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.
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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.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
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.
Tuesday, January 16, 2001
GABRIUS ZINE (TEMA ONLINE COMPONENT)
Cancellation of Art Basel Miami Beach - Spring 2001
Lesson number one for those contemplating staging an international contemporary art fair in the future: get more than a contract when signing up participants, get a deposit. Lawyers raison d'ítre is to get clients out of contracts, but the leverage of money in hand is uncontestable. The above-mentioned scenario is exactly what befell the organizers of Art Basel Miami Beach, which surely contributed to the decision to cancel the fair which was to be held from December 12th to the 16th, 2001 in addition to the stated reasons of the terrorist attacks and increased insurance costs. What got the ball rolling in favor of calling the whole thing off was a series of letters in Europe, New York and California initiated by a number of the dealers requesting a one year postponement due to the warnings of potential attacks, the anthrax incidents and the difficulties in air travel. The New York drive in favor of cancellation was led by Barbara Gladstone and included as signatories Sandra Gering, Marianne Boesky, 303 Gallery, Marian Goodman, Pace Wildenstein, and Frederick Petzel among others. Not everyone shared the sentiment that halting the fair in Miami, the first foray in North America (maybe not the best term at this juncture) by Swiss Exhibition, the firm that runs the Basel Fairs, was the wisest choice. British dealer Jay Jopling said the dealers who were dead-set against making the trip were babies and that as a whole, putting off the fair was bad business for the art world.
The bear hug of a grip that Basel Miami had negotiated around the city is evidenced by the fact that any off site project to be conducted within a certain radius of the convention center had to be cleared with Amy Cappellazzo in advance. Cappellazzo, now head of Christie's contemporary in New York and a former curator of the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, was in charge of organizing projects around the city; and, no official permit for an art related special event could be issued without her specific approval. Due to co-inside with the Basel Miami were many, many off-site exhibitions for those that didn't feel like joining a waiting list for a booth, or for a container. The sponsors of the fair were actually renting out empty truck containers to be placed along the beach in close proximity to the fair for smaller dealers, such as Andrew Kreps in New York, to distribute their wares. The 38-year-old real estate developer and mega-collector Craig Robbins who is responsible for creating the Miami design district (and owns about 80% of it) strewn about with European and American furniture and housewares boutiques for the trade, but equally open to the public, organized some of the ancillary projects that were afoot. Robbins had planned for a painting exhibit organized by New York dealer Jack Tilton his primary art adviser (that was to have featured Marlene Dumas, Nicole Eisenman, Franz Ackerman, and others) and a German sculpture show (with John Bock, Andreas Slominski, and Olafur Eliason, and others) that was to be curated by New York gallerist and son of painter Georg Baselitz, Anton Kern, both of which have been canceled as well. Nevertheless, Robbins will hang his collection throughout the design district, including an installation of Rirkrit Tiravanija's scaled down version of Phillip Johnson's glass house (that he owns) that was created for a Museum of Modern Art project in New York, to be utilized as a "playtime" space for kids. Big time Miami art patron Rosa de la Cruz, a major force in collecting emerging contemporary art, is considering a project at the time of this writing in conjunction with Robbins as well. Separately, Miami Art Exchange, which will be a group exhibit of local area artists like Lynne Gelfman, Karen Rifas and Glexis Novoa will be held, as will another local artist ensemble (45 artists including Janine Antoni, Teresita Fernandez and Quescaya Henriquez) curated by artist Robert Chambers, to be held at the newly renovated Bass Museum at 21st Street (and Park Avenue) in South Beach, from December 12th through Feburary 2002.
All in all the fair which was to be attended by in excess of 150 galleries was said to have lost an estimated $4 million in printing costs and advertising related expenses as a result of the cancellation. Fantastically, in the letter acknowledging the end of the venture, the fair organizers solicited voluntary contributions due to the fact that the galleries could have been held to their contracts, but wouldn't be. Imagine the flurry of checks being written at this moment-not! The death knell was sounded November 7, 2001 when none other than Page Six of the New York Post noted the obituary of the fair in its gossip columns. And, a full page advertisement in the New York Times appeared Novermer 9th, with the schematic layout of the galleries, but with a fair date in excess of a year from now. So it will remain fresh in our minds, perhaps. On the bright side, maybe this will free up some more collecting dollars to be spread at next week's onset of the contemporary art auctions at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips.
Lesson number one for those contemplating staging an international contemporary art fair in the future: get more than a contract when signing up participants, get a deposit. Lawyers raison d'ítre is to get clients out of contracts, but the leverage of money in hand is uncontestable. The above-mentioned scenario is exactly what befell the organizers of Art Basel Miami Beach, which surely contributed to the decision to cancel the fair which was to be held from December 12th to the 16th, 2001 in addition to the stated reasons of the terrorist attacks and increased insurance costs. What got the ball rolling in favor of calling the whole thing off was a series of letters in Europe, New York and California initiated by a number of the dealers requesting a one year postponement due to the warnings of potential attacks, the anthrax incidents and the difficulties in air travel. The New York drive in favor of cancellation was led by Barbara Gladstone and included as signatories Sandra Gering, Marianne Boesky, 303 Gallery, Marian Goodman, Pace Wildenstein, and Frederick Petzel among others. Not everyone shared the sentiment that halting the fair in Miami, the first foray in North America (maybe not the best term at this juncture) by Swiss Exhibition, the firm that runs the Basel Fairs, was the wisest choice. British dealer Jay Jopling said the dealers who were dead-set against making the trip were babies and that as a whole, putting off the fair was bad business for the art world.
