Dealt to

The moment we saw them we figured that some artist would find them irresistible. And so Mathieu Malouf took his dealer Lars Friedrich down to get scanned and is now offering a pint-sized limited edition of him carved in sandstone and printed with his image. Still, Friedrich fared somewhat better than Emmanuel Perrotin who Maurizio Cattelan dressed as a pink rabbit/penis for his entire show or Massimo De Carlo who Cattelan gaffer-taped to the wall of his gallery for two hours at an opening.

Images left to right: art dealers Lars Friedrich, Emmanuel Perrotin and Massimo De Carlo (thanks M)

Paid in kind

In Canada artists get them by legislative right, the Norwegians base theirs on the amount of product and the duration of display, for the Swedes it’s a standard rate and the Poles attach theirs to the average monthly wage. We’re talking artist fees in public art institutions.

Some artist fees are paid in NZ by public institutions (we heard Auckland Art Gallery paid fees of $2,000 to artists included in Freedom Farmers) but they tend to be token compared to real costs. Usually artists are expected to be happy with what the Ministry of Culture and Heritage listed in a recent report as “The feeling of self-satisfaction from producing artworks which exemplify who you are as an artist” and “The value derived from your work being positively viewed by critical reviewers.” Thanks guys.

As usual any debate about fees is fuelled by context. In the museums that show art, staff salaries and conditions have increased phenomenally over the last 30 years. There is now an income and lifestyle chasm between the art professionals (the museum crowd surging ahead) and most of the contemporary artists they show (let's forget the teachers for the moment). Over the same three decades artist fees have stayed pretty much the same i.e. zero except for the odd exception. 

Even when fees are paid they are usually tied to production costs as artists today are expected to fill large spaces with work made for the occasion. Fortunately for the art museums the universities have joined the party with research funding for exhibitions by their staff although that's cold comfort for artists who haven't landed a teaching berth.

So should artists show for the love of it and the value of being "positively reviewed"? Other artists benefit directly from institutional exposure. Musicians get APRA fees and writers get some compensation from libraries sharing their books around. So here's another question. When art museums charge for exhibition entry, why don't the artists get a percentage? Creative NZ could take a lead and insist that any exhibitions it funds have artist fees in the budget.
 
A recent survey of 18,000 visual artists in the UK found that:
• 71 percent taking part in publicly funded exhibitions received no fee
• Of those, 59 percent did not get their expenses paid

Sounds familiar.

Sitting ducks

Anyone who is a regular at art openings will have been to at least one after show dinner. At worst you’re trudging the streets in a pack of twenty looking for a restaurant (“no, we won’t have to book, there’s plenty of places") or the place has been pre-booked ("there’s 30 of us now and we're two hours late, can you manage?”). Even if you get inside the doors though, you'll still be left with the biggest question of all: where do I sit? Or, even more importantly, who will I end up sitting next to?

Fortunately help is at hand thanks to some brain time by Alex Cornell. He points out that “as the diameter of the table increases so does the importance of who you sit next to.” Safest are four person round or square tables where at least one of the three should be good company and is easily available from every sitting position.

A room with two tables of any size? As Mr Cornell says, “You’re fucked.“ He explains. “Whenever you make your choice of where to sit you will always choose too soon. You can only lament as the other table’s attendance crystallizes into what is clearly the superior group. Sometimes it’s best to visit the bathroom while seats are chosen, so any seating disasters are the result of chance, and not your own miscalculation.” You can read Cornell’s comments on other table arrangements and important concepts like diagonals, quiet spaces and lonely end-seats here.

And if you want a reminder of just how bad these dinners can be, try watching the ultimate glad-I-wasn’t-there after opening party in this clip from Julian Schnabel’s movie Basquiat.

Image: 'Andy' and Co. at the diner from hell in Basquiat

Storm Warning

Brandeis University in Boston is to close its Rose Art Museum to help solve a budget crisis. The university intends to sell its 6,000-object collection that includes work by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Nam June Paik.

Warning to curators

“Today no curator can afford to be ignorant of the market. If you are, you will soon learn a hard lesson when you try to mount an exhibition by a “hot” artist. Either you will find it is very difficult to secure loans, or you may come under pressure from collectors and dealers to include particular works.”
Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, quoted in the Art Newspaper

Warning to art dealers

When the Burnison art gallery in Colorado rented out its galleries to Andy Somora and Anna Pastuszwska to celebrate their wedding last week, they probably didn’t reckon on being swamped by over 14 police who tasered the couple and put them in jail for the night. "The short version of the story is they didn't want to quit their partying," said Mike Sepic, Berrien County, Mich., chief assistant prosecutor. "If you put this in the class of wedding receptions gone bad, I guess this would take the cake."

Warning to everyone in general

It’s not often you get an art scam and maybe this is only one by association, still nothing like throwing a scare into everyone.

This email came to us yesterday from a Hye Rim Lee.

Hope things are good with you? I am sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling to Africa for a program called "Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Lack of Education, the program is taking place in three major countries in Africa which are Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria. It as been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that I found myself is very hard for me to explain. I am really stranded in Nigeria because I forgot my little bag in the Taxi where my money, passport, documents and other valuable things were kept on my way to the Hotel am staying, I am facing a hard time here because I have no money on me. I am now owning a hotel bill of $1300 and they wanted me to pay the bill soon else they will have to seize my bag and hand me over to the Hotel Management., I need this help from you urgently to help me back home, I need you to help me with the hotel bill and i will also need $1400 to feed and help myself back home so please can you help me with a sum of $2700 to sort out my problems here? I need this help so much and on time because i am in a terrible and tight situation here, I don't even have money to feed myself for a day which means i had been starving so please understand how urgent i needed your help. I will appreciate what so ever you can afford to send me for now, Please let me know on time so that i can forward you the details you need to transfer the money through Money Gram or Western Union. Have a great easter. Best Regards, Hye Rim

Yes it’s just the old Nigerian shuffle in a new unnerving disguise – this time they use the names of people you actually know. Ok, they shifted Hye Lee Rim's name about a bit, and the Yahoo address they used wasn’t anything like the right one. Still, after an opening, tired and befuddled...

Warning to collectors

“The [art world] system is making people offers they can’t refuse when it should be making them offers they can’t understand.”
David Hammons – artist

“You just make things and you sell them, you make things and you sell them.”
Damien Hirst – artist

“After you have a fourth home and a G5 jet, what else is there?”
Amy Cappallazzo – Christie’s on rich people buying art

“Will young artists having 30-month careers be able to also have 30-year careers, or are we simply eating our young?”
Jerry Saltz – New York magazine

These comments and more in Jerry Saltz article Has money ruined art? in New York Magazine. You can read the article here.

Image: David Hammons Too obvious (shells and porcelain) 1996