It’s well over a year since we moved to London and I still haven’t attained the peripheral vision necessary to navigate the width-restricting elevated curbs on the Hammersmith Bridge on the school run every morning. Even my tiny Mini cannot cope with the hurdles encountered on a daily basis as I career from side to side, or worse, from side to side and back again. Either way it doesn’t bode well for long-term tyre usage, nice rims or my current adventures.
Speaking of obstacles, during my house search in 2003 I phoned the Frieze people to say hello after making their acquaintance during a curated show in the mid-1990s, to inform them of my impending move to the UK, the nature of my projects and my hope in attending the fair as more than a viewer. The response was, rather ominously, ‘Even if you are rejected, we can list your opening.’
There’s nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy to weigh down the odds. Two years on and I only gained admittance to the opening by nicking (it’s been over a year, and Madonna speaks like that) the invitation out of the mail addressed to the former tenant of my house.
It’s the capriciousness of the process that frustrates most – well, frustrates me, anyway. I suppose my chances were not helped by comments made on these pages in a prior diary instalment about the fickleness of the organisers when drawing up the invitation list for last year’s opening night party. Galleries are chosen for inclusion in the international fairs by a small handful of galleries that judge one event after another, and amount to a cluster of worms under a rock. Imagine the cliques, snickering after denying admittance to gallery after gallery. Having been on a selection committee or two for various exhibitions, I have indulged in such tastelessness myself, truth be told.
I’ve opened a gallery space on Britannia Street while the planning application for the Zaha Hadid building for Hoxton Square continues. On the opening night there was much support from my neighbours, Gagosian Gallery, in the form of attendance by the international staff and even flowers. I felt like Sally Fields when she gave her acceptance speech after winning an Oscar in 1985 – they like me!, although a few openings later the idea of my posting kids in front of their entrance to direct gallery-goers to my nascent space across the street started to wear thin.
Then came Basel Miami 04. I was asked by the fair to come up with an architectural concept with Vito Acconci, with whom I have collaborated in the past, to create an intervention that would result in a kind of tunnel, within a passageway that had never before been used. Acconci’s contribution was to reconfigure the booth designs that we had worked on for the Armory in New York and a previous Basel Miami.
The result was a series of interlocking igloo shapes formed out of PVC tubes – a superstructure upon which to install art. The final element of the structure extended out in such a manner as to block nearly 85 percent of the passageway from one side of the fair to the other. Word quickly spread among dealers during the installation that I was intentionally trying to disrupt the event, while in reality I was on the phone with the studio to explain why we needed to open the aperture more, so as not to disrupt ingress or egress. Self-sabotaging I am not.
You see the makings of a pattern. I was informed this year that I would not be invited back for the 2005 edition of Art Basel Miami. When I asked why, after such a wondrous contribution from Vito last year and when there is so little to distinguish the goings-on from one booth to another, I was told my art wasn’t up to snuff. Call it the strong arm of the Miami Beach Art Police. When I pressed on, pointing out the quality of the renowned artists I exhibited, such as Karen Kilimnik, Elizabeth Peyton, Ed Ruscha, Vito etc, I was told that Acconci’s design was not what was envisioned from computer renderings prior to its implementation.
Me, I could understand them not liking, but my art? Or Vito’s booth? The show will go on without me, and the only thing I will miss more than the practically effortless sales are the parties.
I find another building in King’s Cross, two blocks from my gallery, as my lease runs out in two and a half years. This is one of the rare times I venture out due to my pathological fear of getting lost coupled with my horrendous sense of direction. Even my sat nav system can’t seem to get it right. In any event, wish I had remained home as I end up finding a breed worse then real estate agents. After we have come to an agreement of terms to purchase the former union clubhouse, I experience a modern-day phenomenon unique to the bloated property market here – I am gazumped! That’s when you shake on a deal, call your lawyers, only to have the rug pulled out by profiteering landowners – or worse, a French collector.
I guess as a way of dealing with these daily art-world frustrations, I have become more involved with cars – collecting them and travelling to circuits in the UK and elsewhere in Europe to drive all out. Before my trips to the track I am queasy at the thought that things won’t turn out well, a sensation only overcome by driving at breakneck speed. I have even successfully campaigned for my competition licence at Brands Hatch; though equipped with the personalised helmet and fireproof coveralls, I don’t think I could actually stomach an event. I’m also working on a car/design magazine that will launch in the spring and have commissioned Hadid to design a car that we will build into a functioning prototype.
And then there was The Armory. Despite three years of participation, but now weary of the selection process, I looked into the make-up of the committee and all was instantly clear: despite having a special relationship with two of the founding members of the fair, I would be, and ultimately was, dropped. Between the members and me there was: 1. An affair 15 years ago that didn’t end well; 2. A dispute from a transaction after being charged 50 percent of the purchase price for shipping; 3. A near fistfight at a boozed-up event at Basel last year; 4. The best friend of the preceding three.
Then there was this email sent by a NYC gallery which is working with many of the emerging artists I used to represent: ‘I thought I might get your thoughts on how to get the Armory show committee to let us into their fair. Currently we are on a waiting list. Several galleries already in the fair are looking to showcase our artists … Many on the committee will be at the Frieze Fair. I’ve written them. Maybe you know these people and can put a word in for us… We could use the $.’
While travelling to one of the many fairs I actually did participate in over the past year, my wife and kids rented bikes in Battersea Park on a Sunday afternoon. When my 5-year-old got ahead a bit he was abruptly and violently pushed from his bike by a 9-year-old girl and robbed of it. For a week he was badly shaken. Now we’ve been mugged as a family – welcome to Britain. London is like New York in the 1970s when politics was only a glimmer in Giuliani’s eyes. Most everyone I know here has been robbed, at least once.
But my kids always seem to extract the last laugh in the rough and tumble world here. In a Rondinone installation at Frieze that consisted of a snow machine raining white paper flakes in a perfect mound on the floor, one of my little monsters approached and proceeded to lie prone atop the pile like a dying cowboy in a spaghetti western. By coincidence, it was a gallery that served on two out of three of the selection committees referred to above.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
FRIEZE DISEASE, OR THE BURSTING OF THE BALLOON (ARTinvestor Magazine, Fall 2005)
When will the reassessment come, the day of reckoning, for a time when demand not only influences art but instigates it, determines the form? Isn’t the repetitive nature of some art production in endless series just another name for creating more of the same stuff? Does it stop becoming “art” as conventionally conceived to this point? Will there be accountability from a time when a de Kooning pencil drawing is worth less than a Hirst spot print in an edition of 1000? The Chapman brothers’ chuckle that their embellishments to Goya prints retail for more than the originals, as if that’s something to boast about rather than lament. Welcome to the world of contemporary art. Maybe the Frieze disease will end when rising interest rates throw a wrench into the runway inflation of contemporary art prices. That’s when the fairs will loose their stranglehold on who does and does not get to participate in the international art dealing game. Cliques of self-congratulatory dealers, patting themselves on the back at denying participation of those not deemed cool enough or worthy enough to play. A cesspool of intertwined worms under a rock.
Don’t get me wrong, I too am admittedly complicit in the enterprise, yet another opportunistic virus, taking advantage of the run up in prices of the select artists (like everyone else) coveted by the present market.
Sign of the times: In a recent fair I observed a private dealer friend, invited with room and board to one fair after another like a gambler to Atlantic City, buy down one isle and sell down the next, time and again. In the same fair! Talk about inefficiencies in markets and the vagueness of what passes for hard information in the art world.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe. I learned firsthand art-world-style that sometimes a pipe really isn’t a pipe purchasing a contemporary photograph by a white-hot artist, signed and dated, from a “collector” at last year’s Armory Fair in New York. This occurred when I made a subsequent sale of the work and the purchaser called the well-known, old school New York Chelsea gallerist who then shot down the sale, denying the authenticity of the print. Her reasoning was that it was not what it appeared to be on its face, from a desirable series by the artist, and was worth substantially less than the agreed upon sales price. These comments were communicated to my client in the face of emails from the very gallery to a prior purchaser to the contrary. This happened with 3 further attempts to sell the work and I was only able to attain a proper certificate from the gallery after hiring a lawyer to draw up a complaint for defamation and interference of a contract. Does this happen anywhere other than in the art world?
I have no issues with the fact more people are looking at, making and buying art than at any other time prior in history. This is a good, wonderful, healthy phenomenon and the fairs in the best of worlds act as non-threatening, welcoming environments in which to experience and appreciate art. Perhaps the fairs are even contributing to the ultimate obsolescence of galleries themselves. However, when connoisseurship and aesthetics are sacrificed in the name of fashion and speculation, you end up with a dangerous minefield. Collectors flipping art without sometimes even a rudimentary viewing should be a bright red flag that danger lurks on horizon.
Don’t get me wrong, I too am admittedly complicit in the enterprise, yet another opportunistic virus, taking advantage of the run up in prices of the select artists (like everyone else) coveted by the present market.
