No Complains

Cesar Baldaccini made a cast of his thumb in pink translucent plastic in 1965 for a Paris gallery.  It ended up selling at auction for over a million euros.  So he made more.  Bigger thumbs.  In all sorts of materials.  And they ended up in cities all over the world.  This version, in the centre of the Souq Waqif, is just one of a huge number of public art pieces which literally litter the city.  But I suppose in a place with CCTV on every corner and virtually no graffiti or public misconduct, and with lashing and stoning still on the punishment roster, public spaces become a bit of a gallery.

 

Despite the heat on Wednesday, we did a long walk around the Katara Towers in the daytime to get some steps in.  We were the proverbial crazy tourists, out in the heat of the day during Ramadan.

In the evening we went to the National Museum of Qatar.  Its not so tourist friendly Ramadan hours were nine in the morning to noon, then 8 pm to midnight.  We went at 8 pm.  Never been to a museum after dinner, but there’s a first for everything.

 

We took dinner at 6 pm, then, it being a wonderful warm evening, walked the neighbourhood near the national museum until it opened.  Pics below are of Flag Plaza, a newly minted public square of 119 flags supposedly embracing cross-cultural connections.  That snaky white tube in the pictures is actually a sculpture.  You might think it’s just a simple barrier to prevent, say, skateboarding on the plaza.  Uh-uh.  It’s an installation of hand-sculpted limestone, spans 313 metres, and is (I quote) “an abstract reflection on human interactions, which conveys the complexity and fundamental importance of human connections. Illustrating various modes and strata of interaction such as acquaintances, friendships, love, introversion, confidence, familiarity, fluidity and obstruction, Us, Her, Him reminds us” OK enough of that, we need the colonel from Monty Python to intervene and end the sketch.

 

Finally, come 8 pm, we got entrance to the national museum.  The architect, Jean Nouvel, modelled it after the desert rose crystal.  It’s a monument (to something).  Discs, tiers, arches, like layers of sand dollars washed up on shore, like a collision of 1950s sci-fi flying saucers; Google “Erich Brenn on Ed Sullivan” and you get my drift.  Stunning and hugely engaging and also a little alienating.

The displays were clever, high-tech and representative.  But the story is basically the history of sheikdoms on the Arab peninsula, early trade with the Portuguese, a thriving industry diving for pearls, the discovery of oil in the 1930s followed by the discovery of gas a few decades later and all the evolutionary upheaval deep wealth has given the region.  And since 80% of the population live in Doha, to dedicate a museum to the country can get a little dry.  I will just say we didn’t need four hours to engage.

With all the wealth comes a little, how can I put it?  Conflict.

OK, so the museum was up and down, sometimes engaging, sometimes didactic, sometimes stretched thin, thematically.  But the building, oh boy the building.