State of Art - Autumn 2005

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I'VE FOLLOWED

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AUTUMN 2005

Baltic phenomenon

since its inception, when its first Director, Sune Nordgren, emanating languid self-assurance, promised us that it wouldn't be a mere museum,

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importing exhibitions from London, but would instead be a constantly

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promoting it are simply scared of appearing ignorant or reactionary by questioning its programme. Third, the feature writers and T.V. j oumalists who tamely, uncritically, recycle the hype about it, are in effect telling their audience that everything that happens there is A Good Thing and they really should be grateful.

The reality is rather different. The Baltic has become the safely provincial test bed of the wannabe cutting edgers.

You know the kind of thing: formulaic novelty and predictable in-your-face transgression, not to mention those darkened rooms containing videos which regularly make me comatose.

O.K. I know Bill V iola is a master, but the others? David Lee, editor of The Jackdaw, calls this kind of thing "State Art". If that reminds you of Stalinism you would be right. The Arts Council, for example, in language akin to

MELT DOWN AT NEWCASTLE'·S BALTIC? The North East is a region famous for its sense of self and cultural identity, no doubt stemming from an historic pride in local industries heavily reliant

"collateral damage", describes the way in which it selects the

artists

right kind of

as "the endorsement process"

and, in a recent booklet about funding endorsed

art

challenging contemporary 55 pages. To a cynic,

84 times in

"challenging" means "you're not going to like this but we're going to give it

on skilled craftsmanship. Recession and repression did nothing to kill the

to you anyway." As Lee points out

notorious Tyneside spirit. Now the Baltic, a flagship arts venue located in

though, challenging can mean whatever

central Newcastle, is rapidly becoming disenfranchised from the area's

it's "more to do with what a small

intrepid arts community - admidst allegations of maladministration and Southcentric elitism.And the local people don't like it either ...

you want it to mean but, fundamentally, coterie who read the same magazines, network the same exhibition openings at the same few galleries, and attend the

report Wl

lAM VARLEY

state OF ART 2005

previewing a major feature scheduled for November

Cover Photograph CLIVE ARROWSMITH Editors at Large

EDITOR MIKE VON JOEl

rnv:j@state-of-art.org

DEPUTY EDITOR MICHAELA FREEMAN

rnif@state-of-art.org

USA Clare

Henry Matthew Flowers

FRANCE Jeremy Hunt Gcerginl! Turner

IRELAND Brian MeAver<> S:arah llritlget Walker

PUBLISHED BY Momentum Publishing (Newspaper Division) 82 Kingsland Road, London E2 SDP

EXECUTIVE EDITOR (AMERICA)

Tel: 020 7920 7777 Fax: 020 7920 7770

MATTHEW FLOWERS

Web: www.state-of-art.org

mf©state··of.art.org

editorial@state-of-art.org

Contributors This Issue LAUIRA GASCOIGNE LI.SA SOSSIE ROWLAND THOMAS JER !EMY HUNT GO D FREY SARI\ER CHARLES KANE GEORGINA TURNER MARK GLAZEBROOK BRJAN McAVERA WllLIAM VARLEY

Printed by Trinity-Mirror Group. Watford Plant

STATE OF ART is an independent publication. Views

expressed herein are those of the individual authors and not necessarily of the Editor or the Publishers.

ALL MATERIAL@ MOMENTUM PU9LISH!NG 2005

same

clubby

international

jamborees happen to decide it is at any particular moment."

Join the Debate our Winter issue will carry a full length

feature on THE BALTIC situation by William Varley. We welcome informed opinion for

publication on this

topic. Email your

contribution (500 words max} to Michaela Freeman. The Baltic Directors' will be offered a preview and an unedited platform should they wish to make a comment.

state of art AUTUM N 2005

states newly arrived from Sweden, who, in his introductory lecture, "amused" his audience by confiding that his daughter had likened Tyneside to Beirut.

Insensitivities like this prompted worries that the new Director would produce eye-catching initiatives and then move on, leaving behind debts and an admini strative mes s . F o r the scepti c s the early signs weren 't encouraging. Before the Baltic opened and was just an empty shell, Anish Kapoor's vast membrane Tarantara was installed - the building's structure had to be reinforced. It remained in place for six weeks, had 1 0,000 visitors and officially cost £1 20,000 - some say the figure was nearer £400,000. As to the cost per visitor ? "go figure" as the Americans say. Other minor em­ barrassments included the cancellation of Richard Wilson's proj ected installation, The Joint :S Jumping, for which £300,000 of Lottery cash had been set aside. Arguably, it was a condition of the Baltic's Lottery grant that this commission be completed. It never was . Wilson was eventually offered a modest financial settlement of £ 1 5 ,000. Then, in the run-up to the opening show, one ofChris Burden's Meccano-like bridges, the Hell Gate Bridge, owned by the former tennis p l ayer Joh n McEnroe, had been damaged by being stored in the upper storey of the Baltic before the roof was secure. Burden was paid $40,000 to repair it.

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t) 0::: TOP Sune Nordgren ina ugur al Dire ctor in the ha lcyon days of the brand new Baltic Mill CENT RE Stephen Snoddy - an unfor tunate , embarrassingly early departure ABOVE Peter Doroshenko current Dire ctor with a growing local interest in his past IVA career i n M ilwaukee

If the B altic ' s programme of institutionalised avant-gardism has been underwhelming, its managerial record has been abysmal. Long before it opened in 2002 sceptics feared that it would operate like a giant vacuum cleaner hoovering up funding that would have otherwise gone elsewhere.

By regional standards its provision had been generous, £46,000,000 for its construction as well as revenue funding for its first five years. It was, of course, the first arts centre in the country to be given this privilege; one which, given the emotional and e c o nomic investment in it as a regional flagship, is likely to recur. The other subject of dark mutterings was Sune Nordgren,

By this time the major funding bodies, the Arts Council and the Lottery, alarmed at the profligacy, maladmin­ istration and lack of professionalism generally, not discounting the crucial business of arti sts ' c ontract s , demanded a financial monitoring role.

How effective that has been is open to question. When Anthony Gormley's Domain Field was installed in 2003 it involved hundreds of volunteers being body-cast, preparatory to steel rod figures being constructed. Their form was , allegedly, determined by the figures' inner space. The stick figures were made by Gormley's assistants and the project must have been massively expensive: some estimates allegedly not million miles from £800,000?

Curiously, given the wide variety of human types participating in this extravaganza, it's odd that they all looked so alike and all possessed identikit coconut heads. Still, there was a lot of them and the Baltic - why have they ·dropped the definite article and always call it Baltic? has habitually been generous to Gormley. Indeed, there are heretic s ar ound who in relation to Lee ' s definition of -

"challenging contemporary art" being to do with "what a small coterie happen to decide it is at any given moment," conclude that the right kind of artists are repres ented in the B alti c ' s programme from the Lisson Gallery, Malmo and Scandinavia particularly.

Admittedly, the Oyvind Fahltstrom and Olaf C h ris topher Jensen exhibitions have been amongst the most successful, but too much has consisted of right-on politics (though the feminists wouldn't dare challenge the subjugation of Muslim women); interactive fun; ramshackle install­ ations and the moral shallowness and unearned emotion of issue-based art.

The irony of such as the B altic affecting the victim postures and the moral heroism of starving bohemians - while trousering millions - is painful.

A while ago, I posed the question: Who is the Baltic for? Is it merely a useful venue for a favoured coterie, or is it for the people of the North East and beyond? I think that the answer must be the former. According to the warped elitism of the Baltic's programmers whose sense of their own integrity means that they would feel ethically compromised by offering anything other than experimental art, the public must be force-fed the inchoate, the provisional and the provocative. The fact that people would love to see the modem classics, Matisse, Picasso, Hopper et a!, that they travel to London to pay to see is, I suspect, regarded as seriously uncool.

I 've followed the Baltic's progress from the beginning when huge crowds went to see the new visitor attraction (excellent views from its roof across the Tyne) and the fun palace antics of those who banged the gongs or whiled away a· few minutes staring at videos.

"Adding to the avant-garde liveliness was an independent a disco lounge by Thai artist Surasi Kusolwong. Besides promoting a general party atmosphere, Kusolwong was selling

$10 - 60 percent off the official

price. Kusolwong made a hit last year in New York with his show at Lombard-Freid, where he sold artworks for as little as

$1...

