The Art of Chess Exhibition, Gilbert Collection, 28 June to 30 November
2003
Last Edited:
Tuesday September 2, 2003 8:58 AM
Howell vs Karyakin
To
kick off the Gilbert Collection's Art of Chess exhibition, an open-air
match on a giant-sized chessboard in the courtyard of Somerset House
was played on 28 June, featuring 13-year-old Ukrainian grandmaster Sergey
Karyakin, and the 12-year-old English FIDE Master and young player
of the year, David Howell, from Seaford. Among the distinguished
guests were Lord Jacob Rothschild and FIDE President Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov (see picture, below right). The exhibition runs
from 28 June to 30 November 2003.
The game, played at a rate of 15 minutes each, ended in a draw.
Mike Basman reports: "David Howell made another giant
step in his chess career when he comfortably held Sergey Karyakin,
the youngest Grandmaster in the world, to a draw in an exhibition match
held at Somerset House to launch the Art of Chess Exhibition as part of
the Gilbert Collection."
"The
match was played on 28 June 2003 on a magnificent summer day in the open
air courtyard at Somerset House, which is just off the Strand in London,
next to Waterloo Bridge. David, the 12-year-old prodigy from Sussex, had
already established his credentials earlier in the week by disposing of
Grandmaster Jonathan Speelman in a match sponsored by British Land
at Regents Place in Euston, also played on a giant chess set. Karyakin,
who has been tipped by many (including himself!) as a future World Champion,
drew the black pieces, and the game began with the spectators crowded
round four or five deep, trying to get a glimpse of the moves. On the
edges of the courtyard two large demonstration boards had been erected
and Grandmasters Jonathan Levitt and Daniel King were keeping
the spectators informed on the game as it progressed. "
"David, who had been coached prior to the match by Grandmaster Levitt,
had prepared well and chose a variation which allowed Karyakin little
opportunity to exercise his natural combinative flair. After several moves
of mutual probing, David had negated all of Karyakins counter play
and the latter was forced to take up a defensive posture. As the pressure
increased, Karyakin attempted to break out and managed to exchange queens
into an end game that still looked weak for him. However, he managed to
equalise the position by advancing his central pawn, and, as time began
to run short on both clocks, it became clear that a decisive victory was
not going to be scored by either side, so a draw was agreed. The major
success was undoubtedly Davids since, although Karyakin is a high-ranking
grandmaster, David has yet to gain his International Master title. This
performance, coupled with his win over Speelman
a few days before, showed that David can compete in the strongest company."
"After
the exhibition match, the two young players plus Grandmaster Daniel
King (pictured left) took part in simultaneous chess displays
against members of the public and UK Chess Challenge Supremi (the UK Chess
Challenge, sponsored by British Land, is the largest chess tournament
in the world involving 66,000 children from 2,000 schools). In a marathon
five-hour session, played inside a marquee especially erected by the Trustees
of the Gilbert Collection, the Masters completed almost 180 games of chess.
Sergey Karyakin proved particularly devastating, playing an incredible
68 games, defeating 63 players, drawing 3 games and losing only to Miguel
Amen and Andrew Stone, a percentage of 94.9. David Howell
played 59 games, won 48, drew 9 and lost to Xin Jie Gai of Oxfordshire
and Tariq Oozerally from Surrey, a success rate of 90%. Danny
King played 47 games, won 43, drew 3 and lost to Kees Pafort from
Holland, scoring 94.7% The marquee, originally erected as a protection
against possible rainfall, proved an immense boon against the scorching
rays of the English sun. It would have been unlikely that the competitors
would have been able to endure the 5 hour contest without it."
"Whilst these games were in progress a parallel blitz event for
UK Chess Challenge children and members of the public was also
being run in the Somerset House courtyard. At the same time the fountains
were turned on which delighted all the children who splashed about in
them excitedly throughout the afternoon."
