Time Makes Art, Destroys It, and Finds It Again

"Art and Exhibitions" is a new QDaily column, updated weekly. We try to use an independent perspective to show the art world as it really is — real, interesting, and sometimes not entirely likable.

This Week's Exhibition: The Lithuanian Pavilion

The 58th Venice Biennale gave the Lithuanian Pavilion the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

Lithuania brought an opera-style performance, Sun & Sea (Marina). Visitors stand on a second-floor balcony and look down at an artificial beach on the ground floor, where performers lie on comfortable beach chairs and blankets, dozing or playing with their phones. The hall echoes with seagulls, an ice cream cart, and the performers' singing — about airplanes and pineapple-juice rum, and about the Chinese sweatshops that make swimsuits.

artnet's review argued that too much art about climate change is "bad" art: preachy, shallow, grand but empty, always trying to solve the problem with symbols that lack imagination. Sun & Sea drops down instead into ordinary daily life and shows how pollution actually gets made — as the mess left behind by rich vacationers, damage done in idleness that no one can undo.

Anyone who has been to Venice will find nothing unfamiliar in this invented scene.

Sun & Sea is performed at the Lithuanian Pavilion every Saturday, with 20 performers acting for eight hours straight.

This year's Golden Lion for Best Artist went to the American artist Arthur Jafa, whose video work examines race in the United States.

Major News

Nobuo Sekine, founder of Japan's Mono-ha ("School of Things") movement, died in Los Angeles on May 13 at the age of 76. Sekine's 1968 sculpture Phase—Mother Earth consists of a hole 2.7 meters deep and a cylinder of earth molded from the soil dug out of it. The piece used Zen philosophy to probe the meaning of matter, and gave rise to the idea of Mono-ha (もの派). The movement's influence shows plainly in the work of the Korean artist Lee Ufan, now on view at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.

In an interview with Oriental Morning Post's Art Review, Sekine once said that in the 1960s, when Japanese art was racing to imitate Europe and America, "Mono-ha did not want to be shaped by foreign schools; it was a return to ideas we in the East already had." Mono-ha also inspired Japan's contemporary land art, which shares its concern with bringing a work into harmony with its surroundings.

Better technology is changing how people read some classic paintings. In 1979, researchers found a hidden Cupid inside Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, a famous work by the 17th-century Dutch painter Vermeer — a painting within the painting, covered over by the blank wall behind the girl. At the time no one understood why Vermeer had given up on that part of the scene.

Now, after a close analysis of the paint layers, researchers at the Dresden State Art Collections have reached a conclusion they call beyond doubt: the paint covering the Cupid was added decades after Vermeer died. If Vermeer always meant Cupid to be there, then the guesses about the letter in the girl's hand are confirmed — yes, it is a love letter.

Uta Neidhardt, a senior conservator, said this was "the most moving experience of my career." The museum plans to remove the later paint and restore what Vermeer intended. Art history keeps producing surprises like this one: time can erase a detail and a maker's intent, and time, with the help of trained eyes and technology, can also bring the art back to life.

Artists Say

"Since life today is already so virtual, why would I still need a body?"

Ayakamay, American artist

On May 6, the Instagram account of the New York artist Ayakamay posted a set of images with a long caption. The post said that some of the work Ayakamay made in her lifetime would be shown and given away free at a private space belonging to her friend and patron, Williard Morgan.

The news shocked her friends. Her official website says she was born in 1985 into a Japanese-American family in Tennessee, fell in love with photography in her teens, and moved to New York in 2006 hoping to become a performance artist.

The odd part, according to an artnet investigation, is that no one can publicly confirm or deny the death. Friends and collaborators either keep conspicuously quiet or say they don't know. The patron who provided the space posted a memorial message hinting that the artist had killed herself, then deleted it. Secondhand word reaching Ayakamay's friend Kurt McVey says the artist is still alive and all of this is a performance.

McVey is angry about it. The day before her "death" he got a text from her saying she felt weak and needed company. He thinks she may have been using him to build a false atmosphere, which he calls cheap. Other friends have also accused the artist and her patron of trading on other people's tears for attention.

At best — depending on where you stand — this is a cruel experiment or a publicity stunt. Playing games with one's own identity has precedents. The conceptual artist Lutz Bacher, who died of a heart attack last week, never made her real name or age public, and the portrait of her on her gallery's website had the facial features erased.

