THE REMARKABLY well-preserved remains of the Caliphate city of Medina Azahara, a medieval Arab Muslim town near the Spanish city of Cordoba, was added to Unesco’s list of World Heritage sites last week.

The 10th-century Moorish site provides “in-depth knowledge of the now vanished Western Islamic civilisation of Al-Andalus, at the height of its splendour,” said Unesco’s World Heritage Committee, which was meeting in Bahrain.

People visit the Caliphate City of Medina Azahara in Cordoba, Spain, which was recently added to Unesco’s  list of World Heritage sites. /EPA-EFE

After prospering for several years, the magnificent palace-city, which was the de facto capital of al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain, “was laid to waste during the civil war that put an end to the Caliphate in 1009-10,” the committee said in a statement.

The city was built as a symbol of power to rival the caliphate of Baghdad, but lasted less than a century before it was destroyed in an uprising that ended the Cordoba caliphate at the beginning of the 11th century.

The remains of the city were forgotten for almost 1,000 years until their rediscovery in the early 20th century.

The site is a treasure trove for archaeologists, presenting “a complete urban ensemble” including roads, bridges, water systems, buildings, decorative elements and everyday objects, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) said.

A far more recent historical site was also added to Unesco’s Heritage list on Sunday.

The Italian industrial city of Ivrea, which was developed in the 20th century as a testing ground for Olivetti, manufacturer of typewriters, mechanical calculators and office computers, was also rewarded.

Unesco described the city as “a model social project” expressing “a modern vision of the relationship between industrial production and architecture”.

The heritage committee added six other sites to its list, including inuit hunting grounds in Greenland, ancient Korean mountain Buddhist temples, pre-Islamic sites in Iran, and Mumbai’s Art Deco buildings.

A lone polar bear scrabbles across a melting iceberg. Beijing lovers wear masks to shield their lungs from polluted air. A tiny fish is trapped inside a floating plastic bag off Thailand’s Koh Phi Phi Leh. A Mali rancher and his son stand sternly over a desiccated cow carcass in a drought-stricken landscape.

Yes, the message is about the environment – specifically climate change – and it’s a powerful one.

James Balog reflects on the drama of the melting ice sheet in Greenland in 2009. Photo courtesy of James Balog

It’s contained in the touring photo exhibition “Beyond the Air We Breathe: Addressing Climate Change”, on view at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre until September 2.

In all there are 140 stunning images by more than 60 photographers in the show assembled by Hossein Farmani and Susan Baraz for the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in 2015.

The collection had been seen by more than a million people, in Italy, France, the United States and Mexico, before coming to Bangkok.

It is, says Farmani, about “finding beauty in disaster, beauty at risk”.

“These major photographers who have committed their time and passion to documenting the changes in climate allow us to be a witness to the earth’s transformation. They are at the forefront of bringing awareness to us all.”

The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand and the Lucie Foundation are co-hosting the exhibition, which spotlights works by four influential photographers in particular – Steve McCurry, James Nachtwey, Sebastian Copeland and Tom Jacobi.

Copeland, a polar explorer as well as an award-winning photographer, has travelled 8,000 kilometres across the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland on foot and has 15 dramatic images in the show.

“The Arctic Sea is now in danger,” he told The Nation. “Expeditions to the North Pole are much more difficult now than they used to be because the ice has been rapidly melting for decades.”

British photojournalist Sean Gallagher is based in China and calls Beijing “the Mask City”, saying most of its residents wear filter-masks because of the foul air. His photo of the young couple in masks might have been sweetly romantic anywhere else – they’re holding hands, after all – but their hearts are at risk.

 Sean Gallagher’s “Beijing – The Masked City.  Photo courtesy of Sean Gallagher

The situation evidently isn’t much better in Shanghai and Shijiazhuang, where Benedikt Partenheimer captured scenes of ghastly pollution.

Bangkok has nothing to brag about, of course, with health-threatening PM2.5 pollutant particles regularly massing to dangerous levels. Silvia Gaiani, an academic researcher for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation, writes in the exhibition catalogue that “many parts” of Thailand are choking.

“Lack of regulation and frequent dumping have led to a rapidly worsening situation. The World Bank estimates that there have been nearly 20,000 air-pollution-related deaths in Thailand in the past 20 years. The most vulnerable to the air pollution are those with heart and respiratory diseases.”