"The event was generously sponsored by the British Land Company
Plc, Freestream Aircraft Limited and Sir Jeremy Morse, KCMG.
It was so popular that it may well be repeated next year." MJB
Howell vs Speelman
The
UK's top junior player David Howell (pictured left, aged
12) got in some superb practice for his head-to-head with Sergey Karyakin
with a win against top English GM Jon Speelman. The game was played
on 25 June on a giant set at Regent's Place, near Euston, London and sponsored
by the British Land Company Plc.
Mike Basman reports: "David Howells remarkable victory
over Grandmaster Jon Speelman has sent shock waves reverberating throughout
the English chess scene. The two players met in a 30 minutes match at
Regents Place, Euston, London. David Howell, 12 years old, was facing
47 year old Jonathan Speelman, three times British Champion, World Championship
semi-finalist with a victory over Gary Kasparov to his credit. Few gave
David much chance in this encounter, as Speelman, although not as strong
a player as he was 10 years ago, still commands a regular place in the
powerful English Olympic team. The reality was different. After an equal
opening, Speelman played a natural looking move which turned out to be
a tactical blunder. David spotted his opportunity immediately, won two
pawns and gave Speelman absolutely no chance to wriggle out in the remainder
of the game. This result, coming on the heels of his recent international
master result in Budapest, will make even the strongest players in England
sit up and take notice of Britains brilliant prodigy David Howell.
If one of the leading, most experienced Grandmasters in the country can
be demolished so easily, who any more is safe?"
Play
through the Howell-Speelman game in a javascript window.
The Art of Chess Exhibition
Starting
on 28 June, London is host to a prestigious exhibition whose subject is
'The Art of Chess'. It features 19 chess sets designed by artists in the
last hundred years that demonstrate the interaction between chess and
modern art. This exhibition illustrates how this most challenging of games
has inspired artists from 1900 to the present day, as it had in earlier
centuries. The exhibition is generously supported by Oleg Deripaska. The
exhibition runs from 28 June to 30 November 2003 (note: originally scheduled
to end on 30 September, the exhibition has proved so popular that it has
been extended to the end of November).
The venue is the Gilbert
Collection, housed in Somerset House in the Strand, just a few steps
from the world-famous 'Simpson's' where so many famous chess players congregated
in the 19th century. (Picture left: Damien Hirst and his Mental Escapology
chess set)
More about 'The Art of Chess' Exhibition
More on 'The Art of Chess' Exhibition
Throughout the 20th century the game of chess has been an inspiration,
if not an obsession, for artists. The Art of Chess exhibition features
nineteen chess sets dating from the beginning of the 20th century to the
present day. Each set illustrates a move in the apocryphal last game played
by Napoleon with General Bertrand on St Helena in 1820.
On public view for the first time will be five recently commissioned
chess sets designed by leading contemporary artists Damien Hirst, Jake
and Dinos Chapman, Paul McCarthy, Yayoi Kusama and Maurizio Cattelan.
These new works will be set in context by chess sets designed during the
20th century by such major artists as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst,
Alexander Calder and Yoko Ono.
The first exhibit will be the only known Fabergé chess set. Made
by the workmaster Karl Gustav Hjalmar Armfelt, this exquisite silver-mounted
hardstone set has pieces carved from tawny aventurine quartz and grey
Kalagan jasper, the board being made of Siberian jade squares alternating
with pale apricot serpentine. It was specially made circa 1905 for Tsar
Nicolas II's Commander in Chief of the Russo-Japanese War, General Alexei
Kouropatkin.
There is just one set dating from the 19th century: a Kholmogory Russian
mammoth ivory set. The village of Kholmogory, near Arkhangel'sk, was a
centre of bone and ivory carving, the origins of which go back to the
Neolithic period. The Kings are shown as chiefs holding pipes, the Bishops
as hunters with rifles and the Knights intricately carved as reindeer
heads. Such decorative sets were popular with the Russian aristocracy
and this delightful example is laid out as the first move when Napoleon
brought out his Knight as did his opponent.
