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The Berlin Victory Column (Siegessäule) is a gold statue of a winged woman placed on top of a marble column. It was built in 1873 to commemorate soldiers of the Prussian army who had battled in wars against Denmark, Austria and France. It was originally located in the Reichstag, but now rises up from its 66,89 m high column in the middle of Tiergarten (Straße des 17. Juni, Berlin-Tiergarten).
You can climb all 285 steps to the top of the statue where you will get a spectacular view over the city of Berlin. The base of the column is decorated with bronze low-relief depictions of battles, and the column is made of polished red granite. The angel who represents victory weighs 35 tonnes, is 8.3 metres high is covered entirely in gold-leaf.
The statue is featured in the 1987 film Wings of Desire and in U2’s video for the single Stay and when Barack Obama visited Berlin in 2008 this statue served as the backdrop for him – perhaps the golden angel really does celebrate victory since Obama subsequently hit gold with his post as president of America.
2010-09-06 17:40:53
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Even if most of us are struggling financially there are obviously still plenty of people out there with disposable cash, and they spend this on wise art investments.
This summer a Yves Klein gold-leaf artwork sold at auction for nearly 500,000 British pounds. That is nearly 200,000 above the original estimate, showing that classic pieces of contemporary art still pique the interest of investors. The piece is dated from 1960 and is inscribed on the back with the name of the original owner. This piece has risen to six times of its value when last auctioned in the year 2000.
Klein used gold as part of a performance piece called ‘Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle‘ where he traded empty spaces within the city in exchange for gold. In return for their payment in pure gold the buyers got to experience The Void, and received a certificate to say that they were the owner. In Klein’s estimation gold was the purest material and therefore only that could be used to pay for the experience of The Void.
As part two of the performance Klein offered buyers the chance to set fire to their certificate, if they agreed to do this. Klein would throw half the gold into the river. From the other half, which he retained he made a series of gold-leaf works one of which is that mentioned above.
With so many galleries struggling to maintain their financial foothold since the downturn in the economy perhaps it would be better for struggling artists to take a (gold!)leaf out of Klein’s book and wear a sign around their necks reading: Will Sell My Art for Gold!
2010-09-03 16:21:12
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Most people are familiar with the work of the Swiss artist mostly due to the vast amount of prints of his decorative and sensual paintings. His primary subject for both drawings and paintings was the female body. In his paintings she was normally surrounded by layers of pattern.
At the end oft he 1800’s Klimt began to use gold leaf in his work and this is when he gained the most critical acclaim and success, this is called his golden period.
One of his works featuring an extensive use of gold is the work above ‘Adele Bloch-Bauer’. In 2006 this work sold for a staggering $135 million dollars, that is a huge amount of money. However, Klimt’s works have now of course increased in value, this gold work will be an investment for the person who purchased it and will probably rise to even greater heights in value in the future.
2010-09-02 16:42:18
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As mentioned in the previous post, artist Marc Quinn cast his statue of Kate Moss from solid gold. Most statues that we see in our cities are cast from bronze, however, if you really want something special gold is the metal of choice to get people to notice.
Quinn is quoted as saying of his statue of Kate Moss "Why should gold be worth lots and steel not?..It's because we have agreed it represents something special in our society….If there was a war or anarchy this will be melted down and turned into bullion." This has happened, all over the world with ancient gold artifacts, stolen or resold or melted down.
Quinn is right, in today’s unsure economy, gold is one of the only things that has kept its value and indeed seems to be growing as an investment, let’s hope no one breaks into the British Museum, steals the statue of Ms Moss and melts it down into gold bullion.
On the topic of golden statues as representations of real people, here are two news pieces regarding iconic figures being immortalised as a gold statue.
Last year Australian singer Nick Cave revealed to Time Magazine his plans to erect a gold statue of himself in the town of Warracknabeal where he was brought up. Cave has already had a maquette version of the statue made. This one foot high scale-model shows the singer astride a rearing horse, Cave is naked wearing only a small loincloth for modesty. He described the work as homoerotic.
However, sadly for the citizens of Warracknabeal they have lost out on having this homeoerotic golden work of art stuck in the middle of their town. Cave has put his plans to erect the statue on hold and explained that the town is suffering from poverty due to the recession and drought that he felt it in bad taste to place a massive gold statue in the middle of such a place - but the plan has not been scrapped, merely delayed. Residents of Warracknabeal you have been warned!
Meanwhile in recent news, rather than plans to erect a statue, one has been torn down. Nijazov’s golden statue in Turkmenistan has been removed (Turkmenistan was until 1991 part of the Soviet Union and is now one of the Turkic states). The now dead leader, Saparmurat Niyazov, had erected an enormous, gold, rotating statue of himself in the capital Ashgabat. The 15m high statue had been on a 75m marble plinth and the statue rotated so that it followed the movement of the sun.
Current president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, ordered that the statue be taken down early this year and the first sign that this was going to happen was that it stopped rotating a few weeks ago; last week the golden Nijazov was finally removed from his plinth.
Nijazov called himself the father of all Turkmen "Turkmenbashi" and went about ensuring that no citizens could forget that, establishing a personality cult by excesses such as the revolving golden statue of himself, having portraits hung across the country and renaming streets after himself and his family.
The removal of the statue is part of a promise by the current president to reform the nation. While under Niyazov’s rule the nation was subjected to his totalitarian leadership and it was kept totally isolated from the outside world.
However, it is doubtful that the current president will follow through on his promises considering that he is leader of the one and only political party there and add to that the fact that Turkmenistan’s media is controlled completely by the state, transparent reforms are highly unlikely. Perhaps Berdymukhamedov is merely removing the statue and other images of his predecessor only to increase his own popularity and to replace the last memories of the previous president with thoughts of his government alone.
2010-09-01 13:03:42
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The most recent piece of art made from gold is the artwork made by artist Mark Quinn. It was unveiled at the British Museum in London and is called ‘Siren’.
Siren is made totally of 18 carat gold. One wonders where that amount of gold would come from?
Perhaps Quinn purchased gold ingots which were melted down to cast the piece in. It is more likely however, that the artist himself, apart from making the original sculpture from clay, would have handed this over to a team of experts who would have completed the mould and subsequent casting process with him merely overseeing the work.
The piece cost around one and a half million British pounds to make. One million pounds was the price of purchasing the gold. If these sound like large sums of money, that is nothing compared to what the artist hopes to earn from the sale from it after it has finished its stay in the museum. His estimate is a cool ten million pounds, which if it sells will make Mark Quinn a very rich artist indeed, earning him enough money to buy gold for around another 7 statues. He expects it to fetch up to £10m when it is sold following its time with the British Museum in January.
The statue is to be put on display in the Nereid Gallery section of the museum alongside statues of Greek goddesses. This is an appropriate spot for the piece as it is the largest art sculpture made entirely from gold since ancient Egyptian times, so it is appropriate that it is to be displayed alongside ancient classical sculpture. Staggeringly this piece is the largest gold statue made by man since ancient Egyptian times and weighs in total around 50kg. Most of the golden statues that we might have seen in museums or cities are actually made from another metal such as bronze and then covered with gold leaf.
The meaning of the piece is according to Quinn “trying to live up to impossible dreams or immortality”. As the sculpture depicts Moss attempting to pull her legs around the back of her head, she is an imperfect goddess, trying to attain perhaps the unattainable. Therefore Kate Moss represents a flawed goddess and is the perfect representation of what we worship in our modern times; actors, models, musicians, famous people - and not gods – are what we worship and want to emulate. Quinn has represent this by representing a celebrity as both goddess but at the same time showing her human frailty.
2010-08-31 13:08:37
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