A post without a Monet pun in its heading

Te Papa may well have to go back to government with a reassessment of what the bill will be if their upcoming Monet exhibition goes up in flames or walks out the door. Last night at Christie’s Monet’s 1873 work The Railroad Bridge at Arenteuil sold at a record price for the artist of $US41.4 ($NZ52.9) million, SUS2.4 million above estimate. The painting last came up for sale in 1988 when the ticket price was $12.6 million. The price jump on Monets is comparatively recent, a previous record price of $US19.8 million set in 1998, held until mid last year.
Image: Monet mechandise

Forum

New Zealand month in the May issue of Artforum which has ads for Rangi Kipa's exhibition at Goff+Rosenthal and Michael Parekowhai in the group show Evolution at Max Lang.

The Bronze age

When the Wall Street Journal does an article on art thefts for scrap, it’s time to lock up your sculptures. The article was prompted by the theft about a year ago of John Kennedy’s The Spirit of Life. The 113 kilos of bronze were snatched in Brea California and no doubt scrapped. Since then a 2.1 meter 232 kilo bronze statue Miner has been taken from the Cathy Circle in LA. Valued at $125,000 it was expected to get about $900 as scrap.

In all the WSJ identifies eight sculpture thefts in the US over the last three years. Of course we had our own bronze age for sculpture theft in 2005. Most spectacular was Napier’s Pania of the Reef when was taken off its perch. Weighing in at 60 kilos she was probably worth around $30 as scrap but was found unharmed. There was a flurry of concern the same year when a guard was put on Wellington’s Bronze Form by Henry Moore, probably in sympathy for the one that was pinched the same year from the Henry Moore Foundation in England. In that case the 3.4 x 2.4 meter sculpture valued at $NZ7.5 million was simply loaded onto a Mercedes flat-bed lorry. The view at the time was that the Moore would be less valuable as scrap and had probably been shipped to the mysterious Argentine collector who buys all the stolen art in the world.

Meanwhile, in Wellington, Brenden John Marshall, possibly fired-up by the Pania heist, nicked a 3 x 3 metre sculpture from outside the Swell restaurant in Waikanae. Long Horizon by Paul Dibble was valued at $250,00. When he came to trial in July 2007, Marshall was also found guilty of blackmailing the owners by threatening to cut up the artwork and sell it for scrap if they did not pay a ransom. Marshall copped 300 hours of community work for his troubles. Who says art isn’t part of the real world?
A reader tells us that bronze is currently $18 per kilo. We also omitted to mention the five bronze sculptures by Greer Twiss stolen by thieves who used bolt cutters to break into the Wintergardens Fernery in the Auckland Domain in October 2007. Thanks W.

Something you don't see every day

Wellington's Peter McLeavey outside Auckland's Starkwhite

Loco

This is following up on our post about Jeff Koons’s proposed sculpture of a full-sized steam engine hanging from a crane outside the LA County Museum. Since then, we have discovered that the locomotive Koons’s suspended engine will replicate, was originally built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. So what, really? That is until you hear that the founder of the workshop that makes these monsters, Matthias W. Baldwin, started off as a jeweller and silversmith. In 1831 Baldwin was asked by the Philadelphia Museum to build a miniature locomotive for an exhibition. The miniature was such a success that Baldwin received an order for a full sized version! No big surprise then to also find out that Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia.
Image: Baldwin locomotive

March, April, Maybe not

Dr Joanna Cobley has an interview with Peter Peryer on her award winning blog, The Museum Detective, that publishes stories “from behind the scenes of the museum world”. Peter is always entertaining but we particularly enjoyed his musing over what images would be ok for a Peryer calendar.

“I took a picture some years ago of a possum with his head in a trap. Now, that is not a calendar picture.”

You can listen to the complete interview here.

Boxing on

Just as mounting images onto sheet aluminium, the lightbox has become a basic tool for art photographers. Amongst the first to use this display technique (a back-lit transparency in a fluorescent light box) was Canadian Jeff Wall who first used a lightbox to display his 1978 work The Destroyed Room in a shop window. It was part of a movement, of which Wall was a central figure, to create photographic works that would “be more akin to paintings” in scale. In some ways the lightbox has become something of a cliché, a thought that was obviously in Michael Parekowhai’s mind, when he backgrounded his sculptured piano The Story of a New Zealand River with an lightbox displaying a photograph of an outdoor panorama. Over the last few days in Wellington, a set of lightbox photographs have been unwrapped in the new Coutenay Place Park. As you can see, before the transparencies were added what we had was more like a Donald Judd installation. Now it's been revealed as photography, this time dressed up not so much as painting as sculpture.
Images: Top, before and bottom, after

Copy cat

Images: Left, Jeffrey Harris Self portrait 28 April 1976 (Auckland Art Gallery), Right Flight of the Conchords poster

Art is where you find it

Maybe not the best Parkour in the world still, where else but in sculpty-Wellington, would lads like these pass by four public sculptures by five of the …er lads. In order: Matt Pine, Ralph Hotere, Bill Culbert, Neil Dawson and Para Matchitt. And, while we’re on a guy theme, you can chuck in a couple of architects: Ian Athfield and Rewi Thompson.

Thanks guys

How ever pointy their preferences, you have to admit the Wellington Sculpture Trust has never come close to doing to us what has been done to the people of Heidelberg, Germany.
Images: Meanwhile, in downtown Heidelberg

Berenice Abbott

The first in our series Famous Photographers Playing Table Tennis

When art goes to the movies 2

Dr No will always be remembered as the first time Sean Connery said the words, “The name is Bond, James Bond” or, more likely, for Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) appearing out of the ocean holding a couple of large sea shells and singing Under the Mango Tree. But, for the art lovers who didn’t catch the Birth of Venus reference, Dr No will always be the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya.

Early in the morning on 21 August 1961 Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery in London. It had only been hanging for three weeks after its purchase by the Gallery for $392,000 to prevent its export from the country. The alleged thief, Kempton Bunton, slipped the painting under his coat and walked out unnoticed.

Dr. No was shot the following year at Pinewood Studios and premiered on 5 October. As James Bond and Honey Rider walk up the stairs to join the evil Dr Julias No for dinner in his lair, Bond spots the painting on an easel by the stairs and does a double take. "So that's where that went". In the real world the painting was recovered in 1964.
Others in this series: A Clockwork Orange, Wall Street

The April shower

Last month we: got some good oil on Larry • puzzled over why Monet is doing a come back tour at Te Papa • wondered about the Walters Prize • threw a couple of stones at a glass house • noticed all the notices at the Dowse • started our When art goes to the movies series • pondered on the rise and rise of auction houses • gasped at Hamish Keith shamelessly blaming a building for something that wasn’t its fault • tried to visit The Emporors Club and popped the question, why are public gallery web sites so…er…boring?
Image: Rain drop photographed in April

Search us

Google has just offered art themes for your Google search page. New Zealand’s Anne Geddes is represented and, as you can see above, so is one of OTN’s regulars Jeff Koons.

Twin Peaks

“Well it’s interesting that both John (Reynolds) and Peter (Robinson) have been nominated twice, and you have to wonder. They’re on such a roll in their practice at the moment, if they keep working at this level will future judges keep putting them back in as well. This is the 4th Walters, so we’re just starting to see patterns arise. So it will be very interesting if it is the same people at the top of their game that start to dominate, or if these artists have peaks and troughs in their careers and Peter and John are both at a real peak at the moment.”
Andrew Clifford, Walters Prize shortlist selector, discussing the competition on The Arts on Sunday. You can hear the rest here.