SQUARE TIMES
The art world appears to be the most backward thinking, anti laissez-faire environment in which to implement projects; compared even to the accounting or legal realms. Information, contacts, and resources are guarded like state secrets. The de rigueur four white walls, bland and unimaginative, uniformly adorn all exhibition spaces the world over, institutional and commercial alike. That is, save for a few adventurous museums such as the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Guggenheims in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel. Who could have imagined that innovation would arise not from the cottage industry, entrepreneurial gallery universe but from the staid world of art institutions? Considering the exclusive, high-end boutique atmosphere of most galleries and "alternative" spaces, I suppose it is no surprise indeed. Galleries went fleeing wholesale from the accessible Soho neighborhood in New York never casting a backwards glance at the ubiquitous, dreaded tourists and casual passers-by. The destination instead was shifted to the Chelsea district, well clear of the reach of public transportation, and replete with boundless garage spaces at the ready for Richard Gluckman (and the wannabes) to work his ho-hum, tiresome architectural legerdemain. What you have is akin to the Turbine Hall Syndrome, derived from the gigantism of the Tate Modern foyer in London-get big art to fill a big space for the sake of filling a space, irregardless of the content. Art that would not exist in such form other than to consume the sheer volume of the container. The more the merrier, and in the process feeding the market with plenty of fodder, I mean, masterpieces like 80 or 100 spot paintings.
TIMES SQUARE
I would rent a ground floor storefront situated squarely in the Times Square district to present a group show of emerging and under-recognized artists in all media, with a restaurant, separate but contiguous, that had the possibility of seamlessly becoming one joint space. This would in effect create a comfortable interior in which to view art and a social one to boot. Similar to the flickering figures across the facade of the NASDAQ building, and the video images that race across much of recent Times Square architecture, art would bulge from this storefront rather than the usual corporate blather back onto the street. The inside would be designed by Vito Acconci an artist that has radically shifted his practice over the years without paying heed to popular tastes, and constantly challenged himself and his public in the process. Acconci has suffered mightily in the eyes of the art market for assuming this activist position. Acconci Studio has recently designed ConTEMPorary, my new experimental space at 14 Charles Lane in New York's West Village, with the only parameter that there be no white walls (wending, maneuverable ones of steel mesh were utilized instead). Rather than the status quo of Tuesday to Saturday, 10 AM -6 PM hours prevalent on every continent where a contemporary gallery resides, this space would be open seven days a week, from 9 AM to 12 AM. This would intrinsically expand upon the micro-audience that typically attends any given contemporary exhibit. Instead of constantly devising ways to whittle down an audience as the galleries are wont to do, why not reach out to a mainstream audience and subtly introduce them to the world of art? The manner in which this could be almost effortlessly accomplished is not by convincing the public that art is solely for the committed, and knowable only to professionals, but gently coaxing people to trust their own intuitive reactions to things in and of themselves. Call me a cynical idealist. And by the way, there certainly would be no sign in sight that delineated this place as a gallery-nothing would more surely alienate and turn away the street traffic except maybe a banner announcing a site to volunteer for the inevitable war in Iraq.
Monday, December 16, 2002
Thursday, December 5, 2002
THE UNENFORCEABLE ANDREA ROSEN CONTRACT (ARTinvestor Magazine, Winter 2002)
A John Curin painting appeared in an advertisement for an upcoming auction at Phillips in an art magazine. When Andrea Rosen of the eponymous gallery got wind of the consigned Curin lot, she notified the auction house of a sales agreement in effect that every client of the gallery is compelled to sign prior to the purchase of any artwork. The contract states that each collector will: offer the work back to the Rosen Gallery should it be resold; not auction a piece under any circumstances; and, not exhibit it without written consent of the artist. Additionally, if the gallery declines to purchase a work prior to resale, the original buyer must forward to Rosen the name and address of the new collector. Phillips withdrew the Curin slated for auction. Andrea Rosen succeeded in not only restricting the free transfer of an artwork, but even further, prohibited the transfer itself. Signing of the so called "Sales Agreement" is now a trend that has been followed by Matthew Marks, and Barbara Gladstone galleries as well-a blow to laissez-faire economics that is as incomprehensible as it is unsound.
A legal analysis of the relevant case law and applicable statutes in New York State and on a Federal level reveal that the contract is on its face illegal and unenforceable in a court of law. A casual conversation with a staff member of the Rosen gallery disclosed an admission of this fact, which indicates that the intent to continue to proffer the document is plainly to intimidate gallery clients into falling in line if they wish to continue doing business with Rosen and her colleagues. Many unsuspecting collectors that have abided by the wrongful covenants unilaterally dictated by the galleries have in essence been robbed of the opportunity to achieve full fair market value for their artworks in the resale and auction markets.
The common-law rule against unreasonable restraints on the distribution of property invalidates unduly restrictive controls on future transfers but requires a case by case analysis that measures reasonableness of the restraint by its price, duration and purpose. The statutory rule provides that any restrictive transfer without delimitation is void if it suspends the absolute power of alienation for a period beyond lives in being at the creation of the covenant plus 21 years. Both the statutory and common-law rules attempt to strike a balance between society's interest to freely transfer property and the rights of parties to control future transactions. There is no consideration paid for by Rosen for the right to restrict subsequent sales; such alleged "agreement" is unlimited in time and could conceivably last forever; and, the purported purpose of protecting her artists' markets is not outweighed by the unqualified restriction on free trade. Such agreements have in the past been upheld if they facilitate a broader marketing of the art, rather than the Rosen case which only applies a prophylactic constriction of the marketing of the works. The Rosen Sales Agreement fails on all three fronts, not even taking into consideration the Draconian ban against auctioning. What has been upheld on previous contracts of this nature but missing from the Rosen version is a provision entitling the collector to offer the artwork to a third party and only then to provide the option holder (Rosen) the chance to meet the price.
The more patently offensive proviso calls for no auctioning of the art. Where auction restrictions have been upheld they have provided the collector with the possibility of proposing a price for the artwork to the dealer and if that price was not agreed upon between the parties, it was set forth that a major auction house representative set a price level. Rosen's proscription to auction hinders not only the buyer's ability to achieve the most for their art when they wish to sell, but also additionally, the artist's capacity to increase their market levels via public, open auction. Such clause is unreasonable under any interpretation of the law. Instead of buyers beware, sellers beware! Would anyone like to join a class action?
A legal analysis of the relevant case law and applicable statutes in New York State and on a Federal level reveal that the contract is on its face illegal and unenforceable in a court of law. A casual conversation with a staff member of the Rosen gallery disclosed an admission of this fact, which indicates that the intent to continue to proffer the document is plainly to intimidate gallery clients into falling in line if they wish to continue doing business with Rosen and her colleagues. Many unsuspecting collectors that have abided by the wrongful covenants unilaterally dictated by the galleries have in essence been robbed of the opportunity to achieve full fair market value for their artworks in the resale and auction markets.
The common-law rule against unreasonable restraints on the distribution of property invalidates unduly restrictive controls on future transfers but requires a case by case analysis that measures reasonableness of the restraint by its price, duration and purpose. The statutory rule provides that any restrictive transfer without delimitation is void if it suspends the absolute power of alienation for a period beyond lives in being at the creation of the covenant plus 21 years. Both the statutory and common-law rules attempt to strike a balance between society's interest to freely transfer property and the rights of parties to control future transactions. There is no consideration paid for by Rosen for the right to restrict subsequent sales; such alleged "agreement" is unlimited in time and could conceivably last forever; and, the purported purpose of protecting her artists' markets is not outweighed by the unqualified restriction on free trade. Such agreements have in the past been upheld if they facilitate a broader marketing of the art, rather than the Rosen case which only applies a prophylactic constriction of the marketing of the works. The Rosen Sales Agreement fails on all three fronts, not even taking into consideration the Draconian ban against auctioning. What has been upheld on previous contracts of this nature but missing from the Rosen version is a provision entitling the collector to offer the artwork to a third party and only then to provide the option holder (Rosen) the chance to meet the price.
The more patently offensive proviso calls for no auctioning of the art. Where auction restrictions have been upheld they have provided the collector with the possibility of proposing a price for the artwork to the dealer and if that price was not agreed upon between the parties, it was set forth that a major auction house representative set a price level. Rosen's proscription to auction hinders not only the buyer's ability to achieve the most for their art when they wish to sell, but also additionally, the artist's capacity to increase their market levels via public, open auction. Such clause is unreasonable under any interpretation of the law. Instead of buyers beware, sellers beware! Would anyone like to join a class action?
Saturday, November 16, 2002
JASPER WHO? (Tema Celeste Magazine Fall/Winter 2002)
From the 1913 Armory Show in New York which was front page news to Jackson Pollack appearing on the cover of life magazine to Warhol and the Pop movement, it seems that contemporary art has been falling further and further out of the consciousness of the general public. Perhaps this is a factor of the commercial art world, which has grown more business oriented, and more akin to a specialty niche marketplace which only embraces it's own rather than focusing on cultivating new audiences. It is not maintained that the collective populous ever uniformly cherished art, but it was part of the discourse, the public imagination and it certainly is not now.
There appears to be a marked difference in other countries such as England, and Germany for instance when it comes to recognition and awareness of contemporary artists. The antics of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and other members of the still percolating YBA movement have garnered so many headlines over the past decade that knowledge of their art and sometimes behavior have trickled down from the echelons of the art establishment to just about every cab driver. From Emin nearly puking drunk live on TV to Hirst's filleted animals, the fodder of tabloids has culminated in advertising campaigns featuring Emin posing in Viviane Westwood and even peddling booze (a cynical angle that wouldn't float in puritanical America). Hirst's signature vitrines are aped in all sorts of media from political cartoons to insurance adverts. In Germany, though most may disagree with the artistic merit of a pile of fat casually clumped in the corner of a room, the majority recognizes Beuys' output. Further, it is not uncommon to spy one of his unlimited editions in the home of a middle class family with no art contacts. Not since Warhol garnered a Love Boat TV series cameo has an American artist neared that level of notoriety.
Television-wise, in any given year, the measly 5 stations in the UK boast more contemporary arts programming than the past 5 years in the US. There has been countless UK documentaries on artists of all stripes, and many instances where artists have been commissioned to create original segments for TV. This is a phenomenon with virtually no parallel in the US. Here we are treated to episodes of 60 Minutes, "Yes, But is it Art Part I & II" where a busload of kids are stood before a Basquiat painting and queried whether they could do a better job. Critic Robert Hughes had a Public Broadcasting Network special a number of year's back where he expounded upon how initials scratched into a tree was more artistic than contemporary art. He was some prescient choice to helm the curator's post for the upcoming Venice Biennial, shame he withdrew. Of late in the US, there was the monotonous thematic show entitled Egg, which touched on art from time to time and was in turn cancelled, and Art 21, which profiled a group of contemporary artists last year, over the course of four episodes. Though the reported audience remarkably totaled 2 million for the entire broadcast, and more were ordered, the show stuck to an unprogressive, uninspired format that lacked even rudimental entertainment value. Financing has yet to be locked into place to fund a continuation of the series.
