Thomas Hoving 1928 - 2009

The man you can thank for the advertising banners outside Te Papa, the late night entertainments at the Auckland Museum, the invitation of Te Maori to the Metropolitan in 1984 and the focus on entertainment by so many of today’s museums, died last week. Thomas Hoving all but invented the museum blockbuster and although he had left the Metropolitan Museum by the Time Te Maori showed up, his spirit was still presiding over the box office. As director of one of the greatest museums in the world, Hoving swung the limelight away from curators and researchers and onto the announcement and display of spectacular purchases, crowd thrilling exhibitions and media stunts. He called his memoir Making the mummies dance and that’s exactly what he did. The Metropolitan is now steering a somewhat more sedate course, but like them or not, most museums and art galleries throughout the world (including our own) are children of Hoving's style.

Tasteless

The Taste: food and feasting in art exhibition currently showing at the Auckland Art Gallery isn’t subtle. It’s the sort of show you put together by feeding taste-related words into the collection database. “How about ‘fruit’? Let’s try ‘eat’ and ‘meat.’ What do we get with ‘dine’?” Given the small amount of space the Gallery has available until mid-2011 when the major rebuilding is completed (that’s at least another 18 months), you’d think the plan would be to make a serious effort with smart, credible exhibitions that build its reputation as New Zealand’s leading art institution rather than undercut it. And what's with entry to this exhibition (mostly from the collection) costing $7.50 while the more substantial collection show Picturing History downstairs is free?

Still, we coughed up only to find art and life weirdly merge as we sat down to watch the Ed Ruscha early seventies video Premier. The soundtrack was disrupted by a high-pitched and insistent electronic alarm beeping which was definitely not part of the work. Nearby was an open door, and through it we could see a small table with a plate of biscuits. ‘Taste!’ we thought and checked it out. As we approached we could also hear the clanking of knife and fork which we traced to a guard eating his lunch. We asked if he could turn off the door alarm. Without looking up from his meal he said, “I’m working on it.” Turned out he meant his salad.

Meanwhile, up on K-Road we saw a work made from Raro and spit at Artspace and a bronze lemon tree at Michael Lett, two works that escaped the Taste net. The artists Campbell Patterson and Michael Parekowhai are no doubt relieved.


Image: staff room as installation

The Saturday serial: Part 2

Click on image to enlarge, Part 3 next week

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.

Vote National

When Hamish Keith opens Francis Pound’s new book The invention of New Zealand, let’s hope someone has the foresight to scatter pillows at his feet because he may well faint dead away. Anyone who lived through the brouhaha surrounding the publication of Pound’s first book Frames on the land – famously described by Keith as a ‘slim pink volume’ which has to be a word play up there with Rob Muldoon’s suggestion that Bill Rowling was ‘a shiver looking for a spine to run up’ – will remember the harsh words flung between the Internationalist and the nationalists.

Gordon Brown and Hamish Keith’s book New Zealand painting had held the floor since 1969 and it was a big target starting its coverage in 1839 and running all the way through to the end of the sixties. There was harsh New Zealand light, there were unique forms of landscape and there were arrivals and departures asking the question whether a true New Zealand artist had to live in the country. The national/ international dispute flared up again when the exhibition Headlands opened at the MCA in Sydney. Here the curators dared hang internationalist Gordon Walters with nationalists Para Matchitt and Sandy Adsett in an ‘inside out’ argument and among the deeply offended was Francis Pound.

Now Pound has come up with a book that centralises proto-nationalist Colin McCahon (47 illustrations and 124 page references). Milan Mrkusich barely gets a mention (only two illustrations and 22 page references) and Walters is strangely positioned as the not-a-koru-painter (20 illustrations of abstract Walters to three koru works).

It’s a substantial book and Pound is very gracious about the contribution of his old adversaries Brown and Keith, using their book as the clearest articulation of Nationalism ideology and the triumphant ending to his story. Well nearly the end, after some Walters and Killeen talk, it’s over to Shane Cotton, Michael Parekowhai and Peter Robinson. The more things change etc. etc.

Image: the Pound book packaged with safety device

Simply the best

Continuing our interest in living sculptures, this one in Tokyo.

Go figure

It's nearly Christmas, so let's go shopping. The Van Gogh Action Figure with replaceable head also comes with an easel painting of your choice. And, for that special someone, there's nothing to stop you putting on a GI Joe head to create your own 21st Century Action Painter.

Animal farm

"Seeing an art fair for me is like getting a guided tour of a slaughter house."

American artist Chuck Close

Ratings

Since we last left him, Pointless and Absurd's David Cauchi has finished his first year's season in Massey with straight As. In the very entertaining show Cauchi entertained his fellow students (“I faced away from them, dropped my pants, and read my presentation”), leaked like a sieve (“I had a couple of amusing meetings with tutors yesterday. One of them said the problem with talking to me was that a couple of days later there'd be a blog post about an earnest lecturer talking bullshit over a cup of tea”), and never hesitated to take a contrary position (“I did my presentation lying on my back on the floor”). You can read David's account of the year here.