I've also seen the numbers dwindle and visitors wandering around with bemused expressions feeling that they should respond, they've been told to, but getting little, least of all aesthetic or sp iritual reward fro m the ir experience.

The rest of the Baltic's history you can easily imagine . Its first Director, Nordgren, left - ofcourse - to become supremo of O s l o ' s museums and galleries. The cries of anguish as he initiates his reforms there have been washing across the North Sea like a tsunami ever since. He was replaced

by Stephen Snod d y, whose brief tenure was ended by "a little local difficulty" (© J. Profumo). The most recent incumbent, Peter Doroshenko, is an American of Ukranian heritage.

Direct from a two year directorship of the Smak Gallery in Ghent, having previously been at the Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee. The official sum given as his salary was £75,000 but there are rumours that this figure was increased to persuade him to accept the Baltic challenge. While at Ghent he exhibited work by Jose Antonio Hernandez Diez fro m Venezuela, w h o " u s e s trainers, skateboards and other obj ects to attempt to raise phil o s o phical questions." So no change there then.

The intervening history of the Baltic you can easily imagine: dissension, disorganisation, inc ompetent con­ servation, and resignations from its M anagement Team and Advisory Board. While financial problems hang over it like the Sword of Damocles.

Still, it will survive. As long as there are those politicians around who believe that throwing money at the Arts in the cause of regional regeneration is incontrovertibly g o o d , (the instrumentalist v iew that I would willingly debate) and as long as the proj ect i s controversial - thus garnering extensive publicity - it will remain. And will appear immune to embarrassing questions about the use­ fulness of the "arm's length principle" or of matters of artistic quality. ·

curatorial project organized by Peter Doroshenko, which included

copies of the fair catalogue for

T he changing face of the old Ra n k Mi ll on the banks of the Ty ne

"

Chicago Art Fair : ArtNet Review

William Var/ey is a writer and former regional critic for The Guardian

state of art AUTUM N 2005

6state

Most public sculpture, especially in the Trafalgar Square and Whitehall areas, is triumphant male statuary. Nelson's Column is the epitome of a phallic male monument and I felt that the square needed some femininity, linking with B oudicca near the Houses of Parliament . Alison's statue could repres ent a new model of female heroism.'

IN SEP TEMBER 2 0 0 3 , the Evening Standard advised Londoners to react meaningfully in responding to a crucial choice regarding the future of the city and the commissioning of a sculpture for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Describing a choice to be made between a 'a pigeon-spattered car and a pair of cruise missiles, a pregnant di sabled woman and an ant i-war protest . . . selected by a committee of contemporary-art apparatchniks' and .'minority tastemakers' . The paper was indulging in the spectator sport of iconoclasm, made popular by William Dowsing in the 1 7 th c entury but continued through the articulacy of the news media, Hackney cab drivers and passengers on the top deck of the Routemaster buses that pass con­ veniently close to the fourth plinth.

Alison Lapper commented: 'I regard it as a modern tribute to femininity, disability and motherhood. It is so rare to see disability in everyday life - let alone naked, pregnant and proud. '

The public, however, do not have a role in the decision making process and selection is not one aimed at public concensus. The fourth plinth proj ect is led by the Cultural Strategy team, working on behalf of the Mayor of London who took over responsibility for Trafalgar Square in 1 999. A panel of specialist advisors, the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, were appointed to guide and monitor a programm e of c o ntemp orary art commissions. The Mayoral intention 'aims to encourage debate about the place and value of art in the built environment ' . The commissioning process is organised by the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery and chairman of the selectors, .said : 'we hope they will create a debate that reaches as many people as possible.

Public discussion of sculpture, and the place of memorial and monuments today is part of the process of the commission'. An additional aim is to: 'create interest, excitement and debate ' .

O n S eptember 1 5 th 2 0 0 5 , Marc Alison Lapper Pregnant will be unv e i l e d as the first of two temporary installations, each commissioned to be exhibited for 1 8 months.

MarcQuinn JEREMY HUNT 0

Quinn's

A lison Lapper Pregnant is a 3 . 5 5 metre high portrait sculpture of Alison Lapper when she was 8Y:z months pregnant, carved out of one block of white marble in C arrara. It has achieved substantial news coverage as the sculpture is notable not merely for showing her. ripe nakedness but also her truncated arms and legs. Whilst Ju lie K irkbride MP, a previous shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, commented in the Da ily Ma il that: 'The p o litically correct lobby has prevailed. Whilst childbirth is a great thing to celebrate, I still think we should have focussed on individuals of great achievement that the nation ought to commemorate. ' The initial impact o f the work will pass quickly. It is more interesting to see it as part of Quinn's preoccupation with

EWWORKfFo··· FALGAR SQUAR the ever-changing physical states of the body. His work increasingly addresses ideas concerning mortality and survival in our age of cloning and genetic manipulation. He gained notoriety in 1 99 1 with Self, a refrigerated cast of his own head made using nine pints of his own blood. The 1 2 metre high steel sculpture The Overwhelming World of D es ire (Paphiopedilum Winston Churchill Hybrid) commissioned by the Cas s Sculpture Foundation, evolved from Quinn's fre ezing of flowers and similarly dealt with the transience of nature and the natural life cycle. Alison Lapper Pregnant is part of a series of portraits of disabled people entitled Group Works whose aim was to challenge attitudes towards the perception of the body beautiful and people without limbs and with

prosthetic limbs. These are inspired by the Greek and Roman marbles of the British Museum and include Catherine Long, in the pose of a contemporary Greek Kouros with one arm, purchased by the Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum.

Quinn describes the A lison Lapper Pregnant sculpture as a tribute to disability and motherhood: 'At first glance it would seem that there are few if any public sculptures of people with disabilities. However, a closer look reveals that Trafalgar Square is one of the few public spaces where one exists: Nelson on top of his column has lost an arm. I think that Alison ' s p o rtrait reactivates this dormant aspect of Trafalgar Square.

When Marc Quinn, first heard the news of the commission he remarked that: this could only happen in London. He was perhaps musing on the eccentricity of a statue-less pedestal remaining empty for most of its 1 64 years as much as the public enterprise and debate that resulted in a work of contemporary art in the centre of the city. Since 2005, the fourth plinth has been part of a largely pedestrianised square following the completion of architect Norman Foster's plans as part of the World Squaresfor All scheme. It is located in the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square, opposite the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery. It was originally designed by Sir Charles Barry and built in 1 841 to display an equestrian statue of William IV. There were insufficient funds to create such a statue and so the plinth remained empty. In 1 998 the Royal Society for the enc ouragement of Art s , Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) commissioned a series of three works to be displayed temporarily on the plinth with the support ofWilfred and Jeanette Cas s of S culpture at Goodwood: Ecce Homo by Mark Wallinger ( 1 999) Regardless of History by Bill Woodrow (2000) and Monument by Rachel W hiteread (200 1 ) . An active media debate ensued with Daily Telegraph j ournal i s t Auberon Waugh describing t h e commissioning cabal as 'hyperactive philan thropists'. Simon Jenkins pointed out that any group would like to claim the fourth plinth for their own caus e . The Navy would w ant an Admiral, the RSPCA a stray dog and the Tate Modern . . . well how about some modern art? Meanwhile the average Evening Standard readers knew what they wanted Mandela, Madonna or the Spice Girls. While a substantial proportion of rural and suburban England favoured the Queen Mother, or failing that, any member of the Royal Family astride a horse.

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The p eoples ' choice was not acted upon and the six artists shortlisted for the fourth plinth commission in 2004 provided a selection of contemporary plinth-based public art: Chris Burden is a California-based performance artist best known in the UK for a series · of six model bridges including the Tyne Bridge (2002) in Newcastle. He proposed Toy sky-scraper as tall as a real building using Meccano (British) and Erector (American) metal toy construction parts.

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(clockwise from left) Sarah Lucas maquette for This One's for the Pigeons (Oi! Pigeons, over here!)

Sokari Douglas Camp maquette for No-o-war-r No-o-war-r .

Lapper Pregnant

Stefan Gee maquette for Mannequin

Sokari Douglas Camp's No-o-war-r No -o- war-r was a welded ste e l sculpture - a figurative group fusing the aesthetics and politics of London and the masquerade tradition of the Kalahari in Nigeria.