The bear hug of a grip that Basel Miami had negotiated around the city is evidenced by the fact that any off site project to be conducted within a certain radius of the convention center had to be cleared with Amy Cappellazzo in advance. Cappellazzo, now head of Christie's contemporary in New York and a former curator of the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, was in charge of organizing projects around the city; and, no official permit for an art related special event could be issued without her specific approval. Due to co-inside with the Basel Miami were many, many off-site exhibitions for those that didn't feel like joining a waiting list for a booth, or for a container. The sponsors of the fair were actually renting out empty truck containers to be placed along the beach in close proximity to the fair for smaller dealers, such as Andrew Kreps in New York, to distribute their wares. The 38-year-old real estate developer and mega-collector Craig Robbins who is responsible for creating the Miami design district (and owns about 80% of it) strewn about with European and American furniture and housewares boutiques for the trade, but equally open to the public, organized some of the ancillary projects that were afoot. Robbins had planned for a painting exhibit organized by New York dealer Jack Tilton his primary art adviser (that was to have featured Marlene Dumas, Nicole Eisenman, Franz Ackerman, and others) and a German sculpture show (with John Bock, Andreas Slominski, and Olafur Eliason, and others) that was to be curated by New York gallerist and son of painter Georg Baselitz, Anton Kern, both of which have been canceled as well. Nevertheless, Robbins will hang his collection throughout the design district, including an installation of Rirkrit Tiravanija's scaled down version of Phillip Johnson's glass house (that he owns) that was created for a Museum of Modern Art project in New York, to be utilized as a "playtime" space for kids. Big time Miami art patron Rosa de la Cruz, a major force in collecting emerging contemporary art, is considering a project at the time of this writing in conjunction with Robbins as well. Separately, Miami Art Exchange, which will be a group exhibit of local area artists like Lynne Gelfman, Karen Rifas and Glexis Novoa will be held, as will another local artist ensemble (45 artists including Janine Antoni, Teresita Fernandez and Quescaya Henriquez) curated by artist Robert Chambers, to be held at the newly renovated Bass Museum at 21st Street (and Park Avenue) in South Beach, from December 12th through Feburary 2002.
All in all the fair which was to be attended by in excess of 150 galleries was said to have lost an estimated $4 million in printing costs and advertising related expenses as a result of the cancellation. Fantastically, in the letter acknowledging the end of the venture, the fair organizers solicited voluntary contributions due to the fact that the galleries could have been held to their contracts, but wouldn't be. Imagine the flurry of checks being written at this moment-not! The death knell was sounded November 7, 2001 when none other than Page Six of the New York Post noted the obituary of the fair in its gossip columns. And, a full page advertisement in the New York Times appeared Novermer 9th, with the schematic layout of the galleries, but with a fair date in excess of a year from now. So it will remain fresh in our minds, perhaps. On the bright side, maybe this will free up some more collecting dollars to be spread at next week's onset of the contemporary art auctions at Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips.
Friday, June 16, 2000
ARTinvestor Magazine 2 - 2000
DOWNTICKS: THE DAMIEN DULDRUMS: WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH?
As evidence that there can be no strictly linear movement up in the art market without regard to quality and consistency, there has been a marked downturn and backing off with regard to Damien Hirst's auction performance in 2001. Though his last extravaganza at New York's Gagosian Gallery (Fall, 2000) sold out and was an unmitigated raging success, there has begun to settle in a re-evaluation of the value of Hirst's artistic output in all forms, i.e. paintings, sculptures, prints and multiples.
THE SECRET EDITIONS
In effect much if not all of Hirst's recent output has been the result of endless reiteration of a few ideas first put fourth in the early stages of his career nearly a decade ago. The obvious nature of this stratagem is the bottomless pit of spot and spin paintings that ceaselessly flow from Hirst Incorporated. Together, these works form a kind of non-authored aggregation that until now has continuously fed the hungry masses of collectors and institutions hankering to have a scrap of the Hirst enterprise to proudly showcase on their mantelpiece. The spots are offspring of early Bridget Riley paintings from the 1960's, augmented by titles that refer to pharmaceuticals, produced ad infinitum; and the spins, a simple Richter-esque formula with no discernable conceptual import. All in all, these bodies of works (two simplistic "ideas") amount to naked marketing panache. And guess what, the collecting world has begun to take notice as reflected by the fact that on many occasions no paddles were raised at the last round of auctions in New York and London when these works appeared. A humorous footnote to the machinations of the creation of these paintings, Christies tried to distinguish one of the endlessly repetitive spots by stating in its catalogue that Hirst had a hand in actually applying the paint to one of the early ones himself. Wow, what a reassuring signifier of value that a painting was allegedly touched by the author (which painting did not sell by the way).
