Rubber necking

"When it fills up, you can feel the heat rising. We even get pickpockets in here, just like at a street market. There are only two of us against thousands." 

An unnamed guard comments on the overcrowding caused by tourists trying to see Michelangelo's frescos in the Sistine Chapel.

"Is that the PR Department?....Oh, forget it."

For the Waikato Museum it was good news and bad news. The good news is that they got a mention on a prime time popular TV show. The bad news? It was 7 Days. 

The why-us? moment came as part of the A&Q segment. Two competing teams of comedians are given an answer related to a news event in the last 7 days and have to work out what the question was. 

The answer was (you guessed it) the Waikato Museum and the question snapped back by Urzila Carlson? “If Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, what is the saddest?” It got worse. 

You can see the full episode here

Iconic

Unless you’ve been off the grid for the last six months you'll have caught up on 80+ year old Cecilia Giménez’s ‘conservation’ of a painted icon in her local church in Borja, Spain. The original in Santuario de Misericordia was painted by Elias Garcia Martinez in the nineteenth century but the mutant results of Giménez’s efforts have become internationally famous as Beast Jesus. As her church has won fame and income from her work, Giménez is now demanding some sort of royalty arrangement. Good luck with that Cecilia. 

But however things work out for the artist, the meme isn't about to disappear very soon, if this Halloween costume spotted on metapicture is anything to go by. 

A clash of symbols

We’ve mentioned before how hard it is to find out what’s being included in the big art exhibition supporting NZ’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair, but a Twitpic in the stream from Frankfurt let in a chink of light.  It shows a Peter Robinson triptych that features (among other elements) a version of the swastika. 

Although the swastika Robinson has chosen is the reverse of the Nazi one and shown on its side, its standing in as a symbol of Nazism and the far right is self-evident. Not surprisingly Germany has specific laws prohibiting the use or display of the swastika even when done satirically or in opposition to Nazism although this prohibition is usually limited to the specific swastika design used during the Nazi era. 

Robinson in his use of the symbol is of course addressing the continuing and disruptive power of the far right internationally as well as in New Zealand and pointing out how far we are from reaching some level of real equality.

Still, you’d have to say including this work in an exhibition in Germany is certainly a stand-up provocative act of curation. After all the curators will be aware of the conflict that surrounded Jenny Harper hanging a similar Robinson swastika work in her Victoria University office back in 1998. Presumably, having taken the work into Germany, the curators, CNZ and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage are all prepared to stand behind it should there be any similar objections from a public somewhat more sensitive to these issues than we are. 

Image: Top, Peter Robinson’s work being readied for exhibition in Frankfurt. Bottom, the modification of a swastika to a less offensive form the Olympic stadium built in Berlin in 1936

LATER: You can now see a few images from the opening here on Barbara Walzer's photostream and more installation images on the St Paul’s Facebook page. 

Runway Boogie Woogie

It isn’t fashion week if there isn’t another version of YSL’s riff on Mondrian’s painting. Has to be the most copied composition of all times. 
Images: Top to bottom, left to right. Grace Kelly wearing the original YSL dress, Costume National, Sarah Scofield swimwear, Diane von Furstenberg, Francesso Maria Bandini, Virtual Heela, BC BG Max Azria, the original YSL version, Anns Klein Ladakh, Morgan, a DIY from supplied pattern, Etsy, Paul Smith and Opening Ceremony

On the road

The Ministry of Transport and Local Bodies in support of New Zealand's artists

Death of a thousand cuts

Now it’s hard to remember the spasm of shock that ran through the art world when art dealers raised their commission from the traditional 331/3 to 40%. That rise of 6 2/3 percent has of course long been assimilated. But now, if Australia is anything to go by, and it generally is, we are on the verge of swinging over to 50 percent an increase of 10 percent on most current commission. 

 That really is a bit more serious and highlights the dealer artist relationship as never before. Even 60/40 gave the impression that the people delivering the goods were leading the business rather than the distributors, fifty-fifty, not so much. 

