A Bob each way

One of the strangest appearances of art in a movie surely took place in Vanilla Sky directed by Cameron Crowe. Ok, the fact that Monet’s The Seine at Argenteuil turns up in Tom Cruise’s pad isn’t so remarkable (the title of the film is based on the colouring of the sky in this kind of Monet painting), and Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses in the living room must be on loan from the National Gallery in London (oh the power of the rich), but casting Robert Rauschenberg as the hard-nosed father is something else altogether. Rauschenberg doesn’t personally appear (not in real time anyway), but he does have the movie listed as one of his movie credits. Confused?

The thing is Robert Rauschenberg appears as himself, but a young self. Crowe uses vintage sixties film of the artist and intercuts it into the film as flash-backs of Tom’s Dad. Other art? There’s a giant Chuck Close-like (sorry Chuck) painting of Rauschenberg that pops up in the living room and, curiously, a painting by Joni Mitchell.

Images: Top, Robert Rauschenberg in the flesh as Tom’s dad, on the cover of Dad’s book and on display in the house. Bottom left, Van Gogh in the living room, right, Cruise and Cruz peruse the Monet.

Art in the workplace

Art, hard at work in the foyers of the world.

Lookalike

Left, the fingerprint maze at Hove Park in the UK. Right, Te Papa reaches for a strange metaphor and uses its logo to represent the Te Papa experience maze-wise. Click on image to see lost souls trapped in Te Marae.

Other Te Papa fingerprint stories:

That's my thumb by gum. read

Footprints. read

Perfect storm

" I do like it when I get a commission where everybody is on song, the idea is received with open arms, the execution is spot on, and the price is right and the client goes bonkers when they unwrap."

Dick Frizzell reveals the secret to commissioning art to the Dom Post

Your tax dollars at work

The latest round of CNZ grants are out and the Visual Arts continue their slow drift from the mother lode. Within the 11.3% of the total allocated to the visual arts, publishing is the new black and institutions, with their admin staff, continue to streak past solo artists in the paper assault required to win grant money. You can see who got what here.

Amount allocated to all artforms $2,284,080

Average amount requested across all artform projects $30,240

Average amount granted across all artform projects $24,300

Average amount granted to visual arts projects $21,500 

Percentage of total grants allocated to visual arts 11.3%

Percentage of total grants allocated to performing arts 41%

Number of Visual Arts grants with artists’ names attached 6

Number of those artists who were female 1

Percentage of Visual Arts grants given to publications 41%

Percentage of Visual Arts grants given to Australian institutions 30%

Image: Old gold mine seen from a distance

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.

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Hang on. Most art makes physical connections and most of those are with the human body. Physically lifting a painting or moving a sculpture tells you a lot about its place in the world. As curators and artists are firmly ushered out of the exhibition design, hanging and installation process, many exhibition hangs have more to do with abstract design concepts than with the effect of one artwork physically relating to another.

Hang it all. Another effect of curators being separated from the physical side of hanging is the everything-that-will-fit-on-the-wall exhibition. Removed from the physical reality of hanging, curators end up pulling together as many works as they can find on their theme and passing them over to technicians and designers to fit them into the space allocated by management.

Hang ‘em high. See above. Welcome back Academy hang.

Hang about. And whatever happened to our ability to hang things straight? In some cities that knowledge is being lost like the language of a threatened tribe. The professional installer holds the knowledge like a witch doctor, the last person left in the village who can make the paintings in private collections hang in a straight line.

Well hung. Don’t go there.

Copycat

Images: Left, Artforum's annual 'Best of' format. Right, Art + Object latest catalogue

Culture shock

Only a Wellington newspaper could have a column called Meet the Mandarins but given the closed nature of the public sector‘s art divisions, such a column can reveal priorities not easily unravelled from the day-to-day bureaucratic communications. For the Ministry for Culture and Heritage – whose CE Lewis Holden was this weekend’s guest in the DomPost – those priorities do not include the visual arts. Of course when it comes to having his photo taken Lewis plonks himself down in front of an art work, but in describing the priorities of his Ministry he tells us they advise Government on how to divi up the $256 mill available to culture between, “the ballet, the symphony orchestra, television, radio and sport.” New Zealand culture, gotta love it. Oh and for the record, they also fund Creative New Zealand.

Image: a lemon. Sorry, couldn’t find a mandarin

Choice

It’s Over The Net’s third birthday today. Hey, someone make us a cake. How about a three-layered Picasso or a substantial Warhol or even a pretty three-tiered Monet? Hang about, that Duchamp looks kind of cool on its stand and there are a couple of those Van Gogh Starry Night jobs to choose from. Not so keen on the Matisse (too much marzipan) and the Van Gogh landscape is over-piped…. But maybe the Pollock will do … ok, maybe not. So, one Duchamp and three candles. To go.

Market forces

We may be in the middle of a recession but the auction catalogues are still as plump as Christmas turkeys. With auctions only five days apart, Art + Object and Webb’s have together put up a total of 249 works, 17 with high-end estimates over $100,000 and a swag over $50,000. As you might imagine with A+O first out of the blocks last night, Webb’s will be combing over the prices achieved. They might take it as a good omen that the first work listed went for over 70 percent above the high estimate. The small (200 x 300mm) canvas by Peter Robinson ART went for a hammer price of $3,000. Another Robinson – There is no 1 God – also went well selling just shy of its $30,000 high estimate. Unfortunately when it came to the bigger ticket items, most were passed in or, on a number of occasions, received no bids. A typical tough-times exception: a Goldie that clocked $200,000. More typically a large Shane Cotton work expected to go between 130,000 and 170,000 was passed in at $100,000. Webb’s have another 1990s Cotton and will hope for better. No interest in Milan Mrkusich or auction darling Ralph Hotere. Another auction favourite, Gordon Walters, failed to get anywhere near its low estimate when his Study for Rewa faltered $20,000 below its low estimate. There is a non-koru equivalent in the Webb’s auction to follow. More surprisingly, a stunning Colin McCahon Truth from the King Country (sold at Dunbar Sloan in 2007 for $50,000) could only attract $42,000 and was passed in. There are bargains to be had if you have the cash.

Naked on Friday

Kim Cattrall has never been one for keeping her clothes on with a full-on naked life preceding her Sex in the City jag, so when the National Gallery in London was building a fund last year to keep Titian's Diana and Actaeon in the country, it seemed only natural for Cattrall to strip for art’s sake. Fifty-two year old Cattrall boldly went naked alongside a much younger group from the cast of La Clique. The resulting copycat (it really doesn’t qualify as a lookalike) apparently brought in a few pounds and helped the cause. Now Cattrall is on a roll as new Titian paintings featuring naked women are threatened with export. As we write, Kim is stripping off to do a version of Titian’s Diana and Callisto. You will be pleased to know that Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Lucian Freud are supporting the campaign by petitioning the Government.

Images: Top left, Titian's Diana and Actaeon, right, the Cattrall version with Cattrall second from right. Bottom, opportunity knocks with Titian’s Diana and Callisto

Copycat

Images: Top, The New Dowse. Bottom Telecom

Defriended

In the new academic “whatever” culture, it was probably pointless to expect the authors of the Mrkusich book Alan Wright and Edward Hanflin to do anything about the exhibition list they included at the back of their book. In spite of caveats “… not intended as a catalogue raisonné or complete biography…” the authors could assume this will be the Mrkusich book of record for at least 20 years (going by what usually happens and their own bleak narrative of Mrkusich publishing). And yet they have done nothing to remedy their vanishing of a dozen exhibitions at the Peter McLeavey Gallery that included Milan Mrkusich. The publisher AUP, although initially interested – “What’s the story on this just so I know?” –has also slumped into “whatever” mode. No erratum for Milan.

Here, for the record (even given the ephemeral nature of blogging) are the Mrkusich exhibitions dropped from those listed in Alan Wright and Edward Hanflin’s book Mrkusich: the art of transformation.

Unrecorded Solo shows at the Peter McLeavey Gallery:

1974 Recent paintings 27 August to 13 September

1979 Works from 1949 26 June to 13 July

1984 Recent paintings 8 May to 24 May

1986 Recent paintings 27 May to 21 June

1987 Works 1946-1984 7 July to 25 July

1988 Four 1988 works on paper 15 November to 3 December

1990 Two large paintings and five works on paper 16 October to 10 November

Unrecorded Group shows at the Peter McLeavey Gallery:

1980 Group show 6 December to 24 December

1981 Group show 5 December to 24 December

1982 Group show 7 December to 24 December

1984 Warren Viscoe, Colin McCahon and Milan Mrkusich 25 September to 13 October

1989 Jacqueline Fraser, Warren Viscoe, Milan Mrkusich March

LOL Redux

"I think curators are ill advised and usually wrong."
British art critic Brian Sewell's response to MoMA curators putting Tim Burton up with Warhol.