Will Massey sign Cauchi up for another season? In his interview for a year's post-graduate diploma course, Head of School Jeremy Dingle told Cauchi he needed to “conform if he is to be accepted for another year.” Game on. Pointless and Absurd? Not a bit of it.

Image: Our hero gears up for season 2

Art is where you find it

Coffee and paint, paint and coffee

By the numbers: International edition

1    The number of pavilions the Vatican is planning for the 2011 Venice Biennale

1.04    The number of US dollars in millions embezzled by the former financial director of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

13    The estimated amount in billions of US dollars lost to the art market in the last 12 months

3,300    The number of Hong Kong students it took to make the world’s largest recorded finger painting

375,000    The number of people who visited this year’s Venice Biennale

17,500,000    The purchase cost in US dollars per Elvis in the sale of Andy Warhol’s 1963 painting Eight Elvises

184,000,000    The estimated value in US dollars of Madonna’s art collection in 2008

Image: Early concept sketch for Vatican pavilion

sources: Economist, Times, NYT, Artforum, Artfino

What Te Papa did

Below are the art objects that Te Papa purchased in the last financial year as listed in its 2008-2009 annual report. You can download the report here and find the full list beginning on page 87.

Paintings – New Zealand

2 x Colin McCahon

3 x Darryn George

1 x Jeffrey Harris

1 x John Backhouse

1 x Reuben Paterson

2 x Judy Millar

2 x Simon Morris

1 x Geoff Thornley

Paintings- International

1 x Cedric Morris

Works on paper – New Zealand

1 x Lois White

Works on paper- International

2 x anon

1 x Daniel Hopfer

1 x Niccolo Vicentino

1 x Anthony Gross

Contemporary art

1 x Peter Robinson

Sculptures and decorative forms

2 x Chiara Corbelletto

1 x Brett Graham

1 x Francis Upritchard

14 x Warwick Freeman

6 x Malcolm Harrison

1 x Para Matchitt

1 x Michael Parekowhai

1 x James Greirg

11 x John Parker

Installations – New Zealand

1 x Maddie Leach

Photographs - New Zealand

2 x Gavin Hipkins

1 x Peter Peryer

1 x Les Cleveland

1 x Yvonne Todd

6 x Laurence Aberhart

1 x Neil Pardington

7 x Fiona Pardington

1 x Greg Semu

4 x John Pascoe

3 x Ben Cauchi

1 x Wayne Barrar

4 x Darren Glass

5 x Megan Jenkinson

1 x Frank Coxhead

1 x Raoul Sunday Bell

4 x Anne Noble

1 x Marti Friedlander

1 x Ann Shelton

4 x Edith Amituanai

1 x Ruth Watson

1 x Giovanni Intra

5 x Mary Macpherson

Photographs – International

1 x Edward Weston

2 x William Mortensen

1 x Larry Clark

1 x J Davis

1 x Malcolm Ross

Other

7 x pages from books with woodcut illustrations

Foreign devils

What is it about the rest of the world the Dominion Post doesn’t understand? With well over a million New Zealanders living overseas, the internet tying us all together, and New Zealanders’ passion for travel, you might wonder why the Dom labels Te Papa’s prospective Welsh director a Foreigner first and foremost. Part of it will be the newspaper’s desperation to hold its circulation, a task they have put on the shoulders of kids eating ice creams and crime reports. The other thread that makes its intense provincialism possible in this case is Te Papa’s own reluctance to play a part in the larger world we live in.

Our Place should have stood for Our Place in the world but has instead narrowed to our place as in our backyard. That’s why in the most recent list of Te Papa’s 106 art purchases over the last year, only one painting, five works on paper and six photographs came from outside New Zealand. Te Papa’s made-in-New Zealand policy extends into the rest of the collections. In its purchasing category International History and Culture there were only four items purchased last year. Maybe a “foreigner” is just the thing to turn this around.

The Saturday serial: part 1

Click on image to enlarge, Part 2 next week

Nose job

This week, at the Art Basel Miami Beach, curators waited to unpack a crate from Mexico that contained Gonzalo Lebrija’s sculpture Black Marlin. It was to be installed as though it had plunged nose-first into the top of a building, but when lid was removed they found the fish’s head had been lopped off. Turned out that the carrier had transshipped to a smaller truck and when the full-length fish wouldn’t fit they did what any self-respecting art carrier would do and shortened the load. A bit of spot welding restored the work, Relations with the trucking company remain rocky. 
 What's in that crate # 2:  Black Marlin by Gonzalo Lebrija
Image: Reconstruction by OTN, story via The Art Newspaper