PC World Komputer 1998 May

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Text File | 1997-02-17 | 12KB | 254 lines

<HTML> <BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <RCZARTS_HEADER> <BLOCKQUOTE> <A name="1"> <CENTER> Arts Reach </CENTER> CHRISTO PLOTS GRANDE LID FOR RIO OF THAT NAME NEW MEXICO -- Christo and his wife Jeanne -- Claude have announced plans to install the biggest picnic ramada in the world over the Rio Grande south of Pilar, N.M. The plan calls for suspending fabric panels from steel wire cables above the churning waters for about five miles. The panels will be interrupted only by bridges, trees and rocks big enough to be in the way. Not in my back yard, some are already saying. The Santa Fe New Mexican fears the project will send "squadrons of Mexican owls scurrying back across the border" despite Christo's perennial promises to be sensitive to the environment. Plans call for the giant lid to remain over the river and through the woods for 14 days once installed. <CENTER> Arts Reach </CENTER> 'FLAG BALL' UNRAVELED BY VANDAL LONG ISLAND, N.Y. -- Art using the American flag remains a controversial proposition. The most recent demonstration of this occurred when an unknown vandal slashed to bits Donald Lipski's 8╨foot╨high outdoor sculpture, Flag Ball, a sphere of dacron batting surrounded by nylon printed like the American flag. The work was already raising tempers before the slashing that left about half of the exterior in shreds on the ground. Republican Congressman Peter King (N.Y.) had asked the president of the University of Long Island, where the piece was installed, to remove the "appalling and senseless act of flag desecration." The request was denied, and King participated in a protest at the campus with veterans. Snow covered the piece until recently, revealing the damage. Lipski wants the work to be seen as scheduled in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum's Phillip Morris branch. As a "visual representation of intolerance" the piece is more powerful than ever, he says. People for the American Way, which is helping Lipski research his legal options, notes the number of cases of harassment against the arts has increased by about 30 percent in each of the four years it has tracked such cases across the U.S. <A name="3"> <CENTER> Arts Reach </CENTER> LANDMARK VICTORY FOR VAN GOGH SELLER PARIS -- The one-time owner of Vincent van Gogh's Jardin a Auvers has won a monumental appeal from the French court awarding him $29 million as compensation for the government's decision to refuse an export license to him when the painting was auctioned. Jacques Walters (whose father Jean donated his entire collection to the Orangerie Museum) fought since 1982 to punish the government for denying him the license, an action he termed "abusive." Walters argued that the painting is not by a French artist and therefore not a legitimate national monument. Too, Walters noted that he himself is Swiss and brought the painting into France from outside. In December 1992, the painting was auctioned for $10.2 million. American and Japanese bidders were excluded from the sale. Experts estimated at the time that the painting might have sold for $60 million. French museum officials are concerned that the ruling will set a major precedent, making it more expensive for museums to acquire major pieces. <A name="2"> <CENTER> ArtDirect </CENTER> JAPANESE MUSEUM PAYS RECORD PRICE FOR MAGRITTE TOKYO -- A Belgian collector whose family has owned Rene Magritte's La grande famille since early in the artist's career has agreed to sell the work for $5.9 million to the city of Utsunomiya for a new museum scheduled to open in March 1997. The surrealist work is considered one of the most important paintings by Magritte remaining in private hands. The sale smashes Magritte's record price at auction of $2,028,000, set at Christie's in 1989. The price reflects Magritte's popularity in Japan: La grande famille, in particular, is featured in many art textbooks used in Japanese schools, and Magritte shows have consistently done well in Japan. <CENTER> ArtDirect </CENTER> SOTHEBY'S SETTLES OVER DISPUTED CASSATT WORK NEW YORK -- Prominent collector William C. Foxley of Foxley Cattle Co., and Sotheby's have reached a settlement regarding Foxley's claim of fraud over his purchase of Mary Cassatt's Lydia Reclining on a Divan. He bought the painting at Sotheby's for $632,000 in 1987. There were questions at the time, but the '87 sale catalogue included an essay crediting the painting to Cassatt. However, when Foxley consigned a large chunk of his collection to Sotheby's for a sale in 1993, Peter Rathbone, director of American paintings, asked to have the painting withdrawn to clear up questions about it. Foxley said he would have sued then if Sotheby's hadn't promised to refund his money if the painting turned out to be fake. Ultimately, the Cassatt Foundation excluded the painting from its catalogue raisonne, but not until the five year standard time limit for claiming refunds had passed. The U.S. District Court in Manhattan found that the delays were beyond Foxley's control, preventing him from meeting the time limit imposed by the agreement of the sale. A court battle of experts ensued until the recent settlement. The deal was described as amicable by Sotheby's and Foxley, but neither side would disclose details. <A name="3"> <CENTER> Stare Stare. It is the way to educate your eye. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. </CENTER> IN PASSING Early in 1995 the artist Danny Martinez came to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he did a bit of street performance art, How to Con a Capitalist. He also gave a talk at the local university, where he told of how tough life was in his native Los Angeles: "People come up to you when your car's stopped at a traffic light, stick a gun in your face, and blam! You're dead!" He also showed a lot of work, such as the series of five buttons ("I can't," "imagine," "ever wanting," "to be," "white") that were among the most memorable pieces of the 1993 Whitney biennale. His work attacking the rich ("In a rich man's house, the only place to spit is in his face") and the powerful has lead to a curious symbiotic relationship. The leaders of the rich and powerful art establishment keep inviting him to participate in their events, thus demonstrating that they're not only rich and powerful, but hip to boot. Still, he tirelessly goes to what he describes as "awful" events like the Whitney and Venice biennales to take advantage of the upper classes. His message went over well in class-conscious northern England, and not just among the students and art cognoscenti. While Martinez was videotaping in the town market, some of the local lads apparently mistook the working-class artist from the Los Angeles barrios for a rich American tourist. In an act that could have come from one of his street theatre, the locals robbed the rich visitor of his very expensive video camera. It was, by any definition, a class act. <CENTER> Stare </CENTER> ARTIST ENVY I'm sure that Anya Hulbert, the organizer of a day on The Art and Science of Vision at the British Association's 1995 Annual Festival of Science never intended to mislead anyone. In practice, though, the real theme of the day seemed to be "Artist Envy." Here's an example. Professor Richard Gregory from the University of Bristol began the day by asking The Question: "Does it demote art to attribute optical effects [such as those produced from Bridget Riley's work] to science rather than more lofty sources? I'm not going to try to answer." He wouldn't but I will: Yes, absolutely. Now let's put on our lab coats and examine that anecdote. I am an artist with only a minimal understanding of science in general and the scientific method in particular. Nevertheless I can give a definitive answer to a complex question without giving any proof, citing any precedents, et cetera. Just as something is art because I say it's art, an aesthetic truth is an aesthetic truth because I say so. You might say I'm wrong. You might be right. But that doesn't matter, because art is about ideas and opinions, not provable facts. And thus is it any wonder men and women who spend their entire lives attempting to prove things are jealous of artists? Tom Stoppard said it best: "What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist." Artist envy was repeated frequently by other speakers. Patrick Cavanagh from Harvard interrupted his facinating presentation on The Art of Perceiving Contour with the observation that "These are things all artists know, but that we scientists have to work out." And artist sitting next to me appeared bored during a presentation by Doctor Andrew Parker from Oxford University. My friend responded to Dr. Parson's diagrams that a subject is illuminated by indirect as well as direct light by jotting "Reflected light illuminates shadows! What a concept!" (In fairness, it should be noted that Dr. Parson went on to cite the example of 19th century photographer Fox Talbot's use of reflectors as a precedent.) Although the scientists seemed jealous of artists' license to say "It is thus because I say it is thus," the reverse was not true. Professor Heinrich Buumthoff from the Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany gave an interesting talk about Recognition and Navigation in Virtual Realities. To examine how humans perceive three-dimensional space, graduate students were asked to identify shapes on a computer monitor. The same experiment was repeated on monkeys, who reportedly were more perceptive than the humans. Professor Bülthoff introduced yet another spiffy three-dimensional graph by mentioning almost in passing that his colleagues at Baylor University then "did something they couldn't do with graduate students; they attached electrodes directly to the monkeys' brains." This apparent "fact" left many of the artists confused. Why can scientists attach electrodes to monkeys and not graduate students? Did the coauthor of some of the research, Shimon Edelman from the Weizmann Institute in Israel feel as comfortable with performing science experiments on living sentient beings? And anyway, hadn't vivisection been widely discredited as a tool of psychological inquiry? Artist envy aside, there are times when it's intellectually easier to be a scientist. That's true because I'm an artist and I said so. </BLOCKQUOTE> </BODY> </HTML>