Warszawa, 7.04.2020
Polski Narodowy Komitet IAA/AIAP
Do Okręgów ZPAP Kolegium Prezesów ZPAP
Szanowne Koleżanki i Koledzy!
Międzynarodowe Stowarzyszenie Artystów IAA/AIAP, którego jako ZPAP jesteśmy członkiem, przyjęło dzień 15 kwietnia jako World Art Day / Światowy Dzień Sztuki, dzień urodzin mistrza Leonardo da Vinci: 15 kwietnia 1452. Dzięki Nam wszystkim artystom − dzień ten jest w oficjalnym kalendarzu obchodów UNESCO od maja 2019. Obecna sytuacja nie pozwala na bezpośrednie prezentacje czy otwarcie galerii/drzwi pracowni. Ale przecież jesteśmy i tworzymy!
Zwracamy się z prośbą o używanie przekazanego znaku przy wszelkich działaniach artystycznych w sieci, w okolicach dnia 15 kwietnia. Wszelkie formy obchodów Dnia Sztuki zależą od naszych inicjatyw. Pogoda ma być słoneczna. Obraz na balkonie, wystawiona rzeźba, galeria, którą, inni zobaczą ze swych okien. Świętujmy i cieszmy się Dniem Sztuki!
Prosimy uprzejmie o przesyłanie dokumentacji zdjęciowej, krótkich info (angielski) oyku.piramid@gmail.com
IAA/AIAP zamierza na stronach IAA www.aiap-iaa.org prezentować działania artystów z okazji Światowego Dnia Sztuki.
Z poważaniem i zdrowymi pozdrowieniami
Maria Moroz
Wiceprezydent Polskiego Narodowego Komitetu IAA/AIAP
Executive Committee IAA/AIAP World
The President’s letters
Dear National Committees, dear Presidents, dear fellow artists,
As I told you in my last letter, because of the corona times that brought us a worldwide black out we decided all together to make our celebrations online.
Today I want to tell you something as an experience we have had here in Turkey for the past eight years and I will tell you about it as the President of UPSD, the Turkish National Committee.
Starting with 2012, the first year of celebration of World Art Day, we have started distributing awards in the Turkish art world. We wanted everybody in the art world to feel the importance and the value we give to art and artists. Those awards were given in the following fields of the arts:
- Artist of the Year;
- Emerging Artist of the Year;
- Art Professional of the Year (among non-artists);
- Art Media Professional of the Year (Writer/critic/editor-in-Chief);
- Art institution of the Year (Foundation/Cultural Center/Museum of the Year).
I must confess that those moments of award distributions have been extremely touching, fulfilling and rewarding moments, for everybody those getting the awards as well as those giving it to them. Art awards, stimulate the art world, become standards that triggers an expectation year long in that country’s art community.
So in this important and unfortunate year when we were supposed to celebrate for the first time World Art Day officially all over the world, had this coronavirus not intervened, I will humbly advise every National Committee to get together and decide for themselves on whether they would hold these awards yearly in their country starting from this unforgettable year in every sense. That would add a meaning to 15th of April 2020 that has been unfortunately almost cut off from the calendar of our lives timeline… With the World Art Day spirit, we must add strength, confidence and belief to the world, from our perspective.
There is one more important information here that I should add to my suggestion: The Turkish national committee UPSD’s executive board has decided this year that those awards should be entitled not just 'World Art Day Awards', but 'World Art Day/Titanic’s Wallace Hartley Band' awards. At this point you should be intrigued about what does Titanic’s music band have to do with all that story and who is Wallace Hartley.
Everybody knows that the infamous Titanic transatlantic liner has sunk in 1912 in the Atlantic Ocean on its way to New York, on one cold spring night. Also, almost everybody knows that the orchestra of the transit line seats kept playing music during the two and a half hours after the boat hit the iceberg until it sank. This was the ever most striking art performance and decisiveness shown by any group of art performers in the history of art. They knew they were about to die, panic was all around them with people screaming, crying, hurting each other yet all they did was perform their creative profession until the very last moment, keep playing and singing their last song being most likely “Nearer my God to Thee”. There was a total of eight musicians in the Wallace Hartley Band, and their behavior was an exemplary courage and devotion to art and to their profession shown in the most desperate moment one can ever encounter in life. In other words, they were the most exemplary came to life version of the most famous artistic line in the world, “the show must go on”. We have to accept that nobody can match the performance of the Wallace Hartley band, no matter what field, no other artist or performer can claim to be a rival to that level of devotion and determination. Wallace Hartley’s body was found dead in the ocean by the boats and his music case was still strapped to his body. More than 40,000 people attended his funeral in his hometown Colne Lancashire in England and his bust was erected for his memory.
Besides this unforgettable example of carrying beautifully in history, this magic line 'The show must go on' (no matter which war, no matter what kind of bad situation, no matter the level of the economic crisis), there is a second reason regarding why linking the story of the Wallace Hartley Band to World Art Day: This disastrous sinking of the Titanic as well as this unforgettable final music performance was lived on April 15, on the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci and on a future date of World Art Day.
So dear National Committees, you have 17 days to get together (maybe online) and decide on this suggestion. Since this year you cannot hold anyway a party of any kind, if you decide to nominate and decorate with your awards some artistic names from the art scene, you can make your decision public and you can inform those awarded names and you can wait until the agenda comes back to normal, hopefully after we will get rid of those dark coronavirus days for the celebration and distribution of merits.
