Anyone can tell you how easy it is to find images of well-known paintings through a Google Images search, but the Art Project offers a lot more than snapshots. Using a “gigapixel process” to capture super high-resolution pictures (up to a whopping 14 billion pixels), the site allows viewers to zoom right in on selected paintings, to study brush strokes and artists’ techniques up close, much like you would want to do in a museum, in the presence of the real object.

So far, the website offers access to some of the world’s most important collections, including, amongst others, the Uffizi (Florence) the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam) the Tate Britain and National Gallery (London), the Met and the MoMA (New York). The Louvre (Paris) and the Prado (Madrid) are conspicuous in their absence but the project is set to expand if it proves to be a success.

Questions of new technologies and digitalization have infiltrated modern museology in recent years, as musuems and galleries try to find ways of harnessing the virtual possibilities of the internet. Does Google’s Art Project spell the end of visits to actual museums? Not according to Julian Raby, director of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art, quoted in the Washington Post, “Far from eliminating the necessity of seeing artworks in person, Art Project deepens our desire to go in search of the real thing.”

Indeed, despite the detail of the gigapixel, many specialists, scholars and visitors will still want to see the three-dimensional object rather than an image. This is something Google can’t do yet, but of course, they’re working on it.“I want to find the technology to capture three-dimensional art such as Michelangelo’s David.” said Amit Sood, founder and head of Art Project, “It’s not going to be easy but these are the kinds of things the we hope to explore.”

Check it out for yourselves here.

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The show brings together almost 200 works by the artist from 70 museums around the world and is the first retrospective of the artist on home territory since 1980. Indeed Monet is often overlooked in France, seen as “light”: popular with tourists and on greetings cards but not to be taken seriously. This exhibition aims to reassess his contribution to the history of art. Guy Cogeval, one of the curators and director of the Musée d’Orsay, France’s national museum dedicated to nineteenth centurt art, was keen to rehabilitate Monet’s reputation in France. “We [the French] are a bit like spoilt children” Congeval told Le Figaro, “the Anglo-Saxons have written everything on Monet for the last 30 years”. A conference on Impressionism at the Musée d’Orsay in December 2009 must have confirmed Congeval’s fears, with three quarters of the speakers coming from Britain and America.

Claude Monet, Impression: soleil levant, 1872, Musée Marmottan

The works on show have come from all over the world, including American and Russian institutions as well as private collections. Despite the international enthusiasm to loan, domestic organizations were less keen. The Musée Marmottan, also in Paris and boasting the largest collection of Monets anywhere in the world, declined to participate, organizing their own Monet retrospective instead: “Monet: son musée”. The most glaring lack, picked up by most commentators is the iconic 1872 painting of a sunrise, “Impression: soleil levant”. This coastal scene, depicting ship masts in the early morning mists of Le Havre, gave Impressionism its name. It is part of the Musée Marmottan’s collection and features proudly on the cover of the catalogue that accompanies the Marmottan show.

As well as pride, the Musée Marmottan’s decision is, of course, driven by economic factors. Judging by the popularity of the two Monet shows, both institutions can be pretty happy with ticket sales.

The Musée d’Orsay, co-organizer of the Grand Palais show and home to many a Monet in its permanent collection, brings us a less lucrative, but more challenging exhibition, “The Spectacular Art of Jean Léon Gérôme”. This show is the first monograph of the artist in France since his death in 1904 (and you thought Monet had waited a long time!), and brings us the flipside of the fuzzy, plein air Impressionists: the clear lines, naturalistic detail and meticulously constructed narratives of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings.

Gérôme, perhaps more than Monet, needs a reputation overhaul. Often seen as a reactionary, he stood staunchly by the academic tradition, resisting the move towards the great nineteenth century isms: Realism and Impressionism. But the Orsay exhibition presents him as an innovator rather than a conformist. His paintings may not have the evident formal innovations of Monet or Courbet but the show talks about the “paradoxical modernity” in Gérôme’s work, drawing a comparison between the artist’s innovative staging of drama and the twentieth century art of cinematography, from Peplum films to Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator”.

