The Grand Tour - A Look Back

We began planning for the Grand Tour in January 2007. Our original intention was to visit the four major art events in Europe in the summer of 2007. Well, we made 3 of 4. Julia Chaplin writes about her grand tour in The Times.

We arrived in Basel, Switzerland on the opening day of Art Basel 38. The weather was perfect. Art Basel is an annual event. In fact, it has grown so large that there is now Art Basel-Miami held in December of each year.

This is an event where everything is for sale. About 300 major galleries from around the world apply and are selected to have a booth where they will showcase works in their collection. Many of these works are by well-known artists. The crowd at Art Basel was clearly well-heeled and ready to buy. The website for Art Basel 39 is already up and ready for your viewing. You can read articles about Art Basel from The New York Times. My final thoughts about Art Basel. I can't say I saw a lot of new and exciting art. I was most taken with a very large painting from China, a performance piece with William Hunt in a car filled with water, and by the Russian videos. The peripheral events such as Scope provided access for some of the lesser known galleries and artists. Perhaps those are the ones to watch in the future.

Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany was entirely different. Documenta began in Kassel in 1955 and was curated by Arnold Bode, an artist from the area. You can read a history of this event from their archives. Documenta occurs every 5 years. As with Art Basel, we arrived on opening day. Again the weather was just perfect. Now while Art Basel seems to be located in a large convention center type of space with booths from various galleries completely adjacent to each other, Documenta is located in 5 main spaces in this small town of Kassel, some 2 hours north of Frankfurt. The show was curated by the husband and wife team of Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack. Unlike Basel, this show is for the intellectual. Works of art are not for sale. Rather it offers an opportunity for works of art from a global perspective. Much of the work is from 2000 and upward, with many pieces from 2007. This is more conceptual than Art Basel or even the Biennale. You can read what The New York Times has to say. You can also see a slide show of some of the art works. What can I say about the art? I found the large sculpture by Ai Weiwei constructed from old doors and windows and located in the open garden space just behind the Orangerie wonderful. I did not like many of the video installations. This exhibit was extremely varied--with many new works that were challenging and interesting. Much of the art was very political.

We left Germany by car and plane and flew into Venice on June 18. The Biennale has opened a week earlier so I think we made a good choice in coming at this time and were able to avoid some of the crowds. As its name implies, the Biennale occurs every other year. The oldest of all these art events, the Biennale began in 1893 with the city of Venice passing a resolution to set up a biennial exposition of Italian art to begin in 1894. Read this detailed fascinating history up until World War 2. And for a recent historical account you can go here. For the first time, the Biennale has had an American curator: Robert Storr. Storr was named Dean of the Yale School of Art in 2006. Prior to that time he was at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and New York University. The Biennale is unlike either of the other two art events. First of all, it has a very long history. Permanent pavilions are located in Giardini in Venice. About 76 countries were chosen to be in the Biennale. I want to make some comment about the art. My favorite painter was Sigmar Polke. The canvasses were monumental in nature. He used materials that were really hard to discern. The content of the paintings was so enigmatic that I found myself wondering what I was looking at. As with Documenta, I found much of the art political in nature. The work by Gonzales-Torres got a lot of press, but I am not really sure why. Sophie Calle's installation in the French pavilion of responses by women to her "dear John" letter did nothing for me.

Now, unfortunately we ran out of time and never got to the Munster sculpture show. And it won't be up for another ten years. But I read that much of the work was old.

This turned out to be a marvelous experience. Art looking and family bonding were definitely two highlights. I can't forget the wine and beer and the other wonderful experiences all of us had.

Home at last

There was Richmond ready to greet us. We were finally home. And only one small suitcase was lost. And luckily it was delivered the next day. Stay tuned for more art adventures.

