In Auckland we had a chance to talk over with Alistair Carruthers, Chair of Creative New Zealand some of the things that drive us mad about the organisation. The good news is that he is someone who can genuinely listen to opposing views without feeling personally affronted and (witness the release of the budget for Venice) is also a staunch advocate of greater transparency around government spending.
He has a tough job to unravel a knotted-up and defensive organization that seems to us to be more comfortable working with institutions that can mirror its own processes and language rather than with individual artists. Even more problematic from the visual arts perspective is that CNZ has been leached of anyone with expert knowledge.
A good example of the challenges facing the visual arts with CNZ as a funding body can be seen in one of its recent publications New Zealanders and the arts: Attitudes, attendance and participation in 2008. The devil is always in the detail so we started with the basics and counted the images. Of the 12 full page images, nine are of the performing arts, one for literature and two for the visual arts. So that’s 75% performing and 16% visual.
This visual representation is backed up by CNZ’s allocation of funds which roughly break down to: visual arts 24% and performing arts 52%. Even participation at the Venice Biennale, as pricey as it is, comes in at only 17% of the annual theatre budget. You can see CNZ's distribution chart here.
The questions arise though when you look at the place of the visual arts in the publication New Zealanders and the arts. CNZ states that it commissioned the research to “…allow the measurement of changes in attitude, attendances and participation…” so that the findings could “…inform the development of New Zealand’s policy and implementation. This makes the report important as it will be used as a reference source and a way to justify future decisions.
So did New Zealanders over the age of 15 feel that the performing arts were over four times more important than the visual arts as suggested by CNZ’s funding allocation? Well, no, they didn’t.
First, in terms of attendances the visual arts and the performing arts are equal. 60% of people over 15 attended an event over the last 12 months of the research period, although it’s interesting to note that the category Performance/ performance arts/stage shows/live shows/performances was down 3% when compared with the previous research done in 2005 while the category Painting/drawing/different painters/visual arts had increased by 7%
Second, 61% of people surveyed thought that the visual arts best represented their idea of what the arts are. This is in contrast to 27% for ballet, 27% for theatre, 12% for drama and 16% for performance in general. (For younger people the percentage in favour of visual arts is even higher.)
Why does this matter? We believe that for some time CNZ has systematically elevated the performing arts by its funding priorities, areas of staff expertise, selection of board members and communication focus. The primary affiliations of most CNZ’s board members and staff seem to be to the performing arts and this focus is reinforced as the mainstream culture of the organization. Does CNZ have a mandate to shift public perceptions of the arts over time or a duty to reflect what their own research shows? The Colmar Brunton research shows that New Zealanders might expect more of CNZ’s funding to be allocated to their idea of the arts – the visual arts. It’s definitely time to have another look at the pie.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
The 62 percent solution: cutting the CNZ pie
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Advice to collectors
Good works still achieve good prices.
Last night in New York the Sotheby’s sale, with its meager 36 works, was hoping to bring in a minimum of $81.5 million. It managed $61.3 million. This compares with 45 lots auctioned six months ago for $223.8 million. On a brighter note, the stunning Mondrian, estimated at between $3million and 5 million clocked $9.2 million.
Image: Tobias weaves his magic
An exhibition of prints
You may have noticed our (small) ongoing thing for art and shoes. We once considered constructing a chart to track the increasing quality of curator/dealer shoes against a decline in artist footwear over the past ten or so years, but there were too many variables so now we’re sticking with anecdote.
Shortly after we put up our Auckland Art Fair shoe alert we dropped into Gambia Castle for Andrew Barber’s latest exhibition. You can see some images on the Gambia Castle home page, and shortly on Andrew’s section of it here. The paintings continue Barber’s wrestle with abstraction, but for us the horizon line won this particular skirmish. Show these paintings in the US and the idea of landscape probably wouldn’t even come up, but here it is very hard to avoid.
While preparing the space for the show Barber had sanded the ceiling and the effect of the soft coat of white plaster on the floor was so strange he decided to leave it. As people walked in they left behind them the traces of their soles, summoning up the ghost of Andy Warhol’s Dance Diagram paintings from 1962.
Images: Footprints at Andrew Barber’s Gambia Castle show
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Vote damn you
News from the Film Archive that Ronnie van Hout's 1982 video for The Clean's track Getting Older is in the top ten of their 100 Classic Kiwi Clips. Every vote counts. Get over here and do your bit for RVH.
Advice to collectors
"Does this work do something I like, or does it simply refrain from doing everything I hate?"
