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ABU DHABI - In cooperation with the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), the Kalima translation project, affiliated to the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH), has published a new book entitled "Seven Days in the Art World", written by Sarah Thornton. The book was translated into Arabic by Dr. Siddiq Mohamed Jawhar.
The publication of "Seven Days in the Art World", the amusing ethnography, comes as part of a collection of new publications released on the sidelines of the third session of the Abu Dhabi Art Exhibition, organized by ADACH and TDIC. The publications discuss some of the main topics covered by the overall programme, such as the history of art in the Middle East, the international art market, and the cross-cultures art.
The book has been a great success at the global level. It was translated into fourteen languages. It takes readers beyond the scenes of the world of art, from schools of art to auction houses, showing how work is done in these places. The book gives us a rich sense, as if we were living the experience in real life, through a series of daily stories from New York, Los Angeles, London, Basel, Venice and Tokyo. It also explores the dynamics of creativity, taste, money, marketing, and search for the meaning of life.
When some aspects of the cultural landscape decline and disappear for long or short periods, visual art lovers move to other areas in the cultural space, in an attempt to challenge the outdated and traditional methods that caused stagnation and recession in the cultural domain. In this context, it must be recognized that, although we became more familiar with education, we do not read much. Culture at the present time has become a visual culture, transmitted via various display monitors and through the internet and YouTube.
Some people lament and even mourn the disappearance of the time when people used to read. The emergence of a new era is seen by them as a setback or backflow to the past and the times of verbal cultures. However, others believe that this era is witnessing a growth in the so-called video education or visual culture. In this era, the cultural and knowledge development depends largely on what the eye sees. Learning a culture has been accompanied by fun and all that pleases the eyes.
Art has crossed borders in the era of globalization, which moves very quickly. Unlike the cultural forms that take words as a means of communication, art can be transformed into an effective universal language understood by all people around the world. Art has common denominators with other cultural patterns. The paradox here is that the popularity of art has increased because art products became more expensive. The expensive products have become the lead headlines in the press and news bulletins. Therefore, arts are promoted as entertainment products and symbols of distinguished social status. During the period of economic recovery witnessed by the art market, the rich people in the world made profits by the billions.
In a digital world in which the number of cloned cultural products is increasing, the original artistic products have become similar to real estate and lands in terms of value. The wealthy seek to acquire these products as assets that will not be wasted. Auction companies and houses started to appease new segments of society that have never purchased artistic products. These companies are keen to promise customers that it is possible for them to resell the works of art they bought from the companies if needed. Thus, investors wanted to buy contemporary artistic products as a successful investment. Therefore, huge amounts of money were brought into the art market. The investment value of artistic products remains standing even in times of economic recession.
The world of art in general is a gray area with characteristics of which are difficult to determine. But in public auctions, which represent the business side of this world, things are completely different. This art is either black or white, in the sense that auctions highlight the output of the art world by removing its ambiguity and uncertainty. It is clear that artists and writers tend to make an aura of mystery about themselves, and find joy in doing that. They love gray areas that provide them with an appropriate atmosphere through which they form their world. The price determined by the hammer of auctioneer in public auctions is fixed, final and irreversible. The hammer has the last word.
Thirst for the art world lies in the complications and entanglements involved in this world, which eliminates all presumed barriers and separators. In the art world, there are no barriers between work and play, between local and global, between culture and economy, or between what is artistic and what is political. It is certain that one will commit a grave mistake if they think that people of the art world believe in equality or democracy. The world of art is not just a utopia for running new artistic experience and exchanging ideas. Rather, it is a world based on personal discrimination and the exclusion of others from the field. It is also a community in which one seeks to achieve something of partial excellence, even if limited. It is a world that requires combination of divergent and different things. One may succeed in that and may come out of the experience empty-handed.
The world of contemporary art is "the world of high ranks". This world was established in the form of a hierarchical class system governed by uncertainty and contradictions. In the world of art, there are no signs of transparency regarding issues and concepts related to things such as fame, reputation, credibility, belonging to particular institutions, education, intelligence, wealth, the size of holdings, the assumed historical importance, and others. Some tricks and conspiracies are plotted in the art world, and some people confess that they enjoy these tricks and conspiracies, but others do not like these machinations and intrigues that can not be tolerated. This is because the way these machinations and intrigues look is different from what they are. This is part of the process of deception and the mechanism of breaking the bones of competitors. The art world in general and the art market in particular are two ambiguous and mysterious worlds, and ordinary people can access only the minimum of their secrets. Even after one becomes part of the trusted inner circle, whether in the art world or in the maze of art markets, this does not mean that they are permitted to access all secrets and crypts.
The methodology adopted in this book, which aims at recording the events that took place over seven days in the art world, is a reflection of the author's vision about the nature of the artistic community which is not a dynamic system or a mechanism working smoothly, but consists of warring and conflicting sub-groups, each of which believes in different definitions of art.
The author worked hard in this study to explore the various problems surrounding the world of art by offering seven narratives whose events were associated with six cities located in five different countries. The chapters of the book include reports about the diary of each city, separately. The first chapter, “Public Auction”, is a detailed report describing an exciting event that took place inside a hall designed for public auctions at Rockefeller Center in New York. Some people see that public auctions are only mass graves where artworks are buried. They believe that auctions are similar to morgues or refrigerators, in which unidentified dead bodies are placed. Others, however, see that auctions are free zones designed for displaying artworks for the last time.