Thai marine photographer Nat Sumontemee captures a tiny fish overwhelmed by a huge plastic bag off Koh Phi Phi. Photo courtesy Nat Sumontemee

It’s no prettier underwater. Nat Sumontemee, who has specialised in marine photography for three decades, travelling the globe, has witnessed the effects of climate change first-hand.

He’s showing fabulous shots of a whale shark in Maldives, a humpback whale calf off Tonga, sea cows in Florida and dying coral reef in Fiji, as well as a mangrove forest in Krabi.

But that shot of the little fish trapped in a floating plastic bag off Phi Phi is the most thought provoking.

“Unfortunately, every place I’ve returned to, the natural underwater life has deteriorated,” he said, putting much of the blame on human activity. “Climate change is real and it has affected all life on this earth more than we could imagine.”

The Cultural Centre, doing its bit to save the planet, won’t tolerate plastic bags anymore.

“All of the shops here have stopped using plastic bags,” said its director, Pawit Mahasarinand. “This is another example of how we’re more than an art museum or culture centre – this is a socio-cultural centre.”

The next step is a collaboration with non-profit environment group Magic Eyes to reduce the centre’s carbon footprint.

“Magic Eyes is helping our building-maintenance team with waste-management training and raising awareness about environmental issues,” said Pawit. “Together we’ll be holding climate-change-related activities every Sunday in July.

“And, starting on July 29, our 10th anniversary, we’ll bar all foam containers. People who bring reusable cups and containers to our cafes and restaurants will also get a discount on their drinks and meals.”

The centre and Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Education are meanwhile planning activities around art and climate change for more than 1,000 students at a BMA-run primary school in August.

Copeland presents his endearing shot of a polar bear near the North Pole.  Nation/Chalinee Thirasupa

All eyes on the drama

– The exhibition “Beyond the Air We Breathe: Addressing Climate Change” continues through September 2 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

– Sebastien Copeland’s documentary film “Into the Cold: A Journey of the Soul” will be screened on July 10 at 7pm in the auditorium, free admission.

– Tom Jacobi will talk about his work on August 23 in the auditorium. Admission is Bt200 for members of the Royal Photographic Society of Thailand and students and Bt500 for everyone else.

THE LOUVRE Abu Dhabi said on Wednesday it will unveil its most prized acquisition on September 18 – a very rare painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that was bought for a record $450 million (Bt14.9 billion) last year.

The “Salvator Mundi”, a portrait of Jesus Christ painted in 1500, was the only one of the fewer than 20 paintings believed to be the work of the famed Renaissance Old Master still in private hands when it went under the hammer at Christie’s in November.

It was only six years ago that it was declared authentic after long being dismissed as a copy by one of Da Vinci’s students.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi will unveil its most prized acquisition to date, a Leonardo da Vinci painting that sold for nearly half a billion dollars at Christie’s auction in November./AFP

“Lost and hidden for so long in private hands, Leonardo Da Vinci’s masterpiece is now our gift to the world,” the chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism, Mohamed Khalifa al-Mubarak, said in a statement announcing the public unveiling.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi has kept tight-lipped over the identity of the painting’s buyer, saying only that the emirate’s Department of Culture and Tourism had “acquired” it.

Last December, the New York Times identified the buyer as an obscure member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Badr bin Abdullah.

The Wall Street Journal later reported Bin Abdullah was acting on behalf of Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

He has never confirmed or denied the report.

The perforated double dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. EPA-EFE

Prince Badr saw his stature rise this month, when he was appointed to head the kingdom’s culture ministry in a government shake-up.

Asked whether the buyer himself would be present for the unveiling, the museum said only that “representatives from Abu Dhabi will welcome the world to the unveiling of the painting”.

Saudi Arabia and the neighbouring United Arab Emirates are very close allies who are both engaged militarily in the war against rebels in Yemen, and diplomatically and economically against Gulf rival Qatar.

STREET artist Banksy has confirmed that he “blitzed” Paris with up to a dozen murals as a tribute to the May 1968 uprising and even took aim at the French government’s hard line on migrants.

Stencilled images in the style of the mysterious British graffiti star began appearing on walls across the French capital last week.

All were unsigned, leaving a lingering doubt that they might have been by an imitator.