During the summer of 2002 a non-scientific survey was conducted featuring on-the-street interviews with in excess of 100 randomly selected individuals in Manhattan neighborhoods from Wall Street to Harlem. The intent was to subjectively gauge general perceptions of the relevance of contemporary art to the everyday lives of a cross-section of people. Questions were posed to take the pulse of how people felt about galleries, museums, technology in art, and notions of beauty, among others. Additionally, when there was some level of familiarity with art and artists among interview subjects, a laundry list was read containing names from Picasso to Matthew Barney to get a glimpse of how well the art world communicates its most talented ranks across societal boundaries.
Gone are the days of Picasso or Abstract Expressionism where an artist or movement held sway in the imagination of the general pubic. Though art was prominent in the minds of many as a personalized inward notion of creativity explored on a regular basis, contemporary art was judged a specialized professional niche more akin to the study of artificial intelligence. In fact, a number of those interviewed sensed the intelligence bandied about in the professional art world to be artificial. Under the guise of art was considered a wide of variety of activities from cutting hair, rap, and architecture, to the way a person walks across the street; that is, everything save for contemporary art itself.
Although a common explanation of the role of art was to reflect emotions and an interpretation of the world the way it is experienced-there was a marked contrast with the fact that no one acknowledged contemporary art's penchant to do this. Could it be a hesitancy to accept the current uncertain state of society or at least to do so through the lens of the present-day artist? "Art is dead" could also relate to the fact that civility is felt to be dead, which is not just endemic to the art world but to society at large. New art has lost its ability to meaningfully communicate to a broad-based audience beyond other art professionals. There was rarely an instance where contemporary art evinced any particular relevance to the daily lives of people not enmeshed in the world of art. Additionally, there was a conviction that contemporary artists and art professionals purposefully obfuscate art and the context within which it is viewed to make it overly erudite and hence more dear.
Aside from a mirroring of present day political and social woes that no one wants to face, a possible rationalization for the disinclination towards new art forms was the consent that they are lacking a traditional sense of skill, technique and human touch involved in the processes. This is especially so in the realms of computer and video art which are seen as not just a short cut, but akin to cheating. Another telling comment was that present art making was viewed as "images of images of images", thus a removal, or distancing of art production from primary experience or traditional notions of beauty and affirmed art subject matter. Though, in contravention to this sentiment, most would be unaware of the derision the lot of Impressionists and Post Impressionists were met with when first exhibiting their paintings versus the universal admiration and blockbuster status they were met with here, where "Target stores have all the Van Gogh prints!"
A backlash to art viewed as shocking, call it The Sensation Syndrome after the Saatchi collection exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, was manifest which inured people from being affected by art judged offensive. Today there is a weariness, numbness, and level of familiarity with art meant to affront in the vein of Damien Hirst to the extent that this variety of art is regarded academic, as stated: "Breaking the rules is practically a college course". Also, by pandering to the aesthetics of offensiveness, the only emotions elicited from the general public were that those efforts smacked of juvenilia.
There was a clear skepticism in such comments as contemporary art was an inside joke and "a racket", and not of the Richard Prince variety. The only idea about geometry in art shared by interview subjects was the perception that a line delineates the real world from the art world, describing distinct spheres where there is no crossover only mutual alienation. Characterizations ranging from soulless, to fraud, to being too cerebral-all were geared towards rationalizing a dismissal of new art. This seems to be recognized as the fault of artists from failing to make an effort to connect with the rest of society. As put forth by one: "Artists live in a post modern dreamy dreamy world."
"Now its greed it's just making money, it's become big business like everything else. You buy a name". Art is seen as part of the Prada parade and artists are nothing more then brand names where people buy into trends or fashion whether or not there is a full comprehension of the significance of the artwork at hand. "It's about buying and owning rather than appreciating beauty." This is in contrast to feelings that art is part of the patrimony of the country, something not to be profited from and something at everyone's disposal. "I don't know if the pubic cares anymore. It's kind of sad. It's closed doors." This is surprising in light of the lack of admission to gain entry to galleries, art being the only free lunch in town! However, refreshingly, the majority of participants didn't consider art strictly for the wealthy; rather, what turned people off was the content of the art itself ("New art is like-you know Coors Light") and the environs in which it is observed that was largely responsible for the antagonism and aversion. Galleries and even museums were widely viewed as clinical, sterile, and elitist-all adjectives of intimidation, where there was a shared feeling of antipathy relating to the art going experience: "I don't like it when they follow you around everywhere and they don't want you to touch anything."
Despite the popular appeal of architecture largely wrought by the Guggenheim phenomenon ("I've been to a couple of Guggenheims in Europe") there is a tedium in the sameness of gallery interiors the world over. That galleries do little to encourage an extended diversity audience-wise was handily expressed by the following: "People who go there are predominantly people who are interested in art anyway." And once in galleries, the cold glances of the staffs were related as a palpable browbeating, "You feel a pressure to look a certain way." In the end, commercial galleries would better serve the public by chipping away at barriers, rather than erecting them higher. "I think the biggest hurdle is to get people to go to the galleries who don't necessarily go to begin with."
Beauty figured as an integral component of art in the minds of many but surprisingly the definition accorded was an expansive interpretation with a wide net cast beyond traditional ideas of what constitutes a pretty picture. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder, an oft-repeated cliché, seemed to indicate an accepting, liberal conception of how subjective taste can be.
Those with a trace of art knowledge, or strong opinions about art were not without artful senses of humor. When asked about whether they had made or bought art, one person remarked "I'm too poor to be a collector and untalented to be an artist". Vocalizing the frequently held incredulity towards art was the following gem: "I could spread myself with peanut butter and play around Washington Square Park and call it art". Not a bad idea for a performance piece, watch out Vito Acconci. On acclaimed Brit bad boy, Damien Hirst: "What he does is interesting for three minutes." One easy step to morph a layman into an artist-"you can turn it into art if you frame it." Lastly, on the prevalence of the internet and computers now ubiquitous in biennials and galleries: "Computers are good for tracking locust infestations in the third world. A computer found a computer for my son when he needed it four years ago." Take that, Whitney Bitstreams.
As far as the recognition of artists ranging from Picasso to Mathew Barney, while there seemed universal awareness of Picasso and Warhol ("He's done wonders for advertising"), there were less than a handful of people who recognized the names of artists like John Currin, Janine Antoni and Cecily Brown. As Barney is perhaps the most acclaimed US artist of his generation, it was not surprising that no more than three people had even a passing acquaintance with his work, given his and his dealer's reluctance to seek wide dissemination of his art and films. As Matthew Barney said in a New York Times Magazine article by Michael Kimmelman, October 10, 1999 entitled The Importance of Matthew Barney: "If a work is shown too many times, something gets stolen from it. You come to it with preconceptions, or you get tired of it. And it's the same with an artist. So I try to protect myself and my work." The result of this protectionist attitude with regard to the artist and his work is that he is not only an enigma but also one that remains unknown to most. The following pithily sums it up: "Uh, I know Barney's the store."
Actually, in spite of mild to medium malaise for ultra contemporary art, there was a shared open-mindedness pertaining to art broadly defined, across a wide spectrum of communities. We are on the threshold of an unparalleled opportunity to expand upon art appreciation and acceptance internationally. Examples in the museum world shed light on how the entrepreneurial sector (i.e. galleries) can seize back the initiative to turn the table on contemporary art phobia. One positive new effort on the landscape is the Guggenheim in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, an initiative that is sure to open more than a few unsuspecting eyes of hotel guests to the merit, and worthiness of looking at newer art. Another undertaking is the Palais des Tokyo in Paris, a fresh, raw, unorthodox museum with the atmosphere and hours of a bar or nightclub but filled with challenging and experimental new art production. If the private galleries follow suit, we could be on the verge of an unbounded rise in contemporary art acceptance and patronage.
There appears to be a marked difference in other countries such as England, and Germany for instance when it comes to recognition and awareness of contemporary artists. The antics of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and other members of the still percolating YBA movement have garnered so many headlines over the past decade that knowledge of their art and sometimes behavior have trickled down from the echelons of the art establishment to just about every cab driver. From Emin nearly puking drunk live on TV to Hirst's filleted animals, the fodder of tabloids has culminated in advertising campaigns featuring Emin posing in Viviane Westwood and even peddling booze (a cynical angle that wouldn't float in puritanical America). Hirst's signature vitrines are aped in all sorts of media from political cartoons to insurance adverts. In Germany, though most may disagree with the artistic merit of a pile of fat casually clumped in the corner of a room, the majority recognizes Beuys' output. Further, it is not uncommon to spy one of his unlimited editions in the home of a middle class family with no art contacts. Not since Warhol garnered a Love Boat TV series cameo has an American artist neared that level of notoriety.
Television-wise, in any given year, the measly 5 stations in the UK boast more contemporary arts programming than the past 5 years in the US. There has been countless UK documentaries on artists of all stripes, and many instances where artists have been commissioned to create original segments for TV. This is a phenomenon with virtually no parallel in the US. Here we are treated to episodes of 60 Minutes, "Yes, But is it Art Part I & II" where a busload of kids are stood before a Basquiat painting and queried whether they could do a better job. Critic Robert Hughes had a Public Broadcasting Network special a number of year's back where he expounded upon how initials scratched into a tree was more artistic than contemporary art. He was some prescient choice to helm the curator's post for the upcoming Venice Biennial, shame he withdrew. Of late in the US, there was the monotonous thematic show entitled Egg, which touched on art from time to time and was in turn cancelled, and Art 21, which profiled a group of contemporary artists last year, over the course of four episodes. Though the reported audience remarkably totaled 2 million for the entire broadcast, and more were ordered, the show stuck to an unprogressive, uninspired format that lacked even rudimental entertainment value. Financing has yet to be locked into place to fund a continuation of the series.
During the summer of 2002 a non-scientific survey was conducted featuring on-the-street interviews with in excess of 100 randomly selected individuals in Manhattan neighborhoods from Wall Street to Harlem. The intent was to subjectively gauge general perceptions of the relevance of contemporary art to the everyday lives of a cross-section of people. Questions were posed to take the pulse of how people felt about galleries, museums, technology in art, and notions of beauty, among others. Additionally, when there was some level of familiarity with art and artists among interview subjects, a laundry list was read containing names from Picasso to Matthew Barney to get a glimpse of how well the art world communicates its most talented ranks across societal boundaries.
Gone are the days of Picasso or Abstract Expressionism where an artist or movement held sway in the imagination of the general pubic. Though art was prominent in the minds of many as a personalized inward notion of creativity explored on a regular basis, contemporary art was judged a specialized professional niche more akin to the study of artificial intelligence. In fact, a number of those interviewed sensed the intelligence bandied about in the professional art world to be artificial. Under the guise of art was considered a wide of variety of activities from cutting hair, rap, and architecture, to the way a person walks across the street; that is, everything save for contemporary art itself.
