International News Digest
RESISTANCE TO MURAKAMI AT VERSAILLES
For his exhibition at the Château de Versailles, Takashi Murakami is facing as much public resistance as his forerunner Jeff Koons faced two years ago. As Agence France-Presse reports, a number of petitions are already circulating against Murakami’s exhibition at the former royal residence of the “Sun King” Louis XIV, outside Paris. There’s also the threat of legal action as well as a protest planned for the opening on September 14. According to the president of the public castle, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the protesters come from “extreme right fundamentalist groups and very conservative groups” who want to make Versailles into “a reliquary of nostalgia for the France of the Ancien Régime, or a France withdrawn into itself and hostile to modernity.”
The protesters cite the sexually explicit content of some of the artist’s works––My Lonesome Cowboy and Hiropon––although Aillagon notes that such works will not be shown. Two petitions––Versailles mon amour (Versailles my Love) and Non aux mangas: Contre les expositions dégradantes au Château de Versailles (No to Mangas: Against Degrading Exhibitions at the Versailles Castle)––have collected close to eight thousand signatures, including Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon Parme, a descendant of Louis XIV, whose nephew gained notoriety in 2008 by taking legal action against the Koons show. Opposing contemporary art does not come without risks in France. One of the petitioners noted that the names of the signatories have not been revealed online as “disliking contemporary art could be viewed badly by future employers.”
AN AMERICAN DEALER IN PARIS
Agence France-Presse offers a few more details on the new Paris branch of the Gagosian gallery, which will open on October 20 for the FIAC international art fair. Located a skip away from the Champs-Elysées, the new branch is located at a “prestigious address” on the Rue de Ponthieu in the Eighth arrondissement. According to the branch’s co-director Serena Cattaneo, the sixty-five-year-old dealer decided for the City of Lights because “it’s a historical capital of art.”
“It’s an old wish of Larry Gagosian,” said Cattaneo. “Plus, we have seen a change in Paris. The city is in the midst of regaining its place in the international art circuit thanks to very beautiful exhibitions in the museums.” Another advantage: “Artists love to come to Paris and to do exhibitions here.” Gagosian owns galleries in the US (three in New York, one in Los Angeles), in London (two), in Rome (since 2007), and in Athens (since 2009). The façade of the Paris gallery building on Rue de Ponthieu has not been changed, but the interior was completely revamped by the French architect Jean-François Bodin and the London group Caruso Saint John which has already completed other Gagosian branches in Europe. The gallery covers 2,950 square-feet on four levels with 1,150 square-feet dedicated to exhibition space. While opening his first Paris branch, Gagosian will be attending FIAC with a stand for the first time. FIAC runs from October 21 to 24.
WHO CHEWED THE GUM?
A curious case about the true authorship of an artwork is giving a Düsseldorf judge something to chew on. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bild Zeitung report, the Düsseldorf artist Karin Karrenberg has made a legal claim that “chewing-gum” artworks by the French artist François Morellet, in fact, belong to her. The works in question are not named in the report but feature sticks of gum, sometimes chewed, stuck onto forty black canvasses.
While Karrenberg saw some of the works in an exhibition last year, the story actually begins thirty-nine-years ago in 1971 when she was an art student working at Daniel Spoerri’s Eat-Art-Galerie in Düsseldorf. Despite the lapse in time, Karrenberg distinctly recalls making the works herself. “(The director Carlo) Schröter told me, ‘I need forty paintings for an exhibition. Make them!’ The paintings were supposed to be black and have chewing gum stuck on them. So, I started to work,” she told Bild.
According to the SZ report, the exhibition “Mords Les!” (Bite Them!) began on June 11, 1971 while the poster promised forty works by Morellet “signed and chewed by the artist” for $243 apiece. Karrenberg recognized her handiwork in an exhibition last year––“my teeth marks are clear”––and took legal action after noting that the works have now been attributed to Morellet. “Morellet had nothing to do with the pictures,” she told Bild. “Back then he wasn’t even in Düsseldorf!” But the former director Schröter has another opinion.
“Ms. Karrenberg was the assistant of Morellet, it was a contract work! [Morellet] gave her a precise sketch and all the materials.” But yet another author of this contracted conceptual work may turn up in a future legal case. While Karrenberg bit into some of the gum sticks, she left the actual chewing of other sticks to someone else, unnamed in the report, because “that was too disgusting for me.” Neither Karrenberg nor Morellet will be testifying at the court case, which is centered on Schröter’s claim that the works were authored by the French artist. The Düsseldorf judge will make a decision on September 8.
REM KOOLHAAS’S PLANS FOR VENICE
Although Rem Koolhaas was honored with a Golden Lion for his life’s work at this year’s Venice architectural biennial, some are worrying about the architect’s bold new plans to transform the stately Fondaco dei Tedeschi into a luxury shopping center in the city. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Laura Weissmüller reports, Koolhaas seems to have turned his solo exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni into a plaidoye for the project. Under the guise of “Preservation,” the show looks at the nefarious effects of preservation, from preventing modern development to creating tourist meccas. North Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay, which entered the UN’s World Heritage Site list in 1994, has since become overrun with tourism. According to Koolhaas’s OMA, 12 percent of the world is protected as historical monuments and heritage sites.
Venice is yet another case of preservation and its failures. Yet instead of planning to reduce tourism, Koolhaas seems bent on turning the Fondaco dei Tedeschi into a tourist magnet in a city that already welcomes twenty-two million visitors annually. The building, which was purchased by the Bennetton group and is in need of restoration, might soon sport modern-day frescos channeling luxury resident labels along with bright red escalators crossing an atrium. Koolhaas wants to bring “new young life” back into the city, but Weissmüller doubts that such a shopping center is likely to do so and points out that there are still citizens living in Venice with more banal needs than luxury goods, from bakeries to shoemakers. While an open space on Koolhaas’s planned roof terrace is to be used “culturally,” Weissmüller believes that logos like Dolce & Gabbana or Louis Vuitton will guarantee an exclusive selection of cultural events. “As long as the city gives its permission for all that,” writes Weissmüller, “construction will begin in two years.”