From the Soviet Union of the 1920s will be two remarkable Russian Revolutionary
chess sets that reflect the social conflicts of the time, designed by
the sisters Natalia and Yelena Danko for the Lomonosov State Porcelain
Factory in Leningrad. The rarer of the two is popularly known as The
Town and Country design and was produced in a limited number of prototypes.
One side features the King and Queen as factory workers, while on the
opposing side the King and Queen are farm workers, the Knights water wheels
and the Pawns are bottles of milk with open books beside them. In the
second propaganda set, Capitalists versus Communists, one of the Kings
is modelled as Death holding a human thigh bone.
The
second gallery focuses on the work of Marcel Duchamp (pictured left,
in 1950), the Bauhaus and Meissen. Duchamp was so enamoured of chess
that in the 1920s his professional involvement in the game caused many
to conclude that he had ceased artistic activities altogether. As a member
of the French team, he played in the 1928 chess Olympiad. The exhibition
features two sets by Duchamp, the first designed while he was living in
Buenos Aires in 1919. The set comes with a travelling foldaway table and
a board that has two stopwatches for timed games. From 1943 is a pocket
set with a leather wallet, celluloid pieces and ingenious pin attachments,
designed by Duchamp as a 'Rectified Readymade'.
One of the most important influences on the design of chess sets in the
20th century was the Bauhaus school of art and design which flourished
in Germany between 1919 and 1928. Josef Hartwig was the Workshop Master
in charge of woodcarving and the set on view demonstrates in miniature
the Bauhaus design principles. He rejected the traditional idea of figures
and based his design on the function of the pieces on the board. The King,
for example, is a cube diagonally set on top of a larger cube reflecting
the way that the piece can move in a limited fashion in all directions
while the Queen, the most mobile piece in the game, is a sphere on top
of a large cube, the fluid sphere representing the privileged degree of
movement the piece is allowed.
A Meissen stoneware Art Deco 'futuristic' chess set was designed by Max
Esser, a master craftsman for the celebrated porcelain factory in the
1920s. The terracotta and dark chocolate brown pieces are in the fashionable
Art Deco style: the Bishops in the form of Japanese tsunami, or
giant crested waves, and the Knights as stylised horses' heads.
The third gallery is devoted to the chess sets of the Avant-Garde and
Fluxus movements. A travelling chess set, designed by the American sculptor
Alexander Calder, illustrates the artist's ability to fashion intensely
evocative art from the debris of daily life. Completed over a weekend
in 1942, it is made from segments of a broom handle which he then daubed
with red and black paint. The resulting pieces are a combination of abstract
and figurative design.
In 1944 the Julien Levy Gallery in New York commissioned a number of
contemporary artists to design chess sets for an innovative exhibition
entitled The Imagery of Chess. Amongst the original exhibits was
a boxwood set by Max Ernst. The abstract pieces possess a rhythm that
plays out across the board during a game. The powerful curve of the crescent-shaped
Knight suggest both a horse's head and the circuitous character of the
moves while the configuration of the Bishop evokes both a mitre as well
as its ability to move two ways.
Man
Ray's abstract set of 1946 has pieces of red and silver anodised alloy
with a varnished wood board. Man Ray (pictured left, playing chess
at home in Hollywood, 1946) was an avid amateur chess player although
his friend Marcel Duchamp jokingly referred to him as little more than
'a wood pusher'. However Man Ray said that his interest in the game was
"directed towards designing new forms for chess pieces, of not much
interest to players, but to me a fertile field for invention".
Yoko Ono, also an avid chess player, was a member of the informal international
group of artists from the early 1960s to the late 1970s known as Fluxus.
Her painted wood set White on White Chess Set from 1966 was surprisingly
classical in design and comes with white chairs, a white inlaid board
and white pieces. In this exhibition, the 1997 version of the original
entitled Play it by Trust is on show. The concept of an all-white
chess set derails any ordinary game as the players lose track of their
pieces, ideally leading to a shared understanding of mutual concerns.
