The undead

This multiple edition thing is all very well, but how careful do you have to be when you buy one? Often the size of editions is vague, particularly with sculpture, and what do you do about zombie editions, the ones made after the artist’s death like Len Lye’s Wind Wand or Water Twirler? It’s all very well the current committee of Leninists (sorry but it's too good to drop) saying that these works are aok, but what happens later when others take over the role of authentication? Artists saying they want stuff made after their death isn’t quite the same as an artist controlling the development and quality of work while alive.

If you want to see the pitfalls of zombie editions you need look no further than Andy Warhol’s Brillo box sculptures. To start with there is the original set of around 98 made for Warhol’s Sable Gallery show in 1964. For his 1968 survey show in Stockholm a version of the Sable Gallery display was recreated using 500 Brillo packing boxes, the original source for the Warhol sculptures. Then, to complicate things further, a further 100 boxes were also created around the time of the exhibition but in hardboard, not plywood. 

But wait, there’s more. 

In 1970 Warhol authorised the construction of yet another 100 Brillo boxes for the retrospective in Pasadena. These ones were made slightly bigger to distinguish them from earlier examples. Now it turns out the 100 boxes thought to have been made for the Stockholm show (because the curator, Pontus Hulten, said they were) were actually made in 1990, three years after Warhol died, and put to market as 1968 originals. Zombie boxes in fact. As some collectors have paid up to $300,000 per box thinking they were purchasing Warhol authorised originals, ripples of discontent can be felt. The catalogue raisonné of Warhol’s work dates the Stockholm boxes 1968 which makes you wonder about the value of authentication committees that also have an interest in protecting the sales and reputation of an artist.

Image: The Stockholm Brillo boxes recorded and illustrated in the Warhol catalogue raisonné

Sources: Art News, Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne 02A paintings and Sculptures 1964-1969, Andy Warhol by Arthur C. Danto, Forbes, and the NYT.

Happy Happy Xmas

If you’re looking for multiple gifts for Christmas there is no shortage of choice. For $850 you can snap up Reuben Paterson’s Moustache Glass (half a dozen crystal wine glasses with attached whiskers) from Gow Langsford. Michael Lett still has copies of the Michael Parekowhai book - a stunning 600 pages of pics with a strap-on essay by Justin Paton that nicely segues into Objectspace’s offering of Glove Compartment. This limited edition of 10 bags by Vita Cochrane is available for $950. At Artspace the latest in a long list of multiples is Pukapuka Tohunga Mahi Toi a 240-page book with pressed objects by Daniel Knorr. Yours for $200, or for $150 you can pick up one of Pae White’s gorgeous letters A-Z at Sue Crockford.

The same but different

As we’ve said before on OTN, multiples offer a great way to buy art at reasonable prices and still get major pieces. Many artists like the way multiples give a wider range of people the opportunity to own and live with their work.

On Saturday in Sydney we went to one of multiple exhibitions of multiples. We had already been to Michael Stevenson’s show at the Hamish McKay Gallery and were intrigued to see what he would turn up with at the Darren Knight Gallery. The word multiple should have given the game away. It was practically the same show. As we might have expected, however, Stevenson had thrown multiplicity in the air and some of the pieces came down to earth as unique works. For instance, Bowl made from remnants of Stevenson’s version of Australian artist Ian Fairweather’s raft (yes, there was more than one replica raft constructed) was slightly different and on different issues of The National Geographic Magazine in the Knight show compared to the McKay version. The McKay exhibition also had Lance, the replica of a burnt tent pole that, simply by the way it is made will be different from the rest of the edition, and the Knight exhibition screened a copy of Introduccion a la Teoria de la Probabilidad. When you add the stories behind the works and the stories involved in their creation, the venture is enough to make your head spin. One good thing about having your head turned is that you do get to see new angles and new connections.
Image: Left Bowl at Darren Knight. Right, Bowl at Hamish McKay

China Art Objects

Check out this story on Boing Boing. Can it be true that 60% of the world's paintings come from one village in China? Someone needs to get over to Dafen and find out. An OTN cap for that person.

Comparing Apples with Apples

This week we saw Billy Apple’s 1965 sculpture Rainbow with waterfall reproduced in two very different places. The first example was as lot 11 in the latest Art+Object catalogue where it was presented as the original 1965 work exhibited in his 1965 solo show Neon Rainbows, at Paul Bianchini and Ben Birillo’s Bianchini Gallery. Apple had famously shown there a couple of years before in the gallery’s exhibition The American Supermarket where he was in the company of artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The second illustration was being displayed on the home page of Acryform a company who, along with a wide range of other work, fabricate acrylic sculptures for artists. The two objects looked to be the same, as indeed they are. In fact Rainbow with waterfall is either fully, or in part, a reconstruction of the original that has been fabricated by Acryform.

In the context of Billy Apple’s conceptual practice this is no big deal. If Billy Apple considers the reconstructed work to be another iteration of the idea, in conceptual terms it is probably no more or less important than the first example. This is the same thinking that led Duchamp to sign and date the 1964 copies of his lost 1917 sculpture Fountain with the inscription ‘R Mutt 1917’. The art market, however, is usually more conventional and, for the most part, considers works at auction, unless clearly stated otherwise, to be the original object created and exhibited by the artist. And that is why, when displaying the Apple work, Art+Auction are now accompanying it with a note pointing out that the catalogue entry has been amended to indicate that the work being described as the same as the one shown in 1965, is open to interpretation.

So what happens in cases like this? Usually the artist will either redate the work to cover the span of its reconstruction, in this case as say 1965-2006 or, as is usual with Fountain, supply a certificate that makes clear to new owners that the work is from the 1964 Arturo Schwartz edition.

The challenge for a work like Rainbow with waterfall is that for the marketplace, as soon as the idea takes form as an object, the issue of authenticity tends to crowd other ideas out of the room.
Images: Left, Rainbow with waterfall as it appears on the Acryform website, right Rainbow with waterfall illustrated in the Art+Object catalogue.

The Do Ron Ron

Our love of artist action figures and our love of Ronnie van Hout makes this a slam dunk. This limited edition Ronnie action figure is a fund raiser for the Christchurch Physics Room's 10th anniversary.

Back on the doll

After our post on Andy Warhol dolls a flurry of reports on artist action figures were sent our way. The Walker Art Center featured again (you might remember them from our Lego fixation) with artist action figure maker Michael Leavitt. He has created one-off action figures of artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dale Chihuly, Hieronymus Bosch and, you guessed it, Andy Warhol (thanks J&C). Our favourite artist action figure maker (how did we get to this place?), however, is Phil Collins. For the miniature Wrong Gallery offered by Cerealart he is creating action figures of Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gion and Ali Subotnick. They are around 30 cms high, well, Ali Subotnick is 25 cms, and come in an edition of 500. You can catch Phil Collins’ 2004 video work They shoot horses at Turbulence at the New Gallery in Auckland.