Sign of the times: In a recent fair I observed a private dealer friend, invited with room and board to one fair after another like a gambler to Atlantic City, buy down one isle and sell down the next, time and again. In the same fair! Talk about inefficiencies in markets and the vagueness of what passes for hard information in the art world.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe. I learned firsthand art-world-style that sometimes a pipe really isn’t a pipe purchasing a contemporary photograph by a white-hot artist, signed and dated, from a “collector” at last year’s Armory Fair in New York. This occurred when I made a subsequent sale of the work and the purchaser called the well-known, old school New York Chelsea gallerist who then shot down the sale, denying the authenticity of the print. Her reasoning was that it was not what it appeared to be on its face, from a desirable series by the artist, and was worth substantially less than the agreed upon sales price. These comments were communicated to my client in the face of emails from the very gallery to a prior purchaser to the contrary. This happened with 3 further attempts to sell the work and I was only able to attain a proper certificate from the gallery after hiring a lawyer to draw up a complaint for defamation and interference of a contract. Does this happen anywhere other than in the art world?
I have no issues with the fact more people are looking at, making and buying art than at any other time prior in history. This is a good, wonderful, healthy phenomenon and the fairs in the best of worlds act as non-threatening, welcoming environments in which to experience and appreciate art. Perhaps the fairs are even contributing to the ultimate obsolescence of galleries themselves. However, when connoisseurship and aesthetics are sacrificed in the name of fashion and speculation, you end up with a dangerous minefield. Collectors flipping art without sometimes even a rudimentary viewing should be a bright red flag that danger lurks on horizon.
Friday, September 16, 2005
ARTinvestor Magazine Fall 2005
In 1973 Ethel and Robert Skull, as the result of a divorce settlement, staged a significant auction of contemporary art in New York; significant in as much as it was the first time a major evening auction transpired featuring solely contemporary art. Immediately after the sale, which was a monumental, historic success, Robert Rauschenberg punched Robert Skull in the stomach due to the fact two Rauchenberg paintings purchased from the studio for under $3,500 realized a quantum leap from his then primary market to $175,000. What pissed-off the artist so much to the point of fisticuffs was the fact that not only did Rauchenberg himself fail to participate in the upside of this market surge to the extent the Skull’s did, but moreover, the notion that he didn’t stand to make a cent off of the tremendous windfall the works achieved at the sale. Rauchenberg declared he wound henceforth receive a royalty in the resale of his art. He didn’t, but this now quaint anecdote presaged the issue of the Droit de Suite (resale profit-sharing rights) that to this day is widely debated and is sure to be even more hotly contested January 1, 2006 when it takes effect in the UK.
In a nutshell, Droit de Suite affects the public resale of an original work of art (including prints!) by a living artist or the works of dead artists up to 70 years after death. A levy of .25% to 5% (depending on sales proceeds) will benefit the artist or artists’ estate calculated on the sales price, not profit. Generally, no Droit de Suite is payable on sales less than €3000, but for all other transactions the rates are around 4-5% of the sale price up to €50,000, then declining to the lowest rate as the prices climb up to €2,000,000. The total amount of the Droit de Suite is not to exceed €12,500. The origin of the tax in the 1920’s was to assist French widows of artists that perished in WWI. The Droit de Suite provisions were later incorporated into copyright legislation of most nations in what is now the European Union and reflected in the Berne Convention. The Droit is not adapted in the US (except for California), Canada, New Zealand or Asia. Figures it was the French who started it, but can someone explain California?
The points of view (or rather, polemical positions) about the Droit de Suite are fairly straightforward, but nevertheless present an ongoing quagmire in the making. On one side are artists who (if they are lucky) see their works resold at auction but see no profits from subsequent transactions and still can manage to go hungry during such ongoing economic activity. On the other hand are the dealers and auction houses in the countries that adapt the law who stand to lose business, not to mention the poor collectors put out by having to search for tax friendly venues to shift works. The dealer and auction houses also argue artists’ prices will suffer because of the restrictions on trade.
To this writer, not lest of all as I ply my trade buying and selling “original” works of art and frequently arbitrage sales according to local tastes and tax consequences, this measure is clearly anti laissez-faire and bad for business. Though the tax is admittedly small and not too onerous, why not sell in New York (or Switzerland, see below) and not bother about the consequences. Also enforcement must be an expensive Herculean undertaking, to say the least, waiting for an over-zealous prosecutor with political aspirations. In addition, a “starving artist” is by most definitions not one being feted at night sales by Sotheby’s and Christies. When an artwork reaches new heights at auction and on the resale market there is clearly a spillover effect that benefits the artist directly by an increase in their primary market and an increase in the stock of paintings, etc. held by the artist. By the same token, should an artwork turn out to have lost value, (hypothetically speaking of course, as its never happened to me) should the artist chip in to restore the collector to parity? In the end, the consequences might be said to have materialized already in the way of recent gallery migrations from both the UK and Germany to Switzerland: London’s Haunch of Venison Gallery and Berlin’s Arndt and Partners will be launching form Zurich this season.
In a nutshell, Droit de Suite affects the public resale of an original work of art (including prints!) by a living artist or the works of dead artists up to 70 years after death. A levy of .25% to 5% (depending on sales proceeds) will benefit the artist or artists’ estate calculated on the sales price, not profit. Generally, no Droit de Suite is payable on sales less than €3000, but for all other transactions the rates are around 4-5% of the sale price up to €50,000, then declining to the lowest rate as the prices climb up to €2,000,000. The total amount of the Droit de Suite is not to exceed €12,500. The origin of the tax in the 1920’s was to assist French widows of artists that perished in WWI. The Droit de Suite provisions were later incorporated into copyright legislation of most nations in what is now the European Union and reflected in the Berne Convention. The Droit is not adapted in the US (except for California), Canada, New Zealand or Asia. Figures it was the French who started it, but can someone explain California?
The points of view (or rather, polemical positions) about the Droit de Suite are fairly straightforward, but nevertheless present an ongoing quagmire in the making. On one side are artists who (if they are lucky) see their works resold at auction but see no profits from subsequent transactions and still can manage to go hungry during such ongoing economic activity. On the other hand are the dealers and auction houses in the countries that adapt the law who stand to lose business, not to mention the poor collectors put out by having to search for tax friendly venues to shift works. The dealer and auction houses also argue artists’ prices will suffer because of the restrictions on trade.
To this writer, not lest of all as I ply my trade buying and selling “original” works of art and frequently arbitrage sales according to local tastes and tax consequences, this measure is clearly anti laissez-faire and bad for business. Though the tax is admittedly small and not too onerous, why not sell in New York (or Switzerland, see below) and not bother about the consequences. Also enforcement must be an expensive Herculean undertaking, to say the least, waiting for an over-zealous prosecutor with political aspirations. In addition, a “starving artist” is by most definitions not one being feted at night sales by Sotheby’s and Christies. When an artwork reaches new heights at auction and on the resale market there is clearly a spillover effect that benefits the artist directly by an increase in their primary market and an increase in the stock of paintings, etc. held by the artist. By the same token, should an artwork turn out to have lost value, (hypothetically speaking of course, as its never happened to me) should the artist chip in to restore the collector to parity? In the end, the consequences might be said to have materialized already in the way of recent gallery migrations from both the UK and Germany to Switzerland: London’s Haunch of Venison Gallery and Berlin’s Arndt and Partners will be launching form Zurich this season.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
BASQUIAT, PHOENIX ART MUSEUM LECTURE 4/22/04
QUESTIONS ASKED TO ADDRESS:
1. Should we be glorifying art that at it's inception flourished by desecrating and mutilating public and private property.
2. How did it really happen overnight that a guy living on the streets becomes the toast of New York society and the art world? What kind of business (Anina Nosei, Mary Boone, and Bruno Bischofsberger) did that while other artists struggle to make an impression on NYC art galleries.
1. Beginning with the first issue, re: celebrating art that defaced public property. Firstly it’s a matter of opinion whether graffiti is “desecrating or mutilating”. More than some people find such interventions to embellish a city such as New York, but that’s really not the central question. Artists’ like the poet ee cumings was a reputed racist, and Picasso was notoriously abusive to his wives, mistresses, and children. In one famous, well-reported instance he instigated a physical fight between two competing lovers. Additionally, more than one wife/girlfriend of Picasso’s committed suicide. So really, it’s a matter of do we judge the person, or the art, and must we judge the two together or separately?
In comparison, graffiti in streets of New York doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, does it? Besides these acts of transgression more often than not get subsumed by the things they rise up to fight against: graffiti art became commodified in the early days of east village art scene (when many like Basquiat who’s art was really a world apart from most other so called graffiti artists actually came off the streets and were subsumed wholly in the gallery world. Another example is an artist like Vito Acconci who is most noted for masturbating under the floor boards of the Sonnabend Gallery in 1972, which was act in direct contravention of normative practice in the day to day world, i.e. public lewdness, let alone what one would typically associates with what goes on in a gallery—well, what we know about anyway. Now Vito Acconci is designing buildings, including the interior of my NYC gallery, he has an encyclopedic one person show up at present at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, and an upcoming retrospective in Barcelona. And a few monographs on him to boot.
