Directional Footsteps 2 // Katharina Grosse

I've been following Katharina Grosse loosely for a few years now. Her paint sprayer-driven scribbles take over buildings attempting to override their architectural nuances. What you get is a colorful bread crumb trail of Katharina making her way up, over, and through spaces.

She was born in Freiburg/Breisgau in 1961 and lives and works between Dusseldorf and Berlin. Since October of 2000 she has been a Professor at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee.

(images top to bottom: Installation at Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX, 1999; detail of interior at Chinati, exterior painting on Berlinishe Gallerie, 2003.)

Kassab's Visual Pollution Clean-up in Sao Paolo

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Sao Paulo artists Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo obliged London's Tate Gallery by painting their distinctive yellow graffiti on outside walls of the museum. Just a month later, their hometown began rolling gray paint across one of the brothers' murals as part of clean-up efforts.

Officials did an abrupt about-face after the Pandolfos and other artists complained both to the city and in the news media. Now Sao Paulo is creating a registry of street art to be preserved, exempt from Mayor Gilberto Kassab's drive to eliminate "visual pollution.'' The episode is sparking a public discussion of what constitutes art.

"When this happened, we thought, `what a mess,''' said Regina Monteiro, who is director of Projects, Environment and Urban Landscaping and in charge of coordinating the city clean- up. "You have the English pampering our graffiti art, and we're not giving it the least bit of value?''

City officials blamed the paint-over on an overzealous interpretation of the law. The Pandolfos, who are twins, say countless murals and panels already have been lost to misguided efforts under Kassab's Clean City project.

"Outside of Brazil, graffiti art has been much more accepted,'' said Gustavo Pandolfo, speaking by telephone from Barcelona, Spain. "Galleries and museums invite us to do shows. And in Sao Paulo, where we do this mural for free as a present to the people of the city, it's viewed as trash."

Under the Clean City law, enacted in 2006, billboards were removed, signs with large corporate logos were scaled back, and graffiti is being expunged.

The Pandolfos' 680-meter (2,230-foot) mural on retaining walls along the 23 de Maio expressway, south of downtown, was half-covered by gray paint on July 3. The destruction occurred even though the art had been officially sanctioned.

Permission from the city was obtained before the Pandolfos embarked on the project in 2002. The brothers, along with Sao Paulo artist Francisco Rodrigues da Silva, known as Nunca, and Otavio's wife, Nina, spent more than a month decorating the 5- meter-high walls.

On a background of blue, colorful cartoonish faces 3 meters tall look over the eight lanes of traffic. A few of the figures are decked out in traditional regional garb, such as the leather bicorn hat of northeastern Brazilian cowboys.

Some of the city's 800 inspectors "understood the Clean City law to mean paint over anything that's irregular,'' Monteiro said. "Because the law didn't give objective criteria, it was left up to subjective opinion.''

Sao Paulo is developing those criteria, giving priority to cataloguing works of graffiti that were painted with permission from the property owner, Monteiro said. The Clean City law prohibits graffiti that functions as advertising. The city expects the catalog to be ready by November.

"What happened to the mural downtown is a pity,'' said Claudecir Jose Sivieiro, 44, an engineer from Sao Bernardo do Campo. "It was nice, and it wasn't doing anyone any harm.''

Not everyone is a fan. Some residents object to images that contain letters in particular.

"People are ruining the walls scribbling and drawing on them,'' said Armando Alves dos Santos, 74. "It's shameless. You can't have that in neighborhoods; you should paint over all of it.''

The Tate Gallery approached the Pandolfos to participate in its street-art show, which closes today, after they painted Kelburn Castle in Scotland last year at the owners' invitation. In addition to the Pandolfos, known as Os Gemeos, the exhibit shows works by Nunca; Blu of Bologna, Italy; Parisian artist JR; New York collaborative group Faile; and Barcelona's Sixeart.

The artists decorated the Tate's outside walls with paintings 15 meters tall. It is the first major display of street art at a public museum in London, according to museum documents.

Before the crackdown, South America's biggest city had been seen as a place where graffiti artists could go to work without interference from passersby or police, Gustavo Pandolfo said.

