Marc Gauthier

[Pêche interdite/No Fishing [Fishing prohibited/No Fishing], Thierry Arcand-Bossé, 2008, Quebec City]

Efforts to improve nearby ramps of highway Dufferin-Montmorency continue in the Saint-Roch district of Quebec City. The destruction of two ramps freed some space where a new park will be built: Xi’an park.

Since June, manhole covers decorated by Quebec artists have been put in place. These works of art are integrated into the street furniture of the city.

[Future Xi'an Park, 2008, Quebec City]

Non-profit organization Folie/Culture is behind this initiative. In a previous post, I related my visit to the workshop of artist Paryse Martin, who had shown me the design for her cover. The result is as pleasing as the drawing suggested.

[Sketch, Quand la nature fait naître des fictions [When nature creates fictions], Paryse Martin, 2008, Quebec City]

[Quand la nature fait naître des fictions [When nature creates fictions], Paryse Martin, 2008, Quebec City]

Did you know? Folie/Culture “seeks to inform, to raise awareness, and to promote in the area of mental health. It organises events that follow unusual directions in research while at the same time motivating reflection on questions relating to painful social issues.”

[Dérapage [Slippage], Cooke-Sasseville, 2008, Quebec City]

The idea of integrating a banana peel on laughs and to call it Dérapage [Slippage] makes one smile. It should be noted that Cooke-Sasseville appears to have a busy summer! The duo also participates in the Triennal at the Montreal Museum of contemporary art and in Quebec Gold, which takes place in the city of Reims (France).

You can download a map of the circuit by visiting the website of Folie/Culture. I also prepared a circuit on Google Maps.

[Circuit, Google Maps]

[Prière d'écraser [Please crush], François Chevalier, 2008, Quebec City]

Did you know? Xi’an park owes its name to the nearby street. It marks the site of the former Chinatown of Quebec City, ravaged when the highway was built. The city of Quebec also has a cooperation agreement with the Chinese city of Xi’an since 1999.

[Cité suspendue [Suspended City], Laurent Gagnon, 2008, Quebec City]

It would have been interesting to name the artists on their plates. At the very least, a panel indicating the intention behind the idea to passerbies would have communicated the intentions of the exhibit to a wider audience. Furthermore, the absence of a title takes away basic information that adds to the pleasure when watching the works.

Finally, the rust that has emerged quickly surprises me: are these works permanent or will they be withdrawn at the end of the year? An article [in French] suggests that they’ll stay in place until the end of their useful life. Folie/Culture says that the exhibit closes on December 31, 2008. In all cases, it would seem like their useful life is relatively short…

[Vertigo, Jacques Samson, 2008, Quebec City]

It is difficult to talk about this exhibition without a mention of the censorship which hit artist Martin Bureau. Indeed, his drawing of Queen Elizabeth II mixed with a reindeer head was censured by the foundry Bibby Ste-Croix (a subsidiary of McWane located in Alabama) and the city of Quebec. If the artist wanted “to make people talk”, it seems that critic is liken to “Debbie-Downers” in the Old-Capital. The censorship thus took place without raising an eyebrow.

The exhibition Manhole Madness is presented on Saint-Vallier street, under the ramps of Highway Dufferin-Montmorency, until December 31st, 2008. The initiative is an official event of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City.

Further reading:
* My post on the drawing from Paryse Martin
* My post on manhole cover art
* My circuit on Google Maps
* The site of the organization Folie/Culture
* Official map to identify the works
* Carte officielle pour repérer les oeuvres
* Des Photographs taken during the inauguration on June 2008
* Article in French from weekly Voir with a picture of the artists
* Canoe, in French, on Martin Bureau’s censorship

[Alfred Pellan (1958), Gabriel-Desmarais Fund [Fond Gabriel-Desmarais], Quebec National Library and Archives [Bibliothèque nationale du Québec]]

The Quebec National Library and Archives [Bibliothèque nationale du Québec] has put online their first photographs from Gabriel Desmarais. Working in the Quebec artistic community for many years, it is now possible to see several of his photos on the Internet.

