***** Ephemeral Art Festival in Cuba Lasts 90 Minutes Reuters Saturday, June 7, 2003; 8:04 AM
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's first ephemeral art festival lasted barely an hour and a half Friday, until the butter paintings and ice sculptures began to melt, the children ate the cupcakes hung from a tree and the grand piano went up in flames.
There were sculptures made from flowers, paper and cardboard egg trays and blindfolded domino players, all competing for the best exhibit of transitory art in a square in Havana's inner city.
The winner, Jeanette Chavez, a 22-year-old art student who won a night out at Havana's famed Tropicana cabaret, poured gasoline on a wooden piano structure and set fire to it while minimalist piano music blared from speakers.
"I built it and I destroyed it, to show art as change and not as an object that can be used," she said. "It's not a sculpture that will endure in time like a Michelangelo's David."
A tower of ice with books inside, evoking the Alexandria library and lighthouse of ancient Egypt, melted in the tropical heat. Children swarmed around a tree, grabbing at chocolate cupcakes, which artists had hung like mobiles.
"The works will stay here until they disappear," said Mayrelis Peraza, director of Havana's Experimental Center for the Visual Arts and organizer of the First National Festival of Ephemeral Sculpture.
The most elaborate entry was 'The Four Seasons,' a series of relief paintings made of butter by hotel chef Jorge Gonzalez, who copied the fruit and flower portraits of 16th Century Italian painter Giussepe Arcimboldo.
"They are ephemeral because the butter will melt in the sun," Gonzalez said.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27975-2003Jun7.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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