Take no prisoners

“Winners win, losers lose. Shoot the wounded, save yourself. Those are the rules." 

Dave Hickey describing the art market as he takes his leave

Striking gold

When Karl Fritsch was offered an exhibition at the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus in Hanau, he decided to take advantage of the fact that one of the local businesses was a gold smelter. The company was responsible for melting down unwanted jewellery into bars of gold and other metals and alloys and Fritsch saw an opportunity to get some raw material. Peering into a huge bin of jewellery of all kinds Fritsch immediately wanted to start working with it and to reconstruct the old rings into new works. Unfortunately that wasn’t on. The foundry was legally obliged to render all the material that was sent to it. Security around the gold bullion was also very tight so when Fritsch eventually asked to borrow a kilo he didn’t have high hopes of scoring. Turned out he walked out of the foundry with a kilo of gold in a plastic shopping bag. The end result of Fritsch + gold + hammer was three beaten bowls, one sold, one on hold and the third to escape being melted back into ingots by taking pride of place at the smelter who intend to use it for display at fairs. As a quid pro quo Fritsch is thinking of making a bigger gold bowl by taking his shopping bag along to fill up with 5 kilos of the stuff. 

Images: the raw gold ingots in store. Bottom, Goldene Schale by Karl Fritsch

Good bye Possum

“We would like to have said farewell."
Locals from the Cardrona Valley in response to a “larger than life” bronze statue of the rally driver Possum Bourne being removed from its hill-top plinth above their valley and taken to his hometown of Pukekohe. Full story here in the NZH

Art in the movies: Arbitrage

Anyone who catches the new Richard Gere vehicle Arbitrage will immediately connect it with Wall Street the famous greed-is-good pic. While Arbitrage is not so hot on great one-liners, once again art is used to supply the fabulous wealth metaphor and like Wall Streets I and II the art is real-stuff borrowed in. According to the New York Times the budget for getting art onto the walls of the various locations was $US60,000. 

All this spending on packing, transport, lease and copyright fees was in the charge of critic/curator/consultant Linda Yablonsky who writes for the NYT, Artforum and other art mags. Her selection includes a number of artists whose work is fairly easy to recognise in the film including Donald Baechler, Brice Marden, Laurie Simmons, Alexander Calder and Marilyn Minter (and we did spot the inevitable Mock Rothko in the background of one shot). On a more local note, a good deal of the art came from the New York dealer Salon94 that has Francis Upritchard in its stable although we didn't spot a Upritchard sculpture up on the screen. 

Then, as the movie includes the now almost mandatory female art dealer as a key character, an opening had to be arranged. The subject of this solo exhibition is photo-realist painter Victor Rodriguez who was the choice of the movie's director Nicholas Jarecki (sorry curatorial team but that’s what directors do best). Given that the production was using Vic’s apartment on White Street in Tribeca (it used to be the famous Mudd Club – Basquiat, Haring, Madonna) for the gallery location there are no surprises there.  

OTN PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: as anyone in the film world will tell you (unless they are on the hunt for a location) never, ever, under any circumstances, let a feature film crew into your house, apartment, office or boatshed.

For most of Arbitrage art pretty much serves as I-am-rich wallpaper although a Brice Marden does get a small speaking part when the mogul (Gere) praises his art dealer and girlfriend on the side with, “She bought me these Brice Mardens here and over time they’ve gone up in price.” Spoiler alert – it doesn’t help her at all, not one little bit. 

Images: Left Robert Miller (Richard Gere) walks past Ryan McGinley's Dusk flip smoke strip and right Detective Michael Bryer (Tim Roth) partly obscures a blurry Brice Marden. Bottom, the mock Mark Rothko

Ain't that brand

Billy Apple headlines the latest Frieze magazine in a massive 5500 word interview with Anthony Byrt. The reason for all this? Barrie Bates became the brand Billy Apple 50 years ago. 