THE MUTATING SCULPTURES
Like binary fission, Hirst's sculptures split off into reincarnations of themselves, sometimes a fact made clear to the public at large, and sometimes a deception hidden from full view: caveat emptor-let the buyer beware. An example is the flayed skeleton sculpture resting on a glass cross with floating Ping-Pong balls suspended from the eyesockets. In the Spring of2000 this work first appeared in London's White Cube Gallery's grand opening in Hoxton Square under the name "Rehab is for Quitters" (can't take anything away from Hirst's occasional brilliant wordplay), which sold in the vicinity of $275,000. In the fall of the same year in New York, the work appeared under the guise of a different name with no allusion to the fact that this was an exact replica of a previously created sculpture. An early 1990's medicine cabinet readymade, no different from a Hiam Steinbach, and Koonsian in spirit, failed to elicit a single bid in New York in the Spring of 2001 with a $600,000-800,000 estimate. Ten years later, Hirst is still shopping away in medical supply catalogues doing a great impersonation of himself. Great work for as long as you can get away with it. Further examples, and they are legion, are two gynecological offices submerged in water with fish (as stated in Hirst's own words to refer to woman who "smell like kippers") called "Love Lost", and "Lost Love", one with small fish, and one with larger fish. And, separated by four years from his last one person show in New York, two floating ball sculptures, one just a beach ball suspended by a jet of air (1996), and another ball similarly suspended but in the later work over knife blades. Could the life of excessive indulgence (rumors of rampant boorish behavior at the recent Venice Biennale ) be the result of guilt , and self-doubt over continuing to bamboozle the art world? Stay tuned.
UPTICKS: KAREN KILIMNIK HASN'T SCRAPED THE TOP
In the early 1990's Karen Kilimnik was a leading light of the movement known as scatter art which entailed the strategic placement of found stuff, crafted objects and assorted flotsam spread about the floor in a sculptural arrangement akin to a Carl Andre with a degree of three dimensional kitsch. When hard economics times hit in the early nineties, one suspects that Kilimnik's dealer, the 303 Gallery in NYC, had a hand in the gradual transmogrification in the body of work from these loose, barely confinable aggregations to paintings and works on paper. Though any time factors impacting on the work of an artist wrought from without may seem problematic, the work of Kilimnik has progressed into some of the most effecting, original two-dimension art currently being produced. This is especially apparent when taken into consideration with some of the outlandish prices for the works of her contemporaries such as Cecily Brown (over $100,000), Elizabeth Peyton (over $75,000), John Currin (nearly $350,000) and Chris Offili (over $300,000). In relation to the previously mentioned group of Kilimnik's contemporaries (all younger artists by the way), her work is downright undervalued. Recent auction performance for Kilimnik's drawings are in the neighborhood of $10,000 and oftentimes lower, and a record of $27,500 for a painting dating from 1996 (Spring 2001, Sotheby's day sale). Her work has yet to crack the evening sales of a major auction. The paper works often juxtaposes imagery and text with colored pencils and painted bits, detailing the worlds of fashion and celebrity in a mode not seen in others who tread upon this albeit familiar territory. The works on paper are in a language so distinct to the artist that one can imagine a scenario where these will be more favorably viewed over time than the paintings. In Kilimnik's hands, these themes become infused with a mannered romanticism, light and airy in the drawings, as the sculptures once were diffused on the floor, and lushly painted when applied to canvas. Kilimnik is transfixed by the ballet in an almost nostalgic longing for active participation in the realm of dance that has infatuated so many previous artists. In the end, the works of Kilimnik are like little gems (always small in scale, physically) with the paint luxuriantly applied, the text quirkily distinct, and prices that have not yet come close to approaching the top of their inherent value.
PERSONAL PICKS: IN THE DOMAIN OF THE UNKNOWN-ACCONCI STUDIOS
Vito Acconci seems to have found the secret of life transcending the everyday woes that drive the rest of the world at large, namely, the ubiquitous quest for prosperity that has recently spurred global acts of civil disobedience and violence. From his beginnings as a poet and early conceptualist in the 1960's, mercilessly exploring his body in his photo-based text pieces and performance work, Acconci has consciously cultivated a position outside the mainstream mechanations of the artworld. He famously lives a life of extreme asceticism without so much as a nod to the throes of conspicuous consumption that rule so many of our lives. His outfit is a regimen of black shirt and trousers, never varying from one year to another, yet from day to day. His studio is a threadbare office with gunmetal gray metal shelving units that could furnish the set for a 1950's accounting firm. Though he has worked with Barbara Gladstone Gallery for some years, among the most elitist venues in New York, his body of work has grown steadily unwieldy progressing from 2-D and video, to large-scale installations, to giant outdoor public works to the most uncontainable of art forms: architecture.
To date, Acconci has built architectural elements such as the futuristic walkway and entrance to a subway station in Shibuyu, Japan (2000) and a slowly turning ring set within an administative building courtyard in Munich, Germany, powered bya wind turbine atop the office tower. Such gyrations in the body of work of an "artist" are considered tomfoolery, or worse, career self-destruction. And, the extant pieces of Acconci popping up at recent auctions have been no exception to the inelasticity of the artworld when it comes to marked shifting in art making practice. A model for an outdoor work, a giant clam shell sculpture fetched all of $1,500 in the Spring 2001 auctions at Phillips. A fencing-mask festooned with video cameras as eyes and mini monitors to observe the din of life from a protected stance was for sale for $35,000 at Barbara Gladstone's summer 2001 group show. The early panel pieces from the late 1960's through the 70's, comprised of a photographic element and a text component, can be had generally for $5,000 to $15,000 at any given auction. Adivce: buy anything you can from this seminal master of the contemporary who only suffers from being too far ahead of his time with his quest for intellectual pursuit and experimentation at the expense of material and societal success.