Unlike the impressionists, Gérome didn’t take much inspiration from his contemporary surroundings, turning instead to classical tales and antique architecture, scenes from history and the imaginary Orient. The Orientalist paintings are perhaps the most impressive part of the show. Although the artist visited Constantinople, Egypt and Syria, the oriental scenes he created are text book Edward Saïd (a Gérôme painting is even reproduced on the cover of the Vintage Books edition of “Orientalism”). While the carefully rendered decorative tiles and Egyptian architecture may be observed from life (and brought back from travels in photographic form), the voluptuous women bathing, or for sale, and young boys charming snakes are pure fantasy, designed in accordance with literary references and European expectations of what the “Orient” was like.

One of Gérôme’s portraits, from 1877, is of another nineteenth century heavyweight, Charles Garnier, who has his own exhibition down the road at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Like Gérôme, Garnier is not the first name that springs to mind when you think of nineteenth century France. Although he was, at one time, a lot better known and a lot more establishment than any of the Impressionists. He was an architect, most famous for his outrageously decadent building, the Opera in Paris, aka the Opéra Garnier.

The first part of the show is for die-hard Garnier enthusiasts, with letters, photos and memorabilia as well as architectural drawings (but no English translations of the explanations as far as I could tell). The second part is devoted to the Opéra itself and the various aspects of its design and construction. Most interesting are the photographs showing the clearing of 12 000 square meters of land to build the edifice. The various facets of the exhibition remind us just how extremely over-the-top an undertaking the opera house was.

Designed to reflect the glory of Empire, the image is completely at odds with the impression (geddit?) we have of French art in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Opéra was finally finished in 1874, the same year that Monet’s “Impression: soleil levant” was exhibited in the Impressionists’ independent show. They could not be more different.

“Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)” is on at the Grand Palais, through January 24 (open 24 hours from 21 through 24)

“Claude Monet: son musée” is on at the Musée Marmottan through February 20

“The Spectacular Art of Jean Léon Gérôme” is on at the Musée d’Orsay through January 23, then going to Madrid (February 15 through May 22)

“Charles Garnier: un architecte pour un Empire” is on at the Ecole des Beaux Arts through February 9

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Ugo Rondinone, "Turn back time, lets start this day again", Tuileries

Despite this, galleries and other venues have been scrubbing their white spaces to greet the international art world glitterati. The 2010 Fiac – Foire internationale d’art contemporain (international contemporary art fair) – opens to the public today, and is generating a fair amount of “bruit”. In its 37th year, the Fiac has carved itself an important place in the Paris art calendar in recent years, moving from the less auspicious exposition center at Porte de Versailles, on the western edge of the city, to the prime location of the Grand Palais and the courtyard (Cour Carré) of the Louvre. This year the fair boasts 3500 artists and almost 200 galleries.

The Grand Palais’ monumental 19th century glass roof shelters more established galleries, while the temporary structure in the Louvre courtyard houses younger outfits. The Louvre courtyard also includes stands dedicated to the artists shortlisted for this years Prix Marcel Duchamp. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Cyprien Gaillard, Camille Henrot and Anne-Marie Schneider are in the running for France’s most prestigious contemporary art prize.

Antony Gormley, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Fiac 2010

The buzz of the Fiac has also spawned numerous satellite fairs: the Slick Art Fair and Show Off, both celebrating their fifth year, Cutlog, a fair in its second year, dedicated to young galleries and emerging artists, and newcomer the Chic Art Fair, which launches its first edition tonight. Unlike the other fairs which are located in central and western Paris, the Chic Art Fair is held in the east of the city, in the innovative Seine-side structure of the Cité de la mode et du design (design and fashion center). To encourage visitors there is a BatoCHIC – a boat which will travel along the picturesque river, carrying people to more central locations.

There is even a “not the Fiac” show (“ceci n’est pas la Fiac” borrowed from Magritte’s famous “ceci n’est pas une pipe”), an internet platform for digital artists, which offers a more democratic image than the flashy VIP (pronounced in French to rhyme with quip) events surrounding the other fairs.

As if that wasn’t enough, there are also numerous exhibitions and events timed to coincide with “Paris art week”, including sculpture and installations in the Tuileries gardens (linking up the Fiac’s two venues), the sell-out Monet show – the largest ever retrospective of the artist, uniting over 200 works, and a major Basquiat retrospective.

