Why Art? June 2010 Issue
Welcome
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the June newsletter (a little later and lighter than usual on account of travel and well travel and would you believe it a minor stopover in Johannesburg for the World Cup(?) followed by a few infrastructure sponsored delays known as power cuts and internet problems in Zimbabwe. June saw us park our backsides on the banks of the Seine - and almost everything that this implies, drowning in baguettes, consuming the museums and drinking in the atmosphere while carefully avoiding the tourists and giving the occasional wrong direction to the Eiffel Tower, with an outcome being almost entirely a franco-centric reportage, so without further ado...
- Marketplace time to start setting records again...more below
- Showtime June reviews and July hop to its...more below
- In Focus spotlight on Tilman ...more below
- Collector's Footnotes On what happens to get a work into a gallery, and reputation and career ... more below
- Hunters & Collectors choice morsels and feasts more below
Marketplace
International
So it is official - the financial crisis in the art world is not forgotten but it is history. Sotheby's June, two-day sales series of Impressionist & Modern Art marked at dramatic increase in activity on 2009 (a rise of 185 %) and realising a combined total of US$193,602,387, bringing Sotheby's year to date sales in 2010 to £295 million and the highest total for Sotheby's London ever.
Several major records were set including a new auction record for Edouard Manet Self-Portrait(£22,441,250) and Andre Derain's Arbres a Collioure, (£16,281,250) also a record for any Fauve painting at auction. Other "strong" prices included Matisse's Odalisques jouant aux dames which sold for £11,801,250, Chaim Soutine's pivotal Le Valet de chambre £7,881,250 and Pierre Bonnard's, Le Petit Dejeuner, Radiateur, £6,201,250.
Remarkable prices were also achieved for drawings, such as Picasso's three drawings of Dora Maar, which almost tripled their estimate to make a total of £2,923,750 and Matisse's etude pour ‘nu rose' brought a price of £5,865,250 - almost double the previous record for a drawing by the artist.
Overall 54% of the lots sold achieved prices in excess of their high estimate, with the average lot value for the evening sale of £3.2 million or more than double the average lot value than that reached last year.
On the art fair front, Art Basel in June is generally treated as a lead indicator in contemporary art. This year's fair showed that while the money is back in the market, the market is backing sure things more than anything else, with the larger proportion of sales being attributed to established names, with the usual "morbid" buying which made Louise Bourgeois , who died last month and Sigmar Polke, who died a week before the fair, hot commodities. European buyers dominated and there was little impulse shopping and vendors reported a reluctance to spend over $500,000.
Domestic
Domestic market has been waiting for signs progress and on 24th of June, Menzies Australian & International art auction in Sydney, delivered some indications, although nowhere near as clear as London. While the total of the sale was respectable by Australian standards ($7,180,150 and $8,616,180 with buyer's premium) clearance rate was rather ordinary 66% by volume and 64% by sum. Only three auction records were set including a top price for Sid Nolan's 1946 First-Class Marksman, $5,400,000, followed by $690,000 fetched by JohnPerceval's Scudding Swans 1959and Bronwyn Oliver's Tracery goingfor$360,000.
More serious news for the art market emanate from our esteemed government, which is determined to pave the road to hell for the art world and the art market with its good intentions. Looking from the outside, their efforts appear focused at comprehensive disenfranchisement of the art world from the economic mainstream. We've seen the charming initiative to deprive young artists from the resale artist royalty. Then came the proposal from the draft Cooper Report to ban artworks as investments from Small and Medium Superannuation Funds (SMSFs) with what seems like an strategy aimed at destroying the incentives for the small and individual collectors, who want to invest in art. Super proposal 'could devastate' the Aboriginal art market in which it is reputed almost 60% of the purchases are made via self-managed super funds. Even more insulting however is the implication that art is no more than a disposable status symbol ergo a collectible in the same category as coins, wine and exotic cars. As usual in Australia, the value of art as patrimony and foundation of culture is an enigma beyond the intellectual grasp of the democratically elected heathens.
However, in another content defied by context shift, the panel has approved art as investment for funds with a trustee and regulated by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, because the members believed purchase decisions for these funds had more checks and balances. Save Super Art <http://www.savesuperart.org.au> established by Lowenstein Arts Management, has been scoring lobbying goals with the Opposition, with the Shadow Minister for the Arts committing to rule out the recommendations to ban artworks from SMSFs, so there is at least one reason to sway the vote in the elections coming up.
