The Dotcom boom

“It is not very significant, appealing to unsophisticated nerdy types."

Art critic John Daly Peoples in the NBR responding to the following confiscated art works in Dotcom’s art collection: a fiberglass sculpture, imported from the United Kingdom, In High Spirits, Olaf Mueller photos from The Cat Street Gallery, a Predator Statue, sculptures by Christian Colin and an anonymous Hooded Sculpture. (Thanks H)

They're at it again. This time it's Ralph Hotere like product for the Auckland motorways.

When art goes to the movies: Jackson Pollock

No big surprise to regular OTN readers that much of the art you see in the movies is made for the occasion, whatever the signature. Usually this task is taken on by the movie's art department but in the case of Pollock, enter Method actor (so Method he collapsed on set with the strain of playing the part) Ed Harris. Determined to make a uniquely accurate account of Pollock’s life, Harris spent a couple of years working in the artist's style making it plain that the only person who was going to paint the paintings in the movie was Ed Harris. “I'd been painting and drawing off and on since I became committed to making this film. I had a little studio built so I'd have enough floor space to work on larger canvases.” You can see Harris painting a tribute Pollock-like product (although on a canvas leaning against the wall rather than on the floor) and compare it with the real Pollock painting.
Image: Ed doing a Jackson

Nearly curtains for Campbell

For six years now, once a year, the artist Campbell Patterson has been lifting his mother off the ground for as long as he can and videoing the result. The six resulting videos (the seventh is due to be made soon) were all shot in front of the curtains that hang in the home of Patterson’s parents. Trouble loomed when the parents got on the move and the house was put on the market. When Patterson asked them to save the floral curtains, they made it a condition of sale. The curtains were taken off the list of chattels and are leaving with them.

Image: Campbell Patterson lifting his mother in 2007 in front of the signature floral curtains.

Roadside Serra

If American sculptor Richard Serra were to visit Auckland and take a ride along the Upper Harbour Highway, he might be forgiven for thinking he had been either ripped off or weirdly honoured by Auckland Transport. Alan Gibbs might be less amused. It was Gibbs who commissioned Serra’s great work Te Tuhirangi Contour on his Kaipara farm. No way the noise control walls alongside the winding Harbour Highwaycould have been designed like this without the precedent of Richard Serra’s work. To add insult to injury they have been painted orange, a clear reference to the rust coloured original. Still these Serra copycats are a major step-up from the gecko and the pohutakawa, no one is likely to raise a hand to say their work had been copied in those two cases. But with everyone getting so snotty about Mr Dotcom ripping off creative content on the internet, spare a thought for Richard Serra.

Images: Top and bottom left Auckland Transport's effort. Bottom right Richard Serra's Te Tuhirangi Contour

Branded: Garth Tapper

The moment when artists become brands

Dotty

More on the Damien Hirst spotathon. There’s been a winner in his global spot the spots chase and it is 27-year-old Valentine Uhovski, a former Russian child star, socialite and Hirst groupie. In one week he travelled the required 30,000 plus miles to check in on each of the Damien Hirst Gagosian exhibitions dotted around the world. 

Uhovski’s reward is a Damien Hirst print (yes, a spotted one) and the latter day Phileas Fogg has predictably told the media that ‘no way’ would he sell it. Hirst himself has famously said he only ever painted five of the spot paintings himself because he found the process more boring than bat shit (or something like that). Not the experience of the 760 registered spot seekers three of whom have already completed the task.

Image: Dot Boots created by Spanish designer Manolo Blahnik and Damien Hirst in 2002.

That was then

Andy Warhol puts out his experience to the editor of Harpers Magazine in 1949 soon after he arrives in New York fresh from arts school. In our day of finely crafted pages (and pages) of cvs and personal profiles it’s hard to imagine AW getting anywhere with this kind of self-deprecating note. As you can probably guess, he nailed it.

Thanks again to Letters of note

One day at the advertising agency

Ad guy: … and so these robots which are actually Daleks - “exterminate, exterminate” - and they are huuuuge with robot arms that can fire out death and destruction only instead they will be firing out Jeff Koons' Balloon Puppies because it’s all about power and your power company and how Jeff Koons is one of the most powerful artists in the world and the Balloon Dog is one of his most powerful images so it’s a power, power combo. And that’s why the small little people are waving at the Dalek because they are so amazed to see these giant stainless steel puppies coming out of the Dalek arms instead of a hail of bullets or laser beams … Power.

Client: Whatever.

Image: Poster for Powershop.co.nz

On the road

Another examples of the Ministry of Transport celebrating the lives of artists young and old, living and dead, throughout the land.

Beknighted

First up, let’s be clear that although we're grateful to all those who put us up for New Year's honours, we’ve heard via the back door that OTNOBE sounds too much like a Star Wars character to be acceptable. In any case OTN has a no-knighthoods-for-us policy meaning we can look at art honours with some sort of weird dispassion. 

In so far as knights and dames are a measure of the country’s love and respect, the arts ain’t getting much and the artists even less. As Hamish Keith mentioned in a recent Listener column there have been very few NZ artists recognised. Ever. Woollaston was one (which meant that Peter McIntyre missed out as it was beyond a Muldoon Government to acknowledge two artists at a time) and so too were Peter Siddell, Louise Henderson, Robin White and Eileen Mayo. Then there are Ralph Hotere and Cliff Whiting who were awarded the ONZ. 

We like to think that Colin McCahon told them to stick it (a nice thought, but it might not be true) and that most of the deserving rest (you know who they are) refused to have her majesty’s sword anywhere near them.

Nuts

However often we say we'll never do it again, the fact remains that OTN is the go-to place for animal art. Of course with over four and a half years experience we have developed a rigorous selection process to chop out random animals doing things that needy readers want us to believe is art. This squirrel just squeaked in (stand by for the mean-spirited to say it's only chewing on the end of the paint brush). Hope you enjoy this rare look inside an animal artist's studio.

"When I go to the roof top of a high-rise building, I feel an urge to die by jumping from it. My passion for art is what has prevented me from doing that."

Yayoi Kusama

Soldier on

Might as well start the year as we mean to go on with a sculpture made of something weird. This time it's little soldier figures (come on, at least it isn’t made by a horse or an ant or a dog). In fact this is made by human being Mr Joe Black (his website claims “If it’s small enough I’ll stick it down”). Black amassed 5,500 toy soldiers and created a 3D version of Robert Capa’s famous March 1938 Life magazine cover photograph Boy soldier, Hankou, China. The photo spread was part of the magazine's coverage of the Nanking Massacre that started in December 1937. You can still buy a copy of the magazine with the Capra cover.

Image: Left Joe Black’s sculpture Big China, Right top, detail of the Black work and Right below, the Life cover with Capra’s photograph

Art in the workplace

Art hard at work in the foyers of the world