Lastly on this topic, imagine being young, hungry, and ambitious and wanting to be recognized by a wider audience for your visual output without money to purchase canvas and stretchers and what better way can you conjure to get noticed than to paint directly on the walls in the sole neighborhood where such activity is acknowledged as conferring value?
By the way, present artists such as Barry McGee, who has achieved public prices for his art far and beyond above what Basquiat ever achieved during his short life, boasts of the fact he continues to practice illicit acts of public vandalism concurrently with his traditional gallery art practice. Such assertions and actions, on the part of an artist well absorbed in the institutional mainstream, seem to me disingenuous.
2. How does an artist come in off the streets to be a seeming overnight success, and what kind of business structure catapults an artist such as this at the expense of other artists who appear as talented.
In the art world there are many variables that go into creating overnight successes, most of which so called overnight success occur over the course of many years, including Basquiat’s career. His father, a middle class accountant was utterly dismissive and unsupportive about Jean Michel’s work and was largely responsible for the artist living in the streets early on in his career. The irony being that now the father is the gate keeper of the Basquiat estate, controlling what does and does not pass as authentic.
Among the ingredients that launch a career from 0-60 with the speed of a Ferrari are certain romantic mythologizing ingredients, along with a level of critical response, and dealer and collector support of a particular ilk. In the case of Basquiat, being African-American at a time when there were no other significant contemporary black figures, and making art that was so raw and immediate added to his appeal. That Basquiat spent some time actually living on the streets only magnified the mystique.
Early relationships with curators such as Diego Cortes, who put Basquiat in a now famous PS1 Museum show, and Warhol, who appeared to be looking for street credibility and young blood when he was seen largely as society portrait painter again added to the aura and inscrutability.
Contemporary and not so contemporary examples of the above scenario abound. Joseph Beuys was supposedly struck down in a plane during WWII, and covered in felt and fat for warmth and protection while awaiting rescue, which though never substantiated (and probably not in fact true), served as potent symbols in his work and life for his entire career
Julian Schnabel banged on his chest and shouted for all who would listen how significant and important his art was, including publishing his own coffee table book with an imposing sounding Greek title and ended up becoming emblematic of a type of self-mythologizing that helped define the entire 80’s movement of neo expressionism, and beyond. Back to this delicate subject in a bit!
Throughout his career, Jeff Koons has always embellished his early limited experience with the commodities industry in promoting his brand of object fetishism, and marrying an Italian porn star certainly didn’t hurt on the way to achieving multimillion-dollar sales prices at auction.
Matthew Barney is another example, who began life at Yale as fashion model, and subsequently morphed into a narcissistic god, appearing like Cindy Sherman, though usually indistinguishable, clad in Hollywood style prosthetics, in all of his filmic work, and photography. In a sense not unlike Schnabel, but using unknowable myths of sexuality and creation to create a buzz, along with limited output and venues to view the work.
Really, these types of what appear to be instant levels of monumental success abound in the international art world and are today more common than not. I have experienced this in my own previous curatorial efforts though these artists seemed to flourish in spite of working with me!
There was Janine Antoni, who I couldn’t disseminate any of her early pieces in group shows, until Saatchi snapped up the contents of her entire first one person show. Christian Schumann, who Roberta Smith said bristles with talent when I first showed him in a group show at PS1 Museum I curated, and after his first one person show the same critic said he gave cause for optimism in the state of painting. Cecily Brown, who’s work I couldn’t give away, though maybe that says more about me, now fetches six figures for her work after appearing clad in tank tops in one after another fashion spread in the likes of Vogue, et al, and after word got out that her father was the noted critic David Sylvester, which fact she wasn’t aware of growing up—instant myth readymade for the glossies.
There was Anna Gaskell who dated Gregory Crewsden, her professor at Yale, who’s first one person show was bought en toto by the Guggenheim, not a bad freshman effort, and Saatchi’s latest, that has made headline after sordid headline: the former stripper who painted a portrait of Princess Di with a stream of blood dripping down the side of her mouth. Sorry but I did not make this up!! There were even those who speculated that Saatchi himself was responsible for this winning body of work.
Lastly, I am not a big believer in dealers who take credit for the trajectory of artists’ careers, when on many occasions they have their own selfish interests at heart when dealing. Really, though this is a bit self-negating, there are instance after instance where a dealers interests are at loggerheads with those of the artists they supposedly represent. Now is not the place to get into names, but there are repeated cases of dealers trying to control work by not fully revealing to artists opportunities that are presented, in an effort to control the whereabouts of pieces and in an effort to get larger commissions. On my way to opening in London I have experienced this over and again in the past few months. Another story.
In the end, hopefully, it’s the work that is left to speak for itself; and in the case of Basquiat it is the raw power and graphic freshness that are manifest in the paintings, the congested, dense imagery sticks in the mind and never departs. The overall energy is akin to figurative Pollacks. Long after the hype, the lightening-fast burn out of a life, this passing of this film, etc. the work is still achieving records in the marketplace that I am certain are here to stay. Surely the artist and his coterie of supporters never would have dreamed of such a state.
Schnabel and his hyperbolizing role in this story is left to the viewers to judge for themselves, but for sport, see how many of the directors works you can spot from hereon in.
1. Should we be glorifying art that at it's inception flourished by desecrating and mutilating public and private property.
2. How did it really happen overnight that a guy living on the streets becomes the toast of New York society and the art world? What kind of business (Anina Nosei, Mary Boone, and Bruno Bischofsberger) did that while other artists struggle to make an impression on NYC art galleries.
1. Beginning with the first issue, re: celebrating art that defaced public property. Firstly it’s a matter of opinion whether graffiti is “desecrating or mutilating”. More than some people find such interventions to embellish a city such as New York, but that’s really not the central question. Artists’ like the poet ee cumings was a reputed racist, and Picasso was notoriously abusive to his wives, mistresses, and children. In one famous, well-reported instance he instigated a physical fight between two competing lovers. Additionally, more than one wife/girlfriend of Picasso’s committed suicide. So really, it’s a matter of do we judge the person, or the art, and must we judge the two together or separately?
In comparison, graffiti in streets of New York doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, does it? Besides these acts of transgression more often than not get subsumed by the things they rise up to fight against: graffiti art became commodified in the early days of east village art scene (when many like Basquiat who’s art was really a world apart from most other so called graffiti artists actually came off the streets and were subsumed wholly in the gallery world. Another example is an artist like Vito Acconci who is most noted for masturbating under the floor boards of the Sonnabend Gallery in 1972, which was act in direct contravention of normative practice in the day to day world, i.e. public lewdness, let alone what one would typically associates with what goes on in a gallery—well, what we know about anyway. Now Vito Acconci is designing buildings, including the interior of my NYC gallery, he has an encyclopedic one person show up at present at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, and an upcoming retrospective in Barcelona. And a few monographs on him to boot.
Lastly on this topic, imagine being young, hungry, and ambitious and wanting to be recognized by a wider audience for your visual output without money to purchase canvas and stretchers and what better way can you conjure to get noticed than to paint directly on the walls in the sole neighborhood where such activity is acknowledged as conferring value?
By the way, present artists such as Barry McGee, who has achieved public prices for his art far and beyond above what Basquiat ever achieved during his short life, boasts of the fact he continues to practice illicit acts of public vandalism concurrently with his traditional gallery art practice. Such assertions and actions, on the part of an artist well absorbed in the institutional mainstream, seem to me disingenuous.
2. How does an artist come in off the streets to be a seeming overnight success, and what kind of business structure catapults an artist such as this at the expense of other artists who appear as talented.
In the art world there are many variables that go into creating overnight successes, most of which so called overnight success occur over the course of many years, including Basquiat’s career. His father, a middle class accountant was utterly dismissive and unsupportive about Jean Michel’s work and was largely responsible for the artist living in the streets early on in his career. The irony being that now the father is the gate keeper of the Basquiat estate, controlling what does and does not pass as authentic.
Among the ingredients that launch a career from 0-60 with the speed of a Ferrari are certain romantic mythologizing ingredients, along with a level of critical response, and dealer and collector support of a particular ilk. In the case of Basquiat, being African-American at a time when there were no other significant contemporary black figures, and making art that was so raw and immediate added to his appeal. That Basquiat spent some time actually living on the streets only magnified the mystique.
Early relationships with curators such as Diego Cortes, who put Basquiat in a now famous PS1 Museum show, and Warhol, who appeared to be looking for street credibility and young blood when he was seen largely as society portrait painter again added to the aura and inscrutability.
