The writings on the wall

One obvious difference between dealer art galleries and public art galleries is the lack of explanatory wall texts attached to the art works. While it is often interesting to have lots of information about the works you are looking at, wall labels can be just as easily a diversion, as well as a design challenge. Where did these explanatory labels come from? You can find the answer in Riches, Rivals, and Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America by Marjorie Schwarzer. This volume includes an essay on wall texts by Ingrid Schaffner. As this American Association of Museums book has more than you, or we, could possibly want to know about wall labels, a few highlights.

Shaffner notes: “In 1857 the British House of Commons passed a rule ‘that in national museums objects would be accompanied by a brief Description thereof, with the view of conveying useful Information to the Public, and of sparing them the expense of a Catalogue.’

And then: 'By 1890, labels were printed for general distribution. They regularly ran to 300 words and threatened to turn exhibition displays into textbooks.'

Wall labels were brought to contemporary art museums by Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Pre-Barr labels were attached to the frames of the paintings. Barr (no relation) moved them onto the wall and added extra details about the work. Now you know.

Image: Reading labels in Brussels

Advice to collectors 9

Avoid social realist sculpture. (storage problems)

Inflation theory

Anyone who saw Michael Parekowhai’s inflatable rabbit Jim McMurtry in the foyer of the Christchurch Art Gallery knows the dominating scale inflatable sculptures can bring to even large architectural spaces. Take sculpture outdoors and achieving scale is a very different proposition. For a start, nature is really good at it. At the Middelheimmuseum in Antwerp, Paul McCarthy is exhibiting nine gigantic inflatables and a gallery full of the models and drawings that were part of their production. McCarthy maximised the scale of the already immense works by placing them in discrete areas of a large sculpture park. Framed by trees, many of which the sculptures match in height, McCarthy used the cultivated nature of the sculpture park to frame and highlight the work. And of course coming across a 30 metre high butt plug around the corner from a Henry Moore had its own special surprise value.

Images: Top, left to right, Black plug, Piggies, Daddies tomato ketchup. Bottom, White head

Don’t mention the war

... in Frankfurt
The Museum fur Moderne Kunst’s collaboration with the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan on a so far undetermined number of installations to build to a major exhibition. One of these installations, Ave Maria, is at the back of the Museum in its own exhibition space. Three upraised arms push out of the wall in the Nazi salute. When we saw it a school group of teenagers arrived around the same time. They were both embarrassed and shocked. Most of them immediately backed out of the space and then after some laughing and talking they edged back in for a second look.

... in Amsterdam
The German artist Jonathan Meese’s installation Jonathan Rockford (don’t call me back, please) at de Appel Centre for Contemporary Art in Amsterdam, fills three large rooms with his signature overload of historical images and icons. In the first space Meese has historicised himself in relation to a number of the figures who have populated his work like Stalin, Wagner, Napoleon, Nietzsche, Nero, Ezra Pound, Dorian Gray and de Sade. The exhibition launches a counter attack against the weight of history as Meese attempts to neutralise the overwhelming presence of the past. He presents so many different ideas of history and from history that they become too complex or too arbitrary to unravel. This history does not make sense. Included are many photographs of Meese with his arm outstretched in the Nazi salute and photographs of Hitler with Meese’s trademark long black hair.

There is a, possibly apocryphal, story about Marcel Duchamp being approached by a visitor to his 1963 survey show at the Pasadena Art Museum. The woman had purchased a postcard of the Mona Lisa and asked Duchamp to sign it for her and "maybe even put a moustache on her?” Duchamp did just that. The next day artist Richard Hamilton, who would a few years later, with Duchamp’s permission make a replica of the Large Glass, saw the artist sitting at a desk at the front of the exhibition. Beside him was a large pile of Mona Lisa postcards which Duchamp was ‘moustaching’, signing and giving away. When Hamilton asked him what he was doing, Duchamp is said to have replied, “Devaluing the currency.”

Images: Top, Students confronting Maurizio Cattelan’s Ave Maria 2007. Bottom, details from Jonathan Rockford (don’t call me back, please) 2007 by Jonathan Meese

Think alikes

In Amsterdam, thinking about Indiana in New Zealand.

There goes the neighbourhood

You can always tell when you’re at the start of something – it’s hard to find. And that was true of the Spielhaus Morrison Gallery in Berlin. After a couple of attempts we found the gallery at the back of an industrial building, tucked next to another gallery specialising in drawings. The two partners who run the gallery Georg Speilhaus and Hamish Morrison (a New Zealander) have pitched their tent close by the Hamburger Bahnhof, the main public museum for contemporary art in Berlin. They must have felt rather lonely to start with among the motor bike repair shops and rental businesses, but we noticed that The Haunch of Venison has its sign up just down the road, another couple of galleries are about to open nearby and architectural practice Graft (the ones who work with Brad Pitt) are upstairs next door. It’s a familiar pattern. Soho and Chelsea in New York are only the most famous examples. In another year Spielhaus Morrison will be in the centre of a gallery zone, and it will be the mechanics looking over their shoulders.

