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    The Art of the Fall
    The Art of the Fall
    The Art of the Fall
    Ebook139 pages3 hours

    The Art of the Fall

    By Véronique Côté, Jean-Michel Girouard, Jean-Philippe Joubert and

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    About this ebook

    A story about love, art, and the 2008 financial crisis. Towards the end of the 18th century, twenty-four traders would meet under a tree to buy and sell shares. The tree was located at 68 Wall Street, so called because of a wall that used to mark the northern limits of the colony of New Amsterdam, on the Island of Manhattan.On May 17, 1792, the twenty-four brokers signed, beneath the tree, the Buttonwood Agreement. This marked the foundation of the New York Stock Exchange, and the birth of Wall Street.Today, the tree on Wall Street has long since fallen, and the twenty-four traders' transactions have become complex to the point of being almost intangible and immaterial. Finance has become an abstraction; it pervades every sphere of our lives, including contemporary art. Especially contemporary art. This love story, based on documentary research, follows a struggling artist and an opportunistic hedge fund manager. As Lehman Brothers falls and two worlds collide, we explore the darkest corners of the contemporary art scene, the global economy, and two broken hearts.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQC Fiction
    Release dateApr 1, 2020
    ISBN9781771862134
    The Art of the Fall
    Author

    Véronique Côté

    Véronique Côté is an actress, director, and author. She was a finalist for the Governor General’s award in 2013.

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      Book preview

      The Art of the Fall - Véronique Côté

      Véronique Coté • Jean-Michel Girouard

      Jean-Philippe Joubert • Simon Lepage

      Danielle Le Saux-Farmer • Marianne Marceau

      Olivier Normand • Pascale Renaud-Hébert

      THE ART

      OF THE FALL

      Translated from the French by

      Danielle Le Saux-Farmer

      QC FICTION

      Revision: Peter McCambridge

      Proofreading: David Warriner, Elizabeth West

      Book design: Folio infographie

      Cover & logo: Maison 1608 by Solisco

      Fiction editor: Peter McCambridge

      Afterword translated by Robin Philpot

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

      Copyright © 2019 by Nuages en pantalon - compagnie de création

      Originally published under the title L’Art de la chute

      by Les éditions de L’instant même (Longueuil, Québec)

      Translation copyright © Danielle Le Saux-Farmer

      ISBN 978-1-77186-211-0 pbk; 978-1-77186-212-7 epub; 978-1-77186-213-4 pdf

      Legal Deposit, 1st quarter 2020

      Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

      Library and Archives Canada

      Published by QC Fiction

      QC@QCfiction.com

      www.QCfiction.com

      QC Fiction is an imprint of Baraka Books.

      Printed and bound in Québec

      TRADE DISTRIBUTION & RETURNS

      Canada

      UTP Distribution: UTPdistribution.com

      United States and World

      Independent Publishers Group: IPGbook.com

      orders@ipgbook.com

      We acknowledge the financial support for translation and promotion of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), the Government of Québec tax credit for book publishing administered by SODEC, the Government of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

      Prologue

      TOWARDS THE END OF THE 18TH CENTURY, twenty-four traders would meet under a tree to buy and sell shares.

      The tree was located at 68 Wall Street, so called because of a wall that used to mark the northern limits of the colony of New Amsterdam, on the Island of Manhattan.

      On May 17, 1792, the twenty-four brokers signed, beneath the tree, the Buttonwood Agreement.

      This marked the foundation of the New York Stock Exchange, and the birth of Wall Street.

      Today, the tree on Wall Street has long since fallen. And the twenty-four traders’ transactions, brokered in the shade of a plane tree, have become complex to the point of being almost intangible and immaterial.

      Finance has become an abstraction. And it pervades every sphere of our lives.

      Including contemporary art.

      Especially contemporary art.

      This story is based on documentary research. We quoted artists, gallery owners, auctioneers, speculators, and economists. We tried to shine some light on the obscure workings of the art market. To explore the darkest corners of where the art world and the economy meet.

      1. CALQ

      2008. Montreal, office of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Quebec’s arts funding body.

      CALQ program officer. First impressions?

      Assessor 1. When I started looking through the application, I thought it was ironic, that it was playing on kitsch, that there was more to it. Nope. Just plain old photos. Nothing to say about photography, about art, nothing at all. It’s just a pet project.

