International News Digest
HERSHMAN LEESON WINS 2010 D.VELOP DIGITAL ART AWARD
The American artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson has been awarded the d.velop digital art award (ddaa) for 2010. As Artfacts.net reports, the prize is awarded every two years by the Digital Art Museum in Berlin and comes with $25,500 as well as a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bremen. Hershman Leeson, who lives in San Francisco, directs the film faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute and is a Professor Emeritus for digital art at the University of California, Davis. Active in media art since the 1970s, the artist is behind technological innovations including the first interactive computer-based artwork Lorna, 1983–84, and an artificial intelligent web agent
Dina, 2006. Her list of films, including Conceiving Ada (1997), will soon be extended by !Women Art Revolution, a documentary that will be released in 2011.
GILBERT AND GEORGE: XL
Gilbert and George seem to be cleaning out their atelier. Citing an article in The Art Newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the artist duo are considering selling one of their early and extra-large works to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. The six tryptichs, titled With Us in Nature, 1971, each measure seven-and-a-half by twenty-two feet, which makes the complete work come close to a whopping ninety feet long. The set belongs to the artists’s private collection and is the only large-format work with such dimensions to come out of their atelier.
MANIFESTA 8 DELAYS OPENING
Manifesta 8 has a new starting date: October 9. As the Austria Presse Agentur and The Standard report, the next edition of the trans-European biennial will take place in Murcia. The opening date was pushed from October 1 to October 9 because a general strike in Spain has been announced for September 29. The strike that is likely to lead to travel chaos, but the Manifesta 8 organizers postponed the opening out of respect for the strike. The press preview, which was originally slated for September 29 to 30 will now take place October 7 to 8. “We hope that (with the delay), we will give all guests the possibility to be there,” said the organizers in a press release.
SARKOZY PHOTOGRAPHER BOOED AT ARLES FESTIVAL
The official photographer of French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was greeted less than warmly at the Arles photography festival. As Le Monde’s Michel Guerrin reports, Pascal Rostain was booed as he entered the stage of the Théâtre antique d’Arles along with his photographs of the Sarkozy. “I expected an uproar,” Rostain told Le Monde. “But who would refuse to be the official photographer of the presidential couple?” The choice of Rostain lies with the former model, not with the politician. Rostain is renowned for taking the paparazzi shot of Sarkozy’s former wife Cécilia, when the couple were still married, with her lover Richard Attias in New York, a photgraph that made the cover of Paris Match and led to the dismissal of the magazine’s head Alain Genestar. The French first couple does not make Rostain show them the photographs before these are published, at least according to Rostain, who would not disclose his salary. Is Rostain a “sarkozyste”? “I didn’t vote for him,” says the photographer. “He’s the husband of my friend.”
ART HISTORY OF WORLD CUP
Soccer’s World Cup may have found a temporary home in Spain but its Italian roots linger on, in art history. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Lisa Zeitz reports, the golden cup itself was made, not by Alberto Giacometti as is often assumed, but rather by his artist colleague Silvio Gazzaniga. Born in 1921 in Milan, Gazzaniga designed the cup in 1971. The cup, which shows two young athletes stretching their arms upwards (perhaps for a foul?), was poured in 1973 with close to eleven poundsof 18K gold. Some disappointing news for the latest winner: The original cup is kept in Zurich at the FIFA headquarters while the World Cup winner is given only a gold-plated bronze copy.
CAT MISSING––MUMMIFIED
A missing cat is a common occurrence, but not a mummified one passing as artwork. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Lisa Zeitz reports, the cat sculpture seems to have been stolen during an opening at the Galerie Vittorio Manalese in Berlin. The gallerists Bruno Brunnet and Nicole Hackert welcomed 600 guests to the exhibition “Ein Fest für Boris–2. Akt” (A Party for Boris–Act Two). The cat, whose days of partying were long over, went missing shortly after the event. Like any pet owner, the gallerists have issued the usual “Missing Cat” poster, and added a nearly $1,200 reward, although, if one judges from the picture, the animal doesn’t look as if it could have walked away on its own dried out legs.