International News Digest
FEEDING AN EXECUTED PRISONER TO FISH
The Danish artist Marco Evaristti has made headlines in Germany with a provocative project: transforming the corpse of an executed prisoner into fish food. Die Tageszeitung’s Joerg Sundermeier is not impressed. “Dumb, dumber, dumbest art,” writes Sundemeier. “It’s an intervention that shows how undertalented artists can get attention. Does it get any any dopier?” It certainly gets more complicated. Although the reports vary from one source to another, Evaristti hopes to obtain the corpse of a prisoner executed in the United States, ship the body to Germany, deep-freeze the remains, and then transform these into food for goldfish. “Or to feed an exhibition audience,” writes Sundemeier, “according to which report you read.” According to Evaristti, the intervention is an attempt to criticize the death penalty in the United States. Apparently, the artist has already found a willing volunteer. “Aesthetic questions don't matter,” writes Sundemeier. “Morals are only allegedly interesting. The most important thing is that there’s a news story.”
CONFLICT OF INTEREST AROUND KOONS?
Jeff Koons’s forthcoming exhibition at the Château de Versailles is not just irritating French cultural purists who would prefer to keep the American king of kitsch off the castle grounds. As Le Monde’s Clarisse Fabre and Emmanuelle Lequeux report, there are now charges of a conflict of interest around the exhibition at the former residence of Louis XIV. The exhibition’s origins go back to Venice in June 2007. “Jean-Jacques Aillagon found himself with his friend the businessman François Pinault,” write Fabre and Lequeux. Aillagon was then responsible for the Palazzo Grassi, where Pinault shows part of his private collection. “Monsieur Aillagon, also the former French minister of culture, was getting ready to take over at the Château de Versailles,” write Fabre and Lequeux. “Pinault then asked him: ‘With all the gardens that you have, you will be able to exhibit my Split-Rocker!’ ” Koons's Split-Rocker, 2000, is one of seventeen works that will go on display this week inside the castle and on the grounds. Although a former employee of Pinault, Aillagon seems to be doing his old job by including a total of six Koons works from Pinault’s private collection in the Versailles show. That’s not the only problem. Elena Geuna, who is curating the project with the Centre Pompidou's Laurent Le Bon, is an employee of Pinault.
“I find this argument specious and discourteous,” says Aillagon in Geuna’s defense. “Koons’s works have obtained impressive prices well before being exhibited at the Metropolitain a few weeks ago and at Versailles today.” Of course, many of those impressive prices have been reached at Christie’s, which is owned by Pinault’s holding company. The director of the Friends of Versailles, Anémone Wallet, would have liked to have had the chance to make one request to the artist: to create a work that would have deferred the costs of the exhibition, estimated at around $2.7 million. At Versailles, the public purse is paying for around $400,000, while the remaining $2.3 million has been provided by partners, most of whom also happen to be Koons collectors with works in the Versailles exhibition: François Pinault, Eli Broad, Dakis Joanno, and Edgar de Picciotto.
PALAIS DE TOKYO AT FONTAINEBLEAU
There’s a more successful—and less extravagant—invasion of contemporary art at the Château de Fontainebleau, once the royal residence of King François I. As Agence France-Presse reports, the director of the Palais de Tokyo, Marc-Olivier Wahler, has carefully “grafted” a series of contemporary works into the castle and the grounds. The exhibition—dubbed "Château de Tokyo/Palais de Fontainebleau"—features fifteen interventions, including a swing by Roman Signer, a sound installation by Werner Reiterer, and a model mountaintop by Luca Francesconi. Instead of a “confrontation” with the castle, Wahler curated with “a logic of grafting” to create a resonance with the castle's architecture, painting collection, and furniture. "The eruption of today's art allows for a comprehension of the totality of the castle though a new and free gaze, without misreading history,” said Bernard Notari, the director of the castle. "Château de Tokyo/Palais de Fontainebleau" is the second chapter of an ongoing collaboration between the castle and art institutions. Initiated last year by Notari, the project began with the exhibition “Picasso at Fontainebleau.”
US PATRON FOR BERLIN CASTLE
Someday, the city of Berlin may look forward to such projects and the many conflicts that accompany them, from the aesthetic to the financial. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Berlin is getting a helping hand to reconstruct its castle, which was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in WWII and then torn down by the East German regime in 1950. Now, foreign aid to build a copy is coming from the Americans, although long after the Marshall Plan. According to the newspaper, the renowned American porcelain collector Richard Baron Cohen invited guests last week to his property on Long Island for a gala benefit dinner to raise cash for the Berlin castle project. The German government has put a lid on the budget at $777 million. One hundred and twelve million dollars must come from donations, although there's no word on the amount raised by Cohen's benefit dinner.