Contemporary and not so contemporary examples of the above scenario abound. Joseph Beuys was supposedly struck down in a plane during WWII, and covered in felt and fat for warmth and protection while awaiting rescue, which though never substantiated (and probably not in fact true), served as potent symbols in his work and life for his entire career
Julian Schnabel banged on his chest and shouted for all who would listen how significant and important his art was, including publishing his own coffee table book with an imposing sounding Greek title and ended up becoming emblematic of a type of self-mythologizing that helped define the entire 80’s movement of neo expressionism, and beyond. Back to this delicate subject in a bit!
Throughout his career, Jeff Koons has always embellished his early limited experience with the commodities industry in promoting his brand of object fetishism, and marrying an Italian porn star certainly didn’t hurt on the way to achieving multimillion-dollar sales prices at auction.
Matthew Barney is another example, who began life at Yale as fashion model, and subsequently morphed into a narcissistic god, appearing like Cindy Sherman, though usually indistinguishable, clad in Hollywood style prosthetics, in all of his filmic work, and photography. In a sense not unlike Schnabel, but using unknowable myths of sexuality and creation to create a buzz, along with limited output and venues to view the work.
Really, these types of what appear to be instant levels of monumental success abound in the international art world and are today more common than not. I have experienced this in my own previous curatorial efforts though these artists seemed to flourish in spite of working with me!
There was Janine Antoni, who I couldn’t disseminate any of her early pieces in group shows, until Saatchi snapped up the contents of her entire first one person show. Christian Schumann, who Roberta Smith said bristles with talent when I first showed him in a group show at PS1 Museum I curated, and after his first one person show the same critic said he gave cause for optimism in the state of painting. Cecily Brown, who’s work I couldn’t give away, though maybe that says more about me, now fetches six figures for her work after appearing clad in tank tops in one after another fashion spread in the likes of Vogue, et al, and after word got out that her father was the noted critic David Sylvester, which fact she wasn’t aware of growing up—instant myth readymade for the glossies.
There was Anna Gaskell who dated Gregory Crewsden, her professor at Yale, who’s first one person show was bought en toto by the Guggenheim, not a bad freshman effort, and Saatchi’s latest, that has made headline after sordid headline: the former stripper who painted a portrait of Princess Di with a stream of blood dripping down the side of her mouth. Sorry but I did not make this up!! There were even those who speculated that Saatchi himself was responsible for this winning body of work.
Lastly, I am not a big believer in dealers who take credit for the trajectory of artists’ careers, when on many occasions they have their own selfish interests at heart when dealing. Really, though this is a bit self-negating, there are instance after instance where a dealers interests are at loggerheads with those of the artists they supposedly represent. Now is not the place to get into names, but there are repeated cases of dealers trying to control work by not fully revealing to artists opportunities that are presented, in an effort to control the whereabouts of pieces and in an effort to get larger commissions. On my way to opening in London I have experienced this over and again in the past few months. Another story.
In the end, hopefully, it’s the work that is left to speak for itself; and in the case of Basquiat it is the raw power and graphic freshness that are manifest in the paintings, the congested, dense imagery sticks in the mind and never departs. The overall energy is akin to figurative Pollacks. Long after the hype, the lightening-fast burn out of a life, this passing of this film, etc. the work is still achieving records in the marketplace that I am certain are here to stay. Surely the artist and his coterie of supporters never would have dreamed of such a state.
Schnabel and his hyperbolizing role in this story is left to the viewers to judge for themselves, but for sport, see how many of the directors works you can spot from hereon in.
Monday, October 20, 2003
ARTinvestor Magazine, Fall 2003
DOWNTICK: PIDDLING PAINTING DEALER
I Bought Andy Warhol (Harry Abrams, 2003) is a slim new volume by California private art dealer and art market chronicler Richard Polsky, a frequent contributor to artnet.com. The premise of the book is to weave the search for the Holy Grail, i.e. the hunt for the perfect Warhol painting, into a memoir of life as an art dealer. However, the problem is that Polsky is a not very interesting, small time dealer in pursuit of a not very interesting, minor Warhol. In fact, for those actively trading pictures for a livelihood, the whole affair of Polsky's book/life is rather depressing. This is a person who spends his time eking out a living by operating a dinky gallery in a town, San Francisco, with a negligible market for contemporary art, and then struggling to makes ends meet as a private dealer-and often times not managing at that. This is not to maintain that's its not a noble cause to struggle to survive doing something that one is passionate about; rather, it is simply that this story never really measures up as a story.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting factual tidbits and observations and a few engaging anecdotes. Is there enough here to constitute an engrossing autobiography? No. However, that little fact certainly has done nothing to diminish the flood of memoirs these days from everyone and their grandmother, and grandmother's grandmother. The gratifying segments include Warhol's auction record during his lifetime: $385,000 in 1986 for 200 One Dollar Bills. Another perceptive thought was that Warhol's is the most democratic of all markets for artists as his paintings are the most widely collected and traded works of art in the world, and name the greatest recognized among the general public save for Picasso's. There are some humorous stories spun regarding a food fight that culminated in a soiled Rucha painting, and an $800,000 check gone missing from an absent minded gallerist. Lastly, in the worthwhile reminiscences department, is an encounter with the imperious Vincent Freemont, the exclusive sales agent for the Warhol estate. The tale involved a demonic spinning chair episode as Freemont twirled Polsky around at the warehouse where the estate's Warhols are stored so as to shield him from seeing the extent of the cache of paintings still existing which fact is as guarded as a state secret.
Back to the grim nature of the tome is an unentertaining, gratuitous chapter about two wealthy art patrons that invited Polsky to lunch. When the $300 bill showed up, they ambushed the destitute dealer with a set of dice supplied by the waiter to be thrown to determine who would get stuck with the check. Besides Polsky, dear readers, it was ultimately we that were stuck with the bill. Recommended reading are two books referenced in I Bought Andy Warhol :Duveen (S.N. Behrman, Glenn Lowry, Introduction, Little Bookroom, 2003 Paperback) ,an autobiography of perhaps the greatest dealer who ever dealt, that brazenly borrowed millions in the early 1900's as a young man (probably hundreds of millions in today's dollars) to speculate in art. And, Bob Colacello's Holly Terror (HarperCollins, 1990) a day to day account of Warhol's factory life and madcap social goings-on in the 1970's, utterly elucidating if you can get past Colacello's claiming responsibility for a good portion of Warhol's output and social connections. Example: "As I recall, I took mine (a photograph of a room service set-up with a new camera) seconds before Andy took his."
UPTICK: SHoP SHOP
SHoP is an appropriate name for the architectural firm ShoP Sharples Holden Pasquarelli, a team composed of two husband and wife couples and a twin brother of one of the husband's. SHoP is apropos inasmuch as the word connotes a cottage entrepreneurial enterprise, in this case with a very innovative approach to the staid world of building buildings. Sharples Holden Pasquarelli have won design awards from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, which entails a commission to build an academic building (upcoming); a feasibility study from Columbia University resulted in a commission to build a School of the Arts building; and, a First Place/Commissioned Young Architect's Award Competition from The Museum of Modern Art, which resulted in a 12,000 square foot dunescape for summer relaxation at PS 1 Museum in Queens, NY. SHoP built the first infrastructural element to be installed into the vicinity of the former World Trade Center site since the tragic events of September 11th. The bridge reconnected the residents of Battery Park City and the various businesses of the World Financial Center to the rest of Lower Manhattan.
The printed matter supplied by SHoP immediately sets them apart as is apparent in their profile, which employs a flow chart to depict the organization of the firm. Aside from obvious backgrounds of the principals (lots of degrees from Columbia University), the schematic chart illustrates experience in the worlds of finance, marketing, structural engineering, and art history. The key here is finance and marketing which becomes palpable in the project known as "The Porter House" referencing a choice cut of meat for a residential structure in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Rather than continuing to passively design OPP's (Other People's Projects) the SHoP group brought a property site on the market to the attention of a former client that is also a developer so they could actively take a stake in the enterprise. What resulted was a renovation and conversion of a six story warehouse to a condominium with a new four story structure plopped on top and cantilevering over the lower neighboring buildings to the south. Hence, the financing and marketing expertise came into play as Sharples Holden Pasquarelli found the building, helped cement the financing, designed the job; and, in addition, put together a snazzy book to market the whole shebang. The prices of the units were raised several times before they ultimately sold out-all prior to the completion of construction. Not bad for a firm established in 1996 with a group comprised of academics from Columbia (a few still teaching there, among other top-flight institutions).
Many architects pay lip service to new systems of practice that employ digital expertise in the way of three dimensional computer form generation. Stephen Holl claims that despite his firm's mastery over new design technologies, all his work emanates from traditional water colors by the hand, as good design should-an oxymoron if ever there was. Not only does SHoP look beyond past architectural practice to the realms of automotive and aeronautical engineering, they do so with a view towards using the computer to often reduce construction budgets. The façade of The Porter House used a custom fabricated metal panel system that originated on a desk top and ended up as a kit of custom parts accompanied by a set of instructions akin to Lego or a model airplane kit. A Duchampian Readymade building to go for the streets of New York City or anywhere for that matter. A building that functions as an actual Camera Obscura for a park in Greenport, New York was the fist structure not only designed but entirely assembled with laser-cut aluminum and steel components using digital files directly extracted from the computer model. Rarely do you find an artistic undertaking with such an acute business sense and forward thinking technological stance. Sign me up as a client.