      Assessor 3. True.

      Assessor 1. They’re mall photos. They look like they were done at Sears Portrait Studio. They’re photos of his grandmother, right?

      Assessor 2. Yes, and she died not long after they were taken.

      Assessor 1. Well there you go. See, if he’d at least used a Polaroid, you’d say, OK, they don’t make Polaroids any more, his grandma’s dead. That’s, like, bare minimum.

      Assessor 3. Agreed.

      Assessor 2. Sure, it’s not quite polished, but I find the project, the old photos, quite moving… It even made me think of my own gran—

      Assessor 1. It feels like a high school art project. It’s a no for me.

      Assessor 3. Same here.

      Assessor 2. What if we sent him to the Quebec studio in London for six months? Maybe that would help develop his approach?

      Assessor 1. He’s forty-two.

      They gasp at his age, like it’s too late, as though he’s a lost cause.

      CALQ program officer. Any other comments?

      Silence around the table.

      CALQ program officer. OK, next: Alice Leblanc.

      Assessor 3. Excuse me but… what time’s lunch? I have to make a call…

      CALQ program officer. This is the last one before lunch.

      Assessor 3. OK.

      Alice steps up onto the meeting table.

      Alice. My name is Alice Leblanc. I’m a visual artist who specializes in sculptural installations integrating audio and video technology.

      Assessor 2. What does this one do again?

      Alice. My work focuses mainly on copper. My family’s from Murdochville, a mining town on the Gaspé Peninsula, so copper holds special meaning for me.

      Assessor 3. Has she won any awards?

      Alice. Almost as soon as I graduated, I won several for the Wilson Syndrome exhibit. The central piece of that exhibit, The Fall, gained a great deal of attention and allowed me to present my work all over Canada.

      Assessor 2. Oh, I saw it. It was awesome, really amazing. Her work… her work really moves me. Her subject matter is very Gaspé and that really speaks to me. I mean, I’m from Paspébiac, so… Her large formats especially… so, so moving.

      Assessor 3. Same here, I feel the same.

      Alice. The Fall is composed of recycled copper wire taken from the offices of the now-defunct Copper Workers’ Union of Murdochville. Speakers integrated into the sculpture play the memo from the owner of Gaspé Copper Mines announcing to three hundred workers that the mine would be closing for an unspecified period of time. The wires are twisted into the shape of the trophy awarded by the Canadian Institute of Mining; the CEO was awarded this trophy the very same day he announced the mine closure, for his innovative vision in the industry.

      Assessor 3. Ugh.

      Assessor 2. Nauseating.

      Assessor 1. Her latest pieces don’t have the oomph of her earlier ones. Her criticism of industrial capitalist society, if I can put it that way, has lost its edge.

      Assessor 3. Yeah, true. I was just about to say the same thing.

      Assessor 2. I don’t know why she didn’t stick to large formats.

      Alice. At the beginning of my career, copper prices were very low: $2,500 a ton. It was relatively easy to get materials from construction sites or from people who were renovating. But starting in 2001, prices went up and people stopped giving copper away, so I had to start buying it.

      Now, demand from China and speculation have brought copper prices to an all-time high of $8,700 a ton. So, I turned to working on smaller pieces, but I seem to have lost the momentum I had working on larger ones.

      Assessor 1. She hasn’t exhibited in a while. Isn’t she a little… off the radar?

      Alice. I recently went through a period when I doubted my work as an artist, and I’m still moving through that. On a more personal note, I separated from my partner last year. The day I moved out, someone stole The Fall, the central piece from my first exhibit.

      Assessor 2. Really? What an awful thing to do!

      Alice. The Fall had about one hundred and fifty pounds of copper. I’m sure the thief made no more than $350 by selling the metal. So when it comes down to it, I realize I’ve got a bone to pick less with the person who stole my piece than with the financial markets that stole my ability to make the art I want to make.

      Assessor 2. Look, just for that, I’d give her the residency!

      Assessor 3. Me too.

      Assessor 1. She really does have a way of thumbing her nose at the invasive capitalism that’s ruining our society.

      Alice. London is both an economic capital, home to the world’s most important metal exchange, and a hotbed of art. I need a moment to step back in order to

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