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, "Human Legacy", Tuileries

As well as the overwhelming abundance of art, people-watching opportunities abound. The viewing public at the Fiac reflects the ambience of the split venues – men in scarves, women in fur sipping champagne at the Grand Palais and young hipsters drinking colorful Ricard cocktails at the Louvre.

The mighty Larry Gagosian, recently named the “most powerful figure in the art world” has also just added a Paris venue to his string of international galleries (bringing his total to 9). Gagosian Paris is a stone’s throw from Christie’s and Sotheby’s and across the road from the Fiac.

Often seen as lagging behind London and New York, contemporary art in Paris seems to be making a bid to catch up.

The Fiac is on at the Grand Palais and the Cour Carré du Louvre, October 21 through 24. The Slick Art Fair is on at the esplanade of the Palais de Tokyo, The Show Off is on at the Champs Elysées, Cutlog is on at the Bourse de Commerce, also October 21 through 24. The Chic Art Fair is on at the Cité de la mode et du design, October 22 through 25. Monet is on at the Galeries du Grand Palais through January 24. Basquiat is on at the Musée d’art moderne through January 30.

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Sanaa, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York

Sejima’s chosen theme, “People Meet in Architecture”, is suitably vague and has been seen as an attempt to move away from previous shows’ obsession with buildings. The 2010 show engages more with the idea of inhabiting space and architectural experience. Sejima is the first woman to curate the Architecture Biennale and reviewers have pointed out that the show’s success is, to a certain degree, thanks to the lack of macho architecture that has dominated in recent years. The ambience is also in keeping with the economic climate, hardly conducive to impressive edifices of capitalist glory.

Reviewers are fairly unanimous in their choice of highlights, including Danish artist, Olafur Eliasson’s installation, ‘Your Split Second House‘ – an ethereal play on light and water and ‘Cloudscapes‘, a walkway that disappears into an artificially generated cloud, by German Engineers ‘Transsolar Klima Engineering‘ and Japanese ‘Tetsuo Kondo Architects‘ .

As for the 53 national pavilions, the Hungarian offering has been widely praised, paying homage to the art of drawing with an installation made of suspended yellow pencils. The Golden Lion for best national participation went to the Kingdom of Bahrain, for its contribution, which is made up of reconstructed traditional fisherman’s huts. This seems an unlikely proposition from a country that is more often associated with the rapid development and architectural one-upmanship of the Persian Gulf, but reflects the more modest, contemplative character of this year’s Biennale.

***

In Paris, a smaller scale show also tackles architecture in its conceptual form, this time in the context of the comic strip. ‘Archi & BD – la ville dessiné’ (‘Architecture and Comic strips – the city illustrated’), curated by Jean-Marc Thévenet, head of Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême and Francis Rambert, head of the Institut Français d’Architecture, deals with the illustrated city—or even the imagined city—be it as a backdrop to a cartoon or an architect’s work in progress.

Antonio Sant'Elia, Building Design, c.1914

Drawings on show by futurist architect Antonio Saint’Elia or French architect Auguste Perret’s “Ville-tours”, a new idea for suburbs in which the city is surrounded by enormous interconnected tower blocks, are echoed in the plunging perspectives or dystopic visions of comics artists.

New York and the early megalopolises of the 20th century (think Gotham city and Metropolis) feature heavily as the epitome of the modern. From Winsor McCay’s ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland‘, one of the first comic strips to be published in the Sunday papers, to wistful European representations – Alain Saint Ogan’s ‘Zig & Puce

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Louvre visitors taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. Photo by inti

Photography was briefly banned in the Louvre in 2005, but with the digital revolution in full swing this was becoming harder to police. What’s more, “No Photography” falls into that category of rules that people tend to ignore (like cycling the wrong way up a one way street or under-age drinking). Result: museum staff meeltdown as they had to constantly remind recalcitrant tourists. Photography is now permitted in the Louvre (except for temporary exhibitions) as long as the flash off.

Photography in museums remains, however, a divisive issue and there seems to be no common stance across major musems. The trend in the United States seems to be to allow photography. The Met, MoMa and the National Gallery in Washington all allow photography without flash and for non-commerical use. In Europe there is no unifying policy. In the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Prado in Madrid photography is not permitted. In France, as well as the Louvre, most contemporary art institutions allow photography. But, the Musée d’Orsay, famous for its rich collection of impressionist paintings, recently announced that photography was to be prohibited inside the museum. The museum’s main argument against it is that it causes visitor traffic jams.

