I Will Need Panels

Over at stimulusresponse is a futuristic history of an artist not fully appreciated in his own time.

Painting the town yellow

As mentioned, Julian Dashper was in New York recently.

Silly Seurat Saturday

Given the unrestrained response to our M C Escher tattoo-on-the-head post, here is another in what could become a series. This time it’s Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte on an arm, at least we think it’s an arm. For anyone wants to pursue the different ways this painting can be used and abused (live performances, topiary, ties, clothing) go here.

Cue queue

Last night we met someone who had been to Gregor Schneider’s one time only performance held at the State Opera in Berlin. We had seen Schneider’s Ur House at the Geffen in Los Angeles and a couple of his disturbing rooms at the Rubell collection in Miami, so missing this event by only a few days was a disappointment but our friend was there to join the queue to see the performance. By the time she arrived the line stretched around the block and only inched forward over the next two hours. Eventually she got to a door at the Magazin, a building used by the Berlin Opera for storage. Before being allowed to enter a bouncer asked for her address and other details, gave her a ticket, and let her into a large courtyard where another queue slowly moved forward. Her ticket was ripped again by another bouncer-type and she continued to shuffle forward. Then, after having her tickets checked for a third time, she was guided to a small door and allowed to enter in slow single file. On the other side of the door was a short corridor and at its end she discovered she was back outside on the street on the other side of the Magazin The whole event took more than two hours. For Hannah Dübgen’s more elegant accountk, go here.

Art is where you find it 7

Having seen this sculpture outside the Berlin airport terminal we promise never to be mean about public sculpture in Wellington ever again.

Three card trick

These installation shots have just reached us from Venice where the Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena installation Aniwaniwa is on course to open this Friday at the Venice Biennale. The project could still use any help it can get, but the invitation indicates at least eight sponsors (excluding Creative New Zealand) are already involved.

In a stroke of bureaucratic genius, however, CNZ satisfied its undertaking not to fund a project to Venice this year and managed to slip Aniwaniwa $24000 at the same time! The money, approved in the latest funding round, is pegged to bringing the work back to New Zealand after the Biennale has ended.

Advice to collectors 7

This story from the International Herald Tribune will ring a bell with anyone who lives with contemporary art.

“When a guest thanked Philip Johnson for his hospitality during her visit to his famous Glass House, that he had designed as his weekend home in New Canaan Connecticut, she couldn’t resist adding that she wouldn’t want to live there. “Madam, I haven’t invited you,” was his reply.”

Snap

Is there anyone who is not a sucker for before and after images? We also love those photos of views that artists have interpreted alongside the paintings. So imagine our double pleasure when, after photographing Max Beckman’s 1936 painting of Frankfurt”s railway station the Hauptbahnhof at the Stadel Art Institute, we went over a bridge, round a corner, and saw almost the same view in front of us.

Photographer’s block

Yesterday we went to visit Block Beuys at the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt. It is one of those art pilgrimages to complete soon as the word is the place will close for renovation in October. Block Beuys is a six room installation created by Beuys himself and he continued to make adjustments for years. The rooms are on the second floor of a combined museum that also features archaeology, natural history and old art. The Beuys rooms today feel rather forlorn as their fate is debated but we told you about them so we can tell you about photographing in museums. At Block Beuys we attempted to take a picture of Kate Newby and Simon Denny who were there with us. We posed them sitting in front of Beuys’ felt screened TV set which had been apart of a performance work. As we took the shot a guard came and announced that photos were not allowed. Fair enough, but too late as you can see above.

Museums have a very strange relationship with photography. At the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt, where we took the pic of Cattelan’s horse (that’s for you pm), we were able to sign up for a pass that let us take photos for personal use (and what could be more personal than blogs which are pushing an increasingly wide definition of what constitutes private use). The Museum of Modern Art in New York allows you to photograph anything you like, while many other museums have a no photographs at all policy. Often the copyright of images has long passed into the public realm so the only rationale seems to be to hold onto the commercial rights. Some museums have seen the light and put up their images of out of copyright material on the Internet. They are simply accepting the inevitable.
Images: Left, Joseph Beuys Filtz TV, first enacted in Copenhagen in 1966. Beuys later re-presented it as his only performance ever made specifically for the camera. In the performance Beuys sits in front of a felt screened TV set cutting sausage and boxing the screen. In confirmation of the confusion around copyright, you can watch the whole 10 minute and six seconds of it here. Right, Kate and Simon sitting in front of Filtz TV at Block Beuys. Please do not use this photograph without our permission (just kidding).

Blog of a lifetime post

Despite our continuing interest in CNZ’s Trip of a Lifetime Tour, we have not forgotten those of our readers who are packing their trunks and checking their first class tickets on departure on their own Summer European sojourn. Here for all of you is the very helpful Grand Tour of the 21st century site dedicated to “supporting you with our friendly hospitality service on planning and organizing your personal route through art this summer.”

Earthly delights

Andy Warhol has one, so does GI Joe and Princess Leia. So, why no action figures for Jeroen van Aken, aka Hieronymus Bosch, the iconographic Dutch painter? That’s obviously the question the folk at Talaria Enterprises asked themselves. Here, for museum stores all over the world, is the result.
Images: From left to right: Bird with letter grande and Fish with tower (from The temptation of Saint Anthony), Egg-monster and Headfooter (from The last judgement)

Look Alike XIII

As you all know everything in life is only a couple of handshakes away. On the left a soccer ball sculpture by overthenet’s favourite, ping pong artist Laurant Perbos. On the right Peter Peryer’s wonderful photograph After Rembrandt.

Of course, of course

The first work of art we saw in the first German art museum we visited? A full sized horse hanging out of the wall. And why not.
Image: Untitled 2007 by Maurizio Cattelan

New china

Our friend John Parker has been on a residency in the Fuping Ceramic Art Village in China along with other ceramic artists from Australasia. Unlike most residencies, however, this one culminated in the opening of a museum built to display the work made in Fuping. As part of the deal John worked with the local brick and tile factory to create a new series of work that is now on display. You can follow John’s account of working in China and the opening of the museum on his blog.
Images: Top, the recently constructed New Zealand ceramics museum in Fuping. Middle and bottom, work in progress and the final display.

31 days in may

if you had any sense in may, being the unnaturally mild month it was, you were outside in the sun and missed the fact that on overthenet we: felt the quality of gus mckay’s tailoring, put out a warning about comercialised art curation, pointed out all the pointy public sculpture in wellington, lamented john mccormack’s withdrawal from the cnz trip of a lifetime tour, wondered why the city gallery in wellington invited eleven art dealers to dinner, outed the speculation cover, shared your astonishment that stephen farthing ra was brought to new zealand as a hood fellow, enjoyed the art fair, announced and immediately sold out of our trip of a lifetime tour t-shirts, searched in vain for anyone involved with visual art on the cnz arts board, welcomed hamish mckay’s new gallery and sneaked a peek at the mega-parekowhai book.