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state of art

APRIL/MAY 2006

state OF ART 2006

EDITOR MIKE VON JOEL mvj@state-of-a rt. o rg

state a

NEW AUCTION RECORDS, where this or

paintings. In the Duveen intoxicated 1920's

gallery ledgers. Giorgione's Portrait ofa Man

that painting made many thousands of pounds,

over 700 paintings had been credited to the

being one example. Sold to Benjarnin Altman

are so common that outside the art industry they

C 17m Dutch master, by a more sober 1969 this

in 1913, this was a painting in a state of

barely raise a comment. W hilst the same sang

had been reduced to almost 400. Barely a week

'deplorably bad preservation' according to BB

froid

after the

Man with the Golden Helmet

in 1 895. Eighteen years later, Berenson finds

might not be said of the recent prices

achieved at the Contemporary market sales,

bombshell, Britain's National Gallery was

it in a 'miraculously fine state'. (SJ Duveen used

there is already a smug acceptance that this is a

quietly demoting

Scholar in a Lofty Room to

Berenson's connivance remorselessly. For

right and proper evaluation of works by(often)

the abyss of obscurity- the curator, Christophei:

example: in 1927 Jules Bache bought a

young and living Western artists.

Brown, noting it bore a false signature and was

Madonna and Child

most likely by an imitator of Rembrandt. The

paid by Duveen) as by Bellini - the 'revised'

It is an interesting cultural and philosophical

picture itself looked identical to how it had

opinion of Berenson. Today it barely scrapes

moment when an artist affixes a price tag to a

looked the week before.

by as 'workshop of' the Italian Master.

work and introduces it to the world.

DEPUTY EDITOR MICHAELA FREEMAN mif@state-of-a rt. o rg

Theoretically speaking, the local maker of a

PUBLISHER MAnHEW FLOWERS mf@state-of-a rt.o rg

minute he/she offers that work for sale in the

Contributors This Issu e FIONA DUNLOP SOPHIE HALL GODFREY BARKER ROBERT HELLER

small show of drawings in a gallery in Leeds is in direct competition with Michelangelo the

The Colour of Money

marketplace. It becomes a matter of perceived value and certainly a more complex equation than the old art school adage: there is no such thing as a bad painting - it's always good to the person who likes it!

ROSIE MILLARD SIMON KINNERSLEY USA BOSSE ALASTAIR GRAHAM BRIAN MeAVERA

scon REYBURN

ROWLAND THOMAS GEORGINA TURNER

Image ARCHIVE IMAGE COURTESY CHRISTIE'S KING STREET Cover

(for ten times the price

Value, economics and wealth is a tangled web

INTRODUCTION

and never more so than when combined with the plastic arts. The evolution of money, and monetary 'tokens', is a fascinating study over

MIKE VON JOEL

which the experts constantly feud. There is a general agreement that coin age; as we understand it today, was invented in Asia Minor by the Lydians around 640 BC. King Croesus

The repercussions of the Berlin Gemiildegalerie

Perhaps the most universal aspect of the

USA CLARE HENRY

of Lydia introduced coins of true gold, as

misfortune were manifest. Overnight a

Duveen story is the dramatic combustion when

FRA��E JEREMY HUNT GEORGINA TURNER

opposed to amalgams, so successfully that his

D M 20,000,000

worth

money and art conjoin. lsabelle Anscombe,

name is still familiar today. Exchange systems

DM l ,OOO,OOO-without a single fleck of paint

reviewing Meryle Secrest's Duveen/Berenson

had existed before of course, with the Aztecs

on its surface being altered. The effervescent

biographies last year, succinctly assessed the

sermons on the picture by acknowledged art

alchemy:

Momentum Publishing (Newspaper Division)

using cocoa beans and the Pacific Islanders' more sophisticated use of cowrie shells. The

world giants- authorities like J akob Roseberg,

Tel: 020 7920 7777 Fax: 020 7920 7770

cowrie emblem appeared on the first examples

Wllhelm Bode and WR Valentiner- overnight

'The most tantalising question about Duveen

Web: www.state·of-art.org

of paper money in C13m China(as Marco Polo

became not worth the paper they were printed

is the extent to which he was aware, while

reported enthusiastically in 1275: 'I tell you

on. The fact that here existed a magnificent

befriending and charming his clients, that it was

that people are glad to take these tokens,

painting by an unregistered Dutch genius

all at best, business, and at worst, a confidence

because wherever they go in the empire of the

seemed to matter little - it no longer had the

trick. Collectors are curious individuals -

great Khan, they can use them to buy and sell as if they were pure gold' )Ul

cachet of Rembrandt.

although there is no discussion here of their

Editors at Large IRELAND BRIAN MCAVERA SARAH WALKER

PUBLISHED BY 82 Klngsland Road, London E2 SDP

editorial@state-of-art.org Printed by Trinity-Mirror Group. Watford Plant

STATE OF ART is an independent publication. Views expressed herein a re those of the individual authors and not n ecessarily of the Editor or the Publishers. ALL MATERIAL@ MOMENTUM PUBLISHING 2006

�

picture

became

But what is the

cachet

of Rembrandt? Is it really any more than a body

psychology - and dealers are equally so. The

of superior paintings (of which there are

way in which a dealer grooms, educates and

Roman coinage systems spread everywhere in

obviously numerous others: see The Man with

manipulates a collector should lie at the heart

the wake of their colonisations, but the Emperor

Golden Helmet);

a mythologising through

of the biography of the high practitioner of this

Nero had quickly discovered the ease with

contemporary eyes of a man we actually have

dark art; and while Secrest does say that Duveen

which the currency could be debased and by

limited information about but of whom much

made himself indispensable, encouraging in his

AD64 the silver content had decreased to 10%,

has been extrapolated through his range of self

clients 'the kind of helplessness [he] found so

and via subsequent rulers to 5% -naturally its

portraits? And a romance with C171h Dutch life

appealing and for which he was willing to be

buying power fell accordingly. Coincidentally,

which seems so immediately familiar by way

endlessly accommodating', she lacks the

this was a seam not lost on Henry Vlll .

of Flemish genre painting?

courage to draw any conclusions about the

'Economists and financial analysts are

It's all in the

potentially abusive nature of the dealer-client

eye and mind of

the beholder.

exercised by the concept of

And nowadays in the ear as well- whereby the

and their value as a

whisperings of the dealers and auctioneers are

economics, there

tradeable goods medium of exchange. In is no such thing as intrinsic

tinnitus hard to

relationship.' <6> So as the Bankers - and Barons of widget

avoid. The Prick Collection

manufacture-bask in the sychophancy and flattery an outlay of a few thousand dollars

value. This is true for the simple reason that

in New York has a 'Rembrandt' in the gunsights

value does not reside in the atoms, molecules,

of the RRP:

1655. The

brings; and the City boys flush with pride as

chemical composition, or structure of an

Prick is interesting in this context as its origins

a telephone directory like M o d e r n Art

economic good. It resides, always, in the mind

owe much to the manoeuvrings of Joseph 'Joe'

catalogue arrives by special courier on their

of the individual perceiving the good. That

Duveen (1869-1939) a former king of the

trading room desk; and the advice to buy

art

The Polish Rider of

decision determines the value of that economic

Western

world and of the convenient

'must have now' contemporary art grows to

good, at that particular time, to that unique

attribution. Coincidentally of Dutch origin,

a crescendo - remember Samuel Johnson's

individual. Once this value became widely

Joe's father(Joseph Joel) and uncle Henry had

1770 advice on re-marriage: it is the triumph

recognised, the commodity in question was no

launched Duveen Brothers delftware business

of Hope over Experience. So is punting on

for any but the most vital

in Hull, of all places, with a rapid expansion

any runaway commodity market. And stay

purposes. Instead, it was used in exchange. It

into London and New York- and also into

right away from Dutch Tulip Bulbs!

longer

consumed

had become a MONEY.' <2>

paintings and furniture. The future Lord Duveen of Millbank thrived in the New York

This is an important delineation because it

gallery, initially as a junior to his uncle Henry,

proposes, correctly in the context of art, that

rubbing shoulders confidently with Henry's

value is not what is beheld but rather what is in

nouveau riche

the

eye and mind

of the beholder. And there

American

industrialist

clienteleY> By 1907, Joe was in full charge.

are many apposite examples in the world of art to back this up. Without even deviating into

'In 1906, [Joe] acquired three large collections:

the arena of fakery: the dexterous conjuring of

the Rodolfe Kann, the Maurice Kann, and the

Han van Meegeren; the brilliance of Elmyr de

Hainauer. In 1927, he bought the Robert H.

Hory and the flourished knock-offs of Tom

Benson collection of 114 Italian paintings; three

Keating, the prime example(and my perennial

years later, the Dreyfus collection of Italian

favourite) is The Man with the Golden Helmet.

paintings and sculpture in Paris.'

<•>

For many years one of Rembrandt van Rijn's _very best mid C17m paintings(© the experts).

Access to archival sources in the 1980s, and perhaps a lessening of reverence to sacred cows,

In 1985, a shocked world (viz_ the director's of

revealed an unholy alliance between Duveen

Berlin's Gemiildegalerie) learned that the

and the scholar Bemard Berenson. The Italian

Rembrandt Research Project [RRP] in

expert secretly received a percentage of the

Amsterdam had added this public favourite to

profit on any painting he authenticated for

their irrefutable list of non-authenticated

Duveen, as meticulously noted in confidential

NOTES (1) Source: The Proj ect Gute n b urg Ebook: The Travels of Ma reo Polo (2) The Evolution of Money Privateer M a rket Newsl ette r 2001

(3) Duveen clients i n cl uded: Otto Ka h n . Jules Bache. H.E. and Ara bella Huntington. And rew Mellon. Wi l li a m Ra ndolph Hea rst. Jo h n D. Rockefe l ler Jr.. Anna Dodge. S.H. Kress. P.A.B. Wi dener. Benjamin Altma n . M a rjorie M e riwether Post. lsabella Stewa rt Gardner. He n ry Clay Frick (4) Duveen Brothers Records. 1876-1981. The Getty Resea rch I nstitute Los Angeles. CA (5) Sou rce: Duveen- A Life in Art 2004: Being Bernard Berenson: A Biography 1979: b oth by Meryle Secrest (6) lsa belle Anscombe Apollo Magazine 2005

state of art THE ART MARKET is booming. Sotheby's and Christie's various February auctions of

APRIL/MAY 2006

British Rail Pension Fund would have struggled to show a significant profit. It is

Impressionist, Modem and Contemporary art

also sobering to note that one of the stars in

that 1989 sale was Monet's 1908 canvas,

£ 2 6 1 ,000,000 with the C o ntemporary

Santa Maria della Salute et le Grand Canal, Venice, which sold for a double low-estimate

London

took

record

total

auctions almost total sell-outs.

hammer price of £6,100,000, having been Back in December, Larry Gagosian, the

bought 10 years earlier at Sotheby's for a

world's most powerful art dealer, was

premium-inclusive £253,000. Last Nov

rumoured to have taken $2 l m at four-day

ArtBasel Miami Beach contemporary art fair.

ember, a fullfifteen years after that landmark BRPF sale, another very similar Monet from

And on top of that, an ever-bullish Philip

that 1908 Grand Canal series sold a t

Hoffman, head of the only one of the much heralded crop of art investment funds that is

Sotheby's New York for $11,500,000 (or £6,800,000).

actually up and running, has recently been quoted in

The Times

(") 0 c

as saying, 'Four

thousand individuals in the world are looking

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to spend at least $10,000,000 on art.'

Perceptions that serious money can be made

::; -< 0

out of art at the moment have inevitably

resulted in some of the fmancial markets'

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most serious investors investigating art as a potential h e d g e fund. Search for 'art

investment' on Google and you will be

confronted with dozens of articles by

fmancial journalists and analysts weighing the pros and cons of fine art versus the stock market. However, you only need to look through a few of these articles to see why the world's most serious fmancial institutions -as distinct from the world's most seriously rich individuals - are wary of making substantial and systematic investments in art. The one major bank that has - the Dutch based ABN-AMRO- summarily shut down its

'art

investment advisory service' last

October after barely a year in operation. Time and again, senior figures in the financial sector cite a lack of liquidity (i.e. the ability

rags to riches

to turn assets into cash), high transaction costs (auctioneers' commissions and

art star

premiums) and the sheer volatility of the managers are loath to jump on the art

Impressionist art got the British Rail Pension Fund out of jail in the late 1980's,

investment bandwagon.

but if it had hung on to these pictures for

Another factor is the paucity of truly

suffered an even more disappointing return.

scientific data o n which to base their

Jeremy Eckstein, who advised the fund at

investment decisions. The British Rail

the time, admitted to Business Week last year,

Pension Fund provides the only major case history showing what happens when fund managers systematically sink large amounts of money into a collection of art. Beginning in 1974, British Rail used 2.5% of its total pension fund to amass a broad portfolio of some 2500 pieces in various fields, which was sold off at Sotheby's from 1987 to 1999. The BRPF's overall return of 11.3%

'We tried to diversify too much.'

value. Of these, Contemporary is the only

The

one with broad international appeal, and as

market as the main reasons institutional fund

also featuring

another fifteen years, the fund would have

THE CRITIC

THE DEALER

compound from 1974 to 1999 (source:

Economist August

THE AMERICAN COLLECTOR�"

THE PUBLISHER

P&P

(UK only)

First p u bl i s hed by PSI (London) 1993. This edition PSI (London) 2006 ©Vo nJoel jBerger

By post from

PSI, 27 St Quentin, Fitzhugh Grove London SW18 3SE

email: books@art-line-art.co.uk

£6.00 Chequejmoney order to "PSI (books)"

Nowadays, it is concentration rather than diversification, that is the main problem for investors. Pretty well everyone with a passing knowledge of the auction market knows that Contemporary, Russian, Chinese and Indian art are the main areas currently soaring in

23, 2003) is often cited

a result, an enormous number of investment

by proselytizers of art investment as proof

conscious buyers have been funneled into

positive that institutional funds can be

this one sector of the market. Plenty of

profitably sunk into this field, but, as ever,

dealers, auctioneers and collectors who were

the devil begins to show his horns when you

active in the late 1980's art market are

look at the detail. According to the Artnet's

predicting that the Contemporary art bubble

product development strategist, Kevin

is about to burst. That may or may not prove

Radell, 'only one percent of the fund's 2500

to be correct, but whatever happens, 2006 is

art objects ultimately accounted for a positive

clearly going to be the year where something

return.' This assessment is however disputed

is going to give in the Contemporary market.

by CG Lewin, chairman of the British Rail

At the moment, if Sotheby's and Christie's

Pension Fund's subcommittee in the 1970's, who maintains that 'excellent returns' were

record-breaking

made in a broad spectrum of fields that

bubble is still growing. Both of those

Part I Contemporary sales

in February were anything to go by, the

included Chinese ceramics, Continental

auctions

furniture, manuscripts and silver.

£10,000,000 above their pre-sale estimates.

But there is no disputing that the most

Unlike the auction houses, precise figures are

achieved

totals

that

were

significant of all returns for the BRPF was

always difficult to get hold of from Philip

Sotheby's April l989 auction in London of

Hoffman's London-based Fine Art Fund (as

the fund's 26 Impressionist & Modem works.

and THE MUSEUM

Copies signed by the artist & writer - £6.00 incl

Larry 'go-go· Gagosi a n . s u p posedly tro usered $21 , 0 0 0 . 0 0 0 i n just 4 days at ArtBase/ Miami Beach selling the h ottest of conte m p o ra ry a rtists

is Philip Hoffman himself, who w a s

This one sale, held at the height of the late

unavailable t o contribute t o this article).

1980's art market boom, netted a hammer

However, recent reports suggest that the

total of £34,800,000 -a massive 20% of the

fund, which was launched in July 2004 with

fund's final aggregate of £170,000,000- on

an initial investment in the region of $30-

an overall investment of £2,700,000 made

$40,000,000 (far below the projected $100-

at various Sotheby's and Christie's auctions

$350,000,000)

during the mid-1970's. If it hadn't been for

$2,000,000 a week' an d has bought 'many

spending

'about

this single group of pictures sold at a time

million dollar paintings and have sold some.'

when prices in the international art market

Hoffman has stated that with the help of his listed advisers (lvor Braka, Thomas Dane

were bloated by Far Eastern speculators, the

state of art

APRIL/MAY 2006

and Roger Bevan) the fund will b e

states

the art market (according to their website) is

increasingly active in the Contemporary

'informed by modern portfolio theory,

market, ideally through private deals which

sophisticated risk management metrics and

cut out the transaction costs of auctioneers'

quantitative and qualitative analysis' and

fees. The Fine Art Fund is structured like a private equity fund with investors becoming

who have a rumoured $100,000,000 of funding, have stated that they will become

partners for 10 years. Thought to have under

active early in 2006.

50 direct investors, the first fund is now

heavily capitalised investment funds who are

formally closed with a second planned to be

hoping to enter the Contemporary market this

launched by the beginning of March.

year are the Swiss-based Art Collectors Fund and the lrvine Collection Fund and the Artist Pension Trust, both based in America. Add to these less formal ventures like the Swiss dealer Daniella

But it looks as though by then the Fine Art Fund will have some competition. The US based Fernwood, whose understanding of

Other new, but less

MONEY FOR NOTHING AND

O n e of the stars in the B riti s h R a i l Pe n s i o n F u n d 1 9 8 9 s a l e was Cl a ud e Monet's Santa Maria del/a Salute et le Gra nd Canal. Venice, 1908 w h i ch sold for a d o u b l e l ow-estimate h a m m e r p r i ce of £6,100,000, having been b o ught ten years e a rl i er at Sotheby"s for a p r e m i u m - i n cl usive £253. 000. Last Nove m b e r. a fu l l fifteen years after that l a n d m a rk BRPF s a l e . a ve ry s i m i l a r Monet fro m that 1908 G r a n d Ca n a l series s o l d at Sothe by"s N e w York for $11, 5 0 0.000 ( o r £6.8 0 0 . 0 0 0) .

THE GIRLS .FOR FREE

months earlier at Christie's New York, another silkscreen from the same series had

and even opaquer statistics that periodically emerge from Philip Hoffman's lips.

fetched $1,150,000 (£760,000). At the moment, it's possible to make When vendors are making this kind of money

impressive profits out o f investing i n

SCOn REYBURN

simply by putting works in an auction, who

contemporary art. Putting your money i n the

needs the modern portfolio theory and

hands of the advisors and consultants of a

sophisticated risk management metries -and

managed art fund might - just might - be

CASTS A WEATHERE

the administration fees -of an art fund? And

one way of doing it in the long term. But

with prices currently rising so much faster

most private individuals with a few million

-·f>Z»

OVER 1IHE

RrENZV GRIPPING CONTEMPORARY ARu MARKIET

�

in the salesrooms than the galleries, why

to invest in contemporary art now have the

would an owner of a major w o r k o f

confidence to spend their own money and

contemporary art want t o sell i t to a single

watch the value of their own collections rise.

buyer from an art investment fund, rather

And how relevant is the concept of long-term

than put it in front of the feeding frenzy of

investment in a market where fashions are

bidders at an auction?

changing

'Art funds are a very good place for dealers

CAUTIONS AGAINST .NVESTING UN IHO

OVER IEXPERIENC

Luxembourg'sArtVest and the activities of

"' C") :::r 0

prices

are

rising

auctions,

which,

S otheby 's

Contemporary art specialist Cheyenne

of one experienced London dealer who

Westphal recently put it, 'estimates are no

doesn't happen to be involved with the Fine

longer relevant,' simply can't be sustained

Art Fund. Philip Hoffman answers these questions of possible conflicts of interests

in the long-term. Sooner or later, t h e

by encouraging its advisors and consultants

Impressionist boom o f the late 1980s, will

to eo-invest in the individual works they

slow, if not actually go bust.