Although a common explanation of the role of art was to reflect emotions and an interpretation of the world the way it is experienced-there was a marked contrast with the fact that no one acknowledged contemporary art's penchant to do this. Could it be a hesitancy to accept the current uncertain state of society or at least to do so through the lens of the present-day artist? "Art is dead" could also relate to the fact that civility is felt to be dead, which is not just endemic to the art world but to society at large. New art has lost its ability to meaningfully communicate to a broad-based audience beyond other art professionals. There was rarely an instance where contemporary art evinced any particular relevance to the daily lives of people not enmeshed in the world of art. Additionally, there was a conviction that contemporary artists and art professionals purposefully obfuscate art and the context within which it is viewed to make it overly erudite and hence more dear.
Aside from a mirroring of present day political and social woes that no one wants to face, a possible rationalization for the disinclination towards new art forms was the consent that they are lacking a traditional sense of skill, technique and human touch involved in the processes. This is especially so in the realms of computer and video art which are seen as not just a short cut, but akin to cheating. Another telling comment was that present art making was viewed as "images of images of images", thus a removal, or distancing of art production from primary experience or traditional notions of beauty and affirmed art subject matter. Though, in contravention to this sentiment, most would be unaware of the derision the lot of Impressionists and Post Impressionists were met with when first exhibiting their paintings versus the universal admiration and blockbuster status they were met with here, where "Target stores have all the Van Gogh prints!"
A backlash to art viewed as shocking, call it The Sensation Syndrome after the Saatchi collection exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, was manifest which inured people from being affected by art judged offensive. Today there is a weariness, numbness, and level of familiarity with art meant to affront in the vein of Damien Hirst to the extent that this variety of art is regarded academic, as stated: "Breaking the rules is practically a college course". Also, by pandering to the aesthetics of offensiveness, the only emotions elicited from the general public were that those efforts smacked of juvenilia.
There was a clear skepticism in such comments as contemporary art was an inside joke and "a racket", and not of the Richard Prince variety. The only idea about geometry in art shared by interview subjects was the perception that a line delineates the real world from the art world, describing distinct spheres where there is no crossover only mutual alienation. Characterizations ranging from soulless, to fraud, to being too cerebral-all were geared towards rationalizing a dismissal of new art. This seems to be recognized as the fault of artists from failing to make an effort to connect with the rest of society. As put forth by one: "Artists live in a post modern dreamy dreamy world."
"Now its greed it's just making money, it's become big business like everything else. You buy a name". Art is seen as part of the Prada parade and artists are nothing more then brand names where people buy into trends or fashion whether or not there is a full comprehension of the significance of the artwork at hand. "It's about buying and owning rather than appreciating beauty." This is in contrast to feelings that art is part of the patrimony of the country, something not to be profited from and something at everyone's disposal. "I don't know if the pubic cares anymore. It's kind of sad. It's closed doors." This is surprising in light of the lack of admission to gain entry to galleries, art being the only free lunch in town! However, refreshingly, the majority of participants didn't consider art strictly for the wealthy; rather, what turned people off was the content of the art itself ("New art is like-you know Coors Light") and the environs in which it is observed that was largely responsible for the antagonism and aversion. Galleries and even museums were widely viewed as clinical, sterile, and elitist-all adjectives of intimidation, where there was a shared feeling of antipathy relating to the art going experience: "I don't like it when they follow you around everywhere and they don't want you to touch anything."
Despite the popular appeal of architecture largely wrought by the Guggenheim phenomenon ("I've been to a couple of Guggenheims in Europe") there is a tedium in the sameness of gallery interiors the world over. That galleries do little to encourage an extended diversity audience-wise was handily expressed by the following: "People who go there are predominantly people who are interested in art anyway." And once in galleries, the cold glances of the staffs were related as a palpable browbeating, "You feel a pressure to look a certain way." In the end, commercial galleries would better serve the public by chipping away at barriers, rather than erecting them higher. "I think the biggest hurdle is to get people to go to the galleries who don't necessarily go to begin with."
Beauty figured as an integral component of art in the minds of many but surprisingly the definition accorded was an expansive interpretation with a wide net cast beyond traditional ideas of what constitutes a pretty picture. Beauty being in the eye of the beholder, an oft-repeated cliché, seemed to indicate an accepting, liberal conception of how subjective taste can be.
Those with a trace of art knowledge, or strong opinions about art were not without artful senses of humor. When asked about whether they had made or bought art, one person remarked "I'm too poor to be a collector and untalented to be an artist". Vocalizing the frequently held incredulity towards art was the following gem: "I could spread myself with peanut butter and play around Washington Square Park and call it art". Not a bad idea for a performance piece, watch out Vito Acconci. On acclaimed Brit bad boy, Damien Hirst: "What he does is interesting for three minutes." One easy step to morph a layman into an artist-"you can turn it into art if you frame it." Lastly, on the prevalence of the internet and computers now ubiquitous in biennials and galleries: "Computers are good for tracking locust infestations in the third world. A computer found a computer for my son when he needed it four years ago." Take that, Whitney Bitstreams.
As far as the recognition of artists ranging from Picasso to Mathew Barney, while there seemed universal awareness of Picasso and Warhol ("He's done wonders for advertising"), there were less than a handful of people who recognized the names of artists like John Currin, Janine Antoni and Cecily Brown. As Barney is perhaps the most acclaimed US artist of his generation, it was not surprising that no more than three people had even a passing acquaintance with his work, given his and his dealer's reluctance to seek wide dissemination of his art and films. As Matthew Barney said in a New York Times Magazine article by Michael Kimmelman, October 10, 1999 entitled The Importance of Matthew Barney: "If a work is shown too many times, something gets stolen from it. You come to it with preconceptions, or you get tired of it. And it's the same with an artist. So I try to protect myself and my work." The result of this protectionist attitude with regard to the artist and his work is that he is not only an enigma but also one that remains unknown to most. The following pithily sums it up: "Uh, I know Barney's the store."
Actually, in spite of mild to medium malaise for ultra contemporary art, there was a shared open-mindedness pertaining to art broadly defined, across a wide spectrum of communities. We are on the threshold of an unparalleled opportunity to expand upon art appreciation and acceptance internationally. Examples in the museum world shed light on how the entrepreneurial sector (i.e. galleries) can seize back the initiative to turn the table on contemporary art phobia. One positive new effort on the landscape is the Guggenheim in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, an initiative that is sure to open more than a few unsuspecting eyes of hotel guests to the merit, and worthiness of looking at newer art. Another undertaking is the Palais des Tokyo in Paris, a fresh, raw, unorthodox museum with the atmosphere and hours of a bar or nightclub but filled with challenging and experimental new art production. If the private galleries follow suit, we could be on the verge of an unbounded rise in contemporary art acceptance and patronage.
Thursday, May 16, 2002
ARTinvestor Magazine 5 - 2002
DOWNTICKS: BAD BAD PAINTING
Imagine the worst Howard Hodgkin painting come to life in a horrible nightmare hijacking your very existence: covering walls, floors, utensils, and everything else in sight. Such is the impact of the recent exhibition of Lucas Samaras at PaceWildenstein gallery. According to the press release there were more than 700 discrete pieces that made up this encrusted paint-laden sensory assault with prices ranging from $4,000 for notebook sized paintings on paper to $75,000 for large canvases appropriately entitled "Wounds". The catalogue that accompanied the show was a 27-page poem by the artist, written in the form of a laundry list in a single column of words that proved elucidating to the abortion at hand ("I thought of things evicted from the womb" says the artist). Samaras brazenly boasted that his strokes of paint were "more complex than Pollack's mesh" and in comparing himself to Picasso stated: "his brilliance resides not in his brush mark which is quite pedestrian." "A single sale of recent work would redesign the pain threshold" said Samaras, but viewing the primary colors smeared over paper, canvas, and everyday objects without more artistry or finesse the pain was only ours, and it was far from sporadic. Perhaps an excuse for such lack of imagination in work that smacked of art school tendencies resided in the revealing comment: "Stoli (as in the vodka) opens the door to a pleasant reverie". That was enough to create teetotalers of us all. The unintended comedy continued with Samaras declaring "Other annoyances are awaiting my pluck." He sure wasn't kidding. And, in a scenario one can only imagine as Pace owners descended upon the studio that must have appeared like a nuclear explosion in a toy factory, "The Pace group was discomfited, unwittingly displaying Gucci gears of diplomacy in traction." But the bewilderment at a show weighted down by such an abundance of mediocrity was not lost on Samaras as signs of self-doubt manifested itself but not enough to cause him to prune the overripe fruits of his harvest. "A friend's mother said, why do you do such stuff. Civilians as well as experts can rain on my parade." As was evident from the downpour that was his show, such criticism did not dampen his own enthusiasm for displaying such a mother lode of painted matter. But, Samaras' reasoning for the onslaught was unassailable: "Where will I put all the stuff I've done?"
UPTICKS: GOOD BAD PAINTING
Picasso said anyone can learn to paint but it takes a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. Dubuffet, Twombly, Guston, Basquiat and Baechler all evince a major strand of contemporary painting that captures something of the essence of the bright-eyed exuberance of childhood that at first blush could look likeSwell, crap. Not to say that such vein of painting doesn't have a dark foreboding side to it, rather the formal and compositional elements look as if rendered without connection to standard notions of quality or competence. Twombly blackboard scribbles have sold for 5 - 6 million dollars; Guston's cartoonish hooded characters in the millions; Basquiat's have breached $2 million; and, Baechler has an auction record of $149,000. Somebody is ascribing value to the renderings of these painters that can't seem to paint. A new breed of artistry-impaired artists is emerging and the support is flourishing. Take Chris Johanon for example, who makes drawings, paintings and installations with rudimentary crafted cars, freeways, and buildings that look like the work of an intoxicated Julien Opie. From the mid 90's to now, the 34 year old artist has frequently exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago in a variety of modest galleries on his way to the Whitney Biennial and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery as his primary dealer. The prices for colored starburst paintings which are actually no more than a series of narrow blobs emanating from a central point on a canvas or board range from $2,000 - $6,000. Johanson's works have a pleasant optical sensibility that is refreshing and optimistic in these tense times we find ourselves in post 9/11.
Thirty-four year old British artist Paul Housley recently had a travelling exhibit throughout various UK institutions and is presently showing at Nylon gallery in London, where he has had two one-person shows to date. Though he is without a New York venue, surely it won't be long. Subject matter ranges form one-eyed cats, to gym bags, planes and portraits all done in a jewel-like fashion (always small in scale in lacquered in finish) that remains enticing and seductive despite the awkwardness of his interpretation, prices range from $1,500 to $5,000. Joe Bradley is a newcomer showing regularly only in Boston at Allston Skirt Gallery for the time being, who despite the rapidity of his touch has a wonderful deftness to his composition. An untitled painting of a mountainside with wisps of green for trees and flashes of blue depicting depth, captures the scene so well and forthrightly you feel a chill though it appears to have been completed between sips of a single coffee. Another painting that proves that less is more, which is not usually associated with this brand of sloppy art making, entitled "Natural Scene", looks like a Monet water lily that accidentally got washed by a cleaning person. The problem when he is less successful is that the paintings look as though they were used to clean his brushes! The prices for Bradley who's paintings are no bigger than 3' x 4' top out at only $1,000 a veritable steal.
