Abu Dhabi could well be the major draw in Asia for its focus on promoting art and culture.
On an evening like any other, Jeff Koons has walked by, spoken to an audience about his work, and moved on. If anyone in the audience has swooned, it is not known. But Koons, the biggest superstar of the art world to visit Abu Dhabi — a second time this year, and on this occasion as the marquee name at Abu Dhabi Art — isn’t being spared his critics. His participation via his toons at the region’s largest art fair, far from being lauded, is being shredded by those who claim to know his work. But Koons, for the record, had walked away after the talk with a shrug and a smile.
Same place, another day: Subodh Gupta is having a tantrum. “It’s like a bazaar,” he says of the coincidentally simultaneous Indian exhibition Spectrum also being hosted by the Indian Embassy at the Emirates Palace, a great pile of fantasy and opulence, right down to ebony-hued security guards and blue-eyed, blond-haired concierges who ought to be in Hollywood instead of opening car doors here. Gupta can afford the tirade — three of his works are being aired at Abu Dhabi Art while, at Spectrum, because of a technical hitch, his canvas has not made the exhibition. “I’m grateful I’m not being exhibited,” he says, though one suspects a gnashing of teeth.
Switch to another bend in the gilded passages of the mythological Xanadu breathed into impossible life and there’s another exhibition, within metres of the others, but occupying a different space and world. The Emiratis, long deprived of a global cultural brand, are making up for lost time the best way that money can McDonald-ise it: with a few billion shekels thrown to the West.
Past a counter where women in abayas gaze through marvellously painted eyes, past more ebony security, is a glimpse of Guggenheim’s secret world of Paul Cezanne and Fernand Leger, of Robert Delauney, Hilla Rebay, Vasily Kandinsky, Georges Mathieu, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, somewhat surreal in an alien land civilised into culture as people come and go, measuring out their visits in coffee spoons.
Minutes away on a good traffic day in Abu Dhabi — where every day is a good traffic day — at Saadiyat Island, the architect Frank Gehry has conceived the most extraordinary sculptural architecture for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, an almost whimsical cluster of cubes and tubes which will house the masters of this American art museum in a fantastic but hardly opulent setting. Another finger of the exhibition space is devoted to models and pictures and sketches and videos of what will be the new hub for art in the world. Right next to the Guggenheim, the Louvre is taking shape, the vast structure topped here by neither French architecture nor an interpretation of the pyramid, but a glass-cobwebbed dome. But that won’t complete the strip, for alongside them, a maritime museum and a centre for performing arts are taking shape. The moneyed vulgarians of Dubai need culture, and Abu Dhabi, 150 km and an hour away by Porsche, is hell-bent on providing it.
In the lobby, five gigantic, almost whitewashed canvases make up the work of a Chinese artist that has viewers wanting to have their pictures taken against it. In the centre, Mona Lisa is being inscrutable, and on the far sides, the Chinese artist and his father are painted lying dead, the younger in a morgue, the elder in a hospital bed. It is a tiny bit macabre in a space that feasts the senses, but pictures taken, it can be dispensed with — there is coffee to be drunk, lunch to be had.
Besides, Damien Hirst here is represented not by his grinning diamond skull but by gentle, uncontroversial works, all colour and crystals and butterflies. But, oh dear, Gupta’s installed his distinctively uncomfortable skull made from utensils. The steel, you concede, might be stainless, but isn’t he responsible to show an India shining (if a little hungry)?
Down the escalator, the Western galleries have got what they hope will sell best: works by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro and Alexander Calder and Francis Bacon. There’s Andy Warhol being whimsical and Paul Cezanne being portrait-erly, endless variations of calligraphy till it’s a turn-off and, splendidly, a lush, erotic Ravinder Reddy head, and the usual Indian Progressives and contemporaries as a charming surprise.
Upstairs, there’s interest in the Indian artists at the Indian show. Will the Sheikha buy? Pricelists are hastily sent to her secretariat. But Indian collectors have marked their preferences. “The prices are Abu Dhabi standard,” suggests a scandalised voice. But Paresh Maity and Ajay De and who knows what others won’t be coming back, there’s interest in Valay Shende, and really, what business does M F Husain, exiled to Dubai, have not being here?
Is it well arranged? Is it edgy, critical, patronising? Gentle conversations turn explosive. Points of view become points of debate. The Indian selection is representational — but is it the best? Are the Western galleries condescending to the Emiratis? Shouldn’t Guggenheim have put its best foot forward?
Come for the talk, Anupam Poddar insists. I sit in a chair while speakers chatter on about the greatness of the Guggenheim, the artists, the foundation and the collection. No longer wanting to hear the culturati, I sneak out, pause in the washroom where if the art is any reflection, the Emiratis like a bit of escapism and fantasy. Spectrum provides them with that, which is why the footfalls are so high. But the Indians have been as careful as the organisers of Abu Dhabi Art — there is no reference to politics or pornography, and even K S Radhakrishnan and Sakti Burman’s inoffensive nudes have been vetted by curators Saryu Doshi and Pheroza Godrej before being displayed to an admiring public. Husain’s canvases carry no hint of goddesses — clothed or unclothed.
Even though I’m not invited, I hear fascinating tales by the fascinated guests of the Sheikha who visited her palace at night to dine. In the Louis-something, French-style terraces of the palace overlooking the sea, the feast was like a fairytale fantasy with tables groaning with foods, the gentlemen segregated from the royal women so they could go about unveiled, dressed neither in European chic nor Arabian couture, but in Abu Jani and Neeta Lulla, all warmth and hospitality beyond the strict protocol. The Sheikha had said, “I love to shop in Khan Market.” It’s nice to be able to be able occasionally to escape from the gilded cage, though at the height of that night, with the moon shining, the guests would not have minded it so much.
Back at the fair, I wonder whether there have been sales at Abu Dhabi Art, but no one is saying. If Emirates Palace is any reference, the large ape structure made from wire hangers, perhaps even Koons, would be lucky to make it to the children’s nursery. Which, after all, might just be the right place for an education in high art.