Contemporary

boom,

just

When that happens, it will be the cash buyers

of million quid on a Warhol are you really going to pass on that kind of profit to an

and sellers, not the long-term investors, who will be left standing at the end.

the growing hoards of private individuals

anonymous investor in an art fund? Perhaps

from all around the world looking to make a

Messrs Braka, Dane and Bevan already are,

Scott Reyburn is a regular contributor to the

fast buck out of dealer shows and auctions,

but at the moment there is no way of telling,

Antiques Trade Gazette and a specialist writer on the

then you have all the ingredients of a

apart from the occasional opaque anecdote

contemporary art market

by the hottest, most sought-after artists- the most precious and profitable

c "' CD c

of all

If you're a dealer and you've got the chance to

commodities in the Contemporary market are, as we know, strictly rationed by dealers

make a couple of million quid on a Warhol, are

to waiting lists of what they regard as the most serious and worthy collectors who

you really going to pass on that kind ofprofit to

won't be tempted to take a quick profit by 'flipping' a painting. Less well-placed collectors, investors and speculators are then

an anonymous investor in an art fund?

left to compete for what they can iii the public market of Contemporary art auctions. With so many private buyers with so much money pouring into Contemporary auctions, prices

Why would an owner of a major work of

are now starting to take leave of what little sense databases like Artnet previously made of the market. To take just one example from those February Contemporary sales (it would have been

S hy a n d reti ring? lvor Braka, a p o p u l a r, C h e l sea based private d e a l e r enjoying u n a ccustome_d_pers o n a l expos u re th rough h i s rol e as a dvisor to Ph i l l i p H offm a n ' s Fine Art Fund

the

and you've got the chance to make a couple

speculators' market. Supplies of fresh works

3 s:

to sell old stock,' was the cynical observation

advise the fund to buy. But if you're a dealer

() 0 c .... CD "' '< I

and

bewilderingly fast? Multimillion-pound

possible to use dozens of others). At

Christie's, an Andy Warhol silkscreen from the 1981-82

Dollar Sign

series sold to a

hitherto unknown collector in the room for a quintuple estimate £2,300,000. Four

·-

contemporary art want to sell it to a single buyer from an art investment fund, rather than put it in front of a feeding frenzy of bidders at an auction?

6s"late

state of art

STATEO

APRIL/MAY

2006

�RT

The only Bear market ever 1:0 make a profit

comment L'lOBERT HELLER FEW, IF ANY, investors in art have bettered

It wasn't that Picasso's

The Skin of the Bear. More properly termed La Peau de l'Ours, this early investment fund

fetched a high selling price that was decisive, but the low buying price - the young

was the brainchild of Parisian financier

Spaniard was a new kid on the block. But

Andre Level. He set up his fund under that

here's a difficulty for the would-be art

odd title, persuading a dozen other art lovers

investor of 2006. The new art funds have

to contribute 250 francs each year to buy

been talking big money. Unless they pay big

Saltimbanques

contemporary paintings. The investors would

prices, they will have great difficulty in fully

hang the works in their homes during the ten

investing their funds. Instead of discovering

years before the fund cashed in by selling

new, important talent, the investors will have

off the collection at auction.

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to seek established names who are already highly valued (or over-valued).

Level kicked off

The Bear in

1904. By the

time the ten years were up, the prices of work

Where contemporary prices have already

by Picasso and the other selected artists had

soared high, the risk is probably at its

soared nearly out of Level's reach. The sale

greatest. You may even now be purchasing

catalogues produced in 1914 are now

the next Picasso, an irmovative master who

The Bear's

will change the direction of art forever: but,

original investment in works by Picasso or

speaking with the greatest respect, I fmd this

themselves worth more than

Braque. The great sale narrowly went ahead

proposition unlikely. Talk of $32,000,000 for

before the First World War broke out, and

an important early Rauschenberg, or the

huge profits were pocketed - so large that

achievement of $40,000,000 for artwork by

the investors were happy to donate a fifth of

his sidekick, Jasper Johns, does not to my

their loot to be shared between the artists.

mind represent a sure thing.

The Bear

backers had quadrupled

Such risks are intensified if the auction

their money in the decade. The stars of the

market is involved. You are always gambling

show were Picasso and Matisse, with the

on the right buyers competing at the right

In fact,

former breaking all records for the modems

level on the right day. The odds will move

by selling his great Saltimbanques for 12,650

against sellers the more that art funds

francs: it had cost Level a mere thousand in

participate, since supply will obviously

1908. Could a latter-day Level achieve the

increase, and demand may well not match

same results today? The answer is certainly

the selling wave. That's where the final factor

The Bea r 's

yes, but there are critical differences between

The Bear and the approach of today's would

predetermined exit.

Pablo Picasso S p a n i s h . 1881 - 1973 Family of Saltimbanques. 1905

o i l on ca nva s . 212 . 8 x 2 2 9 . 6 cm (83% x 90"12 i n s ) Purchased 1909 from the artist b y Andr e Level, Paris, for the collection o f La Peau de /'Ours. Sold in the Bear sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 1914, no.63 (as Les Bate/eurs) purchased by Modernen Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser, Munich. Sold by June 1915 to Hertha Koenig [1884-1976], Munich. Valentine Gallery, New York sold 10 February 1931 to Chester Dale [1883-1962]. Bequest 1963 to NGA Washington.

success comes in - the

be large-scale imitators. Level's investors knew that after ten years, First, the bullish Bears were all art-lovers,

the entire collection would be marketed at a

happy to enjoy the works on their walls until

special auction. The prestige of the vendors

the sell-off. Second, the investment was small

plus the excellence of the increasingly

by their standards, and they were happy to

fashionable artists would attract the cream

entrust their money to a friend who had

of contemporary collectors,

and

the

demonstrated that he had both an artistic eye and a fmancial brain. Third, Level's chosen sector of the contemporary market was select and carefully selected - like all great collectors (a rule that still applies today) he

Artists and cafe s o ci ety: at The Dome c.1910 And re Leve l ' s fri e n d a n d a s s o ciate W i l h e l m von U h d e is seated first l e ft. Ju l es Pascin is s e e n d rawing on extre m e right

concentrated his efforts.· Most important, however, is the final factor.

Sch olars argue about Rainer Maria Rilke's relationship to Picasso's painting The Family of Saltimbanques,

Level sought 'value'. This is the key concept

but the yoking of the Fifth Elegy and Picasso's 1905 masterpiece is less important than seeing in Ril ke's poem a confirmation of the l atitude available to a great artist.

for some of the world's greatest fmancial investors, led by the immortal Warren

Buffett. He looks for a small number of large investments which he believes have good management, a good profit record and a great customer franchise, and which are priced attractively in the market. He aims never to sell these beauties, what's more, thus avoiding the erosion of profits by taxes and commissions. 'Value' in stocks and shares seems more objective than in art, though subjectivity does affect both. In hindsight, buying Picasso and Matisse, as Level did, seems a cast-iron deal

Is it important to know whether it was Rilke's own experience with Pere Rol lin's troupe, recorded in 1907, that was the first inspiration rather than Picasso's painting? Most likely both experien ces mingled. lt is qu ite possible that Ril ke had known the Picasso painting for a long time. H e was acquainted with Wilhe l m von Uhde whom he saw in Paris fairly often. Uhde knew Picasso's work well and was a frie n d of Andre Level, whose organ ization, La Peau de /'Ours, had acquired the painting an d was eventually to sell it on March 1914 in an important auction . According to von Salis, Ril ke had once prevailed u pon Frau H e rta Koenig to purchase the painting, and may h ave been responsible for h er decision, later, to acqu ire it. If Ril ke's Rfth Elegy was not inspired by the Picasso painting, why did Rilke dedicate the poem to Frau Koenig? In 1915, when Rilke requ ested the use of her apartment wh ile he sought the right house in the country, he wrote: 'I would beg for a bed in the guestroom for myself, a bed for my housekeeper, the kitchen, and permission to work at your magnificent desk - everything else would remain locked up; at most I would on some afternoon sit for a long time before the Picasso, which gives me courage for this beginning... '

- and their stature was plain to see for many

these peaks is an interesting question: but in

On 28 June 1915, he writes to a friend: '... meanwhile I am sitting here in the apartment of friends... with the finest Picasso [The Saltimbanques] in which there is so much Paris that, for moments, I forget.' Finally, on 10 October, he writes: '/must leave these rooms tomorrow, as the owner is returning from the country, and

any event, the technique, the art equivalent

with them the glorious big Picasso beside which I have been living for almost tour months now.'

others at the time. Whether many (or any) of today's contemporary heroes will match

of Buffett's mastery, is to buy great works at little prices.

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excitement of the event would do the rest. It may be that 'private' auctions by today's new art funds will also work - but

The Bear sale

method was a once-in-a-lifetime event, which was never put to a further test. The principle was similar in some respects to

a highly

contemporary

financial

investment - private equity. Here money is raised, primarily from institutions which, like

The Bear boys, are prepared to wait ten years for the pay-off. The investor trusts the fund manager to fmd suitable investments (often by t .u<i.ng public firms private) and ultimately a sui:able exit (often by taking the private investment public again). The art market has long known skilled investors of much the same variety - experts whose judgment of value is enhanced by long experience, who have access to large lenders, and who are also adept at making profitable exits. For some reason, these highly successful practitioners are ignored by those discussing art investment, even though the latter is plainly their game. They are tbe dealers, some ofwhomhave made fortunes which even financiers must envy. The profits of Ernst Beyeler, for example, are legendary. He once remarked that he made his living from the work he sold and his fortune · from what he retained. The core of the sales and collection alike was and is the same as Level's- the great modern masters. To my knowledge, no art gallery has established an investment fund around its activities. Indeed, very few of these businesses have ever sold any shares to the public. No doubt many dealers find the profits too high and the intimate private contacts too secret to encourage going public. It is a world where stocks of good, even great art are very high, and where the interests of dealer, collector (and artists) are very closely intertwined. An interesting·example of fusion, if not confusion, arises from the operations of

Charles Saa:tchi. In some aspects, he behaves like an investment fund, locking up millions in· widely spread holdings. The

This slinky accessory looks like chain mail-and is

activity of the collector greatly reinforces the profits of the investor. For instance, Saatchi . was for some years virtually the sole buyer

indeed the first line of defence against the knife in

of what became known as Young British Artists. The more he bought, and the greater

your other hand. Knit with tiny, interlocking metal

the publicity attached to his purchases, the larger the value created for his holdings.

links, this mesh glove is intended for use with oysters

Throw in close relationships with gallerists like Larry Gagos�an, and you have

profitable exit routes lined up.

but would be suitable for any operation that requires

But the operations of a notorious recluse like

hand protection - such as boning or filleting meat or

Saatchi, who doesn't even attend his own openings, are hardly a model for wider public participation in contemporary art. Dealers

fish, or even just slicing bagels.

with their clien�s' best interests at heart have always advised against regarding art as an investment. Just as the wise men say, art is too illiquid and its values too problematical

tp make that a sensible pursuit.

The best advice has always been to buy what you love, concentrate your buying on a liruited area of art and artists, and buy the best you can afford within that territory. With any moderate luck, the monetary results will

Protective· Glove was photographed at Guy's Hospital Morgue on 14 May 1998, and is part of a series dealing with the tools of life and death. So much of what we see in work now is about distancing us from the object of our labours. With these tools there is an tntense physical engagement with the object.

be as satisfying as the art. After all, that's what the world famous coldectors Herbert and Dorothy Vogel did by spending one of their two ·modest salaries on work like that of the newcomer American rninirnalists. Much of their collection is displayed at the . National Gallery in Washington, while they enjoy a (one hqpes) rich annuity in their .active old age. If such results can be achieved

Steve Pyke

December

2005

POSTMORTEM AND POSTPARTUM ARE

AVAILABLE IN A LIMITED EDITION AT £25 EACH INCLUDING A SIGNED ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH. CALL 020 7920 7777

on relatively small means (and they can), who needs an investment fund?

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comment GODFREY BARKER SO YOU thought that art investment (aka gambling on

art) was only a decade old? Or

as old as the $300,000,000 Chase Manhattan

A rt Investment Fund (founded 1 9 8 9 , deceased 1990)? Or the British Rail Pension Fund (began buying art in 1 974, had sold it by 1 997)?

ABOVE: Jacob Marls a l a n ds ca p e with w i n d m i l l s typ i ca l of the D utch 'Ba rbizon S ch o o l ' LEFT: John Galsworthy a uth o r o f t h e N o b e l P r i z e w i n n i ng: T h e Forsyte Saga

On page 6, Robert Helier reports on the investment in living artists in Paris in the

Pancake Day

1 9 10's and 20's which so infuriated Picasso

delivered a spectacular return on the Forsyte

died.

- and led him to believe that he was being

pound between 1 890 and 1 9 1 3 . The Maris

1957, or about 9 per cent in real terms of its

exploited by the

family, painters of flat canal scenes, doleful

value in 1 9 10.

art

trade. But of whom,

goats and hardy seaweed gatherers, could be

written in 1 899, is the this passage about?

He had a little-room ifJ No. 62, Montpelier Square,full ofcanvases, stacked against the wall, which he had no room to hang. Turning on the gas, he heaved a deep sigh, as though amongst these treasures, the backs of which confronted him in stacks, around the little room, he had found at length his peace of mind. He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face to the light. There had been a movement in Turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it. He stood for a long time, his pale, clean shaven face pokedforward above his stand up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found, perhaps, that it came to too little.

descended to £525 in

had for under £300 in the 1 8 80's, under

Soames did not reach his grave without

£1000 in the 1 890's yet ascended to peaks

meeting some challenge to his values. He is

in the £6000s by 1905.

Windmills

A Landscape with

by J acob Maris, the middle

urged by his arti st-niece June, in

Chancery,

brother, was sold for £880 in 1 898, the year

duck Bohemian. He refuses her on the

of the first Forsyte novel. It soared to £6930

ground that this Bohemian is 'splashy' and

in 1 9 1 3 under the propulsion of Scottish

'will never get hold of the public' . At this

money from Glasgow men like McCulloch,

assertion June, an aesthete, flares up:

Young, Cuthbertson, Hamilton, Patterson and Coates. That Jacob Maris's Zuider Zee, £3 150 in 1 9 10, then sank to £75 . 1 2s in 1932

... who knew that his reputation was grounded not on mere aestheticfancy, but on his power ofgauging thefuture ofmarket values. When he went to Timothy 's he almost always had some little tale of triumph over a dealer to unfold, and dearly he loved that coo ofpride with which his aunts would greet it.

I thought you were a connoisseur, not a picture-dealer.

was of no consequence to Soames; he had taken his profit and left the planet. While he was here, Soames did equally well in Joseph Israe1s, who was no less inflated by Glasgow banknotes.

Pancake Day was worth £945 in

'Of course Soames is a connoisseur, ' Aunt 'he has wondeiful taste he can always tell beforehand what's going to be successful'. Juley said hastily;

1895 but £2835 in 1 9 1 0, a year which counts as a summit of madness on the art market in

'Oh!'

the 20th century (this is the moment the Tate

bead-covered chair,

gasped June, and sprang up from the

'I hate that standard of success. Why can 't people buy things because they like them ? '

Mere aesthetic fancy! What a basis on which

persuaded itself to spend £4830 on Israels'

to buy art. The mid-Victorians, whose

Drowned Fisherman, a sum which could then

attitude to life we imitate in more ways than

have purchased five Van Gogh Self-Portraits

we care to understand, gave only such time

or five Monet Haystacks). The Maris market

Godfrey Barker is a leading authority on the art market

It is none other than that arch-Victorian,

to appreciating art as they needed to give to

died after Soames and the delirious Scotsmen

and contributor to the Wall Street Journal & etc.

Soames Forsyte, who survives so painfully

make money from it. Soames talked of the

into the freer air of the 20th century in John

Barbizon school of painters, whom he had

The Forsyte Saga

just discovered. These were the coming men,

(it received the Nobel Prize in 1 92 9 ) .

he said; he should not wonder if a lot of

Soames, as a mid-Victorian, had n o notion

money were made over them; he had his eye

of Art for Art's Sake; in his day it was Art

on two pictures by a man called Corot,

Galsworthy's epic novel,

for Money's sake, it was a commodity, to be

charming things; if he could get them at a

freely traded. On his daily walks into the City,

reasonable price he was going to buy them -

Soames would stop outside Jobson's, a

they would, he thought, fetch a big price

gallery which followed what may have been

some day.

MAKE YO U R OWN

M ENT ?

a general Victorian practice of displaying artist prices in the window.

