Elizabeth Markevitch: 'I take your eyes by the hand'

When Elizabeth Markevitch first suggested launching an art television channel, the response was underwhelming. It wasn't that the art community was opposed to it. They just didn't see the point. Perhaps this shouldn't have been surprising. By her own admission, everything she was proposing ran contrary to the received wisdom of art, television and commerce.

But Markevitch isn't easily discouraged. Doubts over her brainchild, Ikono.tv, are as nothing against the sheer force of her belief in it. Her ingenious response to criticism is to take every negative and claim it as a positive.

It is now two months since the Middle Eastern strand of her HD channel - Ikonomenasa.tv - began broadcasting via Arabsat. Point your dish in the right direction, tune it to the frequency (ArabSat BADR-5 Satellite, frequency 11785 MHz) and art will be streamed to your television 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That isn't documentaries or discussions about art, but the stuff itself; unadulterated, uninterrupted and, save for the occasional zoom on a detail or video artist's work, entirely stationary.

As Markevitch says: "Ikono.tv focuses on experiencing art, unspoiled by commentaries or background music. It is an HD virtual journey covering a broad range of art, from Iranian web-comics, 14th century Persian miniatures to innovations in architecture."

At a time when television producers are all about "adding value", the draw of ikonomenasa.tv is, Markevitch believes, the fact that "we're not adding anything".

"It's like MTV for art," she says. And yet, in its steady focus, her concept seems like the antithesis of all that the music channel has come to symbolise.

Markevitch first tested her idea online. Inadequate bandwith meant that the images had to be compressed. Satellite worked better. For nine months, Ikono.tv broadcast across Markevitch's home city of Berlin. It drew 100,000 viewers daily. "Nothing for TV," she admits, "but the equivalent of a year of visitors for an art gallery." HDTV is an expensive medium, however, and dwindling funds meant that Markevitch had to "take a break".

Five years and several hundred thousand of her own euros later, she is optimistic about the Middle East. And, after all this time, she has grown used to explaining the apparently inexplicable.

"The idea came from me wondering why art is not as popular as music," she says. "It occurred to me one day that a big difference is that for 100 years music has had the medium of radio to bring it out of the concert hall and into people's homes.

"I made the parallel that if the museum is like the concert hall, then the television is like the radio.

"You discover some music on the radio and think, 'Wow. I want to hear that again', some you don't like at first but grow to, and some you will never like.

"The idea with Ikonomenasa is to do the same with art on television, to remove the elitism that is associated with art galleries.

"It's not meant to replace the 'real' experience, but it should give you simple pleasure. If you want more you can look at the website and be directed to books and so on."

A team of 21 curators, historians and film editors select the artwork and put together the films, three of which are broadcast every 24 hours. Markevitch's intention is that this triptych can be left on permanent display in your home - glanced at or studied at will.

On Fridays, in deference to the holy status of the day, there is a 24-hour focus on just one artist to heighten the channel's meditative quality. At the moment it's Ulysses Syndrome by New York's Soundwalk Collective, an audio-visual interpretation of Homer's Odyssey.

No money changes hands between Ikono and its artists. The channel would, Markevitch admits, be impossible without her formidable network of art-world contacts.

In 1990 she joined the Henry Schroder Bank in Geneva, where she created the role of private art advisor - a bespoke service for clients keen to collect and invest. From there she became the senior manager of paintings at Sotheby's, Geneva. It would be hard to imagine a more establishment background. And yet, she says, "we are not part of the art community, though we need it. It helps that we treat the works with respect".

The very name of the channel is intended to show that the art itself is the focus.

"It comes from the Greek word 'icon', meaning image, and the tradition of religious icon painting which dictated that artists weren't allowed to sign them. It was about not putting your own ego before God.

"With Ikono there is no ego - the artist doesn't 'intrude' in interview or information. And Menasa refers to this region."

But isn't Markevitch in danger of turning art into (barely) moving wallpaper? Of putting innovative local artists and old masters on a par with the crackling yuletide log?

"Not at all," she insists. "This is an introduction to art. Everybody has a different way of looking. I take your eyes by the hand and we dive into the painting together."

Without missing a beat she continues: "We're a bridge between galleries and consumers and between cultures. That's particularly interesting in the Middle East, when you have the League of Arab States with a shared language but different cultural history to understand.

"Looking forward you have the Guggenheim and the Louvre coming, new galleries in Dubai and two art fairs coming up [Dubai in March, Abu Dhabi in November].

"But there isn't the same tradition of visiting galleries in this region as there is in some parts of the world, simply because they haven't historically been there. That's changing, and Doha has the magical Museum of Islamic Art.

"But you don't buy something you don't know anything about. You fall in love and then you buy. We offer a trailer service for galleries to advertise exhibitions. We are looking for regional sponsors whose names we would show just like in any exhibition and we have an online shop we're developing so you can buy artists' work at accessible prices.

"Ikono builds up knowledge and awareness softly and it builds up demand."

Perhaps Markevitch is right, and the most obvious negative really can be turned into a positive. The way she tells it, ikonomenasa.tv isn't tapping into a market that doesn't exist. It's tapping into a market that doesn't exist yet.