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?

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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.

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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”…

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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.”

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This prize-winning pavilion sits underneath the three hundred year old plane trees of Bedford Square, just outside the Architectural Association. In making no false claims for its status beyond design excellence, it entirely avoids the use of hyperbole. And it’s popular! You can sit on it!

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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…

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this impulsive device is a work by Olafur Eliasson, who currently has light and movement works all over the MoMA. It’s nice to imagine the shape of the invisible anti-monument thus created…

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As you would expect. This splendid fountain was co-authored by the architect Richard Meier, the landscape architect Laurie Olin and the then director, John Walsh. See how the water runs through the crack in the rock from the top level to the bottom level? Courbet comes to mind… But maybe the cracked rock is itself a subtle reference to the way the travertine marble was split to form the blocks which make up the walls of the Museum itself? And what’s that crack in the firmament way off in the distance?

It’s an Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled, 1988 (bronze).

Now here’s the backstory, as relayed by John Walsh. As the conceptual structure of the museum spaces were coming together, the function of the central courtyard as a social space, city square, piazza, became a priority to be resolved. Meier had a sketch plan which showed a fountain of some kind, geometric in nature, loosely cubist in spirit. As the three parties to the plan (Meier, Olin, and the museum people) mulled it over, the idea of a Californian boulder emerged, a counterpoint to the Italian marble surrounding it, a reference to the rocky hilltop on which the Getty is built. After some extensive searching, Olin discovered some waterworn glacial marble boulders in the forest outside the town of Columbia, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in northern California, the source of Los Angeles’ water. An expedition was mounted, and the local fire brigade (who owned the rocks) constructed, with the aid of their fire trucks, a live fountain mock-up, water, pond, and all. Muddied and wet, art and its elemental origins coalesced, and the boulder began its journey south to its symbolic future. Now that’s aspirational public art for you!

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while we’re waiting for the announcement of Canberra’s Northbourne Mounument here’s a stunning echo of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the IIIrd International. This version of a work by Ai Weiwei titled Chandelier, 2002 (spotted in the SMH Good Weekend’s publicity for his show at the Campbelltown Arts Centre) is unfortunately not in the show. Apparently Chandelier is an early version of “Working Progress (Fountain of Light)” 2007, here shown at the Tate Liverpool. We wish.

Want to go deeper? In addition to the exhibition at CAC curated by Charles Merewether (past director of the Biennale of Sydney), there is another show at Sherman, and a new book by CM himself. Listen to CM and AW on Artworks, with Amanda Smith. For more chandeliers, of a different kind, go here.

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…one of our favourite art sites is Gallery 4 at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, which is the mega-vitrine at the entrance to CMAG in the North Building on London Circuit. It’s a bit tucked away, unless you’re en route to the Library or the Theatre, or on your way to CMAG itself, but it’s where CMAG often showcases its most adventurous works.

Currently you will see a magical piece by the late Neil Roberts, Cryonic Quintet, 1994. These cast-glass totems, sitting on Duchampian stools, on a platform, on a black floor, against a black wall, are spell-binding. Beautifully installed: the subtle elevation of the white floor plane on beer glasses is Neil’s own device. Detail below. The website entry, which also has some biographical and other relevant background both to Neil and to this piece, is by Deborah Clark. The work is in the CMAG collection.

P.S. Surely there’s a show to be made about the distinctive way in which Canberra artists of the 70s, 80s, 90s turned to found objects as the material of their practice – Rosalie Gascoigne, Neil Roberts, Ingo Kleinert, for starters…

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