That day was a long way off. Corot was briefly interesting to the Americans in Paris

In the plate-glass window ofthe picture shop his image stood and looked at him ...

in the 1890's but those fickle buyers deserted

him for the Impressionists before the Great War. Only after 1952 did Corot's recumbent

He noted the subjects of the pictures, the names of the painters, made a calculation of their values. . . and walked on.

prices rise from the horizontal and even then they stood, and stand, far lower than Monet's and Sisley's. Had Soames punted on Millet, in contrast (and Galsworthy does not mention

Soames had his own firm judgments as to

the name), he would have won big returns

what was going to do well. Happily for his

by 1 890. But the Forsytes, bar only Jolyon

bank balance, he chose Turner over Clarkson.

and lrene, treated Paris and its passions with

Stanfield. Stanfield, a London theatre painter,

high caution and Galsworthy tells us that

was more expensive than Turner until the

Soames exited early from Meissoniers, which

mid- 1 8 6 0 ' s , his vast seascapes with

were spectacular risers in the 1880's and then

picturesque 'characters' peaking at £3465,

dramatic plungers. Instead Soames decided

then falling. But those who chose to bet on

he must go Dutch:

Turner were able to ride him up far more steeply from a norm of £750 in the 1840's to a high of £20,000 in 1 885. Soames Forsyte took much secret satisfaction in his 'connoisseurship' . He would occasionally

He himself, who had done extremely well with the Barbizons, hadfor some years past moved towards the Marises, Israels, and Mauve, and was hoping to do better.

announce his triumphs to his family or to his guests at Mapledurham:

to buy some paintings by a lame

He was not wrong. The 'Dutch Barbizons'

FOR PRICES AN D S IZES GO TO

www.state-of-art.org and click on 'AD RATES' S IX ISSU ES A YEAR VIEW ALL DISPLAY OPTIONS ACTUAL SIZE I N .PDF FO R MAT

-r

state of art APRIL/MA\' 2 006 R EAL ESTATE

state 9 Fezzan 's rock-paintings and engravings

treas u re

•

I ss

immovable and uncollectable, the intrinsic 1Value' of some art report

FIONA DUNLOP

giraffes, elephants, antelope, horses and

show hunting, domestic, ritual and even

crocodiles ... proof that this part of the Sahara

erotic scenes, all with an unexpected sense

was once a land of lush savannah. Painted

of movement, detail and proportion. Nor are

or etched between 2000 and 10,000 years

they timid little sketches, as some measure

ago, they are part of the fantastic prehistoric

over a metre and are easily visible on

culture of Africa that continues over the

exposed, isolated rocks. These are the

border in Algeria's Tassili region. Much of

engravings, able to withstand climatic

the research in the Fezzan has been

extremes (which once upon a time included

undertaken by Professor Fabrizio Mori, the

rain) while the paintings are generally located

Italian archaeologist who first set foot there

under protected overhangs or inside caves.

in the 1950's. According to his classification, there were several stylistic periods, each

Many are concentrated in a 1 0-km stretch of

lasting a few millennia and which were

Wadi Teshuinat, where they rival surrounding

instigated by climatic changes. As vegetation

pinnacles, crags, mushrooms, stacks and

and animals changed, so did man's activities.

honeycomb erosions. Alongside the more

As a result, these paintings record a gradual

predictable images of camels are oxen, bison,

shift from classic hunter-gatherer activities to more sedentary existences. In one cave

'Between a rock and a hard place' goes the

there are even images of women undergoing

expression, but in this case it's more like

elaborate hair-preparations, no doubt for

between thousands of very ancient rocks and

some kind of ceremony. In some cases there

a soft Sahara landing. There can be few more

are panels of ti.finagh - the Tuareg's ancient

remote or astonishing open-air art-galleries

script - which were probably added later.

than this showcase of prehistoric art which lies deep in the Fezzan, the desert province

Given this richness of images and age, it is

of Libya. Even more surprising is that,

hardly surprising that the Fezzan, like its

despite their great vintage, these engravings

Algerian neighbour, is on the UNESCO list of

and paintings have only been thoroughly

World Heritage sites. For the moment,

investigated since the 1950's. Research and

Libya's embryonic tourist structure ensures

categorisation continues with, as usual,

that this secret art remains accessible only

wildly varying theories but what the images

to the happy few who can afford to hire

clearly reveal is that desertification of North

4WDs and Tuareg guides. But the natural

Africa has been an ongoing process for

western thirst for the obscure will no doubt

several thousand years.

change that situation. What's for sure is that no one will be out in those dunes on mule

Mile after mile of extraordinary rock

back.

formations shoot out of the sand like extra terrestrials. While beyond them looms the

Fiona Dunlop is a London based arts journalist and

250-km long range of the Akakus and beyond

specialist travel writer.

that, the oasis town of Ghat. This is Libya's Far West, a north African take on Ansel Adams or Edward S. Curtis - minus the

Courtesy: Universitil degli Studi di Roma (Libyan Project)

Native Americans and plus turban-swathed Tuaregs and the odd camel. It is a long way from anywhere, not least from Tripoli which is about 1400km to the north. 'Good luck in my country' a hotel waiter said with more

LEFT: p a sto ra l p a i nting from the Wa d i Tes h u i n at

than a touch of irony on my first morning in the capital.

He was right, I needed it, but

once destination had been reached and a·

B E LOW: gi raffes etched in rockfa ce. d e m o n strating the d r a m atic l oss of vegetation i n the now a ri d d es e rt l a n dsca p e . Picture: Neil Beer

night spent in the desert in near-freezing temperatures, a kind of smugness set in. It had to be the rarity value because it was certainly not the local hooch (Libya is

TO P: th e Ita l i a n a rc h a eo l ogist Professor Fabrlzlo Mori on l o cati o n in 1 9 5 0 " s . Acco rd i n g t o h i s classificati o n . th e re w e re severa l styl istic periods. e a c h l a sting a few m i l l e n n i a a n d w h i c h were i n stigated by c l i m atic cha nges.

dry

in more ways than one). Courtesy: Universitil degli Studi di Roma (Libyan Project)

A few years ago, I embarked on a tortuous mule-trek to the bottom of a Mexican canyon in order to see some unsung and, I thought, little known rock-art. In the end, the experience - despite the lyricism of the paintings - was a disappointment due to ropes, walkways and other visitors, mainly Mexican schoolkids. My

pique

was even

more acute when I discovered they had somehow strolled into the canyon while I'd been painfully negotiating with my mule down vertiginous tracks. Compensation did come in the sculptural forms of desert cacti - this was Baja California where literally hundreds of weird and wonderful species pepper the landscape. I had an even less rewarding experience in Australia's Northern Territory; the Aboriginal rock-paintings were superb but the infrastructure top-heavy and the tourist-shuffle just too much. Here in Libya, it was altogether a different story. Although we were by no means the only 4WD in search of desert art, when we finally reached our goals (the works are scattered over a vast wadi between miles of rippling sand-dunes) we had front-row close up views with absolutely zero impediment; we could even run our fingers over them. Such rawness of context adds immensely and egocentrically to the emotions - the art seems to commune with the sand, the skies and time. Far more than mere stick-figures, the

1 0stale

state of art

EUROSTATE

APRIL/MAY

2006

paris diary

--��nd g he Trilby

Brit Artists thrive in Paris studios report GEORGINA TURNER ASK

MOST

PEOPLE

about

wooden

Artists have also long been

used to draw that summer at the Musee de l'Homme.' Paolozzi was immersed in an alternative culture where he could question conventional attitudes. In a position outside both cultures, he could select and comment on aspects of both:

Maugham studied at the Academie

The sculptor William Chattaway

describes the

In London, his work is shown at the Stoppenbach & Delestre

and James Joyce. Or maybe Peter

Brook, Kristen Scott Thomas and Charlotte Rampling. Or Serge Gainsbourg's muse, Jane Birkin,

remembering her groundbreaking heavy

breathing

performance

plus.

sound

Je t 'aime moi non

attracted to Paris. Somerset

has also been in Paris since 1947.

Julien in the 1 890's and his novel

TOM P H I LLI PS PRI NTS 31

P R U N ELLA C LO U G H

Bohemian studio life and loves of

artists in Pari s . For any self

gallery and his commissioned

to Roderic O'Connor, Wyndham

Royal is in front of where the Bal Bullier once stood (now a students

respecting artist from Gwen John

portrait of Chateaubriand at Port

Lewis, Marlow Moss, Conroy Maddox, Eileen Agar and Roland Penrose, an extended sojourn in

amongst

MAY - 4 J U N E Flowers Graphics 82 Kingsland Road London E2 S D P T: 0 2 0 7920 7777 F: 020 7920 7770 graphics@ flowerseast.com Tuesday - Saturday 1 0-6 Sunday 1 1 -5

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synthesis with architecture, evident

necessary to participate in the

Neovision House, 1955.

international melting pot of current

trends and emotional freedom away

f.)

New . London Children 's Choir

Monday 15th May at 7.OOpm Fundraising concert for New London Children's Choir Musical director_· Ronald Corp Courtesy ofAngela Flowers Gallery to be held at

early

1 95 0 s

Mason has

that is immediately recognisable as the Panorama ofParisfrom the

Crozier, Stanley William Hayter, Alan Davie, William Gear and William Turnbull all spent time in

developed his Relief Panoramas -

Surrealism and the iconic appeal of

from 'physical, articulated, three

top of Sacri-Coeur,

1959, Mason

a play of perspectives originating

Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Giacometti. Their presence helped

city panoramas and urban reliefs

and stimulate a dynamic post-war

possibilities, combining the human

painter, architectural designer and

architecture. His ideas, like Gilbert,

Stephen

Jocelyn

Chewett

Gilbert, ( s culptor,

Canadian 1906� 1976) at the Henry

Moore Institute in Leeds, has been living in Paris since 1 9 45 . Grandson of the sculptor SirAlfred

was a popular, much painted,

dancehall. As Henry James '

'. . . and meantime I must live. For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream. I want to go to the Bal Bullier. ' 'To the Bal Bullier? ' repeated

and popular. In early drawings such

sculptor

high

the

Post 1945, Lucien Freud, William

culture. S o me stayed on. The ·

and

laments:

developed a figurative landscape

to both internationalise British art

low

Raymond Mason moved to Paris

Road.

Paris pursuing the remnants of

the

participants of culture, the Bullier

marquise, Madame de Bellegarde,

in 1 946. From his street scenes of

dimensional attacks on paper' . His

evoke streets full of people and aspect

of the

city

with

its

developed in response to the post war Parisian art scene and his

conversation is scattered with

references to Beckett, Giacometti,

Balthus, Malraux and Duchamp.

Newman, for whom the words at

first meant nothing.

'The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their mistresses. Don 't tell me you have not heard of it. ' 'Oh yes, ' said Newman; 'I have heard of it; I remember now. I have even been there. And you want to go there ? ' 'It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please. But I want to go. ' The American, Chapter 17,1877 A more recently settled Parisian

But his work is also firmly rooted

Brit is Markus Hansen. Born in

Gilbert R.A., and born in 1 9 1 0 in

exposing a satiric, social comedy

moved to Liverpool aged 9. Hansen

first and then painting at the Slade

School of Art. He established a

of manners, such as in The departure offruit and vegetables from the heart of Paris, 1969, in

became a member of the Cobra

response to the disappearance of

Fife, Gilbert studied architecture

studio

Montparnasse

and

Group, the Groupe Espace and an

Associate of

Rialites Nouvelles,

participating in the post-war

debates of British and Continental

his

native

Birmingham,

St Eustache Church, made in

constructed colourful welded

Paolozzi described the excitement

sculpture and architecture. He

b e gan

in proposals for h o u s e s and

objects: 'I spent my first summer

1950's was infused with a cross

Flowers East, 82 Kings/an d Road, E2 BDP

channel dialogue, exploring the

Art, Wine & Concert

spatial compositions resulting in

explored this combination further apartment blocks searching for a

began showing his work with

Maureen Paley through Interim

Art and moved to Paris after a residence at the Cartier

Foundation. Hansen's work is

food market.

articulation of three-dimensional

to geometric abstraction in the

1963 in Heidelberg, Germany, he

Les Halles, the huge central Paris

In 1947, his contemporary at the Slade, Eduardo Paolozzi, joined him and subsequently encountered Tzara, Leger, Dubuffet, Giaciometti, Brancusi, Braque, Miro, Ernst, Picabia and Arp and

constructivism. Gilbert's approach

'space-frames' that hover between

in his drawing and model for

from the restrictive provincialism

currently exhibiting with his wife

(:'L

canteen). A favourite rendez-vous

Paris, a city that was then at the

of Camden Town and the Euston

PRI NTS 4

Of Human Bondage

centre of the modem art world, was

MARCH - 30 AP RIL

Denfert

. and lots of shooting booths [also] I

off Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde

Edition 75. 7 6 . 5 x 54.5 c m

be a permanent summer fairground,

Paris and chances are they will reel

Tom Phllllps Virgi/ in his Study S c re e n p ri nt 1979-80

studio

Rochereau where there seemed to

creative Brits and Irish living in

saw Dada and Surrealist works .

of these years 1947-49 where he to juxtap o s e

popular

imagery and more s c ulptural in Paris after the Slade in a large

Alfred Mehran at Cha rles de Ga u l l e

a i rport - a career m a d e o ut of l ost pa pers a n d u n d e resti m at i n g the intransigency of internati o n a l Gove r n m ents

-r

state of art

APRIL/MAY

conceptual and his themes memory, history, identity and roaming versatility - are generic to his generation. He works solo and in

using

collaboration

performance,

installation,

pho tography, film, video and sculpture incorporating materials ranging from chocolate to domestic dust. For the Parisian Nuits

Blanche in 2005 - art installations and promenades that run through the night - Hansen transformed the

King's Alley at the Chateau de Versailles into a Stairway to

Nowhere. This vast, slightly curved lawn, known as the Green Carpet,

state 1 1

2006

YBAs. The selection of 25 art

Terminal with Tom Hanks, and he Waiting for Godot at de Gaulle, a film by Alexis Couros and Sir Alfred of CDG Airport, a documentary by

videos

is the inspiration for

Lemaitre

(Antoine de Galbert's private art Gillian Wearing, Jeremy Deller, Tacita Dean, Mark Wallinger, Isaac Julien, Rachel Reupke. At the FRAC C e ntre in Orleans, architect CJ Lim is exhibiting his

September 2005, he is the ultimate performance

the

foundation) is dominated by them

Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard. Last reported seen in enigmatic

from

collection at the Maison Rouge

and

installation artist.

project

Virtually Venice created for

the British Pavilion at the Venice

In 1953, long term French resident John Berger considered that 'Paris

Biennale in 2004: a fictional universe where Kubla Khan meets

today seems to me to be a city sick

Marco Polo. Archi/Peinture at Le

with art, the victim of the second

Plateau (a contemporary arts

and third generation of its own

centre in Buttes Chaumont in the

geniu s . ' [Judgement on Paris] .

1 9 th)

c ollaboration

with

Stephen Gilbert d rawing for Neovision House 1955

Camden Arts Centre, London,

Co u rtesy of the a rtist

looks at the architecture in cities illustrated through works by French and British artists Phil ADen, Hurvin Anderson, Andrew Lewis, Toby Ziegler (to 2 1 s t May). To mention a selected few. Creative Brits in Paris are alive and quite well. Georgina Turner is a writer and curator based in Paris

LI N KS Shaping Modern Sculpture: Stephen G i l b e rt and Jocelyn Chewett i n Post路 Wa r Paris: to 16 Apr 2006 Leeds City Art G a l l e ry Jane Blrkln with coup de foudre Serge G a i n s b o u rg. G a i n s b o u rg (1928路1991) re m a i n s an i c o n i c figure in Fra nce with a rep utati on c o m p a ra bl e to that of J o h n Le n n o n i n Engl a n d .

M a rkus Hansen www. m a rkusha nsen.com The 28th I nternati o n a l Festiva l de Films de Fem mes: a self portrait of J a n e Bi rkin through a sel ection of fil ms. discussions a n d p h otogra phs by Ga brielle Crawford . www.fi l msdefe m mes.com

O P P OSITE: p u b l i city for the i nternati o n a l h it s i ngle J e t'aime moi non plus was carefully mown and then cross-lit with intense light to give the impression of an uneven grand stairway disappearing into the night. Alongside it could be heard a text by a 1 7th century visionary,

Mercier

Louis-Sebastien

describing his prediction of the world in 2440. In another install颅

ation inside a neo-gothic chapel at the Donjon de Vez,

Trink 1999, he

collected the unclean champagne glasses from a private view. These he built into a 2.5m wide x 3m high tower around a clear 500 watt light bulb to present a mixture of 'fragility, dirt and beauty' .

True, there is an overflow of abundance of art in Paris, much of it historic, but I would argue it is a motor not an illness. Paris is loyal

La M a ison Rouge, Fondation Anto i n e de G a l bert www. l a m a i s o n rouge. o rg

to its traditions: a constant upkeep, renovation and re-thinking goes on, with long-term grand proj ects

CJ Lim Exh i b ition at the Fends Regi o n a l d'Art Contemporain d u Centre (FRAC) in Orleans. www.frac-centre.asso.fr

being undertaken and followed through - not least the Louvre. And it is also traditionally a city that faithlessly insists on having a good time, in search of novelty. Leading

Arc h i p e i ntu re Le Plateau Fends Regi o n a l d'Art Conte m po ra i n d ' l l e de France (FRAC) www.fracidf-l e p l atea u .cam

in fashion, luxury, slightly kitsch, it naturally opens itself up to contemporary art and strange foreigners. This keeps it alive not sick.

The oddest case of confused ex-pat identity has to be that of 'Sir'

Alfred Mehran, known simply as Sir Alfred, who has lived in

Today Paris is under the spell of Brit creativity, attracted to the fame and brash knowingness of the

Markus Hansen Trink 1999 i n sta l l ati o n 2 . 5 m w i d e x 3m h igh

in n ee-got h i c c h a p e l at the D o nj o n de Vez c h a m pagne glasses b u ilt i nto a tower a ro u n d a c l e a r 5 0 0 w l ight b u l b

Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airport Terminal 1 since 1 9 8 8 . Born in Iran, Sir Alfred was on his way to London to seek asylum when his

I .

papers were stolen at CDG airport. Without a passport, he found himself caught in a refugee No Man's Land. Over a period of eleven years, he became a

cause celebre and a human rights lawyer eventually succeeded in obtaining

him a residency permit. During this

time Mehran re-named himself Sir Alfred and made himself at home enjoying a celebrity squatter status

in CDG Terminal ! . He has no need for money as airport staff and passing travellers provide him with

food and he is sought after by frequent travellers, journalists and MA

art

students .

Steven

Spielberg's Dreamworks bought the rights to his story in the nineties and made a film called

The

路- - -

Vincent 2 0 0 4 C-Print. u n i q u e p ri nt 97cm x 7 5 c m Private C o l l e cti o n , N ew York

Rachel 2004 C-Print. u n i q u e p ri nt 9 7 c m x 7 5c m G ugge n h e i m M u s e u m . N e w York

Markus Hansen Other People's Feelings, 2 0 0 0/5

1 2 state

EUROSTATE

state of art :

the frieze effect

.....u;;;;

APRIL/MAY

2006

the exhibition has been such a success that

The London Printworks Trust

has shown

interest in collaborating in an offsite exhibition. 'Having the exhibition at the house was really relaxed. People always enjoy seeing other people's homes.'

innovative exhibitions or

attention seeking gimmicks?

��J !�!�!�'�!' (

survey LISA BOSSE

U·

1 tr

(

IIIIJJ.,.J J J

BACK IN 1975, Brian O'Doherty presented

a lecture, tackling the habit of showing art inside the white cube, which was published in his famous and influential book Inside the

ABOVE/LEFT : Julle August at 18M. the h a l lway g a l l e ry

White Cube. It seems that today the location for art is

BELOW : Carollne Stevenson, Ann Marle Pena a n d Cllodhna Murphy' s Flag Project

almost as crucial as the exhibition or event itself. The use of alternative exhibition spaces outside the traditional gallery and museum format predominates. Especially in London's

18M BERLIN, GERMANY

East End, where the creative spirit of turning any spare space into a platform for art is without any limits. It's a trend that is very similar to New York's

East Village

ISm was launched in February 2005 by Julie August in the 1 8m long hallway of her flat. Exhibitions are open once a month on the

in the

1980's where within one summer over 180 galleries were established, although very

1 8th. 'Being a mother, having a full-time job

short lived. The first gallery to start this

but a great passion for organising art

explosion was Fun Gallery ( 1 9 8 1 - 1 985),

exhibitions, it was an ideal solution to do it

followed in 1982 by Gracie Mansion; Loo

Division, showing art work - as the name already reveals - in her toilet. But even before, in 1 9 7 1 , PSI Museum was founded by Alanna Heiss as a defining moment of the alternative movement. The PSI Museum space opened in 1974 in a former Queens school building and now is an associate of the MoMA. However, the notion of inventing space is not only restricted to London or New York these days, but can be observed on an international level beyond the acknowledged centres of the art world. Whether this notion is still a rudimentary rebellion against the institutionalisation of art in the 1960s, is due to the lack of space, or of sociological matters - they all offer different perspectives.

BOTTOM : Brlan Duggan a n d Mark Cullen's Pal/asstudios atop semi derelict fl ats.

at home. Only the other tenants are irritated by the frequent stream of visitors' . Sales and concept have been so successful that August is moving to a bigger space early next year to continue juxtaposing exhibitions and

LONG PLAYER TRINITY BUOY WHARF LIGHTHOUSE LONDON, ENGLAND

living.

