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Lacan Drawings at Auction; David Weiss Turns Sixty; "Force de l'Art" a Success; Curator Discusses Manifesta 6
PORTRAIT OF THE PSYCHOANALYST AS AN ARTIST
Drawings by the late French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) are going under the hammer this week at Paris' Artcurial. As Le Monde's Clarisse Fabre reports, Jean-Michel Vappereau—a mathematician and analyst who owns the 130 works, including manuscripts—decided to sell the collection. The profits from the auction—estimated at €450,000 ($566,275)—will be used to purchase an apartment in Paris to serve as a home for Lacan's vast archives.
Lacan began to draw in the 1970s with a group of mathematicians in an attempt to solve various enigmas. "A series of graphs, sketched for the most part on A4 sheets of paper, came from this emulation, if not obsession," writes Fabre. The graphs include "chains, braids, circles, Borromean knots (three interlaced rings), drawn with ink or a felt-tip pen."
What would the sale be without a few Oedipal conflicts? As Fabre reports, Lacan's family has opposed the sale. According to Artcurial, the analyst's daughter Judith Miller—also a psychoanalyst—did not allow photographs of her father, published in her book Album Jacques Lacan: Visages de mon père (Jacques Lacan Album: Faces of my Father) (Seuil, 1991), to be used in the catalogue for the Artcurial sale.
DAVID WEISS AT SIXTY
Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Niklas Maak congratulates David Weiss—one half of the Swiss duo Fischli & Weiss—on his sixtieth birthday. "Without him, [Peter] Fischli is nothing," writes Maak in his admiring assessment of the pair's impact, giving special praise to their film Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), which was shown at Documenta 8 in 1987. "Without Lauf der Dinge," notes Maak, "artists like John Bock would surely be doing another type of art today."
Born in Zurich in 1946, Weiss started working with Fischli in 1979. For Maak, one of the duo’s most memorable efforts involved dressing up for a film as a rat and bear, "a nightmare of the art market circa 1980." At the Venice Biennale in 2003, Fischli & Weiss were honored with the Golden Lion for posing a series of questions, including "Should I leave reality in peace?"; "Is my stupidity a warm coat?"; "Does the dog bark the whole night?"; and—the most pressing—"Does the world also exist without me?"
130,000 FEEL THE "FORCE DE L'ART"
"La Force de l'Art"—the controversial exhibition of contemporary French art initiated by French prime minister Dominique de Villepin—has closed its doors on a successful note. As Agence France-Presse reports, 130,000 people saw the exhibition, which included 350 works produced by 200 French and France-based artists. Minister of culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called the event "a popular success," especially for a public unfamiliar with contemporary art.
But the "Force" is far from over. Donnedieu de Vabres announced that he will appoint a team to organize a second edition of the exhibition, which is now destined to become a triennial for Paris. According to the minister, the team for the next "Force"—slated for 2009—would be finalized by the beginning of September.
According to AFP, the "Force" pales in comparison to the Musée du Quai Branly, the new ethnographic museum that just opened its doors across the Seine. In the first three days, Quai Branly welcomed 28,000 visitors, including the Ur-anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, now ninety-eight years old.
WALDVOGEL SPEAKS OUT ON MANIFESTA 6
Die Tageszeitung features an interview with Florian Waldvogel, part of the curatorial team for the troubled Manifesta 6, which was slated to take place in the divided city of Nicosia on Cyprus in the fall. Recently, the city and the organization Nicosia for Art (NFA) effectively cancelled the event by relieving Waldvogel, Anton Vidokle, and Mai Abu ElDahab of their curatorial duties. The municipal government and NFA disagreed with the curators' plan to include the northern part of Nicosia—occupied by Turkey since 1974—in the exhibition. Yet according to the curators, their original contract stipulated that the event would take place in both the Greek and Turkish zones of the city.
"It was clear to us from the beginning that we did not want to organize another group exhibition on Cyprus," says Waldvogel, "which would reproduce the commercial logic of art tourism. Our idea was to establish a long-term school on both sides of the Green Line." Waldvogel explains that the interdisciplinary school would have buttressed the infrastructure and supported the local artist scene. "From the start, it was important for us to integrate both sides, the Greek and the Turkish, so no one would be left out. We had this ensured in the contract."
Does the failure of Manifesta 6 spell the end of Manifesta and its goal to bring contemporary art to new EU member countries? "The Manifesta Foundation must ask itself if its model is still legitimate," said Waldvogel. "I hope this occasion sparks a caesura in the art world and that people will consider the expansion of the concept of art and not only expanding capital markets." Along with these queries, Waldvogel is looking to the International Foundation Manifesta to compensate the travel costs for both artists and curators.
When asked if moving Manifesta 6 to another location might indeed be a last-minute option, Waldvogel is not giving any definitive answers. "For me," the curator told the newspaper, "the failure of the project is the project."