Table stakes

In spite of repeated warnings we still get a lot of pics of artists and famous people playing table tennis sent into OTN. This time we are happy to point you to the Narrows Table Tennis Tournament. Why? Because artist and regular NZ exhibitor Marco Fusinato kicked fellow artist Callum Morton’s butt. Videos, skite pics and weird commentary here.
Images: Trophy by Giblett Sports Memorabilia, winners jacket with hand tickering by Jacobs Embroidery, Princes Hill, winner Marco Fusinato front, Callum Morton back.

Year of the Ox

Turns out you’ll have to wait a little longer for Roundabout. The City Gallery has just announced that it will re open in September with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. At the age of 79 Kusama has been ‘rediscovered’ having played a significant role in the avant garde scene in sixties New York. In Japan it’s hard to find an art institution that is not featuring her spotted surfaces. Closer to home Kusama shows at Australian Dealer Gallery Roslyn Oxley regular exhibitors of many featured City Gallery artists over recent years. Previous OTN posts on Kusama, here and here.
Image: Kusama sculpture being installed in Tokyo.

Making a good impression

There’s nothing like old art from abroad to get foot traffic through the museum doors. Te Papa has stubbornly refused to exhibit international contemporary art since being bitten on the bum by a virgin in a condom on opening day and preferred to reach back into more comfortable times for their blockbusters. And so we’ve been bathed in the warm glow of Constable, Moore, Holbein to Hockney, The Queen’s Pictures (Sorry Jackson, we’ll get right back you Willem, they’re great Louise but have you done anything with some sort of UK connection?).

On Saturday Te Papa another exhibition in its old-art-from-Europe series, this time via the United States. Monet has drawn crowds in New Zealand before and you can understand why Te P, who dance across the headcount/funding continuum, figure that the Impressionists are ready for another outing.

Of course the interest museums show in the Impressionists is simply following the money, driven on by that darling of world economics, Market Forces. Usually Impressionist paintings come into public collections via rich collectors, and this is the case with all but a couple of the works in the Te P show. It has also been those same collectors who have raised both the profile and price of Impressionist paintings over the years. In the 1950s the price for Impressionist works jumped as wealth accumulated in a post war boom. This surge of buying coincided with the rise and rise of the auction houses. In 1957 Margaret Thompson Biddle’s collection went under the hammer with Gauguin’s Still Life with Apples tripling its estimate at $297,142. The same year the William Weinberg collection with its five Van Goghs continued a round of record smashing prices that went on for the rest of the year. By 1958 the police were being called to control crowds trying to get into Sotheby’s salerooms.

Fifty years later Impressionism still fuels fires in the hearts of the rich and famous. In June last year Monet’s Le Bassin aux Nymphéas sold for $NZ115.5 million and Nymphéas for $NZ52 million. Who knows what the paintings in the Te P show are worth. Fortunately, as with our banks, the Government guarantees against loss.

Other OTN posts on this story here and here.
Image: Monet the collector with a selection of his Japanese prints.

Look alike

Yes …. we know, and you’re right, it is Peter Robinson … again. You’ve got to help us Doctor. Seriously.
Image: Paramount theatre, Wellington

When artists go to the movies

When you go to the new Gus Van Sant movie Milk, you also get to see Jeff Koons’s first feature film cameo. It’s short but Koons gets some lines and a credit (he was also in the credits – in a thank-you – for the 1990 pic Maniac Nurses) and a listing on imdb.com. He plays Art Agnos who ran against Harvey Milk for the State Legislature and in 1988 was elected mayor of San Francisco.
Images: Top, Jeff Koons in some Milk action. Bottom, with Harvey Milk played by Sean Penn

The good old days

Auckland

When art goes to the movies?

