Trigger

The incident as pictured in a contemporary newspaper

It's been a century since that 28^th of June which ended the world as it was known since then, although The Great War wouldn't start until a month later. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austria-Hungarian throne, was in a trip to observe the scheduled military manoeuvres in Bosnia, as commanded a year earlier by the Emperor Franz Joseph I (Empress Sisi's husband, for those of you fond of romantic literature). After a brief inspection of the military barracks, the six car motorcade led Franz Ferdinand and his wife Duchess Sophie to open the state museum of Sarajevo in its new premises.

Danilo Ilic, local leader of the Serbian Black Hand, had spread six of his men along the motorcade route to make they wouldn't miss their chance. Two of them missed their shot. The third one, Nedeljco Cabrinovik, threw his bomb at 10:10am but the timed detonator made it explode under the next car or the parade. Alerted by the explosion the procession sped away towards the town hall, cancelling the visit to the museum. The other three murderers failed to act as the cars passed them at high speed. History would have been so different if Franz Ferdinand stayed in instead of going to the Sarajevo Hospital to pay a visit to the affected by the explosion. On that second motorcade they were supposed to avoid trouble using a different route, but no one told the driver and thus they ended up being too close to Gavrilo Princip position, one of the murderers who after failing had moved to a better position. Princip got as close as five feet and fired two shots with a Belgian-made 9x17mm semi-automatic pistol. The first bullet wounded the Archduke in the jugular vein, the second inflected an abdominal wound on the Duchess. Both died the same day. The Austria-Hungarian Empire demanded Serbia an explanation, this one answered that the matter did not concern the Serbian Government. So the former sent the July Ultimatum, which was not conceded, and then the declaration of war. Germany was an ally of the Empire while the Kingdom of Serbia was supported by Russia, member of the Triple Entente alongside France and the United Kingdom. Hence the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary was the trigger of the first world wide conflict.

Alliances map of Europe in 1914

But why did Serbia attack its neighbour? That goes back to the Treaty of Berlin signed in 1878 by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Italy and the Russian Empire. With that treaty Serbia, Romania and Montenegro where recognised as independent kingdoms, but Bosnia remained attached to the Austria-Hungarian Empire. On the first years of the 20^th Century Serbian military officers led by Dragutin Dimitrijevic, who also took part on the 1914 assassination as the leader of the Black Hand group, stormed into the Serbian Royal Palace, killed the former king and installed in its place Peter I of Karadordevic. A new dynasty more nationalistic was born and their purpose was to reunify all the territories that belonged to the Serbian Empire (which collapsed on 1371, get over it!) including Bosnia.

So even if Austria-Hungary (and Germany) longed for an excuse to attack, it was originally Serbia who, in the shadows, broke the Treaty of Berlin. Once the conflict started the Allies came out defending one each other and although the Triple Entente was helping the “guilty” kingdom it really didn't matter any more because all these countries had little unsolved issues between them. The tension had been in the air for so long and the death of Franz Ferdinand was only the straw that broke the ice.

What would had happen if the Archduke had listened to his wife fears instead of enjoying the chance of a day out with her (as a Czech countess she was treated as a commoner at the Austrian Court so public displays of affection were not aloud, not even to sit next to her husband)? Highly probably, and sadly, history wouldn't have change much. Germany or Russian, the most eager for battle, would have found another excuse among their allies to face each other and extend their territories. Who knows if in that case Germany would also have had to pay, unfairly, most of the costs of the war and hence lead Europe, and the world, to the second major conflict of the last century. Because, after all, the Second World War was in a huge part the continuation of these unsolved issues that had been wounding Europe for so long time.

Archduk Franz Ferdinand and Duquess Sophia on 28th June 1914 in Sarajevo

Then

During the last month of February it was held in London the second edition of the Waterloo Vaults Festival. For six weeks the labyrinth of tunnels under Waterloo station were filled up with concerts, art and alternative theater. We enjoyed so much Then, the new show written by and starring Yve Blake supported by the Young National Theatre Studio.

Entrance to the Waterloo Vaults Festival

The stage is almost empty: a microphone stand, a computer, a projector and a curtain for the few but effective costume changes. But as soon as the show begins Yve Blake takes care of covering the entire stage with monologues, interacting with the projections, singing, dancing... and she even dares to go with rap!

