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the Ruin:
L'Art Pour Tous!
15 july – 26 august 2007
Curator: Brigitte van der Sande
Artist: Bernard Heesen
The L'Art Pour Tous! project, subtitled Art works by Bernard Heesen, is part of ‘De Ruïne’ and marks a breach in the Marres programme that symbolises the transition from citizen to consumer, from contemplation to intoxication. A transition in which the phenomenon of the World Fair plays a key role.
In 1851, the first World Fair 'the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations' was held in the Crystal Palace in London, with objects from the worlds of art and industry on display. Particularly special was the fact that for the first time, industrial products were shown on a large scale to a new public consisting of the burgeoning and affluent middle classes. New production techniques enabled increasingly large groups of the population to buy luxury goods. Origin or civilised behaviour became less important than owning money and property. Not only were the decorations in palaces and mansions stylishly designed, this also applied to basic household effects for daily use.
Therefore, the Great Exhibition not only marked the beginning of mass production, but also the birth of the modern consumer. And this consumer was curious: 6 million visitors came to look at over a hundred thousand of the latest technical, cultural and scientific works.
Everybody is familiar with the buildings that remained after the various Expos, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Atomium in Brussels and even the Crystal Palace, which burned down in 1936, while, the products that were on display at the first fairs only live on as prints in dusty catalogues. However, they have been saved from oblivion by Bernard Heesen, who has blown a selection of objects from the London (1851) and Paris (1867) catalogues in glass. And Heesen is no longer alone in his encyclopaedic appreciation of these works: since 2006, they have been accepted at the pAn art and antiques fair in Amsterdam.
Bernard Heesen, graduated architect and self-taught glass artist, plays an ironic game with modern categories of art and kitsch, trade and industry, original and copy, unique and mass, collector and consumer, elite and mass taste. What was once proudly presented as an excellent example of mass production now becomes a unique object, one that is part of a collection of identical unique objects. Art works by Bernard Heesen, for everyone.
This project was previously on display in 2003 in the Mesdag Museum in The Hague. The present work, which has since achieved historic status, is being displayed in a reconstructed form especially for Marres.
