If you see a sailboat sinking like this one and you notice the captain calm and carless, even enjoying his view 45 degrees up from the water’s surface, you might start to second guess what you are really seeing. The French artist Julien Berthier likely envisioned all of this and more as he put together one of his wildest creations, a boat that is always in the midst of capsizing. He calls his apparently doomed work of art, Love Love (created on 2007), and she’s not sinking at all. In fact, she’s incredibly stable and has been known to cruise around many of Europe’s famous harbors.
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Love Love is the permanent and mobile image of a wrecked ship that has become a functional and safe leisure object.
In 2008, due to multiple coincidences, it was installed in front of the Lehmann Brothers building, two days after their bankruptcy. The press, despite my disproval, saw it as an anticipatory vision of the financial crisis. Yet neither the boat nor the banks disappeared in the following months.