The man who bought the world

As we saw in microcosm in NZ with the Paris, Sang and Francis auctions, nothing attracts art collectors more than the flickering glow of a single collector sale. In part it’s the solid line of ownership and stamp of good taste, but it’s also very much the allure of an appealing story to go along with the work. The creation of those stories has now become a central part of the auction business. 

If you want to see the phenomenon at its peak, check out Sotheby’s gearing up to flog the David Bowie collection in early November. Bowie was no slouch in the art collecting game but you’d have to describe what he assembled as extremely personal. There are some big names and they’ll no doubt fetch the big prices but many of the works are moody and introspective which is not the usual look for auction stars. But Bowie as a personality trailing his fame and associations and emotion - what a gift! 

To promote Bowie the Collector Sotheby’s have gone overboard: moody trailers, evocative quotes from the man, slideshows of his art collector life, reminiscences from his personal art curator Beth Greenacre, lots of ‘icons’ and ‘revereds’ and ‘passions’ thrown around, and so on and so on. You can access the full catalogue here

Images: top left, curator Beth Greenacre and right, Marcel Duchamp’s A Bruit Secret estimate to sell for $311,000–432,000. Bottom, Bowie’s collection ready for sale.

Here comes d'smudge

Any conservator will tell you that one way to check on damage or over-painting is to look at a canvas under a raking (angled) light. And that’s what someone should have told Arnold Schwarzenegger when he unveiled his official Governor’s portrait. That big smudge is a clumsy patch-up blotting out an image of the Governor’s ex wife who’s portrait appeared on a small lapel pin when the painting was originally commissioned. You would have thought that of all people Schwarzenegger would have known that lighting is all.

The vanishing

“what a relief that he dropped the hyphen”
 
Über art auctioneer Simon de Pury gets in behind Jay Z coming down hard on punctuation. You can read de Pury’s excellent summary of the art-world's love affair with Hip Hop here in the Daily Beast

Careful what you wish for

The Auckland Art Gallery’s marketing department must have been beside itself. The gaggle of celebrities they'd offered free tickets to paper the $75 opening of Degas to Dali not only turned up but were also happy to mug for the cameras. But the Josie McNaught gotcha story headlined in the NZ Herald will have team marketing hiding under their desks this morning. Turns out that over 40 percent of the tickets for the Masterpiece art bash were freebies. Guess they'll all be hoping against hope that the patrons, donors and other supporters who were asked to pay can’t read.

Image: Liam Fennell, Ben Barrington and Colin Mathura-Jeffree add lustre to Degas to Dali. Photo Auckland Art Gallery Flickr set

Forever Gary

The Auckland Herald has always been keen on rich people and rich Garys are no exception. So when they herd about the lavish renovation and über styling of the Herne Bay house formally owned by the Sultan of Brunei and now owned by very rich Gary Lane they obviously needed pictures. The trouble started when they sent the celeb-pic team down to the morgue to get a ‘great Gary image’ (something with him and a champagne glass would be nice). Somehow they ended up with the wrong Gary - ArtGary, Gary Langsford - and not the RichListGary, Gary Lane, hoping no doubt that one suave Gary holding a champagne glass would look pretty much like another.

Image: Left, the wrong Gary. You can see the NZH story (with ArtGary eliminated) here

Celebrites make art: Juliette Binoche

For us the highlight of the recent New Zealand Film Festival was Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. Haneke also scored for us with Hidden a few festivals back – in fact we like pretty much everything he makes. He also delivers an OTN Celebrity painter in the form of Juliette Binoche. Binoche starred in Hidden with Daniel Auteuil and another extraordinary French actor Maurice Bénichou and it turns out the between takes she keeps herself busy painting portraits of the directors and actors she works with.

OTN US readers, you can catch the Binoche exhibition in New York 10 September to 9 October at the French Consulate and the rest of us can read a Guardian story around the UK exhibition. Art goes to the movies, celebrities make art, art working for France, the first OTN Multitasking Award goes to… (open the envelope) … Juliette Binoche.

Image: Juliette Binoche’s portrait of director Michael Haneke courtesy of the Cultural Services of the Embassy of France

Farrah Fawcett 1947-2009

As well as being a cultural icon, Farrah Fawcett is one of a few Hollywood celebrity artists to have exhibited in public art museums. In May 2003 as part of a collaborative project with artist Keith Edmeir, she exhibited her sculpture in both the Andy Warhol Museum and LACMA in Los Angeles. For the exhibition Edmeir and Fawcett made sculptures of one another, hers bronze, his marble. (Running at the same time at the Warhol Museum outing was The American Supermarket examining the famous Bianchini Gallery show that included Billy Apple.) Fawcett was an art major at the University of Texas at Austin. You can see some of her sculpture and Andy Warhol’s portrait here.
Image: Farrah Fawcett by Andy Warhol