Dealers will tell you that even at 50 percent there is not that much to be made across the board given the costs of the freight, insurance, the art fairs, the documentation and the publications. For the few of them that offer those services at the highest level there is no doubt an argument to be made. 

But how do you make a living as a practicing artist on 50% percent? Say you have an exhibition of 10 paintings at $10,000 each and sell 70 percent of them, a champagne inducing event for many artists. That’s $70,000 across the counter (we’ll ignore GST) well more like $65,000 as the dealer has almost certainly given a 10 percent reduction to the bigger collector clients. The dealer will now take their half leaving 32,500. Time to deduct the cost of stretchers (you wont sell at $10,000 unless they are a reasonably good quality), paint, canvas, studio costs – rent, insurance etc and travel to the opening say $6,000 leaving $26,000 which will be taxed at say 25 percent to $19,500. To get the after tax salary of a lecturer at an art school you’d have to do that three times a year. That’s 21 sales at $10,000. Oh, and don’t forget to deduct $40 for the champagne.

Lookalike

Left the Wellington City Gallery's latest exhibition poster designed by John Reynolds and right David Shrigley. (Thanks again C)

The Italian job

Could anything stop the long queue of serious artists who are waiting to put their work up as collateral on 15 minutes luxuriating in the glamour of the fashion world? Doesn’t look like it. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that artists like Gilbert and George had to make a sneak run to out-of-the-way Tokyo to strut their fashion stuff and avoid a WTF pie in the face from the artworld. 

But now that Jenny Holzer has reached out to Italian Vogue you can forget all that old-school decorum. Even spun out as an-opportunity-to-get-a-wide-audience-not-even-possible-in-the-art-world, Holzer pimping up some of her most powerful TRUISMS including TORTURE IS BARBARIC and sending them down the cat walk is breathtaking. 

And while Holzer agreeing to have her ‘TRUISMS’ spread across the cover and pages of Vogue may have been intended as deep irony, at least one of them still rings true: the abuse of power comes as no surprise.

Anyway, now the gates are wide open it’s clear sailing for that cat food commercial you’ve had your eye on Gerhard, and Roni, the Zyliss Easy-Chop endorsement? Why the hell not. 

Image: H.C. Experimental – Photographer Peter Lindbergh (2b Management) collaborating with conceptual artist Jenny Holzer for the September issue of Vogue Italia. You can see the rest here

Jolly good company

The 2012 Turner Prize exhibition of nominated artists (Spartacus Chetwynd, Luke Fowler, Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price) has just opened at the Tate in London. It brings to mind the impressive list of the many great artists who were nominated for this prize but did not win. They include: Art & Language, Gillian Ayres, Patrick Caulfield, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tacita Dean, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and Boyd Webb. Our own Walters Prize has a similarly strong line up of nominated alumni who did not take out the prize including: Fiona Connor, Phil Dadson, Jacqueline Fraser, Ronnie van Hout, Lisa Reihana, John Reynolds and Michael Stevenson 
Image: New Zealand born Boyd Webb’s Untitled from 1988 the year he was nominated for the Turner Prize (collection: Christchurch Art Gallery)

A day for Knight

The latest Artforum fell out of our mailbox yesterday. Fortunately we were able to jump back in time so we weren’t injured. It’s the Fiftieth anniversary issue and by far the fattest edition (550 pages, just under two kilos) of a magazine that has grown its girth with the market over the last 30 or so years. 

This anniversary seems the right moment to remember the personal association New Zealand has had with Artforum thanks to one of its Publishers, Knight Landesman. Knight has visited several times and he has been an indefatigable host to New Zealanders in New York. Anyone who has done the Saturday gallery round with Knight comes away with two things. One, how everybody (no exceptions) in the New York art world knows Knight and how all of them (ok, maybe there is one who doesn’t) seem to love him, and two, how you need a full Sunday to recover. 

Someone once said you could analyse the art market’s health by making a bar chart of a year’s worth of Artforums and watching the piles grow and diminish. If that’s the case, recession or no recession, the international art market is in awesome good health.