Brendan Cass who has showed with Noirhomme in Brussels and in exhibitions in New York is the king of the bad painters: when he hits his mark he is truly on to something and when he misses, the fall is precipitous. Cass uses paint almost like a sculptural element pouring gallons and gallons onto the surface forming almost a relief-like structure in the process. There are shards of recognizable imagery scattered about abstract compositions, the colors have gone from muted to day-glo, and the support from canvas to glass and mirror. Bits of text are often incorporated, but are often indecipherable, the import of which is known only to the artist. Most spot on of late are cityscapes composed of simple block buildings with dabs of paint for windows which have added gravity in light of the tenuous nature these buildings now seem to possess in New York at the moment. Prices of Cass' paintings range from $2,000 to $7,500.
Imagine the worst Howard Hodgkin painting come to life in a horrible nightmare hijacking your very existence: covering walls, floors, utensils, and everything else in sight. Such is the impact of the recent exhibition of Lucas Samaras at PaceWildenstein gallery. According to the press release there were more than 700 discrete pieces that made up this encrusted paint-laden sensory assault with prices ranging from $4,000 for notebook sized paintings on paper to $75,000 for large canvases appropriately entitled "Wounds". The catalogue that accompanied the show was a 27-page poem by the artist, written in the form of a laundry list in a single column of words that proved elucidating to the abortion at hand ("I thought of things evicted from the womb" says the artist). Samaras brazenly boasted that his strokes of paint were "more complex than Pollack's mesh" and in comparing himself to Picasso stated: "his brilliance resides not in his brush mark which is quite pedestrian." "A single sale of recent work would redesign the pain threshold" said Samaras, but viewing the primary colors smeared over paper, canvas, and everyday objects without more artistry or finesse the pain was only ours, and it was far from sporadic. Perhaps an excuse for such lack of imagination in work that smacked of art school tendencies resided in the revealing comment: "Stoli (as in the vodka) opens the door to a pleasant reverie". That was enough to create teetotalers of us all. The unintended comedy continued with Samaras declaring "Other annoyances are awaiting my pluck." He sure wasn't kidding. And, in a scenario one can only imagine as Pace owners descended upon the studio that must have appeared like a nuclear explosion in a toy factory, "The Pace group was discomfited, unwittingly displaying Gucci gears of diplomacy in traction." But the bewilderment at a show weighted down by such an abundance of mediocrity was not lost on Samaras as signs of self-doubt manifested itself but not enough to cause him to prune the overripe fruits of his harvest. "A friend's mother said, why do you do such stuff. Civilians as well as experts can rain on my parade." As was evident from the downpour that was his show, such criticism did not dampen his own enthusiasm for displaying such a mother lode of painted matter. But, Samaras' reasoning for the onslaught was unassailable: "Where will I put all the stuff I've done?"
UPTICKS: GOOD BAD PAINTING
Picasso said anyone can learn to paint but it takes a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. Dubuffet, Twombly, Guston, Basquiat and Baechler all evince a major strand of contemporary painting that captures something of the essence of the bright-eyed exuberance of childhood that at first blush could look likeSwell, crap. Not to say that such vein of painting doesn't have a dark foreboding side to it, rather the formal and compositional elements look as if rendered without connection to standard notions of quality or competence. Twombly blackboard scribbles have sold for 5 - 6 million dollars; Guston's cartoonish hooded characters in the millions; Basquiat's have breached $2 million; and, Baechler has an auction record of $149,000. Somebody is ascribing value to the renderings of these painters that can't seem to paint. A new breed of artistry-impaired artists is emerging and the support is flourishing. Take Chris Johanon for example, who makes drawings, paintings and installations with rudimentary crafted cars, freeways, and buildings that look like the work of an intoxicated Julien Opie. From the mid 90's to now, the 34 year old artist has frequently exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago in a variety of modest galleries on his way to the Whitney Biennial and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery as his primary dealer. The prices for colored starburst paintings which are actually no more than a series of narrow blobs emanating from a central point on a canvas or board range from $2,000 - $6,000. Johanson's works have a pleasant optical sensibility that is refreshing and optimistic in these tense times we find ourselves in post 9/11.
Thirty-four year old British artist Paul Housley recently had a travelling exhibit throughout various UK institutions and is presently showing at Nylon gallery in London, where he has had two one-person shows to date. Though he is without a New York venue, surely it won't be long. Subject matter ranges form one-eyed cats, to gym bags, planes and portraits all done in a jewel-like fashion (always small in scale in lacquered in finish) that remains enticing and seductive despite the awkwardness of his interpretation, prices range from $1,500 to $5,000. Joe Bradley is a newcomer showing regularly only in Boston at Allston Skirt Gallery for the time being, who despite the rapidity of his touch has a wonderful deftness to his composition. An untitled painting of a mountainside with wisps of green for trees and flashes of blue depicting depth, captures the scene so well and forthrightly you feel a chill though it appears to have been completed between sips of a single coffee. Another painting that proves that less is more, which is not usually associated with this brand of sloppy art making, entitled "Natural Scene", looks like a Monet water lily that accidentally got washed by a cleaning person. The problem when he is less successful is that the paintings look as though they were used to clean his brushes! The prices for Bradley who's paintings are no bigger than 3' x 4' top out at only $1,000 a veritable steal.
Brendan Cass who has showed with Noirhomme in Brussels and in exhibitions in New York is the king of the bad painters: when he hits his mark he is truly on to something and when he misses, the fall is precipitous. Cass uses paint almost like a sculptural element pouring gallons and gallons onto the surface forming almost a relief-like structure in the process. There are shards of recognizable imagery scattered about abstract compositions, the colors have gone from muted to day-glo, and the support from canvas to glass and mirror. Bits of text are often incorporated, but are often indecipherable, the import of which is known only to the artist. Most spot on of late are cityscapes composed of simple block buildings with dabs of paint for windows which have added gravity in light of the tenuous nature these buildings now seem to possess in New York at the moment. Prices of Cass' paintings range from $2,000 to $7,500.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
ARTinvestor Magazine 4 - 2002
DOWNTICK: NEW YORK
The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster was sad, nauseating and unfathomable. After being brought to our collective knees, New Yorkers walk around with a continual knot in our stomachs wondering what will be next. We are gripped by fear for the futures of our children, and simultaneously are forced to digest information about conflicting reports on asbestos exposure. At the time of this writing, nearly six weeks after the attack our neighborhoods and homes (miles from the WTC) are intermittently overcome by an invisible remainder from the still smoldering site that manifests itself in an acrid, indescribable smell. The odor has caused many people to temporarily or permanently flee the city altogether. One thing is clear, although we are not told so by the local authorities, this scent must be carcinogenic. Experiencing the events of September 11th, for those that survived, was akin to a life threatening mugging; after the initial shock and scare fade, there is the residue of loss of a certain protected sphere of the body and mind. And, if you happen to ask someone directions on the street after being robbed, they jump three feet. That is how we all feel with each and every plane sighted overhead, and every loud noise from the street-this from a city characterized by a cacophony of unruly sounds. By erasing the towers and inducing a state of implausibility and heightened uncertainty, we are all walking around vulnerable beyond naked. Now passenger planes could be guided missiles, and regular mail is a delivery system for deadly anthrax. Maybe we were a bit too smug in our sense of security as the USA was caught sitting on its hands; and then, as Lichtenstein might have put it: POW! Life as we know it will never be the same. Though it is truly impossible to pick up where we left off, what else can we do?
Cynically showing a dark side of humanity akin in spirit but not in levels of destruction as the terrorists, immediately after the event street hawkers sprang into action selling appropriated, re-photographed images of people jumping from the towers to avert the heat, flames and smoke. Also available for sale, both on the street and in one hour photo shops, were pictures of the towers imploding. Additionally, not a bodega exists in the city that does not sport a newly minted postcard rack with glossy mementos of the towers standing tall as they once, almost inconceivably now, did.
Another odd, disquieting phenomenon at the early stages of the art season was the post facto gravity given to art works nothing more than mediocre, due to their fortuitous connection to the WTC attacks. Chief among these cases was Wolfgang Staehle's installation "To the People of Manhattan", later changed to "Untitled" after the attacks at Postmasters Gallery. Staehle hung up his appropriationist art making shenanigans in the early 1990's as he set about creating an arts oriented web discussion group and net services provider called "The Thing". Internet providing must have proved insufficient ego gratification as Staehle decided to allegedly reenter the art making fray again. What is more irksome than the re-contextualization of his work in post WTC terms is his claiming his simulcast in the gallery of lower Manhattan, a TV tower in Berlin and a monastery in Comburg, near Munich, was "a kind of contemporary landscape painting". Couching new media work in the language of painting is a non sequitur that does a disservice to the art of paint and canvas as well as the realm of the video ready-made (see the work of Jeremy Blake, which also fits in this category). The destruction of the towers, viewable as a gaping hole in the New York City skyline on his simulcast only served to render his work a quick fix substitute for CNN, to hold one over on the way home to catch the latest news.