Artangel is probably the most renowned and established organisation for showcasing art in unusual locations. Longplayer is a musical collaboration with Jem Finer based at the Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse. With the technical support of a computer program, a

LINKS www.a rta ngel .org. u k www.longpl ayer.org www.18m-ga l e r i e . d e www . pa l l asstud ios . org

one thousand year long piece of music is playing without repetition (till 3 1 December 2999).

more readable. There's a young

himself 'in favour of having the

' B rancu s e ' ? Aside from this,

Dylan Thomas - then 'a modest,

nonentities left where they were

though,

witty, gnome-like little creature'

put, as monuments also to what was

entertaining

at the Surrealist exhibition of 1935,

thought at the time ' ,

illuminating read.

which

Some Poets . . . and

is a hugely uniquely

cont'd/Boys from a Lost Generation

"'"

·exercise his beliefs in the accessibility . New York City, born in Brook\yn i n· of imagery. Like Warhol (a friend and 1960, but left for Puerto Rico at the ally) with his Factory concept, Ha ring crucial age of 12 when his father, a n opened Pop Shop i n New York (1986) accountant, was transferred to Mira and Tokyo (1988) selling chea per · Mar near San J uan. M uch was rater. versions of his art as prints, T-shi rts to be made of Basquiat's im aginary and ephemera. This, and his work for street kid credentials by the media, · Absolut vodka and Swatch watches, b u t i n fact h i s u p b r i n gi n g was · caused outrage and accusations of decidedly American midd lec\ass: his ' s e l l-o ut' at the time. By today's father Gerard, a Haitian professional; standards, it seems truly visionary. mother, M ati lde, a N e w Yorker of Endeari ngly, H a ring never lost the Puerto Rican parents; two sisters; ' Buddy H o l ly' looks noted by Tony and a comfortable home in suburban Schafrazi at their first meeting back East Flatbush. Matilde Basqu iat was in 1979. When he died . of AIDS in a cons u m m ate museum goer and 1990 aged 31, Keith H a ri n g h a d J M B was a regu l a r visitor to the become a n ind ustry. His friend a n d Brook\yn M useum, Met and MoMA . .. . associate J u \ia G ruen maintains his estate to this day, true to the ethical In 1976, the family retu rned to New stance of an artist who wanted art · York and JMB attended Man hatta.n's ·for a l l a n d the destru cti on of the City-as-school, a special institution concept of highbrow vs lowbrow art f�lr gifted and talented kids who did not fit i nto the traditional scHool This Skira book, whilst technically a system. it was here J M B's productive cata logue to an exhibition sponsored association with m u lti-di s c i p l i n e · · by C h rys \ e r, i s a n a b s o l utely . graffiti artist A I Diaz began to expand outstanding exam ple of the modern : his creative horizons. 1979 was a - i l l u strated b i ogra p h i c a l a rt bopk. ·_ seminal year for J M B, not yet 20. He Large fo r m at, m a gnificent and · began a friendship with Keith Haring extensive colour reproductions, with and Kenny Scharf and, crucially, was a . c o l l e cti o n of i n c i s i v e , highly i ntro d u ced by M u d d Club b u d dy_ r e a d a b l e texts by those ·m o st · Di ego Cortez to H e n ry G eldzahler. conversant with the a rtist ( a s Over the next two y e a r s , J M B opposed to the u s u a l m o n oto n e , co ntr i b uted t o s ignificant gro u p si ng\� critic essay). Autho ritative shows, notably New YorkjNew Wave contributors include J effrey" Deitch; in 1981. Subsequently, Annina Nosei J u l i a G r u e n ; Arturo S c h w a r z ; offered to represent Basquiat and Fernanda Pivano; Tciny Schafrazi; etc. p r o v i d e d a stu d i o s p a c e i n h e r i t offers dual English-Ita lian texts and basement. This i n turn led to Re ne is a shining example of clear a n d Ricard's highly complim entary essay fluent design. in Artforum. J M B was launched with his first American one man show at Jean M ichel Basquiat started life in Nosei's Man hattan gallery in 1982. _

Basquiat's sense of his own integrity. · Between 1986 to 1!:!88, the a rtist visibly disi ntegrated , whilst across the. i nternational art community, the tra d e in h i' s works c a r r i e d o n rem'orselessly. T h e sudden death of A n dy Warhol i n - 1987 devastate.d Basqu iat. W a r h o l h a d seemed to understa nd J ean M ich el's alienation a n d cu.ltura l schizophrenia. Alone, with o ut the m u ch l oved J e n n ife r Goode who had been defeated by the d rug .abuse, a l l attem pts to d etox ca me to n aught. The headline news of 7th August 1988 - Artist Basquiat dead at 27 - was n o surprise to the New York art milieu.

Kelth Harlng Untitled 1982 e n a m e l a n d d ayglo o n· m eta l

Co l l ecti o n : Keith Ha r i n g Estate. N ew York.

'As 1983 drew to a close, Basquiat's meteoric rise to celebrity seemed u n sto p p a b l e . N o w close to' A n dy Warhol, with wnom he had a natural affinity; a girlfriend who was an· editor at Interview magazine; signed to a Bruno Bischofbergerj M a ry Boone pact .a nd exhibiting across the world. But what a difference a year makes. B a s q u i at's s e n s e of roots a n d indentity were the subject of much self scrutiny. He was submergect in a predo m i n a ntly wh ite c o m m e r c i a l artworld where p o w e r a n d money ruled the pecking order (true friend A n n i n a N os e i h a d s o o n b e e n o utgu n n e d a n d h e r ' d-i s c o v e ry'

seduced away). The death of black

gra ffiti a r�ist M i c h a e l Stewart,

fo l l owi n g a p o l i c e a r rest, h a d d i sturbed h i m greatly, b u t these 'street' concerns· seemed light years away from the ' m e-me' society he now inhabited. Basquiat's drug taking was out of control according to close friends, and his subsequent, acute, paranoia was tellingly aimed at his dealers. H is new girlfriend, J ennifer Goode, was unable to get him clean. In 1985, a cover story for the New

York Times entitled New Art New Money:

the

Marketing

American Artist seemed to have a

subte� that was incompati ble with

From Skira, this, in association with CreditSuisse and the Tricino Canton, makes a .first class j_ol:i of presenting J M B's short career. The publisher's tra d e m a r k fo r m at - p re s e nt i n g a collection of authoritative essays and high qua lity fu l l page reproductions ( a l s o i n c l u d e d h e r e a re d o u b l e · s p r e a d fo l d ·o u tsf - i s i d e a l to communicate the plJ\se of the New York a rtwo r l d of the ·8 os. Ed itor Chiappini is di rector of the museums of the City of Lugano a n d he has assembled texts from Archil le Bo.nito 0 \ i v a ; th.e l ate H e n ry G e l d z a h l er; B r u n o B i s c h of b e rger; L u c i a n o Caprile; RD Marshal\; J effrey H offeld; a c o n c i s e b i ogra p h y by G a i a Regazzoni a n d catalogue data by Luca M a re n z i . A ga i n , a lthough technically a catalogue like the Keith Ha ring publication, this book is at the high end of a rtist m onogra phs -and i n parti c u l a r represents exce l l ent value for money: ( M vJ )

..L

ll'jJi@.'ltW

state of art Miles' searing confessions of life behind the green baize door:

APRIL/MAY

2006

with real skills a s a business woman. She was in the hair salon trade and this became Roy's first

After lunch at which the guest of honour was Princess Margaret, her lady in waiting started to look anxiously at her watch so, with a smile, 1 said loudly, 'Time to get back to our shops, ' and we all departed. Later that day, Geoffrey Agnew of the Bond Street dealers telephoned to say : 'We don 't run a shop. ' 'Really ? ' was my reply.

foot in the door of servicing public taste and understanding the fickle nature of the monied clas s e s . Indeed it was the sale o f the name and premises ofRoy's own venture into world of the powdered peruke,

Antoine 's

of Dover Street, that

funded his launch as an art dealer. To some, the biggest surprise in

Priceless is the appearance ofRM's wife Christine - he married in 1970 at the Chelsea registry office. B y

Well, they had started with one in Manchester!

Miles' account their personalities were chalk and cheese, which explains her invisible presence. But

WHEN YOU read the subtitle of Roy Miles' long 'cherished' journal

Royalty and the toffs appear with

her large estate in Yorkshire and

project you have some idea what

monotonous

' county set' connections could

you are in for : The Memoirs and Mysteries of Britain s ' N° 1 Art Dealer and indeed, the book is

Priceless,

regularity

Miles' face to the world is one that

with our Roy always in

have done no harm to the budding

where Miles' reprised his conjuring

the role of Raleigh sweeping his

gallerist, fresh from a career as a

with High Victorian painting. This

beams munificently and he loved

cloak (metaphorically speaking)

crimper in Dover Street. And

time it's

pre-glasnost Russian Art,

to confide 'just sold a million' ,

aptly named for the contents are

across the dirty puddle. Now in

Priceless is subsequently dotted with

similar in subj ect matter and

somewhat o f a catchphrase i n the

certainly priceless. Few people in

retirement he might muse on the

references to 'the Rolls' and 'the

execution to the traditional French

far

the London art world are unfamiliar

wasted years spent as unofficial

Bentley' - vehicles which, as anyone

painting so beloved by the 'monied

introduces Miles' obsessive en

off boom

times.

Which

with Roy, he's an effervescent,

courtier and wonder what happend

who has ever owned one knows, are

classes' . But the sadness begins to

gagement with the news media.

buoyant character and the common

to his knighthood (as Britain's W 1

next to useless in the city.

creep in before Bruton Street. The

Roy just cannot disguise his delight

art business, as Miles so often

at even the flimsiest mention in the

The illustrious career unfolds. It's

observes, was changing and there

most obscure rag, and a journalist from the Beano would be accorded

attribute of 'generous' is not at all

art dealer) - the waggish soubriquet

wide of the mark. During the many

The Duchess of Duke Street being

ups and downs in Miles' career, not

as near as the ebullient dealer is

a rapid waltz from Duke Street St.

was no role for him in the hip hop

all covered in this memoir, his

likely to get to an honour in this

James' to the gulag at Bruton Street

world of the White Cube. And

the champagne and confidence

generosity - especially towards

life . However, this is

a not

frankly, his patrons were dying off

routine equal to that dished out to

The Times.

those less fortunate than himself

unfarnilar stance, often taken by

(quite literally) and their children

the lead writer of

seldom wavered and this alone is a

those

wanted to be in with the new party

course, this is the key to Roy Miles

worthy epitaph. Those hoping for

perceived as a humble background:

art crowd preferring, one assumes,

- he is a thoroughly decent bloke

gratuitous

born in Liverpool ( 1 935) of an Irish

to show off a Warhol Mao to a bit

but as vain as the rest of us. Which

disappointed. Unlike i n life, Roy's

father and a broken marriage .

of Sergei Chepik buff n'fluff. The

is not to say he is above the sharp

literary exposures that teeter on the

Although it al so managed to

death of his wife Christine in 1997

manoeuvre in business and the

edge

encompass Prep School, a weekly

was obviously an unexpectedly

seizing of the moment in a deal. In

s c andal

will

indiscretion

are

from

what

might

surprisingly - few and far between.

allowance on leaving home and a

harsh blow and it seemed to signal

the art world you last five minutes

His revelations are somewhat timid

new sports car from Mother at 2 1 .

the end of a glorious era - as well as

without this skill. But overall, his

and, on the whole, reserved for the

In fact, Mother i s omnipresent and

the end of a century [in art terms]

o c casional

deceased. The following inter

appears in

like no other.

promotion - and the pompous

change might be illustrative of

nonsense go-getting Scotswoman There is an engaging honesty in

pale to insignificance against his

Priceless

as a no

Roy M i les 264 pp. i l l us. H b . M etro Publ ish i n g £16.99 M I KE VON J O E L

Arts o f Africa

7000 Years

of African Art

ed. Enzio Bassani 412pp. 247 col ill us. H b . SKIRA /G rimaldi Forum £34.95 Arts of Africa : the contemporary collection of Jean Pigozzi

ed. Andre Magnin 368pp. 336 col i l l us. Hb. SKIRA /G ri maldi Forum £42.00 BY THE 1870s the modern system of dealers, galleries, selling exhibitions a n d the vernissage was w e l l established. A s the art business took firm control over, and to a n extent manipu lated, the careers and future prospects of a rtists, it cannot be a coincidence that they looked with e n vy at c u ltu res w h e re s u c h strictures were a bsent. Where the creative process was u nfettered by avarice and social stratagems. The post-I mpression ists had responded to the simplistic gra phics and linear q u a l ities of J a p a n es e wood b l o�k pri nts, used as packing for porcelain exports. By the end of the C19th the sculptured artefacts of Africa were to capture the imagination of the ava nt garde of th e d ay. I n 1889, P a u l G a uguin acquired two statuettes at the World Fair, from a presentation stand which included works from the G a bo n-Congo colony. After a d d ing

With a b o o k l i ke 7000 Years of

African Art, it is the i m ages that

spea k with the most clarity, and this one is more than generous with its selection of full page colour plates; divided i nto fu l ly described eth n i c groupings, accompanying catalogue a n d map. Concise a n d readable o r i e n tat i o n texts b y B a ss a n i ; O m o toso E l u y e m i ; V i o l ata E k p o ; H e l e n e Le l o u p a n d J ea n - Lo u i s

self

joie de

Roy's script - books with large text

spirit and that contagious

formats are seldom ghost-written

vivre.

and he covers his childhood and

the fray, his final sentence states:

Now at 71 and retired from

start in life with the various hurts

'I write as a free and happy man ' .

and disappointments thinly veiled.

This reviewer wishes him many more

This is probably unintentional as

years of the same. He deserves it.

mother of pearl, doll's eyes and other bits and pieces, he also added his signature - they are now i n the M a rc Felix Collection as G a uguin works. By 1906, a seminal year in the fusion of Western and African art, future giants of art history were collecting a n d rewor k i n g Afri c a n i m a ge ry. Picasso, Vlaminck, Derain, Matisse, M o d i gl i a n i a l l a c k n o w l e d ged the infl u ence of the n ew fas h i o n for Sculptures Negres tll_ The P a risian dealer, Daniei-Henry Kahnweiler, per c i p i e ntly noted that certa i n I vory Coast masks had all the design in gredients necessary for the synthesis of Cubism (Picasso owned a Kobe mask). In Germany, a similar desire fo r the u n a d u lterated ' p r i m itive' exp e r i e n c e led N o l d e , K i r c h n e r, P ec h st e i n a n d S c h m i dt-Rottluff, amongst others, to look to Africa as well as Oceania and the Far East.

silliness

affectations towards 'the rich' -

PRICELESS

Looks fa m i l i a r? E m i n e m : The two M rs M " s . C h rist i n e is o n the l eft.

Paudrat illum inate the key developments of N egro art. J ea n Pigozzi's coll ecti on of contemporary art from Africa is, in its own way, equally as inspiring. Pigozzi is himself a n interesting character and those with a long memory will recollect him as a 'society photographer'. This appeared to constitute Pigozzi taking Pola roid snaps of himself " with any available celebrity, so s uccessfu lly that a book was eventually published with him mugging alongside Andy Warhol and countless other media personalities. That was then, and this now, and here he is as a one man champion of a host of contemporary a rtists and photographers from Africa.

The burden on the African artist today is complex and omnipresent. They are well aware of the respect and im portance attri buted to the traditional a rts of their cou ntry. At the same time, the intern et and world commu nications introduce the influences and ideas of a global artworld. lt is a measure of their creativity and original ity, ably demonstrated in Pigozzi 's collection, that they can avoid the pitfalls of fakery and pastiche. The work of the photogra phers in the collection has a special strength, particularly the reportage images from the streets of Kinshasa by Abou Bakar Depara (1928-1997). T h e P i gozzi c o l l ecti o n offers an u n us u a l o p p o rtu n ity to review contemporary activity from within the Afri can a rtworld, a closed book to most readers. Profusely ill ustrated in full colour, the only gripe with this book is a design quirk - the liberal use of 30+ point type fortext isjarringand an unnecessary affectation. (MvJ) (1) Sculptures Negres Paul Gu i l l a me and G. Apol l inaire. Paris 1917 Callxte Dakpogan

( b . 1958) l ives and works i n Ben i n . Wire & found objects. Pigozzi collection

I state of art

APRIL/MAY

lmi'D'M

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At the Edge of Art jon I p�llto and Joline 13[al.s Su r•.:ying a broad ra nge o f work

Texts bj· NkkCu.rrie

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Freight Tra in Graffiti Roger Gastrnan, Darin Ro-....i.and and !an Sattler

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At Home with Books E.EIIis; C.Seebohm; C.Simon Sykes 248pp. 350 col il lus. Pb. Thames & Hudson £19.95 FORGET THE Kelly Hoppen brown and taupe open plan living area. Forget the home cinema in the coal cellar. The latest must-have home accessory (or what is destined to be the latest home accessory - you read it here first) is the private library. Not just a couple of MDF shelf units either side of the chimney breast, so inescapable in Victorian conversions, but a whole room dedicated and designed to house books. So the 2006 paperback edition of Thames & Hudson's survey of private library spaces could not be more timely. A terrific combination of full colour interior photography (Christopher Simon Sykes) and incisive owner commentary. Naturally, nouveau bibliophiles will go green as they peruse the Grand Passion chapter and come across the [late] Duke of Devonshire relaxing in a library that was re-established at Chatsworth by the 6th Duke in 1 8 15. To the historic tomes laid down by his ancestors, the 1 1 th Duke added his own collection, including items like a complete run of Cyril Connolly's Horizon ( 1940-50). Whilst not everyone is fortunate to inherit a library decorated in such splendour by Crace, others have created something special for themsel"%. Victor Niederhoffer, a Wall Street broker, awarded himself the bonus of a 2,500 sq ft. library at his home in Connecticut, with every one of the 1 8,000 books carefully catalogued. Like most other people in

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THE STORY of Gandy ( 1771-1843) is a Dickensian tale of genius ignored and a sensibility crushed by adversity. Brian Lukacher's tremendous achievement brings us the first monograph on this artist and architect, a name not im mediately familiar to the general public. Gandy's work encompassed a body of imaginary, romantic and visionary watercolours of architectural extravaganzas, destined never to be realised in stone. His lot was to curb his enthusiasms for more terrestrial projects and mundane commissions. Gandy 's instability and erratic personality repeatedly excluded from the rewards he felt were his due. The Royal Academy singularly failed to elect past Associate status, despite support from the likes of John Constable; and the continual patronage of Sir John Soane did nothing to relieve Gandy's spells in Debtor's prison. Gandy lived through an exceptional period in English cultural history, almost a renaissance in terms of literature and art, where intellectual rigour favoured the survival of the fittest. This creative hothouse engendered many remarkable casualties and Gandy joined the likes of Dadd, Haydon, Hazlitt, de Quincey, etc. in a self made purgatory. Gandy entered a lunatic asylum near Plymouth around 1840 and died still incarcerated there in 1 843. This is a noble publication of an overlooked artist, full credit goes to T &H for embracing what must certainly be a non-commercial proposition. (MvJ)

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sort ofreading room where days, if not weeks, could easily pass by unnoticed.

Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1993. For the last few decades, Jeff Wall has

A little surprise might be had in another chapter, Reading Retreats, when guitarist Keith Richards discusses his domain, custom built to his own meticulous design, located at Richards' home in rural Connecticut. And of his love of reading. It is a peaceful, small scale room where he demands total privacy and quiet. Here Richards demonstrates absolutely the veracity of the famous quote about him: 'Keith Richards is a gentleman masquerading as a yob ' . At Home with Books also includes an

The late J. Pa u l G etty's p u rpose b u i lt l i bra ry in Oxford s h i re. housed i n a castle l i ke fo l l y with every tec h n o l ogica l i n n ovati o n . this book, their libraries are there to be used and Niederhoffer's six offspring have full access to the children's section with visitors being encouraged to physically examine the many rarities he owns. Much to the concern of his bibliophile advisors. At the other end of the scale, and yet one of the most inspiring interiors, is the Reading Society Library in Corfu. Founded in 1 836 by Peter Brailas Armenis, it contains many printed artefacts relating to the Ionian islands. With scrubbed, bare wooden flooring and walls painted with an ochre palette, this homespun edifice is the

interesting section on the infrastructure of book collecting: shelving, heat & lighting, binding, bookplates; storage . . . and bookworms (the destruction of). But finally, the most mouth-watering contribution in this inspirational mix of interviews and interior photographs is the glimpse behind the walls of the late J. Paul Getty ' s purpose built library in Oxfordshire. Housed in a castle like folly, this splendid philanthropist's collection is a model marriage of wealth and taste. Thermostatically controlled, ultraviolet rays filtered out by special glass, oak shelves that circulate cooled air and lined with green baize, sprinklers that emit Halon gas in case of fire and a refrigerator in the basement to rescue any books that might get wet (highly unlikely). We might not all to a 1482 U1m edition of Ptolemy's atlas on vellum, but one can only dream. This is the book to aid just such dreams. (MvJ)

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Jeff Wall : Photographs 1978-2004 Ed. Sheena Wagstaff 2005 80pp 28 col i l l us. H b Tate Publishing £12.99 ACCOMPANYING A maj or exhibition at the Tate, Photographs 1978-2004 brings the best from Jeff Wall's production from the last 26 years. Sheena Wagstaff examines several artists that have influenced this Canadian photographer. Eugene Delacroix ' s The Death of Sa rd anapalus 's notion of destruction, for example, is reflected in Wall's The Destroyed Room, whilst Picture for Women is inspired by Edouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. All these connections are very interesting as well as Wall's direct link with film making. 'I see film as a principle model for photography' he says. He works with artificial lighting, hires actors but also uses computer to manipulate his images, as is the case with the amazing scene in A Sudden

greatly contributed to the genre of social urban landscapes and some of his core photographs are included here. Mimic ( 1 982) is a restaged scene with a racist gesture experienced in his Vancouver neighbourhood. In another work, Milk ( 1 984), a single hand movement (of a man crushing a cartoon of milk) is important because, according to Wall, 'this magnification of what has been made small and meagre, of what has apparently lost its significance, can lift the veil a little on the objective misery of society and the catastrophic operation of its law of value' . Some of Wall's other works don't seem to be so eloquently staged - they show everyday images such as a girl walking down the stairs in an old house in Prague, a man cleaning the floor in Barcelona or a flooded grave. These recent photographs contain less criticism of society and more mysterious narratives, like Wom<ln with a Covered Tray (2003). A View from an Apartment (2004-5) is like peeping through a keyhole into two student's flat. Here Wall uses a principle of 'a picture within a picture' similar to the role of mirrors in paintings by Velasquez and Manet. It's difficult to reproduce the luminosity of photographs that are usually displayed in a lightbox, but the quality of reproductions is absolutely striking, which outweighs the thinness of the volume and the fact that it doesn't include all of the photographs from the Tate exhibition. (MIF)

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1Ijii[Q'41

state of art

REC ENT RELEAS ES : FI N E ART B O O KS & CATALOG U ES

EDITED CHARLES KAN E

REVIEWS ROWLAND THO MAS (RT) BRIAN McAVERA (BMcA) M I CHAELA FREEMAN (MIF) M I K E VON J O EL ( MVJ)

landscape never normally present in Britain'. The Welfare Show: Mlchael Elmgreen & lngar Dragset. Ex. cat.: Serpentine Gal lery 224 pp. ill us. Hb. Walther Koenlg £30.00

Moonrlse Over Europe: J C Dahl and Romantic Landscape. Paul Spencer-Longhurst. Exhibition catalogue: Barber Institute, Birmingham 128 pp. il lus. Pb. Phlllp Wllson £20.00

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WHAT IS the welfare state? What has caused its decline? How socially responsible has it been? For more than a decade, the artists M ichael Elmgreen {born 1961, Denmark) a n d l ngar Dragset {born 1969, Norway) have been collaborating to create sculptures and installations that challenge conventional notions of institutions

THIS P U BLICATION puts the dazzling 'moonl ights' by the N orwegian artist J ohan Ch ristian Dahl {1788-1857) in context with works from his predecessors and contem poraries, includ ing Caspar David Friedrich, Claude-Joseph Vernet, M illet, Wright of Derby, Turner, and Samuel Palm er. Dahl was a contem porary and friend of Fried rich, Europe's leading landscape painter of the Romantic and public spaces within era, a n d from 1823, the pair even shared a house in Dresden. Like contemporary society. Since 1997, · their Powerless Structures series many artists, musicians, and poets of his period, Dahl was fascinated has investigated how sites such as by the theme of moonl ight. The prisons, social secu rity offices, hospitals, museums, ga lleries ·and centrepiece of the exhibition accom panied by this cata logue is parks exercise social control. his haunting, gem-like little The Welfare Show uses sculptures, masterpiece Mother and Child by installations and an encyclopaedic the Sea [1840] " recently acquired by style catalogue to focus attention on welfare systems in the .Western the Barber Institute. This highly world. With in this context, visitors atmospheric oil painting shows a are invited to consider sOch woman and her infant looking out concepts as power, economic over the moonlit water as a small boat carrying the child's father dispa rity, health care, imm igration, makes its way to the dark and rocky the police state, and the social role shore. The picture had particular of a rt. This enclyclopaedia-style catalogue consists of texts that resonance for .Da h l as his own explore issues related to welfare father was a fisherman. This book ·provides a n opportunity for a lo ng and to the exh ibition:s broader overd ue reassessment of Dahl, concerns. whose work was often ·over. shadowed by Friedrich's particula rly in this country, where Martin . Kippenberger. · · only two painti ngs by Dahl are to be . Ex. cat.: Tate Modern Ed. by Doris KrystofjJ essica Morga n . With found in public collections. 'Their . · work certainly bears some strong Susa n.ne Kippenberger/G regory simil arities, and Mother a·nd Child Williams. 192pp. 130 col & 20 b&w by the Sea has sometimes been illus. Pb. late Publishing £16.99 . seen as Dahl's tribute to his friend, . as it was pai nted the year of the THIS CATALOGUE accompanies the Friedrich's death , ' said Paul first major UK exh ibition to explore the extraordinary art of M a rtin Spencer-Longhurst, author of the catalogue and the show's cu rator, Kippenberger {1953-�7). The German artist produced a rich and . 'This exhibition will set the Barber diverse body of work frcim the mid painting i n context with Dahl's work · 1970s until his untimely death at as a whole while studying his relationship to Friedrich and his the age of 44 and is now rega rded as one of the most influential development as a painter of "moonl ights" . But just as artists of his time. Kippen berger im portantly, the show will give the once proclaimed that he was the public a unique chance to enjoy u ltimate embodiment of the art of the 1980s and it is certainly true some stunning and hau nti ng masterpieces of Romantic that his work was preoccupied with

a n u mber of a rtistic concerns prevalent at the time. He was a master appropriator who consistently absorbed, cha l lenged and transformed the world around him. H is work draws on popular culture, a rt, architectu re, music, politics, history and his own l ife where no subject remained sacred. Also reflective of the era was Kippenberger's awareness of the importa nce of self-publicity. He was constantly reinventing himself and his a rt, and tirelessly controlled his image through press and market ing. H e also felt that he was working in the face of a 'perceived death of pai nting' and his art reflects his struggle with the concept that, at the turn of the millennium, it was impossible to produce a nything original or authentic. The authors examine the themes underlying his work, including Socia list Realism and kitsch; self portraiture and myth ; punk and a nti-romanticism; exile and hom elessness; the importance of humour and its roots in German political realities; and the artist's use of la nguage and the influence . on his work of l iterature.

Tate curator J essica Morgan writes · on ttie installation of the a rtist's final, great work, The Happy Ending of Franz Kafka's Amerika . Many lesser known works will be illustrated, with the primary focus being the painti ngs at" the 1980s, and Kippenber.ger's ·enduring · influence on subsequent generations of artists are to be exa m ined.

narrow range of tones. Morandi never visited Britai n during his l ifetime, and yet the popularity of his work has grown steadily here since the 1950s. His intimate stil l l ife paintings were first seen in this country in the 1950 Arts Council exh ibition of Modern Italian Art at the Tate, and since then he has been the subject of many solo and themed shows in major British galleries. An exploration of the influence of Morandi's work on generations of British a rtists, this fascinating book j uxta poses pai ntings and drawings by Morandi with signature works by artists such as David Hockney, Tony Cragg, Patrick Caulfield, Euan Uglow and Ben Nicholson. Each of these

Mike Nelson: Between a Formula and a Code Ex. cat.: Turner Contempora ry, Ma rgate. Richard . Grayson, Peter Eleey, Ralph Rugoff and Rob Tufnell. 72 pp. i l lus. Hb. Walther Konlg £19.00

PU BLISHED TO coincid·e with the exhibition at TlJrner Contempora ry, Margate, :this b.ook documents fou r of M i ke Nelson's works: 24a Orwe/1 Street (Sydney, _Austral ia 2002), . The Pumpkin Palace {San Francisco, USA 2003), Magazin: Buyuck Valide Han {Istanbul, Turkey · 2003), and Spanning Fort Road and Mansion Street - Between a Formuia and a Code {Margate,

Morandl's Legacy: Influences on · British Art. Paul Coldwell. Ex. cat.: Abbot H a l l G a l lery, Kendal. 80pp. 32 col + 20 b&w il lus. H b . Phlllp Wllson £20.00

G IORGIO MORANDI {1890-1964) is one of the most admired Italian pai nters of the twentieth centu ry, known for his contemplative sti l l l ife pai ntings of familiar objects: vases, bottles and boxes, pai nted in subtle combinations of colour using a

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England 2005). The four works that make up Between a Formula and a Code were not made in chrono logical succession but were part of a series of 'faked ready-mades' conceived originally as a trilogy. Each work reconstructed a ca refu lly selected space, working with the in herent real and imagined histories suggested by the site, building on their existing physical features and the idiosyncrasies of their context;.

2006

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Robert Rauschenberg: Combines Paul Schimmel, Thomas Crow, Branden W. Joseph, Charles F. Stuckey and Pontus H u lten 318 pp. 172 col. and 65 text ill us. H b. Steldl £40.00

artists is represented by a work or works that betray the influence of Morandi and is illustrated alongside pertinent examples by him. Many of these a rtists have pointed to Morandi as being an influence, but for some the relationship with their work is tangential. The aim of the exercise is not to illustrate direct influences or particu lar references to Morandi in the selected works, but rather to set up 'conversations' between his work and that of contemporary British artists, addressing themes that have become central with in contemporary art practice,. including negative space, the recording of the passing of time, and art as process. I ncludes a n essay by Paul Coldwell and interviews with some of the aforementioned a rtists, discussing their interpretations of Morandi's work.

APRIL/MAY

THIS VOLU M E focuses on the Combines created roughly between 1954 and 1964, the most important decade in the a rtist's 50year career. The most complete survey of these works ever mounted, the exhibition will feature close to eighty key works drawn from major collections. Poetic and lush, the Combines present layers of complex and sometimes conflicting information. This prescient approach has become increasi ngly relevant in the current age of cascading information, when even the most groundbreaking artists are referencing and sampling disparate elements to create new forms. The Combines suggest the fragility of definitions, the fluidity of materials, and the complexity of forms that is characteristic of Rauschenberg's works. The artist's handling of materials provides a precise physical evolutionary link between the painterliness of Abstract Expressionism and the iconographical, subject-driven qua lities · of early Pop Art. This publ ication ' c.o nstitutes ttie most complete survey of the Combines ever · presented, as well as the most rigorous ana lysis of their politica l, social, a utobiogra phical, and aesthetic significance. Reading Rauschenberg, a n introductory essay by curator Paul Schimmel offers an iconogra phic analysis of the earlier Combines {1955-59) based on in-depth conversations with the artist. Thomas Grow's essay addresses the Combines as the major artistic statement of their time, the one body of art that could simultaneously hold its own with the leading art of older peers like de Kooning and prevail against the coming wave of pop painting centered on the reproductive image. Brariden Jciseph's text deals with some of the lesser known Combines a nd reconsiders their original critical reception through the contemporary critical filter of the simu lacrum. Charles F. Stuckey traces the lineage ofthe Combines through early twentieth-century movements, including Surrealism and Dada. And Jean-Paul Ameline' looks at the impact of the Combines on European art. The book also features an afterward by Pontus H u lten. The Delirious Museum . Ca lum Storrie 192 pp, illus. H b I. B. Taurls £49.50 The Delirious Museum gives a new

APRIL/MAY

state of art

interpretation of the relationsh ip between the museum and the city in the twenty-first century. lt presents an original view of the idea of the muse um, proposing that it is, or should be, both a repository of the artefacts of the past and a continuation of the city street in the present. Storrie reviews our experience of the city and of the museum taking a journey that begins in the Louvre and contin ues through Paris, London, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, re-imagining the possibi lities for museums and their displays and re-exa min ing the bl urred boundaries between museums and the cities around them. On his quest for The Delirious Museum , he visits the m useum architecture of Soane and Libeskind, the exhibitions of Lissitsky and Kiesler and the work of such artists as Duchamp a n d Warhol. Calum Storrie's premise i s that t h e museum and the city street are continuous with one another: the city is a delirious museum, overlaid with levels of history and m u ltiple objects open to many interpretations just as museums and their contents are. In support of his theme, he d raws on multiple sources, from Waiter Benjamin, Daniel Libeskind and G reil Marcus through Paul Auster and Peter Ackroyd, to Stephen Bayley, Norman Bryson and Sadie Plant and takes readers on a stim ulating journey through cities and museums worldwide. Beautifully ill ustrated in black and white.

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the camera. Warhol's own position in the New York scene brought him unparalleled access to subjects like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mick J agger, Debbie Harry, Diana Ross, Robert Rauschen berg, J erry Hall, Bianca Jagger, G race Jones, Demi Moore, David Hockney, Kenny Scharf, Diana Vreeland, Paloma Picasso and Ozzy Ozbourne, and this extensive book establishes - if there was ever any doubt - that Warhol cared deeply about human society, human interaction, and human frailty, and took intense joy in documenting them in the m icrocosm that was his Village. CoBrA: Tbe Last Avant-Garde Movement of the Twentieth Century Willemijn Sto kvis, , 352pp, 138 col + 315 b/w il lus. Pb Lund Humphries £35.00

ALTHOUGH THIS is not the first survey in English, it is the first su bstantial treatment of the CoBrA group of artists and poets whose movement officially lasted from 1948-51. it's written by the Dutch author who has made the movement a speciality since her doctoral thesis i n 1973. This is a heavily abridged version of the fifth revised 2001 edition of her 1974 book. Whoever did the u ncred ited tra nslation did a fine job as the book is a pleasure to read. Refreshingly free from jargon, packed with detail, and very heavily ill ustrated, it is a fairly com pre hensive s urvey which works its way logically through the Danish, Netherlandish and Belgian adhe rents of the movement. There is a good chronol ogy, a bibliography and i ndex, and even a 'd iagram' tra cking the progress of the group . All of the colour illustrations are i n one block, which is a pity as it gives the look of the book a somewhat bleak aspect at times; and it is rather expensive. A tome to reread with pleasure. (B.McA)

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Blackshaw, Patrick Collins, Col i n Middleton and so forth. T h e pl ates are largely ful l-page a n d well reproduced, and there is a short but wel l-written text by the art critic Aidan Dunne. (B.McA)

However, the photographs are fasci nating, and in terms of social history, biographical ba ckground and, occasional ly, insight into his mind, they make the book worthwhile. A rather livelier design would have helped. (B . M cA)

Northern Nocturnes: Nightscapes in the age of Rembrandt Adriaan Waiboer 108pp 50 col illus +mono National Gallery of Ireland Dublin 2005 20 euros

Comhghall Casey Paintings Emer Gallery, Belfast, 2005, U n paginated, 53 col. i l lus. Hb £25

THIS IS AN attractively produced exhibition catalogue of still lifes by a contemporary Irish artist lt contains a three page CV, a brief introduction by Dr Mary Cosgrove, and good quality ful l-page col our ill ustrations. (B.McA) On Reflection Modern Art: 1960s - 1990s, Crawford M u nicipal Art

G a l le ry, Kinsale. 2005.83pp 54 col. il lus. Pb Cork/Gandon Editions THIS IS THE cata logue to an exh ibition showing a selection of the Bank Of Ireland Art Collection. The collection is one of the best known in I reland and features a raft of wel l-known artists such as Basil

THIS SU BSTANTIAL and attractively produced cata logue is a ' m ust' for fans of 17th century Dutch painting i n particular. The exhibition upon which it is based u n ited for the first time three celebrated nocturnal landscapes by Rembran dt, Rubens and Elsheimer. One of the central arguments in the text is that, contrary to expectations, these pai ntings are about light effects in the da rkness, not darkness itself. There is a very su bstantial, well written and erudite introduction, and each of the fifty main plates is given an accompanying text. There are notes and a very detai led bibliography. (B.McA)

Neil Shawcross: Forty Years of Portrait Painting ed. Eileen Black,

60pp, 34 col. il lus. Hb Ulster Museum/Biackstaff Press Belfast, 2005 £10.

SHAWCROSS IS one of the grand old men of 'Ulster Painting' and this coll ection of his portraits, of sitters ranging from Seam us Hea n ey to Sir Terry Frost, is entertaining and affa ble, and not remotely aca demic. There is an essay by the critic and lecturer Liam Kelly which traces the development of Shawcross' practice, a brief CV a n d bibliography, and a list o f the sitters. ( B . M cA) Michael Smyth: Another Day 95pp. App rox. 4o col i m ages. Pb Gormley's Fine Art 2005 Belfast, Om agh & Dublin, £2.00

THIS IS the catalogue to an exhibition of paintings of flowers, nudes and still-lives by the Belfast artist M i chael Smyth. There's a very brief essay by Amanda Croft, a brief CV and a list of i l l ustrations. H a n dsomely printed. (B . M cA)

Magrltte and Photography Patrick Roegiers, 168pp 30 col +220 duotone illus. Hb Lund Humphrles £29.95

Warhol's World Anthony d 'Offay and G regor M u i r 224pp. 300 i l lus. Pb. Steldl £19.99

TH E POWER in Warhol's portraits stems in part from the depth of his engagement with the society his subjects moved in. Nowhere is this involvement more clea rly demon strated than in his late photography. These previously unpublished images from the Andy Warhol Foundation reveal the reality behind the glitz and the silver foil at the Factory and Studio 54, and stare into the bloodshot eyes of the endless retinue of celebrities that came to make up the a rtist's social life. If there had remained in Warhol someth ing of the true voyeur, a n a lternately detached and star-struck watcher, that role largely shifted as he himself became visible in celebrity's funhouse mi rrors, and became a more profoundly involved and then again more fascinated participant Warhol's World finds the artist at the far end of that transition, at one with his subjects, a l l lost to themselves and found by

THIS IS really a very strange book. Its ostensible subject is absol utely i ntriguing. A proper exploration of the painter's use of photography, along the lines of the Picasso Foundation's book on that a rtist, would have been of considerable value. This is surprising as the author is a photography critic who has written over twenty volumes on photogra phy. However what we get is a coffee table book, the text of which is banal and written in a style not far removed from Mills & Boon. M uch of it speculates simpl istically on the biography, particularly the artist's relations with his mother and father, for which no shred of evidence is given, other than 'readings' of a number of photo graphs which are distinctly suspect What the author has to say about photography, M agritte's use of it, and its relationsh ip to the paintings, could be summarised on the back of the proverbial postage stamp. He tells us that M agritte didn't believe in photography as a n art form b u t used i t t o document his work - scarcely illuminating - or i nforms us that photographs of M agritte which he didn't take are really M agritte photographs as he probably set them up. This is not the kind of text to take seriously.

