Don Binney 1940-2012

Don Binney died on Friday. His paintings of the mid-sixties with large native birds dominating New Zealand landscapes developed a great pictorial concept and rightly made him famous. Along with Robin White he helped establish a fresh way of looking at the New Zealand landscape that had for so long been dominated by Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston. 

By the time we interviewed him for Contemporary New Zealand painters in the late 1970s, Binney was still trying to reconcile the public’s unwillingness to see him as anything other than the bird painter and this reluctance hurt. Don Binney was highly intelligent and strongly opinionated as well as articulate. It was a powerful mix that could be both stimulating and at times a challenge. The fact is he could just as easily have talked those birds down out of the trees. 

Image: Binney country, Bethell's Beach

The Saturday chart

All the charts that have been submitted to OTN over the years.
Best art movie
Who are these exhibitions for anyway?
No photography
Art and science
McCahon and tomorrow
What they sell at auction
Hierarchy of needs
A job at Te Papa
Exhibition time lines
Hirst 
Touch 1 
Modern art 
Age will not weary them
Touch 2 
Know what I like 
Most loved art
The French and art
Barr's famous art chart
Power 100 
Foot traffic
How dealers price paintings
Art market 2008-2009 

Getting to the point

If you ever thought art curators should get out a bit more here’s something to nail that prejudice home. Tate curator Carol Jacobi has discovered a phallic symbol in John Everett Millais’s painting Isabella. So far so good. It’s the shadow cast on the table by the guy extending his leg. Jacobi goes on to say that the shadow-shaft “dramatically changes the way we see the work.” Um… ok. Then, starting to drift a bit, she goes on “It gives us a different view of the Victorians”. Maybe. Unfortunately things go all to hell as she winds up, “We can assume it’s deliberate, so then that raises the question: what’s it there for?”

Image: Isabella by John Everett Millais

Touching

Last night there was a panel discussion we were part of on Marcel Duchamp in New Zealand at the Adam Art Gallery. A lot of the talk was around the Duchamp exhibition that came to New Zealand in 1967. It famously got some older members of the art museum (the director of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery at the time was a tortoise inspiring 74 years old) profession extremely agitated. The fuss ended up with two of Duchamp’s works - Please touch, a false breast made by Duchamp to stick on the cover of a book and Fountain his famous readymade urinal, being removed from the exhibition at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch. The director allowed 'artists' and arts students to view them in his office and queues formed in protest with students returning to the back of the queue after they had had a look in an attempt to keep the director fully occupied showing Fountain and Please touch to 'artists' every waking minute of his day.

In memory of all this Duchamp history action here are some latter day tributes to Fountain. They range from a sticker you can use to convert your own toilet into a Duchampian gesture to a remote-controlled urinal signed R (the R was for Richard) Mutt.

Images: Top to bottom, left to right. Sherrie Levine’s Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp), Michael Parekowhai’s Mimi, R Mutt sticker from Thwart Design, Fountain parade float, cake by Hannah Hull, R Mutt figures and Raphael Rogenmoser’s remote-controlled Fountain (you can see it in action here)

Dollars and sense

If you ever wondered how much it cost to put up a public sculpture in the middle of nowhere in Queensland here are some figures to help you out. These are the commissioning and construction costs for Andy Goldsworthy’s sculpture Strangler cairn a 3.7 meter high granite sculpture funded through the art+place Queensland Public Art Fund.

Total cost $874,000 of which $421,500 went to the artist, $64,000 to helicopter the stone to the site and $388,500 for production costs.

You can view a clip of Andy Goldsworthy talk about the sculpture here.

Image: Andy Goldsworthy's sculpture Strangler cairn 

… and change

Those of you who were as surprised as we were by Te Papa’s intention to monetise the curatorial functions of the museum and use the collection’s artefacts to turn a bob can rest easy. The job description for the new Associate Director Enterprise has been severely modified to dial back these commercial expectations. 

Some time between our post on Wednesday morning and that afternoon the editors were hard at work cutting and pasting. The most startling bits in the job description (the stuff about having Te Papa operate "commercially when curating exhibitions” and having responsibility for "commercialising artefacts”) are gone. They've been replaced by more conventional expectations to "ensure commercial opportunities are generated around our collections…”

There's nothing to indicate these changes have been made but any marketing thrusters who were looking forward to cash in on curation will be disappointed. For the rest of us it's a matter of remembering that somewhere in that building someone pretty senior thought it was a good idea.

Having a cow

“It’s ridiculous—they have a great product, and they’re pushing it out into the market like cattle.”