Richard Phillips, at Frederick Petzel Gallery, who once made quirky quilted neo-geo sculptural constructions in the go-go late 1980's shifted to the more market friendly world of photo-realist paintings quite similar in form and content to the 1960's artists that gave the movement it's name. Suspiciously, the change occurred in the belt-tightening, recession plagued early to mid-1990's when, perhaps in a bid to keep up with the Sean Landers' and John Currin's of the world, who were classmates of Phillips at Yale, and had launched zooming painting careers at the time. In this case, a knowing, wink-wink, obviously sarcastic portrait of a smirking George Bush took on the unintended monumentality of depicting a leader at the crossroads of a world historical moment. In the instances of Staehle and Phillips, they clearly had no a priori intent to capitalize on a tragedy, the magnitude of which no one could have foretold; but, the unintended effects served to focus unwarranted spotlights on work that was at best undeserving of the added attention.
back to top
UPTICK: NEW YORK
New Yorkers are a resilient bunch and we will pick up the pieces and create a city even more determined and cohesive than ever before. The art market, after holding its breath for much of September seems to be slowly eking back to more normal levels. In the immediate aftermath of the WTC there was an eerie pause where things came to a grinding halt: there were no visitors to galleries whatsoever, and business came to a standstill. However, feedback from galleries such as Andrew Kreps in Chelsea, a cutting edge venue that represents international emerging artists, shows a heartening rebound in business and an honoring of pre September 11th deals. His first show of the season (mid September to mid October) multi-media artist Hirsohi Sunairi practically sold out with prices in the range of $3,000 - $15,000. The centerpiece of the exhibit, a giant abstracted wooden Buddha with a painted and photo collaged surface, was also the most costly work in the show. It sold just prior to the 11th but the sale was not reneged upon, which is good news from the unproven, more speculative emerging segment of the market. At Luhring Augustine Gallery, Japanese photographer Yosimura Morimura who usually cross- dresses himself into roles in iconic Hollywood films or masterpieces from historic art works, sold remarkably well at levels from$10,000 to $45,000 in editions from 3 to 15. Phenomenally for any time of year, yet almost inconceivable after the most heinous act of terror the world has known to date, the gallery sold in excess of 40 pieces of the artist playing Frida Kahlo in photographs and videos. Though certain collectors expressed sentiments that they were "not in the mood to buy", artists such as Donald Baechler reported fairly brisk sales from his studio in the range of $20,000 to $50,000 for paintings and works on paper. A possible precursor to the upcoming fall auctions was the recent sale held on October 10th at Sotheby's from the estate of Fred Hughes; Andy Warhol's recently-deceased business manager. Though the sale was comprised of mostly decorative doodads from his elaborate brownstone, a classic blue Warhol Jackie portrait in the generic size of 16 x 20 inches which is almost classifiable in the realm of commodity (over 40 are known to exist), fetched a respectable $180,000. At another auction, this one a charity event to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless, anxious bidders snapped up much of the art being offered. Ricci Albenda, an emerging conceptual artist who has a project room opening at the Museum of Modern Art in November, sold an 8 x 10 inch drawing on paper for $1,500 and an Ed Ruscha print in an addition of 100 sold for a healthy $5,600. With these encouraging tidbits of sale information trickling in, perhaps art will be viewed as a safe haven in a shaky economy, in an even shakier world.
The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster was sad, nauseating and unfathomable. After being brought to our collective knees, New Yorkers walk around with a continual knot in our stomachs wondering what will be next. We are gripped by fear for the futures of our children, and simultaneously are forced to digest information about conflicting reports on asbestos exposure. At the time of this writing, nearly six weeks after the attack our neighborhoods and homes (miles from the WTC) are intermittently overcome by an invisible remainder from the still smoldering site that manifests itself in an acrid, indescribable smell. The odor has caused many people to temporarily or permanently flee the city altogether. One thing is clear, although we are not told so by the local authorities, this scent must be carcinogenic. Experiencing the events of September 11th, for those that survived, was akin to a life threatening mugging; after the initial shock and scare fade, there is the residue of loss of a certain protected sphere of the body and mind. And, if you happen to ask someone directions on the street after being robbed, they jump three feet. That is how we all feel with each and every plane sighted overhead, and every loud noise from the street-this from a city characterized by a cacophony of unruly sounds. By erasing the towers and inducing a state of implausibility and heightened uncertainty, we are all walking around vulnerable beyond naked. Now passenger planes could be guided missiles, and regular mail is a delivery system for deadly anthrax. Maybe we were a bit too smug in our sense of security as the USA was caught sitting on its hands; and then, as Lichtenstein might have put it: POW! Life as we know it will never be the same. Though it is truly impossible to pick up where we left off, what else can we do?
Cynically showing a dark side of humanity akin in spirit but not in levels of destruction as the terrorists, immediately after the event street hawkers sprang into action selling appropriated, re-photographed images of people jumping from the towers to avert the heat, flames and smoke. Also available for sale, both on the street and in one hour photo shops, were pictures of the towers imploding. Additionally, not a bodega exists in the city that does not sport a newly minted postcard rack with glossy mementos of the towers standing tall as they once, almost inconceivably now, did.
Another odd, disquieting phenomenon at the early stages of the art season was the post facto gravity given to art works nothing more than mediocre, due to their fortuitous connection to the WTC attacks. Chief among these cases was Wolfgang Staehle's installation "To the People of Manhattan", later changed to "Untitled" after the attacks at Postmasters Gallery. Staehle hung up his appropriationist art making shenanigans in the early 1990's as he set about creating an arts oriented web discussion group and net services provider called "The Thing". Internet providing must have proved insufficient ego gratification as Staehle decided to allegedly reenter the art making fray again. What is more irksome than the re-contextualization of his work in post WTC terms is his claiming his simulcast in the gallery of lower Manhattan, a TV tower in Berlin and a monastery in Comburg, near Munich, was "a kind of contemporary landscape painting". Couching new media work in the language of painting is a non sequitur that does a disservice to the art of paint and canvas as well as the realm of the video ready-made (see the work of Jeremy Blake, which also fits in this category). The destruction of the towers, viewable as a gaping hole in the New York City skyline on his simulcast only served to render his work a quick fix substitute for CNN, to hold one over on the way home to catch the latest news.
Richard Phillips, at Frederick Petzel Gallery, who once made quirky quilted neo-geo sculptural constructions in the go-go late 1980's shifted to the more market friendly world of photo-realist paintings quite similar in form and content to the 1960's artists that gave the movement it's name. Suspiciously, the change occurred in the belt-tightening, recession plagued early to mid-1990's when, perhaps in a bid to keep up with the Sean Landers' and John Currin's of the world, who were classmates of Phillips at Yale, and had launched zooming painting careers at the time. In this case, a knowing, wink-wink, obviously sarcastic portrait of a smirking George Bush took on the unintended monumentality of depicting a leader at the crossroads of a world historical moment. In the instances of Staehle and Phillips, they clearly had no a priori intent to capitalize on a tragedy, the magnitude of which no one could have foretold; but, the unintended effects served to focus unwarranted spotlights on work that was at best undeserving of the added attention.
back to top
UPTICK: NEW YORK
New Yorkers are a resilient bunch and we will pick up the pieces and create a city even more determined and cohesive than ever before. The art market, after holding its breath for much of September seems to be slowly eking back to more normal levels. In the immediate aftermath of the WTC there was an eerie pause where things came to a grinding halt: there were no visitors to galleries whatsoever, and business came to a standstill. However, feedback from galleries such as Andrew Kreps in Chelsea, a cutting edge venue that represents international emerging artists, shows a heartening rebound in business and an honoring of pre September 11th deals. His first show of the season (mid September to mid October) multi-media artist Hirsohi Sunairi practically sold out with prices in the range of $3,000 - $15,000. The centerpiece of the exhibit, a giant abstracted wooden Buddha with a painted and photo collaged surface, was also the most costly work in the show. It sold just prior to the 11th but the sale was not reneged upon, which is good news from the unproven, more speculative emerging segment of the market. At Luhring Augustine Gallery, Japanese photographer Yosimura Morimura who usually cross- dresses himself into roles in iconic Hollywood films or masterpieces from historic art works, sold remarkably well at levels from$10,000 to $45,000 in editions from 3 to 15. Phenomenally for any time of year, yet almost inconceivable after the most heinous act of terror the world has known to date, the gallery sold in excess of 40 pieces of the artist playing Frida Kahlo in photographs and videos. Though certain collectors expressed sentiments that they were "not in the mood to buy", artists such as Donald Baechler reported fairly brisk sales from his studio in the range of $20,000 to $50,000 for paintings and works on paper. A possible precursor to the upcoming fall auctions was the recent sale held on October 10th at Sotheby's from the estate of Fred Hughes; Andy Warhol's recently-deceased business manager. Though the sale was comprised of mostly decorative doodads from his elaborate brownstone, a classic blue Warhol Jackie portrait in the generic size of 16 x 20 inches which is almost classifiable in the realm of commodity (over 40 are known to exist), fetched a respectable $180,000. At another auction, this one a charity event to benefit the Coalition for the Homeless, anxious bidders snapped up much of the art being offered. Ricci Albenda, an emerging conceptual artist who has a project room opening at the Museum of Modern Art in November, sold an 8 x 10 inch drawing on paper for $1,500 and an Ed Ruscha print in an addition of 100 sold for a healthy $5,600. With these encouraging tidbits of sale information trickling in, perhaps art will be viewed as a safe haven in a shaky economy, in an even shakier world.
Sunday, December 16, 2001
TEMA CELESTE MAGAZINE - 2001
Las Vegas and Art: Public Meets Private (Interview with Robert G. Goldstein, President of the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino)
The manners in which contemporary art galleries and museums function is based upon models that have not changed for decades. One would think with the entrepreneurial nature of the gallery business and the lack of institutional structure and layered bureaucracy inherent in the museum world, that galleries would be quick to respond to shifting cultural, political and economic times. Paradoxically, that has not been the case as none other than the Guggenheim has seized the initiative, first in Bilbao, and now even more radically, in of all places: Las Vegas. That innovation has occurred at the hands of the much-derided director of the Guggenheim, Thomas Krens and the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino. Vegas, much more so than Spain, has the potential to forever transform the underlying business of art-from nurturing new audiences to disseminating works of art to the public. Stay tuned.
Since the late forties the architecture of galleries, mimicking early museums of modern art, adopted the white cube paradigm for displaying works in order to confer value when there was little or no market to support such wares... Thus, for in excess of sixty years there has been a rigidity and orthodoxy in exhibitions that is mind-numbing in its sameness. If you step into contemporary art galleries from Africa to Asia you encounter the ubiquitous generic box, uniform hours of operation, and worse still, the exclusionary mind-set. And now the time for change is upon us; more revolutionary than a revolution started by the public sector is the launching of a hybrid marriage with private enterprise. Inevitably, galleries will catch on and be emboldened to follow in the footsteps of the Vegas experiment in reaching out to inaugurate alliances that for the first time seek to mobilize fresh visitors that would not ordinarily patronize galleries.
Viva Las Vegas
Las Vegas has tourism (prior to the World Trade Center attack, referred to herein as WTC) to the tune of 35 million visitors a year, and 130,000 hotel rooms en toto in which to house them. The 1.5 billion-dollar Venetian hotel, with over 3000 rooms, has 60,000 people a day passing through the lobby. Within the hotel alone are 400,000 square feet of retail space and three Jacob Javits Centers worth of convention space to boot (1.7 million square feet). Citywide, room rates can be had for as low as $29.99 at Circus Circus Hotel and probably approach a slot machine jackpot's worth for the high-end consumer. Vegas boasts more retail space in 3 miles than anywhere else does in the world. The commercial establishments in the Venetian hotel range from Canyon Ranch Spa and Prada to Banana Republic, and rival Madison Avenue for quality and choice. The city is hitting its stride with an onslaught of new gourmet eateries and nightlife activities and the re-development is not predicated on increasing gambling tables, but on entertainment and retail.
