Finally

There’s been a renewed interest in unfinished works of art recently. You can see loads of them via OTNSTUDIO but it has never been usual to show unfinished work publicly. However, that said, a recent Auckland exhibition called Arrested Practice at Northcote's Northart Gallery looked at unfinished work in this case as ‘a work in progress’. But recently in New York this idea was taken to a whole new level in the major exhibition Unfinished. It included works that were incomplete for all sorts of reasons - politics, health, dealer interference, etc – and because it was organised by the Met the loans were astonishing. Included in the works that ranged across 600 years of Western art were these two paintings by Cezanne and Picasso. Their incomplete state shows the bones of the ideas which hung side by side nail why Cezanne was so essential to the development of Cubism. Something else the exhibition also resolved was the question, how do you know when an artwork is finished? You don’t.
Images: left, Paul Cézanne Gardanne 1885-86 and right, Paplo Picasso's The Sacré-Coeur 1909-10

One day in the director’s office

Director: I’m alarmed. We really do need to wake up our ideas and raise the bar.

Staff: We could make better shows...

D: Don’t be facetious. I mean pumping up our attendance figures.

S Better shows?

D: Yes, yes, very amusing …. I get it. We need something that will attract a completely different breed of punter. It’s the Trump thing. I’m thinking ....oh, I don't know... body builders or the craft-a-noon crowd or maybe, just maybe, the God Squad - they usually give us a miss.

S: We could dust off Michelangelo for them.

D: I don’t need another DWM what I’m after is - Michelangelo …the…the… WOMAN.

S: Woman plus God plus Art? .. that’s a challenge. (brightly) How about that singing nun?...

D: A nun? .... did you say nun? ...why didn’t I think of that? … a nun (quietly hums to himself ‘Dominique, inique. inique s'en allait tout simplement. Routier pauvre et chantant’).

S: I was joking…please tell me you’re not thinking of going with a singing nun… aren’t we supposed to be about the visual arts?

D: (ignoring him) Now if we go with my nun idea it’s going to have to really pop. (thinks) …POP! ….. I’ve done it again! We’ll show that Pop Art Nun, what’s–her-name.

S: Pop Art Nun?

D: (on a roll) The Great Pop Artist nun Sister Thingumy. I can see the poster already. “GOD ALMIGHTY…IT’S POP ART! “

S: But she isn’t a Pop artist.

D: Of course she is, everyone says so … PURE POP.

S: But she’s selling God. Warhol wasn’t making work to sell Brillo, Lichtenstein wasn’t shilling comics, Rosenquist wasn’t flogging F111 Bombers on commission.

D: You’re splitting hairs. …. A Pop Art Nun … holy shit…we need to get onto this right away.

And that is what they did.

When life follows art.

BREXIT

Image:  A study attributed to Benjamin West of the two delegations at the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783. After much hard bargaining, representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America agreed on conditions that were considered exceedingly generous to the US. The British delegation refused to pose for West’s painting and it was never completed. It is currently hanging in The Met Breuer in New York as part of the exhibition Unfinished.