Photo by Mr Wabu

While shouty critics argue that the museum management just wants to increase postcard sales, the question is thornier than it first appears.

The website, Louvre Pour Tous, whose mission is to “inform and defend museum-goers”, points out that with this new decision the Musée d’Orsay is missing a trick and revealing itself as backward. People who take photos in museums are often doing so to share their experiences on social networking sites, blogs or photo-sharing sites. By banning photography in the museum the management are seen as “surfing against the tide” of new media, apparently ignorant of the fact that bloggers and other internet users promote the musuem and its contents.

Louvre Pour Tous cites the Château de Versailles, Louis XIV’s extravagant royal residence now one of France’s most visited museums, as a counter-example which has ridden the flickr/picasa/facebook wave and launched a photography competition, “Reflections of Versailles”, based on photos visitors have taken in and around the château. The best entries are exhibited on the website.

Another argument, which is particularly French in its nature due to the structure of public arts funding and, well, national character, is that “patrimoine” (heritage) belongs to every French citizen and so every French citizen should be within their rights to photograph something that is, at least in a fairly abstract way, theirs. Moreover a tract published by the CGT (General Confederation of Labour, one of France’s main trade unions) highlights the fact that 20% of the ticket price at the Musée d’Orsay goes toward the museum’s acquisitions budget. So even non-French visitors can fight for their right to a little piece of Monet or Renoir.

Degas, 'L'Absinthe', 1876, Musée d'Orsay

Curiously the question of conservation has taken a back seat in this debate. In the end flash-less photography does little to harm the art. Although this is something that still has to be policed. In the last week the Louvre has erected white gauzy sheets across its more notably ceilings (for example paintings by Le Brun and Delacroix in the Apollo Gallery). Signs claim this is ahead of restoration work, I’d hazard a guess that too many flashes are to blame.

Which begs the question – should people have a right to their piece of “patrimoine” when the historical value of it hasn’t even crossed their mind? The proliferation of digital cameras and mass consumption of images has created a new sort of museum-goer, the happy-snapper. Sometimes these 21st century museum visitors are so keen to immortalize the moment they were grinning inanely in front of Degas’ depiction of parisian down-and-outs in ‘L’Absinthe’ that you have to wonder whether they are actually looking at the art at all. A friend returning from New York felt her visit to MoMA was ruined by the incessant snapping. “One man was trying to get a shot of his young daughter posing in front of Picasso’s ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’” she said, “I wanted to remind him that this is Picasso’s warped vision of a brothel”.

No matter. The snappers will have their way, and they probably ought to.

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Trafalgar Square’s latest contemporary installation is Yinka Shonibare’s “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle” – 4.7 meters of model replica with batik sails in place of the traditional white. A Turner prize-nominated artist, Shonibare often uses batik prints in his sculptures. Although the fabrics give his installations a decidedly African feel, the artist is quick to point out that, even if these colorful prints have become identified with Africa, their international visibility is a result of trade between the Netherlands and Indonesia during the colonial period.

Yinka Shonibare, "Nelson's Ship in a Bottle", Trafalgar Square, photo by daisybush

The complex weaving of cultural identity is a good analogy for Shonibare’s work, mixing styles, cultures, and periods of history to the point where it becomes hard to decipher. Take, for example, “The Swing (after Fragonard)” (2001), a sculpture based on Fragonard’s famously frivolous painting in which a young woman suggestively kicks off her slipper as she swings on a swing. In Shonibare’s version the eighteenth century costume is recreated in colorful fabrics and contemporary trade marks. The woman, for her part, has no head. Fragonard is all about rococo style and titillating narrative, a powdery looking young woman revealing – gasp – a naked foot. Shonibare’s swing may be less provocative but raises question of excess common to the eighteenth century and the early noughties.

So far, the ship has garnered a lot of positive response – from the appreciation of its element of kitsch to the bold statement of multiculturalism. The choice of a ship in a bottle is a thematic fit in the nautical Trafalgar square, and the plinth carries on it’s modern tradition of linking London’s hardware with the people scurrying around it. Commissioned by the City of London (previously commissioned by the RSA between 1999 and 2001), the Fourth Plinth project sits somewhere between public monument and public art, aiming to reflect the city and the nation, as well as appear aesthetically and conceptually relevant.

