The government finds money for the things it wants to
Published:
June 29, 2014 at 6:05pm
The government has just spent 163,000 euros buying Antonio Sciortino’s small sculpture, Speed, from a private collection at public collection.
Given that this is roughly twice the amount spent on Jason Micallef’s two-day wilting pansy-tile on Palace Square, I can understand why the government thought li kien il-vera wertit.
Owen Bonnici said that it is a gift to the people of Malta in this celebratory year. That’s a bit of an unfortunate turn of phrase, because where I come from, you don’t buy people gifts with their own money.
I wish he’d bothered to tell us where it is going to be housed.
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http://www.gov.mt/en/Government/Press%20Releases/Pages/2014/June/28/pr141460.aspx
We held a kiddies football tournament, at great expense, to celebrate Valletta! We hold rock concerts for Lou Bondi’s idols in the name of ‘national celebrations’, so that he gets the chance – yet again – to play his guitar on stage! We hold fashion shows to celebrate Valletta!
Can’t you seen the connections between spending money with our friends and linking to national causes? No? Nor can I!
Our uncultured and rabidly totalitarian PM tweeted something about “biex jitgawda mill-poplu”, so expect it to be housed en plein air.
Yes, positive news only please. No more negativity
For the first time in 15 months I can actually say, money well spent.
Let’s hope though that it is exhibited in a museum and not hidden in someone’s private residence or cabinet office.
Yes where it can be spirited away as has happened with other works of art.
Remember Mary Louise Coleiro Preca telling employees within some section in her Ministry that she would have loved to give them a larger increase but the funds are tight?
A very similar sculpture by Sciortino is in Zebbug square for the public to see, probably a replica.
X’kull kritika validissima tohrog biha! Il-PN irid jibda jitghallem minnek. Veru prosit.
Mur gieb kieku ghamilha l-PN din!
The only reason why they bought it is because it is belongs to a style related to the notorious Futurism movement where masculinity, speed, strength etc were exulted. This art was much loved by the Italian Fascists and now the Maltese ones.
Id-Duce Muscat rega ghamilha !
You’re reading it all wrong. It’s got nothing to do with any of that, but good old Maltese patriotism and a touch of the Japanese policy of buying up all samurai swords to bring them back to their homeland. Sciortino is seen as a “Maltese” artist, so his work belongs here, QED. All my liberal, arty Facebook friends are Liking this news item and reposting like there’s no tomorrow.
There’s a little bit of that too, but that’s not what determined the purchase. These are perverse Fascists.
I await Maltese critics and Kittens to comment on this.
It looks like a piece of slate waste from a slate quarry.
That’s not the point. This was not a naive purchase. It was simply bought because it is a fascist piece of art which matches Labour’s ideology.
I thought the PN was claimed to be fascist by the MLP in the past?
You know, the pro-Italian language question in the past, the love affair with the Roman Catholic church, the Uganda exiles of around the WW II era.
Even the black background of the PN flag, these where all claimed as proof positive by die-hard Mintoffian people of the 1950s and 60s of the PN having fascist leanings and fascist symbology.
I thought you said cannabis doesn’t affect the brain.
“I thought you said cannabis doesn’t affect the brain.”
It eases my arthritis pain but I wish it would ease having to deal as*holes online, but that is asking too much of a herb.
For your information many members of my family have heard the same spiel from Labourites and they can vouch to what I am saying, some are still living in Malta.
Maybe old Labour was before your time, and you only know the new phony face of Jo’s Sun Myung Moon positive mind control mantra style Labour.
I was referring to your slate comment.
It still looks like a piece of slate waste to me, even the colour is spot on for slate and so are the layer lines or lines to represent speed in this case.
Only the horse’s legs are its saving grace and tell the viewer what it might represent.
Antonio Sciortino was a good sculptor, but I would pass up this piece if I was a buyer, just my opinion.
And everyone has an opinion.
I would pass up this piece too if I were a private collector, because Sciortino is a nobody in the art trade, and is unlikely to go up in value.
A government heritage agency is different. There are other factors at play. I’m not sure Sciortino is what Malta needs, but good art is beyond our budget, so if this is the best we can do, then so be it.
Just by way of comparison, Cheltenham council will spend
£ 1 million to keep Banksy’s Spy Booth. One million, my dears. Because Banksy is the present and immediate future of art. Sciortino, is – how shall I put it – something to put on the mantelpiece.