Street artist Banksy blitzed Paris with up to a dozen murals as a tribute to the May 1968 uprising and even took aim at the French government’s hard line on migrants. /AFP

But late Monday the Bristol-based artist posted his latest two Paris murals on Instagram – neither of which had yet been found by his fans – and on Tuesday confirmed that another near the Sorbonne university was also |his.

“Fifty years since the uprising in Paris 1968. The birthplace of modern stencil art,” he quipped under a self-portrait as a masked rat carrying a utility knife that he uses to cut out his stencils.

Cheekily he sprayed it on the back of a road sign outside the Pompidou centre modern art gallery, which houses Europe’s biggest collection of contemporary art.

Banksy took on the rat as his avatar – a symbol of the vilified and downtrodden – in homage to the Paris street artist Blek le Rat, who started out in 1968 when a general strike by students and workers brought France to a halt.

Anonymous street artist Banksy’s artwork of Napoleon Bonaparte wearing a headscarf inspired by the original painting by JacquesLouis David was spotted in northern Paris over the weekend. /AFP

The movement produced an explosion of street art and ingenious graffiti slogans, some of which have become legendary.

Banksy sprayed another rat wearing a Minnie Mouse bow under the caption “May 1968” near the Sorbonne, one of the centres of the uprising, which was read as a wry take on the decline of French revolutionary spirit.

The Disneyland Paris theme park is now one of the French capital’s biggest employers.

The artist, known for his sharp political and social commentary, made headlines with another Paris mural of a refugee child covering up a swastika sprayed over the patch of pavement on which she was sleeping.

Placing it right next to a former refugee centre closed down in March by the French government was seen as an attack on President Emmanuel Macron’s crackdown on migrants.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, who set up the centre, was quick to hail the mural.

“Sometimes an image is worth a thousand words. Humanity and pragmatism rather than populism,” she tweeted in a dig at Macron, who had argued the shelter was making Paris a magnet for migrants.

Stencilled images in the style of the mysterious British graffiti star began appearing on walls across the French capital last week. /AFP

In his first clandestine “blitz” of the French capital, Banksy also created a image of girl in mourning in a fire exit next to the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were massacred by jihadist gunmen in November 2015.

His final stencil – which he posted to his Instagram account on Monday evening – shows a genteel old rat couple out for a walk along the River Seine near the Eiffel Tower.

In his latest Instagram post on Tuesday afternoon, Banksy claimed credit for a Left Bank mural skewering capitalism. It shows a businessman or a politician in a suit offering a dog a bone having first sawn the animal’s leg off.

His Paris posts accumulated more than half a million likes within few hours.

Banksy’s work has sold for more than $1 million (Bt33 million) at auction and fans have already covered some of the new Paris |works with Plexiglass to protect them.

However, his mural of the migrant girl was defaced with blue spray paint late on Sunday after news of its discovery spread on social media.

Banksy has taken the French government to task several times for their handling of migrants. A stencil opposite the French embassy in London 2016 based on the poster for the musical “Les Miserables” criticised French police for teargassing the Calais refugee camp known as the “Jungle”.

An elderly couple walks past a recent artwork by street artist Banksy./AFP

The previous year he crossed the English Channel to paint two murals on the edge of the camp built by migrants trying to reach Britain, which has since been razed by the authorities.

One, “The Son of a Migrant from Syria”, depicted Apple co-founder Steve Jobs – who was of Syrian descent – carrying a knapsack and an Apple computer.

Many believe Banksy to be musician Robert Del Naja, a 52-year-old member of the Bristol-based trip hop trio Massive Attack.

The band plays the French city of Lyon on Sunday.

The young Thai artist addressed the dark side of Thailand four years after the 2014 coup d’etat in his solo debut, “Welcome to the Dark Side”, which opened yesterday at Voice Space located in the Voice TV compound on Vibhavadhi Rangsit Road.

Headache Stencil is known for his street graffiti mocking Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan over his collection of luxury wristwatches. Headache Stencil earned harassment headaches from the junta and his creation was scrubbed away.

“My art reflects dictatorship, corruption and the loss of freedom in our society,” Headache Stencil told The Sunday Nation.

“It’s the artist’s most important role to mirror society’s illnesses and tell the world what Thailand is now facing under military junta rulers.”

His graffiti art is displayed in the 120-square-metre maze, greeted by a mascot depicting a primer portrait in the |shape of Japanese maneki-neko cat.

Walking into the maze, audiences face the multiple complex socio-political issues the nation faces.