The show begins with three questions: Who are you? Who you'll be? And, most important, who you used to be? It is from this last question that the the full show is developed. We are always the same throughout our lives? Or the situations we live make us change gradually while we grow up? Then talks about the past we used to live in, but also invites us to reflect on what this implies about changes and about life .

The project started well before staging with the creation of the website Who Were We where people around the world was invited to anonymously submit their stories, pictures or memories about the people who they used to be in the past. From there the artist created a speech including more than a hundred of the stories received to make us think about ourselves, as most of them are stories which anyone can feel identified with, putting aside a comedy look that turns the reflection in a fun and entertaining show.

Promotional image for the show

Many of the stories are read by the interpreter from behind her computer, some of them accompanied with images from the projector, while others are put together into songs linked by themes and tidying up the speech by age of this past persons. So throughout the show we see our thoughs when we were infants, how we saw the world when we went to school and the problems of becoming a teenager. The last part of the show, however, brings together the reflections of older people who also collaborated on the website and give us an idea of how they see it was their life when they were 20, 30 or 40 years old.

One of the positive parts of this structure is the increase in the intensity of emotions. Leaving the reflections of older people for the end of the show allows it to start in a much lighter and fun way, including the preference for sandwiches without crust, to gradually pass to the typical adolescence body concerns and self-acceptance. Getting to the end of the show one of the most tender and sweet songs is “You grow me up, now I'll grow you down” where, without leacing completely aside the bold and fun touch of the show, we can reflect about elderness and how generation after generation some help us to make the road to success in life while in exchange, sooner or later, we will have to help them rid the road of life.

Finally, the show concludes with a final song bringing the most interesting responses to this particular question from the site : If you had five minutes with your past you, what would you say? We invite you to answer it yourselfs.

Ricard Gispert
@ricardgispert

The riddle of modernity

The concern for being modern, for being trendy, it's not only a human life condition; it also happens in literature, for example all the novels with the same subject that came out after the success of a best-seller or even the fan-fics are a prove of that. But that concern can also be found in art subjects. That's how the different art movements arise: someone inspired tries to be original and changes the rounded arches for the highest lancet arches giving way from the Romanesque to the Gothic architecture; Edouard Monet started to paint outside instead of being closed in his study, his fellow contemporaries liked it and copy it. Originality becomes trendy and that is only break again when someone else original appears. That explains why we remember the virtuous who generate changes but most of artist who copy the new style just remain anonymous forever. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

African masks/ a portrait by Pablo Picasso

But also at the same time in art, like in trends, everything is cyclical. The bell-bottom trousers are back, or the thick plastic frame glasses... The old stuff that once was left aside is now original again. Otherwise what is vintage fashion? Well then in art it happens exactly the same: the Renaissance raises the balance and harmony typical of the Greece-Roman classic art, afterwards it comes the Baroque filling up everything with ornaments and recharged compositions that will only stop with the Neoclassicism, a new return to Greece-Roman art. Thus century after century, cycle after cycle, we arrive to contemporary art, which seems to ignore the cycle: everything is innovation and every new change looks like a complete break with all previous art. Precisely “break with everything” was the idea that contemporary artist had in mind; but intentionally or not it all still feels like a return to earlier periods. Art feeds itself. Pablo Picasso's cubism is inspired in the African traditional masks while Andy Warhol's works, despite the innovation of the technique, are just new interpretations of the portrait and the still-life, two of the main topics in Baroque paintings.

The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living, Damien Hirst (1991)

And that's how we get to Damien Hirst, a very controversial British artist in recent decades for his work with dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. Death, the main topic in Hirst's artworks, has always been deeply laden with symbolism and a strong personal meaning. A lot of artworks talk about death, but if we use death as a tool and not only as a theme: outrage! A lot of people would say “that is not art”. Aberrations of contemporary art! But, oddly, Damien Hirst hasn't been the first one in using corpses to express himself artistically. To prove it we invite you to go to Rome and visit Santa Maria della Concezione dei Capuccini's crypt. The brave who dare to go in will discover a peculiar 17^th Century decoration which the Cappuccin monks made with the bones of its ancestors: skeletons turned into statues, altars made entirely with skulls, barrel vaults decorated with tibias and pelvis... It has nothing to envy to Hirst's shark in formaldehyde.

