The kilo price of Maurizio Cattelan’s track and the fact that the auction house Sothebys sold an AI robot’s portrait of the father of AI Alan Turing for a million dollars, have been talked about a lot in the past year. That the robot’s art most closely resembles a bad Francis Bacon copy matters less. Money and AI are topics that receive an inordinate amount of attention.
Bananverket is still open for talks. The robot is dumb and stupid.
Apollo is not Jesus
Another event out of the ordinary was the global misunderstanding surrounding one of the Paris Olympics’ many opening tableaus. The inspiration was not Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper – as the Vatican, many bishops and an inordinate number of (easily offended) Christians believed. An indignant Donald Trump thundered, for example, that “the opening ceremony was a disgrace!”.
In fact, it was “Feast of the Gods” by Dutch fifteenth-century painter Jan van Bijlert, who was the model.
Think about it! If Greek gods such as Dionysus, Cupid and Flora are at the party, then of course it is Apollo, the god of the sun, poetry and art, and no one else, who sits there in the middle. Jesus!
There were great Swedish expectations for the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, but critics and audiences remained ambivalent. Swedish-Chilean Valeria Montti Colque made a stronger impression in the Chilean pavilion. And on Swedish soil, it was Romanticism that melted the most hearts in a well-made exhibition at the National Museum.
Photo salon for all photographers
2025 is still an uncast candle. But perhaps we will see the return of the collective when the Hasselblad Foundation’s “Photo Salon” opens in the spring in Gothenburg. Everyone who considers themselves a photographer has been invited to an open call and now a four-man jury sits and sifts the chaff from the wheat.
The question is whether a large number of photographers mean a sharper or blurrier picture of the present?
Dry up Öresund
Another collective exhibition to look forward to is “Dry Öresund!”. It was Tetrapak’s founder Ruben Rausing who hatched the slightly absurd idea 70 years ago. And now Malmö Konsthall, which celebrates 50 years, brings together artists from both sides of what is still a strait. Hopes and failures in the event of major societal transformations, it should be about.
It could be exciting! In a time when everything flows.