I Bought Andy Warhol (Harry Abrams, 2003) is a slim new volume by California private art dealer and art market chronicler Richard Polsky, a frequent contributor to artnet.com. The premise of the book is to weave the search for the Holy Grail, i.e. the hunt for the perfect Warhol painting, into a memoir of life as an art dealer. However, the problem is that Polsky is a not very interesting, small time dealer in pursuit of a not very interesting, minor Warhol. In fact, for those actively trading pictures for a livelihood, the whole affair of Polsky's book/life is rather depressing. This is a person who spends his time eking out a living by operating a dinky gallery in a town, San Francisco, with a negligible market for contemporary art, and then struggling to makes ends meet as a private dealer-and often times not managing at that. This is not to maintain that's its not a noble cause to struggle to survive doing something that one is passionate about; rather, it is simply that this story never really measures up as a story.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting factual tidbits and observations and a few engaging anecdotes. Is there enough here to constitute an engrossing autobiography? No. However, that little fact certainly has done nothing to diminish the flood of memoirs these days from everyone and their grandmother, and grandmother's grandmother. The gratifying segments include Warhol's auction record during his lifetime: $385,000 in 1986 for 200 One Dollar Bills. Another perceptive thought was that Warhol's is the most democratic of all markets for artists as his paintings are the most widely collected and traded works of art in the world, and name the greatest recognized among the general public save for Picasso's. There are some humorous stories spun regarding a food fight that culminated in a soiled Rucha painting, and an $800,000 check gone missing from an absent minded gallerist. Lastly, in the worthwhile reminiscences department, is an encounter with the imperious Vincent Freemont, the exclusive sales agent for the Warhol estate. The tale involved a demonic spinning chair episode as Freemont twirled Polsky around at the warehouse where the estate's Warhols are stored so as to shield him from seeing the extent of the cache of paintings still existing which fact is as guarded as a state secret.
Back to the grim nature of the tome is an unentertaining, gratuitous chapter about two wealthy art patrons that invited Polsky to lunch. When the $300 bill showed up, they ambushed the destitute dealer with a set of dice supplied by the waiter to be thrown to determine who would get stuck with the check. Besides Polsky, dear readers, it was ultimately we that were stuck with the bill. Recommended reading are two books referenced in I Bought Andy Warhol :Duveen (S.N. Behrman, Glenn Lowry, Introduction, Little Bookroom, 2003 Paperback) ,an autobiography of perhaps the greatest dealer who ever dealt, that brazenly borrowed millions in the early 1900's as a young man (probably hundreds of millions in today's dollars) to speculate in art. And, Bob Colacello's Holly Terror (HarperCollins, 1990) a day to day account of Warhol's factory life and madcap social goings-on in the 1970's, utterly elucidating if you can get past Colacello's claiming responsibility for a good portion of Warhol's output and social connections. Example: "As I recall, I took mine (a photograph of a room service set-up with a new camera) seconds before Andy took his."
UPTICK: SHoP SHOP
SHoP is an appropriate name for the architectural firm ShoP Sharples Holden Pasquarelli, a team composed of two husband and wife couples and a twin brother of one of the husband's. SHoP is apropos inasmuch as the word connotes a cottage entrepreneurial enterprise, in this case with a very innovative approach to the staid world of building buildings. Sharples Holden Pasquarelli have won design awards from the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, which entails a commission to build an academic building (upcoming); a feasibility study from Columbia University resulted in a commission to build a School of the Arts building; and, a First Place/Commissioned Young Architect's Award Competition from The Museum of Modern Art, which resulted in a 12,000 square foot dunescape for summer relaxation at PS 1 Museum in Queens, NY. SHoP built the first infrastructural element to be installed into the vicinity of the former World Trade Center site since the tragic events of September 11th. The bridge reconnected the residents of Battery Park City and the various businesses of the World Financial Center to the rest of Lower Manhattan.
The printed matter supplied by SHoP immediately sets them apart as is apparent in their profile, which employs a flow chart to depict the organization of the firm. Aside from obvious backgrounds of the principals (lots of degrees from Columbia University), the schematic chart illustrates experience in the worlds of finance, marketing, structural engineering, and art history. The key here is finance and marketing which becomes palpable in the project known as "The Porter House" referencing a choice cut of meat for a residential structure in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Rather than continuing to passively design OPP's (Other People's Projects) the SHoP group brought a property site on the market to the attention of a former client that is also a developer so they could actively take a stake in the enterprise. What resulted was a renovation and conversion of a six story warehouse to a condominium with a new four story structure plopped on top and cantilevering over the lower neighboring buildings to the south. Hence, the financing and marketing expertise came into play as Sharples Holden Pasquarelli found the building, helped cement the financing, designed the job; and, in addition, put together a snazzy book to market the whole shebang. The prices of the units were raised several times before they ultimately sold out-all prior to the completion of construction. Not bad for a firm established in 1996 with a group comprised of academics from Columbia (a few still teaching there, among other top-flight institutions).
Many architects pay lip service to new systems of practice that employ digital expertise in the way of three dimensional computer form generation. Stephen Holl claims that despite his firm's mastery over new design technologies, all his work emanates from traditional water colors by the hand, as good design should-an oxymoron if ever there was. Not only does SHoP look beyond past architectural practice to the realms of automotive and aeronautical engineering, they do so with a view towards using the computer to often reduce construction budgets. The façade of The Porter House used a custom fabricated metal panel system that originated on a desk top and ended up as a kit of custom parts accompanied by a set of instructions akin to Lego or a model airplane kit. A Duchampian Readymade building to go for the streets of New York City or anywhere for that matter. A building that functions as an actual Camera Obscura for a park in Greenport, New York was the fist structure not only designed but entirely assembled with laser-cut aluminum and steel components using digital files directly extracted from the computer model. Rarely do you find an artistic undertaking with such an acute business sense and forward thinking technological stance. Sign me up as a client.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
CELEBRITY/ARTIST/KING OF THE UNIVERSE (INSIDE ENTERTAINMENT Magazine, Spring 2003)
Today, celebrities are collecting art more than ever, and the latest art that they seem to be collecting has shifted from old and modern masters to more and more contemporary stuff. Artists are collecting celebrities as well, but the big trend of the moment is that celebrities want to be artists and artists want to be celebrities.
Celebrities who collect art…
Elton John is a voracious collector of art, as he has accumulated most things in his life from clothes to cars. John’s collection includes many historic pioneers of photography that set about establishing camera work as a legitimate art form on par with painting and sculpture, such as Margaret Bourke-White, Man Ray, Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz and others, which were shown together recently in a traveling museum show originating at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2000. Though photography is the principal focus of his collection (nearly 3000 pieces), it goes way beyond photos in scope and includes all varieties of contemporary art up to work produced by the latest hot young thing. It was another all consuming collector of contemporary that turned Elton on to art produced by younger practitioners and that was Gianni Versace, who escorted the singer to museums, galleries and churches the world over. At present, painters such as Julian Schnabel, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Taaffe, Damien Hirst, Lisa Ruyter and it-girl, Cecily Brown, who paints sexually charged expressionist canvases, have augmented John’s photo collection.
Actress Julianne Moore recently moved into a widely publicized New York City apartment designed by Oliver Freundlich (the brother of her boyfriend, writer/director Bart). Julianne was so into her large-scale contemporary photo collection that the living space had to be created around the oversized individual pieces in her collection that includes work by Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Thomas Struth, Gregory Crewdson, and David Armstrong. It was the Struth, a German artist in his late forties, the subject of a recent retrospective at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, who’s work was responsible for necessitating the special treatment of having a giant wall constructed in the apartment. This may be the result of present photographers’ efforts to establish the equality of their work with super-sized paintings and sculptures, and other new art forms.
Leonardo DiCaprio first began looking at art in the mid-nineties. Under the guidance of art adviser Patrick Callery Leo bought a portrait of rapper Biggie Smalls prophetically depicted amidst tombstones in a cemetery by rock and celebrity photographer Michael Lavine and a couple of minor Jean-Michel Basquiats. Leo also bought the work of Christian Schumann, a young painter educated at the Art Institute of San Francisco in the style of cartoons mixed with elements of academic realism. Schumann’s paintings reflect an MTV sensibility of jump-cut edits and wildly colorful pop imagery lifted from record album covers, incorporating a soup of other elements like text and geometric abstraction.
