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Fuchs Under Investigation; Cattelan Provokes Cologners; More
STEDELIJK'S FORMER DIRECTOR UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR SMUGGLING
Rudi Fuchs, the former director of Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, is being investigated for smuggling. The Süddeustche Zeitung's Siggi Weidemann reports that the sixty-year-old curator, who announced his resignation last December after ten years as the Stedelijk’s director, is suspected of using importation papers from the museum to smuggle works by the COBRA artist Karel Appel into the Netherlands.
The affair dates back to April 2002, when the managing director of the Stedelijk Museum, Stevijn van Heusden, discovered that five Appel works on loan to the museum were missing. When the Dutch "Office of Integrity" began its inquiry, Fuchs declared that Appel had asked him to take care of the loan. The five works, imported from the United States, had been sitting for years in customs at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport when Fuchs intervened. But instead of being delivered directly to the Stedelijk, the works ended up in Appel's Amsterdam residence and were handed over to the museum only in August 2002.
While Fuchs and Appel apologized for the error in protocol—Appel claimed he wanted to see the works in his home and then neglected to give them to the Stedelijk—the Office of Integrity was not mollified. Now the Dutch public prosecutor and the tax inspector have joined the investigation and are reviewing the methods used by the Stedelijk to import artworks over the past three years.
As Weidemann reports, it's not the first time that Fuchs finds himself in the midst of a controversy. As director of the Haager Museum, Fuchs overstepped his budget by four million euros (4.3 million dollars). Starting in 1994, Fuchs—who admits he is not one for figures—had to have all of his acquisitions for the Stedelijk approved.
Fuchs claims that the current investigation had nothing to do with his decision to resign. In light of the scandal, Amsterdam's mayor Job Cohen has cancelled a party planned for April 26 to mark Fuchs’s departure from the museum.
COLOGNE BICKERS OVER CATTELAN'S DRUMMER BOY
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung's Stefan Koldehoff reports that Maurizio Cattelan's latest project at Cologne's Museum Ludwig is causing a furor amongst the locals. Ludwig director Kasper König invited Cattelan to make a work for the temporary exhibition space AC/DC, but the artist opted for the museum's roof, where he hopes to install a mechanical drummer.
Modeled after Oskar Matzerath from The Tin Drum, Cattelan's complex machine will take the form of a small boy who drums at intervals. Berlin's Bucerius foundation and Cologne's Italian Cultural Institute are funding the project.
But the sculpture, which is due to be unveiled on May 9, has run into problems getting approval from the municipal cultural committee. Shortly after König submitted the project on April 1, a local association for home and property owners began a press campaign against Cattelan's work.
As Koldehoff reports, the association, the Kölner Haus- und Grundbesitzerverein, claims that the project should not be approved because the drumming might disturb residents and hotel guests in the area. Koldehoff points out that the Museum Ludwig's immediate neighbors are the city’s central train station, the Römisch-Germanische Museum, and the Dome cathedral.
Apart from raising objections to the possible noise, the association's open letter also suggests that Cattelan's project is an act of revenge against the Dome on behalf of "Professor König." Last year, the Dome’s directors refused to allow the Ludwig to infringe upon its property by 30 centimeters, which were needed to execute Rem Koolhaas's renovation plans for the museum.
The association’s protests seem to have gained it a popular following in Cologne. Last week, the city's Bild newspaper featured a headline asking its readers: "What the heck is a tin drummer doing on the museum roof?"
König has until the next meeting of the municipal cultural committee, on May 13, to answer several questions: To what extent has Cattelan's project been regulated by the Dome? At what decibel level will the drummer be playing? How long will the intervals of drumming be?
As Koldehoff suggests, the furor can't do much for Cologne's bid to become a European Cultural Capital—nor will the upcoming cuts to the city's culture budget, which are due to be announced on May 22 by mayor Fritz Schramma.
"THERE IS NO SOLUTION BUT SELLING:" BRETON'S DAUGHTER DEFENDS AUCTION
In an interview with Libération's
Vincent Noce, André Breton's daughter, Aube Elléouët-Breton, talks about her decision to auction off her father's possessions. The 67-year-old woman, who has decided to stay in Touraine for the duration of the auction, sees contradictions in the sale.
"It's heartbreaking: I am seeing a large part of my life and the lives of thousands of others go," Elléouët-Breton told Libération. "At the same time, it's a pleasure to experience all these reactions: They prove that André Breton is still alive. People have never talked about him and surrealism as much as they do today."
Elléouët-Breton has mixed feelings about the protests against the auction. "It's touching, but also inappropriate," she explains. "For thirty years, with his wife Elisa, we fought for a foundation. It's not possible in France, where foundations have difficulty existing. Twenty years ago, Daniel Filipacchi proposed an exhibition space to us, but the state would have had to take over operation costs. We were told that it would be too expensive—or that three quarters of the collection would have had to have been sacrificed to raise the capital, which would have been absurd."
Having failed to convince the French state to establish a foundation for her father's collection, Elléouët-Breton believes the auction is the best way to keep his memory alive. "There is no other solution but selling so that the collection is accessible to the maximum number of people," Elléouët-Breton told Libération. "At the same time, considering the market prices, I'm afraid that this wish may not be completely realistic. Even so, there are modest objects, as important as the others for André, for me, for everyone."
