Toulouse's Abattoirs
A modern and contemporary art museum
Claudine Canetti, France
Former slaughterhouses in Toulouse, the
town built of pink stone, have been successfully turned into a modern and contemporary art
museum. It is a unique experience in this city in the Southwest of France, which is
already rich in cultural and scientific institutions. A few months after it opened, this
astonishing museum, which is still known as the 'Abattoirs', has made its mark by
presenting 82 paintings by Pierre Soulages, brought together in the greatest exhibition
devoted in France to this magician of the color "black".
When he built the redbrick slaughterhouses on
the left bank of the Garonne river, in 1831, the young Toulouse architect, Urvan Vitry,
1802-1863, was inspired by the famous religious building, the Basilica of Sait-Sernin, a
masterpiece of Romanesque art. Using the plan of the basilica as a model, he had
constructed a main building corresponding to the nave, the side-yards looking lake
side-aisles and a semi-circular building at the end resembling the apse. This fine example
of 19 th century industrial art was closed down in 1988 and two years later it was listed
as a historical monument.
Antoine Stinco and Remi Pappilault, the
architects put incharge of transforming these slaughterhouses into the
"Toulouse-Midi-Pyrenees Modern and Contemporary Art Center", in 1995, kept the
areas and arrangement designed by Urvan Vitry, enhancing the symmetry on the side of the
Garonne river and combining natural and artificial lighting as well as the possibility of
transforming the spaces using mobile-room-partitions. The large red-brick central hall
remains the heart of the museum whose exhibition rooms are spread over three floors and
completed by an auditorium in the basement. In addition, there is a media-library,
workshops and a café-restaurant. The whole extends over an area of more than 7,000 meter
square, largely used for the museum's successful educational purposes of 'explaining art
today to 8-12 year olds'.
The museum's permanent collections comprise
more than 2,000 works, paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs, sculptures and
installations, covering the second half of the 20 th century. They illustrate, in
particular, the numerous artistic trends which came into being after the Second World War
in Europe, in the United States and in Japan, from abstract expressionism to free
figuration and including Art brut, informal art, Cobra and Arte Povera. These permanent
collections have been considerably enriched by two donations of very high quality, one by
the French collector Daniel Cordier, nearly 400 works, placed with the
"Abattoirs"' by the National Museum of Modern Art, the Pompidou Center, and the
other, consisting of about fifty paintings from the fifties and sixties brought together
by the British collector Anthony Denney, 1913-1990.
However, the museum's star work is the stage
curtain painted by Picasso in 1934 for ' Le Quatorze Julliet'-the fourteenth of July, a
play by Roman Rolland first performed in 1902 and hung at the Theatre du Peuple in Paris
to symbolically celebrate the first 14 th July of the popular front. As the commission
left him very little time to paint an original work, Picasso had decided to enlarge a
little gouache highlighted in Indian ink which he had painted on 28 th May 1936 called,
"La Depouille du Minotaure en Costume d'Arlequin". The result was a magnificent
cotton stage curtain, drawn and painted on the ground in a week by Luis Fernandez, the
Spanish painter and friend of Picasso's using the squaring technique from the gouache of
the master who added the finishing touch. Picasso donated this "'work by four
hands" to the city of Toulouse in 1965. The curtain is completed by about twenty
drawings and paints by Picasso throwing light on the theme of the work and is presented
alternately in a special room in the basement. For the museum, it is 'a symbolical work
inaugurating the post second world war period covered by the collections."
Pierre Soulages is enthusiastic about this
original museum in which he was able to casually demonstrate, with a subtle choice of 82
pictures from among some 1200 paintings and as many works on paper in a career spanning
fifty years, that "black is a color of light". As soon as one enters the large
central hall, light seems to play around the stripes on the three huge black paintings
hanging from the ceiling and around which visitors can walk at leisure. These stripes or
furrows, which catch the light, are not there by chance. To paint his pictures, Pierre
Soulages uses large brushes and spatulas, which he makes himself as he does all his tools.
Moreover, he declares that "as soon as one chooses a paintbrush, one has begun the
work".
Anther striking view of Soulages paintings is
the one looking down from the museum's mezzanine onto the rooms below where, in
particular, huge polyptychs are exhibited. They are black, of course, It is these works
which enabled Soulages to be one of the very rare painters whose works were exhibited in
the Louvre during their lifetime, in an exhibition on Polyptychs.
An astonishing room is devoted to paintings
in walnut stain made by Soulages at different periods of his career, from 1948 to 2000. On
the way, one remembers that even in Soulages' work, different colors existed. It is rather
a rare joy to discover his paintings from the 1950s to the 70s in which black is combined
with red, blue, yellow and brown hues. But the final highlight of the exhibition, in the
Picasso room in the museums' basement, are the "Outrenoirs"', a neologism coined
by Soulages to mean "'beyond black, a light reflected and transmuted by black".