Other celebrities who collect with a passion include the sublimely beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow, who collects similarly demure art my modern masters such as Richard Diebenkorn, and Agnes Martin and equally subtle monochromatic paintings by the younger artist Robert Reynolds. Cameron Diaz is into the previously mentioned overtly sexual paintings by Cecily Brown (no surprise there), Courtney Love has purchased paintings by knowing naïve painter and installation artist Karen Kilimnik and Matt Dillon has purchased a Luc Tuymans, among many more contemporary pieces. Tom Ford helped sponsor artist Ann Hamiliton's contribution to the 2001 Venice Biennial, and has collaborated with and collected Vanessa Beecroft’s sexually explicit (frontal nudity, anyway) photos. Even the rapping set is getting into it with Damon Dash, Jay-Z’s partner in Roc-a-fella Records and Roc-a-wear, recently purchasing art by Graham Gillmore, Donald Baechler, (UK Turner Prize winner) Keith Tyson and more. Dash is even contemplating opening a gallery.
A young artist who has managed to be collected by many celebrities is Eric White, a painter of realistic but distorted images in the vein of surrealism. White has exhibited in Los Angeles’ La Luz de Jesus, a store/gallery that has attracted the likes of David and Patricia Arquette, and by extension Courtney Cox who later commissioned White to paint David, Kidada Jones (one of Quincy’s daughters), Viggo Mortensen, and Leonardo DiCaprio. White’s work was brought to Leo’s attention by his father George, a self-described hippie and a former cartoon distributor, which helps account for the love of cartoons in his art. Now Leo owns more than a half dozen of White’s canvases bought from a few thousand dollars to nearly $15,000. Maybe Leo’s attraction to art with cartoons also has to do with the fact he is still very young, collects toys and avidly plays video games. Art with such imagery is a way to continue to hang on to being a kid or a red flag signifying immaturity.
Donald Baechler is a 46-year-old artist who incorporates an outsider art sensibility with regard to his paintings, drawings and sculptures. He is a master of capturing a childlike innocence in composing a painting that many try to copy but none as successfully. Picasso said anyone can learn to paint but it takes a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. What is not outsider about the work is the audience Baechler actively cultivates to patronize his art including Elton John, Bono, Claudia Schiffer, Owen Wilson, Valentino, Versace, Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper, Ellen Barkin, Stephanie Seymour, Lauren Hutton, Yoko Ono, a close friend and supporter of the artist, and by extension Sean Lennon and Bijou Phillips (who both have Baechler’s of their own). Consequently, Baechler has proved to be as successful an artist as he is a star bleeper.
In addition to these artists who are collected and who collect celebrities, there are some artists who would rather be those actors, musicians, and directors themselves. In this category are artists such as Julian Schnabel who is directing his third movie (on surfing, a love of the portly auteur), Damien Hirst, the anarchistic artist as debauched punk rocker, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, and David Salle, guilty of directing a horrible movie apiece, and Brit art star Tracey Emin, guilty of being herself.
Artist Keith Edmier is not a celebrity… yet, but he certainly came up with a fanciful notion on how to at least get him closer to one, thisclose in fact. Thanks are due to the Art Production Fund which made this fantasy a reality, and a farfetched one at that, and the Los Angeles County Museum for exhibiting this masterful mating of celebrity and art(ist). As set forth in the press release that accompanied this exhibit in November of 2002 to February 2003, Edmier “grew up in the 1970’s, when Farrah Fawcett’s star began to rise and she became the central female icon of his childhood as well as the rest of the world’s.” This bit of prose could be translated to: Edmier, born in 1967, had the famed framed poster of a bathing suit clad Farrah in his boyhood room and had to wait till his art school education could be utilized to concoct a scenario outrageous enough to accomplish their coupling, artistic and otherwise, for that is what really happened, really, as reported in noted art magazine The National Enquirer, along with other more credible journals.
There are also celebrities who go from collecting to making art including Steve Martin, who, after establishing himself as a “wild and crazy guy” on Saturday Night Live, cavorting manically as if suffering from an epileptic seizure, went on to build a collection of Impressionists like George Seurat, and modern masters such as Picasso, Edward Hopper, David Hockney, and Francis Bacon. Martin even put on an exhibition of his art collection at the Bellagio (the esteemed gallery at the hotel and casino). On the path to transitioning from slapstick comic to esthete, Martin wrote the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a “comedy” about a hypothetical meeting between Picasso and Einstein. It appeared that as Martin grew more comfortable with the mantle of seasoned art collector, his tastes have grown more contemporary, with acquisitions by dirty comic book artist R. Crumb, fellow comedian/artist Martin Mull, and most recently a watercolor by Tim Gardner, who paints academically realistic pictures of fraternity pals drunk beyond the point of no return. Maybe now Martin feels confident and comfortable enough in his collecting shoes to return to a sensibility that matches his crude, collegiate comedic roots.
David Bowie has metamorphosed from anything goes androgyny into art impresario. Bowie’s tastes have switched from collecting the likes of Rubens, Tintoretto, Balthus and traditional UK expressionists such as Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer, to Damien Hirst, and -lo and behold- to becoming an artistic innovator (or rather, imitator) himself. Being the budding dabbler and entrepreneur, Bowie employed the famous Do-It-Yourself mentality of the Brits to begin producing his own art (see www.bowieart.com) The paintings Bowie began to exhibit in galleries in addition to his website looked like primitive African renderings or bad Basquiats. At present on the website there are 6 x 8 inch portraits for US$3,500, and a single sculpture of an African chess piece. Bowie had the piece remade large from a sidewalk purchase in Mombassa, Africa in a “shiny expensive looking material, directly influenced by Jeff Koons”. Now that’s touching considering the local artisan who probably barely survives from having to actually carve and sell the chess sets himself. What makes matters even more exploitative in Bowie’s act of appropriation is his final description of the process: “It was a way of sealing forever my experiences and the present events in my life.” If ever there was a lovelier testament to the transformative and transcending nature of art.
Another celebrity experimenting with art, unbeknownst to even his closest friends, is Christopher Walken who has been making drawings and the like for over 20 years but has until this time showed them, or even spoken about them to no one. Doesn’t that conjure images of a creepy, mad scientist bent over a steaming cauldron creating alchemy? Apparently all that is about to change, as Walken is on the verge of taking off his smock and making these mystery pictures from the mystery man himself available for public viewing.
And now, ladies and gentleman, Madonna has thrown her hat into the art-making arena. Indeed, the road traveled by Madge has mirrored that of other celebrities, i.e. buying newer and newer art and then making the realization that hey, I could do that! Billed as one of the year’s “most anticipated exhibits”, X-STaTIC PRo=CeSS (it wasn’t easy to pass the brilliant concoction through spell-check), a collaboration just transpired at New York’s Jeffrey Deitch Gallery between Madonna and photographer Steven Klein. Klein’s intention was to work with Madonna as a “performance artist… creating a situation where she could respond directly to the camera without constraint.” What was the Sex book about, snippets from her prudish family album? “The project is not about photography of celebrity, but about the person and the passions beneath the surface. Klein sees Madonna as a messenger, asking people to wake up and confront the dehumanizing forces in the contemporary world.” Honey can you get the door, a messenger is here, and she, uh, looks like Madonna. She says she is here to jolt you from your complacency and get you to take some actions against the world’s injustice. “Rather than the packaged glamour that one might expect from the collaboration of a pop star and a top fashion photographer, the work is raw and menacing. The spirit is apocalyptic” Not to sound too disbelieving, but a photograph of Madonna folded into a position where she could engage in an untold sexual act with herself brings to mind many visions none of which I am afraid is all too menacing or apocalyptic, even when projected onto a wall. According to the gallery, that’s “religious passion and sexual charge” for you.
After Warhol made a career out of making icons out of celebrities, artists now would rather be those actors and musicians (and directors, too) themselves rather than paint them and, who would have ever thought that in the search for more meaning in their lives, actors and musicians now want to be artists. The grass is always greener.
Celebrities who collect art…
Elton John is a voracious collector of art, as he has accumulated most things in his life from clothes to cars. John’s collection includes many historic pioneers of photography that set about establishing camera work as a legitimate art form on par with painting and sculpture, such as Margaret Bourke-White, Man Ray, Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz and others, which were shown together recently in a traveling museum show originating at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2000. Though photography is the principal focus of his collection (nearly 3000 pieces), it goes way beyond photos in scope and includes all varieties of contemporary art up to work produced by the latest hot young thing. It was another all consuming collector of contemporary that turned Elton on to art produced by younger practitioners and that was Gianni Versace, who escorted the singer to museums, galleries and churches the world over. At present, painters such as Julian Schnabel, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Taaffe, Damien Hirst, Lisa Ruyter and it-girl, Cecily Brown, who paints sexually charged expressionist canvases, have augmented John’s photo collection.
Actress Julianne Moore recently moved into a widely publicized New York City apartment designed by Oliver Freundlich (the brother of her boyfriend, writer/director Bart). Julianne was so into her large-scale contemporary photo collection that the living space had to be created around the oversized individual pieces in her collection that includes work by Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Thomas Struth, Gregory Crewdson, and David Armstrong. It was the Struth, a German artist in his late forties, the subject of a recent retrospective at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, who’s work was responsible for necessitating the special treatment of having a giant wall constructed in the apartment. This may be the result of present photographers’ efforts to establish the equality of their work with super-sized paintings and sculptures, and other new art forms.