That is the riddle of modernity: what it's now modern is what it used to be old. Two opposite poles which are touched by the tips. So now we invite you to play a little game with the comments. Help us find more examples of modern art that can be linked with ancient art.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert

Shirts, oak trees and social art

"The Blue Route", Kaarina Kaikkonen (2013)
at Fabrica space in Brighton & Hove

During this May it will be easy to find clothes hanging on the street of Brighton & Hove coinciding with the Brighton Festival. That will be the second part of the installation “The Blue Route” which is already on display at the Fabrica gallery. The project started with the Brighton Dome collecting old shirts from the citizens, as the Finnish artists Kaarina Kaikkonen works always with second-hand everyday objects, and it's her work to later on create this sort of collage with the clothes that match her design.

Why shirts? Easy. Because, in Kaarina Kaikkonen's own words, “a shirt is the closest to the heart. The person is there.” Such a bucolic step from the intimacy of a personal shirt to the opposite immensity associated to the colour blue that names the artwork; but in this way, once the work is finished, the spectator not only can play to find its shirt between the crowd but also ends up finding himself as part of the artwork, giving to it new subjective interpretative values. However, the citizen who has give his shirt will become also part of a social workshop once the Brighton Festival is over: all the shirts collected, the ones finally used in the artwork and the ones excluded, will be given to Oxfam. So in this case the social function of the art turns into a practical side.

Joseph Beuys' rocks at Documenta 7
as he left them

Art has always had this social function, either extolling the virtues of a particular social class as in more traditional artistic performances or as a criticism of social and political systems, a concept much more contemporary; but there are not that much the artworks in which the social function implies something beyond the concept like giving more than 100 shirts to charity. Perhaps one of the first remarkable examples of this kind of art are Joseph Beuys' “social sculptures”, a true believer in art as a power for the revolutionary change. 

Once moved the rocks and oak tree was
 planted next to their new location

Thus in the Documenta 7 in 1982 Beuys spread a pile of basalt rocks, which from an air-view could be seen as a big arrow pointing an oak tree that he had planted. Afterwards he announced that the rocks should only be moved if they planted an oak tree to its new site. As a result of this initiative 7,000 oak trees were planted in Kessel, Germany. I can be said that the social and environmental change that Beuys sought was more than achieved.

So let's not participate a little in the comments below: what do you think about “social art”? Do you know any other artworks like that? In which art social project would you like to take part? Or which one could we create ourselfs?

Ricard Gispert
@ricardgispert

Touch me!

Neuenschwander installation

This last months Barcelona's CaixaForum hosts the series Què pensar? Què desitjar? Què fer? (What to think? What to wish? What to do?) from La Caixa's collection of contemporary art, divided into three periods. Until Abril 8^th we can see the artwork from the second part of the series, the one called Què desitjar?, where we'll find one of the most iconic installations of the series, which actually gives name to this particular period: I wish your wish, by Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander. The work is a big polyethylene panel that covers all the wall and from which are hanged thousands of coloured ribbons with wishes the artist asked her friends to write. We can find from “I wish other people's wishes to come true”, like “I wish to make friends at school”, “I wish a fairer world” or “I wish I could travel in time and space”. The viewer stands suddenly in front of the whole range of ribbons and a small poster announcing the rules of the game: "Chose a wish and take it with you. Tie it to your wrist with two rounds and three knots” in the same way of the bracelets we used to wear when we were kids. Thus a link is established between the visitor's childhood and the artwork, spending minutes and minutes looking for the wish that best suits you and, often, looking after the room's guard double-checking if the ribbons can be taken for real. Leaving aside Neuenschwander work, so tender and original, I wanted to talk about our difficulty to play with art, to touch artwork. The history of our art and culture has taught us that art has somehow like an aura (if I am aloud once more to take Walter Benjamin as a reference), away and high, being a sacrilege to touch it; but we are forgetting that sometimes contemporary art is made to play with it, to interact, and this it is not complete until the viewer intervention. It seems hard for us to interact with artwork, we use to think it is something forbidden. We ask for permission to guides or guards, and even if we have been told we can touch or we have read instructions, we act taken by a prohibitive anxiety. An example I remember is when I visited the Museo Vostell Malpartida in Cáceres (Spain), where there were various artwork you had to interact with, like chairs you needed to sit on or a room full of dirt you had to clean or mess with a hover, according to your personality. Or the 54^th Venetian Biennial, in 2011, where at the Spanish Pavilion entrance two assistants startled the visitor with personal questions while making them walk over a tiled path that was part of the installation.