Stefan Gee's Mannequin proposed a work that linked Lord Nelson's fleet with a symbol of contemporary warfare in the form of two 6 metres l o ng wooden life-size replicas of s e a­ launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.

slapstick humour and simplistic comic puns on sex and Britishness seem inescapably linked to a vision of Charles Hawtrey as a cross­ dressing nurse in the 1 950s film Carry on Nurse . Although the aesthetic appeal for her proposal was more related to the abandoned car culture of estuarine London. This One s for the Pigeons (Oi! Pigeons, over here!) was an ordinary Ford Fiesta family saloon car painted with resin and acrylic paint to resemble pigeon droppings, which. would over the time of the installation have been organically developed by the Columbia livia, aka: the London feral pigeon.

Sarah Lucas'

The vacant p edestal in Trafalgar Square c ontinues to exerc i s e the

Marc Quinn maquette for Alison

Chris Burden maquette for Toy skyscraper as tall as a real building

interest of the art world and the media.

The temp orary contemporary sculptures on the fourth plinth exist in opposition to the existing formal sculpture in Trafalgar Square. Lord Nelson, Charles I, Sir Charles Napier, Maj or-General Hav e l o ck, and Portuguese explorer Bartholomeu Diaz with George Washington and James II outside the N ational G al le ry all celebrate political prestige and naval history. The artists involved in the commission propo sals frequently referred to the space as being a place for the expression of democratic rights, having a history of protest, speeches and demonstrations. The square and plinth represent a metaphorical void at the heart of the nation suggesting a gap between artistic taste and public desire. This is nowhere better indicated than in the intention of the Mayor to pre s s for a po l itically m otivated figurative bronze sculpture of Nelson Mandela which seems directly at odds with the Mayoral aim to encourage debate about the place and value of art in the built environment through the fourth plinth comm i s s i o n s . This political commitment towards social improvement and cultural regeneration was noted by the old thunderer T homas Carlyle in Signs ofthe Times in 1829 when he described an assembly

I mages courtesy of the National Gallery.

of sculptures as a Glyptotheque and noted the l inks between art and enlightenment: 'National culture, spiritual benefit of all sorts, i s under the same management. No Queen Christina in these times, needs to send for her Descartes, no King Frederick for his Voltaire, and painfully nourish him with p e n s i o n s and flattery : any sovereign of taste, who wishes to enlighten his people, has only to impose a new tax, and with the proceeds establish Philosophical I nstitut e s . H e n c e the Royal and Imperial Societies, the Bibliotheques, Glyptotheques, Technotheques, which front us in all capital cities; like so many well furnished hives, to which it is expected the stray agencies of Wisdom will swarm of their own accord, and hive and make honey. In like manner, among ourselves, when it is thought that religion is declining, we have only to vote half- a-million's worth of bricks and mortar, and build new. ' The following sculpture for the fourth plinth, planned for April 2007 will be T homas Schiitte's, Hotelfor the Birds, described by the artist as a sculpture, model and utopian architectural vision

all in one. It will be in the shape of a 2 1-storey architectural model, 5 metres high and built of 2 centimetre thick yellow, red and blue perspex, which will reflect light, and according to Andrea Schlieker, curator for the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, i s : ' promis ing to sparkl e like a brightly-coloured j ewel.'

Jeremy Hunt is editor of Art

& Architecture

Thomas Schiitte maquette for Hotel for the Birds

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state of art AUTUM N 2005

STATE O ......

�RT States of Ignorance

opinion LAURA GASCOIGNE

TURNER

PRIZE SHOCK AS PAIN TER

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screamed the headlines after the nomination of Gillian Carnegie for this year's award. Arts commentators were all in a tizz over the ramifications of the jury's selection of a painter of apparently conventional still lifes, figures and landscapes. Why had they chosen her? What were the implications for BritArt? What impact would it have on the future of painting?

But most important, for now, who on earth was she?

SHORTLISTED

I was relieved to hear other j ournalists asking this question, because I'd never h e ard of her myself. N o t that it surprised me much. Because I'd missed her appearance in Tate Britain's 2003 exhibition Days Like These - where audiences were treated to a flash of the Carnegie bottom - and her low-key spring exhibition at Cabinet, she simply hadn't appeared on my radar.

Nor on Google's, apparently, except for a lone review of the Cabinet show by a diligent A rtforum critic . The only c o mfort I could draw from my ignorance was that it c o nfirmed something I'm always banging on about: that in the information age, in one of the hubs of the contemporary art scene, we are starved of information on the s t ate o f art . The r e ally interesting question raised by the Carnegie debacle is, why?

In the last i s s u e , Rosie Millard analysed what it takes for an artist to make the news, and concluded that being media-savvy helps, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee long-term fame.

Carnegie is apparently so shy of the media that she was tempted to turn the Turner nomination down. Many serious artists regard celebrity as an invasion of creative privacy, but that doesn't mean, of course, that they want to be ignored. Appearing on the news pages is one thing; getting reviewed on the arts pages is another. Carnegie is by no means the only artist to have slipped . through the art critical net. In the current state of British arts journalism, it's probably easier to get onto news pages than into the arts section.

It wasn't always like this. In 1 930 when the young Barbara Hepworth and John Skeaping had a joint show at Tooth :S, they netted eight reviews in the national press; today they'd be lucky to get a mention in an art-for-sale column. What has brought about this

change? A maj o r factor is the proliferation of public galleries, which · has driven a wedge between perceptions of 'public' and 'private' art, and hogged all the review space for the former.

Fleurs de Hui/e 2001 Oil on board 15" x 19" (cou rtesy of Cabinet) LEFT Gillian Carnegie (pie Tarran Bu rgess) ©the artist

public' likes them best.

I n 1 9 3 0 neither Hepworth nor Skeaping had a public profile, though both later attained it in different ways.

Now artists are groomed in art school for public careers making art for public galleries and spaces. Those who take this path, and reach their destination, get coverage in the press; those who don't fall by the journalistic wayside.

There are various reasons for this, the most obvious being simply lack of space. Exhibitions in public galleries with sleek PR machines go straight to the top of the arts editor's pile, burying all the private competition, except for celebrity outfits like W hite Cube.

Meanwhile the predominance of the public gallery has created the concept of public gallery art. Subj ects such as still life, landscape and the figure are now felt to be too 'private' for display in contemporary public spaces, which are expected to address themes of public interest - such as the state of society and the state of art - preferably on a suitably public scale. While the display of historic 'private' art is still admissible - along with old war-horses like L ucian Freud - the general perception is that 'private' pictures are out of place in the public sphere, despite all the evidence that 'the

It could be argued, I suppose, that art made for private consumption doesn't require or deserve a public platform, but for it to survive at all it does need a forum where collectors, dealers, artists and amateurs can pool information. With the near-extinction of press coverage of private galleries and the increasingly narrow focus of art magazines on celebrity artists, such a forum no longer exists. Today, the only people in the art world with an overview of what's happening on the ground are individual journalists on mailing lists with privileged access to pre s s rel e a s e s . If y o u ' r e on this network, you're continually astonished by the isolation of everyone else. We now operate in an art world where artists are unaware of e ach other, dealers are unaware of artists, collectors ditto, and regional museums have no way of knowing what to spend their purchase funds on, assuming they're lucky enough to have them.

Whenever I mention one artist to another who happens to be working in a similar field, I can be pretty sure they won't have heard of them. Two weeks ago I was approached by a London dealer with a background in painting who has just opened a new gallery and is desperate for painters. A year ago I met a serious collector who asked me which living painters I admired, and when I mentioned the names of Eric Rimm ington and Sargy Mann -

highly regarded artists who have been painting, and selling, for half a century - they were new to him. Two years ago I listened to the young curator of a regional museum on the south coast complaining that there were no young painters she could spend a dedicated purchase fund on - in the same year that Tom Hammick won the Sussex Open. Is it any wonder that the Contemporary A rts Society had to launch a Special Collection Scheme to shepherd regional curators around the country and introduce them in person to contemporary art?

If Gillian Carnegie wins the Turner Prize, will it make a difference? The omens aren't good. The public art posse is already circling, anxious to claim her for their own. Within hours of the announcement, jury member Louisa Buck was maintaining that "what look like conventional paintings are anything but. They are actually conceptually rich; they interrogate painting . . . ", and Modern Painters editor Karen Wright was describing her as "a p ainter who talks con­ ceptually." The next time I Googled her name, several s ites were flogging Carnegies and she had even made the Hindu News.