Leonardo DiCaprio first began looking at art in the mid-nineties. Under the guidance of art adviser Patrick Callery Leo bought a portrait of rapper Biggie Smalls prophetically depicted amidst tombstones in a cemetery by rock and celebrity photographer Michael Lavine and a couple of minor Jean-Michel Basquiats. Leo also bought the work of Christian Schumann, a young painter educated at the Art Institute of San Francisco in the style of cartoons mixed with elements of academic realism. Schumann’s paintings reflect an MTV sensibility of jump-cut edits and wildly colorful pop imagery lifted from record album covers, incorporating a soup of other elements like text and geometric abstraction.
Other celebrities who collect with a passion include the sublimely beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow, who collects similarly demure art my modern masters such as Richard Diebenkorn, and Agnes Martin and equally subtle monochromatic paintings by the younger artist Robert Reynolds. Cameron Diaz is into the previously mentioned overtly sexual paintings by Cecily Brown (no surprise there), Courtney Love has purchased paintings by knowing naïve painter and installation artist Karen Kilimnik and Matt Dillon has purchased a Luc Tuymans, among many more contemporary pieces. Tom Ford helped sponsor artist Ann Hamiliton's contribution to the 2001 Venice Biennial, and has collaborated with and collected Vanessa Beecroft’s sexually explicit (frontal nudity, anyway) photos. Even the rapping set is getting into it with Damon Dash, Jay-Z’s partner in Roc-a-fella Records and Roc-a-wear, recently purchasing art by Graham Gillmore, Donald Baechler, (UK Turner Prize winner) Keith Tyson and more. Dash is even contemplating opening a gallery.
A young artist who has managed to be collected by many celebrities is Eric White, a painter of realistic but distorted images in the vein of surrealism. White has exhibited in Los Angeles’ La Luz de Jesus, a store/gallery that has attracted the likes of David and Patricia Arquette, and by extension Courtney Cox who later commissioned White to paint David, Kidada Jones (one of Quincy’s daughters), Viggo Mortensen, and Leonardo DiCaprio. White’s work was brought to Leo’s attention by his father George, a self-described hippie and a former cartoon distributor, which helps account for the love of cartoons in his art. Now Leo owns more than a half dozen of White’s canvases bought from a few thousand dollars to nearly $15,000. Maybe Leo’s attraction to art with cartoons also has to do with the fact he is still very young, collects toys and avidly plays video games. Art with such imagery is a way to continue to hang on to being a kid or a red flag signifying immaturity.
Donald Baechler is a 46-year-old artist who incorporates an outsider art sensibility with regard to his paintings, drawings and sculptures. He is a master of capturing a childlike innocence in composing a painting that many try to copy but none as successfully. Picasso said anyone can learn to paint but it takes a lifetime to learn to paint like a child. What is not outsider about the work is the audience Baechler actively cultivates to patronize his art including Elton John, Bono, Claudia Schiffer, Owen Wilson, Valentino, Versace, Johnny Depp, Dennis Hopper, Ellen Barkin, Stephanie Seymour, Lauren Hutton, Yoko Ono, a close friend and supporter of the artist, and by extension Sean Lennon and Bijou Phillips (who both have Baechler’s of their own). Consequently, Baechler has proved to be as successful an artist as he is a star bleeper.
In addition to these artists who are collected and who collect celebrities, there are some artists who would rather be those actors, musicians, and directors themselves. In this category are artists such as Julian Schnabel who is directing his third movie (on surfing, a love of the portly auteur), Damien Hirst, the anarchistic artist as debauched punk rocker, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, and David Salle, guilty of directing a horrible movie apiece, and Brit art star Tracey Emin, guilty of being herself.
Artist Keith Edmier is not a celebrity… yet, but he certainly came up with a fanciful notion on how to at least get him closer to one, thisclose in fact. Thanks are due to the Art Production Fund which made this fantasy a reality, and a farfetched one at that, and the Los Angeles County Museum for exhibiting this masterful mating of celebrity and art(ist). As set forth in the press release that accompanied this exhibit in November of 2002 to February 2003, Edmier “grew up in the 1970’s, when Farrah Fawcett’s star began to rise and she became the central female icon of his childhood as well as the rest of the world’s.” This bit of prose could be translated to: Edmier, born in 1967, had the famed framed poster of a bathing suit clad Farrah in his boyhood room and had to wait till his art school education could be utilized to concoct a scenario outrageous enough to accomplish their coupling, artistic and otherwise, for that is what really happened, really, as reported in noted art magazine The National Enquirer, along with other more credible journals.
There are also celebrities who go from collecting to making art including Steve Martin, who, after establishing himself as a “wild and crazy guy” on Saturday Night Live, cavorting manically as if suffering from an epileptic seizure, went on to build a collection of Impressionists like George Seurat, and modern masters such as Picasso, Edward Hopper, David Hockney, and Francis Bacon. Martin even put on an exhibition of his art collection at the Bellagio (the esteemed gallery at the hotel and casino). On the path to transitioning from slapstick comic to esthete, Martin wrote the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, a “comedy” about a hypothetical meeting between Picasso and Einstein. It appeared that as Martin grew more comfortable with the mantle of seasoned art collector, his tastes have grown more contemporary, with acquisitions by dirty comic book artist R. Crumb, fellow comedian/artist Martin Mull, and most recently a watercolor by Tim Gardner, who paints academically realistic pictures of fraternity pals drunk beyond the point of no return. Maybe now Martin feels confident and comfortable enough in his collecting shoes to return to a sensibility that matches his crude, collegiate comedic roots.
David Bowie has metamorphosed from anything goes androgyny into art impresario. Bowie’s tastes have switched from collecting the likes of Rubens, Tintoretto, Balthus and traditional UK expressionists such as Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer, to Damien Hirst, and -lo and behold- to becoming an artistic innovator (or rather, imitator) himself. Being the budding dabbler and entrepreneur, Bowie employed the famous Do-It-Yourself mentality of the Brits to begin producing his own art (see www.bowieart.com) The paintings Bowie began to exhibit in galleries in addition to his website looked like primitive African renderings or bad Basquiats. At present on the website there are 6 x 8 inch portraits for US$3,500, and a single sculpture of an African chess piece. Bowie had the piece remade large from a sidewalk purchase in Mombassa, Africa in a “shiny expensive looking material, directly influenced by Jeff Koons”. Now that’s touching considering the local artisan who probably barely survives from having to actually carve and sell the chess sets himself. What makes matters even more exploitative in Bowie’s act of appropriation is his final description of the process: “It was a way of sealing forever my experiences and the present events in my life.” If ever there was a lovelier testament to the transformative and transcending nature of art.
Another celebrity experimenting with art, unbeknownst to even his closest friends, is Christopher Walken who has been making drawings and the like for over 20 years but has until this time showed them, or even spoken about them to no one. Doesn’t that conjure images of a creepy, mad scientist bent over a steaming cauldron creating alchemy? Apparently all that is about to change, as Walken is on the verge of taking off his smock and making these mystery pictures from the mystery man himself available for public viewing.
And now, ladies and gentleman, Madonna has thrown her hat into the art-making arena. Indeed, the road traveled by Madge has mirrored that of other celebrities, i.e. buying newer and newer art and then making the realization that hey, I could do that! Billed as one of the year’s “most anticipated exhibits”, X-STaTIC PRo=CeSS (it wasn’t easy to pass the brilliant concoction through spell-check), a collaboration just transpired at New York’s Jeffrey Deitch Gallery between Madonna and photographer Steven Klein. Klein’s intention was to work with Madonna as a “performance artist… creating a situation where she could respond directly to the camera without constraint.” What was the Sex book about, snippets from her prudish family album? “The project is not about photography of celebrity, but about the person and the passions beneath the surface. Klein sees Madonna as a messenger, asking people to wake up and confront the dehumanizing forces in the contemporary world.” Honey can you get the door, a messenger is here, and she, uh, looks like Madonna. She says she is here to jolt you from your complacency and get you to take some actions against the world’s injustice. “Rather than the packaged glamour that one might expect from the collaboration of a pop star and a top fashion photographer, the work is raw and menacing. The spirit is apocalyptic” Not to sound too disbelieving, but a photograph of Madonna folded into a position where she could engage in an untold sexual act with herself brings to mind many visions none of which I am afraid is all too menacing or apocalyptic, even when projected onto a wall. According to the gallery, that’s “religious passion and sexual charge” for you.
After Warhol made a career out of making icons out of celebrities, artists now would rather be those actors and musicians (and directors, too) themselves rather than paint them and, who would have ever thought that in the search for more meaning in their lives, actors and musicians now want to be artists. The grass is always greener.