A submarine ordered from China by the junta is portrayed on one wall, while another depicts alarm clocks with a portrait of Prawit and his luxury wristwatches.

Allegedly corrupt Buddhist monks are on another corner, and nearby are crossed fingers with the words, “Please give priority to children, ladies   and dictatorship”.

The artist has named the Kingdom under military rule as “Kala Land” or “the land under the coconut shell”.

It’s symbolised by a photo of a coconut shell overlaid with a gun near a couple of doves – the symbol of peace.

At the end of the labyrinth, the artist has installed a ballot box with the word “Freedom” surrounded by soldiers in boots with no-entry tapes.

“Thailand is now like a maze. We’re finding the way out of this political maze,” he added. “An elected democracy is the only way to take us out of this maze.”

Dozens of his fans flocked to the show, which runs through July 6, as they oppose censorship. They take selfies with his artwork and post them on social media.

“I hope they will help spread the word on the socio-political situation in Thailand throughout the world,” said the artist.

A not-for-profit team of enthusiasts are in the process of documenting every single one but they estimate there may be more than 200 across India’s bustling financial capital.

The majority of them, built on reclaimed land between the early 1930s and early 1950s, are clustered together in the south of the coastal city where they stand in stark contrast to Victorian Gothic structures.

The two vastly different architectural traditions face off against each other across the popular Oval Maidan playing field, where enthusiastic young cricketers hone their skills.

On one side lie imposing and rather austere 19th century buildings housing the Bombay High Court and Mumbai University, with their spires and lancet windows.

On the other side stand sleeker buildings boasting curved corners, balconies, vertical lines and exotic motifs.

They were built by wealthy Indians who sent their architects to Europe to come up with modern designs different to those of their colonial rulers.

“Mumbai’s Deco buildings have always lived in the shadow of the Victorian Gothic structures built by the British,” Atul Kumar, the founder of Art Deco Mumbai, told AFP last year.

“But Art Deco is no less. It’s a colourful, vibrant, free, sophisticated style that represented the aspirations of a whole new class.

“India was under oppressive colonial rule and this was a very unique statement through architecture,” he added.

Mumbai’s Art Deco buildings house residential properties, commercial offices, hospitals and single screen movie theatres, including the popular Regal and Eros cinemas.

Their characteristics include elegant Deco fonts, marble floors and spiral staircases.

Most of the Art Deco buildings, including along the three-kilometre long palm-fringed Marine Drive promenade, are five storeys high and painted in bright colours such as yellow, pink and blue.

With participants Michael John Bell, Stephen Anthony Bird and Ruth Li from Australia, Marc Janssens from Belgium, Sanket Viramgami from India, Monika Grycko from Italy, Hideyuki Katsumato from Japan, Epjey Pacheco from Philippines, Anna Maria Couderc from Spain, Do Hiep and Pham Huy Thong from Vietnam, and Thailand’s very own Vasan Sithikett moving into the Nern Chalet Beachfront Hotel in Hua Hin,

“This residency programme puts Thailand on the map as the destination for art, in addition to being known for great people, food, and culture. I want to congratulate Caranee of Nern Chalet Beachfront Hotel for hosting this event,” commented Orasa Awutkom, regional director of Tourism Authority of Thailand in Prachuab Khiri Khan.

All 12 of the international artists have won awards and their work are showcased in museums around the world such as Museum of Modern Art, The Australian National Gallery Canberra, and Singapore Art Museum.

They will use Nern Chalet Beachfront Hotel as their home base to explore Hua Hin and nearby cities to research and craft new artwork from painting to sculpture.

“I’m very excited about this first international contemporary art residency programme in Hua Hin. I can’t believe that it’s finally happening. It’s difficult to find a host who understands art and is generous enough to support this type of programme,” says Vasan, who has received worldwide recognition for his work.

For artists and people who are interested in art, it is a great opportunity to explore and exchange new ideas, develop network and strengthen relationships with other international artists as well as local artists and art organisations.

The International Contemporary Art Residency Programme is open for the public to visit, to meet these international artists, to learn from them, and to see their work in development at the hotel.

The residency programme will conclude with an exhibition of the artwork produced during their stay at River City Bangkok from July 11-20.

For more information, please visit http://www.NernChalet.com.

A PAINSTAKING restoration of the “Mystic Lamb”, a 15th-century Flemish masterpiece by the Van Eyck brothers, was unveiled on Tuesday, revealing a “much more expressive and intense” version of the central image of the giant altarpiece.

