Gerry Fox’s opening at 176 was a great success. There had been only 2OO guests invited and over 700 guests turned up. Beer was served from Dinos Chapman’s ice cream van which was incredibly theatrical as the bar tender happened to be the Shah of Iran’s grandson.
Melvin Bragg and whoever was lucky to be in the right place at the right time was royally entertained by Will Self.
A double-decker bus turned up and transferred the lucky 300 to Gerry and Josie’s home in Notting Hill where they gave an amazing party. By that time my shoes hurt so much I had turned into a Geisha.
Lovely Tracey came to support Gerry and 176 and Marc Quinn’s dad designed some of the technical opticals. Show awesome.
I never got to the Armory or the biennale opening in Berlin, but Lizzie had it covered.
Instead I went to Japan and South Korea, which was totally bonkers. My hosts were the International Council at the Tate and our trip was incredibly interesting even if my hubbie and I had a habit of wondering off most days we managed to enjoy a large chunk of the program. Our first visit was the Prada shop designed by Herzog and De Meuron strange really, visiting a shop with no shopping, we were all quite disappointed! By listening to Roger and his amazing vocabulary which was beyond entertaining? “Undulating Diaphragm” to describe a Building was the best for me.
The Home of Obaya built by Tadao Ando and Olafur Eliasson was the most beautiful site in Tokyo.
Then we were off to some island called Norashima with all this amazing art and architecture. I can only describe it really as James Bond Island. We saw two Museums and stayed in a hotel by Tadao Ando. One museum had only seven works, including Monet’s Water Lilies.
All surreal one minute we are eating in a building site called leasuriland and we are wondering if anything there is to do with art? Then we are in another amazing building which is not built by Tadao Ando and there is no Concrete!
We did manage to buy some art once in Korea, and discovered the South Korean Banksy.
After visiting so many museums I question: Japan and S Korea - what comes first the art or the architecture? For me: definitely the art. I believe good architecture needs good art but:
Does good art need good architecture?
No comments:
Post a Comment