Showtime
Out & About
This month's column is entirely francophilic, focused on Paris with a tiny detour to Brussels, with the joys of Sydney and Melbourne, simply too far to reach remotely. (We hereby call on any ardently reliable readers of the newsletter interested in reportage to contact us about contributions for the next few issues - credited or anonymously (we are happy to take on all the flames - honest we are ;-)).
Paris
Paris, to state the obvious, is never short on exhibitions. On arrival, we usually do a run of the currently playing blockbusters (judging by the advertisements on buses - very very reliable guides!) and in June there were a few rather uneven patches.
At Musee Maillol, the mansion belonging to the estate of Artistide Maillol, the sculptor of languid robust nymphs, a rather stylistically contrasting exhibition called Vanites (from Carravagio to Damian Hirst), dedicated to the rather Euro-christian (in our view) preoccupation with the futility of life and its ultimate end in death as signified for the past odd 2000 years by the Skull. From the Romans to Damian Hirst, this exhibition had skulls of every persuasion, colour and configuration, from gold jewellery to replica insects. This bone driven historical excursion left us almost entirely cold. The en mass parade of bones points more to a dearth of imagination by the curators, who felt the need to come up with a theme but lacked the intellectual initiative to develop the conception of vanitas beyond the most basic, starting with the ubiquitous and the predictable Hirst skulls, the oft seen Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait with a skull etc et. In this context, the works that struck us the most interesting and compelling were those, which as an exception did not prioritise skulls. To wit there were only three (!) in a show of over 200 works, they were a shadow sculpture by Christian Boltanski, which was infused with a sense of humanity and a quest for perfection, a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, where the death is worked into the canvas and the fabric of the narrative of the painting with a normality which is far more potent than an in your face skull and bones and finally a totally glorious painting of a monk sans skull entirely by Francisco Zurbaran. The Spanish master of ascetic chiaroscuro is always rare joy (so few works survive) and amid the morbidity in this exhibition, especially so.
Edvard Munch was playing at Pinacotheque de Paris, with a show which was an attempt to give life to Munch's oeuvre beyond his reputation as the painter of The Scream, hence the title "ou Anti-Cri". The truth however lies in the following that the personal demons and mental anguish that Munch suffered throughout his life as a result of psychiatric problems, were the very factors which produced The Scream and Munch's most powerful work. Unfortunately, during periods of reprieve and treatment (which can be traced chronologically in this exhibition) and attempts at leading a normal life, Munch produced technically competent but rather ordinary works. As a result, the overall impression is to feel compassion for the artist as a person struggling to understand himself in his work and also showcase a man who was motivated by struggle with uniquely personal and insular pain rather than and attempt to reach beyond that pain.
Moving towards the contemporary side of things, the biggest opening in June was for Dynasty at Musee d'art Modern and Palais de Tokyo. This exhibition is a massive showcase for forty young French artists largely under 35 presented with the entirety of the combined exhibition spaces of both the Palais de Tokyo and the Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC or 5000 square meters. Conceptually the show is interesting and challenging, each of the artists was asked to present two works that resonate together: one in the Palais de Tokyo and the other in the Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC, to mirror the organization of the two side by side institutions and as an opportunity to develop more complex works in a variety of techniques. Given the expectations loaded into an undertaking of such grand size and ambition, the outcome tends to fall short of the mark. What is interesting to see is the kaleidoscopic cultural and ethnic diversity that is French contemporary art. All religions, races and a multitude of ethnicities are represented in the selection of artists (perhaps a natural selection, perhaps not). What is less interesting is to see how conventional and emotionally and intellectually under-baked the efforts of this youthful rainbow brigade are and conversely a confirmation that French young artists have as little to say about as few things as most of their peers in the developed world, internationally, Australia included. The usual conceptually pre-programmed misadventures with materials abound - demonstrating that young artists are prioritising fun and knee-jerk reactions with excess funding to enable them to make works of large size and at considerable expense. Yes there were the large spaghetti/yarn snowman, yes the were some knitwear and carpeting initiatives, some videos of ostensibly artist's friends having fun on a hot summer day, yes there were so drawing on walls, yes there were some "poignant" hyper-realist photo based paintings with someone going to the toilet while in the background someone is having lunch. Just because you can does not mean that you should. Certainly it felt like most of the artists, excercised their right to the former but did not spare the audience by exercising the discretion as to the latter. As a result the most common expression on the faces of the punters wandering around the show at the vernissage of puzzled consternation, "we wish we could like this but we can only raise our eyebrows." There was one sculpture that stood out, if only because it showed concerted effort, serious thought and accomplishment - that was - Vincent Ganivet's Catenaires, and in painting a series of paintings from Dan Wylie an African expat, whose canvases manages to create a sense of movement and chaos and destruction in his paintings of architectural distress.