Earth, wind and fire

In september we: visited mona • marvelled at how much ding the universities are putting into the arts • fretted over the chartwell collection • lol at te papa’s attempts to ‘commercialise artefacts’ • wondered why that guy was trying to stick his foot up a dog’s bum • remembered don binney • patted everyone on the back • tweeted from the paris auctions • found that poster • lamented the demise of curators • discovered a killer cockroach artist and ran the numbers on larry gagosian.
For everyone who put up with our completely random links congratulations and apologies. Fixed now. 

Shock of The New

Returning to our car as we were about to leave Auckland, we came across the SOLD sign on the building that once housed both Auckland Art Gallery's NEW Gallery and Parsons Bookshop. This building was one of the most generous offers ever made to the visual arts in New Zealand (made by Jenny and Alan Gibbs with some cash from Chartwell) and it can't shuffle off with just a whimper.

There was talk at one stage that the building could be used by arts organisations or maybe as another contemporary art space but the energy to match the Gibbs’s generosity never eventuated. And along with the NEW went Parsons Bookshop, the only art bookshop in Auckland. On the weekend we asked at Unity Books on High Street if they stocked art books to be told, ”we don't have the room”.

Well thanks for that Unity.

So here's to some of the great stuff we saw at the NEW. Those incredible Henry Darger Vivian Girls drawings in Robert Leonard's Mixed-up Childhood, Natasha Conland’s stylish Chartwell collection presentation in which every object seemed to glow white, Richard Killeen’s survey The stories we tell ourselves, William McAloon’s Chartwell exhibition Home and away, et al's. Voice of silence installation as well as the installation that won the 2004 Walters Prize, the Urewera Mural in the McCahon Room, Robert Leonard's 2003 Chartwell exhibition Nine lives with its tribute to Giovanni Intra, With Spirit the Don Driver’s retrospective and the survey of Flying Nun Records.

And thanks for that, in a very different way, to Allan and Jenny Gibbs

Images: Left, sold and right the space formally known as Parsons

In Tokoroa...

 ...thinking about Damien Hirst

Hunting in the abstract

The discovery in the US of a $50 Renoir (now valued at $85,000) in a Virginia flea market recently reminded us of the possibility of an NZ-related find for anyone travelling in the States. Back in mid-1963 American businessman E. J. Danziger purchased twenty abstract paintings by Colin McCahon from the IKON Gallery in Auckland. As McCahon’s exhibition that year consisted of landscapes (including the large Landscape theme and variations given by Creative NZ to Te Papa), the Danziger works were probably selected from stock. 

Danziger and his brother had been partners in the movie business producing over 70 B-grade thrillers (including So evil, so young, and the 1957 shocker The depraved – more here) in the 1950s and 1960s. By the time 1958 rolled around - as McCahon was painting his pivotal Northland panels - the Danzigers had shifted focus and taken over the Gordon Hotels group whose operations included the 406-room May Fair Hotel in London. It was to decorate rooms in this hotel that Danziger purchased the works by McCahon in 1963. A year after the purchase the Danzigers stepped out of the hotel business presumably leaving the 20 c.1962 abstract paintings by Colin McCahon in place. The hunt was on. 

Over the years the ‘missing’ Danziger McCahons became a bit of a legend. Every now and then there would be talk of this dealer or that combing their way through the files and travelling to the States to try and track the 20 down. Martin Browne, a dealer based in Sydney, talked with the 81-year old Danziger in 1990 and located eight of the 20. 

Then in 2006 another of the Danziger works turned up. The painting which certainly looks like it is from the Bellini Madonna series was made available on eBay with no reserve from a seller tagged quicksellit-westpalmbeachfl. A winning bid of $US4,500 was posted but the vendor refused to give up the work. The painting is not included in the Colin McCahon online catalogue although an image of it appeared on the eBay auction site at the time. 

By our account that leaves 11 works somewhere out there. OTY. 

Image: The painting put up on eBay as one of Colin McCahon’s Bellini Madonna series in 2006

CORRECTION 1 OCTOBER: It turns out that Renoir was stolen so not quite the bargain we'd bargained on