Carnegie's name is made, and good luck to her, but if it takes the Turner Prize to do it there's little hope for her peers. Until arts journalists share their overview with the public - and arts editors let them - we'll stay marooned on celebrity art island.

Laura Gasgoigne is a journa list a nd .the art critic for The Tab let .

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state of art AUTUM N 2005

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From the publicity viewpoint, an acknowl edged key e vent was the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1 99 7 . The great thing about this show - even though it massaged the truth by presenting one man's taste as though it was something more - was that it brought out a fresh· public for art. Many of the visitors to Sensation, attracted by a brilliant publicity campaign, found themselves de-intimidated in an art gallery for the first time. They found something that they liked, could laugh, argue or puzzle over. O ddly enough, although it is perhaps typical of show business, the theme exhibitions which attempted to repeat the success of Sensation, such as Intelligence at Tate Britain and a much better show, Apocalypse, at Burlington House, fell rather flat.

Raising Standards?

Lowering the Rope?

K GLAZ!t:BROOK

among the soi-disant intelligentsia that triviality is in the ascendant and that standards in the visual arts have slipped. The fact that an artist of the calibre of Tracy Em in has been given a room to herself at Tate Britain is cited as evidence of this phenomenon, which is perceived as part of a more general cultural dumbing down.

A FEELING EXISTS

Tracy Emin is a draw however. She knows how to share odd and sad experiences. Her own generation, especially, is curious about her and she is not exactly talentl e s s . She has enough skill to produce an etching of a pathetically bedraggled sparrow, for example, even if at first sight it looks like a rough drawing of a normal sparrow. A better example of current dumbing down, in the s e n s e o f p andering to t h e lowest c o mmon denominator of public taste, might be that yet again one of our great institutions, the Royal Academy. It seems to be attempting to cash in on the turnsti l e ' s magic word Impressionism with what is, in the main, an outstandingly b oring collection of paintings from Boston.

If you are a critic of slipping standards you are likely to be branded an elitist or an intel l e ctual snob. T h i s i s nonsense of course, because it i s natural to strive for excellence. Success brings automatic membership of an elite - like it or not. The gibe of intellectual snobbery is beside the point. Art, as distinct from craft, is primarily about feeling and imagination as R. G. Collingwood argued so cogently in his book The Philosophy of Art-you do not have to be an intellectual to be moved by great art.

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such as Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism lasted only a few years, Conceptualism of one sort or another has been with us for almost a hundred .. One of the reasons it has survived is that it easier to do than p ainting and drawing.

Another _is that the actual obj ects it fathers, such as Tracy Emin's Bed or Beach Hut, are perceived by those who are ignorant of art history to be more innovative than they really are. Her Bed is original in terms of what it looks like in a gallery. As a concept it is amu s ing and entertaining b ut undemanding and, of course, highly derivative.

It would be a pity to get rid of the Turner Prize altogether. One every five years would be ample and sensible.

After the Turner Prize in 2006 we could then have the Hogarth Prize for Drawing in 2007, the Constable Prize for Painting in 2008 and the Henry Moore Prize for Sculpture in 2008. As well as the top prizes there could be

A repeat event in the art world that continues to attract publicity is the Turner Prize. To expect genius to emerge every year like clockwork is

What does one gain by lacking cultural knowledge?

ANDRE DERAIN TO GEORGES DUTHUIT

FROM FAUVISM ( MULLER

Tracey Emin :an undeserved focus for all negativity directed at contemporary artists?

Collingwood was writing in the 1 930's.

He was at pains to distinguish genuine art from entertainment and prop­ aganda, for example. Professor John Carey in his stimulating recent book What Good are the Arts? refuses to give so-called 'High Art' a superior role to what c an be s e e n on the television, including soap operas.

Carey is a sophisticated anti-elitist, however, who prefers literature to other art forms. He sees the art world fighting a losing battle with the mass media.

Painting has virtually died out, he writes, while the elephant dung and inflatab l e dolls of the art world represent a desperate attempt to snatch some crumbs of publicity from the mass m e d i a ' s endl e s s p arade o f glittering, world class celebriti e s .

Painting, of course, has not died out.

Indeed according to Charles Saatchi: it has triumphed. Nevertheless it i s significant and worrying that a literary critic and culture guru such as Professor Carey should think as he does.

&: Afc t�iteclure Nalio,nal

PLllblic Art

ridiculous howev er, and the l o w standard o f some of the participants work has not gone unnoticed. Surely the time has come for a change. The Turner Prize, like Sensation, has been very successful in raising the profile of the visual arts. Now is the time to · build on this s u c c e s s and raise standards. One way of doing so would be to encourage, in the minds o f budding artists, the reconnection o f works of art with the roots from which they sprang.

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It may be argued that students today don't want to do life-drawing - and that no-one would put in for a Hogarth Prize for drawing (for example). The s olution to this would be to make drawing compulsory in all art schools.

And Why Not?

Mark Glazebrook is a writer and critic and former director of the Whitechapel Gallery

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smaller prizes for m any different traditional c ategories such as life drawing, landscape painting, carving and so on. In 2009 and every fifth year from then on there could be a prize which tested the new technologies - for arguments sake let's hazard the Bill Brandt Prize for Photography, the Bill Viola Prize for Video and the Bill Gates Prize for Computer Generated Art?

Drawing and painting can teach you how to see. A painter is someone with special eyes. The disadvantage of a computer a s a tutor is that i t doesn't teach a would-be artist t o s e e with intensity. The Conceptual artist would seem to be, by definition, a person with a special brain, albeit a brain which m ay fail to impr e s s a s c ientist, philosopher or a cultural critic such as Carey. Whereas seminal movements

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DISSENT I N PRAGUE The h istoric falling out between old comrades precipitated a volatile schism with in the Czech a rt world and a Euro-wide moral dilemma for the apparatchniks of contemporary art

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IC

FREEMAN

' 'MANY MOUTHS, ONE voice", says one of five shop windows in the centre of Prague. With his proj ect Prague­ abnormale2005, Czech artist Roman Franta commented on the current situation in contemporary Czech art.

In 2002

and Helena the editors of Flash A rt m agazine , proposed an ambitious project to Milan Knizak, an ex-Fluxus artist, now the director of the Prague National Gallery. Their plan for a Prague Biennalel - to bring together a huge collection of international and local artists . Knizak was their old friend and incidentally the best man at their wedding - little did they know that this collaboration would turn sour and end up splitting the Czech art scene into bitterly opposed camps.

Giancarlo Politi

K o nt o va,

During Prague Biennalel, hosted by the National Gallery in 2003, it became clear that, as Knizak puts it: "this partnership turned out to be ill-chosen and - unfortunately - unreliable".

Politi and Kontova's published opinion was that Knizak is a person: "unpro­ fessional and basically unscrupulous . . . who uses the Prague National Gallery for his own personal feud".

In 2 0 0 5 , scheduled for the Prague Biennale2, Politi and K-ontova decided to go ahead on their own and located an incredible alternative space - a vast disused factory in Karlin, an old industrial suburb of Prague. They felt it would allow "creating a special tension, almost erotic, between a new definition of art and the obsolete 20'h century symbolized by an empty and deteriorated industrial space."

But soon came the surprise : Knizak was going to organise a biennial as well, using a decidedly similar title (slightly changed to International Biennale of Contemporary Art IBCA), same schedule and even using Flash Art 's original sources from the first show.

Naturally the international art press has enj oyed feeding on this story of "the war between the biennales", but the Czech art scene has been seriously polarized as a result of the debate.

Artists invited by Knizak to show at his IBCA have been frowned upon by their Karlin colleagues. It's become a political matter. "Art isn't just about craft, talent, experience, form and content but it's also the attitude", commented Jiri David, a painter and also the curator of the Czech section at the Prague B ienn ale2 . H e ' s criticized Knizak in the past and admits he doesn't expect to be invited to any National Gallery exhibitions until its current Director moves on.

Both the conflicting proj ects finally opened. Prague Biennale2 on May 26 under the auspices of Vaclav Havel, the ex-President ofthe Czech Republic, and IBCA on June 14 with support of Rav e l ' s s u c c e s s o r, the current President Vaclav Klaus. Interestingly, there has always been a tension between these two politicians as well.