Elvis Meets Picasso
Steve Wynn, the legendary hotel developer of Las Vegas who began his forays into hotel ownership in deals involving Howard Hughes, built the Mirage Hotel and Casino in the eighties. The Mirage introduced the concepts of high end shopping and better dining to Las Vegas to skeptical critics that thought neither would fly, but take off they did. The Bellagio, which opened in 1998 at a cost of 1.6 billion dollars, added another high-end retail concept to the glitzy and gaudy world of Las Vegas: the single collector museum. Just a few years prior to the opening of the Bellagio, Wynn began an art collection of Impressionist masters, though not in the usual incremental fashion one might test the waters, rather, in true Vegas Style, we went in deep, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2000 the Mirage (which includes the Bellagio) was sold to MGM Grand Inc. for $6.4 billion out of which Wynn was said to receive between $500 and $800 million. With the sale of the hotel, Wynn acquired a right of first refusal on any offers made for works from the Bellagio collection, said to be worth $400 million, sometimes for prices less than that offered by another buyer. Of the $400 million art collection of the Bellagio, half was said to be owned by the hotel and the remainder owned by Wynn and leased back to the Bellagio at a cost of $5 million per year.
It was the forward and insightful thinking of Steve Wynn during his reign at the Bellagio Hotel that gave birth to the impetus that trickled-down to the Venetian in the form of the Guggenheim, and Hermitage Guggenheim. Wynn committed the then (and still a little now) sacrilegious act of bringing world class art to a hotel lobby gallery and restaurant (the infamous Picasso Restaurant, adorned with eleven authentic Picasso's to whet diner's visual appetites, and designed by Claude, Picasso's grandson). Surprisingly, entrance to the Bellagio gallery came with a $12 admission fee, and more surprisingly, lines formed to gain admittance packed with crowds composed of all colors and stripes waiting to get in to view Wynn's personal collection of masterpieces. Wynn's inimitable style of high profile purchases of big ticket items both privately and at Sotheby's and Christie's, raised eyebrows and created headlines as much for the prices he paid as for the creative way he found to finance it-the buying it and leasing it back to the publicly traded hotel. Auction purchases from 1999 included: a landscape by Georges Seurat, "Island of the Grande Jatte," for $35.2 million, a landscape by Berthe Morisot for $3.85 million, and it was speculated, more than one Picasso in the $40 million range. Bought privately by Wynn were a Tahitian scene by Paul Gauguin from a European collection for close to $35 million, and van Gogh's Peasant Girl with Straw Hat at a price of $47.5 million. As is fairly common with most mega collectors, Wynn was and is a frequent seller of high profile works at auction as well.
Those days have ended with the sale of the Bellagio and the collection within, but before temporarily closing due to the WTC disaster, the Bellagio began a program of temporary exhibits the first of which was from the public Phillips Collection in Washington DC., which staged: "Masterworks from the Phillips Collection at Bellagio" which was comprised of 25 paintings including: Van Gogh's "Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles" and El Greco's "The Repentant St.Peter", and additionally paintings by Picasso, Degas, Manet, Cezanne and others. Next up was a show entitled The Private Collection of Steve Martin, which consisted of a partial loan of 28 pieces from the actor, comedian, and best selling author including works by Hockney, Picasso, Seurat, Lichtenstein, Bacon and Hopper. Among the more contemporary works were paintings by actor/comedian Martin Mull and three Fischl's among which included a portrait of Martin. The proceeds from the $12 admission fee benefited Steve Martin's charitable foundation and an acoustic guide that included Martin's commentary and anecdotes about the works accompanied the exhibit. Canceled due to the trade center attacks was the exhibit arranged by the Calder Foundation, entitled "Alexander Calder: The Art of Invention" showcasing works from 1926-1976.
Steve Wynn has struck again albeit in a scaled down version of his original ground breaking conception. Located in the former Desert Inn hotel lobby which currently houses Wynn Development, is yet another rendition of the original Bellagio museum. Named La Reve (The Dream) after a 1932 Picasso portrait of his mistress Marie Therese Walter that Wynn purchased for $42 million from Austrian banker Wolfgagn Flottl, who previously bought the painting for $48.4 million from the Ganz collection at Christie's in 1997. Additionally, there are signature works from Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne, Degas, Gaugin, and Modigliani and to catch a glimpse it will cost Vegas residents $5 and out-of-towner's $10.
Passing the Baton
Now the Venetian has expanded the concept of the single collector gallery established by Wynn who opened the eyes of the city to the possibility of creating a mixed use commercial formula by combining art, culture, food and entertainment. The goal of Robert G. Goldstein, president of the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino was to make Wynn's original conception more diverse, and especially, more economically viable. Goldstein was born in Philadelphia, and lived in Las Vegas since 1975; he is an attorney by training with no formal art background whose specialty is real-estate development, with a knack for all things cultural. Goldstein's mother was a hobby painter and as a child they frequently visited museums. He collects an eclectic mix of contemporary work from street art in New Orleans to cutting edge emerging art from Paris and New York galleries. His is an intuitive approach characterized by criteria defined by "what I like". The ubiquitous don of Las Vegas aesthetics and cultural booster-ism Dave Hickey, plays a multi-faceted role in the shaping of Goldstein's burgeoning contemporary art knowledge. Tricky Hickey accomplishes a dual influence by way of Goldstein's wife's attending Hickey's class at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Hickey's wife Libby Lumpkin (a consultant to Steve Wynn) pitching in with advice on the contemporary scene to the Goldsteins. Goldstein's dedication to the cause is evidenced by his reading Clement Greenberg every night to glean a better understanding of the underpinnings of modern and contemporary art thinking.
Goo Goo Guggenheim
Thomas Krens came into the picture when a commerce association envisioned opening a 100,000 square foot gallery in Vegas and brought in the Guggenheim director for feasibility advice. Goldstein was so impressed with the "razor sharp intellect, creativity and open-mindedness" of Krens that he approached him independently to feel out the possibility of the Gugg opening a franchise at the Venetian. The result was the founding of the 63,700 square foot Guggenheim Las Vegas, and 7,600 square foot Hermitage Guggenheim Museum, both designed by Rem Koolhaas, the latter in Cor-Ten steel, a la Richard Serra. Together, the stated cost of the construction of the two venues was 30 million dollars. The larger of the two Guggenheims is nicknamed the Big Box and is structured as a partnership between the hotel and the museum, and the Hermitage Gugg was built by the hotel but based on a strict tenancy between the museum and the Venetian. The hours of the museums are 9am to 11pm; private galleries should take heed. Together the museums are envisioned as growing the spectrum of activities in the hotel and thereby increasing various appetites (for food and drink, shopping and gambling) by adding hubs for culture. Fantastically, rooms and other retail ventures earn more than gambling, which contradicts the notion of gambling dollars fueling the neon fire. So much for the common perception of Vegas as a place where fat cats get free booze and gratis suites that could accommodate football teams, and go on to drop millions in gambling losses at baccarat.
As set forth by Goldstein, there will be "no rules" governing the possibilities of what may transpire at the Venetian Guggenheims. Though they are seeking for the projects to be commercially viable, at $15 dollars a pop for admission to each museum, the extremely prominent spaces at the entrance to the hotel could have been put to better economic use by high-end retail. Goldstein states that the hotel won't get rich from the admissions to the Guggenheim, but it could have a phenomenal and mutually beneficial spillover effect. When queried as to whether the Venetian would contemplate art projects outside the (big) box he stated that they are considering fetching Koons' giant flower puppy for an appearance-the perfect kitsch emblem for the emblematically kitsch city.
The opening festivities included a sit down dinner for 800 people (the scale of everything in Vegas seems larger than life); but, the scope of the opening events were scaled back inasmuch as a giant pool party was canceled due to the WTC attack. Initially after the disaster, there was a setback of 50 - 70 % reduction in attendance at the hotel, but that has come back at the time of this writing to levels of 40 - 50% of what is normal for late fall. On an optimistic note, the Venetian's 3000+ rooms were sold out for the latter week and a half of October. Attendance for the two museums is projected at 5000 people per day for each space. Says Goldstein surveying the completed and now open for business museums: "Krens delivers on his promise."
Vegas-Next Generation
Art is a business and is product in reality not very different from any other in a sense, and it is this fresh, outsiders perspective that is so empowering about the marriage of hotel and museum in Vegas. The art world finds it anathema to breathe words of commerce combined with art, but hypocritically is meshed with money like worms under a rock. Though the quality is to date questionable, there are some galleries in Vegas, but Goldstein believes it is only a matter of time before high caliber commercial galleries take advantage of the new momentum for viewing art and drop stakes in Vegas. There is already a movie festival slated for Vegas and an art fair of some sort is not ruled out for the near future. Goldstein is amazed that the private sector hasn't seized the opportunity in New York or other major city to do some mixed-use venture of the caliber of the Vegas Gugg. In expanding the horizons of Vegas, the audiences at the Venetian Guggenheims are not expected to be art buyers per se, but just curious tourists who will walk away vastly enriched from an experience they might otherwise never attain. And, from the seeds sowed at the Venetian Guggenheims, who knows what may emerge next from the alchemy.
The manners in which contemporary art galleries and museums function is based upon models that have not changed for decades. One would think with the entrepreneurial nature of the gallery business and the lack of institutional structure and layered bureaucracy inherent in the museum world, that galleries would be quick to respond to shifting cultural, political and economic times. Paradoxically, that has not been the case as none other than the Guggenheim has seized the initiative, first in Bilbao, and now even more radically, in of all places: Las Vegas. That innovation has occurred at the hands of the much-derided director of the Guggenheim, Thomas Krens and the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino. Vegas, much more so than Spain, has the potential to forever transform the underlying business of art-from nurturing new audiences to disseminating works of art to the public. Stay tuned.
Since the late forties the architecture of galleries, mimicking early museums of modern art, adopted the white cube paradigm for displaying works in order to confer value when there was little or no market to support such wares... Thus, for in excess of sixty years there has been a rigidity and orthodoxy in exhibitions that is mind-numbing in its sameness. If you step into contemporary art galleries from Africa to Asia you encounter the ubiquitous generic box, uniform hours of operation, and worse still, the exclusionary mind-set. And now the time for change is upon us; more revolutionary than a revolution started by the public sector is the launching of a hybrid marriage with private enterprise. Inevitably, galleries will catch on and be emboldened to follow in the footsteps of the Vegas experiment in reaching out to inaugurate alliances that for the first time seek to mobilize fresh visitors that would not ordinarily patronize galleries.
Viva Las Vegas
Las Vegas has tourism (prior to the World Trade Center attack, referred to herein as WTC) to the tune of 35 million visitors a year, and 130,000 hotel rooms en toto in which to house them. The 1.5 billion-dollar Venetian hotel, with over 3000 rooms, has 60,000 people a day passing through the lobby. Within the hotel alone are 400,000 square feet of retail space and three Jacob Javits Centers worth of convention space to boot (1.7 million square feet). Citywide, room rates can be had for as low as $29.99 at Circus Circus Hotel and probably approach a slot machine jackpot's worth for the high-end consumer. Vegas boasts more retail space in 3 miles than anywhere else does in the world. The commercial establishments in the Venetian hotel range from Canyon Ranch Spa and Prada to Banana Republic, and rival Madison Avenue for quality and choice. The city is hitting its stride with an onslaught of new gourmet eateries and nightlife activities and the re-development is not predicated on increasing gambling tables, but on entertainment and retail.
