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Maezawa, founder of Zozotown, the largest online shopping mall in Japan, is a longtime art lover who last year bought a $ 110 million painting for Jean-Michel Basquiat, the sixth most expensive work of Sotheby's & # 39; s. Auction house.
Maezawa said he would choose the lucky passengers among a group of painters, photographers, musicians, directors, fashion designers and architects from around the world. It is not certain that he will solicit proposals, as artists' residences do, and he may already have some participants in mind. And it does not seem that Maezawa expects selected artists to produce work directly related to the historical background, but rather that they allow the experience to inform their creative process.
Meet Yusaku Maezawa, the first moon passenger of SpaceX.
"If Pablo Picasso had been able to see the moon closely, what kind of paintings would he have drawn?", Asks the site of the lunar expedition. "If John Lennon could see the curvature of the Earth, what kind of songs would he have written?"
These issues are at the heart of artist residency programs on Earth, especially those taking place in remote and extreme natural environments, that most people never have a chance to see. In the United States, both federal and private organizations send artists to remote areas each year, from frozen landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctic to the arid lands of the American desert. Participants leave the grid – or as far from the grid as possible today – and enter environments they can not really imagine before they get there.
These places are certainly not as far away as the moonbut they are about as extraordinary as possible without escaping the gravity of the Earth.
Many nature-oriented residences have emerged as a means of public awareness, says Valentine Kass, the program officer for the National Science Foundation's Artists and Writers Program, which dates back to the late 1950s. Participants receive a return flight ticket and six weeks to live and work at the South Pole, either alone or with scientists stationed there.
"It was felt that it was very important that the work of scientists carried out there be brought back to the general public so that it can be understood and associated," says Kass. "Werner Herzog made a movie, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a book, Eliot Porter took some fabulous pictures. These are not all big names like these, but we expect them to produce what they propose to produce.
Such extreme environments can significantly influence an artist's perspective. "It's a shock to the system," says James Berg, co-founder of an artist residency in the dusty desert of Joshua Tree, California. The program, created in 2007, provides six to seven weeks of accommodation and financial support for painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers and others.
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