So R av e l , an ex-diss ident and playwright, with his famous slogan "Love and truth will prevail over lies and hatred" (with which he became the P r e s i dent right after the Velvet Re volution in 1 989) is standing, quite symbolically, with the revolutionary contingent in their alternative space whilst Klaus is repre senting ' the powerful' and 'the establishment' at the National Gallery.

Morally, one inclines to side with Politi and Kontova in this David & Goliath

story. Respecting intellectual property is a serious issue, not always easy to resolve legally, but more so a matter and of respect courtesy, professionalism. Knizak doesn't seem to care. He can be confident, having four times the budget of Po liti (reportedly £46 5 ,000 compared to P o lit i ' s £ 9 3 , 0 0 0 ) , an excellent exhibition space equipped with staff­ and p o s s ibi l iti es of up scale sponsorship at his disposal. He can afford to turn up at the press conference wearing a T-shirt with his opposition's slogan Boycott Knizak.

On the other hand, Politi and Kontova claim their motto is "More imagination, smaller budget". They can draw from their c o ntacts through the well established and influential Flash Art and indeed, during the first three days, 7,000 visitors turned up to see their B iennal e : including international names like Dakis Joannou, Donald Rubell and Samuel Keller.

Helena Kontova eo-Director of

Prague Biennale2

So what about the art? Both of the Biennales used the previous model of thematical or geographical sections, each selected by different curators. The title of the National Gallery's IBCA is Second Sight. It offers "a new look at the way civilisation has influenced human identity". The amount of art at IBCA is overwhelming - "800 works of art by 400 artists from 20 countries".

It's not all good, but shows a strong curatorial hand and concept in some parts. Polish curator Adam Budak included a surreal video by Joban Grimonprez and Zbigniev Libera's re-photographed famous press photo­ graphs. Oliver Kilemayer showcase of artists was particularly strong with Corinna Scbmitt's videos. Engaging was the selection of African Art with Ingrid Mwangi and interactive video installations by a Czech artist living in Germany, Jakub Moravek.

Meanwhile Prague Biennale2 focused on Expanded Pain ting ( ' art as contemplation and visual pleasure' ) and a l s o A c cion Directa ( ' art a s rebellion and p o l itical acti on ' ) .

Kontova said: "We wanted to discover

Dawn Melior Christina Wenders, 2004, oil on canvas

Jakub Moravek Standing Ovation 2001 video installation

state of art AUTUM N 2005

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路,路

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Giancarlo Politi publisher of Flash Art and eo颅 Director of Prague Biennale2

Milan Knizak director of the Prague National Gallery and Director of IBCA

too. We prepared it like an issue of our magazine, like a presentation of art which is both recent and diverse." The slight chaos of the Expanded Painting section has been outweighed by more coherent New German Painting and Poland Overview which introduced

Gallery. It was handed out at Prague Biennale2 but also shown, with a hint of conspiracy, to this writer by one of Knizak's staff. At the end of the day, both of the biennales have benefited from the publicity that the conflict has generated. Competing has meant that both sides tied very hard to outdo each other and ultimately it's the visitors that won, being able to see over 600 artists located in one city.

Katarzyna Kozyra, Jacek Malin颅

artists of the Leipzig School, like Tilo Baumgartel, and Dresden based Matthias Kistmacher. For New Czech Scene Jiri David selected works from the 90's that "survived the terror o f time". Neverth e l e s s Saddam Hussain pickled in blue liquid a la D amien Hirst by D a vid Cerny, .

Czech's own master of shock, wasn't as striking and chilling as Kristof Kintera's boy-sized figure repeatedly butting his head against a brick wall.

The UK artist Virginia Hackerman designed a postcard to support the boycott of Knizak and the National owski,

It ' s not likely that P rague will experience such a high concentration of art in 2007 - Knizak has decided to change his biennial to a triennial. Politi and Kontova will stick to their biennial even though they've now been invited to organize a similar event in Miami and its a very sunny aspect out there !

Michaela Freeman is Deputy Editor of State of Art, a critic and curator

TOP Konstantin Batynkov

Hunters and Ghost 2004, acrylic on paper Tatyana Hengstler A UTOgraph 2003, installation, photogra phs on aluminium

CENT RE David Krippendorff Mistake 2004, oil on canvas

Jan Kadlec Pig 2005, stain less steel, colou red steel, polyester

WEB L I N KS

www. p ragu ebi en n a I e . o rg www. ngprague.czjbien n a l e

LOWER Zbigniev Libera Nepal 2003, photograp h LEFT Roman Franta

Pragueabnormale2005 project

1 2state

state of art AUTUM N 2005

PROFILE WILLIA

CRO

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MARKI NG TH E TI M ES REPORT

BRIAN McAVERA

WI LLIAM CROZIER 1 s A

follows on from what went before. 'It's a bit like diving. You have only time to do a couple of twists and turns and then that's it - you can't make a radical change ! ' T H E P I CTOGRAM

prol ific p a i nter a n d d ra u ghts m a n , whose

ca reer has l eft d e e p i m p ri nts a c ross the UK & I re l a n d , b ut o n e w h o is b est k n own fo r h is p a i nti n gs of a bstract l a n d sca p e , be it West Cork, P rove n c e , H a m ps h i re . H owever, h e re we a re p r i m a ri ly concerned with an a rea w h i c h , d u ri n g t h e co u rse o f a l o n g a n d v i gorous ca ree r, h as ra rely been

Whether one calls it a pictogram, an ideograph, or a calligraphic shorthand, Crozier is in search of a universal language - an alphabet of a kind of c alligraphic shorthand - which, p aradoxi c ally, he wants to make singular. This is not as odd as it sounds

abstracted representations of people or things. When you first look at it, all you see is the all-over pattern and/or the patterning of the colours. Gradually, as your eye learns to weave in and out of its three-dimensional presence, you observe the 'drawing', the 'represent­ ation' - you 'read' the figure-in-the­ carpet, and the reason you need to read it, is that all of the elements of the three-dimensional objects or figures represented, have been folded into the spatial framework of a seeming two­ dimensional space, so that they become a part of the overall pattern.

to u c h e d u po n - Croz i er's d rawi n gs .

These wo rks , p r i m a ri ly b ut b y n o mea ns exc l us ively i n b l a c k a n d w h ite , a re not o n ly a th esa u rus o f m otifs a n d i d eas, fo r t h ose w h o a re i nterested i n v i ew i n g th e p a i nti n gs th ro ugh t h e l e n s of t h e Wo rker ( a bit l i ke a critic l o o k i n g at a write r's n ote b o o ks , or co m m o n p l ace book, to a p p ra i se a c a re e r) but s h o u l d be seen as i n d e pe n d e nt wo rks in th e i r ow n right.

TOOLS OF T H E TRADE

Drawing, any kind of drawing, is to a degree controlled and determined by the tools that are used. If you use pencil, it's a 'dry ' medium, with a tendency towards the clean and the sharp .and the neat. This is not a medium that Crozier uses with any frequency. For him the pencil is too 'absolute ' . It doesn 't suggest alter­ natives whereas he wants to find a line that is 'held together as if by magnetism ' . Drawing with a pencil is for him 'as difficult and unattractive as writing with a biro ' .

Pens are not used either, probably for two reasons, the first of them referencing the pencil and its sharp edge; and the second having something to do with his attitude to brushes.

Crozier doesn't like good brushes. For him 'the history ofthe brush comes into the mark'. Rather, he prefers cheap, decorators' brushes because then 'you have to be in charge of them ' .

Likewise, for etching, rather than using the burin, he considers that 'there is nothing better than a six inch nail with the point pared down. Then the line will vary and smudge ' . The materials that Crozier does use in drawing have certain properties in common. Up until a couple of y e ar s ago, he u s e d lithographic crayon. The crayons are greasy (a mixture of wax, tallow, shellac, soap and lamp black) and range from soft, for the darker tones, to hard, for fine and light tones, on a scale of one to five.

Today Crozier frequently uses oil bars (also called oil sticks depending upon the manufacturer). This is oil pigment in stick bar form - the artist prefers the very thick ones - and it produces an intense black which is what the artist prefers. Oil pastels are used where a wider tonal range is required.