Flying a little under the radar given the hype around Dynasty, at the same venue is History Lesson (Leçon d'histoire) on the mezzanine of Palais Tokyo, This year is the year of Russia in France and quite a number of Russian art and political elite were on show for the opening of History Lesson an exhibition trying to showcase and explain the way Russian contemporary artists have been trying to make sense of their country's recent history. In this context, the show is tight, tightly conceived and executed as a curatorial effort by Josef Backshtein one of Russia's curatorial el supremos. Consistent and leaving little doubt about focus of the curator and his intent to re-conceptualise and re-invent the individual works to deliver his message. The message, very much about the irony of the collapse of the ideals of Communism is a uniquely Russian historical experience and important to Russian art and Russian audiences, but in some ways to a Western view presents as a curiosity rather than a powerful universal message. While occasional works like Olga Kisseleva's video triptych compiling film and documentary footage from 1920s are poetic and sufficient, the majority like Andrei Molodkin's Democracy [a letter based sculpture filled with crude oil - typical of Molodkin's oeuvre], are quite literal and it being Russia literary and literate metaphors attacking not to say interrogating and sometimes mourning the realities of losses on the path away from communist utopia. Interestingly, the exhibition also tackles the issue of post-diaspora particularly relevant to Russian art but increasingly an important phenomenon for artists internationally - that is to say artists who emerge in one country and define their identity as such but live and work without any particular geographic commitment or national loyalty. Molodkin, who lives in Paris is one such inclusion, another is Anton Ginzburg, who grew up and lives in New York and adds a flavour of post-modernist and Westernised ethic and aesthetic with his neon light sculptural installation. While the exhibition features the current stars of Russian art like AES (also featured in the Biennale of Sydney) there were a number of important and relevant artists who were not featured including grand master of them all Ilya Kabakov and the current enfant terrible Oleg Kulik, both of whom make power statements on the very subject. But then the g-ds of exhibition mounting move in mysterious ways. Overall however, this chamber sized show proves a strong counterpoint to Dynasty playing across the hall as it were.
The show not to miss, was Lucian Freud Atelier Centre Pompidou touring from the Tate. Any large painting show of Freud's is an embarrassment of riches. Freud is one of if not the finest painter alive today and in this show we see some of his very best works. However, the curatorial concept of the exhibition is for want of better adjectives a trifle on the juvenile side. The works were segregated by artificially devised themes, with chronological and style evolutions disregarded. Thus all of the paintings with green things (as in trees etc) are grouped together, whether painted in 1970 or 2007 and disregarding emotional and intellectual content of the works beyond the literally superficial unison. Trying to superimpose ideas on the works this way, inevitably fails. Thankfully the works are sufficiently amazing to enable us to ignore the curatorial mismanagement and enjoy the works for themselves.
Private Practice:
Paris top galleries in Le Marais, closed the year (well at least as far as annual summer holidays are concerned) on a high note kicking off with Anselm Keifer at Yvon Lambert . What can be said other than that Kiefer is simply great and reminds us what good art is all about and what great artists do. This show is works on paper and artist books made by Keifer and even in smallness of things he manages to make you go ‘wow' by opening doors to your soul, just when you were not looking. His watercolours and notebook drawings just occasionally simply sublime in the humbleness which gives them such pathos.