It seems to be hard when we have, when we can touch an artwork, it still seems like a blasphemy against art, but at the same time we feel the joy of reaching what is forbidden; that's why from Cultural Crops we encourage you fervently to participate, touch and play with the artwork because it is, at last, a two way game between author-artwork-receptor.

Guiomar Sánchez

@guiomar_sp

Portraits

Julius II (1512) Rfaello Sanzio

We can find it in many museums: portraits of Popes, Kings, nobles and courtiers. Nowadays we admire it as an artwork, but every portrait is also a historical document of a time and a specific ideology. Art is not only about beauty. What makes a work to be art is precisely its link with the context and, in the case of Renaissance and Baroque portraits, WHO was the person portrayed and why. Hence it is through art that the most important characters of an age are immortalized and every portrait becomes a reminder of their legacy.

For example one of the most prominent names of the Hight Renaissance would be Pope Julius II, the Warrior Pope and also Michelangello's and Rafaello's patron. But which contemporary artist could leave us a portrait of the new Pope Francis I? In the effort to preserve our past aren't we ignoring our own footprint? The answer is no. What really happens is that our footprint has changed over the centuries so the right question here will be: What will we find in futur museum when we look to portraits of our the 21st Century?

Marilyn Monroe (1960's) Andy Warhol

The figures we see immortalized in contemporary art are no longer the political and religious leaders, these groups are not anymore the most important for our society. Think about famous portraits of the 20^th Century. Probably one of the most famous would be Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe. The show business! The most important characters of our time, those that are now immortalized, are singers, actors and athletes. What would we see in futur museums showing our age? Lady Gaga's portrait.

Ricard Gispert
@ricardgispert

Art trade in times of crisis

One of the main worries of this historical period in which we are living is the purpose of capital investment and the benefits that they generate. It is for this reason that the commercialization of Art has been also included in this universe, but in a wider sense. What it is meant by the last statement is that Art is not only listed by its materiality, but since the end of the last century and especially in these first two decades of our century, many of the leading artistic productions intrinsically linked a philosophical and intellectual value that releases most of its materiality, becoming even a part of a completely Conceptual Art. However, art investors commit paying for this thought which makes us completely modern and contemporary in the world we are living.

Perhaps these words may be an offence for an expert, but it would be incorrect not to accept that the art world has been related to the trade practices almost from its inception. Therefore, considering this as a value linked to the history of art, we will look to how these productions are evaluated and how is surviving the art market in these difficult times that we living.

According to the academics, nowadays there is a remarkable difference between economic value for the old paintings -everything produced before the 20^th Century- and for contemporary productions. This is based on the high prices for Contemporary Art, which as we have said before is an art mostly paid for its conceptual and intellectual value. While art considered as “ancient” remains on stable prices and transactions, Contemporary Art gets to move about $ 60 million annually in the art market. Although these calculations include also the antiquities and decorative art's markets, anyway the thing is that the artistic world is about big numbers, or at least that's what the data show for now. Unfortunately the critical situation has also affected the world of buying and selling art. While before it was recognized that the bad economic situation had interfered the maintenance and management of the artistic heritage, nowadays, from a commercial or particular point of view, the situation has gone through a substantial decrease both on the artistic production and its commercialism worldwide, as London and New York still stand as cores of the artistic trade.

The two factions of Art mentioned respond and are governed by different laws and principles, according to the economic times in which they are. If until now the great economic bubble had opted for Contemporary Art as speculative goods, especially in the inverter collector profile, the new situation redirects the expectations in the fields of the art market. Currently, in accordance with the recessionary times we live in, the economic change projects its capital investment towards the solid markets of Ancient Art.

