The European Central Bank has installed a towering bronze and granite tree sculpture outside the bank’s Frankfurt headquarters as part of a €1.25m (£920,000) art project.
The work by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, instantly dubbed the magic money tree, is a slender trunk with a perfectly round ball of gilded leaves at its halfway point. Something that looks like a faded beach ball is lodged among the barren upper branches.
Loosely modelled on a walnut tree, it stands 17.5 metres tall – soaring above real chestnut trees at the entrance to the ECB headquarters, a billion-euro building that opened to scenes of protest from anti-austerity campaigners earlier this year.
“Giuseppe Penone’s tree conveys a sense of stability and growth and is rooted in the humanist values of Europe in the most beautiful way,” said…the ECB executive board member who chaired the art jury that selected the work from a longlist of almost 60 European artists.
Those curious to learn what something so beautifully rooted in the “humanist values of Europe” looks like can take a peek here.
Sadly, I missed an exhibition of Penone’s work in New York earlier this year. There would have been much to learn!
Penone writes, “The indistinct nature of the marble encloses infinite millennial existences compressed by the relentless weight of gravity, existences supported by the pure white calcium that has structured its form. The whiteness of the calcium envelops our thoughts, appears in our smiles, articulates our movements. The marble belongs to us, nurtures and sustains and attests to our existence. A tree trunk of marble, of calcium, encloses in our thought, the carbon, the plant, and the plant the mimicry of the color of the bronze, the green of the foliage and the trees, the flow of matter ….where courses the subterranean life of the world. ”
Since 1969 Giuseppe Penone has been one of the leading representatives of Arte Povera….
Well….
Back to the Guardian:
The money tree is one of three artworks costing €1.25m that have been specially commissioned for the ECB headquarters. An aluminium stone by Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov has already been installed inside an atrium, while a sculpture of a mathematical formula by 2002 Turner prize nominee Liam Gillick will be hoisted on to the roof of the ECB conference hall later this month.
Aside from these works, the ECB spends about €140,000 on art each year and its collection includes pieces by contemporary artists, such as the Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn and French-Algerian artist Fayçal Baghriche.
“It is not about decorating the headquarters, it is about helping the cultural world,” a spokeswoman said, citing European Union treaty article 167, which states that the union will contribute to “the flowering of the cultures of the member states”.
She added: “Public institutions in many countries have the obligation, or are encouraged by guiding principles, to commission works of art when they construct a new building.
“In times of austerity we think it is important to spend money on art because it is a unifying theme between countries.”
I don’t know what is worst about this; the condescension, the arrogance, the waste, the eurobabble, the characteristically dodgy legal rationale, the jabber passed off as erudition or the junk passed off as art.
In any event, take down that tree.
Comments