Shonibare is the seventh contemporary artist to win the commission to ornament the Fourth Plinth, which was originally designed to hold a statue of King William IV, and his ship is flanked at the three other corners by King George IV, and military men Henry Havelock and Charles James Napier.

Other memorable Fourth Plinth moments include:

Rachel Whiteread, who made it her trademark to create sculptures out of negative space, simply made a cast of the plinth itself. Cast in transparent resin “Monument” was calm and symmetrical, minimal yet thought-provoking.

A rogue David Beckham appeared on the plinth during the 2002 World Cup. Madame Tussauds, the famous waxworks museum, put the model of the former England football captain up as a publicity stunt. Waxy Beckham’s outdoor adventure was short-lived as he was up there without official permission. Red card.

Marc Quinn, "Alison Lapper Pregnant", Trafalgar Square, 2005 - 2007, photo by Morgaine

Marc Quinn’s “Alison Lapper Pregnant” was a large sculpture of a pregnant disabled woman. In a square dedicated to military heroes, Lapper was a refreshingly arresting image of another form of heroism.

Last year the Fourth Plinth commission was won by Antony Gormley, who used it as a platform for public performance, starring none other than, the public themselves. “One and Other” lasted 100 days and saw 2 400 selected performers, who used their half an hour for all sorts of self promotion, good causes, campaigns and lunacy. The whole project is documented here. Hats off the the Godzilla impersonator.

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Last month may have seen the opening of the largest and most expensive world’s fair ever – Expo 2010 in Shanghai. Over 190 countries are participating and 70 million visitors are expected by the end of the expo’s run on October 31 2010. But it also saw the opening of the more modest exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris, ‘Dreamlands’, which takes Paris’ Exposition Universelle of 1889 as its starting point and explores some of the more extravagant architectural experiments, theme parks and artists’ impressions of this thoroughly modern phenomenon. Taking its title from the Coney Island theme-park, Dreamland, which burned down in 1911, the show is loosely thematic and takes us on a journey from a film of Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in Dreamland’s replica of Venice, to Las Vegas and the dizzy heights of Dubai.

Postcard of the Eiffel tower, 1910

The tradition of world’s fairs was inaugurated with Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition, which took place in London in 1851. The idea was to showcase Britain’s industrial and manufacturing achievements and to show the world that technology was the key to future success. Stuffy Brit utilitarianism was eclipsed in the late nineteenth century expos by a more “fun” dimension – the Eiffel tower in 1889, the first Ferris wheel in Chicago in 1893 – which would evolve throughout the early twentieth century.

The New York World’s Fair in 1939 included a pavilion designed by Salvador Dali, ‘The Dream of Venus’, which has been partly recreated for ‘Dreamlands’. The melted-looking facade and protruding forms of the pavilion give it the air of a haunted house. It was not haunted by ghosts, however, but by sensual fantasies. Reproductions of Botticelli’s Venus and the Mona Lisa invite visitors in to discover a choreographed “water ballet”.

Also at the New York World’s Fair was the General Motors pavilion, which revealed “the world of tomorrow” through its ride, the “Futurama”. Although GM did have an industrial agenda (showing how technology would alter lifestyles 20 years in the future – the 1960s!), world’s fairs had arguably become more concerned with spectacle and less with utility.

Dreamland, Coney Island, 1905

The fun part is the thread the Pompidou’s show picks up: the modern spectacular. It is a multifaceted exhibit, including some important architectural moments – Cedric Price’s designs for the Fun Palace (plans are curiously similar to today’s music festival site maps), the publication of Denise Scott Brown’s and Robert Venturi’s ‘Learning from Las Vegas‘ in 1968, Rem Koolhaas’ ‘Delirious New York‘ and Richard Rogers’ design of the Pompidou Center in the seventies.

But beyond architecture, it also deals with collective mythologies. Building on Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York’ legacy of eerily animist architecture is Malachi Farrell’s installation ‘Nothing stops a New Yorker’. As you hear the sound of an aerobics instructor starting up a class, cardboard skyscrapers come to life, raising their hands according to the instructor’s directions. The simulated aerobics class is broken up as the sounds shift from sterile aerobics class to crashing disaster and screaming, with 9/11 now firmly bound into the mythology of New York. It is a weird but interesting comment on how a city becomes more than just a sum of its architectural parts. Next to the installation a street scene from ’42nd Street’ is playing on a loop as if to remind us of New York’s cult status.