"Graffiti would stay up for 10 years, and no one would erase it,'' he said. ``People liked seeing the graffiti.''

Hundreds of the brothers' works have disappeared during the clean-up campaign, he said. That would be a costly loss if measured by the price of their gallery works.

Os Gemeos drawings sell for about $2,000, while paintings sell for about $30,000, said Alexandre Gabriel, 32, artistic director at Galeria Fortes Vilaca, which represents them.

The Tate exhibition is helping change Sao Paulo's perception of its graffiti art, Monteiro said.

"We want to make this part of the city's look,'' she said. ``It's a trademark of the city.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Paulo Winterstein in Sao Paulo at pwinterstein@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 24, 2008 23:04 EDT

Louder than Words

One Iraqi artist explains the importance of the gallery this way:

People who are staying here, they find art in the bottom of their interest. It’s not prior to them. The most prior activity is how to keep your head on your shoulders. And that was the challenge Hasan faced. To have this gallery under this terrible situation is a bravery — is real bravery. So, this is why we help him voluntarily. […] Now there is very small role for educated people in Iraq. So, we catch this opportunity. Art is acceptable. But if you directly talk in politics, you will be subject for killing. But, if you paint something, whatever the meaning is, you might be excused. So we try, through art, to say many things that are not allowed if we directly say them. And then we try, gradually, to touch some political sides of our culture. And we don’t guarantee that the next season we will be here to continue. But if we are alive, we will start again.

Baghdad Gallery NY Times story

By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: June 6, 2007

Hasan Nassar, the owner of the Madarat Gallery. “We’re trying to get back the Iraqi open mind,” he said. “It’s a chance for a new period.”

Amid the violence, the crumbling economy and rising religious and political intolerance, Hasan Nassar can see a peaceful, democratic Iraq close at hand, one in which ideas, not bullets, are paramount.

The incubator for his vision is his small art gallery in northern Baghdad, which he opened in early 2006 even as most others were shutting down. He has kept it alive with a relentless rotation of exhibits, lectures, poetry readings and film screenings.

There is urgency to this schedule. Mr. Nassar believes that culture can provide a pathway out of the hate and fear overwhelming Iraq, and he is trying to marshal like-minded Iraqis to join his movement.

Few people outside the shrinking Iraqi art world know of Mr. Nassar, and the trickle of visitors to his Madarat Gallery suggests that many Iraqis would find his notion quixotic. Furthermore, the gallery, the only one left in Baghdad with frequently rotating exhibits, is far from profitable.

But Mr. Nassar persists all the same, passing his days drinking cups of sugary black tea with a scattering of artists and bohemians in the gallery’s courtyard cafe, decorated with friends’ paintings and a stand of tall ficus plants. They talk about culture, politics and their shared belief that the salvation of Iraq rests with the redeeming and ennobling virtues of art.

“We’re trying to get back the Iraqi open mind,” said Mr. Nassar, 37, a plump man who speaks gently and smokes constantly. “It’s a chance for a new period, and I want to be part of that.”

Immediately after the invasion, the cultural community here was flush with optimism. For many artists, the fall of Saddam Hussein promised a new flowering of expression, an artistic liberation. They found clients among the returning exiles and the flood of foreigners, including diplomats and their staffs, aid workers, journalists, even the American military.

“It was the golden age,” said Hadi Mahood, 36, a painter who works in a group studio without electricity in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad. “We hoped for a good life.”

But as the Sunni Arab insurgency grew and sectarian violence overwhelmed the country, the local arts community dissipated. People stopped spending money on all but essential goods, and art sales plummeted. Nearly all of the capital’s galleries closed, and hundreds of the country’s most accomplished artists joined the Iraqis who were fleeing the country. Those who remained retreated to the obscurity of their studios or lay down their tools altogether.

Many have concluded that their lives as artists were better under Mr. Hussein.

“One million times better,” said Noori al-Rawi, 82, a painter, curator and art scholar who founded four museums in Baghdad and is regarded by many in the Iraqi art world as one of the pioneers of modern Iraqi art.