If the collection presents popular quebec artists (like Dominique Michel and Jean-Pierre Ferland), some visual artists were also captured on film like painters Alfred Pellan (1958), Jacques de Tonnancour (1961), Rita Legendre (1961), Guido Molinari (1964), Marcel Barbeau (1964) and sculptor Jean-Julien Bourgault (1964).

It is the first step to digitize 4200 pictures of the photographer.

[Improv Everywhere]

After paralyzing a New York train station and creating a musical in a shopping mall, Improv Everywhere does it again.

This time, the group, helped by pairs of identical twins, created a mirror effect in the New York subway. The video is available on their site and on youtube.

Half of Quebec museums operate with a budget of less than $ 123,000.

Manif d’Art 4 draws to its end - we’re in the final sprint until Sunday.

The Museum of French America [Musée de l'Amérique-Française] presents Forgotten Presence: The Huguenots in New France until March 22, 2009.

[photo credits: Idra Labrie, Musée de l'Amérique-Française]

This week is also the good time to visit the archaeological area of the Palais in Quebec City. It is open to the public until June 13. It is on this location the Palace of the Intendant of New France was located. It is also where the first brewery operated in Quebec. The Côte du Palais draws its name from the building.

The Visionaries’ Garden [Le Potager des Visionnaires] was inaugurated this week. Charming - but I didn’t take my breath away.

Another week, another grandiose architectural project for Dubai. This week: a new amphitheatre for the opera, designed by Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher. It must be where all that money from oil is spent. [Other photos]

[Draft of a cultural centre and an opera, Dubai; Source: Dezeen Blog]

A museum guard who did not like a painting by Vija Celmin decided to cut it with a key. The act of vandalism has proved fatal to the work. The painting Night Sky # 12 was exposed in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.

Some gold artworks stolen from the Museum of Anthropology at the University of BC are back.

In 1957, an art gallery in California is closed by police in Los Angeles. The exhibition by Wallace Berman is considered obscene. It will be the only solo exhibition of the artist.
In 1962, Andy Warhol presents his first solo exhibition at the same place: Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans. Five cans were sold at $ 100 each, but the owner of the gallery bought the lot to keep it intact.
Both events took place in the Ferus Gallery. Its story is told in the documentary The Cool School, which was broadcasted this week by Independent Lenses. It reruns on Vermont Public Television (WETK) (Thursday 12, 3:00; Friday, 13, 22.00) and PBS Mountain Lake (WCFE) (Sunday 15, 23:30). Set your VCRs!

The photographer Claude Dityvon died in La Rochelle.

The exhibition of contemporary art Art Basel ended with a massive crowd success: 60,000 people have passed through the doors.

A Russian billionaire decides not to sponsor a retrospective devoted to Kabakov. The event will take place anyway.

Tate Britain asks the public to help it buy an oil sketch by Rubens. The work in question, The Apotheosis of James I, is a study of the ceiling of the Banqueting House in London. It is important for some English people.

[Banqueting House; source: wikimedia.org]

The Montreal Biennnal offers, for 2009, to open its programming to Internet users. Seeking to redefine itself, the event will unlock the doors of the event. According to the website:

” [...] the Biennale will use elements of [ the shift towards open models] in creative activity and cultural production to generate some of the content of the Biennale. ”

A reference to YouTube appears to have been made in the press conference [in French; English automatic translation].

I feel scepticism towards this approach. User-generated content is often of uneven quality. The spectacular and the unusual are represented in a disproportionate manner. Are we to expect such works?

” Celebrating projects which show ways in which individual creativity operates in the day-to-day experiences and interactions of people as they rework their surroundings and immediate environment [...] ”

Great! I look forward to seeing a video, shot on a 99-dollar digital camera, taking place in the kitchen, where the artist will create a culinary work. Hurray. Aren’t there already tons of those art pieces on YouTube, like the Heinz Kitchen Artist.