Towards my unfettered belief in the ideas generated by Acconci Studio, I have commissioned Acconci and his band of disenfranchised young architects to design a permanent gallery space in New York's Chelsea, and while that project is being built, a temporary public exhibition space in the West Village, as well. The premise was to use Frederick Kiesler's design of Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery (from 1942) as a point of departure-to readdress the paradigm of the white cube as the monolithic, only viable model within which to show art. The results by team Acconci were as loopy as one would imagine: the void of the cube is to be filled with a giant, all encompassing, polycarbonate blob floating in the space like a slightly hovering blimp... There are no walls, when paintings need to be hung apparatuses appear from hidden structures in the columns like accordians. The biomorphic mass seduces people into the space where the facade is left purposefully open to blur the distinction between outside and inside. Clear your minds, withhold judgement: a new archetype is upon us to display and disseminate contemporary art and hopefully, just maybe, things will never be the same.
As evidence that there can be no strictly linear movement up in the art market without regard to quality and consistency, there has been a marked downturn and backing off with regard to Damien Hirst's auction performance in 2001. Though his last extravaganza at New York's Gagosian Gallery (Fall, 2000) sold out and was an unmitigated raging success, there has begun to settle in a re-evaluation of the value of Hirst's artistic output in all forms, i.e. paintings, sculptures, prints and multiples.
THE SECRET EDITIONS
In effect much if not all of Hirst's recent output has been the result of endless reiteration of a few ideas first put fourth in the early stages of his career nearly a decade ago. The obvious nature of this stratagem is the bottomless pit of spot and spin paintings that ceaselessly flow from Hirst Incorporated. Together, these works form a kind of non-authored aggregation that until now has continuously fed the hungry masses of collectors and institutions hankering to have a scrap of the Hirst enterprise to proudly showcase on their mantelpiece. The spots are offspring of early Bridget Riley paintings from the 1960's, augmented by titles that refer to pharmaceuticals, produced ad infinitum; and the spins, a simple Richter-esque formula with no discernable conceptual import. All in all, these bodies of works (two simplistic "ideas") amount to naked marketing panache. And guess what, the collecting world has begun to take notice as reflected by the fact that on many occasions no paddles were raised at the last round of auctions in New York and London when these works appeared. A humorous footnote to the machinations of the creation of these paintings, Christies tried to distinguish one of the endlessly repetitive spots by stating in its catalogue that Hirst had a hand in actually applying the paint to one of the early ones himself. Wow, what a reassuring signifier of value that a painting was allegedly touched by the author (which painting did not sell by the way).
THE MUTATING SCULPTURES
Like binary fission, Hirst's sculptures split off into reincarnations of themselves, sometimes a fact made clear to the public at large, and sometimes a deception hidden from full view: caveat emptor-let the buyer beware. An example is the flayed skeleton sculpture resting on a glass cross with floating Ping-Pong balls suspended from the eyesockets. In the Spring of2000 this work first appeared in London's White Cube Gallery's grand opening in Hoxton Square under the name "Rehab is for Quitters" (can't take anything away from Hirst's occasional brilliant wordplay), which sold in the vicinity of $275,000. In the fall of the same year in New York, the work appeared under the guise of a different name with no allusion to the fact that this was an exact replica of a previously created sculpture. An early 1990's medicine cabinet readymade, no different from a Hiam Steinbach, and Koonsian in spirit, failed to elicit a single bid in New York in the Spring of 2001 with a $600,000-800,000 estimate. Ten years later, Hirst is still shopping away in medical supply catalogues doing a great impersonation of himself. Great work for as long as you can get away with it. Further examples, and they are legion, are two gynecological offices submerged in water with fish (as stated in Hirst's own words to refer to woman who "smell like kippers") called "Love Lost", and "Lost Love", one with small fish, and one with larger fish. And, separated by four years from his last one person show in New York, two floating ball sculptures, one just a beach ball suspended by a jet of air (1996), and another ball similarly suspended but in the later work over knife blades. Could the life of excessive indulgence (rumors of rampant boorish behavior at the recent Venice Biennale ) be the result of guilt , and self-doubt over continuing to bamboozle the art world? Stay tuned.
UPTICKS: KAREN KILIMNIK HASN'T SCRAPED THE TOP
In the early 1990's Karen Kilimnik was a leading light of the movement known as scatter art which entailed the strategic placement of found stuff, crafted objects and assorted flotsam spread about the floor in a sculptural arrangement akin to a Carl Andre with a degree of three dimensional kitsch. When hard economics times hit in the early nineties, one suspects that Kilimnik's dealer, the 303 Gallery in NYC, had a hand in the gradual transmogrification in the body of work from these loose, barely confinable aggregations to paintings and works on paper. Though any time factors impacting on the work of an artist wrought from without may seem problematic, the work of Kilimnik has progressed into some of the most effecting, original two-dimension art currently being produced. This is especially apparent when taken into consideration with some of the outlandish prices for the works of her contemporaries such as Cecily Brown (over $100,000), Elizabeth Peyton (over $75,000), John Currin (nearly $350,000) and Chris Offili (over $300,000). In relation to the previously mentioned group of Kilimnik's contemporaries (all younger artists by the way), her work is downright undervalued. Recent auction performance for Kilimnik's drawings are in the neighborhood of $10,000 and oftentimes lower, and a record of $27,500 for a painting dating from 1996 (Spring 2001, Sotheby's day sale). Her work has yet to crack the evening sales of a major auction. The paper works often juxtaposes imagery and text with colored pencils and painted bits, detailing the worlds of fashion and celebrity in a mode not seen in others who tread upon this albeit familiar territory. The works on paper are in a language so distinct to the artist that one can imagine a scenario where these will be more favorably viewed over time than the paintings. In Kilimnik's hands, these themes become infused with a mannered romanticism, light and airy in the drawings, as the sculptures once were diffused on the floor, and lushly painted when applied to canvas. Kilimnik is transfixed by the ballet in an almost nostalgic longing for active participation in the realm of dance that has infatuated so many previous artists. In the end, the works of Kilimnik are like little gems (always small in scale, physically) with the paint luxuriantly applied, the text quirkily distinct, and prices that have not yet come close to approaching the top of their inherent value.