I’ve no doubt our People’s government will house the piece in some godawful ‘public space’, to be ‘enjoyed’ (‘jitgawda’, my darlings – such a madwar il-kenur word) by ‘il-poplu Malti’. Because these Philistines will never come to terms with the fact that art carries no passport.
It is only bad art that does. And we have plenty of it: from Guzé Whatever’s ode to minestra, to countless ‘gritty’ views of Mdina and mountains of ‘Mediterranean’ ceramic piece.
“Artistic hub”, Kenneth? Not bloody likely.
Don’t be silly. Sciortino is remembered primarily for his ability to produce a plasticity capable of rendering perfect stillness.
Futurism was about progress and modernity as much as the Bauhaus and American streamlining.
So Italian fascism adopted it as the style, this having been ‘in voga’ since the end of the great war, signalling the end of an era, promoting the machine aesthetic.
Futurism, being of the right, has been censored as some belligerent ‘masculine’ style. But if that’s the case, cubism does worse, reducing subject to ideology and evident limits of expression in the name of synthesis and personal judgement.
Ironically, Hitler deemed both as degenerate art, and had his art policed to generic pre-Raphaelites in a foul mood. Ultimately, what he was looking for was film.
Speed is part of the amphetamine family of drugs, which also includes ice.
Ice as in ‘blokka silg?’
It’s incredible how circumstances have a habit of hitting them in their face.
What a contrast with what happened with the eternal flame
But how is this different from say a national park, where a country buys land and safeguards it for all?
It depends on what the purchased land is used for.
If the land is turned into a park, then there are ecological benefits for all at a relatively small cost.
What ecological benefit can be derived from a piece of sculpture, even if by a renowned sculptor?
The only way of ‘safeguarding’ the sculpture is to insure it against theft and/or damage at a substantial premium per year at taxpayers’ expense.
Land isn’t put in a public officer’s private office.
Those who, like Kenneth Zammit Tabona, insist on having a museum of modern/contemporary art do not realise – or care – how much such a museum costs to stock it.
Oh it’s not just our Kenneth. Charlene Vella wanted it too.
It wouldn’t cost much to stock. A couple of Sciortinos and a few Antoine Camilleris at most. That’s unless we go international, but it would be like that branch of the Louvre in Abu bloody Dhabi – incongruous in the middle of that artistic desert. AND we’d have to raid the national coffers and bankrupt ourselves.
What price art, eh, Owen ‘Varist’ Bonnici?
I beg to differ here. I already did not agree with your earlier comment that Sciortino was a nobody. He was one of our best Maltese sculptors and his art, a product of the times he lived in just as Banksy is a product of this time.
Will you say the same of a sculpture by say, Canova or Bernini, that they are only good for a mantlepiece? Or is it because Sciortino is Maltese?
Yes, this particular piece ‘Speed’ was one of his very best creations. Granted, with art, it will always remain a subjective issue. Unfortunately, in Malta, discussing art will always degenerate into such useless squabbles as most times, such discussions tend to be hijacked by those who happen to appreciate anything else but good art.
But my point is this. Malta needs a proper museum of modern and contemporary art. Having a proper venue where to PROPERLY exhibit the already existent collection is needed. So many pieces remain stacked in dark rooms as space is lacking.
We do not need to go out there buying priceless Monets, Manets, Rembrandts and Rothkos to stock a museum. We have plenty of great Maltese art which merits exhibition and appreciation.
I blame the absence of such a proper institution on the lack of appreciation there exists in many of us. Luckily, there are many who do appreciate so all is not lost.
I for one, agreed with the acquisition of Sciortino’s ‘Speed’ – the pity is that there could have been instances like this in the recent past and no such initiative was taken.
Tal-Labour jbieghu l-blokkok bojjod, u l-gvern issa xtara l-ispeed.
Daphne,
Inti ma tafx li diga’ sibna z-zejt?
Guzeppi tal-Mosta
kullhadd jafni!
Then for the garden in Valletta ditch there is no money.
Looks like it could double as a coke line preparation counter.
Not very original as a sculpture. A copy rather.
Did he think people didn’t travel?
Not when you know where the real thing originated and are familiar with the original.
Next a couple of vintage guitars to allow some members of the national festivities committee to perform the chicken dance.
Eric Clapton is selling off some of his guitars.
At least they didn’t decide to buy Tracy Emin’s bed.