Seventh day

Just a reminder that we no longer post on Sunday.
Image: diagram for the construction of a post hole

Warning to collectors

Jill Miller, a San Francisco artist, trained to be a private investigator and then spied for six months on art collectors in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a team of two artist assistants, Miller maintained surveillance on ten houses, concentrating on six. She will be showing the results at San Francisco’s 2nd Floor Project Gallery later this month.
Images: Top left Bob through fence. Bottom left Sushi, others untitled.

When good sculpture turns bad 1

Watch below as a large ice sculpture attempts to kill the guy who chainsaws its legs off.

Going once, going twice, going 27 million times

"Mr. Giraud was glued to his cellphone, steadily raising his hand as Christopher Burge, the evening’s auctioneer, took bids in $500,000 increments. It seemed as though neither bidder would give in.

When the price hit $27 million ($7 million over the high estimate) with no end in sight, Mr. Burge jokingly said, “At some point I’m going to have to sell it.”

Mr. Bennett won out at $30 million ($33.6 million, including Christie’s buyer’s premium), a record price at auction for Matisse. The salesroom burst into applause." From reports on the recent Christie's auction in the New York Times

Loving the camera

This image of Julian Dashper’s Untitled, a work has appeared on overthenet before. This time it is on the cover of Burley Katon Halliday a book just published by Thames and Hudson about the Sydney based design practice. The cover shows Dashper’s work in somebody’s home. The fact that no one asked Dashper’s permission or paid him for the image is odd given the heavy duty copyright protection claimed on Burley Katon Halliday’s own site, but that’s another story. What interested us is the way this work reproduces so well and what this implies. The reproducibility is partly owing to the highly skilled graphic and smart colour sense that Dashper brings to his work; the camera loves simple, clear images. That reality got us thinking about how some artists get left out of many publications simply because their work does not have, in photographic terms, what the auction houses call “wall power”. Woollaston is a good example. It’s hard to think of iconic images, and the one that does come to mind is Sunset at Greymouth, one of his most graphic works. Woollaston’s paintings do not reproduce well, this affects the number of times you see his work reproduced, and its longevity. We checked this theory out using the simple test of putting contemporaries Walters, McCahon, Angus and Woollaston through Google Image searches. On the first ten screens it came out:
McCahon 78
Walters 35
Angus 33
Woollaston 14
Rule of thumb of course, but it makes you think.

Look alike

Images: Top, Tracey Emin I've got it all

A Plinth? Charming!

As you can see from the lower left hand image, Wellington has added another set of barriers to stand between the public and the harbour near Te Papa. Only this time, it’s for art. The four Carl Andre-like blocks are the promised empty plinths that will be completed with (as you’ll know from previous posts) sculptures. Something of a set-back for Anthony Caro and the rest of the twentieth century sculptors who made such efforts to climb down off the plinth and have their work live in the real world.

If all you’ve got’s a hammer…

This from the latest Art Newspaper on hammer museums. Apparently the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (see previous overthenet post) and the Hammer Museum in Alaska are locked in a battle of the brands. Both museums have submitted applications to own the trademark name. We're sure you'll appreciate the difficulty in differentiating between the Hammer Museum displaying contemporary art in Los Angeles and the Hammer Museum in Haines Alaska that claims to be the "first museum dedicated to providing a unique view of the past through the use of the hammer".

Stocking (sic) filler

Sensible people will be starting their Christmas shopping and Overthenet intends to point you to the top art gifts for this year. There’s no better place to start than these chocolate Santas from Paul McCarthy. Modelled on the sculpture Father Christmas with Butt Plug exhibited at the Basel Art Fair this year, these Christmas treats will be available from Peter Paul Chocolates in New York from 15 November. Let’s have a small pause here to remember that it was overthenet that connected this Santa/Chocolate mash-up back in July. These Christmas edibles will be part of an installation by Paul McCarthy at the Michele Maccarone Art Gallery and for sale at $100. For the show McCarthy will be turning the gallery space into a fully functioning chocolate factory. Curiously the chocolate version is to be known as Santa with Tree and Bell politely referring back, we guess, to its pre-McCarthy origins.

