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Art highlights at Basel
BASEL ART FAIR
The summer of '97 in Europe promised to be the biggest turn-of-the century happening on the art scene, with four keynote international art events opening in mid-June: As a Canadian art publisher determined to be "au courrant," I began my "Kultur" tour on June 10th when Swissair deposited me neatly at the ART'28'97 in Basel, Switzerland, my first visit to this grandaddy of all artfairs since the '80's.
On my return visit, the cobblestoned city of Basel itself seemed less quintescent European and more commercial and international, in comparison, for instance, to Maastritch in Holland, which also shared a history of structures going back Roman times and a strategic location as the gateway to three countries. Versions of Jonathan Borofsky's huge robotic Hammering Man, first seen at Documenta 7 in l992, graced the streets of Basel as well as Seattle and Frankfurt. At the closing night party, I was re-acquainted with Rodin's wonderful weathered bronze, The Burghers of Calais in the open courtyard of Basel's Kunst Museum, (recently re-encountered in the new Central Park wing of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.) The Messe Basel, where ART'28'97 took place, although still a unique circular show building, no longer seemed overwhelmingly huge, after viewing equally large art exhibits in halls in Maastritch, Madrid and Chicago.
But no comparisons can detract from the sheer superb quality of the art shown at ART'28'97 (June 11-18). There were 263 galleries from 21 countries represented on the two circular, curving floors of the hall, rigorously weeded out by a selection committee of dealers from the 600 galleries who applied.
To their credit, the exhibiting dealers, sans the dictation of an overruling curator, presented art in each space with intellectual vigour and drama, that seemed truly to predict the fast approaching 21st century. New forms of figuration emerged as the dominant trend : larger than life, photographically derived, paintings and wall constructions, veering from appropriations of the historical past to daringly erotic versions of the present and predictions of the future were seen. Large scale anthropomorphic sculptures, filled the centres of many booths, while the new electronic based practices were in ascendancy with several huge robots as well as surprisingly real holographic figures in motion displayed, as well as videos and well-developed internet sites.
Several Canadian art-stars were prominently displayed at the fair: Vancouverite Rodney Graham, Canada's entry in the Venice Biennale, was represented by several super large black and white photos of upside-down tree trunks; Torontonian Tony Scherman's large encaustic painting of a bull, Europa, seemed to mirror the drama of the European communities, meeting at the same time to address the problems of negotiating a common currency; Vancouverite Jeff Wall's oversized figurative photo setups were a forerunner of his participation in Documenta X and a one-man show at the Museum fur Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt opening June 27th. Only two Canadian dealers participated: Jane Corkin (Toronto) in the photo section, and Robert Landau (Montreal) with international modern classics like Hundertwasser, Gottlieb and Dubuffet.
Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry (now living in Los Angeles) was feted at the fair for his futuristic design of the soon-to be opened Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. The $100 million project to be opened in October '97, used the newest computer technology to bring to realization the innovative, abstract concept. The twisting, curving and jutting forms of the composition are rendered in titanium, a metal rarely used in construction, but one perfect for the marine environment of Bilbao.
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LISTE' 97
Artworks by many of the biggest stars at ART'28' 97 were a forerunner to fuller exhibits at the 47th Venice Biennale in Italy (June 15- November 9) and Documenta X (June 21- September 28) & Skulptur Projekte 97 (June 22- September 28) in Germany which I moved on to. But before leaving Basel I took time out to visit LISTE'97, The Young Art Fair in Basel (June 12-17).This ìalternateî show of work by 36 galleries was held for the 2nd year in a row, simultaneously with the Basel Art Fair, in the raw space of the former Warteck Brewery by the Rhine river. An in-your-face show of younger international talent, LISTEí97 had many of the experimental new media elements of ART28í97, but on a smaller, less dramatic scale. Although A.A .Bronson of Art Metropole (a fellow Canadian periodicals exhibitor) said, "I like it better."
Interventions: Basel/ Kassel/ Venice
INTERVENTIONS
Artfairs always attract extraneous showbiz types that add unexpected spice to the serious business of understanding contemporary art practices. Most photogenic ìinterventionsî at Euroart events this summer were the Berlin duo, Eva & Adele, who bill themselves as "hermaphrodite twins in art....coming from the future." Surrepticiously they popped up in surprising places at every art event...crossing a canal in Venice, on a park bench beside a winding river in Munster and in the thick of the crowd at Basel. Says Kim Levin in the Village Voice: " Both have naked shaved craniums and perfectly painted faces....they waft through the artworld like extraterrestials, clutching their dainty purses...one seems to be male, and the other female, but theyr'e not saying..." In Venice, peoples heads turned to follow two baby lambs on a leash, and in Kassel, two large lumbering camels paraded by with a political message, plus an ambulance with ersatz patients in a hospital bed sported "first aid for bad art" in front of the Fredericanium on opening day of Documenta X . An extemporaneous show of photos recording the last years of German art-star Joseph Beuys (1921-1986), was held in the theatre lobby next to the Documenta Halle. But I'm getting ahead of my story....
