A TRADITION of BRAFA (the Brussels Art Fair), at the Tour & Taxis building for its 65th annual outing between January 26 and February 2, is to feature an artist, foundation or institution as guest of honour. Last year, Gilbert & George had and gave great fun. This year, thanks to Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke, the fair’s chairman, there will be a very different guest and five charities stand to benefit from it.
In the summer of 2018, he was in Nova Scotia, where he happened upon a segment of the Berlin Wall in a tiny fishing village. This improbable discovery made him think about the Wall’s symbolism and the message it conveys, even in some of the most remote places on earth. Later, he went to Berlin, where he was able to acquire some of the last available intact segments. The idea of a charity auction followed.
The Wall did not long remain the comparatively simple structure of 1961, but became a much more complex system of barriers. These five 12ft 6in high slabs (Fig 1), weighing nearly four tons each, came from the Hinterlandmauer, or inner wall, which isolated the strip across the DDR to East Berlin. After the Wall’s demolition, they were reused by a public works company based in a Berlin suburb. They have graffiti on both sides by anonymous street artists from different periods.
The slabs will be presented outside the fair’s main entrance and an auction will run for the duration. An information desk will be set up where visitors can find out about current bids and bid themselves. The auction can be followed on the website, but bidders will have to visit the fair to submit an offer, with starting prices set at €15,000 for a segment.
Denne historien er fra January 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 08, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