Elvis Meets Picasso
Steve Wynn, the legendary hotel developer of Las Vegas who began his forays into hotel ownership in deals involving Howard Hughes, built the Mirage Hotel and Casino in the eighties. The Mirage introduced the concepts of high end shopping and better dining to Las Vegas to skeptical critics that thought neither would fly, but take off they did. The Bellagio, which opened in 1998 at a cost of 1.6 billion dollars, added another high-end retail concept to the glitzy and gaudy world of Las Vegas: the single collector museum. Just a few years prior to the opening of the Bellagio, Wynn began an art collection of Impressionist masters, though not in the usual incremental fashion one might test the waters, rather, in true Vegas Style, we went in deep, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2000 the Mirage (which includes the Bellagio) was sold to MGM Grand Inc. for $6.4 billion out of which Wynn was said to receive between $500 and $800 million. With the sale of the hotel, Wynn acquired a right of first refusal on any offers made for works from the Bellagio collection, said to be worth $400 million, sometimes for prices less than that offered by another buyer. Of the $400 million art collection of the Bellagio, half was said to be owned by the hotel and the remainder owned by Wynn and leased back to the Bellagio at a cost of $5 million per year.
It was the forward and insightful thinking of Steve Wynn during his reign at the Bellagio Hotel that gave birth to the impetus that trickled-down to the Venetian in the form of the Guggenheim, and Hermitage Guggenheim. Wynn committed the then (and still a little now) sacrilegious act of bringing world class art to a hotel lobby gallery and restaurant (the infamous Picasso Restaurant, adorned with eleven authentic Picasso's to whet diner's visual appetites, and designed by Claude, Picasso's grandson). Surprisingly, entrance to the Bellagio gallery came with a $12 admission fee, and more surprisingly, lines formed to gain admittance packed with crowds composed of all colors and stripes waiting to get in to view Wynn's personal collection of masterpieces. Wynn's inimitable style of high profile purchases of big ticket items both privately and at Sotheby's and Christie's, raised eyebrows and created headlines as much for the prices he paid as for the creative way he found to finance it-the buying it and leasing it back to the publicly traded hotel. Auction purchases from 1999 included: a landscape by Georges Seurat, "Island of the Grande Jatte," for $35.2 million, a landscape by Berthe Morisot for $3.85 million, and it was speculated, more than one Picasso in the $40 million range. Bought privately by Wynn were a Tahitian scene by Paul Gauguin from a European collection for close to $35 million, and van Gogh's Peasant Girl with Straw Hat at a price of $47.5 million. As is fairly common with most mega collectors, Wynn was and is a frequent seller of high profile works at auction as well.
Those days have ended with the sale of the Bellagio and the collection within, but before temporarily closing due to the WTC disaster, the Bellagio began a program of temporary exhibits the first of which was from the public Phillips Collection in Washington DC., which staged: "Masterworks from the Phillips Collection at Bellagio" which was comprised of 25 paintings including: Van Gogh's "Entrance to the Public Gardens in Arles" and El Greco's "The Repentant St.Peter", and additionally paintings by Picasso, Degas, Manet, Cezanne and others. Next up was a show entitled The Private Collection of Steve Martin, which consisted of a partial loan of 28 pieces from the actor, comedian, and best selling author including works by Hockney, Picasso, Seurat, Lichtenstein, Bacon and Hopper. Among the more contemporary works were paintings by actor/comedian Martin Mull and three Fischl's among which included a portrait of Martin. The proceeds from the $12 admission fee benefited Steve Martin's charitable foundation and an acoustic guide that included Martin's commentary and anecdotes about the works accompanied the exhibit. Canceled due to the trade center attacks was the exhibit arranged by the Calder Foundation, entitled "Alexander Calder: The Art of Invention" showcasing works from 1926-1976.
Steve Wynn has struck again albeit in a scaled down version of his original ground breaking conception. Located in the former Desert Inn hotel lobby which currently houses Wynn Development, is yet another rendition of the original Bellagio museum. Named La Reve (The Dream) after a 1932 Picasso portrait of his mistress Marie Therese Walter that Wynn purchased for $42 million from Austrian banker Wolfgagn Flottl, who previously bought the painting for $48.4 million from the Ganz collection at Christie's in 1997. Additionally, there are signature works from Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne, Degas, Gaugin, and Modigliani and to catch a glimpse it will cost Vegas residents $5 and out-of-towner's $10.
Passing the Baton
Now the Venetian has expanded the concept of the single collector gallery established by Wynn who opened the eyes of the city to the possibility of creating a mixed use commercial formula by combining art, culture, food and entertainment. The goal of Robert G. Goldstein, president of the Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino was to make Wynn's original conception more diverse, and especially, more economically viable. Goldstein was born in Philadelphia, and lived in Las Vegas since 1975; he is an attorney by training with no formal art background whose specialty is real-estate development, with a knack for all things cultural. Goldstein's mother was a hobby painter and as a child they frequently visited museums. He collects an eclectic mix of contemporary work from street art in New Orleans to cutting edge emerging art from Paris and New York galleries. His is an intuitive approach characterized by criteria defined by "what I like". The ubiquitous don of Las Vegas aesthetics and cultural booster-ism Dave Hickey, plays a multi-faceted role in the shaping of Goldstein's burgeoning contemporary art knowledge. Tricky Hickey accomplishes a dual influence by way of Goldstein's wife's attending Hickey's class at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Hickey's wife Libby Lumpkin (a consultant to Steve Wynn) pitching in with advice on the contemporary scene to the Goldsteins. Goldstein's dedication to the cause is evidenced by his reading Clement Greenberg every night to glean a better understanding of the underpinnings of modern and contemporary art thinking.
Goo Goo Guggenheim
Thomas Krens came into the picture when a commerce association envisioned opening a 100,000 square foot gallery in Vegas and brought in the Guggenheim director for feasibility advice. Goldstein was so impressed with the "razor sharp intellect, creativity and open-mindedness" of Krens that he approached him independently to feel out the possibility of the Gugg opening a franchise at the Venetian. The result was the founding of the 63,700 square foot Guggenheim Las Vegas, and 7,600 square foot Hermitage Guggenheim Museum, both designed by Rem Koolhaas, the latter in Cor-Ten steel, a la Richard Serra. Together, the stated cost of the construction of the two venues was 30 million dollars. The larger of the two Guggenheims is nicknamed the Big Box and is structured as a partnership between the hotel and the museum, and the Hermitage Gugg was built by the hotel but based on a strict tenancy between the museum and the Venetian. The hours of the museums are 9am to 11pm; private galleries should take heed. Together the museums are envisioned as growing the spectrum of activities in the hotel and thereby increasing various appetites (for food and drink, shopping and gambling) by adding hubs for culture. Fantastically, rooms and other retail ventures earn more than gambling, which contradicts the notion of gambling dollars fueling the neon fire. So much for the common perception of Vegas as a place where fat cats get free booze and gratis suites that could accommodate football teams, and go on to drop millions in gambling losses at baccarat.
As set forth by Goldstein, there will be "no rules" governing the possibilities of what may transpire at the Venetian Guggenheims. Though they are seeking for the projects to be commercially viable, at $15 dollars a pop for admission to each museum, the extremely prominent spaces at the entrance to the hotel could have been put to better economic use by high-end retail. Goldstein states that the hotel won't get rich from the admissions to the Guggenheim, but it could have a phenomenal and mutually beneficial spillover effect. When queried as to whether the Venetian would contemplate art projects outside the (big) box he stated that they are considering fetching Koons' giant flower puppy for an appearance-the perfect kitsch emblem for the emblematically kitsch city.
The opening festivities included a sit down dinner for 800 people (the scale of everything in Vegas seems larger than life); but, the scope of the opening events were scaled back inasmuch as a giant pool party was canceled due to the WTC attack. Initially after the disaster, there was a setback of 50 - 70 % reduction in attendance at the hotel, but that has come back at the time of this writing to levels of 40 - 50% of what is normal for late fall. On an optimistic note, the Venetian's 3000+ rooms were sold out for the latter week and a half of October. Attendance for the two museums is projected at 5000 people per day for each space. Says Goldstein surveying the completed and now open for business museums: "Krens delivers on his promise."
Vegas-Next Generation
Art is a business and is product in reality not very different from any other in a sense, and it is this fresh, outsiders perspective that is so empowering about the marriage of hotel and museum in Vegas. The art world finds it anathema to breathe words of commerce combined with art, but hypocritically is meshed with money like worms under a rock. Though the quality is to date questionable, there are some galleries in Vegas, but Goldstein believes it is only a matter of time before high caliber commercial galleries take advantage of the new momentum for viewing art and drop stakes in Vegas. There is already a movie festival slated for Vegas and an art fair of some sort is not ruled out for the near future. Goldstein is amazed that the private sector hasn't seized the opportunity in New York or other major city to do some mixed-use venture of the caliber of the Vegas Gugg. In expanding the horizons of Vegas, the audiences at the Venetian Guggenheims are not expected to be art buyers per se, but just curious tourists who will walk away vastly enriched from an experience they might otherwise never attain. And, from the seeds sowed at the Venetian Guggenheims, who knows what may emerge next from the alchemy.
Friday, March 16, 2001
ARTinvestor Magazine 3 - 2001
DOWNTICK: 80'S PAINTING
What in heaven's earth is Jeff Koons thinking with regard to his new series of paintings aside from money? They are without doubt the most awful crop of crap to emerge from the studio of a leading light of contemporary art since...there is no comparison to be made, as this body of work stands unto itself in the annals of art. Not even dwelling on the reputed sweat shop studio filled with in excess of forty Soviet immigrants working on the paintings in shifts that stretch 24-7 (hours per day and days per week), they feel corrupt for other reasons. First and foremost, there is the James Rosenquist rip-off factor; despite the fact that Rosenquist is still alive and well and making more authentic and underrated versions of the real thing recently on view at Gagosian's Chelsea outpost, crafty Koons displayed his mercenary restatements at Gogo's Beverly Hills branch. Fitting that Koons' "paintings" debuted in Beverly Hills since they felt as fake as bad plastic surgery cases resplendent in the sunny streets of Los Angeles. The paintings are spliced and diced with shards and fragments of children's toys, desserts and body parts in the hyper realistic mode that has reared its ugly head in the equally off-putting works of Mary Boone's new batch of "talent" Damien Loeb and Will Cotton. Sure, there is nothing wrong with assistants fabricating work, and Koon's vacuum cleaner assisted readymades and statuettes are wonderful, but here they just come off as the shady output of a charlatan.
