Art Photos mixed

Foghunter
Photo by Kilian Schönberger

The Dying Sun
Photo by Arshad Ashraf

Mountain Pup
Photo by Lizzy Gadd

The "Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience", a lavish multimedia presentation about the Dutch expressionist’s life, launched in Beijing earlier this month at the Golden Resources Shopping Mall (until 16 September). The show—created in partnership between Holland’s Van Gogh Museum, the exhibition development firm Artcomm and the Wai Chun Culture company—is expected to attract more than 2,000 visitors daily (a five-year, 30-city tour of Greater China, taking in Shanghai in November is also on the cards).

However, Axel Rüger, the director of the Van Gogh Museum, says that “the Experience does not rely on the original artworks in our collection, many of which are now too fragile to travel.” This is, he adds, “a complete experience, an intimate journey through Van Gogh’s life,” mixing projections, reproductions, films, and sets, so “visitors are transported back to key locations in Vincent’s life.” And visitors will get new insights into an under-the-radar topic, mental health, which remains taboo in China. “His illness is integral to this story and therefore plays a major part,” Rüger says.


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A Bacon exhibition opening in Monte Carlo on Saturday 2 July reveals the close links between the artist’s obsessive gambling and his paintings. Both depended on chance. As Rebecca Daniels, a contributor to the Grimaldi Forum catalogue explains, so inextricably linked were gaming and art that Bacon regarded his losses on the roulette table as “an expense related to painting”. He once used this as an argument for his dealer to advance more money.Francis Bacon loved the French Riviera, but what made Monaco particularly attractive was its gambling opportunities. He moved to the independent principality in 1946 and spent most of the next five years there, returning often up until his death in 1992.

Bacon’s haunt was the Casino. He recalled: “I spent whole days there... you could go in at ten o’clock and needn’t come out until about four o’clock the following morning”. Bacon would quickly dispense any winnings on champagne and the finest food for friends. It was his symbol of living in the present.



Francis Bacon, Study for a Figure (1950).

Among the paintings in the Grimaldi Forum show is Study for a Figure (1950), which includes a vaguely outlined circular object. This picture was assumed to have been lost, but in 2006 it was rediscovered on the reverse of a canvas. Lucian Freud then recalled having seen it in 1950, describing the circular object as a roulette wheel.

Bacon even owned his own roulette wheel, with which he would play with friends back in England. This relic of the artist’s tortured life has recently gone to Monaco, when it was purchased by Majid Boustany for his Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation.

Daniels believes that Bacon approached gambling and art with the same spirit, displaying a determination to take risks and allow chance to intervene. Bacon wrote that “the vice of gambling... is for me intimately linked with painting”. Clive Barker, a sculptor and a friend, recalled that Bacon would talk endlessly about how “chance” affected his paintings, with success or failure being likened to “the spin of a roulette wheel”.



Bacon even owned his own roulette wheel, with which he would play with friends back in England.

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Magic Kingdom
Photo by Yan L

Violet Day
Photo by Evgeni Dinev

The boss
Photo by Sven Broeckx

The Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, who died in Paris earlier this week aged 76, was hugely influential in world cinema having won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1997 for his film A Taste of Cherry. Kiarostami was born in Tehran in 1940, and studied fine art at the city’s university. His other noteworthy films include Certified Copy (2010) and Close-Up (1990)—but crucially his photography also met with critical acclaim. Earlier this year, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto presented 50 full-scale images of doors by Kiarostami (Doors Without Keys). Curators selected the pictures from 200 works made by Kiarostami over 20 years. He found and photographed the doors - all locked - in Iran, France, Morocco and Italy. The images*were displayed at the museum in a maze-like configuration.


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Riding Out The Storm