Text: Natalia Remmer QATAR STATE IS THE KEY COMPETENT OF THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES FOR THE TITLE OF THE CULTURAL HUB OF THE REGION. AT THE CHAPTER OF THE ART PROCESS OF Tiny, BUT EIGHT AMBITIOUS ARABIAN MONARCHY - SHEIKHA AL MAYASSA BINT HAMAD AL TANI, SISTER OF THE CURRENT EMIR, HEAD AND CUSTOMIZED CRAWL.
To break the barrier of ignorance and misunderstanding between East and West - this is the goal set by the Qatari ruling dynasty Al Thani, firmly entrenched in the cultural map of the world. The central figure of the art revolution is the 32-year-old Princess Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Al Thani, the eldest daughter of the famous Sheikh Moza and the sister of the ruler of the state, proudly bearing the title of “Queen of Culture”. Heading the Department of Museums of Qatar, she seriously took up the creation of a collection of traditional and contemporary art. “As my father likes to say, if we want to keep the peace, we must learn to respect other cultures,” said Sheikh Al Mayassa. “People from the West do not understand the Middle East - they have one Bin Laden in their heads.”
It was thanks to her that Qatar became the main buyer of contemporary art. Transactions with works of art, to which the Al Thani family had a hand, went down in history as the most ambitious and ambitious on a budget. The debut for Sheikh Al Mayassa on the art market was 2006: she bought an electric guitar Fender Stratocaster autographed by rock legends Mick Jagger, Brian Adams and Eric Clapton for a record US $ 2.8 million - not a single musical instrument, even inlaid with diamonds, is not managed to overcome this price bar.
Among the masterpieces later acquired at auctions are 11 works by abstract artist Mark Rothko (totaling US $ 310 million), Andy Warhol's work “Men in Her Life” (US $ 63.4 million), “A Child with a Dove” by Pablo Picasso (US $ 76 million) and others.
The real explosion of the art market was the transaction to acquire the canvas "Card Players" by Paul Cezanne - in 2012, she went under the hammer for US $ 250 million, which was an absolute record for that time. The shocked world of art stated: "everything that Sheikh Al Mayassa touches turns into gold." The following year, at a auction in New York, Sheikh Al Mayassa flashed again: her collection was supplemented by the triptych "Three Sketches for the Portrait of Lucien Freud" by British artist Francis Beko a, for which the royal dynasty paid US $ 142 million.
As a result, according to the results of 2013, Al Mayassa bandage Hamad Al Thani became the most influential person in the art world.
“Art and culture is a religion accessible to everyone. It is a space for discussion, communication and demonstrations,” sheikh said. “Culture acts as an intermediary between people in society. It is from it that we learn something new every day.”
Today, the emirate slowed down a little, but in February 2015 there was information that the canvas of the French artist Paul Gauguin "When will you get married?" Is going to move to Qatar - Its value amounted to US $ 300 million. If this information is correct, then the Al Thani family broke their own world record, again acquiring the world's most expensive work of art.
Qatar Medici
The Al Thani Dynasty bears the title of modern Medici. The drift towards high art at the gas monarchy began in the 80s. The first to collect a collection of contemporary art was Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali al-Thani: today in his collection are more than 6300 objects of contemporary art from the Middle East, which gave birth to the Museum of Oriental Art of the Mathaaf. In turn, the cousin of Sheikh Al Mayassa, Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al Thani boasts an impressive collection of manuscripts, carpets, scientific instruments and Mughal jewelry - today they are exhibited at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, which is one of the ten best museums in the world.
According to experts, the budget of the Office of Qatar Museums for the purchase of high art is about US $ 1 billion per year. It is expected that the most ambitious purchases will be announced in the near future and will be timed to coincide with the opening of the Qatar Museum, the country's main cultural center, scheduled for 2016. The futuristic building, inspired by a desert rose, is being erected by the famous French architect Jean Nouvel - he is also working on a project for the Louvre branch in Abu Dhabi, on the island of Saadiyat. 12 galleries will tell the world about the national history of Qatar and its transformation - from the coastal settlement of pearl dealers to the discovery of oil and gas deposits. Unlike Abu Dhabi, Qatar did not open branches of Western cultural centers - he decided to create his own unique museums and collections, grow them out of sand and enthusiasm in the middle of the desert.
While the new museum is still under construction under the roof, Qatari patrons are promoting their name in the world of art, not only in local galleries, but throughout the world. The most striking events are the exposition of the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami in 2010 in Versailles, a grandiose retrospective of Damien Hirst in London and later in Doha, as well as the sensational exhibition "Gifts of the Sultans", which visited California and the capital of Qatar.
