Sunday, March 20, 2011

the merchant is the enemy

“Le marchand—voila l’ennemi”, the merchant is the enemy, said Picasso (Making Modernism, Picasso and the Creation of the Market for 20th Century Art, Fitzgerald, 1995, University of California Press). If that was the case, it gives new meaning to sleeping with the enemy. In the same book, Picasso was quoted that he’d “like to live like a poor man with a lot of money.” In the grandeur he grew to inhabit, that is an expansive notion of poverty. Lastly, Renoir stated: “There’s only one indicator for telling the value of paintings, and that is the sales room” (ibid). You get the feeling he’d be fabricating today.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

japan redux

With Japan on the brink of nuclear meltdown after the loss of life and tragedy of an earthquake and tsunami, it seems more than superfluous, absurd and insensitive to speak about art, but things march on. Even commodities, which along with art have been the recent darlings of the marketplace, have taken a swift hit in the aftermath of the unfolding Japan crisis. At the risk of being macabre, I have long felt that there would be a terrorist plot involving surgical dirty bombs, biological or nuclear, in a city such as London or New York, and wondered what the ramifications would be for physical works of art so exposed. Now in Japan, such a scenario is upon us; we know the horrific, unspeakable effects of radiation on the body, but what of the implications for objects? The upside, from what was reported on CNN is that there was neither death, nor long-term illness recorded from the Three Mile Island core meltdown in 1979. In light of the unprecedented daily global uncertainty, I can only believe art will, even in the face of such human catastrophe, continue to be coveted as voraciously as of late.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Cash is Crap, Sell the Kids, Buy Art

An executive at a top art insurance company told me that a Cezanne painting sold privately for $250m - that stands as the highest price ever paid for a single work of art to date. Not bad for some pigment on a bit of canvas. Many would say that such a lofty number is a ludicrous concept in a time of great political unrest and systemic poverty worldwide. I say why stop there; that the benchmark will steadily rise and in no time at all we will live to see the day of the $1-billion dollar painting. I can hardly wait. I feel entitled to have forged a life in aesthetics, and that you can now attain such high levels of remuneration only makes it that much more pleasant. So, in the age when cash is crap, not to mention the toxic dollar that has become the currency of choice for short sellers, the 1988 Christopher Wool painting Apocalypse Now sums it up perfectly: “SELL THE HOUSE, SELL THE CAR, SELL THE KIDS”. And buy art!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Dancing on Ice Part 2

We continued our assault on the environment today with helicopter rides strafing the cars racing along the frozen lake and then a 2-hour snowmobile ride before getting towed by hapless reindeers to the dinner venue. The snowmobiles go 100 km an hour and are very unwieldy due to the weight of the vehicle and difficulty steering. The fumes they emit are asphyxiating. I had a self-fulfilling prophecy that I would pull the accelerator rather than the brake upon a difficult stretch of navigation and just such a scenario played itself out on a long patch of ice. I was dramatically thrown off and the snowmobile got wedged in deep snow. It took 4 burly guys stronger then me to dislodge it, not a pretty sight. Needless to say, my excursion provided plenty of fodder for dinner conversation and beyond. Why do people drinking shots feel compelled to foist them on those not? Tomorrow I depart a day early to avoid the inevitable fierce competition for the evening timed car race. I sent my 11 year old the accompanying photo and he said i look Chinese; with such a raging economy, i should be so lucky.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Lapp Dancing

I am within the Arctic Circle, the northern most reaches of Finland (Kittila), a region formerly occupied by the Lapp people; though now considered derogatory, I find the term rather sexy. An ice driving program brings me here with a group from Germany and Switzerland, some of whom I know, others not. To be holed up with 20 people, taking every meal and activity together day in and out, is like being in a 1970’s EST-like self-help group. Driving on ice is a whole other phenomenon with absurdist implications beyond an environment snub—but a 6 km track carved into a vast frozen lake resembling a lunar landscape is something sublime, not to mention sliding across it sideways. When the wind blows the snow along the surface of the ice its like moon dust. When you careen off the track and lodge deep in the snow bank, a tractor must tow you out and a badge around your neck gets stigmatized by a hole punched each time, as you get competitively passed by other drivers on the course. There is nothing quite like a little peer pressure, even at our age. I think a glass (or 2) or red wine would actually help in my case. With such a short attention span, after a few hours my mind wanders causing the car to follow suit, so perhaps this may not be the most logical of diversions.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Springtime for Hitler

I watched John Galiano’s loving ode to Hitler on the Sun’s website, which was surreptitiously filmed on a phone. Such a drunken outburst was like a cartoon in a macabre, Anna Nicole Smith kind of way. Not only does he despise dirty Jew faces, but even more so, ugly Jews with unfashionable boots. When queried whether he wouldn’t prefer world peace, he said not for ugly people. Not to mention ugly Jewish people. Perhaps he should be immediately sent to Libya as a mercenary as though I doubt the good Colonel Qaddafi is Jewish, he is certainly ugly. Maybe Galiano and Mel Gibson could respectively design costumes and star in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof with a cameo by Charlie Sheen.