Saturday, May 3, 2003
THE THREE AT JEFFREY DEITCH (ARTinvestor Magazine, Spring 2003)
UPTICK: THE THREE
Why bother? Many artists toil away day after day in the solitude of their studios not with the intent of creating transcendent objects and to be immortalized by posterity as if in amber, but rather to get some good press and become another famous art star. Social climbing, globetrotting, magazine spreads, drug addled celebrity parties, Gap adverts, music video directing gigs-ah, that's what its about, isn't it? Tracy, Damien, Cecily, Maurizio, need I say more? The Three is an artist's group formed over 10 years ago to perpetrate, uh, perpetuate a neo-dada action by creating art-as-media, who's only creative act is selling signed, stamped certificates (in the time-worn conceptualist manner) of press coverage of the group. The Three are professional fashion models, models that are basically famous for being born attractive, and well, famous, who dress in austere Calvin Kleinesque minimalist attire of monochromatic white or black t-shirts, jackets and jeans. Is it a radical post-consumer art gesture or another con a la Enron?
As a comment on the tribe of artists and critics in the 00's (prescient in the early 90's before the thrust of the rise of mainstream media attention paid to fine artists) a nerve has definitely been tweaked in the referencing of media obsession. There is already Frida and Diego cologne, rock star curators and critics who fill their columns with self- canonization rather than explications of the art and artists they are paid to critique. Why not hang the articles on the walls and sell them as art for hundreds, and thousands, especially in light of the laughable crumbs magazine critics are paid anyway (trust me on that). Make celebrities of us all. Besides, painting, sculpture, and video are all so trite and conventional. Nowadays, artists employ press agents like studio assistants, its part and parcel of the big picture. Bypass the rank, manual-labor imbued (even fabricated work has to be made by someone), piddling middle-man that is art itself, and get right to the crux of it-the publicity. And in fact, selling promotion is exactly what The Three did in their last show at the Percy Miller Gallery in London in January 2002, briskly for $500 a pop. The Three will attempt to repeat that success for assuredly more money than the last go-round in an outing at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in May/June 2003 in New York City.
DOWNTICK: THE THREE
The venerable raconteur and art journalist about town for London's Art Newspaper Adrian Dannatt is the inventor of the conceptual hoax that is The Three. Articles have made light of this fact and outted Dannatt as the culprit behind the trio, such as critic Barry Schwabsky in Artforum, but more often than not The Three has been analyzed as a stand alone entity, most notably Anthony Haden-Guest's treatment in the now defunct Talk Magazine. Though fooling nonplussed Haden-Guest shouldn't be viewed as a barometer of persuasiveness. But this is beside the point. We are well passed the age of equating the hand of the artist, or the minds of 3 artists with conferring legitimacy on a work of art. The rule of thumb to judge this enterprise should be solely: is it good art? The answer is yes and no. In a society and world of art where media saturation is equated with profundity and success, column inches can be seen as the equivalent of penis size. In this regard, Dannatt's The Three is squarely on point as self-parody and indictment of our present wayward ways. Yet, there is a degree of pat conceit and sanctimoniousness in swearing off the act of creating art product and then selling articles with "stamped, dated, and signed certificates" the value of which is akin to a decoder ring buried in the bottom of a children's cereal box.
The rhetoric that "we do not create anything ourselves other than interest" rings hollow when The Three offers up the Model T-like novelty of a signed, stamped and dated certificate. Why bother! Could it be that the ill-paid art journalist within wants it both ways-to send up the art world and to be conferred with the money and status (and dare I say fame) so woefully denied one on the short end of the art stick? Doesn't critic-artist(s) stink like actor-politician (Streisand, Penn, Baldwin)? Also, the idea of the collective emanating from fashion may have been a conceptual innovation in the early 90's supermodel heyday, but to revive this by picking 3 new models is a tad formulaic and insipid. Dannatt stated: "I styled them in simple black or white t-shirts and jeans which many years later became the Gap look." Cassandra has peeled away more layers of our foolhardy hypocrisy and become a trend-spotter in the process. Fashion and models signify morphing cultural allusions today without the same import as they once might have enjoyed. Though the idea of The Three popping up from beyond the insular art establishment resonates with the fact that art schools are unessential to endow ability, despite the commercial galleries' bear hugs to graduates of the most favored institutions. Would it not have made more sense to pluck the three from obscurity in the reality TV show vein to make it more pertinent to our time? In the end, this alleged media-about-media is indistinguishable from art-about-art, a wink, wink insiders game. But, to paraphrase The Three, there is no bad press, it all makes for good art (to sell); so no matter, it's all stock in trade.
Why bother? Many artists toil away day after day in the solitude of their studios not with the intent of creating transcendent objects and to be immortalized by posterity as if in amber, but rather to get some good press and become another famous art star. Social climbing, globetrotting, magazine spreads, drug addled celebrity parties, Gap adverts, music video directing gigs-ah, that's what its about, isn't it? Tracy, Damien, Cecily, Maurizio, need I say more? The Three is an artist's group formed over 10 years ago to perpetrate, uh, perpetuate a neo-dada action by creating art-as-media, who's only creative act is selling signed, stamped certificates (in the time-worn conceptualist manner) of press coverage of the group. The Three are professional fashion models, models that are basically famous for being born attractive, and well, famous, who dress in austere Calvin Kleinesque minimalist attire of monochromatic white or black t-shirts, jackets and jeans. Is it a radical post-consumer art gesture or another con a la Enron?
As a comment on the tribe of artists and critics in the 00's (prescient in the early 90's before the thrust of the rise of mainstream media attention paid to fine artists) a nerve has definitely been tweaked in the referencing of media obsession. There is already Frida and Diego cologne, rock star curators and critics who fill their columns with self- canonization rather than explications of the art and artists they are paid to critique. Why not hang the articles on the walls and sell them as art for hundreds, and thousands, especially in light of the laughable crumbs magazine critics are paid anyway (trust me on that). Make celebrities of us all. Besides, painting, sculpture, and video are all so trite and conventional. Nowadays, artists employ press agents like studio assistants, its part and parcel of the big picture. Bypass the rank, manual-labor imbued (even fabricated work has to be made by someone), piddling middle-man that is art itself, and get right to the crux of it-the publicity. And in fact, selling promotion is exactly what The Three did in their last show at the Percy Miller Gallery in London in January 2002, briskly for $500 a pop. The Three will attempt to repeat that success for assuredly more money than the last go-round in an outing at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in May/June 2003 in New York City.
DOWNTICK: THE THREE
The venerable raconteur and art journalist about town for London's Art Newspaper Adrian Dannatt is the inventor of the conceptual hoax that is The Three. Articles have made light of this fact and outted Dannatt as the culprit behind the trio, such as critic Barry Schwabsky in Artforum, but more often than not The Three has been analyzed as a stand alone entity, most notably Anthony Haden-Guest's treatment in the now defunct Talk Magazine. Though fooling nonplussed Haden-Guest shouldn't be viewed as a barometer of persuasiveness. But this is beside the point. We are well passed the age of equating the hand of the artist, or the minds of 3 artists with conferring legitimacy on a work of art. The rule of thumb to judge this enterprise should be solely: is it good art? The answer is yes and no. In a society and world of art where media saturation is equated with profundity and success, column inches can be seen as the equivalent of penis size. In this regard, Dannatt's The Three is squarely on point as self-parody and indictment of our present wayward ways. Yet, there is a degree of pat conceit and sanctimoniousness in swearing off the act of creating art product and then selling articles with "stamped, dated, and signed certificates" the value of which is akin to a decoder ring buried in the bottom of a children's cereal box.
The rhetoric that "we do not create anything ourselves other than interest" rings hollow when The Three offers up the Model T-like novelty of a signed, stamped and dated certificate. Why bother! Could it be that the ill-paid art journalist within wants it both ways-to send up the art world and to be conferred with the money and status (and dare I say fame) so woefully denied one on the short end of the art stick? Doesn't critic-artist(s) stink like actor-politician (Streisand, Penn, Baldwin)? Also, the idea of the collective emanating from fashion may have been a conceptual innovation in the early 90's supermodel heyday, but to revive this by picking 3 new models is a tad formulaic and insipid. Dannatt stated: "I styled them in simple black or white t-shirts and jeans which many years later became the Gap look." Cassandra has peeled away more layers of our foolhardy hypocrisy and become a trend-spotter in the process. Fashion and models signify morphing cultural allusions today without the same import as they once might have enjoyed. Though the idea of The Three popping up from beyond the insular art establishment resonates with the fact that art schools are unessential to endow ability, despite the commercial galleries' bear hugs to graduates of the most favored institutions. Would it not have made more sense to pluck the three from obscurity in the reality TV show vein to make it more pertinent to our time? In the end, this alleged media-about-media is indistinguishable from art-about-art, a wink, wink insiders game. But, to paraphrase The Three, there is no bad press, it all makes for good art (to sell); so no matter, it's all stock in trade.
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