The second chapter, “The Art Criticism Forum”, examines and analyzes the proceedings of a legendary symposium at the California Institute of the Arts, an incubator of all fine arts. At the institute, students turn into artists and learn the basics of the craft. There is a strong relationship between filthy richness in an auction house and the modest budget allocated for the development of artistic creativity in art institutes. It is necessary to understand the nature of each of them to access the world of art and its mechanisms.
Similarly, chapter three, “Arts Gallery”, and chapter six, “A Visit to the Studio”, review problems of a reciprocal nature and ideas of opposite connections.
The first is related to the consumption of artistic products, and the second deals with ways and means of their production. While the studio remains to be the best place to understand the quality of artistic production by one particular artist, the arts gallery represents a means to market and display art products in a manner that is not free of ostentation and showing off in front of the audience. This distracts minds and takes away from the attendees their ability to focus on any specific work of art.
The fourth chapter explores the events associated with the ceremonies of awarding the British Turner Prize when the jury decided to select one of four artists, whose names were included in the list of candidates, in order to ascend the podium and receive the prize at a ceremony broadcast on radio and TV.
This chapter deals with the nature of competition between artists and the importance of getting medals in their artistic careers, as well as the relationships between media apparatuses and authorities supervising exhibitions and art museums.
Chapter five, “The Magazine”, sheds light from many directions on the roles of the art criticism sections in specialist magazines and how far they are even-handed.
The chapter begins by discussing the orientations of editors who work at Artforum International, one of the most famous commercial magazines in the world of arts.
This chapter includes discussions held with senior critics in the field of art criticism as well as reports of meetings held with a number of historians in the arts field whose views were examined and reported. One of the topics covered in this chapter was the effect of cover pages in art magazines on the receiver, in addition to the impact of art reports issued by press organizations on the image of art and artists and how they enter into the annals of art history.
While the incidents and developments of the sixth chapter, “A Visit to the Studio”, take place in three places in Japan, the events of the last chapter, "The Biennale", take place in Italy’s Venice during the convention of the oldest international arts exhibition in the world.
The Biennale (art exhibition) is supposed to encourage the spirit of adventure and push the wheel of the world of art forward, according to the viewpoint of the author. The Biennale should also make a breakthrough in the system, and try to bring some movement to the stagnant waters. It is not one of The Biennale’s tasks to clone everything that is traditional and conservative, and the Biennale should not be against everyone who seeks to take risks.
Entering the world of arts needs some rare skills, and it is difficult to pass general judgments on this world. It is impossible to get to the bottom of it; unlike gold, precious stones, and diamonds, art has its aesthetic value, and that is why it is distinguished and admirable. When one sells gold or diamonds, they sell something, but when one sells their art or innovations, they sell themselves. This is the difference between art and the other precious possessions.
The author of the book, Sarah Thornton, is a famous Canadian researcher, academic and journalist living in London. She has a PH.D in social sciences. She has done studies and researches in the art history. She held several academic positions in British universities. She has also produced a series of articles and studies about the history of art, published in the most important Western newspapers and magazines, such as Artforum International, the Guardian, the Economist, and the Sunday Times.
In 1996, Thornton published a book, "The Culture Club", which deals with the history of the contemporary British culture. One of her most important works is this book which was translated to many languages.
The translator of the book is Dr. Siddiq Mohamed Jawhar. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English Language from the Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1981, and worked as a assistant lecturer in the same university. He then obtained a Master’s degree and a PH.D in English literature, from Indiana University in the US. He then taught translation at some Arab universities.
Dr Jawhar also worked as an interpreter and translator for some government agencies in Arab countries and the world. He is a member of several translation associations in Europe and North America. Dr Jawhar has produced several research papers and studies, published in refereed international periodicals in the US, Australia, Britain and several European countries. This is in addition to a number of works translated into Arabic and English.
The Kalima translation project is an independent initiative, affiliated to ADACH and is supported and sponsored by His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. It is a not-for-profit project that seeks to revive the activity of translation in the Arab world, through the translation, publication and distribution of a wide selection of books from several world languages in various fields, and presenting them to the Arab reader in a premium-quality copy.
The Tourism Development and Investment Company is the master developer of the most prominent cultural, residential and tourist destinations in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. This is achieved through its cultural programme, represented in the development of the cultural region in Saadiyat, the biggest gathering of cultural institutions of its kind in the world.
The principal aim of the company is to find a platform to host artistic and cultural festivals and exhibitions at the highest international level, with the UAE being its headquarters.
The cultural region will also host a number of important museums, including the Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi Louvre, and Abu Dhabi Guggenheim.
On the grounds that education is an important tool in finding and providing job opportunities in the state and the region, the company has undertaken the task of boosting interaction and participation of society in the building and urban, cultural and artistic development of the capital, Abu Dhabi, in addition to enhancing the professional and knowledge skills of the audience.
This was demonstrated by the company’s launch of several open dialogues in which representatives of the most prestigious pioneering cultural institutions in the world participated.