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VENICE BIENNALE
I reached the Venice Biennale at the close of the Press Days, and found all the literature gone in the rustic Canadian pavilion featuring Vancouver artist Rodney Graham. This left me to my own powers of observation. The artist had provided a Robinson Crusoe - type 35 mm colour film clip, starring himself as a l8th century shipwrecked sailor on a Caribbean Island, to represent his artistic statement. Although the darkened room was a restful haven in the summer heat, and the York University press release made a valiant attempt at rationalization, the film in no way made any statement about Canada or the better-known, large scale landscape-based photographic work of the artist.
It was interesting to contrast Canada's and Iceland's rather compact pavilions, both using the media of film and video. Steina Vasulka, the Icelandic artist, ingeniously employed mirrors and cameras in different directions to get the sound and feeling of huge waves breaking over a rocky shore in one room, and the crackling of flames engulfing a forest in the other.
The Austrian pavilion was also a lesson in less is more. Their exhibit consisted of two rooms each containing a mountain of books (50,000 to be exact, of 800 pages each), to be given away to the public, describing the activities of The Vienna Group (die wiener gruppe), an avant garde art movement in Vienna from l954-1960. The hypothesis was that books and art as information should be free. Following this vein, the total project could be downloaded from an internet site printed on the back cover.
Other highlights were the British pavilion (next to Canada) which provided a series of fiberglass installations by Britain's badgirl of minimalist sculpture, Rachel Whiteread; the US pavilion which showcased the expressionist, ethnically-pointed paintings of Robert Colescott, the first black artist selected to represent America in a Biennale; and the Korean pavilion nearby, featuring the handsome design-oriented installations of Hyung-Woo Lee and Ik-Joong Kang.
But the star of the show was definitely the Italian pavilion where Biennale Curator Germano Celant held court. Citing the theme for the 47th Biennale as Future, Present, Past, this exhibit attempted to fulfill Celano's overall aim "to investigate contemporary art of the last 30 years: the 60's/70's, dominated by the encounter between Europe and America; the 70's/80's, characterized by the osmosis between male and female; the 80's/90's defined by the discovery of Multiculturalism." Sixty-five artists from three generations were selected to present work. For me, the most outstanding pieces featured in the pavilion were a huge encrusted wall painting of a pyramid by Anselm Kiefer (Germany), who also had a one-man retrospective outside the Castello Gardens in the Museo Correr above St. Mark's Square; an igloo-like installation by Mario Merz (also representing his country in the German pavillion); a curving anthropomorphic sculpture by Tony Cragg (England); and a row of simple red & white striped fences leading to the pavilion by Daniel Buren (France). There was a moment of pride at the opening ceremonies when Canadian-born painter Agnes Martin (in her 80's) was awarded one of the two Golden Lions for lifetime achievement.
Taking the "vaporetto" (waterbus) back and forth from the maze-like, twisting streets of the ancient city of Venice, to the summery pavilions in the wooded parkland of the Castello Gardens, was one of the fun parts of a visit to the Biennale. Returning one day I renewed acquaintance on the boat with Milton Esterow, publisher of Art News (USA), then set out by foot to cross the Academia Bridge and revisit the wonderful collection of early 20th century art in the The Peggy Guggenheim Foundation on the opposite side of the Grande Canal, which curves thru the centre of Venice.
Next to the Foundation, I attended The Mask and the Face, an art opening in the San Gregorio Art Gallery featuring the Cubistic /Surrealist paintings of dynamic & beautiful young rising Latvian-born art-star, Lolita Tomofeeva. I enjoyed a mingling of old and new friends, patrons and art professionals, (many recently met at the Basel Artfair), and then took a waterbus with themback to the artist's favourite cafe in the city for a typical Venetian late-nite celebration of salads, pasta and wine.
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L. Venice,/ R. Documenta X
DOCUMENTA X
The next stage of my Euroart agenda was to head north again for the opening of Documenta X in the little city of Kassel, Germany. (By this time I was weighed down by an extra suitcase of beautiful art catalogues from Basel and Venice, which I cagily checked at the Swiss train station in Basel, to be retrieved on my return.) My luggage lightened, I journeyed up to north Germany on their modern wonder, the high speed, high tech ICE train....which featured reclining chairs that go back like airplane seats, a huttle, to the older Kulturbanhof station. The smaller inner city station had a little TV at each passenger space, automatic glass doors between cars, and ongoing food service, (no need to pack the ubiquitous railway lunch)...and arrived first at the new Kassel-Wilhelmshohe ICE station, and then, by seen relaunched as a cultural centre, since its eclipse by the ICE station in l991, and was appropriately, the first building in the "parcours" (or axis) of the inside/outside art event in Kassel.
