Home is where the art is

If you’re stuck at home and can’t get into the galleries, the best game in town is spot-the-artwork in magazines. While following extension cords to the jam-packed multi plugs in even the grandest mansions can also be fun, it’s a bit too snake and ladders. A better source for your star art hunt is the June issue of NZ House & Garden that features collectors’ homes in its annual art bonanza.

This year though there’s another option. London-based Monocle magazine has classy pics of one home that is absolutely full of contemporary NZ art including Don Driver, Mikala Dwyer, Diena Georgetti, Ronnie van Hout, Barnard McIntyre, John Nixon, Ricky Swallow and Isobel Thom. Hmm if that sounds familiar it is because the house belongs to Wellington dealer Hamish McKay. And if you can’t get a copy off  the stand, just go here.
 
Images: (1) Mikala Dwyer and (2) Ronnie van Hout

Clocked

‘All collections are political’. That was the American artist Fred Wilson in his exhibition Mining the museum. More contentiously, ‘Possessiveness, when it appears as a symptom, is always a secondary phenomenon of anxiety.’ That was the English psychoanalyst D W Winnicott. These thoughts are here to introduce you to a couple of startling exhibitions on the business of collecting. The first is The Keeper, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, which has just opened in New York at the New Museum. At its center is Ydessa Hendeles’s Teddy Bear project (more Teddys than you could possibly imagine). We once saw it installed alongside another artwork from her collection (not a teddy bear this time), Maurizio Cattelan’s Him, a miniature figure of Hitler at prayer. The New York Times took the opportunity offered by The Keeper to ask its readers what they collect. The responses are here including one guy who collects photographs of men in lines. And this brings us to the second exhibition and one of our favourite collectors, the artist Patrick Pound. He is showing his work Documentary Intersect at the Adam Art Gallery, opening tonight. A highlight of the show is a set of around 30 postcards of the same floral clock that Pound has patiently assembled over the years. Incredibly, each card is in fact a different photograph of the same clock and, even more remarkably, each one shows a different time. Eat your heart out Christian Marclay.

Image Pat Pound installing his exhibition at the Adam art Gallery

Rules of the game

Over the last two days in Berlin we’ve been to see two private collections and they could hardly have been more different. The current trend for super rich collectors to open their own art museums has exploded in Berlin as it has in most of the rich tip of the first world iceberg. We’ve posted before about Berlin's Boros and Haubok collections but now two newcomers have joined the game and they are something else again. 

First, the good news. The Julia Stoschek collection is based in Dusseldorf but has popped-up in Berlin for six months. It’s housed in a large central city building that looks like it was once some sort of radio or television studio and for this round it’s appropriately only showing media based work. Fifty percent of what’s on show is by women artists, most of it English-language based, entry is free and the work is shown in separate rooms with often more than one work by an artist. It’s a great way to see a lot of art beautifully installed with people who are as interested as you in the experience.

The just-opened Feuerle collection is at the other end of the spectrum. If the Julia Stoschek collection is sophisticated, confident and open-ended, the Feuerle is controlling, pretentious and somewhat vulgar. Désiré Feuerle has some very fixed ideas about how you should look at his art holdings. First the descent to the basement draped in a blanket (it’s cold down there). Then the pause in a pitch-black room to ‘meditate’ while listening to a two and a half minute piece by John Cage to get you in the right frame of mind. Only then are you are allowed to shuffle into the cavernous gallery space. It’s an ex World War II bunker renovated with a creepy amount of care by John Pawson. A sprinkle of plinths and display cases feature ancient stone and metallic sculptures from Southeast Asia. Spot-lit in the darkness, reflected and mirrored, it’s a spooky sight. While ‘heart of darkness’ may have been the leading edge style in the 1970s (think Treasures of Tutankhamun at the Metropolitan Museum in 1976), such radical decontextualisation and aestheticisation is now seldom seen in public museums. This is very much a private enterprise with precise rules of engagement and no information about the works at all.  Presumably to leaven this austerity some Nobuyoshi Araki photographs of bound naked women are also hung around the walls. What could possibly go wrong.
Images: top, contemporary media art on view in the Julia Stoschek collection and bottom Asian art on show at the Feuerle collection

Stay where you are

Put a painting by C F Goldie together with an auction price of $1.175 million and odds are the media are going to suddenly get interested in the visual arts. Last night at the International Art Centre we got a flurry of excitement and a couple of interesting questions. The new owner of the Goldie was unwilling to discuss whether or not he would export the painting to China which raises the question as to just what can be taken out of the country. In fact any protected NZ artwork can only be exported if Government approval is given under the provisions of the 1975 Protected Objects Act. In the case of the Goldie approval would be all but impossible.
 