Takako Saito's Fluxus Weight Chess Set from 1964 was made to fit
into a drawer of a 'Flux Cabinet' and comprises a series of identical
white boxes - each piece being defined by its weight. The King, for example,
has steel ball bearings in the box while the boxes for the Pawns contain
sand. George Maciunas, another leading Fluxist artist, is represented
by Colour Balls in Bottle-Board-Chess Set of 1966 which is made
from glass jam jars glued together to form a square board with coloured
balls inside them. To make a move it is necessary to reach inside the
relevant jar and move the ball to another jar on the 'board'.
The
final gallery is devoted to the five contemporary sets and boards commissioned
in 2001 by RS&A Ltd, a new London-based company dedicated to producing
innovative projects with contemporary artists. Each set, made in an edition
of seven, is individually crafted in a variety of different materials
such as wood, porcelain, glass and silver and packaged to the artist's
specified wishes. Damien Hirst's Mental Escapology set (pictured
right) comprises glass and silver casts of medicine bottles with etched
silver labels. The glass and mirrored board displays the biohazard symbol.
It is accompanied by its own glass medicine chest.
The
set designed by Jake and Dinos Chapman has hand-painted black and white
bronze figures and a wood marquetry board inlaid with black and white
double-headed skulls and crossbones. The pieces are post-apocalyptic adolescent
figures, one side white with Arian haircuts, the opposing side black with
Afro hair. The set is packaged in its own handcrafted games box. The Los
Angeles artist Paul McCarthy is a keen chess player. His Kitchen Chess
set is made from random objects found in his own kitchen such as a miniature
rubber duck and a ketchup bottle. The board and box have been made from
the artist's kitchen floor that was ripped up during the project as a
tribute to Duchamp's chess board design of 1937.
Japanese
artist Yayoi Kusama's porcelain Pumpkin Chess set and board (pictured
left - Yayoi Kusama, 2003, King 14.5 cm, Pawn 6.5 cm Pumpkin Board, presented
in a leather Pumpkin display case) is decorated with her signature
spot motif. Made by the German porcelain factory Villeroy & Boch,
the white side has red dots while the opposing side bears black dots on
a yellow ground. The porcelain board is painted with the same colour combination.
The set is presented in a white leather display case. The final exhibit,
laid out as Napoleon's fictional last move, is the creation of Italian
artist Maurizio Cattelan who is known for his mischievous sense of humour.
Made by Bertozzi and Casoni and titled Good versus Evil, the black King
is shown as Hitler opposed on the white side by Martin Luther King. Notable
figures such as Donatella Versace, Rasputin, General Custer, Superman,
Mother Teresa and Sitting Bull appear as Pawns.
The exhibition ends with two classic silent films, Chess Fever
and Entr'acte. The former is an early Soviet comedy featuring a
number of the world's greatest chess players, including Capablanca and
Marshall, filmed during a tournament in Moscow in 1925. Vladimir Fogel,
a leading comic actor of the 1920s, plays a hapless chess fanatic. Entr'acte
was made in Paris in 1924 to be shown between two acts of Francis Picabia's
ballet Relâche. There are also computers on which visitors can try
their luck against Fritz 8 and its 'little brother' Fritz and
Chesster.
'From my close contact with artists and chess players
I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not
chess players, all chess players are artists.' Marcel Duchamp, Cazenovia,
1952
Exhibition Times and Details: 10.00am - 6pm (last admission 5.30pm).
Price of admission to the exhibition (n.b. not the simul/Karyakin-Howell
match which have free admission): £7 (including the permanent
collection - some 800 works of art including magnificent silver, gold
snuffboxes and Italian mosaics collected over forty years by the late
Sir Arthur Gilbert), concessions £6.
All text and photos © 2003 British Chess Magazine
Ltd. Not to be used without consent
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