And, continuing the rampage is the recent hyperbolized 1980's painting show with the dim-witted title: Mythic Proportions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. The cracked crockery paintings of Julien Schnabel have not aged very well and seem the result of an out of control temper tantrum from the monstrously egotistical tyrant who thankfully has picked up steam in his directing career. Can we really afford to loose that much volume of space on the planet with more of his office building sized creations? Too bad David Salle's movie directing career has fizzled in direct proportion to Schnable's advancement because his paintings have the veneer of a hangover from a point in time that is better put behind us, and we are assured to get nothing but more of the same. Ross Bleckner looks here the same as he ever was: dull, repetitive and decorative; like wallpaper for the aesthetically challenged. Peter Halley, though interesting colorist as he is, remains the reigning king of the formulaic-how it must feel to be locked into an economic conundrum where one feels the need to make the same work over and over for in excess of twenty years. He paints prison bars and seems forever locked into one. Take your Cucchi, Clemente, and Chia thank you very much; we have entered a new millennium, so let us quickly get over this overrated, overvalued and overpriced period of art.
UPTICKS: HARLEM
Harlem is heating up hot in the real estate and art markets. Though the sale of townhouses has not breached the one million dollar mark, it is a threshold that is bound to be broken soon irregardless of the present economic slowdown that has seen some residential prices drop by 20% elsewhere in Manhattan. MVRDV, the Dutch architectural firm (an offshoot of Rem Koolhaas' office) much in demand after making a big splash at Expo 2000 in Hanover, are presently in discussions to build in the area for a young New York City collecting couple in the tech industry. Way up north on 149th Street, Sasha Newly, the British born society portrait painter and son of Joan Collins has set up a live/work space on a full floor of a refurbished brownstone. Many contemporary artists are presently migrating uptown to Harlem to set up studios and seeking living accommodations, since compared to artist-infested Brooklyn, the rents are competitive and the atmosphere much more sympathetic.
Art-wise, there is The Project, the progressive gallery run by Christian Hayes that in it's few short years in existence has become a must see for the hard core gallery going public. The gallery represents such luminaries as perennial Whitney Museum wonder-boy Paul Pfeiffer, winner of the first $100,000 Buxbaum Prize for video recently awarded by the museum and newcomer painter and installation artist Peter Rostovsky. After Thelma Golden was unceremoniously dumped by new Whitney chief Max Anderson, and after a short stint with the Peter and Eileen Norton Foundation, she has settled into to a position as Deputy Director of the Studio Museum of Harlem on West 125th Street. The Director of the museum, Lowery Stokes Sims was formerly the Curator of Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum (that hotbed of contemporary art activity!) where she had been on staff since the early 1970's. The Studio Museum is presently undergoing a major expansion and renovation, to be completed by 2002, which includes a new glass facade; entry court; caf™; auditorium; and new 2,500 square foot permanent collection galleries. As commented upon by a gallery-goer after the opening of the latest offering, curated by Golden, entitled "Freestyle":
"They have this area perched in between two buildings (i.e. in an alley) which they turned into the little social area, brightly lit and shrouded in white linen, where the liquor was served and the elite meet and greet and congratulate. It was every other opening, but it was right there in Harlem. At the opening you even heard a yell or siren from the streets, alerting us all to the fact that this little pretentious bubble could pop. It was so not-Harlem. It was so 'fine-art'."
From glancing at the press release, though, one would think "Freestyle" and the Studio Museum in general represent less freethinking and more overt dependence on Philip Morris and their cultural cigarette smoke and mirrors.
PERSONAL PICKS: SANFORD BIGGERS AND SUSAN SMITH PINELO
Standouts from the Studio Museum of Harlem "Freestyle" exhibition were a video by Susan Smith-Pinelo, a recent graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University and sculptures by Sanford Biggers, recently graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. Smith-Pinelo presented a work titled: "Sometimes" which depicted a closely cropped set of bodacious boobs swaying up and down, and right and left to the sound of Rhythm & Blues music. Filling the entire screen was the hypnotically pulsating crevice of her cleavage in a white tank top shirt sporting a jeweled necklace spelling out her name. Concise, to the point, and remarkably memorable and effective-a kind of site-specific work that dealt with the context of the show in its immediate surroundings in a more meaningful way than most other entrants in the exhibit.
Sanford Biggers was recently the recipient of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant which entitled him to a studio on the 92nd floor of one of the World Trade Center Towers. In the downtown venue (the more successful of the two for him) Biggers presented a large-scale sculptural installation and uptown a series of clear cast resin Buddahs filled with sundry detritus culled from local Harlem neighborhood life. The Trade Center sculpture was a headrest of a queen sized bed fitted in red satin sheets and faux black fur comforter, in the form of a giant afro hair pick shaped into a clenched fist and clad in black leather. The piece utilized the symbol of the Black Power movement, conceptually reduced to the kitsch of a hair comb, then enlarged to a bed ornament morphing into a comment on the clich™ of African American male prowess in the sack. All in all, a tough though humorous and seductive work of art.
What in heaven's earth is Jeff Koons thinking with regard to his new series of paintings aside from money? They are without doubt the most awful crop of crap to emerge from the studio of a leading light of contemporary art since...there is no comparison to be made, as this body of work stands unto itself in the annals of art. Not even dwelling on the reputed sweat shop studio filled with in excess of forty Soviet immigrants working on the paintings in shifts that stretch 24-7 (hours per day and days per week), they feel corrupt for other reasons. First and foremost, there is the James Rosenquist rip-off factor; despite the fact that Rosenquist is still alive and well and making more authentic and underrated versions of the real thing recently on view at Gagosian's Chelsea outpost, crafty Koons displayed his mercenary restatements at Gogo's Beverly Hills branch. Fitting that Koons' "paintings" debuted in Beverly Hills since they felt as fake as bad plastic surgery cases resplendent in the sunny streets of Los Angeles. The paintings are spliced and diced with shards and fragments of children's toys, desserts and body parts in the hyper realistic mode that has reared its ugly head in the equally off-putting works of Mary Boone's new batch of "talent" Damien Loeb and Will Cotton. Sure, there is nothing wrong with assistants fabricating work, and Koon's vacuum cleaner assisted readymades and statuettes are wonderful, but here they just come off as the shady output of a charlatan.
And, continuing the rampage is the recent hyperbolized 1980's painting show with the dim-witted title: Mythic Proportions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. The cracked crockery paintings of Julien Schnabel have not aged very well and seem the result of an out of control temper tantrum from the monstrously egotistical tyrant who thankfully has picked up steam in his directing career. Can we really afford to loose that much volume of space on the planet with more of his office building sized creations? Too bad David Salle's movie directing career has fizzled in direct proportion to Schnable's advancement because his paintings have the veneer of a hangover from a point in time that is better put behind us, and we are assured to get nothing but more of the same. Ross Bleckner looks here the same as he ever was: dull, repetitive and decorative; like wallpaper for the aesthetically challenged. Peter Halley, though interesting colorist as he is, remains the reigning king of the formulaic-how it must feel to be locked into an economic conundrum where one feels the need to make the same work over and over for in excess of twenty years. He paints prison bars and seems forever locked into one. Take your Cucchi, Clemente, and Chia thank you very much; we have entered a new millennium, so let us quickly get over this overrated, overvalued and overpriced period of art.
UPTICKS: HARLEM
Harlem is heating up hot in the real estate and art markets. Though the sale of townhouses has not breached the one million dollar mark, it is a threshold that is bound to be broken soon irregardless of the present economic slowdown that has seen some residential prices drop by 20% elsewhere in Manhattan. MVRDV, the Dutch architectural firm (an offshoot of Rem Koolhaas' office) much in demand after making a big splash at Expo 2000 in Hanover, are presently in discussions to build in the area for a young New York City collecting couple in the tech industry. Way up north on 149th Street, Sasha Newly, the British born society portrait painter and son of Joan Collins has set up a live/work space on a full floor of a refurbished brownstone. Many contemporary artists are presently migrating uptown to Harlem to set up studios and seeking living accommodations, since compared to artist-infested Brooklyn, the rents are competitive and the atmosphere much more sympathetic.
Art-wise, there is The Project, the progressive gallery run by Christian Hayes that in it's few short years in existence has become a must see for the hard core gallery going public. The gallery represents such luminaries as perennial Whitney Museum wonder-boy Paul Pfeiffer, winner of the first $100,000 Buxbaum Prize for video recently awarded by the museum and newcomer painter and installation artist Peter Rostovsky. After Thelma Golden was unceremoniously dumped by new Whitney chief Max Anderson, and after a short stint with the Peter and Eileen Norton Foundation, she has settled into to a position as Deputy Director of the Studio Museum of Harlem on West 125th Street. The Director of the museum, Lowery Stokes Sims was formerly the Curator of Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum (that hotbed of contemporary art activity!) where she had been on staff since the early 1970's. The Studio Museum is presently undergoing a major expansion and renovation, to be completed by 2002, which includes a new glass facade; entry court; caf™; auditorium; and new 2,500 square foot permanent collection galleries. As commented upon by a gallery-goer after the opening of the latest offering, curated by Golden, entitled "Freestyle":
"They have this area perched in between two buildings (i.e. in an alley) which they turned into the little social area, brightly lit and shrouded in white linen, where the liquor was served and the elite meet and greet and congratulate. It was every other opening, but it was right there in Harlem. At the opening you even heard a yell or siren from the streets, alerting us all to the fact that this little pretentious bubble could pop. It was so not-Harlem. It was so 'fine-art'."
From glancing at the press release, though, one would think "Freestyle" and the Studio Museum in general represent less freethinking and more overt dependence on Philip Morris and their cultural cigarette smoke and mirrors.
PERSONAL PICKS: SANFORD BIGGERS AND SUSAN SMITH PINELO
Standouts from the Studio Museum of Harlem "Freestyle" exhibition were a video by Susan Smith-Pinelo, a recent graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University and sculptures by Sanford Biggers, recently graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. Smith-Pinelo presented a work titled: "Sometimes" which depicted a closely cropped set of bodacious boobs swaying up and down, and right and left to the sound of Rhythm & Blues music. Filling the entire screen was the hypnotically pulsating crevice of her cleavage in a white tank top shirt sporting a jeweled necklace spelling out her name. Concise, to the point, and remarkably memorable and effective-a kind of site-specific work that dealt with the context of the show in its immediate surroundings in a more meaningful way than most other entrants in the exhibit.
Sanford Biggers was recently the recipient of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant which entitled him to a studio on the 92nd floor of one of the World Trade Center Towers. In the downtown venue (the more successful of the two for him) Biggers presented a large-scale sculptural installation and uptown a series of clear cast resin Buddahs filled with sundry detritus culled from local Harlem neighborhood life. The Trade Center sculpture was a headrest of a queen sized bed fitted in red satin sheets and faux black fur comforter, in the form of a giant afro hair pick shaped into a clenched fist and clad in black leather. The piece utilized the symbol of the Black Power movement, conceptually reduced to the kitsch of a hair comb, then enlarged to a bed ornament morphing into a comment on the clich™ of African American male prowess in the sack. All in all, a tough though humorous and seductive work of art.
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