Change of Course in
Consumer Protection
-By Michael Zipf, editor,
"Deutschland", Germany
On November 24, 2000, German
agriculture suddenly and unexpectedly came down to earth. That was the day on which
veterinary experts visiting a farm in Schleswig-Holstein diagnosed the first case of
bovine spongiform encephalopathy-BSE or Mad cow disease-in a German-born cow. All the
hopes of holding out as a BSE-free zone in Europe, of defying the dangers of an intensive
form of agriculture that had long since turned its back on nature came to an abrupt end
with the wild, uncontrollable convulsions of a single animal. The consequences have been
dire: mountains of dead cattle, farmers who fear for their livelihoods, politicians and
lobbyists arguing over the foundations for a "new agriculture", and anxious
consurmers left asking themselves what they can safely put into their frying pans in the
face of BSE in cattle and anti-biotics in pigs.
This question doesn’t arise for the
numeries. For a number of years now , the grandmother , mother and two grandchildren have
driven into the countryside from Wiesbaden twice a week to visit Domane Mechtildshausen, a
large organic farm located between Wiesbaden and Mainz. "we have a fixed routine:
first , we buy fruit, vegetables, bread, meat and salami, and then we visit our
cattle," explains Heike, the daughter. As soon as the transport restrictions imposed
in the wake of the foot-and-mouth outbreak are revoked, the herd of 450 milk cows ,
calves,and beef cows will leave their large, well-ventilated, straw-strewn sheds and once
again be able to graze the farm's meadows in the Taunus hills until autumn. Freedom of
movement adequate grazing space, and animal feed grown on the farm's own land are just
three of the principles that the farm has committed itself to since 1987. That was the
year in which Domane Mechtildshausen joined the bioland – verband the largest of
Germany's nine organic farming associations with a total of approximately 3,500 affiliated
farms, and reorganized its agricultural production in accordance with organic principles.
These include the eschewal of mineral fertilizers and artificial pesticides, provision of
husbandry systems appropriate to animals' needs, recycling of organic materials, and seven
– year crop rotation. "Unlike many other farms, we didn't specialize on just
arable or livestock farming," says Horst Freund, one of the 13 managers at Domane
Mechtildshausen . "The fundamental principle of organic agriculture is that animals
can be fed from the farms own resources: the maze and grass silage and the sweet-smelling
hay that the cattle eat have to come from the farms own fields; the calves receive milk
direct from their mother's or fresh milk from other cows". Concentrated feed,
meat-and-bone meal and milk replacer feed are strictly taboo-and as a result, so are the
known or presumed infection roots for BSE. "Because we know that, we don’t have
any worries about buying beef or salami, " explains Heike Numeier.
"Thinking should start at the shop
counter", urged Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroder at the beginning of the BSE
crisis, defining the guiding principle of his guiding principle of his government's
agricultural and consurmer protection policy as he announced the establishment of a
recognized Federal Ministry for consumer protection, food and agriculture. When it comes
to food, consumer safety now has priority over producers' profits. Renate Kunast, the new
federal consumer protection minister, recently made clear how she intends to implement
proactive consumer protection. The solution is "quality, not quantity"- she is
aiming for high quality, sustainable produced food, not milks lakes, laying batteries and
environmental pollution. "We will accomplish the shift from the mass products to
quality products if emphasis is again not only on the elemental requirements of the food
safety, but also on the quality of ingredients, flavor diversity, secure origin,
environmentally positive regionalism, and husbandry appropriate to animals' needs",
said Kunast. She also set a very ambitious target: "in ten years, one fifth of all
the food in Germany will stem from organic farms".
At present, only 2.6% of the agricultural
land in Germany is managed in accordance with European Union guidelines or organic
farming. Although this figure puts Germany above the EU's average of 1.7%, it still
remains far behind Austria, which has already achieved a level of 10%. Only 1% of the meat
produced in Germany comes from recognized organic farms. "This figure cant be
increased particularly fast," explains Horst Freund. Building of cattle herds takes a
long time in organic agriculture. Every Friday, Randolf Muller, Domane Mechtildshausen
master butcher and his assistants slaughter two cattle. As at all organic farms, the
demand for organic beef has increased significantly at Domane Mechtildshausen . BSE has
certainly not spoilt its costumers appetites. " We can hardly keep up", says
Randolf Muller. While beef sales in Germany as a whole have declined by more than 50%, the
experts estimate that organic butchers have been able to sell 30% more beef. What is more,
this is the case although their customers currently have to pay at least 30% more than
they would for conventionally produced meat. Farm manager Horst Freund explains that high
labor and personnel costs increased the price . "Knowing where the meat and
vegetables come from is worth it to us", says Heike Numeier, and points towards a
notice board that aims to promote " transparent production" by providing
detailed information when each animal was slaughtered and processed.