PERSONAL PICKS: IN THE DOMAIN OF THE UNKNOWN-ACCONCI STUDIOS
Vito Acconci seems to have found the secret of life transcending the everyday woes that drive the rest of the world at large, namely, the ubiquitous quest for prosperity that has recently spurred global acts of civil disobedience and violence. From his beginnings as a poet and early conceptualist in the 1960's, mercilessly exploring his body in his photo-based text pieces and performance work, Acconci has consciously cultivated a position outside the mainstream mechanations of the artworld. He famously lives a life of extreme asceticism without so much as a nod to the throes of conspicuous consumption that rule so many of our lives. His outfit is a regimen of black shirt and trousers, never varying from one year to another, yet from day to day. His studio is a threadbare office with gunmetal gray metal shelving units that could furnish the set for a 1950's accounting firm. Though he has worked with Barbara Gladstone Gallery for some years, among the most elitist venues in New York, his body of work has grown steadily unwieldy progressing from 2-D and video, to large-scale installations, to giant outdoor public works to the most uncontainable of art forms: architecture.
To date, Acconci has built architectural elements such as the futuristic walkway and entrance to a subway station in Shibuyu, Japan (2000) and a slowly turning ring set within an administative building courtyard in Munich, Germany, powered bya wind turbine atop the office tower. Such gyrations in the body of work of an "artist" are considered tomfoolery, or worse, career self-destruction. And, the extant pieces of Acconci popping up at recent auctions have been no exception to the inelasticity of the artworld when it comes to marked shifting in art making practice. A model for an outdoor work, a giant clam shell sculpture fetched all of $1,500 in the Spring 2001 auctions at Phillips. A fencing-mask festooned with video cameras as eyes and mini monitors to observe the din of life from a protected stance was for sale for $35,000 at Barbara Gladstone's summer 2001 group show. The early panel pieces from the late 1960's through the 70's, comprised of a photographic element and a text component, can be had generally for $5,000 to $15,000 at any given auction. Adivce: buy anything you can from this seminal master of the contemporary who only suffers from being too far ahead of his time with his quest for intellectual pursuit and experimentation at the expense of material and societal success.
Towards my unfettered belief in the ideas generated by Acconci Studio, I have commissioned Acconci and his band of disenfranchised young architects to design a permanent gallery space in New York's Chelsea, and while that project is being built, a temporary public exhibition space in the West Village, as well. The premise was to use Frederick Kiesler's design of Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery (from 1942) as a point of departure-to readdress the paradigm of the white cube as the monolithic, only viable model within which to show art. The results by team Acconci were as loopy as one would imagine: the void of the cube is to be filled with a giant, all encompassing, polycarbonate blob floating in the space like a slightly hovering blimp... There are no walls, when paintings need to be hung apparatuses appear from hidden structures in the columns like accordians. The biomorphic mass seduces people into the space where the facade is left purposefully open to blur the distinction between outside and inside. Clear your minds, withhold judgement: a new archetype is upon us to display and disseminate contemporary art and hopefully, just maybe, things will never be the same.
Tuesday, March 21, 2000
PAUL THEK: FAMOUS... & FORGOTTEN... & FAMOUS (POLIESTER Magazine, Spring 2000)
Pain, death and not being able to make art again. Have you ever stumbled across a medical television station in the middle of invasive surgery? Clamps hold open a stomach, a surgeons' hands extend deep into the body, and blood and guts are revealed like a cross-section of a sedimentary rock. At first glance the impulse is to shy away and zap to a new channel, then morbid curiosity takes hold and repulsion fades to seduction. We can't help but look on. What is put into question is our smug sense of well being, which is normally taken for granted, as opposed to thoughts of the ravages of disease and decay.
Such is the territory of but a fragment of the varied work of Paul Thek, an American born artist that lived from 1933-1988. What is referred to above specifically relates to the "Technological Reliquaries" series of Thek, from 1964-67, and "The Tomb" from 1967. The "Technological Reliquaries" are sculptural replications of meat, or flesh in all of its disturbing rawness, flawlessly crafted out of wax and pigment. These slabs of beef (human or otherwise) are encased in minimalist glass vitrines sometimes printed with yellow lines, which can be seen as either forever holding the viewer outside, or drawing them closer to the object that lies within, imprisoned.
We are a global society big on denial, bent on immediate gratification, and skilled at tweaking appearances at the expense of just about everything else. Mortality is not something we relish contemplating, especially in relation to habits such as drinking, smoking, drugs and over-indulgence with food. It is hard to continually keep in mind what lies beneath the surface and how precarious health and wellness are in light of disease, preventable or not. Constantly undergoing oxidation, aging and drawing closer to death, our actual state of existence is not highly revered by a society fixated on youth or just looking youthful. Thek's meat pieces invoke human rot, tumors, cancer--just about every person's worst fears and vulnerabilities. Yet, simultaneously, these works manage to be about life and beauty and preservation of the human condition. Thek's meat sculptures, created in the mid-60's, presage most end of the century movements in post-modern, conceptual art practice, from institutional critique to spirituality.