At Thaddaeus Ropac on of the other it galleries in Paris, an show of Iranian artists to challenge pre-conceptions of religious repression and bad dress sense (courtesy of Monsieur Ahmadinejad). The show called Be Crown with Laurel in Oblivion features paintings and collages by Ramin Haerizadeh and Rokni Haerizadeh, which clearly satirise the regime and the religious constraints and extremes that it manifest. These observations, though cutting and unsettling read a little to literally and predictably. What got our attention however were the unfathomably imaginative bronze sculptures by Bitta Fayyazi, which delighted both in sense of absurdity and humour as well as decadence and the erotic. These large figurines or minor monuments are completely uncensored and radical in being apparently apolitical. Ironically they are far more potent and political as statements of free speech as a result. We were even more impressed to find out that the artist is a woman - no hijab, no burqa, no problem.
At Galerie Karsten Greve next door, a dense show of for want of a better word mattress canvases by Gotthard Graubner Completely minimal, completely self-sufficient and unexpectedly overpowering.
And around the corner at Galerie Rabouan-Moussion a very strong survey of Oleg Kulik's photographic works 1995 - 2005. We may not always share Kulik's aesthetic but one has to give credit, where credit is due. The artist is never far from controversy having sealed his brand as the artist who documented his life living as a dog in Moscow and biting cars. However the violence he depicts literally and implicitly in his work, including this collection of masterfully dystopic anti-portraits is never gratuitous and rather than demanding the attention of the viewer, treats the viewer as one privileged to have been given access.
We are invariably sympathetic to the quest of young artists making their way in the world and support innovative ways to bring their work to the world and the world to their work. Paris, which is traditionally deemed a conservative place the opportunities seem to be far and few between. This is why we were impressed to find Maxime Chanson, a recent graduate of Beaux Arts, convincing the priory St Germain des Pres, one of Paris' most famous and prestigious churches to enable him to install and exhibit his illuminate works inside the church. Chanson's works were in part inspired by the church and gothic stained glass windows drawing a nice arch between the world of spiritual wonder towards contemporary ultra-violet light technology, which would ordinarily be found in nightclubs.
Brussels
We made a lightning speed visit to Belgium (as one does when it is a 1 hour and 22 minute ride by a very fast train), which permitted only a cursory look at the group sculptural exhibition project With Your Eyes Only by Ccnoa @ YUM. Ccnoa is one of Belgium's longstanding stalwarts of non-objective art. Ccnoa pursues a philosophy of collegiality and communal reciprocity between artists both in work and life and this exhibition, which was developed by seven artists in conversation with each other and each other's works is an example of this approach. The exhibition occupying two levels of a large commercial warehouse in the east of the city (?) can only be perceived as a whole rather than a sum of parts. It is not about egos or contests, nationalities or borders, it is about the more subtle things which artists do when the meet each other and while this conversation reaches beyond the mainstream voyeuristic appeal almost mandatory it is nonetheless an experience that is visual, spatial and visceral, which speaks of dedication, generosity, musicality and wit. The artists as usual for Ccnoa are an international brigade including Greet Billet (BE), Kjell Bjørgeengen (NO), Delphine Deguislage (BE), Alexandra Dementieva (RU/BE), Ward Denys (BE), Clemens Hollerer (AT), Simon Ingram (NZ), Aernoudt Jacobs (BE), Esther Stocker (IT/AT), Tilman (DE/BE), Pieter Vermeersch (BE), Dan Walsh (US) and Carrie Yamaoka (US) with concept rather than curation, by Tilman.
July Hop to It:
Sydney
Melbourne
Brisbane
Perth
Adelaide
Tasmania
In Focus
Kudzanai Chiurai
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We have long been fans of Tilman Hoepfl, having first encountered his sculptural, chromatic sandwich paintings at a group show at Peloton in 2008, which are all and none of the above. These objects managed to compel curiosity and deliver us into a childlike fascination with the way things are, the way things work and what hides behind what is hidden, all the while tickling the retinal sensitivities ever so well. It might be non-objective art but boy is it too much subjective and concrete fun.
We suspect that Tilman, who prefers to be known by first name alone, was born in Germany roughly around 1959 and has since made his home in numerous locations, post-diasporically, living the life of a definitional citizen of the art world, with extensive sojourns in New York and most recently in Brussels.
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Although he began as a painter, Tilman's work has over the past decompletely moved into three dimensions and more importantly, site specific responses to architectural environments, which re-interpret light and perception through various colours, to create both physical and psychological responses in the viewer.