Spot the difference

Some more sample comments (these from the current front page) from artbash, the “online community of New Zealanders who love art and love to talk about art".

“Flake, your article struck a chord with me. I am keeping an eye on the Australian governments dealings in the Pacific Agreements on Closer Economic Relations(PACER).” vivedane

“Yes, there is a particularly long philosophical tradition behind nihilism, not only from buddhist philosophy but also from the gnostic tradition (and others).” David Cauchi

“Well, apparently: 'Edinburgh University admits it is "reviewing" [Robert Mugabe's] 1984 doctorate for "services to education in Africa".’ Creon Upton

Not quite a hat trick

Just in case anyone is concerned that we might have abandoned rabbits as a theme on overthenet. On the left, a detail of Piero di Cosimo’s Venus, Mars and Amor and on the right, noticed in the Berlin dealer gallery invaliden1, a painting by Santiago Ydanez.

Art is where you find it 9

… if you can find it.

Volume

An update email from CNZ the other day, on the Trip of a Lifetime Tour. Apparently, in the Tour’s discussions with the Director of Documenta, members were able to determine the number of New Zealand art publications held in the Documenta archive. Of the three, two were the catalogues Toi Toi Toi and et al. the fundamental practice (both donated by Rene Block, Toi Toi Toi curator and et al. supporter). The third, a book, was Contemporary Painting in New Zealand by Michael Dunn. CNZ’s email noted that the Tour lodged a copy of Speculation in the archive increasing New Zealand’s holdings by 25 per cent. CNZ is now calling for anyone with publications on New Zealand art they regard as significant, to send them to the archive.
Image: Trip of a Lifetime Tour members meet with Documenta director (Reconstruction)

Hammer horror

This nail-studded knight is the result of an early 20th century fund raising effort in Vienna. Each nail was hammered home at the cost of a donation. An easily transported idea, a wooden sculpture of an art world figure of note could easily be used raise funds for purchases, new gallery wings or artist residencies. Get the right person to serve as subject for the figure, and your fund-rising’s nailed.
Image: Studded knight outside the Museum of the City of Vienna

Look alike XIV

Left: Martin Kippenberger Untitled (Lamp) 1992. Right, street scene in Vienna.

Copy cat 20

On the left, a still from Peter Fischli and David Weiss's film The right way and, on the right a poster for a bank in Vienna.

Klimtomaniacs

The Secession, a Viennese institution established in 1897, started on the back of a walk-out by 19 artist members of the Association of Austrian Artists. It was itself subjected to its own walk-out in 1905 by one of its most famous sons, Gustav Klimt, and others. With a board of 13 artists, including our friend Nicolas Jasmin (the man who brought you Reflect, the incredible washing liquid that keeps your blacks blacker than black), the Secession has retained the turbulent atmosphere one expects of an artist run space. The programme is shaped by the differing tastes of board members but, if you look over the exhibitions for the last ten years, it includes one person shows of most of the important artists of the decade. Oddly, to our eyes, the Secession is closest in scale and architectural feel to the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui.

Sammlung Ozymandias

In the global art world the rise and rise of the private collection is a simple fact. Every day it seems there is another private collection going public in an old bunker, a new glass penthouse or an abandoned warehouse. Public museums appear helpless in the face of this juggernaut with private collection shows a standard programming element and gifts a requirement. In our short time in Vienna we have seen four major presentations of private collections – selections from the Generali Foundation, the Sammlung (collection) Verbund, the Sammlung Essl (in its own building) and the collection of the Greek tycoon Dakis Joannou at the Kunsthalle Wien and the Museum Modernerkunst. While there is an argument for the public museums that the explosion of art prices has hugely limited their ability to purchase contemporary art, this does not address the other side of the equation. Why are private collectors (whether corporations, foundations or individuals) creating their own institutions with all the major on-going costs involved? At one level it seems to be a canny mix of philanthropy, ego and tax advantage (as well as a quick finger to the public institutions that have used their collections as a quick fix resource for so many years), but it is not happening in isolation. Art has become more interesting to more people. The concept of the public museum is under strain as it struggles to deal with so many trends, ideas, artists, and vested interests. Power is on the move – will the public institutions keep up?
Later: Having just written this post, we went to lunch and on the way passed a shop window full of art. The day before, in this window, we had seen a signed Manzoni tin of artist shit sitting on a pedestal quietly fading in the sun. Today we notice the space we had assumed belonged to a dealer gallery is in fact yet another private collection. The Sammlung Klewan
Image: Top, the Essl collection. Bottom left and right, Sammlung Klewan