One of the clearest and more relevant examples showing this economical situation is the galleries and artists fair in Madrid, now on its 32th edition of ARCO, held last month in the Spanish capital. This edition also was affected by the bad economic situation affecting both the conditions of the exhibition and the works presented by the galleries and artists. Therefore, all the preparations to shape this event were performed in a more contained way, adapting art shows to the current and real world conditions. While it is reason enough to prepare the art fair for the current crisis, another fact is added as a border for the commercial development of contemporary art: the application of the 21% VAT in culture, which is presented by the galleries as the most negative point for its commercial development. This makes them confirm that Spanish galleries are not competitive against other states or countries, while there is also a weakness in the Spanish artists. Throughout this it is also very difficult to find and present the most controversial and ground-breaking artwork, as the productions adapt to the market conditions and the taste of general customer, regardless of all creative genius. However, other opinions do not completely condemn the situation and opt for a more optimistic adaptation to reality.

Finally, we will give an end to this little reflection on the current state of the art market, with Urroz's words, president of ARCO, who reflects on the art market that the business is important when it has been affected by the loss of purchasing power of public institutions, and therefore, must watch the market towards larger collectors and individuals. To put it simply, in difficult times we must opt for the less cost effective solution, so as not to reach the end of the trading of Contemporary Art, even if for a lot of people it is not seen as a very correct solution.

Antoni Obiols

I don't like Tàpies

A la memòria de Salvador Puig Antich, Antoni Tàpies, 1974

The Museum of Modern Art of Tarragona has organized an exhibition in homage to Antoni Tàpies, who passed a year ago, and I love contemporary art but I have never ever liked Tàpies. I am no ashamed to say it: there are contemporary art artists I don't like or even artworks I would never name as that. But don't get alarmed, it is not a crime, even if for years they tried to make us see it like that, in contemporary art is not about all or nothing, to love it or hate it. Contemporary art is about being critic, to judge and comment.

Some days ago I did a little experiment with a friend of mine who “doesn't like” contemporary art and so I took him to a very very contemporary art display. Before going inside I asked him what he expected from a work to consider it as art and the answer was clear: beauty, technique and being able to understand it. Soon his nightmare began: white canvas with only two lines, amorphous gum sculptures, projections of single images with nonrhythmic music... but my idea soon started to work out and I saw him standing in front of a painting which technique he liked, later another one he thought was beautiful enough and finally in the last room of the display my friend understood the message of an artwork. Maybe that wasn't the same message the author had in mind, but it was a message, the one my friend was able to find out. Step by step and with some effort my dear friend had a first agreement with contemporary art and I am sure in future displays he will be able to find more and more artworks with the features he required for an artwork, and even maybe he'll find an artwork with all the three features.

So that's exactly what the contemporary art is about: to watch the artworks with a critic opinion or even a meaning that only it's valuable four ourselves. Artists don't do “closed circles” as in Renaissance when they painted with a certain canon of beauty, a precise technique and a series of iconographic images to teach us the only true meaning of the artwork. In contemporary art we could talk about “open circles” where everything is possible, where there's is no canon of beauty because that's a subjective quality, technique can easily be the result of artist's experimentation and the artwork's meaning is not complete until the viewer interacts with it being critic and judge. All this variability implies we don't need to like or understand everything. I have found some artworks I didn't like because I wasn't able to understand it; works of the mature period of an author in which he talks about feelings linked to elderly and therefore I am too young to completely get the meaning of what he is expressing. In the same way after a few years in some artworks I have re-discovered new values I wasn't able to see when I was younger. As contemporary art isn't complete until the interaction with the viewer, the final result and meaning of the artwork will always depend on the age of the viewer and its cultural background.

Finally, if you have really tried to understand contemporary art with an open mind, if you have made an effort to complete the artworks' meaning but still you don't see what's up, let's say out loud: “I don't like contemporary art!”. Once you have tried to understand it to not like contemporary art is as permissible as to though Romanesque art is boring or Baroque too burdensome. In the art's world deny contemporary art seems to be as punished as saying that Quixote is heavy duty; and it shouldn't be like that because if, as we have said, it is a subjective art it is totally normal that not everyone sees it in the same way. But if you are going to admit you don't like contemporary art just do it right, with your own arguments and values. No more topics like “even a child could do that” or “you can do this only when you are already a famous artist”. If we are brave enough to say we don't like it we have to be also brave to admit maybe it is because we don't have the necessary tools or knowledge to appreciate it properly. Meanwhile I still don't like Antoni Tapies' art.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert