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Documenta 12 Artists Announced; Culture Crisis at CAPC Bordeaux; Other Art-World News
ARTISTS ANNOUNCED FOR DOCUMENTA 12
Roger M. Buergel has made the first round of announcements of artists to participate in Documenta 12, which begins June 16, 2007 in Kassel. As the Frankfurter Rundschau's Elke Buhr reports, the D12 artistic director and his co-curator and partner Ruth Noack unveiled a partial artist list during a press conference held in Kassel last week. The Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum, the British artist Imogen Stidworthy, the Polish artist Artur Zmijewski, and, somewhat oddly, the Spanish chef Ferran Adrià are the first to be named from a list that will include up to one hundred artists, just shy of the 118 that participated in Okwui Enwezor's Documenta 11. Ayse Bülek of Kassel's Kulturzentrum Schlachthof will be responsible for making connections with the local scene. Buergel clarified this tactical engagement in an earlier press conference, along with the three questions that will frame the D12 exhibition: Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? What is to be done?
"No one has ever been this early [to announce the artist list]: 478 days before the opening," writes Die Welt's Uta Baier, who recalls that the lists for Documenta 10 and Documenta 11 were kept secret until much closer to the opening press conferences and previews. By bringing in journalists, Buergel wanted not only "to show that we are working" but also to allow the exhibition to function without texts. "Texts take authority away from the art works," said Noack, a self-identified "art lover" who does not want texts to speak for the art. "[It's] information as empathic-advertising and media-effective concept," writes Baier. "All the same, you can imagine just as little under Buergel's Documenta as you could under the sparse, high-theoretical, and widely incomprehensible explanatory attempts of his predecessors Catherine David and Okwui Enwezor." Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung offers a selection of images from the press conference.
CULTURE CRISIS AT CAPC BORDEAUX
CAPC, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, is embroiled in a struggle that pits the Bordeaux municipality against the museum's administration. As Le Monde's Hugues Daniel reports, a city cultural official suggested that Bordeaux's book fair could be held at the museum at the end of March. Yet making room for the book fair—and its 40,000 visitors—would involve removing the current exhibition, "Collection automne hiver" (Fall-Winter Collection), which highlights CAPC's recent acquisitions, including works by Christian Boltanski, Daniel Buren, Gilbert & George, Simon Hantaï, Anish Kapoor, Annette Messager, and Richard Serra.
The conflicting events are turning into a debate about public culture. While Bordeaux's mayor Hugues Martin denies that any decisions have been made about the book fair's location, CAPC director Maurice Fréchuret questions the feasibility of using the museum for the fair. "To take down an exhibition like this one is very complicated," Fréchuret told Le Monde. "The Richard Long work is an installation with seven tons of stone." Fréchuret also cites an ethical commitment both to the artists and to the public. "What should we say to a visitor who comes from Paris or abroad, only to find a commercial event?" But the mayor doesn't acknowledge an ethical conflict. "It's all culture," Martin told Le Monde. "I don't see anything shocking."
Bernard Vouilloux, an art history professor at the Bordeaux-III University, believes that the municipality is using "culture to the detriment of culture." For Vouilloux, the suggestion to hold the book fair at the CAPC is part of a larger plan to transform the museum into a "village party hall." The CAPC's budget has been halved in less than ten years, and there has been no budget for new acquisitions in the past five years. With these kinds of cuts, any future might be possible for the CAPC. As Vouilloux quips: "Why not think about using it for housing chickens?"
IN BRIEF
Le Monde reports that Sophie Calle has been chosen to represent France at the fifty-second Venice Biennale in 2007. The announcement was made last week by the Association Française d'Action Artistique (AFAA) and the Délégation aux Arts Plastiques (DAP) from the Ministry of Culture. Calle, who was born in 1953, will show at the French pavilion, and will be accompanied by a simultaneous exhibition featuring works by fifteen young French artists at a site to be announced.
Die Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that former Czech president Václav Havel has blocked the installation of a public light sculpture in Kabul by Prague artist Jirí David, arguing that the installation—a fifteen-meter tall neon heart—could be viewed as a Christian symbol and might cause offense to local Muslims. The work, which sat in front of Havel's former presidential office in Prague during 2002-2003, was selected for exhibition by the World Development Organization (WDO). Despite having collected the necessary agreements from Kabul city officials, the organization said that they would respect Havel's decision.
Yoko Ono has expressed dismay at the recent scandal over caricatures of Muhammad. "I do not want to criticize the caricaturists," said Ono in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung. "But I think it was wrong to draw these images. An apology is urgent. The most important thing is understanding other opinions and ways of living. I know how caricatures can be hurtful from my own personal experience. When John [Lennon] and I married, there were so many mean, ugly images of us. They hurt us a lot, but we did not say anything." Ono was in Berlin for her exhibition "Heal," which takes place at the Galerie Davide di Maggio through March 28.
Die Welt's Max Reval welcomes KUMU, Estonia's new national art museum in the capital Tallinn. The five-story building, located at the city park Kadriorg (which also holds the presidential palace), houses more than 5,000 square meters (16,404 square feet) of exhibition space. "For ninety years, the most important Estonian art collection has been a vagabond, wandering through the country," writes Reval. For Reval, the new building, which was designed by the architect Pekka Vapaavuori, represents "the end of an odyssey," including a long detour through the Soviet era. Museum director Sirje Helme views the change in terms of European standards. "In the nineties, when every West European town was getting outfitted with a museum, we were the only European country not to have one," said Helme.
On the first anniversary of Harald Szeemann's death, Bern's Kunsthalle is offering an homage to the late curator with the exhibition "Villa Jelmini. The Complex of Respect." As the director of the Kunsthalle Bern, Szeemann curated "When Attitudes Become Form" in 1969 and then promptly left the institute to found his independent "Agentur für Geistige Gastarbeit." For the Neue Zürcher Zeitung's Samuel Herzog, "Villa Jelmini" functions as an "anti-homage" exhibition, whose title comes from the wine crates in which Szeemann stored his archive at Maggiatal. Philippe Pirotte, the current director of the Kunsthalle, views the exhibition not as a memorial but as "mnemonic traces" of the Ur-freelance curator's legendary exhibitions. Meanwhile Die Welt's Uta Baier welcomes Hans-Joachim Müller's new book Harald Szeemann. Ausstellungsmacher (Harald Szeeman: The Exhibition As Fine Art), the first biography of the "prototype independent curator." "Before Szeemann, there were no freelance curators," writes Baier. "Now they exist, and even come with training and a diploma. But is that useful?"