On Taste

Gucci has started a project called "#GucciGig," inviting musicians and artists to make Polaroids, collages, videos, flyers and more that reflect their own tastes and personalities. Gucci will also open a Spotify account to collect playlists these musicians build in unexpected ways. The point, again, is to reach new groups of buyers. Gucci has long stayed close to music, working with Jared Leto, Florence Welch and Lana Del Rey, among others.

The contemporary art stars Catherine Opie and Cindy Sherman have moved their work onto a new material: cameo gemstones. In 2017 the jeweler and collector Liz Swig saw Catherine Opie's work in London and wondered what those large portraits would look like carved into stone. The result is a series called "Cameo," which includes earrings and cufflinks.

Swig said she wanted to link something contemporary to cameo gems and give this old form of jewelry a new life. The series was launched at the Venice Biennale and comes from LIZWORKS, a platform Swig founded to pair contemporary artists with fashion brands.

Market Makers

US$91.1 million — Jeff Koons, whose market has been weak in recent years, set a new auction record for a living artist with the stainless steel sculpture Rabbit at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. Guess who bought it? The art dealer Robert E. Mnuchin, father of the current US Treasury Secretary.

Rabbit was made in 1986, inspired by an inflatable children's toy. It carries the innocence and pop feeling common in Koons's work; you can see traces of modern masters like Brâncuși, Duchamp and Warhol in it, and it is easy to think of Miffy or Takashi Murakami's sunflower sculptures. Some sneer at it as "cheap"; others praise how fully Koons explored stainless steel.

"Most expensive living artist" is not a stable title. The previous record was set on November 15 last year, when the British painter David Hockney's Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) went for US$90.31 million. Before that? Jeff Koons again, with Balloon Dog, at US$58.405 million in 2013.

Claude Monet's Les Meules (Haystacks), estimated at more than US$55 million, sold for US$110.7 million at Sotheby's New York Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 14. It is the first Impressionist work to pass US$100 million at auction; another painting from the Haystacks series sold for US$81.4 million in 2016.

Sometimes, though, what fails to sell matters as much as what sells. La Jeunesse de Bacchus, promoted beforehand as William Bouguereau's most important work, drew no interest at all in the room. The painting was made in 1884, reportedly consigned by the painter's direct descendants, and takes up the ancient mythology Bouguereau loved.

Bouguereau was a French academic painter, skilled at rendering classical subjects such as Venus and shepherdesses in a 19th-century realist hand. You can feel at a glance that he and the Impressionists belong to two different eras. As the most popular painter at the Paris Salon, he drew heavy fire from the Impressionists, who were in revolt against Salon art. As modern art rose, this kind of painting — rigorous, idealized, out of step with its time — stopped being the star of the contemporary art salon.

A Few Exhibitions

AI: More than Human. Barbican Centre, London, England. The Barbican is running an AI-themed show that mixes science and creative work. You can try out AI research projects from top teams such as DeepMind and MIT, and interact directly with installations by Mario Klingemann, Es Devlin and teamLab. Through August 26; £15 on weekdays, £17 on weekends.

Das Bauhaus in Weimar. Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Weimar, Germany. This year marks 100 years since the Bauhaus school was founded. Weimar, where it began, has opened a new Bauhaus Museum showing the historical ties between an architectural style and a city. On May 18, Haus am Horn, the only surviving building of the Weimar Bauhaus complex, reopens to the public as well. Adult tickets 11 euros; opening hours are on the museum's official website.

International Museum Day (May 18) Special Program, Beijing. This Saturday, May 18, is International Museum Day. Today Art Museum, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing Times Art Museum, Inside-Out Art Museum, Red Brick Art Museum, M Woods, OCAT Institute, Tsinghua University Art Museum, Song Art Museum, Taikang Space, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art and the CAFA Art Museum have jointly issued an electronic combo ticket for 158 yuan, good for a single day's visit on either Saturday or Sunday.

Shining Through the Ages: Silver in Chinese Monetary History, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai. The use of silver witnessed the growth of China's economy, changes in how the state governed, and even the collapse of the imperial order. This special exhibition offers a closer look at silver and the history of China's economy and society. Through July 28, free admission, capped at 8,000 visitors a day.

Cover image: Nobuo Sekine, cropped.