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0 Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse Vol 2 @ Making Waves: Artists of Southwold

1 909-1 954. Spurling, Hamish Hamilton £25.00

Collins, Black Dog Publishing £30.00

@} Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon

Hauptman, MoMA, New York £29.00

6 Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, New York, Paris 0 Masters of American Comics (D The Drawing Book

G) Egon Schiele

Dickerman, Thames & Hudson £35.00

Carlin, Karasik & Walker, Yale £25.00

Ed. Kovats, Black Dog Publishing £34.95

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ROBBEN ISLAND MUSEUM ROBBEN ISLAND, SOUTH AFRICA As decided by the Cabinet of South Africa

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established in 1997. The premises, formerly

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upcoming events, with updates announced

Mandela was incarcerated for over 18 years,

on his website.

was previously reinvented as a 'university' for a short time, in which the cells were transformed into learning spaces. Due to its political past, Robben Island Museum

EN ROUTE MOSCOW, RUSSIA TO BEJING, CHINA

stands today as an important symbol for freedom and triumph over centuries of brutality.

Described as 'Challenging the traditional stillness of the gallery', En Route, curated by Adam Carr, is a mobile exhibition. Works

HOME LONDON, ENGLAND

of international artists, among them Liam Gillick and Jonathan Monk, were exhibited

Preferring the informal atmosphere of the

Moscow to Bejing. The exhibition observes

domestic environment, artist-curator Laura

the moment of spontaneity, as the train rolls

Godfrey l saacs and Glen Haddon started

in and leaves the station, redefining the

showing artwork in every corner of their

interaction of the art and its audience to a

house in Camberwell in London in 1998. 'I

different level.

Laura Godfrey lsaacs of H o m e & ( o n l eft) Oreet Ashery ( a k a M a rc u s Fisch e r)

on the Trans-Siberian Express, running from

�.- ·

was also interested in the historical concept of the salon and the way of women entering creative and intellectual life in the home by hosting events.' says Godfrey. Very popular are performance events which are always

TEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY LONDON, ENGLAND

sold out. The couple have recently acquired

Run by two MA Fine Art graduates, Jen Wu

two medieval churches in Suffolk which will

and Anthony Gross from Goldsmiths

also serve as an art venue.

College, for the past one and a half years, Temporary Contemporary is located in a distillery in Deptford in South London. 'The

ROEMER & ROEMER BERLIN, GERMANY

great thing about the space is that it is very big and initially run down,' says Wu. 'This

Roemer & Roemer consider each of their exhibition proj ects as a communicative experiment. Altogether the German-Russian couple organised six bunker exhibitions in B erlin, Cologne and Liverp o o l . 'The environment of the bunker has attracted us immensely and almost inspired us to start a new art movement.' The last exhibition Free

gives us the freedom to change the space all the time and every exhibition looks different' . Wu and Gross have also been taking part in off site projects and recently toured their own biennale at independent art spaces in China.

Will was located underneath the former Todesstreifen

(death

strip)

between

Kreuzberg and Treptow. The exhibition showed works by 3 8 1 artists from over 27 countries, reflecting on visions of free will in the context of 20 years of Glasnost, and was opened by Mikhail Gorbachov.

Roemer & Roemer with Mlkhall Gorbachov

BELOW : EnRoute the Tra ns S i b e r i a n to Beij i ng

AREA 10 LONDON, ENGLAND In 2002, Anila Ladwa, Em Druiff and

Dimitri Launder took on the abandoned Whitten's Timber building at Eagle Wharf as Area 10. Although initially organised as a short-term project, many art events have been initiated here in the last four years. The aim is to promote multi-disciplinary projects and

TRUCKART LONDON, ENGLAND

limbo' as they say. Area 10 has been a real

With Truckart, the founder Joe Frazer is

for contemporary art.

provoking and challenging the notion of the

...

an ongoing reformation, an 'operation in success for Peckham as an educative platform

elitist London art scene. A similar idea had already been pursued by Nicholas Treadwell in the early 1960s. Truckart's truck offers a mobile exhibition space to young and emerging artists which is accordingly placed in front of gallery openings in the East End and West End of London, 'feeding off it like a parasite' , as Frazer calls it. The project

L I N KS www. rob ben-is l a n d. o rg.za www.lgi h o me . co . u k www.mais-de.de www.trucka rt.org www.te m p conte mp . co . u k www. a rea10.i nfo

.(. -

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lST S-d-, >

路 La-M

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Yir state of art

APRIL/MA\'

state2 3

2 006

THERE ARE NO paintings of bunches of flowers or rosy apples waiting to be arranged into an elegant still life, to be

found in John Keane's studio. Instead,

walking d o w n the ai s l e s , instead of usherettes selling ice cream.

'Like all of us, they took the bubble that

there are torn out newspaper cuttings

separates them from what is going on in

of battles in far off places, photos taken

a man in a paramilitary uniform appeared

strewn around the table with their stories

the world, so much for granted that when

from television reports from war zones

on the side of the stage, because there were

around the place that tell the story of the

dancing, they assumed it was part of the

which we live.

air they realised something was wrong. '

taped to the walls, and paintings propped

harshness and brutality of the world in

Whether

portraying

N o t t inghamshire

coal

the

lives

min e r s ,

the

Sandinistas taking o n the U. S . backed

Contras in Nicaragua, life in Palestine, or the first Gulf War, the focus of Keane's

work has been very clearly guided by some

of the most profound, and sometimes more

men in uniform on stage singing and

show. It was only when he fired into the

It was seeing a Channel Four documentary,

detailing events at the Dubrovka Theatre

that inspired Keane, to begin this latest

.tranche of work,

57 Hours

in The House

of Culture. What fascinated him was the

revolution in Chechnya. It is a war that has

Keane has

gained the

significant and politically controversial

painters of his generation. The furore that

has accompanied much of his recent work

jerk word for any conflict now is terrorism.

That isn't good enough, it gives no context,

neighbours down the road in Hoxton, East

why they feel this way, we are not invited

London. Instead it stems both from the

subject matter he has chosen to tackle as

well as the way he has set about conveying

his thoughts and ideas.

Of course there is nothing new about

it doesn't explain where they come from,

to reflect on what has happened to them. the end of the matter. '

It was the Falklands War in 1 982 that first alerted Keane to g l o b a l i s s u e s and

politicised his thoughts and consequently

is far more forceful and insightful than that

admits

the themes and ideas for painting. He that

after

y e ar s

o f fe e l i n g

works and not know exactly where he

him his voice.

extreme action?' he asks. 'What has taken

It was his unflinching view of the first Gulf

Having been born 1 0 years after the end

prepared to do this thing, knowing that

depicting both the brutality, as well as the

state of peace all my life, this was a real

s o meone ' s daughter, to c ommit s u c h

'What is that drives people to take such

place in their lives that means they are

Keane is a polemicist, a commentator; he mast. It is impossible to look at one of his stands on the issue.

War, seeing both sides of the conflict,

-:::.,_

We are given tabloid headlines and that is

portraying the horrors of war, the cruelty

of mankind and so on. But Keane's work

;I r.:

and white. But that has changed; the knee

owes nothing to the shock tactics and

gimmickry favoured by some of his artist

clear-cut and things were much more black

handed a reason to paint and a clear path

desperate and terrible acts?

the focus of Keane ' s latest work is the

'I believe that, years ago, issues were quite

last d e c a d e ,

nails his flag, colours, and heart to the

happen? What triggered this awful event?

desire to reveal something more behind the

It should be of little surprise therefore that

reputation as b eing o n e o f the m o s t

comparatively directionless and unfocused

What turns p e o p l e , s om e o n e ' s s o n ,

headlines.

is and I want to reflect that.

of the dispassionate observer or reporter.

story behind the headlines : Why did it

underreported events taking place around the world, his brushstrokes guided by the

work, it is no surprise then that over the

in his work, it was though he had been

his images should take. In short, it gave

'My politicisation took me by surpris e .

of the Second World War, and lived in a

shock. The Falklands War made me realise

how fragile the world is, and how quickly

and easily a series of comparatively minor

events can suddenly lead to two formerly friendly c o untries g o i n g to war and

thousands of people dying.

'I was angry about The Falklands; it was

violence for political ends. There we were

taking up arms over a group of islands that most of the country, at the time, couldn' t

even identify o n a map. I t was colonialism

and imperialism at its very worst. I was also

shocked by the reaction of friends who I

JOHN KEANE AT WAR

suddenly violently disagreed with as they

just fell in line with the popular view and didn' t question what was happening. '

Nevertheless, a s h e watched events unfold in the South Atlantic and the subsequent

aftermath, feeling a sense of surprise, that a war artist, Linda K.itson, had been out

there, and frustration that it hadn't been

him, there was this uncomfortable sense

that trying to depict world events from the safety and isolation of a studio was not the way to set about it.

report SIMON KINNERSLEY

'After the Falklands, I felt that it's all very

well getting wo'rked up about these things;

but to truly convey what it's like to be

caught up in a conflict; then you need to

be there, to see what's going on and smell it all. That's what took me to Nicaragua,

dragged on for more than a decade and

they are going to die? I don't accept that

Chechens and the Russian army have

that they just wake up one day and decide

by street but house by house as brick by

has happened to them to make them want

seen the country razed to the ground, as

people are born this way, nor do I believe

interest of big business, often depicted by

the appearance of Mickey Mouse in his works - the idea came when he came across

not speaking a word of Spanish made it

very hard to get around, but I worked as a

j ournalist with a notebook and camera, as

s o m e p l a s ti c figures in a n e g l e c t e d

though I was compiling a report. Then I

before returning home - that first brought

and felt. '

Comment pages of The Sun.

A s with his subsequent visits to Guatemala,

involved, 18 Black Widows, as they are

Looking back to that furore, as the second

he describes them as very short and very

headlines - the siege of the Dubrovka

brothers or husbands in the conflict. What

work: 'I didn' t seek to provoke, I put things

why he's there, is he a war tourist, a voyeur

evening of 23 October 2002 and ended

to,

picking up pages of the Koran that I had

into the abyss, to see what is happening

using them in several of my works. It

always from a safe distance . ' A detail his

fought for ascendancy, not so much street

to lay siege to a theatre full of people. What

bloody brick.

to do this?

It is typical of Keane 's subtle insight that

'What made this so unusual was that there

the · story is told, not from the remains of the streets of the capital, Grozny, but the

moment the Chechen struggle really hit the

Theatre, M o scow, that began on the

were a significant number of women

known. It transpired that they had all lost level of desperation have they been driven that they are prepared to strap

outbuilding o n his final day i n Kuwait City,

Keane to national attenti o n and t h e

Gulf conflict still smoulders, he says of his

down as I had seen them. I remember

came home and painted what I had seen

the Gulf, Palestine and Northern Ireland,

intense. Inevitably he finds himself asking

of human conflict? 'There is a wish to peer and why, ' he explains . 'But in my case,

when Soviet troops stormed the building

explosives to their bodies?

than 140 hostages and their captors dying.

'The fact is that up until then no one had

shows how things have changed, because

wife Rosemary and children, Calypso, 8,

'The thing that first struck me, was the

has no value to the West, it had not been

was making an important point about the

reassuring.

to be entertained and escape, and yet

such issues are addressed, then there will

following a two day stand off, with more

irony of an audience going to the theatre

finding themselves in the middle of a conflict that most Muscovites were in complete ignorance about, and yet was

going on at the own back door. One minute

everything in their world had seemed safe

and secure, the next there were women with explosives strapped to their bodies,

been interested in Chechnya. Because it

seen scattered on the road to B asra, and

you couldn' t do that now, even though it

expedient to confront it in the issues. Until

hatred that was already festering.

be more incidents like this, because the

'I don't feel that it's a calling; that I have

truth is that the siege worked, it pushed it

up the agenda, brought awareness to what

is going on there, and got people talking about it.'

With these thoughts so resonant in his

and

3 ¥2 y e ar o l d T h e o , might find

As a writer who has covered a number of war zones and revolutions, what personally

to confront these issues. But I do feel that

grips me about Keane's work is his eye for

to explain what is going in the world and

fear and carnage of war, he captures the

contemporary events, and a s I get older, I

perimeters, the absurd and bizarre, whether

it's my way of asking questions and trying

why i t ' s happ e n i n g . I am driven b y

realise how much more complex the world

�

both detail and the perverse. As well as the sense of listlessness that hangs around the

it is the bizarre way in which the squaddies

-r

state of art

2 4 state

APRIL/MAY

2 006

cling on to a sense of normality in such a wild and hostile environment, or how daily life goes on in a world so wildly out of kilter. One of his most intriguing series of works was his coverage of the Nottinghamshire -:

miners. Of course there were the scenes at the pit face, the galleries, pit head and so on, but what made them so distinctive as a body of work was his painting of men hang-gliding as well as the during their tea break reading the paper. He saw them not as bodies born to hew coal, but as men with rounded and sometimes fascinating lives. Loyalists might insist that his is a cruel and cynical eye, while others might argue that this is only way to represent a world filled with half truths, distorted intelligence gathering, and in which big business frequently hides itself behind the flag of convenience for whichever country best represents its Âˇinterests. All of this is a world away from his comfortable middleclass upbringing in Hertfordshire - his father was a stockbroker who commuted daily to the City - and cloistered world of Wellington public school. Yet it was this cushioned existence that gave him the opportunity to develop a fascination for surrealism in his early teens, and in particular the work of Magritte and Dali.

Ten Small Paintings from Dubrovka Theatre Siege No.10 (the death of 0/ga Romanova) 2005 O i l a n d i n kjet o n ca nvas 128 x 41 ems rather

he agrees, that gave him time for his work to

undistinguished Lower Second, to do day

develop and mature. Whether because of the

jobs waiting on tables, cleaning houses and

thought he now applies to his work or the

stifling.

left

with

airbrushing duvets for rock stars with no

ever higher standards he demands of himself,

taste, and in between, hawked slides of my

he admits that each piece takes ever longer

work

around

galleries

who

weren ' t

than it used to. 'I have always been prolific, '

interested.'

h e says, 'but I now feel that I have t o get i t

He recalls having a one man show at the old

world to stand on its own, until I ' m

Zanzibar Club in Covent Garden in 1979,

completely satisfied.

absolutely right. It's not going out into the

he sold three paintings, one to a stranger and two to his father! 'I certainly wasn't spoilt

'I used to start a work not really knowing

by early success. It was a soul destroying and

where it was going, it is something that you

very disillusioning process; it took me eight

can get away with when you are building up

years from leaving college to get me my first

layers of paint, gradually you find your voice and the painting takes a form of its own. Now,

proper show.'

the way I work, is that I do all the preparation But for all the setbacks and disappointments,

up front, so that when I begin on the canvas, I

taking works to mixed shows and taking them

know exactly what I am trying to achieve.'

back home again, his resolve never wavered. Deep down he believed that one day his time

As a child, he admits that his own artwork had passed unnoticed. There were no art prizes at school. He collected toy soldiers from the American Civil War and drew pictures of soldiers in 18th and 19th Century uniform. He relished the use of colour and painting battles. But what was to appeal to him about surrealism, he says, was that it removed him from the mundaneness of his daily life. 'Dali, iďż˝ particular, opened up possibilities of a new world.' It was ironic therefore, that after going through his teens with his painting influenced by everything from surrealism to Mondrian, that he should go to Camberwell Art School, which he describes having a very traditional life class approach to work. 'It was either Oxbridge or The Guards, as far as my parents were concerned. I just wanted to go to London, to study, I didn't think much

Iďż˝

beyond that. 'As a resnlt, I rather lost my way, painting

wasn't fun any more for me, and I found that

.;;. ,-""

I. J

formal and painterly approach - the plotting

'v.

of the body like say, Euan Uglow - rather

-L

Simon Kinnersley is a former Feature Writer of the

would come and he could renounce the day

Year. and a freelance journalist contributing to The

job. Ironically, it's this school of hard knocks,

Times Maga z i n e . Daily Telegraph Magazine etc.

ABOVE: Ten Small Paintings from Dubrovka Theatre Siege No. B 2 0 0 5 O i l a n d i n kjet o n j ute 3 1 x 41 e m s

B ELOW: Martyrdom a nd Modernism 2002 O i l and beeswax on canvas ( d i ptyc h ) 124 x 246 e m s d i ptych

- I state of art

STATE 0

APRIL/MAY 2006

4RT

an accessible way to own a artwork by a leading artist, but is it an &investment'? opinion SOPHIE HALL A 'LIMITED EDITION' print is a strict term in art. It requires definition, as its misuse

This confusion of terminology and identification was muddled further by the

today is co=onplace. Printmaking through out the 20th century has developed in such a way that it is bound to cause confusion to the layman. One hears that serious collectors do not buy prints - but I would say this is more to do with a lack of understanding of

gradual acceptance of photo-technology into the creative process. This was initially exploited by the Dadaists, with their mass

category of works now emerged that were no longer original (in the traditional sense of the artist working directly with the medium) but that were not strictly reproductions either. For now a collaborative relationship emerged between the artist and the printer whereby the printer would act, in

To try and unravel why prints are held with such low regard, it is necessary to look at the history of printmaking in the last century. Historically, the workaday role for prints was for mass production and distribution, with

most cases, not by copying a pre-existing work of art but upon written instructions -

and printer signing impressions to denote authenticity. At the end of the 1 9th century however, a schism in the print world came with the arrival of photography. Many manual engravers found themselves out of work and artists, instead of relying on interpretative technicians, became increasingly interested in exploring and using the print media themselves. Gradually 'reproduction', once standard practise, became a contemptible notion whilst intuitive and spontaneous printmaking became the aspiration of the day. The idea of the original print was conceived, this being an image that was hand worked from start to finish by the artist, in an edition of pre-determined size, and authenticated by an edition serial number and a pencilled signature. As the effects of the Great War and Depression started to fade, the print market picked up with colour lithography emerging as the _popular original print medium of choice. However, even though print technicians were a fundamental part of the process, the monetary value of a work was now intrinsically linked to the artists' direct involvement with the artwork. In order to take advantage of this new development in printing, artists and publishers would utilise the experienced print studios, but concealing this fact, while signing editions which would directly imply that all the work had been executed by the artist himself.

machine-produced photo-collage work, and then by the Pop generation of artists with their exploration of silkscreen printing. A

the medium than because this genre of work has no place in their collection. For many people, a print is regarded as merely a commercially tainted addendum to the artists' real work. In fact, a print can be the most exquisite of any original work of art.

were being used to copy oil paintings by popular Victorian painters (often specially conceived for this purpose) with both artist

....._ � �

The market for artists' prints

the remit being to, as accurately as possible, reproduce other unique media, in limitless editions. In the mid- 19th century, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and spurred on by the growing middle class interest in owning pictures, the Printsellers Association began the practise of differentiating proofs and limiting editions of reproductions. Increasingly complex intaglio techniques

s tate2 5

But what is it that can make a print so special? There are volumes of 'technically pointless prints' . There are many editions published which are simply no more than a 'reproduction' with a high price tag -because the number of impressions is limited and the work is signed by the artist (the market for Sir William Russell Flint 'signed prints' might be a prime example). But is it not true that there are also volumes of 'technically pointless' paintings and sculptures? Prints can be wonderful works of art, testaments to ideas, which could not exist in quite the same way in any other form. They possess qualities which no other work of art can hold. A printed surface is unlike a painted surface. The touch or press of ink onto hand made paper can be so beautiful. For an artist, the process, basically one of indirect mark making, provides avenues for creative experience and experiments which might never otherwise be explored. The practice of working in collaboration with a master printer is an entirely different discipline to working alone in a studi o . Prints are conceived in a unique way - it is almost like

:;::,

There is of course the other benefit of buying a print - because the work has been produced in multiple form, it can be more frnancially accessible. Another great reason to buy a print even if this is not the primary emphasis of a collection.

