Realist Painting Dead in Germany?; Fine for Twombly Kisser; Unitednationsplaza Closes; Museum Asks to Keep "Beuys Block" Intact; Stedelijk Hosts Tours; Hirst for a Pound
GERMAN PAINTING UNREAL?
After taking in the Jeff Wall exhibition at Berlin's Deutsche Guggenheim, Die Tagesspiegel's Thomas Wulffen considers the question of why most contemporary German artists ignore social reality in their work. "Where is the artist in this country who creates critical description, like Wall, of the reality surrounding him?" asks Wulffen. "Contemporary painting doesn't seem to be interested in social topics." Wulffen sees Norbert Bisky's paintings, which are populated by young men, as an oeuvre about a personal obsession, not social issues. "All in all, the new generation of painters is more concerned with pictorial delicacies than with social debates," writes Wulffen. "Even Neo Rauch, whose pictures show 'workers,' leaves his subject as surreal recollections of the worker-and-farmer state from long ago. There are no paintings from today's working sphere, let alone images of migrants in Germany."
TWOMBLY KISSER SENTENCED
The woman who kissed a Cy Twombly painting last July in Avignon, France—leaving behind a set of red lipstick traces—has received a relatively light sentence for her act. As Le Monde and Agence France-Presse report, the Cambodian Rindy Sam has been ordered by the French courts to pay €1,500 ($2,200) in damages and to complete one hundred hours of community service. Yvon Lambert, the owner of the painting, will receive €500 ($733) and the Lambert Collection €1,000 ($1,466), while an additional euro will go to Twombly. While the artist himself demanded only a symbolic payment of €1, Lambert was seeking €2 million ($2.9 million), which corresponds to the market value of the work. One point remains to be decided: The price for the restoration of the painting, which the Lambert Collection estimated at €33,440 ($49,030), will be decided in February.
UNITEDNATIONSPLAZA COMES TO A CLOSE
Unitednationsplaza—an educational space born from the abrupt cancellation of Manifesta 6 in Cyprus—closed its doors last weekend after more than a year of events, including talks, book launches, and film screenings. As Die Tageszeitung's Stefan Heidenreich notes, Anton Vidokle—one of the curators for the Manifesta 6 school, which would have crossed the Green Line dividing Nicosia—took his portion of the educational project to Berlin. Located in the empty wing of a supermarket, unitednationsplaza took its name from its location on the square Platz der Vereinten Nationen.
"The seminars and events were usually well attended, if not crowded," writes Heidenreich. "And that happened, even though some of the announcements read like a threat—e.g., 'One expects all participants to be present for the full four hours'—and English was the continuous language, and the whole project was thrown across the local art landscape like a drop sculpture." Those drawbacks might be the very reasons for the project's success. "Without any consideration for the established and the sufficiently segmented art circles of Berlin, unitednationsplaza was an international cultural import of rare intensity. Situations with a similar density do not often occur."
MUSEUM ASKS COLLECTORS TO KEEP "BEUYS BLOCK" INTACT
The Lauffs family intends to remove its prize possession from the Krefeld Museum: the "Beuys Block," which the artist conceived for the space. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports, the Federation of Rhein Museums has asked the art-collecting family not to dismantle the Gesamtkunstwerk. Tearing apart the multipart work, which was furnished by the artist in this form for the museum, would be "a substantial interference to the artwork" arranged by Beuys.
TOURS OF THE FUTURE STEDELIJK
The new Stedelijk Museum on the Museumsplein in Amsterdam will not be complete until the end of 2009. But that hasn't stopped people from taking guided tours. As Het Parool's Astrid Melger reports, over three hundred local residents toured the construction site last week. Since only small groups were allowed at a time, visitors had to wait for up to an hour to get a peek at the new building. Despite the wait, locals were happy to be directly "involved" in the project. Stedelijk director Gijs van Tuyl promises that the 2009 opening will be accompanied by festivals. "Not just one," said van Tuyl, "but several." While the walls are still being built, the Warhol exhibition installed at the temporary space, Stedelijk CS, may be an example of shows to come.
HIRST FOR A POUND
For those who could not attend the auctions—nor compete with the prices—there's a chance to acquire an original Damien Hirst for a mere British pound sterling, or the price of a charity raffle ticket, in the artist's hometown of Leeds. Citing a report in The Guardian, the Austria Presse-Agentur argues that the Hirst work—a drawing on an exhibition catalogue—should have been auctioned off at Sotheby's. Hirst and the Leeds Gallery decided that the charity raffle, run by the collector Jeffrey Sherwin, should bring the winner a work of great cultural value. Hirst drew his trademark shark and skull on the catalogue. Of course, it’s not just cultural value that's on the plate: Recently, one of Hirst's napkin sketches sold for thirty-seven thousand dollars.