We thought the opening ceremony was (in general) a triumph of digital technology - even when the digits took the form of robotic performers - but we did not expect old-style virtuality, that is, dubbing. It seemed too good to be true, and now we find that what Geremie Barme described as “a young girl in red singing a song to the motherland… a famous Communist paean to the power of the Communist party” - is now revealed as dubbed, the voice of a less-perfect looking girl, which destroys the perfect illusion of a perfect future, whatever the consequences of the one-child policy will be. (No more uncles, as Kevin Murray observed). And then we find that the best of the fireworks, the footprints marching across the night sky towards the stadium, was also pre-recorded? Read Mary-Anne Toy and Sanghee Liu in The Age, and Reuters, about the virtual fireworks. Thanks to Breakfastpolitics for the lead…

[Read more →]

Most of the sculptures in the Jardin des Tuileries are what my colleagues used to call “plonk art” - sculptures located in formal garden-like settings as if they had dropped from the sky - and the Tuileries is the mother lode of this kind of public art. However in one corner there is a jungle which surrounds this most intriguing example of art which takes its inspiration from the environment, and which re-creates a wild park-like environment of an absolutely distinctive kind. This work, Arbre des voyelles by Giuseppe Pennone, (1999) takes its origin from the wind storm that swept this part of the world in the 90s which overturned thousands of ancient trees and forests across Europe. Thus the fallen tree in this part of the Tuileries is a bronze cast of an oak tree - one of the casualties of the storm - and at each extremity of its branches is planted a new tree, now all healthily reaching skywards. Magical. Click the thumnails below to see more. Or see how it looks in winter here…

[Read more →]

ARTWRANGLERS WISHES TO ADVISE VIEWERS OF THIS POST THAT SOME OF THE IMAGES AND WORDS THAT FOLLOW MAY DISTRESS THOSE VIEWERS WHO ARE AFFLICTED BY ARACHNOPHOBIA (OR BOURGEOISMANIA).

…or mixed metaphors. See our friend from New York? She suffers too…

At the risk of being consumed (or ostracised) I am not alone in thinking the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Centre Pompidou is… patchy… Once you’ve seen a few spiders, they start to look a bit formulaic, and a bit trite in what they signify. And the knitted figures are downright mawkish. There’s also the sense of “art direction”, lots of production, interpreted and realised by somebody, with not much sign of the artist’s hand. Best are the urgency of the early works, and the houses and rooms. (Now run for your life, Nigel!).

[Read more →]

Sorry, Jean, it’s not the work of an architect. It is the work Hommage a Arago by Jan Dibbets. It is a piece consisting of 135 medallions which stretches from the north to the south along the Paris Meridian, and commemorates the famous (but absent) scientist and astronomer Francois Arago. His bronze statue was melted down by the Nazis during the occupation of Paris, and was never replaced. Except, conceptually, by Dibbets, one of whose medallions is to be found on the plinth. Not all the medallions have survived… But as we have noted, Paris respects its axes… From this one at the Palais Royale you are lured towards a Daniel Buren, and then…

a Pol Bury. Rich pickings, eh?

[Read more →]

See how a work of art can be monumental without being a monument. This is the Richard Serra piece Promenade in the Grand Palais.

Plus some subtle illusionism: it sits lightly on the ground? I think not.

[Read more →]

Here’s an arresting self-portrait by Cesar as Centaure in the 6th in Paris. It presses all the right buttons as public art for me… Clearly whoever makes the decisions about what is to be seen in the public domain in Paris gets their criteria right! And the face is Cesar, the mask is Picasso - work that out!

No doubt in Australia this has elements the police would have to “evaluate”…

[Read more →]

China is everywhere: Chinese Design at the V&A was underwhelming and arty, and then here’s a work by Zhan Wang on loan to the British Museum. So in a sense it is “art in the public domain” in that the British Museum is seething with visitors, and the central courtyard is a grand place to hang out. So check this out and read the text account of his working process. It’s a spectacular thing, a reflective metal rock, but does it make it? As art, that is? By his numbering system, there must be lots of people in the world who need stainless steel rocks. Imagine one of these in your garden: “hey mom, quick, call the Terminator…” (and see how it’s morphing into a lion?)

[Read more →]

See what’s happening at the Tate. Waldemar Januszczak at The Times thinks it’s a wank: “watching an organisation as institutionally snobbish as Tate Modern trying to get down with the kids is already a ghastly sight. The art world is crazy about street art just now. And Street & Studio [the photography show inside] was mounted, I suggest, in a deliberate attempt to up the tone of the external graffiti.”

[Read more →]

P.S. there is no implied connection between this post and the previous…

[Read more →]

Contact: Between Memory & History is the annual photography festival in Toronto with 150 venues across the city. Here is the contribution of the Italian Embassy: works by Raffaelo Mariniello. More later…

[Read more →]