So what are the rules around NZ art being taken out of the country on a permanent basis? First and foremost it has to be regarded as a ‘protected object’. This classification is pretty sweeping and means something that is ‘part of the movable cultural heritage of New Zealand and that is of importance to New Zealand, or to a part of New Zealand.' Then, if it is over 50 years old and has been made by a New Zealand artist living or dead and is related to New Zealand, it stays unless permission is formally granted.

The 50 year rule is particularly interesting as it is now starting to affect modern artists like Colin McCahon and Don Binney and Gordon Walters. As the 50 year date line line moves forward, any of works created pre-1966 are now subject to export restrictions.

Tim Francis 1928-2016

Visiting exhibitions with Tim and Sherrah Francis could be a challenge. The first-stop-bookshop, quick look round the exhibition and then off for coffee routine was not for them. Infinitely curious and lovers of detail and history, they would stare down the works on show as if their lives depended on it. In Wellington there weren't many important openings or interesting talks (and some pretty uninteresting ones too) where Tim and Sherrah didn’t make an appearance. It is hard to believe we will never see them again as a couple coming up the stairs at 147 Cuba Street, standing around with the rest of us at openings or ushering us around their collection in Talavera Terrace. If that is a great sadness for us it must be almost unimaginable for Sherrah and a huge loss for his children and family.

Tim spent his professional life in the diplomatic service. He was one of a group of Foreign Affairs staff who from the 1960s understood the importance of culture in NZ's dealings with other nations and in particular the role the visual arts could play. The result was not only an important collection assembled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself, but a lifelong commitment to New Zealand art by many of its senior staff. The Corners, the Norrishes and the Francises all collected art as families and all had a close connection with the Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavey. His exhibitions year after year introduced this appreciative audience to works by Colin McCahon, Gordon Walters, Toss Woollaston, Rita Angus and more recently Julian Dashper, John Reynolds, Peter Robinson, Yvonne Todd and so many others. Wellington was certainly the richer for the support and sophistication of this generation of collectors.

Tim and Sherrah were always private in their obsession with art and their passionate support of New Zealand artists but their home was a revelation. Every evening with them ended for us with a leisurely circuit of paintings we came to know very well along with lengthy discussions of what was new, what was interesting, what had to be moved to make room for an addition. And always conversations about artists, about exhibitions in NZ and overseas, about books and history and what it meant to live in this place. Their travels were always focused on art whether it be to study collections they already knew well or to find new inspirations.

When Tim was Ambassador to the United States in the late 1980s, it was during the difficult period following NZ's declaration that it would be nuclear free. The United States was not at all happy and made sure that our ambassador knew this every single day. Tim quietly went about his profession and even spearheaded during this challenging period the presentation in the US of the exhibition Pacific Parallels. Thanks to his tenacity some of the greatest New Zealand paintings as selected by Charles Eldredge were secured for tour outside the country. In such a climate it was a remarkable achievement. Tim wrote in the preface of the publication of his hope that this exhibition would 'emphasize once again how many things our two peoples share, not only our language, a sense of justice, and belief in democracy but also an energetic and lively artistic tradition.' And that hat was pure Tim Francis, staunch, idealistic and a committed New Zealander.

Then there was his famous charm and self-effacing manner, always backed up with a resolve that was rarely thwarted. Put that together with Sherrah’s unbending determination and it was little wonder they so often managed to snag the very best works from some legendary exhibitions. To be part of the Wellington art scene and never again see Tim standing shoulder to shoulder with Sherrah is going to take some getting used to.

Just saying

“a remarkable collection”
“an unparalleled collection”
“this magnificent acquisition”
“representing high points in the artist’s achievement”
 “the most comprehensive representation of his oeuvre held together in any single collection”
“important masterpieces have been added”
“especially strong in late masterpieces”

The James Wallace Trust pumps up its collection of works by Tosswill Woollaston in a recent 500-word PR release.