Alberto Mugrabi, a New York dealer and owner of the largest collection of Warhol's work commenting on the Warhol Foundation putting the remainder of its holdings of  20,000 Warhol paintings, prints and photographs to auction.

Image: Warhol Cow wallpaper (detail)

Hearts and minds

Te Papa is now set to implement its “bold new vision” Changing hearts, changing minds, changing lives. This week four new senior management jobs are being advertised after yet another restructuring since Te Papa opened in 1998.

This time Te Papa is looking for an Associate Director: Te Papa Museum of Living Cultures, Associate Director: Museum Operations and Services, Associate Director: Te Papa Museum for the Future and Associate Director: Te Papa Enterprises. The job that most clearly demonstrates Te Papa's new focus is the last one. The Enterprise guy (it’s going to be a guy trust us) is to be charged with “generating revenue for Te Papa through the development of new products, processes and services, and new partnerships and sponsorships.”

Nothing much new there. But for anyone interested in art there's a stinger at the bottom of this job description as the Enterprise department "will also ensure Te Papa operates commercially when curating exhibitions” and will be responsible for "commercialising artefacts" You have until 24 September to apply.

OK. Hands up anyone who wants to be a curator at Te Papa. No one? Fair enough.

You can read the four job descriptions Enterprises: here, Living culture: here, Operations: here and Future here.

A sign from Paris

The stringer reporters attached to our Paris office have been thinking about Michael Parekowhi. (Thanks J)

September 11

One of those who did not survive the United Airlines Boeing 767 crashing into the Twin Towers 11 years ago was the 37 year old African American artist Michael Richards. He was working in his studio on the 92^nd floor of the Trade Center’s Tower One when the planes hit. 

One of Richards’ last sculptures proved strangely prophetic as it shows a figure based on a cast from his own body attacked by toy planes. The bronze sculpture Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian was in fact a homage to the black air servicemen of the Second World War.

You can read more about Michael Richards here

Image: Michael Richards Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian

art at work

Art pitching in to help fashion students at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

The waiting game

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The Walters Prize certainly continues to bring up a lot of issues around how national our contemporary visual arts culture is. For instance, the commentary from Christchurch that the Prize is Auckland-based and Auckland-centric is mirrored by the fact that none of the four finalists (Simon Denny, Alicia Frankovich, Kate Newby, Sriwhana Spong) have a dealer gallery in the South Island or in Wellington and only one of them is in the collection of a South Island public art museum as a gift to the Christchurch Art Gallery (as listed in the online catalogues at any rate.)

Geographically speaking, people tend to keep to their own (in the beginning stages of careers at least) which has resulted in the move-North-or-vanish effect for Southern artists.

The patterns of public institutional collecting of the four Walters Prize finalists are also interesting and also Auckland-centric. The Auckland Art Gallery has relied on Rob and Sue Gardiner to select most of their collection of the four via the Chartwell Trust. It has an impressive 19 works but only three (all by Spong) were purchased by the Auckland Art Gallery itself. The rest are on loan from Chartwell. Te Papa has two works by Spong, none by Frankovich or Newby and two by Denny (rather optimistically registered as four with one work having each component part recorded as a separate work). By the time you get down to the Christchurch Art Gallery it is just one work by Simon Denny (a gift).

Auckland is relying heavily on the Chartwell Collection to tell its story of contemporary New Zealand art but the others will probably have to pay a premium for waiting.

12 September: The Auckland Art Gallery has corrected our post on their collection of Walters Prize artists. In fact not all of the 13 Simon Denny's registered on their online catalogue were purchased by the Chartwell Collection. One of them, a photograph, was purchased by the gallery. Sorry about that.

Lookalike

In a post we’d only get away with on Saturday here’s the inside story on Barbie. “I think it may be time” says Jason Freeny as he starts off on a Visible Barbie jag. The building of the Damien Hirst lookalike is shown in a step-by-step process on Frenny’s Facebook page which you can reach it via his website here.

The good old faker spirit

"I looked upon my activities as a contest of wits with world experts, it was intoxicating and I enjoyed every moment of it."

American art forger, Ken Perenyi

spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have landed in overthenet’s email: the new building for an art gallery next to te papa has been given the green light with a retiring te papa board member to be actively engaged in the project • tony de latour has had his name pegged to one of the glittering arts prizes • simon denny has been dropped from the exhibition showcasing the 'best of aotearoa’s young, mid-career and senior artists' funded by the nz ministry of culture as part of the frankfurt book fair • the labour weekend walters prize dinner is creating engagement conflicts for some of its patrons • another auckland dealer gallery is about to join the move west. any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us laugh out loud will be rewarded with a rare limited edition otn painting horse badge.