benefits above, plus: 1 year subscription to Boot Print
Boots Benefactor
All benefits above, plus: International artist-in-residency exhibition preview
All benefits above, plus: Private dinner receptions with International artist-in-residence All donations are taxes deductible
$1000 2307 Cherokee Street | St. Louis, MO | 63118
Name (please print clearly) _______________________ Address (please print clearly) _______________________ Email (please print clearly) _______________________ Mail form to:
Boots Contemporary Art Space 2307 Cherokee St. St Louis, MO 63118 For a higher lever of involvement and support (i.e. sponsoring an international artist or exhibition) Please contact: Juan William Chvez - Director juan@bootsart.com 314-772-2668
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