The title of the series "Technological Reliquaries" referenced Thek's notion that increasing reliance on technology was encroaching upon our capacity to live humanely, compassionately, and with passion. Thek foresaw so clearly and early the steamrollering obsolescence of humans by clinical systems of knowledge, and evidenced this foreboding by encasing reproductions of human flesh in glass showcases akin to museum relics. Like the investigations of an archaeologist, Thek's reliquaries preserved what appeared to be animal or human tissue as an emblem of something that once was.
Thek was a devout Catholic, more or less, and seamlessly wove his religious beliefs into every facet of his work. Sins of the flesh, an allusion to breaking the ban on fornication, is recalled viewing Thek's meat works, suggesting a religious device used in order to scare people from inappropriately getting a piece of... In addition, carnal knowledge is implied as it relates to messy, fleshy sex, and how hot bodies are compared to scraps of beef. Like Duchamp, Thek was a master punster, and was never above playing wag to the art world, which has always taken itself too seriously.
When Thek chose to adhere three images of Ringo Star to a small meat sculpture in 1967, it was not as a gesture of cynical commentary on minor celebrity, but rather, an identification with those relegated to be perennially on the peripheral: in effect, inside outsiders. A similar nod was made when Thek included a photographic reproduction of Harpo Marx in an installation, which he referred to as "Harpo Marxism", his version of comic communism for the disenfranchised (Quoted by Susanne Delahanty in her catalogue "Paul Thek/Processions", Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1977).
In all the enigma that is the work of Matthew Barney, through all the Hollywood-style prosthetics that allegedly obscure the identity of the artist; the chiseled body, and fashion model good looks of Barney always manage to shine. In contrast, the meat pieces of Thek, sometimes adorned with clumps of the artist's own hair, stand in as anti-portraits, against the natural inclination to present one's self in the best, most appealing possible light. Versus the ancient Greek ideal of the male form as body-beautiful, Thek has turned this notion (and his body) inside-out, making the private public in a highly diffident manner.
The ready-made, salacious look of a Thek meat sculpture belied the puritanical, Judeo-Christian work ethic invested in the adherence to academic, old world art making skills. Thek was a master draftsman and craftsman and equally adept at concealing this fact. It was never fathomable that in all the reams of press and heaps of accolades on Damien Hirst and his scandalous cow pieces that nary a connection was made to Thek and his "Technological Reliquaries" that preceded Hirst by almost thirty years. However, this was made understandable by the fact that until the end of 1999, Thek never had an exhibit in the UK (despite a rare inclusion in a group show). Unlike the entrepreneurial Hirst, who in endlessly repeating himself has shown to be more proficient at making money than making art, Thek consciously halted the meat pieces after receiving a measure of success and notoriety early on in his career. In fact, having lived a large portion of his life abroad, mostly in Europe, scarcely any US institutions owned Thek's work at the time of his death.
"The Tomb" was a prescient installation created in 1967 which consisted of a pink wooden form in the shape of a ziggurat, and within, a laid out wax cast of a dead Thek, with outstretched tongue and mangled, fingerless hand. The artist was rendered a grotesque impotent symbol of the maceration of mankind. Again, rather than create an heroic version of the self, Thek instead chose to depict himself as a crippled soul that suffered some kind of ritualistic sacrifice. Perhaps Thek was signifying the consecration of the artist by offering himself to the deity as propitiation, in light of the alienating onslaught of pop and minimalism, signaled by the color and form of the tomb. Characteristic of Thek and how he viewed himself and his work; that this sculpture got tagged "The Death of a Hippie" due to the long hair and ragged appearance of the figure, which Thek considered a misreading, caused him to abandon the piece by way of unpaid storage fees.
Robert Gober placed a hairy leg fragment against a wall, sometimes with a burning candle situated on top, commenting upon the fragility of mankind in the face of rampant disease. Yet, in view of Thek, such gesture seems overly aestheticized even in its passing nod to things undeserved and inequitable such as AIDS. Unlike Gober, Thek never matched his initial early art world success after the "Technological Reliquaries" which tormented him, left him bitter, penniless and unsure of himself at the time of his death. Sometimes, being too good is too bad.
Such is the territory of but a fragment of the varied work of Paul Thek, an American born artist that lived from 1933-1988. What is referred to above specifically relates to the "Technological Reliquaries" series of Thek, from 1964-67, and "The Tomb" from 1967. The "Technological Reliquaries" are sculptural replications of meat, or flesh in all of its disturbing rawness, flawlessly crafted out of wax and pigment. These slabs of beef (human or otherwise) are encased in minimalist glass vitrines sometimes printed with yellow lines, which can be seen as either forever holding the viewer outside, or drawing them closer to the object that lies within, imprisoned.
We are a global society big on denial, bent on immediate gratification, and skilled at tweaking appearances at the expense of just about everything else. Mortality is not something we relish contemplating, especially in relation to habits such as drinking, smoking, drugs and over-indulgence with food. It is hard to continually keep in mind what lies beneath the surface and how precarious health and wellness are in light of disease, preventable or not. Constantly undergoing oxidation, aging and drawing closer to death, our actual state of existence is not highly revered by a society fixated on youth or just looking youthful. Thek's meat pieces invoke human rot, tumors, cancer--just about every person's worst fears and vulnerabilities. Yet, simultaneously, these works manage to be about life and beauty and preservation of the human condition. Thek's meat sculptures, created in the mid-60's, presage most end of the century movements in post-modern, conceptual art practice, from institutional critique to spirituality.