Alongside mythic cities, ‘Dreamlands’ explores our darker fascination with recreating the world in miniature, with controlling and shaping the world. A controversial part of early world expos were the colonial fairs, a propaganda tool used to paste a cheerful face on the harsh colonial realities (there is another show at the National Archives, in Paris, on the subject). ‘Dreamlands’ does not engage with the colonial side directly. But the urge to gather the world together, to control and display it, is mercilessly dissected.

Technology has pushed the limits of possibility in places like Disney’s ‘Its a Small World’ or Vegas’ reconstructions of Venice and the Eiffel Tower. The Window of the World theme park in Shenzhen, China recreates models of the wonders of the modern world; Ski Dubai offers indoor skiing with real snow in the Middle Eastern desert and the whole world has been recreated as a series of islands in the sea off the coast of Dubai.

The World, Dubai

This procession of kitsch pastiche inspires photographers Reiner Riedler and Martin Parr, featured in the Pompidou’s selection. Parr delights in the gaudy and colorful world of tourism while Riedler’s series ‘Fake Holidays’ capture the strangeness of a “tropical paradise” recreated indoors in Germany, or of a man posing in front of a mini Capitol Hill, with a mini Mount Rushmore in the background, at Shenzhen.

While Shenzen and Vegas offer neat replicas of the wonders of the modern world, ‘Dreamlands’ is an ambitious and diverse show, not easily reined in by one unifying theme. It is both utopic and outlandish, sincere and fanciful. The multiplicity of exhibits represent the imaginary spectacle and the encroaching of the spectacular on our quotidian.

So does Shanghai’s World Expo 2010 close itself down into the limiting and the conventional, or does it seek to explore? There is still a danger of fostering national stereotypes. The theme of the French pavilion is “the sensual city” including, amongst other things, French cuisine; the American pavilion focuses on 4D audiovisuals, with a restaurant serving burgers; and the Cuban pavilion sells Cuban cigars.

SAIC-GM Pavilion at Expo 2010

But it is not all clichés – escaping the image of bad weather and bad teeth, or red buses and bowler hats, the British pavilion looks more like a UFO. Known as the “Seed Cathedral”, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the structure is made of thousands of fibers, all containing seeds, which take in light during the day, using it to illuminate the structure at night. Prominent Shanghai blogger, Adam Minter, also highlights the weirdness of the Hungarian pavilion, which is based entirely around the discovery of the geometric curiosity, the “Gömböc”. And, true to form, the SAIC- GM pavilion projects a 4D imagining of Shanghai in 2030. Futurama here we come.

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Nick Walker, Corancan, Paris

Walker recently made his mark on the streets of Paris with Le Corancan, a chorus line of Moulin Rouge style French can-can dancers, their faces hidden behind black veils. Walker came up with the idea a few months ago when he heard about the French government’s plans to ban the burka in France. He created a stencil in his studio before coming to Paris in March to stun unsuspecting passers-by.

Unfortunately the piece has already gone the way of much street art – removed at the behest of city authorities. This may be disappointing for street art enthusiasts. But isn’t the ephemeral nature the very essence of street art? From an artist’s point of view, it must be frustrating not to have control over their finished work.

When quizzed on the short-lived glory of Le Corancan, you might expect a vitriolic response, berating the over-zealous French authorities. Walker remains level-headed: “Once it’s on the wall and you’ve left the scene it’s pretty much fair game. If it stays up a week it’s a result. The aim is to get the piece up, document it and move on. This time the whole piece was filmed.”

So the act and the recorded performance are as important as the finished piece. But how does the transience of pieces like Le Corancan relate to the increasingly commercial genre of street art? Some critics argue that graffiti’s original impetus – rebellion – has been eclipsed by the rise of profitable street art. Can the two coexist or is there a danger of street art becoming an empty gesture when it’s no longer on the street?