Insiders

The most recent Art + Object catalogue features the Judith Binney and Sebastian Black collection and it gives you great insight into the idiosyncrasies of long-time private collectors. This is a collection with its heart in the seventies (about 40 percent of the works are from that decade) but it also tells the familiar story of long friendships between collectors and artists. Works by the same artists appear again and again, often personally inscribed: there are 14 works by Ralph Hotere, 12 by Greer Twiss, five by Pat Hanly and seven by Robert Ellis. And for all of you who, like us, enjoy peeking into other people’s houses to see how they have their art displayed, there are lots of in situ pics too.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, more departures from Webb’s including Charles Ninow. As the Senior Specialist he seemed to be single-handedly holding the fine art department together from what we could see. It’s anybody’s guess how his departure so soon after that of Webb’s other specialist contemporary art auctioneer Sophie Copland fits in with their recently-stated objective of focusing on the visual arts. You can download the Binney/Black catalogue here

Image: Hanly, McCahon, Hooper and Albrecht

Dog day afternoon

Imagine. You are in Italy feeling good vibes for China and thinking it would be nice to have some sort of friendship arrangement. Someone suggests art. A light bulb appears above your head as you remember that the Venice Biennale is on in a couple of months. You email China. “Please send your best friendship art. Pronto.” Large crates arrive accompanied by the artist who unpacks the contents and assembles it all in a convenient palazzo. Taking a few minutes out from your heavy party schedule, you catch a water taxi, get off at Rialto, and stroll along to take a look. The work celebrating friendship is sixty, slavering, bronze dogs in attack mode at the base of Michelangelo’s Pietá. You faint.

Images: Top Liu Rue Wang’s installation in Venice. Bottom, Michael Hill’s version of the same work installed on his South Island golf course.

By the numbers

Canadian art collector Bob Rennie estimates that a third of the 1400 artworks in his collection rise in value “astronomically.” Another third barely keeps up with bank rates, and one third are unlikely to rise in value. About 140 works represent 75 percent of the total value of the collection. More here on Bloomberg
Image: Rennie standing in front of his gallery featuring a work by Martin Creed

We’re with stupid

It’s obviously the season for open letters with the latest raising a flaming red flag over Te Papa Press. The new Chief Executive (who’s a TV guy) is pulling the plug on print - what a surprise. The idea is that all publishing will be suspended for four to five years aka indefinitely. And if you aren’t publishing, you don’t need publishers, so the staff will take a hike too, despite the awards they consistently win for Te Papa.

So all that solemn nonsense Te Papa pledged about the importance of research and scholarship, was just that. It’s probably not so surprising that Rick Ellis, a guy who has never worked in a museum in his life, would make a major strategic error like this, but the ones who really need to be called to account are the Te Papa Board. They all know exactly what they’re doing and what the implications are. This is an institution that is supposed to be (according to the Act that established it) ‘a forum for the nation to present, explore, and preserve the heritage of its cultures and knowledge of the natural environment.’ Having failed with this remit for so long now, they are simply going to abandon it.

You may be surprised to know how many of the Board members (and we’re talking about people who want to stop the publication of Colin McCahon’s collected writings among many other projects) are art collectors and like to be known as art patrons. We're talking Evan Williams (chair), Aloysius Teh, Philip Carter, and Dayle Mace.

Tragically, given that Te Papa Press is such an ardent natural history and science publisher, the science representative on the Te Papa Board, Peter Gluckman aka Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand is also involved. 

If you want to do anything about this you have two days. No rush. Or you could just cut to the chase and call a Board member. They could stop this in its tracks.
 
PS: Someone who has stood up to be counted is Jill Trevelyan without whose powerful letter, none of us would have been any the wiser about Te Papa’s latest debacle. You can read it here.

Hit and Ron

What were Webb’s up to? Three o’clock last Thursday afternoon the Parnell-based auction house sent an email to all its clients. “The law has changed for buying and selling at auction,” Webb’s announced. “On 17th June 2014, changes to the Fair Trading Act and Consumer Guarantees Act relating to auctions came into effect.” Was this some kind of educational campaign? Not really. The law changed over six months ago and the email gave no clue to what the changes were although there was a link to the Commerce Commission. If you bothered to chase that up (and had some idea of what you were looking for) you could find the relevant section around 1,000 words into the summary.

Auctioneers are now required to clearly identify when a bid is on behalf of the vendor (as is common practice up to the reserve). They also have to declare any ownership or financial interest the auction house has in works for sale. You can read the official version here.

