Branded: Shelton

When artists become brands.

When good horse sculptures turn bad

When the history of men who make large horse sculptures is written – a history we find our readers can’t get enough of – one name will stand above the rest: Luis Jiménez. In 2006 Jiménez paid the ultimate price of any MHS (Monumental Horse Sculptor). He was killed in his studio by his sculpture Mustang when it swung out of control while being hoisted. The sculpture crushed Jiménz against a gantry severing a major artery. Rushed to hospital, he died in the ambulance. This tragic event came at the end of the long and torturous process to create a 9.8 meter high rearing blue stallion with glowing eyes for Denver International airport. The work was commissioned in 1992 but constant delays dragged its completion into the 21st century. Jiménez’s son completed Mustang which was finally installed early in 2008.

The reaction has been mixed although at first criticism was muted by Jiménez's MHS sacrifice. Recently, however, opposition heated up when local developer Rachel Hultin launched a campaign to relocate the horse. Her weapon of persuasion – the Haiku. And so:

Ugly devil horse horrifies the traveler shames our fair city

To follow this bitter-sweet story go here.

Images: Top, Mustang rearing at the Denver International Airport. Bottom left, Luis Jiménez in his studio with the Mustang maquette and early work on the final sculpture, right Mustang being installed.

Tips

"There’s a credit crunch, not a creative crunch."

John Galliano

One of a kind

Street philosophers slug it out McCahon style on a Wellington stairway.

Progress report

While we bitch and complain about the way Te Papa deals to contemporary art, these images from the bad old conceptual days of Wedde and Sotheran, show that the museum has come a long way.
Image: Left Max Gimblett gets the “Thumbs up Thumbs down Is it Art?” treatment 1988 style. Right top: Installation of Dream Collectors with Para Matchitt’s rough-hewn timber Te Wepu, the Whip is delicately skied above Milan Mrkusich’s Untitled. Bottom right: designer stanchions and light puddles.

Tunnel vision

Pictures from the opening of Anish Kapoor's sculpture on the Gibbs farm north of Auckland this weekend. The piece is an extension (or possibly a re-siting) of the installation Kapoor created for the Tate turbine hall in 2002.

Talk show

We’ve been thinking about Creative New Zealand’s insistence that artists representing New Zealand at the Venice Biennale are prepared to talk to the media. You will remember their puzzlement, quickly followed by indignation, when et al. refused to play the media game in 2005. Indeed on that occasion CNZ went to a great deal of trouble and expense (we heard $30,000+) to contract et al. as part of an effort to make the group front up. The talk-or-walk clause in the New Zealand Venice Biennale artist agreement this time round is the result.
The problem with chasing the media is, of course, that it can go all sorts of ways (witness Helen Clark’s gold-fishing and Tizzards backsliding when they responded to the media on et al.’s selection) as well as limit the kind of artist considered to be acceptable for Venice. There’s an interesting question to be asked about how far CNZ can push this before it becomes unacceptable discrimination. An artist like Ralph Hotere is out for a start as someone older who is unable to travel and famously unwilling to speak. So we assume is Bill Hammond who also declines to speak in public. Then there are all the artists who are no longer with us (assuming there is no Ouija board clause). If the United States stood shoulder to shoulder with CNZ, Felix Gonzalez-Torres would have to have been canned as the selection for the 2007 Biennale. He died in 1996.

It’s probably time CNZ tried to come up with other ways to promote Venice apart from the traditional artist interview. There are bound to be one or two.

Ice cap

OTN reader chills out in London.

Cut and paste

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is putting life size images of its masterpieces onto the walls of the Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Street subway stations in Brooklyn. With a pot of paste and a ladder this high foot traffic connection has become an instant no-pay-per-view virtual MoMA. You can see more here on Jeff Baxter’s Flickr stream. Thanks to BB.
Image: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

The temporary contemporary

The year of One Day Sculpture (and let’s give them the prize for top art communicators) reminded us of a couple of remarkable temporary sculptures put up in Wellington in 1989. Both were part of a survey show of Neil Dawson’s work at the then National Art Gallery. We helped Neil with the assembly of the exhibition and were there when both works went up. It always seemed a pity that the Railway Station didn’t keep its postcard and bring it out every now and then to give the commuters something to gasp at. Thanks to winds, strong even for Wellington, the frame only lasted for a few days.
Images: Top, Frame-work suspended between the National Art Gallery and the Carillion. Bottom, Get the Picture on the façade of the Wellington railway station.

Brick Collage

LEGO, New York, architecture and art museums. It’s like an OTN tag festival. Christoph Niemann of the New York Times and his very funny LEGO portrait of New York City. You can see the whole thing here and more of Christoph Niemann here.

Leaving the building

Looking at the job description for the new senior curator of art at Te Papa, it was obvious that big changes were rumbling through the building. Our guess was that the weird senior management team of area specialists was being disbanded. And sure enough, first to go is Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Director of Art and Collection Services. He’s returning to academia as Professor of Fine Arts and Head of Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland. Mane-Wheoki bows out as his Monet show on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston opens at Te Papa after its run in Sydney. With the Director of Art job axed (the senior curator of art will eventually report to an overarching Collections and Research Group Director) our bet is any opportunity for the visual arts in Te Papa to have direct access to the CEO will leave with him.

Image: The last Director of Art and Collection Services at Te Papa, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki

copy cat

Image: K-Road, Auckland

Nay

The who-can-build-the-largest-animal-sculpture competition has moved on a ways. The 50 meter high Wallinger horse has won the $5.5 million competition and is now on track to be constructed. The citizens of Gravesham are not all thrilled. Perhaps they’re seeing the high horse through Virgil's words on Troy’s horsey nemesis.

“Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.”

Branching out

Fair enough, we started it, but it was just meant as a bit of fun. The idea that there were horses, chimps, elephants and earthworms working away all but unacknowledged in attics and stables around the world was irresistible. The result? Our much loved series on animals making art. And let’s not forget you, the fans who emailed stories of elephants in Bangkok (that trunk has got to be a hand in a sock) and, testing the outer limits, the painting snail. Now, a regular reader “S” (who from memory pulled the snail stunt) has sent in a painting tree. Well “S” your contribution is important to us. We know you could have sent the Larch artist to another blog. Maybe next time.
Images: Top, a tree painting en plein air. Bottom left to right works by a Larch and a couple of conifers. More tree art here.