International News Digest
CHANEL DROPS MOBILE ART PROJECT
The French design house Chanel is rethinking its role as a contemporary art sponsor. As Le Monde’s Emmanuelle Lequeux reports, Chanel has decided to stop its Mobile Art project. Designed by Zaha Hadid, Mobile Art is a shell-shaped structure that was designed to house twenty artworks by as many artists—from Daniel Buren to Wim Delvoye—who all paid homage to the famous 2.55 Chanel handbag. Unveiled in Hong Kong in March, Mobile Art traveled to Central Park in New York last fall and was due to pass through London and Moscow before landing in Paris in 2010. But as Lequeux reports, the luxury fashion label has had a change of heart. “Given the less than spectacular predictions concerning the economy,” Chanel has decided to cease “this image operation” in order “to refocus on more strategic investments,” specifically “the product.” But there may be a future for Mobile Art—albeit a more sedentary one. “Hadid’s structure . . . could still be set up in the Parisian suburbs,” writes Lequeux. “Some are saying that the designer Karl Lagerfeld might organize a fashion show inside—a way of making a profit on the colossal investment.” Costs for Mobile Art are said to have been on par with those for Chanel’s publicity campaign featuring Nicole Kidman.
NO PARTIES FOR PINAULT
Lequeux also considers how the economic crisis is impacting other French luxury labels. The love affair between luxury labels and contemporary art—from Louis Vuitton’s collaborations with contemporary artists for handbag designs to Hermes’s traveling H Box—seems to be dissipating. “I’m afraid that the luxury world is refocusing on transactions simply with their clients—or the general public—and abandoning the experimental side that Mobile Art had,” Fabrice Bousteau from Beaux-Arts magazine told Le Monde. For Lequeux, the current trend is toward less spectacular projects, although few brands are willing to admit they are cutting art sponsorship due to the crisis.
Fondation Hermès, which opened in April with a budget of $24.3 million, will continue to forge ahead in the areas of culture. “Like all luxury labels—even if we are doing rather well—we are experiencing a dip in sales and are obliged to be prudent,” explained the director of the foundation, Catherine Tsekanis. “But we have not received any instructions about restrictions. As a foundation, our budget is set at some $5.3 million per year.” Over at Louis Vuitton, all of the label’s art sponsorship projects are being maintained: the collaborations with artists to design handbags as well as the art-exhibition space above the Vuitton boutique on the Champs-Elysées. Supporting the arts remains “an essential value,” along with the use of “pioneering artists,” according to Vuitton. As for the Fondation Louis-Vuitton, which is being built by Frank Gehry to house the art collection of Bernard Arnault, the new space will open its doors at the Jardin d’Acclimatation by the end of 2011. “We have not experienced any budget restrictions,” a spokesperson for the foundation told Le Monde.
According to Lequeux, François Pinault—the mega art collector whose holding group Pinault-Printemps-Redoute owns Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, among other labels—has already renounced all “celebrations” during the June inauguration of his new art center, which is being completed inside the Dogana in Venice. Over at Hermès, projects in the field of contemporary art will “suffer” from the crisis. “That will clean things up,” said a spokesperson for the label. “And that will be without a doubt beneficial.” Lequeux believes that it will become more and more difficult to support art and cultural projects that don’t have a social dimension. “Thus, for the exhibition of one of its designers, Stephen Sprouse,” she writes, “Vuitton is organizing a charity auction for underprivileged children in New York.”
FRENCH MUSEUMS SEE A RISE IN VISITORS—AND FREE ENTRY TO YOUTHS UNDER TWENTY-FIVE
The French fashion houses may be reconsidering their relationship to the arts, but according to the Agence France-Presse, the public is clearly still drawn to the art in French museums. Visitor numbers for 2008 are in: Centre Pompidou reported a 6.3 percent increase in visits last year, with 2.75 million passing along the famous escalators. The Louvre registered a record as well, with 8.5 million visitors in 2008 (in 2007, the figure was 8.3 million). Of all the major museums, only the Musée d’Orsay experienced a drop, from 3.2 million in 2007 to just over 3 million last year. In light of these figures, commercial enterprises—whether luxury brands or insurance companies—that cut sponsorship to the arts will be missing a large share of public visibility.
Those visitor numbers may leap even higher in the coming year following a recent announcement by President Nicolas Sarkozy. According to the AFP, beginning April 4, all French youths under twenty-five, along with schoolteachers, will be allowed free entry to museums. Sarkozy also announced that he would lift a partial freeze on state financing for the performing arts and made note of a plan to create a new national-history museum.
REPORT FROM SPAIN
In anticipation of ARCO, the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Merten Worthmann delivers a mixed report from Spain. According to Worthmann, the young Spanish arts scene is missing some experimentation—a deficiency that has had a negative impact on both galleries and the Madrid-based fair. Moreover, the Centre d’Art Santa Mónica—which has featured exhibitions by younger artists—will be closing at the end of January, according to a directive from the Catalan minister of culture. “Barcelona is a kind of anti-Berlin,” says Bartomeu Marí, head of Barcelona’s MACBA. “A city that doesn’t know how to attract any artists.” For Worthmann, the closure of Santa Mónica is a sign of a larger malaise. “The Spanish arts scene suffers from its weak connection to central Europe, the center of the market, and of discourses,” writes Worthmann, who cites the lack of both an international public and a national network. “To be an artist in Spain is a handicap, both inside and outside the country,” artist Jorge Galindo told the newspaper.
Ferran Barenblit, who was until recently the director of Santa Mónica and who now heads the art center Dos de Mayo outside Madrid, believes that Spain doesn’t have enough international pull and has lost its “exotic” status in the ever-expanding European community. “Barenblit can be very critical with respect to the homegrown arts scene,” writes Worthmann. “But he holds the unclear reception from outside the country responsible for the lack of resonance.” Chus Martínez, who headed the Frankfurt Kunstverein before recently heading to Barcelona to direct the MACBA collection, adds some “geopolitical” arguments. “Germans, for example, orient themselves above all toward the United States and, since reunification, strongly toward the east,” Martínez told the newspaper. “Spain long existed on the outside. We were never a stop on the Grand Tour, nor could we profit later from the Marshall Plan.” The Franco dictatorship, which ended just over thirty years ago, also played a major role in the isolation of the country’s artists. Despite the end of the dictatorship, many artists still leave the country. And despite the rise of several spectacular exhibition sites—MUSAC in Leãn, MACBA in Barcelona, Herzog and de Meuron’s Caixaforum in Madrid, Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, and Madrid’s Matadero, a multidisciplinary center that will be fully complete in 2011—few institutions have managed to create a “solid profile.” “For regional politicians, often the architectural gesture was more important than the ongoing maintenance of an ambitious program,” writes Worthmann, who adds that museum directors are often at the mercy of changing ruling parties of the government. Despite new directives for running museums from the minister of culture, the sudden closure of Santa Mónica as an art center is a case in point.
As for ARCO, a public initiative dating from the 1980s, the new director, Lourdes Fernández, will be decreasing the number of Spanish galleries in order to increase international participation at the fair. Last year, the fair dedicated more space to curatorial projects featuring artworks with an experimental edge. “And the display window has long functioned in both directions,” writes Worthmann. International collectors acquire Spanish art, while Spanish collectors are increasingly acquiring works by international artists. In 2009, all purchases may well be welcome, whatever the artist’s origin.