Mr. Rawi has become so depressed by the state of his country that he has not picked up a paintbrush for more than two years. He says he is ready to gather all of his art history archives — articles, books, reviews, photographs, slides and paintings — and burn them.

“I feel now that all humanity is against Iraq and against the Iraqi people and against Iraqi history and against Iraqi culture,” Mr. Rawi, frail and slight, said on a recent afternoon while sitting in his dormant studio in western Baghdad. “We entered an endless dark tunnel.”

Even during the terror and cruelty of Mr. Hussein’s reign, there was an active arts market, many galleries, and national and international art shows.

Mr. Hussein himself was a patron of the arts, sponsoring competitions, exhibitions and scholarships. But he was far from an egalitarian benefactor. He rewarded those who honored him with flattering sculptures and paintings and sometimes pressed pre-eminent artists into such projects. He punished those whose work or words stood against his rule.

“It was a dictatorship, but that dictatorship helped,” said Qasim Sabti, owner of the Hewar Gallery, which opened in 1992 in the Wasiriya neighborhood and became a cultural institution in Baghdad.

His gallery remains one of the few remaining hubs for the cultural community here. But even though its cafe is often busy, exhibits are rare. “Sometimes I am tired, too tired,” said Mr. Sabti, who is 54.

Looking back at Mr. Hussein’s rule, he described the compromises that had been necessary for survival. “You were free to do your art with the government or without the government, but not against the government,” he said.

For that reason, Mr. Nassar does not subscribe to the notion that Iraq was better for artists under Mr. Hussein. He did well with his art, selling paintings through a dealer in Austria. But, he said, life was suffocating for everyone who was not close to the regime.

“Saddam didn’t hurt my family or kill any of my relatives,” he said. “I didn’t suffer from any violence. But life was misery, especially if you liked to be free. In Iraq, you had to follow orders.

“Then we were just breathing. Now we have hope, hope for a good future.”

Optimistic comments like those have become extremely rare in Iraq, especially from people who are not politicians or generals. But while Mr. Nassar knows he is isolated, he insists that he is not alone.

“There are other people who believe this,” he said, “but they need to know each other to become a group.”

One recent morning, in preparation for a lecture by an Iraqi sculptor, Mr. Nassar arranged two dozen plastic chairs into rows in the gallery. He said he made no guarantees to any exhibitor. “He may not make money,” Mr. Nassar said, “but at least he can say: ‘I still exist. I’m still working. I’m still alive.’ ”

Sometimes the challenges are completely mundane. Shortly before the event was to begin, the power went out. Then his generator failed. The gallery was cast into darkness and, with no air-conditioning, the temperature quickly approached 100 degrees. Mr. Nassar was forced to cancel the lecture.

Still, about a half dozen people, including instructors from an art academy across the street, stuck around to talk about art and politics.

Amjad Altayyar, a painter, lamented that the dominant parties and people in Iraqi society were communicating in “the language of power and car bombs.”

“In the small society of this cafe,” he continued, “you can find artists and educated people who belong to different cultures, different nationalities. But the language among them is this notion of acceptance.”

The gallery is linked to Mr. Nassar’s organization, Attitudes Society of Art and Culture, which he founded in 2004 to help promote his notion of a progressive society through cultural programs and exchanges. The bulk of its financing has come from a United Nations program that supports new initiatives in developing countries.

But the membership has fallen with the fortunes of the country, dropping to the current level of 37 from a high of about 200. Many members have fled the country or confined themselves to their homes.

Mr. Nassar says neither he nor his assistants have been threatened by militants because of their involvement in the gallery, though he acknowledges that his liberal ethos makes him an enemy of Shiite and Sunni Arab Islamist militias. The violence all around him has at times been crushing and, last December, forced him to close the gallery for two months.

“I was a few steps away from giving up,” he admitted. But he decided that resigning would be tantamount to dying. “If Iraq were without culture, people would be like animals: the stronger eating the weak. The faster would take out the slow.”

“This war,” he said, “makes hearts like stone.”