Images; Left, prototype of the chocolate Santa with Tree and bell. Right, the original china figurine used by McCarthy as a model.

Warning to art students

SHEILA HETI: I suppose the schools have something to do with the change—the craziness that you have to get an MFA to be an artist.

DAVE HICKEY: Thirty-five thousand MFAs a semester, 90 percent of whom never make another work of art.

SH: And do you think that that kind of system produces—

DAVE HICKEY: Almost no one. Idiots with low-grade depression. When I opened my gallery in the late ’60s, Peter Plagens—who’s now the critic for Newsweek and still shows his paintings—was the only artist I represented who had been to graduate school. The MFA thing is an invention of the ’70s. Its raison d’être is evaporating.

SH: Which is?

DAVE HICKEY: Training sissies for teaching jobs. Well, the official raison d’être was to create an intellectual and pedagogical justification for the most frivolous activity in Western culture, so you go back and read things from the past. It’s the traditional Renaissance desire that artists should be taken seriously, and that art not be a practical but a liberal art. But I tend to think it’s a practice, like law or like medicine.

Taken from an interview with Dave Hickey by Sheila Heti in November’s issue of The Believer. Thanks J

Copy cat

Hotere-like product in the foyer of the Wellington's Bond Store apartments.

You say potato

Most people reading this post will have a shock of recognition when they see these two paintings. Many will have even more of a shock when they hear that both were painted by Mark Rothko in 1969, and not Colin McCahon. Looking at reproductions of works like these it is hard for most art educated New Zealanders not to read them as landscapes. Where an American would see an abstract painting we’ve been trained by works like Tomorrow will be the same… painted by McCahon in 1958 to see them as slate grey land with lowering dark skies. We remember having this discussion with an American curator. We were looking with him at Rothkos similar to these and pointed out the landscape possibilities they presented. Initially, he had no idea of what we were talking about. We had to do that thing you do with kids when they see their first elephant. Point out the tail, show where the legs are, and hope that it moves. Once that was done our curator friend grudgingly admitted the landscape possibility but, even then, we could see he kept losing it to the abstractness he had come to expect from Rothko.

Image: Left, Mark Rothko Untitled (Black and Gray), 1969. Right Mark Rothko Untitled, 1969. The two paintings are both for sale, one at Sotheby’s and the other at Christie’s.

Messy

We have just heard that Natasha Conland may not be making an appearance at the Massey Grand Tour session tomorrow night. That would cut the Trip Of A Lifetime representation by 50 percent. Think, think, think. Here's an idea. Given that she lives and works in Wellington, why doesn't CNZ’s Undine Marshfield step up and onto the bill? (er, why wasn't she on the bill anyway?) She too took the Trip Of A Lifetime and, according to those who were there, took notes. Even better, isn't Undine coordinating the confidential (sic) reports from all Trip members? People who want to hear what the lone TOAL survivor (Gavin Hipkins) has to say might be better to button hole him at an opening. LATER: Have just had a call from CNZ's Undine and she'll be there to listen.

Time flies

One of our readers has just noticed this press release from CNZ.
"12 Sep 2007 Creative New Zealand Award for Bravery recognises innovative partnership An innovative partnership, resulting in New Zealand's first-ever live webcast involving sound and moving image, was recognised tonight with the 2007 Creative New Zealand Award for Bravery at the National Business Review Awards for Sponsorship of the Arts."
As our gob-smacked reader notes. One of the first NZ live webcasts of sound and moving image, included Many Hands playing live (CuSeeMe) as part of the Wellington Artslink performing arts festival eleven and a half years ago on 8 July 1995!
Take a belated bow Alison Green, Craig McDougall, Bruce McNaught, Rob Mayo, Derek Tearne, John Ellis, Peter Jamieson and Matt King. Brave ones.

Conceptualise with Confidence!

Over at stimulusresponse is a proposed conceptual framework for the description and analysis of all forms of art.