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. 

Doggered

How often does public sculpture hit the headlines? OK, quite often in OTN we admit (105 stories and counting), but yesterday the Dominion Post went the final yard and slapped up public sculpture on its banner headline. The story, in fact, only featured the possibility of a public sculpture, which just goes to show how powerful the medium has become. What is it with all the bronze guys (they are virtually all guys, including potential Wal and potential Dog)? There was a time when cartoon characters like Wal and Co. would have been supersized in fibreglass, but no more. Now it looks like they are in for the same treatment we once saved for heroes like Scott of the Antarctic, royals like Victoria or politicians like Sir Keith. Still there is a precedent (for the dog anyway) in a life-sized bronze sheepdog (thanks David) at Lake Tekapo down South.

Famous people look at public sculpture

A brand new series. This week Castro and Lincoln.

Look alike

The European city
The American city, the New Zealand city
The road race, the shoes
The cat food
The pop singer
The video game, the film
The Auckland Museum

What's in that crate?

An OTN series looking into the inner life of art crates and the things they protect.
#2: Terence Koh Untitled (Urinal)

Don’t have a cow

Way back in the sixties Dunbar Senior of Dunbar Sloane – that’s the father of the current Dunbar Senior and grandfather of the current Dunbar Junior – was known to hold forth about how a good cow could sell art. “One cow sells, more than one cow sells even better”, he would tell the punters from the auction rostrum. As you can see from the latest Dunbar Sloane catalogue, the current Dunbars have taken this idea on board. Mind you they are not the only ones to understand the cows-for-cash equation when it comes to visual art. The Russian artists Komar & Melamid conducted a survey to find the most wanted paintings and discovered that most countries plugged for a landscape, preferably populated by wild or domestic animals, with the domestic variety most often being cows.

Today Dunbar Sloane leans more towards the views of John Baldessari. The third tip in his 1966-68 painting Tips for artists who want to sell states, “Subject matter is important: it has been said that pastoral paintings with cows and hens in them collect dust… while the same paintings with bulls and roosters sell.” And so Dunbar Sloane, in an anyone-can-make-art moment, have created their own masterpiece by cobbling together two of the works up for sale: a pastoral scene (Justin Summerton’s unfortunately titled Hobbit Hole) and Paul Dibble’s Bull on the fish of Maui.

It's Saturday... who you gonna call?

Art Man.

Roundabout now

A couple of weeks ago, you may remember, we came up blank trying to find what was in the exhibition being rounded up by collector David Teplitsky on the Roundabout website. Well, never say never. The site is now up and running, so you can see what is in the collection artist by artist. Looks like there is also a catalogue in the wings for publication next year. Woe to go in 15 days.
Image: Roundabout website, up and running