Restorers from Belgium’s Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage began working on the altarpiece in 2012, but in recent months focused on removing the overpainting from the central part of the work which includes the head of the lamb.

Part of the restored original of Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” altarpiece by the Van Eyck brothers at the art gallery in Ghent. / AFP 

The results were unveiled at St Bavo’s Cathedral in Ghent on Tuesday, with the restorers highlighting a number of surprising discoveries about the altarpiece, which is one of the world’s most stolen artworks.

“The head is very different from what we’ve known since the 16th century. It depicts a lamb which is much more intense and expressive, which connects far more directly with the people, with big eyes,” said restoration project leader Helene Dubois.

After a study, the restorers of the Royal Institute of Artistic Heritage removed the old overpainting which for almost five centuries had covered the central figure of the altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb. /AFP

“We didn’t know how much this panel had been overpainted during the 16th century, we have rediscovered the original painted by the Van Eycks,” she said of the giant 12-panel altarpiece, which measures 4.4 metres by 3.4 metres.

“The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb”, which completed in 1432 by Jan Van Eyck and his brother Hubert, is made up of hinged panels that can be opened and closed, with images relating to passages in the Bible and daily life in Ghent when it was the wealthy powerhouse of the European wool cloth trade.

The work was first unveiled at St Bavo’s Cathedral 600 years ago, but its glory had dimmed after being split into pieces, seized by Napoleon, then the Nazis, and also nabbed by thieves.

The full restoration of both sides of its 12 hinged panels is due to be complete by the end of 2019, Dubois said, just in time for the start of a year of celebrations centred on the works of Jan Van Eyck.

DREAMBOX’S resident playwright Daraka Wongsiri is contemporary Thai theatre’s most prolific wordsmith and has been honoured for her contributions with IATC Thailand’s lifetime achievement award.

Spanning the genres of drama, comedy and musical as well as translation of foreign plays and musicals, her works have been studied and staged by many theatre students though not so frequently by other professional companies. Her 1998 domestic drama thriller “Kulap Si Luet” (“Crimson Rose”) is among the most popular. But while I have read it and seen student scene works of it, I had never watched a full professional production until last Thursday evening at Thong Lor Art Space.

Daraka Wongsiri’s “Crimson Rose” has challenging roles for female actors and this cast is up to it. Photo/Chutima Tatanan

Daraka noted that this is an actor’s play and award-winning director Pattarasuda Anuman Rajadhon got half of her job well done by casting the right female actors to portray these seven women characters.

The most natural of all was Thanyarat Praditthaen as Rose, the owner of the house in which the play is set. She never sounded like she had a troubling past and present and this subtlety had the strongest effect when secrets were later revealed. Also arresting was Varattha Tongyoo, as Fon, the millionaire politician’s daughter and a university student who’s renting a room in this house. The audience though is becoming tired of seeing her typecast in roles younger than her age and that require her to be the tearful victim, simply because she’s small and looks young.

Meanwhile, Thiptawan Uchai, as Rose’s mother seen in the flashback scenes, was believable as a matron despite her young looks and small stature.

The two newcomers blended in with the vetarans very well, and credit is also due to the director who set it at a pace that wasn’t too quick for the audience to follow nor too slow for us to glance at our watches. A recent graduate from Bangkok University’s performing arts department, Tanyapas Jinjantarawong’s portrayal of Salil, a drama-major university student who did everything to get away from her poor background, was marked by a strong stage presence that subtly stole spotlight from her seniors.

Young fashion model Rastprapa Wisuma made her professional stage debut as Seefah, a medical student, and she succeeded by acting as if there were no dark secrets in her life. This was in contrast to Nualpanod Nat Khianpukdee whose choice of characterisation for Duean reminded the audience too much of the female villains seen in Thai soaps and we knew right away something would later happen to her.

Photo/Chutima Tatanan

“Crimson Rose” was set in 198 7 – that pre-smartphone and pre-social media era when one could dig up secret pasts and hideous presents of others without looking through Facebook posts and Line messages. Set designer Konthorn Taecholarn and costume designer Ubonwan Moonganta respected the period, the former smartly blending his set into the existing structure of TLAS’s main studio making it look like the parts of the house where these characters lived while the latter kept her designs in line with the period.