Dave Hickey offers up a great question in the letters section of April's Art and America.
Days of our lives
The Auckland Art Fair opened on a Wednesday evening. According to some of the people who were there it was all go, with a dog and some Australians as entertainment. That is when a lot of the big sales happened and by the time we turned up on Friday there had already been swarms of special groups through at unlikely hours like 8.00AM to get a sneak peak at the goods. Strangely, at the early-bird session the dealers were not present, which having heard some of the stories about the party on Thursday night, was probably just as well. And yes this is going somewhere.
The thing about attending art events in another town is that you really need them to be on a Friday or during the weekend. Unless you are on the tax payer or rate payer dime, a day off work is a big price to pay, and two or three all but impossible. And this Wednesday night opening trend is catching. We had booked well ahead to get cheap fares so we could catch what was to be the tripartite opening of Pick, etal. and van Hout at the Christchurch Art Gallery in July. Now we hear the date for two of the shows has been changed from Friday to, you guessed it, Wednesday.
If art museums are really interested in going beyond the local (and why wouldn’t they?) the Wednesday opening idea needs review. If there’d be a local revolt if the openings are on Friday, OK, the rest of us will have to suck it up, but it’s hard to believe. As we out-of-towners say, “Wednesday’s child is full of woe” (and, for the record, “Friday’s child is loving and giving.”)
Image: Jason, Patron Saint of Friday openings
Monday, May 04, 2009
Big Ears Part 2
At that Fair again.
Man on phone "Well, if you could just remember which one you liked, then I could go buy it for you...."
Thanks C
Big Ears
Overheard in the aisles at the Auckland Art Fair.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m transfixed.”
“I can’t believe they’ve opened the Art Fair on the first day of the duck shooting season.”
“He’s young.”
“How young?”
“Cheap young.”
“It looks like a stock show.”
“Is that bad?”
“She says it’s too big but he said that’s the way he likes them.”
“It was all fine until we had to deal with the artist.”
“They say they’re selling everything.”
“Everything?”
“Well everything they don’t like.”
Meanwhile, across town…
The Auckland Art Fair was its now traditional smooth-running self with reportedly lots of sales right through the price range. It is still a mystery why dealers, who spend most of their time running discreet personal businesses, fall into step so publicly to present art as commodity. The descriptor we most often heard for the atmosphere of the Fair from dealers? "Collegial." It’s the same internationally where art fairs have also achieved what years ago would have seemed impossible - convincing the high, the low and the medium to muck in together.
Across town in Artspace a very different take on art was in play in a performance by Alicia Frankovich. We were greeted at the door of the main gallery space by Artspace director Emma Bugden. After a brief pause she opened the door to let us in. To get to the door she had been pulling Frankovich up to the ceiling of the gallery with an abseil harness and ropes hooked over the rafters. As our group moved into the gallery she went back into the gallery lowering the artist to the floor. As more people assembled in the foyer, Bugden had to raise Frankovich in order to get to the door, welcome new spectators and let them in. For most of the performance there were about 70 people watching.
For us, along with Frankovich’s ongoing examination of stamina and the body in architectural space, it was a smart look at the relationship of artists and institutions. The director was ready and willing to lift the artist above her and by proxy lift above her weight. A kind of mutually respectful partnership. In a word. Uplifting.
Images: Emma Bugden in the service of art.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Saturday on the street
Here one for everyone out there who thinks art should look like something. Don’t fall in.
You can see more of Edgar Müller’s extreme pavement art here.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Shoe in
We've always believed that shoes make the dealer. Direct from the Auckland Art Fair the European souls of the sellers.
On the road
On the road is an ongoing series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists.
For others in the series search 'on the road' in the blog search box above.
Fight club
Anyone still holding onto the myth that Auckland has taken over as the art capital of New Zealand will feel humbled to know that, while Auckland repeats its annual Art Fair, in Wellington Hardings Furniture has stepped up with its own exhibition of a “Massive Range of Oil Paintings.”
Top ten
Top Ten Stolen Artists
Pablo Picasso
Salvador Dali
Joan Miro
Marc Chagall
Albrecht Durer
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Andy Warhol
Rembrandt van Rijn
Peter Paul Rubens
Henri Matisse
Top Ten selling artists
Pablo Picasso
Francis Bacon
Andy Warhol
Damien Hirst
Claude Monet
Alberto Giacometti
Gerhard Richter
Edgar Degas
Lucio Fontana
Yves Klein
Sources: art newspaper, artNet
