A few days ago I witnessed an excessively sad event. A huge group of merchants was thrown out (by the police) of a hall in the center of Warsaw (which they had been renting for several years), and the events turned violent and nasty, with throwing of stones and fights and tear gas and general havoc.
Although it did look like some sort of incomprehensible flash mob or other performative party, one could hardly squeeze it into the “new art” category, were it not for one significant detail: the commercial hall is to be substituted by the Museum of Modern Art. Of course, the city authorities claim the undoing of this most hideous hall is necessary for the construction of a second line of the metro, but the fact is: the temple of 90’s-style small, bad quality commerce will be replaced by the temple of contemporary art.
The obvious implication of this week’s events is: the Museum of Modern Art will arguably be the most despised building in Poland. So far, the only (extremely heated) debates about its character, name (Contemporary or Modern?), and, of course, its shape, interested only fairly elite circles. The building itself raised most controversy, with its austere, “modernist”, or, as some put it, uninspired look. But all this was nothing compared to what happened last Tuesday: the masses moved. There was naturally no talk of the museum. Yet sooner or later, the topic will appear. The Museum will be built, and the tens of thousands of people around the country who considered what happened an act of injustice will have a surprizingly clear symbolic enemy: Modern Art.
But the hundreds of people gathered at the hall entrance would not be customers anyway. Meaning, they don’t fit the profile. Not the current one, and not any potential profile of someone “we” seem to want to educate into (our) art, into (our) culture. Why? Because the social differences are so big, it is still unimaginable for the common art curator/cultural agent to think of these people as spectators, art amateurs, partners. Just as they were hardly a partner for negotiating a new commercial deal (they rejected several offers and refused to participate in further negotiations). We will hear: They are outside of the reach of… of us, the cultural people, the elites, the-educated-ones. They are a lost case.
This is obviously the moment when the conflict becomes helpless. Each party is convinced that the others are barbarians, their entire world is wrong, corrupt, and unworthy of any contact.
Do these people need us to defend them? I believe this is not a question of need. It is a question of true access to culture. Of initiatives, or rather, structures, which would allow for a potential integration of all citizens.
The Museum of Modern Art has already had many great exhibitions. But these initiatives are clearly focused on a prestigious audience, they are intellectually sophisticated, but beyond that, they don’t seem to reach out to a “larger” audience. This reaching out has been happening in many museums around the world (take the Brooklyn Museum, with their great program of interactive activities where once a month visitors can have a totally different experience of art, which includes, for instance, making their own art prints and parties with known DJs).
In Warsaw, we have a truly outstanding exhibition relating to the great Alina Szapocznikow, an artist whose work is largely unknown outside of Poland, yet here is already considered as a crucial reference for anyone interested in modern art (the exhibition ends Sunday). Her works combine eroticism with power, femininity with a great understanding of structure and drama. Possibly the most impressive among the works presented at the show is the huge female belly sculpted in marble (actually it’s a double-belly), which impresses, attracts, scares, and ultimately leaves us at a (as always unbearable) distance. What is made to counteract this distance in terms of programming? Some lectures, discussions, guided tours, and a new documentary film. All this is great for me or you. Interesting indeed.
But what about the reaching out? The search for new, active audiences?
Well, many of the women present during the events at the commercial hall were convinced to join in the creative thinking about stone – they reached out, grabbed the pavement stones, and threw them at the police. I claim they did it not only because they were “part of the mob”, but also, because they were hardly ever offered any serious alternatives.
Isn’t it time we thought about those others as true potential consumers of culture, who can be sought just as we seek the already accustomed artsy amateurs?
A friend of mine suggested that the 2000 salesmen thrown out on Tuesday be hired at the Museum Store.
Beyond this ironic (and hilarious) take lies the feeling that something is going terribly wrong in the way we are approaching the idea of social change.
I have been often showcasing projects with social agendas. They were more out-going, accessible, they were social sculptures or other initiatives which claimed a different approach to the audience-connection.
But at such instances, I wonder: can’t social sculpture strive for effectiveness? Isn’t it terribly passé to hide behind our we-are-only-poor-artists shields?
PS. The Museum of Modern Art does attempt to create a social space of dialogue, as in the initiative of a Park of Sculpture in a poor part of Warsaw. One can see the idea. Yet paradoxically even an artist like Rirkrit Tiravanija seems to have transformed of his relational aesthetics here into a… well… esoteric sculpture.
Hopefuly, this cube, and tens of other artcubes, can make a difference. Yet for the moment its futuristic, mirror-like shape seems all but ironic.
Combine air, space, track lighting, concrete, glass, metal, a cool king-size bed to rest your sleepy head and you’re totally there.