Veteran lighting designer Supatra Kruekrongsuk kept most of the areas dark and most of her lighting changes were subtle. In short, the three didn’t try to do much but served the play’s purpose well. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for sound designers Rapeedech Kulabusaya and Peerasit Koosrivinij who at times forgot they were working for a realistic stage drama, not a TV one. When, for example, a character pointed a pistol at another early on in the play and the music was cued for it, the audience knew right away that it was a foreshadow of what was to come both with that character and that pistol.

Daraka’s frequent use of inner monologue, a direct address to the audience, by the protagonist-narrator Rose revealed a little too much information and as a result killed some of the suspense, especially these days when the audience is watching more plot twists and mystery in other media.

Otherwise, “Crimson Rose” is a solid character study and a clear reflection of Thai society as it was both then and unfortunately remains so today in this #MeToo era.

On the Skytrain back to retrieve my car from the office parking lot, I was wondering if I should consider having a sex change operation. For the first time in my life, I felt guilty at having been born a male, after seeing numerous wrongdoings the men had done in these women’s lives, although no male characters were even present on stage.

Positive thinking then kicked in and reminded me that we should make sure that such acts don’t occur again in our contemporary society, no matter how patriarchal it remains.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

“Crimson Rose” continues every Thursday to Sunday until July 8 at Thong Lor Art Space (a three-minute walk from BTS Thong Lor, Exit 3). Show time is 8pm Thursday to Saturday and 4pm on Sunday.

It’s in Thai with professionally translated English surtitles.

Tickets are Bt650 (Bt600 for advance transfer) and Bt450 for students, at (095) 924 4555.

For more information, go to Facebook.com/ThongLorArtSpace.

THE ARTIST CHRISTO on Monday unveiled 7,506 coloured barrels floating on a lake in central London, a puzzling installation designed to stimulate debate as much as the senses. “The London Mastaba” on the Serpentine in Hyde Park, a trapezium-shaped work weighing 600 tonnes, was launched with an air of mystery by the Bulgarian-born US artist.

Twenty metres high, 30 metres wide and 40 metres long, the metal barrels might leave some people wondering if there is an environmental message, thinking of barrels of oil in the heart of one of London’s green lungs. Looking from several hundred metres away, others will see a prism, giant pixels, or a simple geometric creation.

Christo poses in front of his first outdoor work in Britain, a 20metrehigh installation made with 7,000 coloured, horizontally stacked barrels on a floating platform. /AFP

However, the work is open to all interpretations and comes with no message attached, said its 83-year-old creator.

“There are no messages – there is something in it to discover yourself. I cannot direct you. You should develop your senses,” he said.

Christo is known for his contemporary artworks including “The Pont Neuf Wrapped” (1985), which involved wrapping the oldest bridge in Paris in polyamide fabric, and “Wrapped Reichstag” (1995), a similar project on the parliament in Berlin.

“It’s created an enormous invitation, like a stairway to the sky,” said the artist on the banks of the lake popular with swans, ducks and tourists on pedal boats.

A woman feed birds in front of “The London Mastaba” by Bulgarian artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff, usually referred to only as Christo. /AFP

Christo’s first major open-air art installation in Britain is in the shape of a mastaba, a type of ancient Egyptian tomb. The floating platform is held in place with anchors.

Red with a white candy stripe on the sides, and blue, mauve and red on the ends, the barrels are a striking contrast with the lakeside surroundings.

“The colours will transform with the changes in the light and its reflection on the Serpentine lake will be like an abstract painting,” said Christo.

The artist has long appreciated the low cost and aesthetic appeal of working with barrels. In 1962, having fled communist Bulgaria, he blocked off a Paris street with a wall of them, in response to the Berlin Wall. More recently, he created a wall of 13,000 barrels in Oberhausen in Germany.

Construction on “The London Mastaba”, financed by the artist, started on April 3. It will stay in place until September 23, when it will be taken down and recycled.

The artwork is already drawing astonished reactions in Hyde Park. “It’s very modern, but this place is nature and historical – I don’t like it here,” said Turkish tourist Yasmin Koc Ozcengel, 46.

Another onlooker, Anna Andronova, said, “It’s good because if it was less brave in its shape and volume it would be less stunning.”

Sheila Steffenson, 58, an American living in London, said, “I’m sitting here pondering what in the world does it mean – if it means anything.

“I’m just not really sure how I feel about it. Maybe it’s a message about pollution. Who knows?”