Sign seen on door at the University of Auckland Art School

Edge dwellers

A while back we posted on books about artist studios and the pleasure we got from them so we took down some of the great ones down and had another look. In the back of the Russell / Robertson / Snowden book Private view: the lively world of British art we found this photograph. It is the last image in the book and shows students in the Sculpture School at the Royal College hard at work. Although the accompanying story is about young English artist Derrick Woodham, the other two artists in the photograph are New Zealanders John Panting and Steve Furlonger. Perhaps they were Snowden ring-ins to fill out the picture. It has to be said that Furlonger (who mainly worked in fibreglass) looks a little out of place letting loose with a mallet and chisel, and that it’s hard to imagine Panting, in what looks like his best shirt, working in such messy surroundings (he has obviously laid down some newspaper so his maquette doesn’t get dirty!). Panting died at 34 and in acknowledgement of his meteoric career, he was given a memorial retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in London in 1975. He has work in the collection of the Tate Gallery. Furlonger retired from teaching at the Central School of Art in 1996 and we assume still lives in London. Both returned to New Zealand after they left the Royal College for short stints of teaching at Ilam and Elam and in 1974 had work toured through the country in the exhibition Six New Zealand Artists (the other four were other UK based artists Boyd Webb, Terry Powell, Darcy Lange, and Ken Griffiths).
Image: From the left, John Panting, Steven Furlonger and Derrick Woodham on page 292 of the book Private View

OTN Social pages

Table tennis and art. Art and table tennis. You say Relational Aesthetics, we say an activity that needs more than one person. Now the game that has too long lived in the shadows of the art world gets its just recognition: a big spread in the Artforum diary. Movie stars, artists and curators all trying to keep it over the net and on the table.
Left: Brad and Brandon Belle. (Photo: Douglas Ljungkvist/Nyehaus) Right: Susan Sarandon with Nyehaus's Tim Nye. (Photo: David Velasco)

The first month of a new year

in january we: were unimpressed by relational aesthetics at the guggenheim • saw a spider in canada • got sidetracked into psycho • grumbled about a slow news day • used art as an excuse to show you a condom advert • worried about warriors • probably stopped a 60 minutes segment from broadcasting • went all archival

In a roundabout sort of way

About a year ago we set out in search of art collector David Trebletsky but couldn’t find him anywhere. Very mysterious, even Google let us down. Duh, we had spelled his name wrong. That makes a difference. One thing we did get right though was reporting a meeting that Teplitzky (yes, that’s correct) had with Paula Savage. Over the last few years Teplitzky has been buying a lot of New Zealand art works, Pule, Cotton, Heaphy, Parekowhai (there is a theme here), to mix with a collection of Asian and Australian art. The result is an exhibition called Roundabout that we are picking to fill the City Gallery when it re-opens later this year. The Roundabout site does say “Opening at the City Gallery 2010”, but Paula Savage in response to our inquiry told us she could “make no comment until we sign contracts.” We’re taking that as a yes.
Image: From the Roundabout front page featuring the artists in the exhibition

On the road

On the road is an ongoing series celebrating the Ministry of Land Transport and Local Body support of New Zealand artists.
For others in the series search 'on the road' in the blog search box above.

Revelations

Here’s something that hasn’t turned up on the Auckland Art Gallery blog. For everyone who wondered about what Gallery staff got up to when they weren’t condition reporting John Reynolds’ Cloud canvases, now you know: they’re doing a spot of parody painting. The result, a McCahonesque I AM with matching waterfall. The signature is H Clark, but she would no doubt deny it was by her hand. The wall work can be viewed from Albert Park as walls are pulled down in preparation for rebuilding. In the meantime it looks like the demolition gang (either influenced by Popeye or subtly referencing McCahon’s kumura paintings) has tweaked the text to read: I YAM.

Branded: Hotere

A while back we posted on a book of brands that featured artist's names and called for New Zealand entries. Here's one to kick things off.

Style section

Home magazine gives its February/March issue over to art and of special interest to OTN are the feature stories looking inside the homes of two New Zealand art dealers. Auckland’s Michael Lett and Hamish McKay from Wellington have let the cameras in and we get to see their differences and similarities of style. The differences are kind of obvious. McKay has chosen a cosy wood lined sanctuary while Lett goes for a lemon and pink flat above the shop. Similarities? We counted five. Artist's lamps - Franz West for Lett, Francis Upritchard for McKay. Paintings resting on the floor. Paintings leaning against walls. Small Hany Armanious sculptures. Stacks of art books, and both have small Julian Dashper drum skin paintings on their walls (you can see pictures of these details on OTN Stuff). Meanwhile Metro magazine for February features the home of art dealer Tim Melville with more paintings on the floor and leaning against walls plus books, but not a Dashper in sight.
Images: Top, Michael Lett. Bottom, Hamish McKay.