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

A big hit with the rich

In the United States, the land that doesn’t do metaphor, extreme food specialist Jennifer Rubell has created a six meter high Warhol piñata. That’s one of those things that you beat the shit out of until it breaks open. As Andy might have said about his face being bashed in by up-market party-goers at the Brooklyn Museum, “Wow.”

Thanks W

That’s sweet of you Andy

Warhol chocs available from Ligne Blanche, Paris and selected art museums

Naked on Friday

Kim Cattrall has never been one for keeping her clothes on with a full-on naked life preceding her Sex in the City jag, so when the National Gallery in London was building a fund last year to keep Titian's Diana and Actaeon in the country, it seemed only natural for Cattrall to strip for art’s sake. Fifty-two year old Cattrall boldly went naked alongside a much younger group from the cast of La Clique. The resulting copycat (it really doesn’t qualify as a lookalike) apparently brought in a few pounds and helped the cause. Now Cattrall is on a roll as new Titian paintings featuring naked women are threatened with export. As we write, Kim is stripping off to do a version of Titian’s Diana and Callisto. You will be pleased to know that Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Lucian Freud are supporting the campaign by petitioning the Government.

Images: Top left, Titian's Diana and Actaeon, right, the Cattrall version with Cattrall second from right. Bottom, opportunity knocks with Titian’s Diana and Callisto

Space cadets

On Thursday 19 November at 6PM Over The Net will open a new space to show art that doesn’t get seen very often in Wellington. Not sure how many shows there will be or how long they will run but our thinking at this stage is that shows will be open for a couple of weekends after an opening. We’ll also arrange to open up during the week if you text us. We will try to be as flexible as our lives allow.

We have set up a blog for the space called On The Table where you can read more and see what it looks like.

We’ll announce the first OTT exhibition later this week.

The good old days

Auckland

Madness

It’s hard to believe that a humour magazine started in 1952 could still be publishing much the same kind of stuff over 55 years later (MAD was started by Harvey Kutzman as a satire on other comics). Over the years MAD has looked at art and used art clichés on its covers many, many times. The two covers illustrated here were published nearly 50 years apart but both rely on the same basic idea – art is as dumb as anything else in the world. These MAD musings were triggered by news of the magazine reducing its monthly publishing schedule to once every three months. In true MAD tradition editor John Ficarra said, “The feedback we’ve gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny. So we decided to just publish those.” You can see some MAD art parodies of Norman Rockwell here on OTN Stuff along with other art-related features including the MAD fold-out which we have posted on before.

Crowd pleasers

How many art works are there in the world that always have a crowd in front of them? The Mona Lisa is always top of the list of course. You may recall the Hirst look-alike and Brian Joseph's image of a mob photographing her like she was Paris Hilton getting out of a sports car. Then there’s Michelangelo’s Pieta in St Pauls, The Nightwatch in Amsterdam and the Sistine Chapel as well as Picasso’s Guernica to prove that twentieth century works can have pulling power. Remember the flash-crowd activity around Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull?
We’re talking about the works that people want to experience simply by being there. This desire triggers a classic blockbuster effect. People crowd in to see a work. Security and space are increased. More people wonder what the fuss is about. Repeat.

In New Zealand it’s hard to think of any major crowd pleasers although Neil Dawson’s Ferns in Wellington’s Civic Square comes close. You’d think Rita Angus’s Cass would be a contender, but it has always been crowd-free when we’ve been around. The same with McCahon’s Northland panels. This sparseness is partly a result of the number of visitors but also the lack of consensus over our icons. If you can think of a New Zealand work with crowd status, drop us an email, we’ll start a list.