Please feel free to write back and inquire more information or brainstorm on this issue, and needless to say this is not at all an obligation of course; it’s up to your national committee to decide, to take or to leave this shared information and proposal. If anybody should tell you: "Well, in these coronavirus days, do you think this is the right thing to do?", you can always answer: "None of us can be in a worser position then the Wallace Hartley Band members on that terrible night of April 15, 1912", which now has a chance to immortalize itself forever by world artists acknowledging this dramatic and beautiful coupling of the most noble proof of devotion to the arts! Also showing our involvement and respect to the arts in these dark and even black days, will be a proof to the whole world about the deep meaning of the unsinkable relations between art and artists. The fact that the same date of April 15 pops up again within this story is more than a coincidence something that really mesmerizers us and keeps our breath in silence and respect.
But of course, you can take the decision to give out awards and call those 'World Art Day awards', as you want, or chose to give awards in 1 or 3 or 5 or different categories, OR as we said in the beginning, you can chose not to give awards at all. This is totally your National Committees decision.
We will be very careful with ourselves, with our families, our friends but we shall survive this dark tunnel together with belief. Wish you the best of luck in our common fight within those hard times and wish you the best of health to you and your family, as well as your friends and colleagues.
Bedri Baykam
AIAP/IAA World President
So in this important and unfortunate year when we were supposed to celebrate for the first time World Art Day officially all over the world, had this coronavirus not intervened, I will humbly advise every National Committee to get together and decide for themselves on whether they would hold these awards yearly in their country starting from this unforgettable year in every sense. That would add a meaning to 15th of April 2020 that has been unfortunately almost cut off from the calendar of our lives timeline… With the World Art Day spirit, we must add strength, confidence and belief to the world, from our perspective.
There is one more important information here that I should add to my suggestion: The Turkish national committee UPSD’s executive board has decided this year that those awards should be entitled not just 'World Art Day Awards', but 'World Art Day/Titanic’s Wallace Hartley Band' awards. At this point you should be intrigued about what does Titanic’s music band have to do with all that story and who is Wallace Hartley.
Everybody knows that the infamous Titanic transatlantic liner has sunk in 1912 in the Atlantic Ocean on its way to New York, on one cold spring night. Also, almost everybody knows that the orchestra of the transit line seats kept playing music during the two and a half hours after the boat hit the iceberg until it sank. This was the ever most striking art performance and decisiveness shown by any group of art performers in the history of art. They knew they were about to die, panic was all around them with people screaming, crying, hurting each other yet all they did was perform their creative profession until the very last moment, keep playing and singing their last song being most likely “Nearer my God to Thee”. There was a total of eight musicians in the Wallace Hartley Band, and their behavior was an exemplary courage and devotion to art and to their profession shown in the most desperate moment one can ever encounter in life. In other words, they were the most exemplary came to life version of the most famous artistic line in the world, “the show must go on”. We have to accept that nobody can match the performance of the Wallace Hartley band, no matter what field, no other artist or performer can claim to be a rival to that level of devotion and determination. Wallace Hartley’s body was found dead in the ocean by the boats and his music case was still strapped to his body. More than 40,000 people attended his funeral in his hometown Colne Lancashire in England and his bust was erected for his memory.
Besides this unforgettable example of carrying beautifully in history, this magic line 'The show must go on' (no matter which war, no matter what kind of bad situation, no matter the level of the economic crisis), there is a second reason regarding why linking the story of the Wallace Hartley Band to World Art Day: This disastrous sinking of the Titanic as well as this unforgettable final music performance was lived on April 15, on the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci and on a future date of World Art Day.
So dear National Committees, you have 17 days to get together (maybe online) and decide on this suggestion. Since this year you cannot hold anyway a party of any kind, if you decide to nominate and decorate with your awards some artistic names from the art scene, you can make your decision public and you can inform those awarded names and you can wait until the agenda comes back to normal, hopefully after we will get rid of those dark coronavirus days for the celebration and distribution of merits.
Please feel free to write back and inquire more information or brainstorm on this issue, and needless to say this is not at all an obligation of course; it’s up to your national committee to decide, to take or to leave this shared information and proposal. If anybody should tell you: "Well, in these coronavirus days, do you think this is the right thing to do?", you can always answer: "None of us can be in a worser position then the Wallace Hartley Band members on that terrible night of April 15, 1912", which now has a chance to immortalize itself forever by world artists acknowledging this dramatic and beautiful coupling of the most noble proof of devotion to the arts! Also showing our involvement and respect to the arts in these dark and even black days, will be a proof to the whole world about the deep meaning of the unsinkable relations between art and artists. The fact that the same date of April 15 pops up again within this story is more than a coincidence something that really mesmerizers us and keeps our breath in silence and respect.
But of course, you can take the decision to give out awards and call those 'World Art Day awards', as you want, or chose to give awards in 1 or 3 or 5 or different categories, OR as we said in the beginning, you can chose not to give awards at all. This is totally your National Committees decision.
We will be very careful with ourselves, with our families, our friends but we shall survive this dark tunnel together with belief. Wish you the best of luck in our common fight within those hard times and wish you the best of health to you and your family, as well as your friends and colleagues.
Bedri Baykam
AIAP/IAA World President