If Webb’s was really aiming at educating the masses you have to ask why it didn’t put the info into the email? Of course what they were really aiming at was Art + Object. The rival house was only three hours away from starting its highly publicised Ron Sang auction when the helpful email hit laptops and phones. As it happened Webb’s educational efforts were unnecessary. The bidding was so fierce vendor bids never got a look-in and all the lots were clearly owned by Ron Sang. And so it goes.
 
Image: around 300 people pack the Ron Sang auction at A+O

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Skin in the game.

New Zealand’s greatest Inappropriator Rohan Wealleans (anyone who was there  must still look at the performance Wealleans's brother gave at the Queensland Art Gallery on YouTube and cringe that they all sat there and laughed) is in Thailand. Wealleans snagged a grant and is using at least part of it to learn Thai massage. So wait and watch for Rohan to return home and let his fingers do the talking.
 
Vaulting ambition 

 There’s a great Sempe cartoon about art collecting. Wellington collectors Les and Milly Paris used to have it in their gallery and you can see it here reproduced on page two of the auction catalogue of their collection (pdf here). It’s a guy talking to an art collector in a large bank vault full of crates marked Picasso, Monet etc. and he’s saying, “I had no idea you were so passionate about art.” It turns out that David Nahmad is that collector as you can see from the photograph. When asked about his relationship to the art that he keeps in a vault year after year he said, “It’s not so sad, it’s more like having children who live in Asia that I can only get to visit once a year. The important thing is not to see them every day, but to know that they exist.“ So there you are, what the hell do we all know.

Singing the blues  
  

If you ever wondered what made NZ art different, take a look at these two tarpaulin works. The one on your left was made by the American David Hammons last year and the other by Don Driver in 1978. Lookalikes for sure, but these two clearly come from different worlds. Definitely not feelalikes.

You’re an artist, of course we take you seriously  

 “Abby Tanner is content to live on her mountain creating her beautiful works of art and enjoying the peace and quiet. All of that changes when a strange golden space ship crash lands on it.” Welcome to the world of Paranormal Romance. Why are we telling you this? Because an important subsection of this very important category features artists as heroes and heroines, like Abby. Want to catch up with the cream of this crop? Then get yourself S E Smith’s Abducting Abby (Dragon Lords of Valdier, #1), Christine Feehan’s Spirit Bound: Sea Heaven/Sister of the heart #2 (“Judith Henderson was an artist on the rise—an ethereal, and haunted woman whose own picture-perfect beauty stirred the souls of two men who have made her their obsession”), Soul Catcher by Leigh Briger featuring “the tormented journey of folk artist Livia Belane, who has been stalked through many lives by a sadistic and vengeful demon”. Otherwise you can graze at the top end of this excellent genre with Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife. More (so many more) here.

OTNSTUDIO  

 Joe Sheehan is in Wellington at the moment working on his Cenotaph project. A couple of weeks before he came down we visited his Auckland studio and the pics are now up on OTNSTUDIO. So too photos of a recent visit to the et al. studio in Henderson where work for a show in the Netherlands was being finished. Then on the way back down the island we caught up with Peter Peryer and, while we’re at it, there are some new artist portraits up too.

Images: Abstracts in the et al. studio

 

Less is more

"That would be vulgar"

Art dealer Leo Castelli to art collector Robert Scull on being asked to sell him all the works in Jasper Johns' second exhibition (Scull purchased two but would eventually own 22 major works by Jasper Johns)

Wonder woman

"The art world is an old boys’ club. People tend to promote people who are like themselves. The barriers to financial success persist for women artists as well. Even for the women who have broken records at auction, their prices are still only one-third the value of the top male artists at auction—on a good day."

Barbara Lee, a Boston based philanthropist who only collects art by female artists

Collective

How interesting is it to get a look inside the homes of art collectors? #rhetoricalquestion For a start it's a chance to see art, possibly for the first time, outside the context of the good old neutral white space that's still endorsed almost unanimously by both art dealers and art museums. We're talking Space Odyssey rather than home-sweet-home. Occasionally public art museums have a swing at re-creating the domestic art experience but it's always awkward. The Auckland Art Gallery made an effort once with a patrons' exhibition (Present Company: Works Presented by the Patrons) but the result was an uneasy hybrid.

