Friends

The current exhibition Julian Dashper and friends at the City Gallery approaches Dashper through the way he collaborated with other artists. It brought to mind a time when Julian worked with Michael Smither. They were both in Wellington and spent an afternoon or two making drawings on large sheets of Steinbach paper. Julian - who could never cram enough metaphors into anything - loved the reference to McCahon's famous seventies black and white works on Steinbach. From memory the two came up with complicated free-style pencil drawings with Michael Smither-rock shapes included in most of them. Who knows where they are now, although having said that Marie Shannon probably does. Julian had already shown his interest in Mike’s work back in 1987 when he made the painting Young Nick’s Head featuring Smither-like rocks as a central motif. We were reminded of this friendship when we found this photograph of Michael Smither drawing Julian on New Year’s Eve just an hour or so before 1992.

Image: Michael Smither (left) drawing Julian Dashper 1991

Art of darkness

Walking along the New Plymouth foreshore it’s impossible not to think of Michael Smither and his well-known series of rock paintings. Michael once told us that the paintings started with an appalling toothache that wouldn’t go away. Concentrating on painting the hundreds (maybe even thousands) of rocks helped him cope with the pain. The rock pools also stepped in for his ongoing struggle with the iconography and metaphors of the Roman Catholic church. The blue of the water was Mary’s blue and the invading waves Smither’s own way of representing the doubt that assailed him in those years. Those rock paintings would have found a good home in the Govett-Brewster’s current exhibition Heart of darkness as would, of course, Smither’s merciless paintings of his children.

Reframing

The art auction season is gearing up to start again and Webb’s has just released its latest broadsheet to attract lots and tout the benefits of the art market. To read it you wouldn’t think it was possible to lose a dime investing in art. This of course goes against the long-held wisdom of the art world that believes (well says anyway) you should only buy art for love and not for profit. 'We'd never dream of selling” is a commonly heard statement from art collectors (until they do). Even great collections usually find themselves on the market in the end.  Take the stellar selection of work put together by the Gibbs. It's been well published, much shown and seemed set in history, until it wasn't. In that case of course the sales have been paralleled by very generous gifting to public institutions.

Can you make money out of art? Sure you can. Should you? Why the hell not?
Here are a couple of random examples from auction records:

Colin McCahon, Let be, Let be was held in private hands for 14 years and sold for a profit of $38,000 per year for each of those years.
 
Bill Hammond, Zoomorphic lounge was held for 12 years and sold for a profit of  $10,000 per year.
 
Tony Fomison Hilltop watcher  was held for 10 years and sold for a profit of  $7,500 per year.

Michael Smither’s Family in a van was held for 26 years returning about $7,500 per year.

And these are two-times-to-the-block resales. As the Les and Milly Paris auction showed, there is also a heap to be made on first-to-auction sales probably around $10,600 a year for the 37 years they owned Gordon Walter’s painting Mokoia.

So you want to make money collecting art? OK. Buy figurative paintings. Always buy the most typical and attractive-looking works of the top-ranked artists.  And remember, there are only ever a very small number of artists who sell for high prices. Forget sculpture and ignore anything unusual. Now fly my pretties.

And counting…

One thing about adding stuff into OTNSTUDIO is how quickly it grows. As of today we have 37 artists on the site and 81 studio visits. This is a mixed blessing really as now things are a little harder to find. Hmmm…we might have a go at doing a visual index. Today though we've added to the problem by putting up four more records of studio visits. The earliest are a few images of Julian Dashper taken in 1989. Julian was clowning around doing impressions of artist poses (we’ve already posted these on OTN) and finished up by posing as himself. About the same time the following year we were with Michael Smither who was painting a detailed self-portrait that you can see in its early stages. The Lillian Budd pics are from January 2000 and as per the wishes of the Estate Lillian Budd's image has been redacted. The most recent photos are from Glen Hayward’s studio in Wanganui. He is the current Tylee Cottage resident in Wanganui and that’s where these pics were taken.

Image: Glen Hayward in his Tylee Cottage Residence studio, October 2014

 

Auction fever

If you were wondering how NZ's two main contemporary art auction houses differ, Wellington was the place to do it last week. Both Art + Object and Webb’s did the man-in-a-van thing and brought down samplers of what's coming up in their next auctions. One (A+O) showed their wares in the white cube(ish) spaces of 30 Upstairs on Courtenay Place and the other (Webb’s) on the dark panelled walls of The Young up the hill.

A + O promoted their offering via one of their distinctively oversized catalogues while Webb’s returned to a more conventional Sotheby’s-like format complete with a magazine front section.  Both catalogues featured a fold out, Webb’s for Bill Hammond and A+O for Ralph Hotere.
 
As usual the core offerings are pretty similar. Both include Michael Smither (two sixties domestic paintings), Peter Robinson (A+O four, Webb’s six), Michael Illingworth, Peter Peryer (both offering his portrait of Christine Mathieson, Webb’s with a low estimate of $5,000 to A+O’s $7,000), Pat Hanly, Michael Parekowhai (A+O a couple of photographs and Webb’s a maquette for the rejected 2002 proposal for The Christchurch Square), Don Driver (both including a work featuring sacks spills that could have been made the same day but are in fact separated by 14 years) and  Frizzell (A+O two, Webb’s six).

And the differences? A+O have works by Ted Bullmore and Julian Dashper on offer, Webb’s have half a dozen by Ralph Hotere,  a couple by C F Goldie and six works by Bill Hammond.

Of course the big difference is in sheer volume. Webb’s are presenting 103 lots that they are hoping will fetch (on low estimate) $3.15 million. A+O are going for $1.96 million (on low estimate) from 69 lots. Webb’s are putting up seven works valued over $100,000 on low estimate to A+O’s two.

So 26 November for A+O and two days later for Webb’s. Game on.
Images: left, A+O present Smither at 30 Upstairs and right Smither via Webb's at The Young

The active I

New Plymouth is many things, but one of them will always be Michael Smither. There are few painters who lavished as much emotion on a place as Michael did. Sure he can also lay claim to Central Otago and parts of the top of the South Island, but it’s Taranaki, the coastline, suburbs, people and places that are his as much as Cookham will always be Stanley Spencer’s or celebrity Andy Warhol’s. In the few days we were in New Plymouth it was impossible not to see his paintings constantly. The Gables where the young Smither children played out on canvas Michael’s own childhood, the beaches he struggled to save, Pukekura Park, that mountain Taranaki. Here are a few images of Smither Land. You can see more of the Smither eye in Michael Smither Painter published by Ron Sang.
Images: Top to bottom, left to right, Taranaki, the Gables, Pukekura Park, Alfred Road Bridge, boatshed Pukekura Park.