And the reason for the brand? “The brand was also a way to get away from the New Zealand connection. Suddenly, you’re from nowhere, you’re brand new. I became British – I was created there in 1962. I could say: ‘Billy Apple was born in London,’ and a lie detector wouldn’t twitch.” 

Apple and Byrt also talk about Apple’s advertising career and some of his key campaigns, his coming to New Zealand after his life in the UK and US and his quest for immortality. “Just like any true immortalisation process, the project is ongoing, and could go on forever. It has no perceivable end.” 

You can read it here

Prize list

Now that this year’s Walters Prize has been awarded, it seems certain that the Prize is in for some tweaking. The $50,000 prize has been handed out six times but if this year it was possible for the jury to make a selection based on exhibitions they had not seen. You can see a copy of the current rules here that clearly state that at least one member of the jury must have seen a nominated exhibition. Whoops.  Knowing nominated exhibitions determine what artists are required to present at the Auckland Art Gallery that feels fair enough. There’s got to be a way to exit this hall of mirrors.

The success of the Walters has certainly been due to the very open rules in place from the outset. It's been a tribute to the sponsors that the Prize has been allowed to find its own style. Bringing in an international judge has been a huge success (although it would be great if they could spend some more time here) and this year's Prize has apparently attracted the biggest audiences so far. As for the suggestion that it’s an Auckland prize, well, the rest of us might just have to get over it.

Here then our top 10 list of how to improve the current format of the Walters Prize. 

1) Drop naming a single exhibition per artist in the shortlist and return to selecting “works or bodies of work“ that has made an “outstanding contribution to contemporary art in New Zealand in the two-year period”. The jury could then include overseas exhibitions in their consideration without having to see them all.

2) Leave it to the artists to decide how to represent the body of work in discussion with the Auckland Art Gallery. If it is based on one exhibition, fine, if not, fine also.

3) Name the jury members at the start of the process. We don't understand why they are supposed to be anonymous to each other and every one else. More discussion and debate has got to be better than none.

4) Arrange for the jury to meet a few times during the two years. At present jury members work in isolation, better to let them compare notes, share ideas and check they are getting the best coverage of work between them. 

5) Make it a condition of selection that jury members agree to talk to the media.

6) Offer the overseas judge (one of the best and most important features of the Walters Prize) the opportunity to meet with the shortlisted artists before deciding on the winner. Not compulsory but it might be useful for some. 

7) Continue inviting past winners to the Walters Prize event - people love a sense of growing tradition.

8) Give the artists who don't win the Prize some more love. Sure they get a very generous $5,000 but on the night there could be less winner-takes-all. Champagne, flowers, a moment in the spotlight.

9) Dump the dinner for drinks and something more lively that doesn’t involve a string quartet.

10) Make the Walters Prize acquisitive. Good for the artists, good for the Auckland Art Gallery, good for the public.
Image: Kate Newby Yes

Tied up

A Christo lookalike hanging out in Newtown

Waterworld

The disastrous floods that hit New York with Hurricane Sandy proved very destructive in the Chelsea art dealer precinct. Here are a few of the more poignant photographs (click on image to enlarge).

Top two rows, during and after the waters.

Second row left, a Carl Andre sculpture is left outside the Paula Cooper Gallery to dry with rust already forming. Centre, even industrial roller doors were buckled by the flood waters as they raged through to the street level gallery of David Zwirner. Right, pumping out the gallery.

Third row, tide lines at David Zwirner, Gagosian and an unlucky crate

Bottom, in one of the few moments of dark humour the appropriately named artist Mark Flood tempted fate at the Zach Feuer Gallery which like many of the ground floor galleries it is currently closed.

More photos and info here on Michael Neff’s Pinterest

Images: Top to bottom, left to right, photographs by Lindsay Howard, Art Fag City, Linda Yablonsky, Linda Yablonsky, Michael Neff, Katya Kazakina/Bloomberg, Katya Kazakina/Bloomberg, Julia Halperin and Zach Feuer 

Never mind the quality

Our local plant shop (left) does its bit to help Michelangelo’s David to man up.

Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com snakepit closes mid show as bulldozers circle • word on the street puts the price of the gursky photo purchased by the auckland art gallery at around $800,000 • as the sole agency battles heat up ivan anthony instructs peter mcleavey to stop selling liz maw and andrew mcleod and to return their unsold works to him in auckland • in the meantime derek cowie has returned from london to front the peter mcleavey gallery for a while • the building that used to house the aag’s new gallery is going food court on the ground floor • hopkinson cundy have nailed a berth at frieze new york in 2013 • te papa also stumps up $86,000 for allen maddox’s painting ‘wanker’ at the les and milly paris auction • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud rewarded.

For the bottom of the market

It’s been around four years since we last pointed you to the competition Donald Judd or Cheap Furniture (and it remains one of the most insightful art quizzes ever compiled) so here it is again to help you while away Saturday morning. On its first outing here Julian Dashper scored a 10 out of 10 so there’s something to aspire to as well. 

Then, to show we don’t just do repeats, here is some artist furniture you don’t have to guess over.  (click on images to enlarge)
Images: Artist furniture top to bottom, left to right. Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali, Donald Judd, Joseph Beuys, Christo, Allen Jones, Franz West, Rachel Whiteread and John Chamberlain

As himself

Giovanni Intra appears as himself in Chris Kraus’s latest novel Summer of hate. Kraus, who spent time in New Zealand when her father worked here in the seventies, became a friend of Intra’s in LA around the time he and a Steve Hansen set up China Art Objects the first dealer gallery to move into LA’s Chinatown. You can read more about the book and Kraus here at GalleristNY 
Image: Giovanni Intra 2001

One day in the publisher’s office

Editor: I think it’s about time we did another big New Zealand art book. 

Publisher: Lavish. 

E: Huh? 

P: Lavish. Art books. We call them lavish. You know, not big, Lavish. Or sometimes big and lavish. But never just big. 

E: OK then, a lavish art book. Something that picks up the threads and weaves them together to create an image of our culture. 

P: A history of painting in other words. 

E: I was thinking more than that, like, you know, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, video .... 

P: No, no, let’s stick with painting. Less complicated, more popular. It's what people expect when the see the word art.

E: But we already have a book on New Zealand painting. 

P: We do? 

E: Yes. 200 years of New Zealand Painting. We published it back in 1971. 

P: Great. Then let’s update it. 

E: We already did. 

P: Damn. How long ago? 

E: 1990 

P: But that was … I don’t know … lots of years ago. 

 E: Eleven. 

P: Brilliant! We could call it the cricket update then. Maybe get Martin Crowe to do an intro. 

E: I’m sure I can find some art person to do it ... hopefully. 

P: Oh… OK. (counting on fingers) I’ve even got a title. Ready? 

E: (on the verge of tears) What? 

P: It's obvious really. 241 Years of New Zealand Painting. 

Which is almost what they did.

OK, so last year we said there was nowhere more tasteless to go after the Francis Bacon tie, but then they gone done the Figures at the base of a crucifixion cushion.

McCahon sat here

Colin McCahon once famously wrote on a drawing of the cliffs at Muriwai: “McLeavey sat here”. But where did McCahon sit? If Trade Me is anything to go by for at least some of the time it was on a Scandinavian-style couch with a small bench end that doubled as storage space. And yes, this piece of furniture refurbished has now ended up online with an ‘opening bid’ of $1000. 

According to the seller it was purchased from descendents of Colin McCahon who said that it had originally been used by him but when it became tatty, it had been given to them for a flat. After being passed around the family for a number of years, the current seller purchased it with its original “faded blue weave” (for any McCahon obsessives out there).

You can bid for the couch which is now “covered in a very expensive linen” here. 
(Thanks for the heads-up P)