“I get asked this question a lot…” says Walker [note to self: try to be more original]. “It’s just another genre that has now been accepted by the art world. Why do people want souvenirs from the sea side? Human instinct, and supply and demand.” He has a point. Think of the throngs of tourists in museum gift shops buying postcards, people always want to have a little piece for keeps. Street art at auction and in galleries is like a scaled-up version of buying postcards in the museum shop: it’s never going to be as good as the real thing but it’s nice to be able to take it home.

Even so, the street still seems to be the most inviting canvas for Walker, offering a visibility and scale that may be lacking in studio art, as well as a rebellious rush. “Nothing beats the thrill of getting away with an illegal piece especially when it’s quite a big production. Painting on the street in general is an important part of my art. The street is the biggest gallery you can wish for and if you find a spot in a busy area your work isn’t going to go unnoticed.”

At four meters long on a very visible wall, Le Corancan certainly got more attention than it would have done if it was in a gallery. Does Walker feel strongly about the controversy over the Muslim burka in France? “I believe that wanting to ban the burka is a crazy decision typical of a leader with far-right views. First he wants to ban the burka next he’ll be wanting to ban baseball hats or hoodies. Where will it stop?”

Nick Walker, Moona Lisa, photo by unusualimage

Despite the political impact, the humorous juxtaposition of Belle Époque and modern day France is amusing and visually arresting in itself. It is reminiscent of another of Walker’s risqué works: the Moona Lisa, in which Leonardo’s well-known sitter for the Mona Lisa reveals her pert buttocks from underneath her robes. Walker seems to enjoy humorously pushing the boundaries of taste. “Not all my pieces have political connotations” he says “most of my work has an element of humor in it or, like The Morning After series, a central character.”

The Morning After series follows a smart gentleman and his waggish acts of picturesque vandalism: painting the town, using a remote control giraffe to paint “vandal” high up on a wall, blowing up a colorful rat… The protagonist, in his pin-striped suit and shiny bowler hat is like a dandy-graffiti artist. Could he even embody the modern street artist – scrubbed up and smart for his new role as art world lovie? That’s not how Walker sees it: “He’s just a character – the city gent outfit is a decoy – no one expects anyone dressed like this to be up to mischief.”

Nick Walker, TMA Williamsburg, photo by Karen Horten

Mischief is a good metaphor for the role of street art today. Walker’s home town Bristol, also home to Banksy (there was even some speculation a couple of years ago that Walker was actually Banksy), is so proud of its home-grown talent that parts of the city now have the appearance of an open air gallery of street art. Is there anything particular about Bristol that makes it such fertile ground for this sort of artistic production? “It’s the cider” says Walker.

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James Gillray, "John Bull, in a quandary", 1788

“John Bull, in a quandary”, a caricature by James Gillray from 1788, depicts a stocky, simple-looking character (John Bull) standing between two MPs running in a Westminster by-election. As unflattering as it may seem, John Bull had come to represent the Great British public in caricature. Here he finds himself torn between Hood, on the left, whose naval success is represented by the French sailors he has captured and the ships in the background. Townshend, on the right is holding ribbons attached to three simpering ladies on their knees behind him, to show his success with women. So even in the eighteenth century political figures couldn’t get away with keeping their private lives to themselves.

The inscription “Which way shall I turn me? How will I decide?”, echoes the thoughts of the current British electorate in the last few days before the general election in Britain. And the art of caricature is alive and well for the occasion. A scatological variation on Gillray’s theme by Gerald Scarfe, “Between two stools”, depicts a modern day John Bull (grey suit instead of breeches) quivering with indecision between two giant shits with the faces of Gordon Brown and David Cameron, leaders of the Labour and Tory parties respectively.

This cartoon, presumably sketched out a month or so ago, did not predict the third influence: Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and surprise sensation of this election. Clegg was catapulted into the public consciousness after Britain’s first televised leaders’ debate. He has even been hailed as “the British Obama”.

This unforeseen change has led to a rise in new voter registrations and the most interesting general election Britain has seen for some years. John Bull (aka the British electorate) finds himself, unexpectedly, not standing between the two usual stools: Labour and Tory, but between three parties: the reds the blues and the bright shiny yellows.