The title of the series "Technological Reliquaries" referenced Thek's notion that increasing reliance on technology was encroaching upon our capacity to live humanely, compassionately, and with passion. Thek foresaw so clearly and early the steamrollering obsolescence of humans by clinical systems of knowledge, and evidenced this foreboding by encasing reproductions of human flesh in glass showcases akin to museum relics. Like the investigations of an archaeologist, Thek's reliquaries preserved what appeared to be animal or human tissue as an emblem of something that once was.
Thek was a devout Catholic, more or less, and seamlessly wove his religious beliefs into every facet of his work. Sins of the flesh, an allusion to breaking the ban on fornication, is recalled viewing Thek's meat works, suggesting a religious device used in order to scare people from inappropriately getting a piece of... In addition, carnal knowledge is implied as it relates to messy, fleshy sex, and how hot bodies are compared to scraps of beef. Like Duchamp, Thek was a master punster, and was never above playing wag to the art world, which has always taken itself too seriously.
When Thek chose to adhere three images of Ringo Star to a small meat sculpture in 1967, it was not as a gesture of cynical commentary on minor celebrity, but rather, an identification with those relegated to be perennially on the peripheral: in effect, inside outsiders. A similar nod was made when Thek included a photographic reproduction of Harpo Marx in an installation, which he referred to as "Harpo Marxism", his version of comic communism for the disenfranchised (Quoted by Susanne Delahanty in her catalogue "Paul Thek/Processions", Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1977).
In all the enigma that is the work of Matthew Barney, through all the Hollywood-style prosthetics that allegedly obscure the identity of the artist; the chiseled body, and fashion model good looks of Barney always manage to shine. In contrast, the meat pieces of Thek, sometimes adorned with clumps of the artist's own hair, stand in as anti-portraits, against the natural inclination to present one's self in the best, most appealing possible light. Versus the ancient Greek ideal of the male form as body-beautiful, Thek has turned this notion (and his body) inside-out, making the private public in a highly diffident manner.
The ready-made, salacious look of a Thek meat sculpture belied the puritanical, Judeo-Christian work ethic invested in the adherence to academic, old world art making skills. Thek was a master draftsman and craftsman and equally adept at concealing this fact. It was never fathomable that in all the reams of press and heaps of accolades on Damien Hirst and his scandalous cow pieces that nary a connection was made to Thek and his "Technological Reliquaries" that preceded Hirst by almost thirty years. However, this was made understandable by the fact that until the end of 1999, Thek never had an exhibit in the UK (despite a rare inclusion in a group show). Unlike the entrepreneurial Hirst, who in endlessly repeating himself has shown to be more proficient at making money than making art, Thek consciously halted the meat pieces after receiving a measure of success and notoriety early on in his career. In fact, having lived a large portion of his life abroad, mostly in Europe, scarcely any US institutions owned Thek's work at the time of his death.
"The Tomb" was a prescient installation created in 1967 which consisted of a pink wooden form in the shape of a ziggurat, and within, a laid out wax cast of a dead Thek, with outstretched tongue and mangled, fingerless hand. The artist was rendered a grotesque impotent symbol of the maceration of mankind. Again, rather than create an heroic version of the self, Thek instead chose to depict himself as a crippled soul that suffered some kind of ritualistic sacrifice. Perhaps Thek was signifying the consecration of the artist by offering himself to the deity as propitiation, in light of the alienating onslaught of pop and minimalism, signaled by the color and form of the tomb. Characteristic of Thek and how he viewed himself and his work; that this sculpture got tagged "The Death of a Hippie" due to the long hair and ragged appearance of the figure, which Thek considered a misreading, caused him to abandon the piece by way of unpaid storage fees.
Robert Gober placed a hairy leg fragment against a wall, sometimes with a burning candle situated on top, commenting upon the fragility of mankind in the face of rampant disease. Yet, in view of Thek, such gesture seems overly aestheticized even in its passing nod to things undeserved and inequitable such as AIDS. Unlike Gober, Thek never matched his initial early art world success after the "Technological Reliquaries" which tormented him, left him bitter, penniless and unsure of himself at the time of his death. Sometimes, being too good is too bad.
Sunday, January 16, 2000
ARTinvestor Magazine - BOTTINO; :BOT; GLASS, 1 - 2000
BOTTINO; :BOT; GLASS
From 1986 to the summer of 1999 Borocco Restaurant (below Canal on West Broadway) was a favorite art world hang out in the heyday of the Mary Boone-Schnabel-Fischl-Salle-Basquiat, rein of power. A time forever, memorably etched upon the minds of those that caught a taste of the opulence and chest-pounding heroics of it all. Signifying the premature optimism of the Miami scene in general in the mid- to late 1990's, in-between his first two NY projects, owner Danny Emerman opened a Borocco Beach for three years in Florida before he folded it. When the art world picked up and retrenched in Chelsea, so did the venerable eating establishment under the new guise, Bottino (opened for business in June of 1998). The food at Bottino on 10th Avenue, between 24th and 25th streets, is as consistent as the décor is subdued 1950's style simplicity. The restaurant is a kind of up-scale art world cafeteria, where you can be sure to find anyone and everyone of significance from the self-important, to the important-important.