Leaving Art Basel - Train to Frankfurt

 

June 10. Getting Ready for the Grand Tour - Last phone call at Dulles

It is Sunday night, June 10 and we are at Dulles Airport getting ready to fly to Zurich. These next postings are a more or less chronological account of The Grand Tour 07 that Judy, Jim and I took. The Grand Tour was originally a tour taken by British men when they finished their education and prior to their embarking on their life's work. They often traveled to Europe and stayed an extended time, sometimes as frequently as several years. You can read more about the original tour here. The time period was from around 1660 until the arrival of mass travel by rail in the 1820s. The Getty had an exhibition about the Grand Tour in Italy in 2002. By 2007 you could take a Grand Tour sponsored by Wine Spectator, a Grand Tour bike ride in Malibu, and our wonderful Grand Tour of art in Europe, not to be confused with the official one.

Iole de Freitas at Documenta

This untitled installation, created in 2007 by Iole de Freitas, was both inside and outside the Museum Fridericianum. It consists of bent steel pipes, partially covered by either transparent or translucent panels. Some actually appeared to penetrate the building and could be seen on the outside of the building. She was born in Brazil and lives and works now in Rio de Janeiro. According to the catalogue, she is concerned with the spatial manifestations of gestures and movements. You can see another view of this by looking at Chrissie' blog. For more about this and other pieces at Documenta, read Walter Robinson's article Lost in Space.

Video Installation at Documenta

While we saw only a few video installations at Art Basel there were many at Documenta. This video was installed on the second floor of the Museum Fridericianum. Here is a portion of the audience. The video is to the right in the niche. While we were watching, someone came up to Jim and asked to interview him. Supposedly this person is making a video of people filming people watching a video. Many layers of things. For the most part, I found the videos not engaging. although this video was shown in a room that was well lit and had chairs, many were in very dark spaces. It was quite disconcerting going into the space and not knowing if you were watching a narrative or what.

Ai Weiwei at Documenta

Another view of the sculpture. You can see that we were there on a gloriously clear day. In the distance is the Orangerie, a beautiful structure on the river in Kassel. You can get a sense of the grandeur of the yellow building in the background.

Ai Weiwei at Documenta

This description helps to understand the sculpture. This 2007 sculpture is 720 x 1200 x 850 cm. He shows in Beijing and Lucerne. In addition to this monumental work, Weiwei arranged for 1001 Chinese people to attend Documenta. You can read more about this fairytale in Irish blogs. His plan involves outfitting them in matching clothes, housing them in temporary quarters that he designed, and having them comment via his blog. While we were there we saw a number of Chinese people, but we never could be sure they were visitors or part of his group

Ai Weiwei at Documenta

Judy is standing before a very large sculpture created by Ai Weiwei. It is made from doors and windows saved from structures that were destroyed. These come from the Ming and Qing dynasty houses. Ai is the son of the famous writer Ai Qing. He is considered a star in China's art world. He is working with Swiss architects to design the Olympic Stadium for the 2008 olympics to be held in China.

Floor of the Forest by choreographer Trisha Brown at Documenta

Floor of the Forest was one of the first pieces we viewed. Housed in a museum space, it reminded me of some of the performance pieces from the 1960s. Trisha Brown from Aberdeen, South Dakota created this dance piece. Brown was a dancer and choreographer in the early 60s. According to the catalogue, she explores everyday movements and place, their function and their substance. In this piece, you see dancers who travel through an "undulating sea" of fabrice. They step in and out of clothing and move along the ropes. Well, I, for one, could not really get into this. To me, the dancers' movements seemed very awkward and I could not connect with them or, for that matter, anyone else in the space. They were given a prominent location in the Museum Fridericianum. You can see more photos of these piece if you are interested.

Town Hall in Kassel

Judy and Jim posed in front of the Town Hall or Rathaus in Kassel, Germany, home of the documenta. We had just arrived and were walking along on opening day. Kassel is a town in Germany, several hours north of Frankfurt. It was pretty much bombed out during the second world war and has been rebuilt in a nondescript architecture. This town hall obviously survived bombings. Documenta began in Kassel in 1955 when painter and professor Arnold Bode wanted to highlight various artistic groups of the 20th century. It began with 570 works of art from 148 artists.