Over 2,500 members of the art press from around the world had descended on the city for the official Press Days of Documenta X by the time I arrived. (Controversy about the event was the central subject of TV & print media across Europe for the entire period of my visit!) Renowned as the once-in-five-year percursor of all thats new and important in modern art, the artworld awaited the 10th Documenta unveiling with bated breath. Whatever directions it pointed to would lead the way to the 21st century in art.
Most of the controversy swirled around Parisian-born Catherine David, Artistic Director of the event: she was arrogant (she refused to name the artists of Documenta X in advance); she was the first woman director and the youngest (born in l954) ; it was said that she overlooked painting and sculpture and preferred photography, film, video and the internet. There was a tendency at first to reject her choices out of hand. For example the rooms full of intimate scrapbook pages of photos documenting the creative life of leading German painter, Gerhard Richter, the first exhibit one saw in the Fredericanium at the centre of the event, seemed an inconsequential choice, compared to the drama of his large, well-known paintings seen in the other art events of the summer. But I was happy to see two Canadians artists from Vancouver represented in the building: a roomful of large black and white photos by Jeff Wall, placing average people in simple household activities, and Der Sandmann, a l995 video by Stan Douglas.
David's concept for Documenta X unfolded as an intervention of contemporary art and culture along a central axis joining the natural structures of the city of Kassel and its cultural edifices. She says, ìWhen I first saw the Hauptbahnhof- in the meantime called Kulturbahnhof- I was taken with the unique atmosphere of it. It reflects our mobile, nomadic culture in a special way when two places that signify "passage" of movement and transition, form the beginning and the end of the exhibition parcours of the Documenta X: a station and a river, the Fulda."
Starting at the old railway station (marked by the Walking Man on a Pole of Jonathan Borofsky, a relic of Documenta IX in l992, covered in in the first issue of ARTFOCUS), the show continues through a series of near deserted underground subway stations (built in the 60's), down the pyramid-like stairways of the Treppenstrase, (the first traffic-free pedestrian zone in post-war Germany), until it reaches the stately Museum Fredericianum (l779). The next steps lead to the Ottenium, one of the first theatres built in Germany (1605), the Documenta-Halle ( 1992) which is the site of the lecture program of 100 Days-100 Guests, down to the Orangerie (early 18th century) at the bottom of the ravine/ parkland winding through the city , and ultimately to the banks of the river Fulda.
All of the historical buildings used for the Documenta exhibits were destroyed during World War Two in the 40's, and have been meticulously rebuilt by the city since the 50's. (Kassel and Munster, the next city I visited, were both devastated by bombing during the war: Kassel because it housed munitions plants and Munster for its cathedrals, a retaliation by the British for the bombing of the cathedrals of Coventry.) The original concept of Documenta, begun in l955, was an attempt to catch up with the disruption of the war and rehabilitate the modern art that Hitler had banned.
Catherine David's l997 presentation of Documenta X stressed a turn-of-the century sense of flux. Instead of a catalogue, there was a short guidebook for the press, describing the project of each artist, and a larger book, authored by David, taking a historical look at contemporary art in relation to society, from the post-war period of 1945 to the present; the onsite lectures, by leading cultural philosophers known worldwide, were recorded on video and transmitted live onto the Documenta X website daily; six filmmakers were commissioned to create original works to be aired as competed in the theatre of the railway station; theatre makers were invited to Kassel to create original dramas to be produced as a theatre marathon at the end of the 100-day exhibition; Hybrid Workspace, was set up as a temporary laboratory in the Orangerie, as a changing experiment using radio, TV and flashing discoteque - like music and images, to be recorded daily on the internet; this project culminated with a piggery in the nearby park, where visitors were encouraged to lie down on mattresses near the pigs .... and intimately view the ambiance of animal life.
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Documenta X, Kassel
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L. Innenseite, Kassel / R. Skuptur Projekte, Munster
INNENSEITE
The first night in Kassel I attended the "vernissage" (opening party) of Innenseite (June 22-September 28), an alternate show of 97 world-wide based installation artists, planned to coincide with Documenta X, organized independently by University of Kassel professor, Hamdi el Attar. (I was briefed about the event back in Canada, several months previous to my arrival by E-Mail and Internet.) The numerous rooms of an empty police station in the centre of the city were requisitioned for the diverse art installations and a series of supportive lectures were held at the University as well as at the station. Innenseite's theme of Encountering the Other was exemplified by two of the speakers at the University of Kassel: Angel Orensanz (USA), a global installation artist and sculptor, who presented the history of his unique independently funded cultural foundation in a formerly abandoned synagogue in New York; and George Gittoes (Australia), an artist who, while attached to the medical unit of the Australian peacekeepers, was witness to the planned massacre of refugees in Rwanda in l995. A simple newsprint journal sufficed as a catalogue but an excellent website promises to keep Innenseite in the public consciousness.