. His career is a testimony to collegiality and building support networks for artists sharing his philosophy and love of minimal expression. This generosity of approach has meant that he has never felt above collaborations, orchestrations, project initiatives and all kinds of things that artists, who believe in art more than personal career and ego do. He has also never been one not to give credit where credit is due, when it came to acknowledging and honouring his colleagues. He was the first in 2009, to mount a tribute exhibition to Julian Dashper in New York, within six weeks of the younger artist's untimely death.
This generosity may be seen as anachronistic in an art culture so driven by personality cults as means of achieving sales and price rises, however art visionaries and activists like Tilman are crucial the health and vitality of the art world.
More pertinently however, this is another exceptionally interesting and masterful, who has done everything in the art world and who richly deserves both acclaim and accolades, for which he does not strive.
Tilman is the co-director of and is represented by Ccnoa in Brussels. |
Collector’s Footnotes
On what happens to get a work into a gallery reputation career and why context (again and always) is ever so much...
Our time in Paris has been punctuated by encounters with artists in various stages of career development, strategically and occasionally unstrategically plotting their career development. To a collector or a casual art lover an exhibition by an artist is a fairly simple affair to observe - you walk in the works are in a space. The process that takes in order to achieve this blessed simplicity is anything but and that is not even counting the effort in producing the work.
Case in point. We were invited to an opening of a two-man show in small gallery in Le Marais in rue du Temple. Now Le Marais is just about the best neighbourhood for art, this gallery made us suspicious of the merits of the artists for several reasons: a) the gallery is known as supporting artists from a particular ethnic group and without a particular prioritisation of quality and the exhibition was promote in that context; b) one of the artists was known to me and was known not as a good artist.
On arrival we pretty much discovered what we had expected. The works of the lesser artist we were familiar with left us entirely cold and works of his companion we felt had a lot of technical merit but lacked any contemporary reference point and looked anachronistic and stifled despite glimpses of inspiration. This was exacerbated by the fact that this artist has chosen to exhibit in a particular context and with a particular partner, was telling. While we hoped to exit the exhibition without being forced to comment, this was not to be. |
We were introduced to the artist and made the suggestion that what the work needed was a breath of contemporary relevance. The artist did not argue the point and in conversation and found him to be a rather intelligent and insightful person. Moreover he indicated that he did not treat this particular exhibition seriously but rather as an opportunity to travel to Paris and develop some of his European prospects concurrently. This prompted us to do further research on his career (aka Googling) and to discover that his overall oeuvre in contrast to the works in the exhibition is exceptionally contemporary, very much "with it", not to say cutting edge. We promptly wrote to the artist with a minor apology for misjudging his work. Subsequently we thought better of the apology. After all every time an artist exhibits his work, he is putting his reputation in play. You never know, who is looking at your work and when. To disregard the context in which your work is seen and displayed is not only risky and foolhardy, it is also disrespectful of your audience. This is why all the serious artists we know are exceptionally sensitive about where the exhibit, which gallery and even which prize they enter or which publications they are featured in. It is not a matter of personal prestige or ego or even money but it is about being understood properly, because in a mixed visual culture, surrounding circumstances will dictate who sees your work and how it is understood. In visual art you are by definition, judged by appearances! If you do not exercise foresight you may not get a second look. The artist we met took a risk and in some ways the fact that he chose to risk his reputation in this way, also speaks about his overall merit as an artist, despite his talent. In art talent is not everything but context is, so as always word to the wise is if in doubt do your research and get advice.... |
This month by virtue of pure mortification at having been bereft of Australian content, images from exhibitions of some of our favourite maturing (rather than emerging) Australian artists, Paul Donald at James Dorahy Projects in Sydney, Giles Ryder at Ryan Renshaw in Brisbane and John Spiteri at Neon Parc in Melbourne.
Paul Donald
Daddylonreach2009
Stain and varnish on pine
Dimensions variable
Paul Donald
Flintlok, 2009
Stain and varnish on pine
Giles Ryder, 'The New Nouveaux Nullism' at Ryan Renshaw install view
Giles Ryder Paintings from Ryan Renshaw exhibition
John Spiteri new work at Neon Parc
(0 vote)
side effets of allopurinol zyloprim
By: Susan (Guest) on 09-08-2010 18:08