I’m sitting in what can only be described as an art gallery because that’s exactly what it is … an art gallery. I’m on the basement floor below and adjacent to the main lobby of the 21C Museum Hotel. Within my line of sight are lookers and gawkers who are pointing and chatting and oohing and aahing. Like me, they’re here for the night or perhaps for a just glimpse of what all the talk is about.
This will be my last post from the UAE. In fact by the time you read this I will already be on my way back to gorgeous grey clouds of the average UK summertime. The last two years of living first in Dubai and then in Sharjah, have been a decidedly mixed experience but I have learned a lot and really enjoyed the exposure to the diverse international art I have seen here. What is perhaps most bizarre is that it took me several months to find an actual Emirati artist but now they seem to be everywhere. It has been very interesting to see how phenomenally the cultural sector has grown just in the last two years and how arts development can become a kind of nationalism in the absence of any other type of overt political statement! I actually arrived in Dubai in May 2007 in the final week of the 8th Sharjah Biennale so I didn’t get to see very much of it. However, 2007 seems to have been the key year. Dubai held its first international Art Fair and fringe in March and not to be outdone, Abu Dhabi followed suit with Art Paris-Abu Dhabi in November. Galleries started to proliferate and three very distinct art areas emerged in Dubai which now has plans for a Museum of Modern Middle Eastern Art, an opera house and various other museums and arts dedicated areas. Meanwhile Abu Dhabi is getting a ‘starchitect’ designed Guggenheim, Louvre, Maritime museum and performing arts centre. 
The culmination of all this activity seems to have been the launch of the first ever UAE pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Actually the UAE had not one, but two pavilions at Venice…. the competitive squabbling between Dubai and Abu Dhabi even spilled over into the most prestigious art platform in the world resulting in one national UAE pavilion organised out of Dubai and a Platform for Venice set up by Abu Dhabi. 
Arthur Danto first gave the notion of the “artworld” a philosophical definition: the artworld provides the theories of art which all members of the artworld tacitly assume in order for there to be objects considered as art (see “The Artworld,” Journal of Philosophy (1964)).
I told myself that I wouldn’t 
The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia is selling two major works by two Australian artists from it’s collection to raise the remaining funds needed to purchase a painting by Cezanne titled Bords De La Marne. Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon, is the driving force behind the purchase of the work for AUD$16.2 million from a Swiss private collection which will be the most expensive work ever purchase by a gallery in Australia. Having committed to purchasing the work without having all the funds available, Capon and the gallery have had to do everything that they can to raise the extra funds in hurry and have been begging for donations at every opportunity. 
Before I came to the UAE I knew there were at least 10 Emirati artists. I had their names and images in a book published in 1982 by the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States. However, on arrival in Dubai I faced a major problem – there was no National Museum or Art Gallery so no obvious place to find them. It actually took me six months to find a local artist but it is amazing that just over a year later, I am now aware of more than 200 and have actually seen the work of well over 50. 
The first works you see are by Reem Al Ghaith and are familiar from the Dubai Next show at Art Basel. There is a palpable sense of dislocation in her three huge prints of a solitary figure inside a frame or seemingly reflected in a mirror against a backdrop of various Dubai locations. They also make an impression by sheer virtue of their size despite being obscured by several stone pillars. So the initial impact of this show is clearly Emirati. 
In the next two rooms, Khalid Al Banna’s work with its contrasting textures and shades of black, white and grey and Alia Al Shamsi’s photographs of modern mannequins and mechanical fortune-tellers addressed aesthetic universalities. However, Khalid Mezaina’s quirky graphics epitomising a fun and funky side of contemporary Dubai were a great example of modern generational sensibilities. Mohammed Al Habtoor also picked up on this feeling but without making a specific visual connection to the locality. His big cartoon faces suggested Disney on acid to me but provoked much discussion, were very popular among the younger generation and have resulted in a solo show when this one is over! 
Similarly, Summaya Al Suwaidi’s photographic images contained nothing distinctly local in content but did seem to be staking a claim for some kind of new local genre of their own. UAE gothic perhaps? The unsettling atmosphere in Lateefa Maktoum’s consumate study of perspective could also fit this category.
Of the other work in the show that connected physically to the locale, Alya al Sanad’s faces covered in sand are sensual and intense while her photographs of vague figures taken through a dirty windscreen are like stills from a UAE road movie that hasn’t been made yet. In one of four video works Khalil Abdul Wahid filmed a short journey through his windscreen with visibility so bad at times due to fog or rain, that I’m sure he was risking a serious accident. It was quite a relief when he put the windscreen wipers on! 