I hope the Montreal event goes beyond that, even though it is fun to watch.

The Quebec Triennal is presented for the first time at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal [Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art]. Entitled “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”, it offers 135 works created by 38 artists. Using this event as an excuse, I wondered about the Web presence of each of the artists presented.

To classify artists according to their Internet reputation, I selected three criterias: the number of links found by Google, the management of domain names [like artist_name.com] and the presence or absence of a page in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

[Julie Doucet, Pantalitaire 2, 2007, 8 collages, 30 x 137.1 cm]

The title of Queen of notoriety on the Internet is bestowed upon Julie Doucet. With 63,000 links on her behalf, 4 articles in Wikipedia, a website owned by a publisher and an official site, we can say without embarrassment that the artist is known on the Web, mainly because of her comics.

[David Altmejd, Berger [Shepherd], 2008, wood, mirror, crystal, horsehair and painting, 365.7 x 152.4 cm x 121.9, with the kind permission of the Andrea Rosen Gallery; photography: Ellen Page Wilson ]

Accompanying Julie Doucet atop the notoriety list on the Internet, David Altmejd ranks second with 51,400 links, 3 articles in Wikipedia and a cybersquatted site.

Among other results of this unpretentious study, I noted that many artists have websites well done: Nicolas Baier, Gwenaël Bélanger, Patrick Bernatchez, Michel de Broin, Raphaëlle de Groot, Manon De Pau, Doyon-Rivest, Romeo Gongora, Adad Hannah, Isabelle Hayeur, Bettina Hoffmann, Lynne Marsh, Serge Murphy, Jocelyn Robert.

Surprisingly, some artists prefer .net or .org instead of .com even when the latter is available. This is the case of Michel de Broin, Raphaëlle de Groot and Bettina Hoffmann.

It should finally be noted that David Ross and Carlos Sanchez were excluded from the rankings. The fact of the matter is that their names are also those of personalities known in other areas, which greatly disturbs the data.

Ranking of MACM Triennal artists according to their Internet presence

Julie Doucet: 11.30
David Altmejd: 9.14
Michel de Broin: 2.85
Isabelle Hayeur: 2.70
Jocelyn Robert: 2.42
Lynne Marsh: 2.15
Adad Hannah: 2.03
Bettina Hoffmann: 1.60
Nicolas Baier: 1.37
Michael Merrill: 1.26
Jason Sanchez: 1.23
Gwenaël Bélanger: 1.15
Patrick Bernatchez: 1.09
Doyon-Rivest: 1.08
Raphaëlle de Groot: 1.08
Serge Murphy: 1.06
Manon De Pauw: 1.06
Romeo Gongora: 1.01
Charles Guilbert: 0.70
Yannick Pouliot, WWKA, Louis-Philippe Eno, Chih-Chien Wang, Stephane Gilot, Etienne Zack, Cooke-Sasseville, Emanuel Licha, Manon Labrecque, Cynthia Girard, Karen Tam, Tricia Middleton, Jon Knowles, David Armstrong Six, Patrick Coutu, Valerie Blass, Anthony Burnham, Jonathan Plante, Adrian Norvid followed with less than 0.5.

Methodology

The name of the artist as well as the term art were entered in the search engine Google. I forced the search engine to include the term art in each of the pages found so that artists working with homonyms in other areas were not privileged.

The first five results are as follows:
David Ross: 163,000 links
Carlos Sanchez: 148,000 links
Julie Doucet: 63,000 links
David Altmejd: 51,400 links
Michel de Broin: 28,500 links

The last five results are as follows:
Valérie Blass: 360 liens
Anthony Burnham: 334 links
Romeo Gongora: 132 links
Jonathan Plante: 120 links
Adrian Norvid: 48 links

Each tens of thousands of links gave a point. Thus 163,000 links attributed 16.3 points.