At this year’s Frieze art fair in London one gallerist (the HellyNahmad Gallery) has jumped the shark and created a set of rooms (living room and study) supposedly owned by a fictitious collector of the pack-rat archivist variety and set in Paris, 1968. According to Art Market Monitor it's “a statement against art as an asset” so who knows which planet they're living on. Still, it's a nice idea and one that has been done before by at least one artist (Elmgreen & Dragset, Death of a Collector, 2009). So now that we have dealers who clearly feel they can also make art. Oh well, there's another old and respected division of labour all shot to hell.

Images: the  HellyNahmad Gallery's installation at Freize

When art collectors pose on furniture

Private collector Valeria Napoleone

Collectors on furniture

Art Collector Indoo Di Monteluce at home, London

Hammer heads

Since the appearance of Art +Object in 2007 the Auckland auction world has been nothing if not exciting. A+O shook Webb’s initially with a super-energetic jump out of the starting gate that included smart catalogues, a front foot approach to collectors and the shock of the new. It didn’t take Webb’s long to catch up and now both houses produce catalogues that can match anything in the world for panache. Then a couple of years ago A+O scored the Les and Milly Paris collection from under Webb’s noses. Lots of talk followed about how A+O managed such a coup, most of it around massive reductions in commissions when the two houses struggled to secure what turned out to be a $4.5 million dollar sale.

Now the word on the street is that yesterday Webb’s has made another mega move with the trimming of staff, reduction in its range of sale catagories and its intention to put art front and centre. At least part of this strategy probably lies at the door of 51 percent shareholder John Mowbray. His stamp business Mowbray Collectables has struggled on the stock market since listing and he’d be looking for a leg up from the art biz.

Another player behind this tighter focus on art (and lets face it we’re talking modern and contemporary art) would have to be investment guru and art collector Christopher Swasbrook who was made chairman of the Webb’s part of the Mowbray collectables empire last year. You can see what he thinks is the sort of art that has pull by visiting his collection web site here. A+O has never been backward in coming forward when a challenge is issued so watch out for some action over the next six months.

Ground zero

“I don’t want to take credit for bringing him into the art world, but before me he didn’t really have any art.”
Art consultant Maria Brito about her client American rapper Diddy

Why is the Fletcher Trust Collection off-loading?

The Fletcher Trust is about to put 77 works from its corporate collection up on the block. It's ironic that, although the collection was started in 1962 via some pressure by Peter Webb of the eponymous auction house, it will be sold through the International Art Centre. With around 600 items this is the largest corporate collection of New Zealand paintings. While only 12 percent is being dumped in this first tranche it's still a surprise and is sure to disappoint a number of artists when it happens on 10 September.

And there's something else. Given that Fletchers aren’t exactly broke and that they're citizens of Auckland it’s hard to understand why these works haven’t simply been gifted to the Auckland Art Gallery. After all, the framing of the collection has always been in terms of its value to New Zealanders and the public interest. “The Fletcher Trust’s intention is that these paintings that constitute a unique record of the whole history of New Zealand art should be seen by as many New Zealanders as possible.”

So who's being culled? It’s hard to say at the level of specific paintings but a few names have been mentioned. Gretchen Albrecht is one. She has eight works in the FT collection including a classic 1985 Hemisphere and the beautiful Snake Charmer from 1976 but there's also a work on paper in the same territory as a large painting so selling it might be understandable in a tough curatorial purge. Ralph Hotere is also mentioned but deciding what to bump is not so easy. He has just six works in the collection and each has been carefully selected from an important period including a very interesting early Sangro painting. Then there's Michael Smither. OK one of the five paintings included (Red Chair from 1979) might get the nod if selling were critical but the other four are outstanding. As for Milan Mrkusich, picking even one of the nine in the collection as not worth keeping would be very hard to justify. The challenge with sales of course is that usually it's the best works that get the best prices.  It would be counter-intuitive to venture into the sales arena with works that that won't get great prices unless you are simply housekeeping. And that would be insulting for the artists.

Finally there's the Alfred Sharpe question. With only four in the FT collection it’s hard to see why any of them would have to go and the idea of gifting back to the nation comes up again. For instance, the national collection held by Te Papa has just four examples of Alfred Sharpe’s work in its entire collection. That's a huge historical gap that could be brilliantly filled by Fletchers.

And so it goes. You can name search the Fletcher collection here and have a go at picking the limping impalas in the herd.

Image: Billy Apple’s painting From the Fletcher Challenge Art Collection in the Fletcher Trust Collection the Fletcher