Crozier often makes his own inks from black g e s s o , water, and various

solvents. Probably the first major interest in the ink-wash drawing was stimulated by his interest in Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. He used to buy Chinese inks in solid blocks in Soho and rub them down in oil or turps, which made them into inks. 'You have to do as they do: the shape is where the ink falls on the paper: you're partly in charge ' . Again it was the oily edge to the line that attracted him. Talking of oil bars he. remarked that he liked the really big sticks because 'you don't quite know where the point of contact is. The stick is at least one inch thick.

It's apparently clumsy, but it isn't' .

Crozier's method is to do dozens of drawings, pin them up on the wall or lay them on the flo or, and then gradually destroy those that he thinks are not as 'authentic' as they should be.

All ofthese mediums, the litho crayon, the oil bar and oil pastel, and ink loaded with the brush into a wash, have marked elements in common. They are expressive and afford an ambiguous rather than a hard linear line; they are tactile; they allow for intense blacks and reasonably wide tonal variations; and crucially, they allow fluency arid speed. 'Fluency I'm really into: I love quickness. It has no virtue or value but it's nearer perfection in three seconds than in five minutes ' .

For years, using a certain size o fpaper, Crozier would close his eyes and draw so that, after a while, he knew the parameters instinctively. 'I could draw, say, a box, just as well with my eyes shut as with them open: you sense precisely in the darkness ' . He also noted that in terms of the 30 to 40 brushes in his tin, he knew 'which one that can do the line that I want' , and that that aspect only comes with constant practice. All of these kinds of drawings are one-offs. Speed is of the essence and he can never go back to them: 'you can never save something [a failure] which is emotionally constructed ' , because . the next bit

if one remembers the theory of the linguist Chomsky, who posited the notion of a universal grammar which underlays all languages.

At one end of a scale, imagine the Rorschach blot test where, depending upon who you are and what you are, ·when shown a forest of symmetrical ink blots, some of which are coloured, you read it as a face, or an animal, or

Hampshire Garden 2001 crayon and wash 37 x 37 cm

Crozier d e lights in this kind of gamesmanship. A Persian carpet - and Crozier is a passionate collector of such carpets - is a three-dimensional obj ect. It has a sculptural presence, but most people read its surface in terms of two-dimensional design. So Crozier, in a drawing, is quite c apable of

�Fluency I'm really into: / love quickness. lt has no virtue or value but it's nearer perfection in three seconds than in five minutes '

whatever. What you read into it determines what the psychologist or psychoanalyst thinks ofyour character, personality structure, intelligence, fantasy life and so on.

At the other end is the figure-in-the­ carpet. There you are, looking at say, a Persian carpet. It's a figurative carpet, highly patterned but containing

reminding us that the tree or the potted plant exists in a three-dimensional space whilst simultaneously taking the ornamental pool behind the tree and fo lding it upwards into two dimensional pattern. He might take a broad panoramic view of a landscape which on one level reads like a succession of receding planes. But one or more of these planes might .�be

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rendered purely by a stippling of dots and so, these particular dotted 'planes' insistently read as two-dimensional pattern. One suspects this has nothing to do with post-modernist notions of intertextuality, authorial intervention, or commentary as ironic displacement - though it can easily be read that way - nor has it anything to do with contemporary notions of the artist not trusting in the illus ion-making elements of his technical capacities.

Rather it's to do with a state of mind, an attitude, which is playful, which enjoys fluency and energy and vitality, which likes to tease but, at the same time as you are enj oying the playfulness, it requires you to do a bit of work. You have to look, to search: you are required to learn the codes. You can of course simply observe and enjoy the surface but, like anything of value, you ' ll get far more out of it if you burrow beneath the surface.

All of these elements also suggest the theatrical. Nowadays this word is often used in a pejorative sense, with the subtext of a he ightened, indeed excessive, stylization. But if you take the word in its root context, that of theatre, and the theatrical space as being a stage upon which worlds can be created, whether l iteral or metaphorical, then the analogy makes sense. And Crozier has worked as a painter of sets for the theatre in London and Dublin.

This line of thinking, from pictograms to the figure-in-the-carpet, alerts one to the work as a search for a language (or a grammar) but it also alerts you to notions of compositional syntax. How form, and the formal, are predicated on the search for the 'right' composition, and. <-o f how notions of balance, of

Divided Self emerges in all sorts of oppositional ways. It emerges in a whole series of dialogues: that between black and white (and thus the symbolic r e s o nanc e s of c o lo ur) ; between resemblance and abstraction; between decoration and description; between positive and negative space; between sign and signifier; between flatness and three-dimensionality; between per­ spective and pattern.

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interval (as in the musical sense - and Crozier loves j azz as well as classical music) are crucial to this instinctual · search for the right formal elements that make up a satisfyingly-balanced composition. Look at the vertical edges of his compositions for examp le, noting how, in a given series of drawings, the intervals of white at the left and right edges fatten, or slim down, as he search e s for the appropriate interval. This is threaded through with the dance of the obj ects.

Like stage actors charting a complex geography of movement around the stage, obj ects, be they trees, pots, flowers or whatever, p erform their functions - in a series of drawings by trying first one melody or rhythmic phase or movement, and then another, until the artist finds the right placement in space. Interval and spatial positiorral interconnect.

The syncopation of successiv e drawings i s time-based, and the final achievement contains the traces of each of the preceding steps or drawings. In Jazz terms, it's an improvisation in search of the permanent. In classical music terms, it's the search for the right melodic and rhythmic development.

THE DIVIDED SELF

As noted at the beginning of the previous section, there was a sliding scale from Rorschach ink blot test to the notion of the figure-in-the-carpet.

If the latter tells you much about the construction of the composition, the former tells you about the way the subject matter is handled by the artist.

It's the psychoanalytic view, if you wish. After all Crozier has said that 'in some sense I see drawing as a series of self-portraits or perhaps self analysis ' .

On one level, there's a very simple dichotomy which runs through much of the artist's work: that between the puritan and the sensualist. Pencils are hard, 'male' and dry, whereas the oil bar (or the brush dipped in ink) is sensual, tactile and 'female' . The artist has remarked that 'all methods which are dry and hard' he 'can't use very well ' , and that he particularly likes 'things that flow along, e specially when in black, and the blacker it is the more sensuous it is'.

Though people often r'efer to his work in terms of innocence or optimism he himself says, quite accurately, that he always tries to find an 'edge' in the work, by which he means an edginess, or what writers would call ' dark matter ' ; stuff that plumbs into the darker recesses of the psyche, but is only there to counterpoint or point up the visual optimism. This notion of The

But the sensual or erotic aspects of the drawings are not referenced to the male or female body but rather to nature, and in particular to vegetation, especially the lush Mediterranean vegetation of palm trees, fronds, broad-leaved plants o f all kind s, c acti - all o f those e l e ments which c onj ure up h e at,

The artist at work in his studio in West Cork, Ireland

1 4state warmth, languor, relaxation, siesta and, inevitably, the vertical as opposed to the concave or convex. They also, of course, summon up intense light, the kind of light that can bleach the world into white and black, or, when the sun is only rising or setting, into varieties of grey.

Spatial Configu ration: The Black & White M ovie

Crozier loves old movies. 'Black and white films had a great influence on my pictorial education. I saw them before I was introduced to 'Art' and I had seen thousands of B Movies b e fore I realised that I might be an artist. ' In the classic early movies, the rhythmic fl ow was controlled in two way s .

M ontage, in the Eisenstein sense, c re ates meaning, atm o sphere and context by means of the editing cuts.

The rhythm is determined by both the length of the shots and the alternation of scale, in terms of the selection of the shots. The camera itself is rarely on the move.

Alternatively, the distribution of light acro s s the frame , p articul arly in relation to depth of field - think ofVon Sternberg's deep-focus photography in The Blue A ngel (a fav ourite o f Crozier's) - which allows our eyes to travel across and into the special configurations. Crozier often uses both techniques. A drawing, or series of linked drawings, often moves, even within the one drawing or frame, from mid-shot to close-up for example; or the disposition of the light, often literally the white of the paper, threads our eye through the warp and weave of the drawing.

Think again of the b/w movie image.

And in particular of those depth-of足 fi e l d shots lit by Von Sternberg, Eisenstein, or even Arthur Edison in Casablanca. Now imagine yourself inside one of those shots or frames; or better still, imagine Crozier inside one of them, but armed with his sketching paper and oil bar.

