Warning, warning, Will Robinson

“I go to shows and galleries and I don't think I am a lazy sod. But I hear what John is saying and working in a public institution (despite my half a brain) I can also hear what Chris is saying. I find that it is one of the most frustrating and difficult positions to be in, not because I have half a brain, because I have a whole one. In my position, I am fully aware of the structures in place that contain and control both acquisitions and curatorship that I am actually interested in. At the end of the day, budgets and the local council have the ultimate say.
I at the end of the day, am fully aware of my predicament and my inability for get blood out of stone, but my kids are eating.
I like people... fuck that is such wrong quality for a curator to have!”
Anonymous curator posting as Hedwig on artbash

Search and rescue

We saw this reproduction of Gauguin’s Te Matete in the Statue Bargain Barn at Paraparaumu. On the back were labels showing it had been part of the Auckland Library’s lending collection and was officially on loan from April 1969 to December 1970. The reproduction was framed, we assume in the month before the first loan, at Mollers Gallery in Karagahape Road. If that were the case, it might have been in good company for a week or so as the exhibition McCahon’s McCahons was on show there that March. The practice of borrowing prints from public libraries must have been nearing an end in the seventies. The Gauguin was only lent eight times, each time for about three months at 45 cents a month. The original version of Te Matete was painted by Paul Gauguin in 1892, three years before his brief visit in August 1895 to New Zealand. It was an encounter that didn’t impress Gauguin at all: “it is cold, and I am bored, and I am spending money stupidly to no purpose.” If you want to see the original painting you will need to go to the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. If on the other hand you hanker after a copy for your own living room, you can get a “hand painted reproduction with 100% satisfaction guarantee” by going here and ordering a GAP018.

Images: Top left, the Auckland Library reproduction at the Statue Bargain Barn and right showing the library labels on the reverse. Bottom left, Paul Gauguin Ta Matete (We Shall Not Go to Market Today). 1892. Oil on canvas. Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland and right, what clams to be a GAP018 but is more likely to be a bad photographic reproduction of the original - caveat emptor.

The Da Vinci crowd

Ad agencies and art

How odd of Todd

Some respect and a bit of hush as you enter this site. You’re about to meet a Master (copycat wise that is). You'll need to scroll down a ways to get to the images.

Word count

Received yesterday: Toi Te Papa Art: Issue 007, October 2007

• Description of evening event focused on William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement – 600
• Description of Rembrandt’s print Joseph’s coat brought to Jacob - 365
• Description of a bequest relating to the UK-based Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in the early 20th century - 333
• Repeat of the William Morris programme – 278
• Conservation of Te Papa’s wallpaper collection - 274
• Profile of the Collection Manager Art - 265
• Announcing Friends talks on Arts and Crafts movement, conservation and Colin McCahon - 186
• Description of Spring in the foothills, Rata Lovell-Smith, 1935 - 122

Things past

The Archbishop of Cologne hates the new Gerhard Richter window. “It belongs in a mosque or another house of prayer, not this one,” he quipped to The Times. The 2007 Auckland University Hood Fellow, Stephen Farthing RA, is off the hook. A Federal Judge dismissed charges of racketeering, fraud and breach of contract against staff of the New York Academy. Steve Cohen has loaned Damien Hirst’s shark to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where you will be able to see it on exhibition for the next three years.

Copy cat

I seen the little lamp

The incredibly strange photograph of a Pufferfish lamp on Peter Peryer’s blog on Monday, had us get our lifestyle team out and about finding more recent designer fish lamps. Above are the best of the best by American Frank Gehry, Dominic Bromley from England and Icelandic designer, Guomundsdóttir Dögg.

Images: From the top, Pufferfish lamp, collection Southland Museum, Frank Gehry, Fish Lamp. Bottom left, Shoal by Dominic Bromley of Scabetti and bottom right pendant lamp Cod Fish by Guomundsdóttir Dögg

Look alike

Top: Art+Auction staff. Bottom: Webb's staff.

Listing

To save you all time, and we promise you no more on CNZ’s Strategic document, here is Creative New Zealand’s list of what they value in order.

1. Partnering with Maori, in acknowledgement of their unique position as tangata whenua.
2. Developing Pacific arts and their contribution to New Zealand identity.
3. Working collaboratively and developing partnerships for mutual benefit.
4. Articulating our strategic position and priorities with clarity.
5. Demonstrating integrity, transparency and professionalism in all our dealings.
6. Supporting artistic expression and the contribution of the arts to society.
7. Aspiring to excellence.

Fast work

The Creative New Zealand Strategic Plan and Statement of Intent for 2007-10 has been published. The Trip Of A Lifetime Tour participants will be delighted to see that, what we assume was their big yes tick, is reflected in the new strategic priorities. Who said CNZ couldn’t move fast? You can download a copy of the full report here.

the story of

One of our favourite videos, with a haunting sound track by George Hubbard, has just been put up on YouTube by popular productions.
popular productions / 16mm silent film St John of God, Christchurch, NZ / c.1970 subject not-known / sound by George Hubbard c.1990

Wall peeper

Here’s a good art game to play when you’re bored. Pop on to nz.open.com and go art hunting. Even if you don’t see the best and the brightest you will begin to understand why contemporary art often gets off to a bad start in the public domain. Go here to start. We used http://www.nz.open2view.com/Property/161023 to kick off the search that brought up the images above.

All the rest have 31, excepting February

Over the past 30 days we: said goodbye to Stephen Birch, watched Dunedin Public Art Gallery lose Priscilla Pitts and Justin Paton, noted CNZ’s continuing indifference to the visual arts, made our own Paul McCarthy sculpture, did a bit of quick and dirty popular art history, said “enough with the skulls already”, learnt to count to two by numbering Te Papa FAQs on the visual arts, took our lifestyle column to sea, praised the Auckland Art Gallery (that’s right – praised), puzzled over Billy Apple, used an apology to sneak in a wax work of the Bay Watch team, scooped the Ruth Watson “clean-up” story, bitched about failing public art museum shows still having long runs, mocked the Webb’s online catalogue, and did it all in that order and all for you.

Image: September. Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry, painted by the Limbourg brothers.

Tell me a story

We remember reading a short story about a newspaper office that filed its regular stories on small cards (it was that long ago). Whenever a story was needed they simply grabbed a card and printed the text. Again. No one ever noticed. So, on a super hot summer’s day, out would come the “Man fries egg on pavement” etc. In the same spirit, Jonathan Jones has listed in his Guardian blog the six art stories favoured by most of the news media . They are:

1. This is the most expensive work of art ever
2. Anything about graffiti
3. Lost masterpiece rediscovered
4. Contemporary artists as plagiarists
5. Art historian/archaeologist makes earth-shattering discovery
6. Restoration stories about damaged art

We would add:

• A monkey or (name your own animal) creates art
• Child’s painting fools art critics
• Valuable art work found in attic
• Public money wasted on art
• Celebrity creates art work
• Record attendances for blockbuster exhibition
• Local artist denied exhibition at local gallery
• Vandals attack public sculpture

Any others? You can read the Jonathan Jones piece here.