Heidelinde Euler, who works in the farm
administration, says customers of Domane Mechtildshausen are very prudent; they can easily
make do without straberries in winter and avoid immoderate consumption of meat. Some of
the farms customers switched to buying organic produced as a result of health problems or
food alergies, while others can be considered traditional ecologically oriented buyers,
who want to give their families good food and feel it is important to support sustainable
agriculture. Then there are the gourmets, who have simply been won over by the superior
taste and appearance of organic produced. Six days a week, customers stream into the farm
from distances as far away as 60 kms in order to do some shopping or to sample its produce
on the spot at the gourmet restaurant. Domane Mechtildshausen now also supplies the health
food trade, a number of restaurants, and canteens. The most important channel, however,
remains direct marketing on the farm itself, where some 300 people keep the entire
operation running. "Not all farms have the opportunities to market their own produce
as extensively as we can", admits Horst Freund. And in some areas there is already a
shortage of processing facilities such as dairies, that can deal with more organic milk.
As a result , believes Horst Freund, new regional centers for processing and marketing
organic products will become absolutely essential. He also feels that if farmers are
willing to change over to organic farming they should be able to receive financial support
for new sets and sales premises.
Approximately 27 billion marks of public
subsidies flow into German agriculture every year. Of this total, 12.6 billion marks come
from the EU and 10.2 billion from the German federal government. The remaining amount
stems from the German lander. Renate Kunast intends to ensure that funds are primarily
spend on organic farming, husbandry systems appropriate to animals' needs, and
safeguarding jobs in country areas. She wants to give farmers, who have suffered many
years as a result of structural change, definite prospects in the direction of organic and
regional production-irrespective of farm size. This means, according to Renate Kunast ,
"There must be an alliance between
farmers and nature. We need more direct and regional marketing. Added value then remains
in the region". German consumers also share this view. Opinion polls indicate that
78% favour a new policy on agricultural subsidies.
The minister also aims to improve orientation
for consumers who can easily lose their way among the numerous quality standards, by
developing two new seals of approval. The first quality mark will distinguish products
from organic farms, while the second will testify to compliance with minimum standards in
conventional agricultural animal welfare, no gene technology, administration of drugs only
when animals are ill, and priority for regional products. Approximately 80% of all foods
is sold in supermarkets. The minister is very aware that the agricultural and consumer
revolution can only succeed "if all retailers particularly the major chains no longer
compete on the basis of who offers the cheapest milk, but who gives consumers the largest
selection of good products". Organic produce must break out of its present niche and
entered the supermarkets-while remaining affordable to all, demands Renate Kunast. This is
"a question of volume, marketing, and of social justice". The minister would
also consider it fair an equitable if the wish of the majority of the Europeans not to be
served genetically modified food were fulfilled by producers clearly identifying
genetically modified ingredients in animal feed and in food. "What's in it must be on
it," demands Renate Kunast in consensus with consumer right activists. They also
argue in favor of more intensive food safety monitoring an improved co-operation between
public authorities, consumer protection organizations , and research institutions. It is
important " that all those involved at the national, European and International level
work closely together and show a greater commitment to protecting consumers' health than
they have in the past", councels Anne-Lore Kohne, Chief Executive of the
Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbande (agv), the German Federation of Consumer
Associations.
Naturally Renate Kunast realizes that
defending higher standards of consumer protection will not be easy in a globalized market
with different perceptions of the risks concerned in different parts of the world.
Difficult negotiations are to be anticipated at the World Trade Organization on the use of
artificial hormones in beef cattle, growth promoters in the milk industry, and genetically
modified plants. However, what is most important to the minister is that the World Trade
Rules are more strongly tied to consumer protection standards in the future and that
consumers freedom of choice is maintained.
A large number of players-from animal feed
producer and farmers to the food industry and retailers to politicians and policy makers-
will have to revise their thinking if the transformation of agriculture and the
reorientation of consumer protection policy are to succeed. Ultimately, judgement will be
passed by consumers, who decide with their shopping carts in the supermarkets whether they
wish to buy tasty, natural produce rather than fast or convenient foods. No one has been
taken in by illusion of a swift transformation. It will take many years for consumers for
buying habits to change- if at all, warns Berlin based consumer rights activist Christoph
Romer. And the transformation of agriculture explains Johann Konanrad Keller, Saxony
–Anhaltr's agriculture minister , will also be a long term process. |