The presence of articles in Wikipedia gave a point by page in each language.

Domain names purchased by a third person gave a point. David Altmejd and Lynne Marsh both “benefited” from this involuntary notoriety.

The presence of an official website gave a point.

It should be noted that this ranking has no scientific claim. It reflects the Internet buzz according to personal considerations from the author of this blog.

Each component of the scores can easily be criticized. Thus, Paris Hilton gets 3.3 million links, even when her name is bound to the word “art”. Moreover, the results vary from Google servers on which research is conducted. To be more effective, I would have had to use a search tool that searches the data centers of Google…

In the end, nothing beats a visit to the museum to let go of the buzz and feed one’s own thoughts!

[source: Lena Gieseke]

A three-dimensional journey into the heart of the masterpiece by Picasso: Guernica. If the iconography of the work is done with loyalty, Picasso’ thoughts on formal aspects of painting are wiped out. Exit the use of drawing, the likeness to collage and flatness in drawing.

Nevertheless, it provides a few minutes of happiness.

[Thanks to Nicolas for the link]

* The Montréal Museum of Fine Arts offers tours of 30 minutes over lunch to discover an artist. A pleasant way to feed one’s soul. Upcoming events: 4th and 5th of June 2008 at 12.15. The artist: Jean-Paul Riopelle. [More]

* The Manif d’art 4 currently takes place in Quebec City. It takes a lot of courage and almost a survival guide to organize your activities on the website of the event. I’m still looking for a way to get a Manif card, necessary for the visit of Toi / You, la rencontre [You/You, The Encounter].

Despite these difficulties, it should be noted that the annual exhibition of visual arts students from Laval University, presented by Loto-Quebec, opens this Friday, May 30th.

* Television channel artv offers new episodes of the French series Palettes. Narrated by art historian Alain Jaubert, each episode explores the history behind a work of art that has marked Western art. If it isn’t found in the list of programs of the specialty channel, it still is worth a look, having been celebrated at the last FIFA Montreal. Being the happy owner of the 18-DVD box set, I recommend these films that are pleasantly instructive. This week: Burial at Ornans by Courbet [May 25 at 7:30, 28 / 5 3:28, 28 / 5 15:29].

[Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850, oil on canvas, 314x663 cm, Musee d'Orsay, Paris; photographic source: Wikipedia]

* Quebec painter Claude Théberge died. The municipality of Notre-Dame-du-Lac has devoted a website to the artist.

* Record books will have to be revisited: skyscraper Burj Dubai is now the highest structure in the world. Peaking currently at 650 meters, it is expected to reach 819 meters by the end of its construction. By way of comparison, the CN Tower stretches over 553 meters [it is time to update the Web site describing it as the highest structure in the world, a title lost a few years ago ...], the 1250 René-Levesque of Montreal [IBM-Marathon] measures 230 metres and the Complex G Quebec stands at 176 meters, with the antenna.

[Burj Dubai; photographic source: Wikipedia]

* The sequel to A Night at the Museum, starring Ben Stiller, began its shooting. The action takes place at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. It is the first time in 162 years that the institution allows the use of its name in a film.

* Sir Anthony Caro, British sculptor, has be answered ‘No thank you!’ by the City of London. He offered them his most ambitious sculpture to date. Result: the work Millibank Steps is now on sale for nearly $ 5 million.

* The only complete copy of the Manuscrit du surréalisme by André Breton was sold this week for $ 5.5 million at Sotheby’s Paris. The lot included eight other manuscripts that many feared would be dispersed.

[Source: Wooster Collective]

Plastic bags, ventilation grates, three black dots and the talent of the artist.

Code from the National Gallery of Canada is no longer visible to every visitor who goes on the Web site. Problem solved!

Further details:
* My post on the National Gallery and their technical problem