Nick Clegg, source: Wikimedia commons

One of the first reactions to Clegg’s TV debate success was a series of smear campaigns in the Tory press: “Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain” (The Daily Mail) and “Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem, donors and payments into his private account” (The Daily Telegraph). This was caricatured by Peter Brookes in the Times, parodying a scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, with Clegg as the Messiah and Cameron and Brown holding anti-Clegg headlines aloft, saying “he’s not the messiah”, “he’s a very naughty boy”.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron are a caricaturist’s gift – heavyset Brown with his bulldog-saggy face, large ears and grim demeanor pitted against clean-shaven Cameron with his floppy hair, bulgy eyes and pink shiny face. Caricatures of these men are instantly recognizable. Cameron can be depicted as the Beano character “Lord Snooty” (in the satirical paper Private Eye) and as a balloon (by the Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell) but we can always tell it’s him.

Clegg’s unexpected rise to prominence is expressed (or rather ill expressed) in caricature. There is, as yet, no credible caricature of Clegg in the British press. Some satirists have blamed this on his lack of distinguishing features (visual or otherwise). Steve Bell talks about the challenges in this short video:

“As a character he’s not defined yet”. This seems to be the main problem – Clegg just hasn’t been in the public eye long enough. While Cameron has been visibly transforming the Conservative party over the last four years, satirists’, pundits’ and cartoonists’ jokes about the Liberal Democrats have been limited to mocking the unlikelihood of their having any real sway at a national level.

Martin Rowson, also of the Guardian, has had a good crack at representing him as Pinocchio – “The Tellyfairy’s promise has come true! You have turned into a real politician!”. Morten Morland, of the Times has also done a fair job as “Supernick”, but there doesn’t yet seem to be any consensus on how to portray this energetic newcomer.

Although Nick won the heart of the TV-viewing electorate in the first televised debate, opinion polls indicate that Cameron performed better in the second and third TV debates. But with polls showing less than 10% difference between the three parties, and a hung parliament looking increasingly likely, it’s going to be a very close call. With these statistics we don’t know what the result is going to be on Thursday, but cartoonists should probably start working on a more solid caricature of Nick Clegg, just in case.

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A new exhibition at the Centre National de l’Audiovisuel, in Luxembourg, engages with this shift in the way we perceive and consume photographic imagery. “I Was Here”, explores the themes of travel, tourism and nostalgia in photography and is timed to coincide with a conference, “Tourists and Nomads. Amateur Images of Migration”, which will take place at the center from April 22-24.

Félix Bonfils, Sphinx, 1867

The exhibition includes archive photographs, from private sources and official tourism bureaus. It also includes the work of three contemporary artists: Joachim Schmid, Erik Kessels and Robert Sclotter who use found images and archive material to explore visual codes in photography.

Photography and travel have long been associated. Since the early days of nineteenth century expeditions to Egypt, photography has been used as a way of documenting new discoveries. Place plays an important role and many photographers rely on the stories, landscapes and otherness of foreign climes as inspiration, from the mighty Henri Cartier-Bresson, co-founder of Magnum Photos, to the ubiquitous Sebastião Salgado and Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

But “I Was Here” is less interested in “travel” and more concerned with “tourism” which has quite different connotations. There is something nostalgic about tourism, something reminiscent of school outings, sandy sandwiches and grandparents eating ice cream.

Martin Parr, "Small World", photo bt Pétille

This is not lost on contemporary British photographer Martin Parr (also an avid ephemera collector and editor of “Boring Postcards” and “Boring postcards USA”). Known for his love of the British seaside and its quaint customs, Parr delights in the common or garden tourist. His series “Small World” humorously captures tourists in well-trodden destinations: with the Egyptian Sphinx, in front of the Parthenon and in the Wild West, for example. My favorite shows people pretending to hold up the leaning tower of Pisa, posing for their friends’ holiday snaps. There is something at once ridiculous and touching about Parr’s subjects.

Nostalgia seems really to be the driving force behind “I Was Here”. In his series “in almost every picture”, Erik Kessels presents the same, unidentified woman posing in various holiday locations. There is an element of voyeurism as we don’t know the stories behind the pictures, so they cannot be completely sentimental. But we still recognize the visual signifiers: crackly-edged borders and color-faded images of vacations are instinctively evocative. Kessels also capitalizes on the unexpected and unplanned with “strangers in my photo album”, in which manipulated images highlight those mysterious figures that appear in photo albums; and “wonder” which celebrates the strange effects caused by accidents in the photo-making process.

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