MUNSTER
The weekend events finished with a sidetrip by train further West in Germany, to the quaint University city of Munster in the province of Westphalia, a few miles from the border of Holland, hosting the once-in-ten-year international sculpture exhibit, Skulptur Projekte'97(June 22-September 28).
For this 3rd edition of Skulptur Projekte, 69 international artists had been invited by Frankfurt- based Curator, Kasper Konig, to present site-specific works in mainly outdoor locations around the town. Three Canadians were selected: Kim Adams (Edmonton), Janet Cardiff (Lethbridge) and Stan Douglas (Vancouver). The total event included such art-star greats as Carl Andre (USA), Georg Baselitz, (Germany), French-born Daniel Buren (his array of striped red and white flags, strung across the streets as you enter the town, set off the outlines of soaring church steeples), Hans Haacke(Germany), Rebecca Horn (Germany), Jeff Koons(USA), Sol Lewitt (USA), Claes Oldenburg (USA), and Korean-born, Nam June Paik (his fleet of 32 silver-painted American classic cars from the 20's to the 50's, set in four groups in front of a castle, was definitely the most dramatic piece in the show) and once again, Rachel Whiteread (England). Associated sculpture projects in the city by Eduardo Chillida (Spain) and Richard Serra ( USA) added further drama to this end -of -the century sculpture event. A full catalogue, CD Rom and limited editions of artists works were available to commemorate this event.
The cobblestoned town of Muenster is filled with the spires of churches and cathedrals, with a gentle river winding through a central park. The peacefulness belies some of the town's violent past, which several of the artist's works interrelated to. One is reminded that Voltaire's adventures of Candide with his famous phrase, "All is for the Best, in the Best of all possible Worlds," began in Westphalia. On the spires of St. Lamberti, the cages of three Anabaptists hang; (we were told that during the Inquisition, people were put in the cages and dunked in the river and drowned if they didn't confess, then left in the cages to be eaten by the birds.)
Like Holland, the area is so flat that the preferred method of transportation is the bicycle, but my fellow-travellers and I resisted and set out on foot, in a gently drizzling rain, to find the sculptures, cited on a maze-like map provided in the program, like a giant Easter egg hunt. It was a relief to take refuge in the University from time to time and view the works in an ongoing slide presentation, from the comfort of a dry bench.
KASSEL SURPRISE
I returned briefly to Kassel, before setting off for my final project, a tour of the gallery scene in Frankfurt, and immediately headed for the former DOCUMENTA X Press Room in the City Hall to check out the 100 Days daily program. The Press Room had changed! The computers, faxes, copiers etc. were gone. Inside I saw only two well-dressed middle- class women and a man with a TV camera. Seeing my camera, they beckoned me to enter. Then, to my surprise, one woman pulled a huge live cobra from a bag on the floor, and wound it around her neck, where it was spitting at my face with a forked tongue! They were there to promote the Circus Romano in Kassel. Shocked, I ran out of the room, and down the four flights of stairs to the street at breakneck speed !
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Frankfurt Art Scene
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FRANKFURT
The last leg of my trip was a stopover in Frankfurt, before taking a night train to Basel, and catching my morning Swissair flight back to Toronto. ARTFOCUS had sent magazines to a Press Booth at the Frankfurt Art Fair in May, and I had met the curators of the Museum fur Moderne Kunste in Frankfurt at an exchange exhibit with the Whitney Museum in New York last October. The small modern art museum was built as a dramatic pie-shaped wedge filling a city block, somewhat like the architecture of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Canada. The curators had used the unusual aspects of the design to best advantage, setting up exhibits of painting and sculpture that "came to a point" on several floors, and using the multi-leveled halls as exhibition area for a wallpaper-like collection of highly erotic photos. (Throughout the trip I found a big difference in Canadian and European standards of acceptable subject matter for public display.)
I arrived in time for the press opening of a one-man show of the (more sedate) photos of Canada's international art-star, Vancouverite, Jeff Wall. Frankfurt's trendy commercial gallery section was somewhat like the Yorkville area in Toronto. Rows of galleries were set up on the streets surrounding the museum, along with the usual European contingent of cobblestoned courtyards, outdoor cafes and a grand cathedral nearby filled with handsome historical artifacts.
The public appreciation of advanced contemporary art, was evidenced in the well-stocked galleries. While large scale promotion has been dormant in Canada for several years, in Frankfurt and other large European cities, it is the norm for contemporary art dealers to produce a handsome colour catalogue for each of their artists and to participate in several major international art fairs each year to enlarge their reputations.
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