;I ,..;

Printmaking is more thoroughly integrated into artistic practise than ever before. The crudest and most well known methods have been revitalised, and new levels of subtleties and sophistication are being achieved in lithography, intaglio, relief printing, silk screen printing, papermaking and - most recently - with new digital technologies. My advice is that next time you encounter a print, it's worth taking a closer look. Sophie Hall has been involved with publishing and exhibiting prints since the early 1990s

www. m o m a . org/ exh i b itio ns/20 01/ wh atisa pri ntjflash . htm I The London Origi n a l Print Fa i r. Roya l Aca demy. 22-26 M a rch 2006 www. l o ndonpri ntfa i r.com

a sort of alchemy.

or collages - which the artist would want integrated onto a single plane. Images were also composed through creative trial and error impressions, where the expertise of the master printer would translate an artist's concept into a printed work, created expressly for this medium only. Since the 1 960's, a multitude of editions have been made. This activity reached a high point in the late 1 980's with the notorious boom in the art market. The demand meant that numbered editions were large. In the 1970's, before the introduction of VAT, edition sizes were kept reasonably in check by the tax and import laws: which stipulated that printed art was defined as editions up to 75 copies and reproductions, anything in editions larger than 75 were subject to heavy 'fancy goods' tax. Contemporary artists in the new millennium continue to make editions of prints, both individually and with experienced tech nicians, and it should be made clear that either practice is entirely acceptable.

White Light 2 0 03 Etc h i n g with c h i n e col l e Edition o f 2 0 45 x 48 e m s P u b l i s h e d b y Fl owers G r a p h i cs . Lo n d o n Pri nted at T h u m b p ri nt Editi o n s . L o n d o n R I G HT Eduardo Poalozzl ( 1 9 24- 2 0 0 5 )

Agile Coin Gross Decision Logic from Zero Energy Experimental Pile (Z. E E P. ) . 197 0 Scre e n p r i nt a n d lithogra p hy on p l exiglass Ed ition of 100 84 x 6 0 ems P u l i s h e d by Pete rsburg Press Pri nted at Ad va n ce d G r a p h ics. Lo n d o n LEFT Prunella Clough (1919-1999)

Device 199 6 Etc h i ng with c h i n e col l e Editi o n o f 2 5 50.5 x 38 ems P u b l i s h e d b y the a rtist Printed at H o p e (S uffera nce) Press. Lo n d o n

2 6 state

state of art

JUERGEN TELLER GOT a name for

himself by photographing that most artificial

EUROSTATE

of species, the Western supermodel, and by

springtime

GEN

doing it seemingly with the minimum of artifice. You can always spot the tripod

behind the stills of Mario Testino, but Teller looks as if he has just got the old Instamatic

TEL ARIS

out. For the professionally un-groomed such

as Kate Moss in deliberately informal yet eye-wateringly hip magazines such as The

Face, this was a good look. Teller's latest

series, which opened at the

Carrier

Fondation in Paris (until 2 1 st May) has

almost - but not quite - got rid of the

supermodel altogether. He's become more

interested in shooting his one-year old son Ed in the bath than Kate or Naomi.

I'm over at Teller's strangely pedestrian

family home in Notting Hill for a preview of

NEW IMAGES AT FONDATION CARTIER

report

ROSIE MILLARD

APRIL/MAY

2 006

my children, and changing nappies, and

playing with them, that is what I am working

on. Why carry on doing something simply to hoard mone y ? ' Given the financial

leverage of his fan base, he would probably

know all about how the rich live. Elton John has sat for Teller's portrait, and Elton, as we

all know, is not exactly thrifty. 'Yes, but Elton enjoys his money, ' Teller laughs. 'Do you

know that whenever he travels the world, he takes with him his own personal tennis

coach? That's marvellous. That's the way to

spend money.'

As for Teller himself, my first impression of

Presbyterian modesty is ruined by his

admission that he and his family are in fact living in a rented house. 'This house is

terrible ! ' he says. 'I'm building a house for

us next door to my studio, we are going to

move into it as soon as it is fmished. ' The

the Paris catalogue. I describe the house as 'strangely pedestrian', because if you are the

architect? David Adjaye, naturally, he of

Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein and married

high-end clients. 'Yeah, but we got him

Sadie Coles, you don't belong in a row of

brightly. 'Which meant that we hired him at

Chapman Brothers fame, and countless other

anointed image-maker for fashion kings

before everyone else did,' says Teller

to the talented and ultra-sophisticated dealer

a far cheaper rate. ' He is nothing if not

'50's brick terraces. You just don't.

honest. Indeed, of all the times I have heard the bullshit of a politician, or an artist,

Teller appears utterly at home, however,

explaining that they have changed tack in

swishing around with a G&T, while his baby

order to be 'with my family' , his is by far

son gurgles at him, me and the nanny from

the confmes of a high chair. Teller shows me

and away the most convincing.

auction. 'They asked me to use supermodels

Rosie Millard is a critic, writer and TV presenter and was BBC Arts correspondent 1995-2004

a recent catalogue he shot for a jewellery

to wear the jewellery, ' he said. 'But I was

bored with that idea. ' And so he brought in

the family, giving diamond earrings to his

elderly mother, and wrapping sparkling

bracelets around baby Ed and his eight-year old daughter Lola. In another photograph from the Paris collection, Lola is looking

furious. With a head full of nit lotion.

On the surface, it's very homely, but it's all

seen through Teller's signature style; intense

colours, hyper-realism and deceptively

careful staging. 'I think my work is pretty .

complex,'· he says. 'A lot of people say I have

a snapshot style, and that things happen by

accident, but every picture is completely

· thought through. And if it doesn't work, I have· to do it again. The immediacy of the

pictures is so strong and powerful that it looks casual. �e casuainess is the best bit

about it. But of course it comes from you,

the experience that is surrounding you, and the whole life of bathing your children, and

of living with nits. ' We then spend a while

chatting casually about nits, which he says

Red Kate, London. 1 9 9 8 f o r Fondation Cartier

he has never had. I tell him that's because nits rarely infest the adult male; something to do with the testosterone.

This of course leaves Teller with a problem. Not the head lice, but the deceptively casual nature of his art. Because it looks so artless,

it is tricky to present himself convincingly

as an artist. If a good deal of your oeuvre is devoted to adverts, then it is difficult to

escape the suspicion you are little more than a marketing conduit. 'I do about three fashion

shoots a ye ar; and I have to have a

responsibility to my client, and to their product. I take care of their needs. ' Crucially,

however, Teller has the .confidence. and artistic drive not to leave it there. A Marc

J acobs campaign with Charlotte Rampling ·

:--'

' ')- � · (") J.. ... -

'v.

resultant furore about the decadent nudity,

hand. Rampling, severe and haughty in a pink

the same room, would get column inches

utterly unrelated to the advertising job in

everywhere, which it duly did.

debauched, excessive and rather sinister, lolling on a doub ie bed while a naked Teller

Perhaps because he is an ex-pat (Teller came

Rampling

(the

art

shot),

architectural shots taken in the former Nazi

stadium at Nuremberg. Teller is known as a

fashion photographer, but that's not going

particularly with France's iconic goddess in

silk shirt (the advertising shot) becomes

to hold him back from powerful narrative or aesthetic abstraction ..

What he never wants to do is coast for the ·

dosh. 'I don't understand those artists who

to the UK from Germany in his early 20's),

have already made their mon�y, and go on

over his body, or waggles his very naked

vanities common to many contemporary

tci make yet more money, ' he says, sensibly

grand piano. 'It started off as an ad, but the

do both, sometimes in the same reel .

because he can!t be bothered to talk in

cavorts alongside her with eaviar daubed

. he is delightfully free of those irritating

frame at the camera whilst crouching on a

artists. Advertising fodder? High art? He'll

ad triggered everything else off,' is Teller's

Although he probably only takes digital now.

riddles. I'm not going to embarrass him by

· Jacobs is clever enough to egg his hireling

an extraordinary series of still"lives and

At the moment,. I am spending time feeding

way of explaining his modus operandi. Plus,

ori; he may_not have worked his way through the clothing budget, but Jacobs knew that the

evolved into an entire portfolio of shots

Charlotte

. Louis.XV. no. 3 2 0 0 4 th·e a rtist in typ i c a l pose from . ' Juergen Teller /eh bio 'vierzig at the K u n sth a l l e. Vien n a . Aust ri a . -10 J u n e - 17 Octo b e r 2 0 04

The Paris exhibition centres largdy around

doing the same thing year after year, in order

not naming names. (Well, he did, actually, ·

repeating the names). 'That is just so dull.

Kristen Mef'(1enam y 3 London 1 9 9 6 from /eh b i n vierzig 2 0 0 4

state of art

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state2 7

�I � -

;I "

�·-

Juergen Teller Lo/a with nits. Lo n d o n . 2 0 0 5 for Fo n d ation C a rtier exh i b iti o n .

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state of art

2 8state A CONTEXT IS helpful in relation to Post War Irish art. Broadly speaking, war can either enervate, or decimate. In the wake of World War Two, the knock-on effects in the North were somewhat different to those in the South . In the Republic, which was officially neutral during the war, Independent Ireland had survived politically but, as

Terence Brown puts it in the best general, cultural survey of the period, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History Ol, the society 'had seen the stirrings of changes that in the following thirty years were to alter the shape of Irish society in significant ways ' . I n 1945, the South was a social and economic backwater. The norms were grinding poverty, mass emigration (not to mention a lemming like rush from the rural areas to the capital Dublin) and a sense that the country was

new developments (giving a platform to the poet Patrick Kavanagh, for example, to denounce modernist paintings). The highly influential magazine The Bell, founded in 1940 and edited for its first six years by Sean O 'Faolain, gave a forum to the likes of Herbert Read to defend the 'new' art. In terms of influence the magazine was as important as, and akin to, Cyril Connolly's Horizon. Ironically, that first generation of IELA artists was dominated by Northerners who held sway until the early sixties. Foremost amongst them was Colin Middleton ( 1 9 1083) who, after a Surrealist phase in the early forties, left Ireland briefly to j oin the writer and critic John Middleton Murray ' s c ommunity farm, in S uffolk. He was promptly taken up by the dealer Victor

I n the North, discrimination i n housing and employment, gerrymandering [the man ipulation of boundaries to ensure Protestant domination at the polls] and investment east of the Bann river (thus favouring a Protestant population) all continued. What the author Sam Hanna Bell called 'an antique conflict, resolved long ago in Western Europe, the conflict of religious dogmas, encrusted with loyalties, prejudices and racial aspirations' <Jl remained firmly in place. Writers and artists were still preoccupied with the country idyll (See Hanna Bell's compendium The Arts in

Painters ' Group (which flickered only briefly) and the Northern Ireland branch of the Artists International Association.

to diminishing returns, or not. He is highly regarded in Irish art circles - the historian Mike Catto called him 'one of the major Irish artistic talents of the century' <5l - was taken up by Waddington, and his CV is

Waddington rapidly picked him up. Having met refugees from the Spanish Civil War in Dublin, Campbell became interested in that country, soon adopting a mildly cubist style, and from 195 1 onwards, he more or less divided his time between Spain (especially Malaga) and the West of Ireland, moving easily between images of the Irish peasant and the Irish landscape, and the gypsies, musicians and picadors of Spain. Though by 1954 he was officially resident in London. He was an accomplished guitarist being accepted in Spain as a flamenco player and something of the powerful rhythms of the flamenco seeped into his work. He was even made a Knight Commander by the Spanish government. It is typical of the Spanish that the council in Malaga has announced that a roundabout will be named after the artist, and equally typical of Northern Ireland that no street or roundabout has ever been named after an artist.

peppered with international exhibitions . Although much of his work reflects the landscape of the West of Ireland, where he often painted with George Campbell and Nano Reid, he is also noted for street scenes of his home town. One of the most interesting of his thematic areas was that of the Pierrot, the Clown and the Harlequin, who are often depicted with blank faces and in a macabre light. Possibly

Readers will by now have noted that while the North of Ireland had an excellent track record in terms of producing artists, it had a negligible one in terms of retaining them, as

Jack Yeats to Now BRIAN McAVERA

OUTLINES THE VOlUTION O

MODERN IRISH ART Part 2

1946-1969

POST WAR

PRE·TROUBLES

Ulster, 1 9 5 1 , or even more tellingly Causeway, a series of essays produced for

could remark, also in 197 1 , that 'one could imagine from the bulk of Irish literature that there wasn't a city in the whole island'<•l. H owever, in the South the rej ection of economic nationalism, with the consequent attraction of foreign capital, would be paying dividends by the early sixties. There was a boom in second and third level education; a wide range of state pensions would b e introduced, there was a huge expansion of television licences, foreign travel became available - not to mention a tourist boom

:-"'

��

of his time out of it, either with Dillon in London and Dublin, or with Campbell in Dublin and Spain. He was predominantly a self-taught landscape artist with an experimental cast of mind, using plaster for instance in his landscapes to build up a highly textured, three-dimensional effect, and by 1971, he was analysing why photographic

1945 that is, when he ended his 'double life' because Waddington offered him fmancial help. As with Middleton and Dillon, this

Armstrong was shown regularly by the Hendriks Gallery in Dublin which opened

meant one-man shows and a regular international proflle, though the Irish myth is that this working-class lad preferred to exhibit in shoe-shops, rather than galleries!

in" 1 956. Owned and run by a man who was ·once described as having the · attitudes and lifestyle of the committed gentleman amateur, · it developed into one of the key . spaces in Dublin, and its opening exhibition which mixed Picasso's Vollard Suite, ceramics by the French potter Lacaf, and a raft of Irish artists from both North and South of the island, was - with its commingling of national and international artists - an oasis amidst the restrictive world of the 1950s.

new ideas. It was largely guided by the energetic northern painter Norah

and whose style is an odd combination of the folksy with the sophisticated. His colour tends to be bright and lyrical, and. there is ·an agreeable amount of charm and humour in

in art circles, being one of the founder members in 1 944 of both the Progressive

McGuinness. The major newspaper in the South, the Irish Times, was often hostile to

To return to the theme of the emigrating Northerner, Arthur Armstrong (b. l 924) although collected in the North, spent most

of my area which record the changing landscape over a period of time . . . '

determined to operate in a modernist mode - was giving an annual platform to those who were interested in international art, and in

as The Radicals on the Move - or artists

where they saw cubist and surrealist work, both modes which markedly influenced Johnson. The earlier work tended to be surrealist - and is worth comparing with Middleton's - whereas the later work was more cubist-influenced. Unfortunately, in the fifties he had a nervous breakdown and destroyed much of his output.

landscape painter who worked nightshifts at the shipyard and painted during the day, until

The other key northerners in IELA were Gerard Dillon, Dan O ' Neill, George CampbeU, Arthur Armstrong and Nevill Johnston. Dillon ( 1 9 1 6-71) was a landscape and figure painter who was born in Belfast

So what was happening in the visual arts, you may well ask? In the �epublic, The Irish Exhibition of Living Art, or IELA (founded 1943 in Dublin) which can be characterised

destinations) or else they went to London. Occasionally the reverse happened as when the English businessman Nevill Johnson (b. l 9 1 1 ) came to Belfast in 1 934 and stayed for fourteen years. Almost immediately, he started taking lessons with John Luke (see Part 1), the pair of them visiting Paris in 1936

who is one of the maj or painters of The Troubles. Dillon's friend Dan O'Neill ( 192074) was a self-taught figurative and

he was a direct influence upon the Ventriloquist Doll series by Jack Pakenham,

Actually he lived in London from 1958 to 1 97 1 , and between 1952 and 1970 he never exhibited in his native city. Another self-taught painter of landscapes, still-lives and figurative subjects, and one who was a close friend of Dillon and O'Neill, was George Campbell ( 1 9 1 7-79). Although he was actually born in the Republic, he was brought up in Belfast and so was regarded as a Northern artist. He was a late developer, only beginning to paint after the 1941 air raids on B elfast, recording the damage caused by the Blitz. Before long he was active

for the Republic.

I�

Waddington, developed an expressionist edge in relation to biblical subjects, but rapidly reverted in the early fifties to his hallmark crisp, tight and abstracted style which has marked echoes of Victor Pasmore and Ben Nicolson. Towards the end of his long life he was also producing numerous small landscapes. Middleton's exploration of the various modes of modernism was much more comprehensive than that of Mainie Jellett, though it is Jellett who is usually given the credit for introducing Modernism, and in terms of seriousness he is akin to the sculptor F.E. McWilliam (of whom more· anon) though McWilliam, a.s well as his modernist confrere William Scott, both of whom developed international reputations, had the good sense to relocate to London for most of their lives.

they either went to the South (Dublin and the West of Ireland being the preferred

accuracy was of minimal importance: 'I feel that a still photograph or representational painting can only record a split second in time . . . one has no idea what the landscape would look like under different conditions . . . my paintings represent a series of multiple, sometimes superimposed, images of pieces

the Arts Council in the North in 1 9 7 1 ) . This was largely true o f the South as well, particularly in relation to literature, so much so that the above-mentioned Sean O'Faolain

2 006

much of his work. He once said that he was 'always trying to see with a child's innocence and sincerity' but it is a moot question as to whether the consciously faux-naif style led

stagnant. As the novelist and short-story writer Sean O ' Faolain declared, the populace was 'a little dulled, bewildered [and] deflated'.

If the South was officially neutral, despite the large numbers of civilians that volunteered, the North, while sending its volunteers to the front, was also being the victim - four air-raids on Belfast demolished large areas of the city. In one raid alone, over 700 were killed and 1 500 injured: more casualties than any other city in a major raid, with the exception of Coventry. Although the war did make people aware of just how underdeveloped the North was in relation to Britain, as the historian Patrick Buckland put it 'in the long run the successes and failures of economic reform helped to undermine the state, but until the 1 9 60's much remained the same, especially the divisions within the s o ciety, and the Protestant and Unionist domination of official life <2l ' .