Crozier doing drawings in sequence is a bit like Crozier moving around inside the frame, circling around an obj ect or obj ects within the frame - let's say those ubiquitous plants in pots - and not only drawing them by successively working his way in 360 degree fashion right round the obj ects but also, at the same time, coming closer to the object, or walking to the furthest corner of the . room, so that the obj ect is not situated within a normal, perspectival space, but rather is drawn, and thus viewed, as if it was . This is a squashed, perspectival space.

Clearly there are analogies here with C ub i st compo sitional strategies, especially those of Picasso and Braque, in terms of multiple, simultaneous viewpo ints which deliver enough information to allow for the mind's-eye recreation of the three-dimensional image. Crozier's version ofthis is not, one assumes, based on the need for any kind of rigorous mathematical enquiry,

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but rather stems (by terms of analogy) from Huizanga's ludic notion of serious play. It's not so much the obj ect itself that interests him (though they obviously do) but rather the search for a language which will 'reveal anew', rather than revealing through another's eyes. ' Success can only be measured' says Crozier 'when the [subject] is seen through the depiction of the drawing . . . ' T H E STU D I O & T H E GA R D E N

Artists have often incorporated their studios into their work. If all art is in some senses autobiography, then it's not really surprising that the place where much of the work is done should be subsumed into the process. And the garden is both Landscape 'writ small' into domestication, as well as an extension of the studio.

Throughout history, gardens have been seen as a refuge or solace (whether spiritual or sensual), and whether created for contemplation or, as at Versailles, to impress and awe and thus subdue the spectator. They are a particular feature of Persian, Turkish and Mughal traditions, and whether we are looking at Islamic or Christian­ inspired gardens, the sliding scale from paradise on earth to paradise in some form of Eden is always there.

ABOVE Balco ny 1997 oil stick 35 x 50cm

BELOW Studio Still Life 2005 oil stick and wash 38 x 51 cm

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Crozier has various studios, perhaps the best-known being those in Cork and in Hampshire. The Hampshire one is approached via a long, long, garden in which grass sward and shrubs, huge bushes of lavender, and sculptural plants, insert themselves into our field of vision. About a third of the way along is an ornamental pool. The top of the garden opens out into a vegetable garden, complete with caged-in fruit bushes, on the far side of which is the studio. Its sliding doors are curtained in white and there are four skylights.

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Everything is organised. Large plastic jars of pure pigment, bought in France, line top shelves with, underneath, the usual panoply of paint tubes, tins, brush cleaner, empty frames and so forth, none of which ever seem to get out of control. · Sketch sticks hang down in transparent pockets. There are scores of empty canvases, both large and small, awaiting an image.

Then there are two tables, one half used as a palette, with the other half covered with large tubes of paint (Old Holland, LeFranc & Bourgeois, Spectrum) as well as tin cans - labels removed - full of brus h e s . The other table has newspaper taped to it and is covered with drawings. There are three easels, small, medium and large, and the walls are cov ered with drawings and paintings, and more �rawings are attached to boards, propped up wherever there is a space. Music is prominent with Jazz CDs including Jazz in Paris, Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, as well as classical music, especially operas by Wagner and Richard Strauss. There are also CDs of French popular music, Flamenco and Tangos.

Thi s world enters many of the drawings : the tall palm tree in the garden, the ornamental pool, and the potted plants. Bric-a-brac from the studio slides in, as does the quality of the light, not to mention the view from

to be 'of ' , as Crozier often does, may suggest automatic writing of the surrealist variety, but is probably closer to the writer 's notion of trying to harness the unconscious, whilst still

'Perhaps the truth is that one drawing suggests another until the imagination and the Will ceases to exist. '

the studio and, I suspect, the music enters prominently - not just in terms of rhythmic fluency and variation (from the more mathematical variations of classical music to the improvisatory elan of much Jazz) but in terms of the emotional c ontent and p o s s ib ly, thinking of the Wagner, the whole notion of stage space, of ripe, lush harmonics, and in terms of Wagner's use of the 'motif ' , of pattern-making ­ the figure-in-the-carpet again.

ON TYPES OF DRAWI N G

S tarting a drawing without any preliminary notion of what it is going

retaining a measure of control and technical facility. Crozier says ' Since I draw with no preconceived subject or intention it would appear to be a direct contact with the subconscious, though I am suspicious of such a conclusion.'

S ome drawings, one suggesting the next one, will run in sequence, much like a pianist doing a five-finger exercise, or a Jazz player improvisation upon a riff. Other drawings, perhaps via the previous accumulative process, will b l o s s om into fully-fledged compositional artefacts in their own right. Some will hone in upon various formal aspects, whether of 'interval' , o r positioning within a s quashed

Closed Entrance 2003 oil stick and wash 28 x 33cm

perspective for example, while others will fandango between observation and metamorphosis. Crozier has written: 'Perhaps the truth is that one drawing suggests another until the imagination and the will ceases to exist. ' In the process of searching for a language, for an alphabet of picto­ graphic forms, for the construction and then deconstruction of the pictograph into its constituent parts in the hope that the part can be a sign for the whole; in the process of searching for the 'right' balance of formal elements that constitutes the dance across the page; in the process of searching for a way of repres enting perspective in an original form and thus a new way of rendering obj ects situated in space; in the s e arch for an emotional expressivity which will complement and contain all of the former, the artist is in search of his own Holy Grail.

Whether he achieves it or not really doesn't matter. It's the energy and vitality that drive the search that matter, and thus what is produced along the way.

Minerva, also called Pallas, was the goddess of wisdom, and she was born,

according to the myth, from the brain of Jupiter. P oets depicted her as a woman sheathed in a breastp late, girded with a sword and with her manly head protected by a helmet. She holds a spear in one hand, and a crystal shield in the other in which is contained the head of Medusa with its snakes. Beside her is an olive tree, and an owl flies above her. She is immortal, a virgin, as wisdom cannot die and cannot be corrupted.

Like all M e d iterranean myths containing b oth male and female, innocence and experience, the light and the dark, it i s both magnificently imaginative and curiously childish. As an extended metaphor for Crozier's drawings, it's not a bad ' fit'. He has the sensuality and the male/female elements & the curious blend of the childlike innocence and the adult experience, and like Medusa's snakes, the wrist keeps on flexing, and the activity never ceases. We should be properly grateful.

Brian McAvera is a playwright, art critic, and curator based in Ireland. He is currently working on a book, and exhibition, about the drawings of William Crozier.

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SA BOSS

rs ONE of many German expressions which loses its meaning by being translated into other languages: homeland or home in English and the French word la patrie means fatherland. Both translations bear a very territorial connotation, recurrent in m i l i tary languag e . "Heimat" however, comprises the concept of the personal affiliation to a specific region and/or environment within Germany. It is a place where someone grew up and c o n s i d e rs to b e their r o o t s . The expression suffered severely in post­ war Germany. Its meaning misused under the Hitler regime, i t o ften remained associated with nationalistic politics and identity. The literal use of "He imat" to day tends to be old fashioned and rather refers to a cliched image, which was interestingly enough frequently visualised in German post­ war television. "

HEIMAT

"

When T homas Ruff applied to .the Kunstakademie in Diisseldorf in 1 977 under Bernd and Hilla Becher, he handed in a portfolio of pictures of the Black Forest where he was born and raised. The Black Forest still today is the quint e s s e n c e o f G erman "Heimatfilm" and the source for German stereotypes o f girls in gay traditional costumes and of the heavily carved cuckoo clocks. In post-war Germany anything relating to "Heimat" had to be considered with caution.

Although it almost seems contra­ dictory, these films attempted to fix the shattered identity by redefining "Heimat" to its original meaning. For the duration of each film all troubles of the recent past were set aside and the viewer indulged in a vi sually pleasing experience.

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Later, from 1 979- 1 983 Ruff produced a series of works entitled lnterieurs (Interiors) which depict houses of his fri ends and fam ily, mostly in his hometown Zell am Hammersbach in South Germany. These pi ctures of bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms and other typ i c al domestic environments can be considered as documentation, both of the time and environment Ruff grew up in.

Conceptually they express a strong sense of 'Home ' . The interior is a private and intimate space, in which decoration reflects the individuality of the inhabitant. The depicted rooms were familiar to the artist and seem to evoke the s ensation of childhood memories.