On the other hand, a cutting edge architectural leap is manifest in the just opened :bot Restaurant on Mott Street (south of Prince Street, near Little Italy) and Glass bar (due to open in early March, located across the street from Bottino on 10th Avenue and co-owned by Fernando Henao). Architect Thomas Leeser, a German based in New York, who also designed the Grunert/Gasser Gallery in Chelsea, designed both places. His style, as apparent from the latest two projects of restaurateur and bar entrepreneur Emerman, is tubular-techno, if that can used to characterize an environment. Four by eight-foot sheet-rock, the building block of wall construction in the States, was soaked in vats of water to render it pliable enough to be molded into the curvilinear walls that make up the new spaces. Tinted glass was handily used to create a fresh, contemporary ambience, with a hint of 60's nostalgia; when the spaces are taken as a whole, they are akin to high tech Japanese subway cars. Glass being a bar is more palatable as an architectural exercise in innovation than the results of :bot, which, with its lime green walls and pink and orange accents, is almost disturbing at first. Though the meal was delicious and without complaints, the space is actually located outside with a tent-like cover and glowing heaters dropped from the ceiling above each table, which is as disconcerting as the colors. All in all, it's a good place to show friends with an architectural bent and a strong stomach, that are into disquieting day-glo-otherwise, to Bottino and pop over to Glass for an after dinner drink.
Danny Emerman, owner of Bottino, Bot and Glass, could be the first restaurateur that built a business around the art world that didn't sell paintings or build crates. Perhaps there was a bit of luck or a confluence of events that catapulted his Borocco to art world hyper status. Nevertheless, he consciously went after the art crowd with his move to Chelsea and deserves the position of court holder for the art elite.
Bottino: 246 10th Avenue (between 24th and 25th Streets). Hours: Tues. to Sat. lunch 12:00 - 3:30pm, Dinner: Tues. - Sat. 6:00 to 11:30; Monday 6:00 - 11:00, and Sunday 6:00 - 11:00. Telephone 212 206-6766; fax 212 206-6767, web: www.Bottinonyc.com
Bot: 231 Mott Street, Monday - Saturday 6:00 - 11:30. Phone and fax 646 613-1312. Web www.botmott.com Glass: 287 10th Avenue, 5:00pm - 3:00am, only cold food-light fare and appetizers such as cerviche and sashimi. No phone numbers since not open till March Specialties at the above: appetizer tuna tartre; penne with speck; and rack of lamb Thomas Leeser is from Frankfurt, and his information re: his building projects could be accessed at www.leeser.com. Please note he also designed Bottino.
From 1986 to the summer of 1999 Borocco Restaurant (below Canal on West Broadway) was a favorite art world hang out in the heyday of the Mary Boone-Schnabel-Fischl-Salle-Basquiat, rein of power. A time forever, memorably etched upon the minds of those that caught a taste of the opulence and chest-pounding heroics of it all. Signifying the premature optimism of the Miami scene in general in the mid- to late 1990's, in-between his first two NY projects, owner Danny Emerman opened a Borocco Beach for three years in Florida before he folded it. When the art world picked up and retrenched in Chelsea, so did the venerable eating establishment under the new guise, Bottino (opened for business in June of 1998). The food at Bottino on 10th Avenue, between 24th and 25th streets, is as consistent as the décor is subdued 1950's style simplicity. The restaurant is a kind of up-scale art world cafeteria, where you can be sure to find anyone and everyone of significance from the self-important, to the important-important.
On the other hand, a cutting edge architectural leap is manifest in the just opened :bot Restaurant on Mott Street (south of Prince Street, near Little Italy) and Glass bar (due to open in early March, located across the street from Bottino on 10th Avenue and co-owned by Fernando Henao). Architect Thomas Leeser, a German based in New York, who also designed the Grunert/Gasser Gallery in Chelsea, designed both places. His style, as apparent from the latest two projects of restaurateur and bar entrepreneur Emerman, is tubular-techno, if that can used to characterize an environment. Four by eight-foot sheet-rock, the building block of wall construction in the States, was soaked in vats of water to render it pliable enough to be molded into the curvilinear walls that make up the new spaces. Tinted glass was handily used to create a fresh, contemporary ambience, with a hint of 60's nostalgia; when the spaces are taken as a whole, they are akin to high tech Japanese subway cars. Glass being a bar is more palatable as an architectural exercise in innovation than the results of :bot, which, with its lime green walls and pink and orange accents, is almost disturbing at first. Though the meal was delicious and without complaints, the space is actually located outside with a tent-like cover and glowing heaters dropped from the ceiling above each table, which is as disconcerting as the colors. All in all, it's a good place to show friends with an architectural bent and a strong stomach, that are into disquieting day-glo-otherwise, to Bottino and pop over to Glass for an after dinner drink.
Danny Emerman, owner of Bottino, Bot and Glass, could be the first restaurateur that built a business around the art world that didn't sell paintings or build crates. Perhaps there was a bit of luck or a confluence of events that catapulted his Borocco to art world hyper status. Nevertheless, he consciously went after the art crowd with his move to Chelsea and deserves the position of court holder for the art elite.
Bottino: 246 10th Avenue (between 24th and 25th Streets). Hours: Tues. to Sat. lunch 12:00 - 3:30pm, Dinner: Tues. - Sat. 6:00 to 11:30; Monday 6:00 - 11:00, and Sunday 6:00 - 11:00. Telephone 212 206-6766; fax 212 206-6767, web: www.Bottinonyc.com
Bot: 231 Mott Street, Monday - Saturday 6:00 - 11:30. Phone and fax 646 613-1312. Web www.botmott.com Glass: 287 10th Avenue, 5:00pm - 3:00am, only cold food-light fare and appetizers such as cerviche and sashimi. No phone numbers since not open till March Specialties at the above: appetizer tuna tartre; penne with speck; and rack of lamb Thomas Leeser is from Frankfurt, and his information re: his building projects could be accessed at www.leeser.com. Please note he also designed Bottino.
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