— Jennifer Allen
The Chapmans' Response, the Breton Controversy, and More
IN DEFENSE OF THE NEW, IMPROVED DISASTERS OF WAR
Jake and Dinos Chapman are courting scandal once again with their latest project, a reworking of Francisco de Goya's Desastres de la guerra (Disasters of war) that some have called plain vandalism. The Chapmans recently bought a posthumously printed edition of the series of etchings, which depict victims of Napoléon’s incursions into Spain. Then they painted directly on their purchase, transforming Goya's figures into clowns, Nazis, toy cats and dogs, aliens, and horses.
In an interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Holger Liebs asks the Chapmans if the charge of vandalism, raised in Britain, is fair. "Artists have always improved on older works, painted them over, even destroyed them," replies Dinos Chapman. "One can cite Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing but also go back even earlier. This criticism leaves us cold."
Why rework Goya's prints? "We modified the Desastres in light of current events," explains Dinos Chapman. "Now they work better, if that doesn't sound too immodest. The victims are de-individualized. Our Desastres denounce any idea of rational humanity in the ideology of the powerful as pathetic and laughable."
"Goya was the first artist to make the scandal of war visible," adds Jake Chapman. "For us, it was about how, and if, moral positions should be or even can be made visible. The Desastres show the impossibility of distancing oneself morally from war. There's no discerning the difference between good and evil anymore."
The exhibition of the modified prints, The Rape of Creativity, begins at Modern Art Oxford on April 12.
FRENCH MINISTER OF CULTURE DEFENDS BRETON AUCTION
Five thousand books and manuscripts, 1,500 photographs, 450 paintings, 300 objects of popular art, 150 primitive artworks: these are some of the objects from André Breton's collection that will be auctioned off in the coming weeks in Paris. The sale of the 4,100 lots, which is taking place at the auction house Drouot-Richelieu, is expected to raise over 30 million euros (32 million dollars).
As Libération's Vincent Noce reports, the father of Surrealism hoarded an impressive cabinet of curiosities in his atelier in the rue Fontaine (the DVD catalogue alone includes 24,800 images). "André Breton spent his life surrounded by objects that were rich with contradictions," writes Noce. "At Drouot, the paintings—by Dalí, Ernst, Miró, and others—are the most valued. But in volume, the library constitutes the largest piece, attesting to an insatiable curiosity."
In another report, the Surrealist poet Alain Jouffroy defends the auction, which French intellectuals have attempted to stop over the past months with petitions, meetings, and articles in the press. "Breton would not necessarily be in agreement with his own followers," writes Jouffroy. "When he decided to sell one of the major paintings in his collection—Giorgio de Chirico's Le cerveau de l'enfant—he didn't do it with a light heart, but he did it. He himself frequented the Hôtel Drouot, where everything will be dispersed."
In addition to offering a review of the presale exhibition at Drouot, Le Monde features an interview with France's Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who refused to prohibit the auction despite pleas from the public. "I am not afraid of the effects of this sale," says Aillagon. "It will not disperse the memory of André Breton but disseminate it." Aillagon adds that the French government, which has already received many works as tax payments, will participate in the auction as a buyer.
The auction takes place from April 7 to 17.
COUNCIL HOPES TO INFLUENCE IRAQ'S ANTIQUITIES POLICIES
UNESCO has asked the US military to spare archaeological sites in the war on Iraq, but bombs may not be the only threat to the country's cultural heritage. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung's Sonja Zekri reports, the period after the war could see more significant losses in the form of plundering.
As Zekri reports, at the close of the first Gulf War, crowds rummaged through Iraq's museums, either destroying works or stealing them to sell on the black market. This time around, the plundering may simply be legalized by a US-backed regime.
Citing an article in the review Science, Zekri reports that a group of sixty American art dealers, lawyers, researchers, and museum directors formed the American Council for Cultural Policy last year to defend the interests of private and institutional collectors. "Their goal is to loosen up the Iraqi antiquities laws under an American-controlled postwar regime," writes Zekri. "In short, it's the legalized plundering of Mesopotamian culture by Americans after US bombs have already destroyed the land, and US companies have profited from reconstruction."
According to the council's treasurer, William Pearlstein, who was interviewed by Science, the group supports a "reasonable post-Saddam administration for culture" with new laws that would permit "some objects to be certified for export."
Ashton Hawkins, the council's president and a former executive vice-president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, denies that the council is attempting to change laws and adds that antiquities are not the organization’s primary focus.
The Archaeological Institute of America’s Patty Gerstenblith is not convinced. "The stated goal of the council is to make countries with rich archaeological resources relax their antiquities-export laws while encouraging the United States to loosen its laws on importing cultural objects," Gerstenblith told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
For Hawkins, the practice of keeping archaeological finds in the country is "retentionist." He believes that newly discovered objects should be bought from "local people at local prices" in order to avoid plundering and export to international black markets.
"Poor countries with rich history sell their cultural heritage to rich lands with better researchers and nicer museums," concludes Zekri. "Even if the council does not succeed in influencing the Iraqi laws, a 'power, money, and conquest' strategy is clearly visible here."