APRIL/MAY

This gallery had been preceded by the huge!y influential Waddington Galleries, the first of which opened in 1 9 2 5 . Victor Waddington exhibited Yeats, Campbell, Middleton, O'Neill, Paul Henry and P�trick Hennessy amongst others but when he lost money trying to promote modernist artists

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2 006

in the fifties he upped and went to London, where his gallery blazed a trail for Irish artists (amongst many others). It was also preceded by the Dawson Gallery which was run by a former assistant of Waddington's, Leo Smith. Dawson Gallery showed both conÂ servative work, such as that of W.J. Leech, as well as more progressive painting such as that of Mary Swanzy, Evie Hone, and Norah McGuinness (see Part 1), not to mention the likes of Dillon, Le Brocquy and Nano Reid. In the North, the Arts Council (then called

CEMA) which had been founded in 1943, immediately started to buy art from both North and South of the border, and also to arrange exhibitions, thus becoming a major outlet for state patronage. Likewise in the South, the Arts Council there, which was formed in 195 1 , also bought art and did touring exhibitions, though it never opened a gallery of its own. In 1948 however, CEMA opened the fust of its galleries at 55a Donegal Place, Belfast (1948-58), exhibiting local artists as well as putting on international shows of Modern Dutch, Turkish and Hungarian Art, and even Soviet Architecture. Complementing it was the New Gallery which was opened by the Lyric Theatre 's Mary O'Malley in the fifties but was run by a Viennese refugee artist Alice Berger Hammerschlag (1917-69). Opinion is divided in relation to her art which was resolutely abstract - personally I think she is a key figure who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she had been in mainstream Europe, artists like her, and the sculptor Deborah Brown, would have been accepted. As it was she was of crucial importance in terms of breaking down provincial attitudes in the North in relation to abstraction. Her work has connections with artists such as Lionel Feininger or Victor Vasarely, and the visual impact is often dramatic with crystalline facets and vital, surging colour.

This was both a blessing, and a nearly mortal wound. It was a blessing in that she was interested in modernism, and under her - and with the help of the Millbank Tate's Ronald Alley as advisor - she rapidly developed the museum's collection in the sixties and early seventies. The direction was English, European and American modernism, being responsible for the acquisition of major canvases by Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Keuneth Noland, Vasarely, Noguchi, Dubuffet, Bridget Riley and so forth. These developments in the collection undoubtedly had an impact upon local artists. The negative side was that Northern Irish artists, having been treated seriously by Hewitt, were then ignored by Crookshank, whose reputation, ironically, was built on Irish Art, and who proceeded to concentrate upon the international scene. So instead of building upon the spadework of Hewitt, and of dealers like Waddington, Northerners got short shrift from their local power base, a situation that is still largely true today. In the Republic, the equivalent figure was the art critic James White who was a proselytiser for Modernism and who, after a period as a curator at the Dublin Municipal Gallery ( 1 960-64) became the Director of the National Gallery in Dublin. But if Northerners like Dillon and company were the driving forces behind IELA, the Southerners were there a-plenty. Doreen Vanston (1903-88) though not mentioned by either Bruce Arnold or Brian Fallon in their survey volumes, was an important artist who studied in London and Paris, married a Costa Rican in 1926, moved there where she was 'held in thrall by the light, the noise, the colours' - a thraldom that surely left a permanent mark upon her work - but was back in Paris, sans husband, around 1933 and stayed there until the end of the decade. She was a landscape and figure painter who was associated with the White Stag Group in the forties, was a regular contributor to IELA (and an inaugural contributor to the annual Independent Artists exhibition in 1 960) and who had a distinctive French sensibility, opulent colour register, and a cubist-derived sense of abstraction.

rather more substantial than Hanlon, who is interesting primarily in terms of his somewhat erratic journey towards pure abstraction, which finally occurred in the early sixties. However, as with so many Irish artists, there is no proper study of this artist, particularly in relation to the study of Irish abstraction.

John Hewltt poet a n d critic a n d a uthor of s e m i n a l study A rt in Ulster 1557-1957

The other important influence at the time on Northern Irish art was the keeper of the Belfast Museum & Art Gallery (later renamed the Ulster Museum). Up until the mid-fifties, this post was held by the poet and art critic John Hewitt, who also wrote the first pioneering study of Northern Irish art which was called Art in Ulster 1557-1957. Hewitt especially promoted 'Ulster' Art, developing the currently unfashionable notion that the North, in terms of its arts, was to be viewed as a region of Ireland with its own distinct identity. He was the only major art critic of the period. In the late fifties, he was replaced at the Ulster Museum by Anne Crookshank.

On the male side we have, still from the S outh, Patrick Swift, Father Jack O'Hanlon and Thurloe Connolly, though none of them are in the same league as another female painter, Camille Souter. Father Jack O'Hanlon ( 1 9 1 3-68), who was one of the founder members of IELA, was much admired in the forties and fifties for his simple straightforward compositional sense and his use of colour. He painted figure compositions, flower studies and, as one might expect, religious subjects, but although he was clearly a good craftsman (and a stylish collector of European work) he is resolutely a minor figure. Thurloe Conolly (b. 1 91 8) who came to prominence through the IELA exhibitions, is another minor painter, albeit

ďż˝I ,..;

Patrick Swift ( 1 927-83) is an odd man out

amongst this company. He's a biographer's dream in that while he shunned publicity he also had a gift for friendship. For good measure he left Ireland when he was in his early twenties (always a good career move, even if you have to die to get a reputation) first .eo-founding, with the poet David Wright, an influential magazine called X in which he wrote art criticism promoting Freud (who influenced his early work), Auerbach and Michael Andrews. He was one of that infamous Soho generation that included Bacon, Minton and Freud, all of whom he knew well, but in 1962, when the magazine folded, he left for Portugal and founded a pottery. As he rarely had solo shows, he was largely overlooked in Ireland until a 1 993 retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The Irish painter he most admired was Nano Reid - he had a really good eye for Irish as well as British talent. Reid is an interesting comparison with Camille Souter (b.1929), who was born in England but moved to Ireland at the age of three . B oth of them naturally situate themselves within an European context, moving easily between abstraction and an abstracted figuration, and both of them have a landscape baseline. Souter, who absorbed influences as disparate as Rothko, Klee and Pollock, tends to work on paper, and is not, in my view, nearly as consistent a painter as Reid.

Elizabeth Rivers ( 1903-64), an English

artist though with an Irish grandmother, who settled in Ireland in the forties, had a similar training to that of Vanston, and was likewise ignored in the Fallon and Amold surveys. A figurative painter whose training under Andre Lhote comes through strongly in her work, she is an under rated figure whose best work, shot through with a subtle and often vital sense of colour, was produced in the fifties and who was also an excellent printrnaker, particularly in the medium of wood-engraving. To complete the triptych of powerful female painters, we have Nano Reid (1900-8 1), a figurative and landscape painter whose later work became abstract in the expressionist mode. She is a major painter who represented Ireland at the 1950 Venice Biennale (along with Norah McGuinness) and never looked back.

:;:,

FE McWIIIIam s c u l ptor a n d key figure i n 1950s I rish Art d es p ite l iv i n g a n d working i n Engl a n d

Of those artists who were creating reputations in the forties and fifties, three of the key figures, the painters WiUiam Scott, and Louis Le Brocquy, and the sculptor F.E. McWilliam were outsiders in the sense that their international reputations were bartered outside of Ireland and, for the most part, they lived outside of Ireland. Scott and McWilliam were largely England-based while Le Brocquy spent much of his time in France. Eclecticism is one of those words which cuts two ways. In the negative sense (often applied to Middleton) it is used to imply an artist who is less than the sum of his 'influenced' parts, while in the positive sense, it is an artist who is more than the sum of his or her parts. With Scott, ever the professional craftsman, the slippage from Euston Road School to Picasso to Saint Ives School to New York School is smoothly negotiated. He is best summed up in the 1972 Tate Gallery catalogue which noted that the artist 'tended to develop backwards and forwards from

Sir Alan Bowness Ta te Gallery d i rector a n d

early c h a m p i o n o f W i l l i a m S cott

figuration and kitchen still life to complete abstraction and from puritan austerity to sensuous richness' . As with Middleton, he has an almost instantly recognizable style and his journey towards abstraction, or more properly towards an abstracted vision - he disavowed the label preferring to see himself as a modem version of a Lascaux Cave artist - has not been short of admirers, be it Alan Bowness at the Tate Gallery or, most recently, Norbert Lynton. Unfortunately he was, perhaps, over-productive, or to put it in a more positive sense, he is not well served by admirers such as Lynton in terms of padding out a substantial book with clearly inferior pieces of workC6l. His friend F.E. McWilliam had a similar trajectory, achieving a retrospective at the Tate Gallery as well as an international reputation. Like Scott, the sculptor smoothly negotiated a bellyful of influences and the slippage between figuration and abstraction; and as with a later sculptor Bob Sloan (see Part 3) his childhood in Northern Ireland was clearly formative. Both describe a world in which makers - coopers and furniture craftsmen for example - stimulated their three dimensional senses. McWilliam was a constant experimenter and a restless lover of diverse materials. Whether one looks at his early surrealist work or the steady stream of metaphorical works in the forties, fifties and sixties, one finds a nonconformist intelligence which embodies those aspects of life - wit, humour, irony and poetic fantasy which postrnodernist critics desperately seek to find in the work of the YBA's. The only blemish in his career (though others disagree mightily) is his Women of B e lfast, a desperately earnest, well-meaning, and unsuccessful attempt to deal with the anguish of the Troubles. Dangling in between these two heavyweights is Louis Le Brocquy (b. l 9 16), another eclectic, and yet another self-taught artist, who was promoted by Herbert Read. A founder member of IELA, and a personality adept at sliding between the modernists of IELA and the reactionaries of the Royal HibernianAcademy (RHA), his early work, which soaks up European influences such as Manet, Degas, Whistler and Picasso, is unhesitatingly figurative. The critic Brian Fallon describes this early work, depicting for example tinkers and families, as academic, but while the artist rapidly developed the capacity to be an academic artist in the sense that he could paint an accurate portrait or depict a particular kind of cloth in an academically realistic style, the overall impact of any given work of the period is rarely academic. There are always elements, whether compositional or tonal, which scratch away at the academic surface. Le Brocquy rapidly developed an international reputation. He had moved to London in 1946 and by 1 956 had won first prize at the Venice Biennale, at which point he left for France.

-r

a os'late

state of art

APRIL/MAY

2006

2006 -2077 Delcy Morelos

! 1 th March - 22nd April 2006

gtGa l l e ry

Golden Thread Gallery,

Brookfield Mill, 3 3 3 Crumlin Road, B elfast. B T 1 4 7EA

t.++ 44 (0) 2 8 903 5 2 3 3 3

info@gtgallery.fsnet. co.uk w.www.gtgallery.fsnet.co.uk

Back in Northern Ireland, the generation of

strategies of the international art community.

Art & Design in Dublin.

of the literary and the humorous.

artists who went throughBelfastArt College

�· :.:-

between 1948 and 1952 were beginning to

The impact of the international impulse was

In terms of artists responding to the

Two immigrant artists did much to expand

mature. Cherith McKinstry (b . l 92 8 in

focused sharply by the first ROSC exhibition,

international scene, Cecil King (1921-86) a

England) came to Northern Ireland in 1 932.

ROSC being an Irish word meaning 'poetry

businessman who like Neville Johnson (by

the sculptural scene. Gerda Fromel (193175) who moved to Ireland in 1956, was a Czech artist who worked in an essentially

Her main theme was man's inhumanity to

of vision' . With an international selection

whom he was influenced) came late to

man and she was particularly impressive

panel who selected three works by 50 artists

painting, was a good example of a hard

abstract, constructivist style and brought a

when she tackled religious themes, managing

from around the world (the Irish artists being

working artist whose style ranged from

wide range of European references into a still

to be both unsentimental and inventive in

excluded), the exhibition, which was strongly

Abstract Expressionist to Hard Edge. He was

parochial Ireland. Tragically she drowned

terms of composition, but she is one of many

supported by Anne Crookshank and by the

one of the founders of ROSC, exhibited in

while going to the aid of one of her sons.

Irish artists whose careers need to be tracked

then current Minister of Finance, one

London as early as 1961 and was soon being

in detail before any sensible evaluation can

Charles Haughey, was controversial but

praised by the likes of MoMA's James

be made. Much better known, but only in

stimulated major debate - and major tourism.

Johnson Sweeney but he is an unoriginal,

If Fromel was a contemplative, restrained sculptor, Alexandra Weijchert (b.1921 in

Ireland is T.P. Flanagan (b.1929) who has

As the art historian Brian P. Kennedy

overrated artist, best described as 'less than

Krakow) was excitable by contrast. She

cornered

landscape

succinctly noted, the exhibition indicated that

meets the eye ' . Similarly Patrick Scott

experimented with new media, such as

watercolours. Opinion is divided on this

the art market was heading towards

coloured Perspex, and like Fromel, produced

artist, some seeing him as a major figure,

international trends, demonstrated that there

(b.1921), an architect who switched to full time painting in 1 9 60 and who not

others as a sure craftsman who comes

was a small but highly influential group of

surprisingly has architectural and largely

public sculptures. The Northern comparison

perilously close to repetitive chic. Modernist

private collectors, pointed up the potential

abstract preoccupations. His techniques -

to this work is the oeuvre ofDeborah Brown

he isn't.

conflict between community art and art for

staining tempera onto unprimed canvas, or

(b. 1 927) who started off as a painter during

the community, and started the trend for

laying gold leaf onto it - are intriguing,

the fifties, gradually moved into collage, and

politicians to give speeches at art openings.

though scarcely original, though whether you

then into the making of abstract reliefs in

regard him as a sensitive, unerring artist, or

fibre glass or papier mache.

the

market

However, the indisputable lynchpin of this group - and one of the major Irish painters of the century - is Basil Blackshaw (b.1932).

The sixties also saw the emergence of a whole

a tasteful decorator is a moot point. To bring this rough summary to a close, two

Ironically, by the early sixties, painters like

series of initiatives, many of them artist-led.

him who worked in the fields of landscape,

In the North, a disparate range of painters

The sixties did produce two conceptual

painters need to be mentioned. Brian

the nude and the portrait were beached, swept

banded together into Group '63, and the Arts

artists who developed maj or reputations

Bourke (b.1936) a painter of landscapes,

ashore by the tide of international 'isms' that

Council opened a major 'shop-window'

abroad. James Coleman (b. 1941), sometimes

portraits and self-portraits, and a sculptor as

dominated the sixties, seventies and eighties.

gallery in Belfast in 1 968. In the S outh,

called Ireland's first conceptual artist, and

well, is one of the great outsiders of Irish

Blackshaw however, has always had a steady

Bruce Arnold summed up the art world in

following and his triumphant, Lazarus-like

the late fifties and early sixties as 'vicious,

Patrick O'Doherty (who changed his name to Patrick Ireland in 1972) who spent most of

really belongs to Part 4 of this survey. But

rise to do battle with the very painters that

spiteful and rapacious . . . concerned with

hi time in New York working with people like

Patrick Collins ( 1910-94) is another matter.

reputation . . . with lies, with deceit, with

Sol Le Witt. Both will be dealt with in Part 4. In terms ofsculpture, the key figures were Oisin Kelly, Hilary Heron, Gerda Fromel and Alexandra Wejchert.

Heavily promoted as the quintessential Irish

If one wants t o paint the end o f the fifties

bribery, with corruption' . The Arts Council supporting a selected coterie of artists.

markedly

contradictory

Oisin Kelly ( 1 915-81) is a substantial figure

fluent treatment of nudes wasn't matched by

who has never really received his due. He

his landscapes which rarely captured 'the

process of dismantling the Irish Nationalist

sometimes dismissed - by the establishment

claimed to see himself as a craftsman whose

luminous light of Sligo, Wicklow or

spirit in the arts. This took a very long time

- as 'a vehicle for all sorts of mavericks and

'freedom' only really began when he 'was

Donegal' whereas Brian Fallont7l thought

- even in 1 966, the National Gallery of

outsiders as well as for certain ambitious,

told what to do' but this is disingenuous. I

the opposite, considering him one of the

Ireland was putting on a major exhibition to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Easter

rising young artists ' , it was in fact a hugely

suspect the key to his character lies in the

finest painters of the last half-century.

influential force for good. It was both a

fact that he took a degree in languages and

Individual works are often elegantly beautiful

Rising in 1 916, while a Dublin publishing

natural successor to IELA which was by then

won a scholarship to Germany for philology.

in a muted, allusive, and misty-eyed manner

house was producing Portraits of Patriots,

growing stale, and a proselytising force that

Philologists are interested in the study of

but he is a minor master at most.

a short book detailing Estella Solomons'

was in some ways the equivalent of the Salon

grammar, of etymology, of morphology and

portraits of same. The impact of international

des Independents. Put another way, it was a

semantics, all of which provide perfectly

Brian

art was becoming so strong however that at

kick up the ass for a conservative, clerically

serviceable metaphors for what a certain type

in Northern Ireland

times it all but buried the native impulse, or

trimmed Old Boys network - and it worked.

of sculptor does, and just as the philologist

to put it another way, there were great

In 1967, the Project Arts Centre opened and

has a cool, seemingly level-headed surface,

swathes of Irish art which reproduced, but

by the end of the decade students were

though often masking quite passionate

failed to digest and make its own, the

agitating to reform the National College of

argument, so too Kelly, eclectic in interests

which ranged from medieval carving to

art

Ernest Barlach to Henry Moore - whom he studied under - has, over the course of a long career, a constantly changing surface which morphs between the abstract and the figurative. We need a major study to tease

� -

In reaction to this situation, Independent Artists was formed in 1960. Although

state

IU1

eye - an eye viewing landscape that is - he conjures

particular Southern Irish artists started the

one might say that Irish artists, and in

:-'

painter in the vein of the poetic, delighted

opinions. Bruce Arnold considered that his

and the rise of the sixties in a broad sweep,

I�

art, belonging to no school. His development

Anne Crookshank collected for the Ulster Museum is one of the subjects of Part 3.

was seen as a middle-class bastion,

�

a number of high quality, large-scale, outdoor

out his development. His counterpart is

Hilary Heron ( 1 923-77) who carved in

1 5 May 2006

wood and stone in the fifties and sixties before turning to metal . A friend of

Elizabeth Frink, with whom she can be us efully compared, and promoted by

Waddington, she is an odd combination

MeAvera is an author,

playwright and critic based

NOTES . (1) Fi rst p u b l ished by Fonta n a in 1981. Revised and expanded edition p u b l ished by H a rper Co l l i ns in 2004. (2 ) See Patrick Buckland"s A History of Northern Ireland. G i l l a n d Macm i l l a n. 1981. (3) see The Arts in Ulster. ed. Sa m H a n n a B e l l . Ha rra p. 1951. (4) I nterview in Irish Times Dec.10 1971 p.ll. (5) see Art in Ulster 19957-1977. Bla ckstaff Press. 1977 and 1991 (6) see Lynto n·s recent book on the a rtist. p u b l ished by Thames a n d H u dson. 2005. ( 7 ) see. respective ly. Bruce Arn old"s A Concise History of Irish Art. Thames and Hudson. 1969 a n d 1977: a n d Brian Fa llon·s Irish Art 18301990. Appletree Press. 1994.