![]() One such artwork that I recently visited is called Nowhere/Now here, by one of Slovenia’s most prominent contemporary artist, JAŠA. There may be relics of the events or of the destructions-as-art (photographs, written accounts, videos), but the real thing took place at a specific time, for a short duration, in a particular place. Performance art is designed to be temporal. The work existed only from 12 February to 27 February 2005. Twenty years later, The Gates was erected in New York City’s Central Park, comprising 7,503 framed gateways on the crossbeams of which hung saffron-coloured fabric that flapped loose in the breeze. An estimated three million visitors saw the work and walked over the shrouded bridge. From 22 September to 5 October 1985, the Pont Neuf across the Seine in Paris was wrapped in 40,000 sq. The brevity of the window of time in which they could be experienced was part of their appeal, as were their occasionally remote locations these became the culmination of a sort of artistic pilgrimage. The artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, built a career out of temporary art installations that could be experienced by anyone and that exist now only as photographs and preparatory drawings. ![]() The festivities for the 2012 London games, designed by the film director Danny Boyle, cost some £27m, all of which, along with the intensive preparations, went into a single spectacular performance, preserved only in pictures. The works are long gone.Ī modern equivalent might be the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Some magnificent decorations were documented in paintings, but in most cases we have only tantalising descriptions penned by awed contemporaries. Weddings, banquets, tournaments, victory parades and the like called for artists to create backdrops, sculptures, even entire buildings that were only meant to last the duration of the event, after which they were disassembled or discarded. Renowned artists spent a disconcerting amount of time and energy on installations and decorations for major festivities. This is but one of innumerable examples, most of them event-specific. It was dismantled shortly after it was put into use for a brief time, perhaps even a single event, at Santa Croce del Bosco. The fact that he oddly refers to this as a machine suggests that it was either movable (perhaps on wheels) or that it had moving parts (sections could be opened and closed). Vasari described it as “an immense machine that is almost a triumphal arch, with two large panels, one on the front and one on the back, and around 30 stories painted on small pieces of the structure, containing many figures made with the highest level of detail”. It was a triumphal arch made of wood, installed around the main altar at the church of Santa Croce del Bosco it held over 30 paintings in a structure that was flanked by columns and mounted with sculptures and had a large crucifix rising out of the top. In the spring of 1567, summoned by Pope Pius V, Vasari built a temporary structure in Rome that he described only as a macchina grandissima, an immense machine. Take, for example, Giorgio Vasari’s Macchina Grandissima. The history of art is regularly punctuated by works that sound as if they were truly amazing but that were unfortunately always meant to be temporary.
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