Ruff's interiors are aesthetically and carefully composed and enhance the abstract quality of the interior. Heavy curtains, showy fabrics, wallpaper and extremely conventional paintings were typical of German lifestyle. However, these interiors never include any of the friends or fam i ly members that inhabited them. In fact, the rooms are empty, creating an almost ghostly impression, untouched and uninviting, suggesting that no one lives there anymore . As a parody of German cleanliness, the furniture is still in perfect condition exactly as when it was bought in the 1 950s during which post-war Germany regenerated as a Wirtschaftswunder.

The criticism of socio-political issues sleep beneath the surface. After the war many Germans as well were refugees and dislocated due to the bombing of their houses. There was no home. In this situation the ideal of domestic stab i l ity w as highly valued and precious. As a result these interiors, which look back at that period, are especially loaded with nostalgia. It is as if Ruff is sealing the good old times in these pictures. By the early 1 980s the domestic environment was increasingly dominated by companies such as IKEA, a Swedish furniture manufacturer, that mass pro duc es cheap and uniform furniture. The G erman interior b e c ame steadily disconnected from nationalistic and nostalgic values. At this point of time Ruff decided to end the series.

break they are rather easily replaced with the next model instead of being restored and retained. The interior today is a reflection of consumerism, in con stant change that does not encourage any space for nostalgia or individualism.

Looking at these pictures over twenty years later, the contemporary interior tends to be much more flexible and mobile. Mobile furniture, cordless telephones and laptops allow the dweller to rearrange looks and functions of each room quickly. Most furniture is cheap, and if things do

In 1 985, as a precocious young artist aged just 1 6 years, Gregor Schneider started to replicate his parents' house in Rheydt within another house. Still ongoing today, Haus u r became a labyrinth of rooms and a manufactured mystery. It describes a · place where Schneider lives and works. Opened to

Gregor Schneider Die Familie Schneider ©Gregor Schneider, comm issioned and produced by Arta ngel 2004.

There never was an art loving nation

JAM ES McNEILL WH ISTLER

' TEN o CLOCK LECTURE

(i885)

the public in 1 996 and it has acquired a reputation for a disorientating and disconcerting experience.

Many of the early rooms in Haus u r are built from the remains of destroyed villages from the surrounding area. Due to the c o al enriched ground, the government ordered expropriation and people had to leave their houses, which were eventually torn down. Schneider literally patches fragments of many homes into his own, embodying the spirit of each individual that was forced to l eave and became a temporary refuge. He reuses the s e people ' s memories to invent his own.

S chnei der emphas i s e s his s trong interest in "places with a troubled past". The locations of his three major installations bear this consistency and contribute to the concept. Rheydt is a model of post-war suburbia where, as in Ruff's work, the representation of orderliness plays a crucial role. The work of both artists reflects the effort of the Germans-to distance themselves from the horrific events of the Second World War. However, it remains fact, that Rheydt was also the birth place of Joseph Goebbels. Uniform facades'and

state 1 9

_ state of art AUTUM N 2005 neat curtains c annot c am o uflage history. ·

The German Pavilion in Venice looks back at an uneasy history. Remodelled on the ideals of Third Reich architecture in 1 938, it hardly can be detached from being a political space.

Ruff exhibited here during the 1 995 Venice Biennale and S chneider transferred rooms from Haus u r to the pavilion in 200 1 .

In 2004 Schneider staged Die Familie Schneider in London's Whitechapel, often associated with Jack the Ripper.

Two terraced Victorian houses, with interiors that were identical in its decoration down to the smallest detail, were inhabited by two pairs of identical twins. One visitor at a time was given 1 0 minutes in which to explore the inside . A woman was standing in the kitchen and cleaning the dishes in a monotonous action without any awareness of what was happening around her. In the bathroom was a male twin masturbating in the shower. In the bedroom the (suggested) body of a child, wrapped in a bin liner with the legs emerging from it, was leaning against a corner. In the basement a passageway behind a shelf led the visitor in a slightly stooped position to a hidden recess in which a child's mattress was placed. The other house presented exactly the same scenario.

With his illusions of reality, Schneider is a provoking artist and stimulates deepest emotions in his audience. He attempts to manipulate the perception by cleverly blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. He creates a juxtaposition of the banality and absurdity, the security and anxiety of real everyday life. With Die Familie Schneider guiltless voyeurism as it is already exercised in daily reality TV shows, becomes now iiber-real. His artwork lives from the peop l e ' s reaction and rumours spread.

Ruff and S chneider evaluate and question family life. The nuclear family as we know it today i s a rec ent development. Towards the end of the 20th Century the institution of the family faces a new challenge. From early on individuality and autonomy is supported and appreciated. Where both parents often work and eating out becomes more economic, life in the private realm disperses into the public environment. In other cases the convenience of a mobile office brings the work space home - whereas the home used to symbolise the refuge from the office.

Both artists described a process of detachment and preservation of the concept of home. The representation ofthe interior became the starting point in this exploration. Bachelard says: [that] our childhood memory provides us complacency in everyday life in form of daydreaming. If we miss out on this experience, we loose touch with our instinctive urge for shelter.

Lisa Bosse is a writer, a curator and is completing her MA in Curating at Goldsmiths

ve n i ce b i e n n a l e

Not cefmtr ge bu yes s report BRIAN McAVERA The Venice Biennale is a c h a n ce to pose and posture.

The great and the good ( a n d not so good) of a l l the worl d ' s art scenes flock to the giardini to s u p p ort their n atio nal pavil i o ns - d usted off and refurbished especia l ly for the occasio n . Amo ngst the Grand Pavilio ns the 19th century power brokers d o min ate the garde n centre: Great Britain , France, Germ any, USA; a n d are a focal point for artists o n the intern atio n a l media rad ar usually the corres p o nding p u b licity reflects this. But for those without an 1895 era mini-palace - like Irel and?

Brian McAvera went l o o king:

Ireland was united yet divided at this year's Venice The Republic of Ireland has been a regular exhibitor at the Biennale since 1950 but this year for the first time ever Northern Ireland .' . also made her presence felt. Whereas the Northern Insh opened wtth a (relatively sober) rooftop breakfast, the Republic has a boozy tea-time extravaganza.

IN A NEAT METAPHOR

Biennale.

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Artist Mike Hogg talking to a journalist from the

Cork Examiner (Northern Ireland Opening)

The Republic was showing for the third time in the Scuola di San Pasquale, in the Campo della Confraternita, in the Castello district, which is somewhat off the beaten track. Its representatives were Stephen Brandes, Mark Garry, Ronan McCrea, Sarah Pierce, Isobel Nolan,

and Walker & Walker.

By contrast, Northern Ireland had a much better space, close to St. Mark's Square, at the Instituto Provinciale Per L 'Infanzia, Santa Maria della Pieta, Calle della Pieta, albeit a space on the second floor. The artists featured were Ian Charlesworth, Michael Hogg, Darren Murray, Mary Mclntyre, William McKeown, Sandra Johnston, & Katrina

......

Moorhead.

From the 6th - 1 1 th of October, there will be live events and interventions from the Northern Irish artists Patrick Bloomer, Nicolas Keogh, Factotum, Sandra Johnston, Ais ling O'Byrne, Peter Richards & Alistair Wilson.

Mike Fitzpatrick, Directo r of the Limerick Municipal Gallery which runs the international exhibition EVA (Re pub l ica n of Ireland )

Gallery director Peter R ichards (Northern

Ireland Opening)

Pat. T. Murphy (Director of the Royal Hibernian Academy) and the artist Sarah Pierce (centre) at Republican of Ireland party.

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British Sculpture in France

report GEO RG I NA TUR N E R How amus ing th ey are! What a pleasure! You see, they live this kind ofhumour that is quick, fine, light and also quite unforgettable! 1 THERE ARE MANY reasons for spending a long we ekend in the m e di e v al university city of Angers in West France and there is a good reason for doing s o now : Effervescence_ L a Sculpture 'A ngla ise ' dans les Collections Publiques Frcncaises de 1 9 69 a 1 989 (British sculpture in French public collections) at the

·

during the mid 1 960s and 1 970s, all the artists - except for lan Hamilton Finlay who spent one year at Glasgow School of Art - were at art schools in Britain, more specifically London Art Schools, and three in particular: St. Martin's, the Royal College , and Chelsea. This is important because if these artists had been in Paris attending the Ecole des Beaux Arts, they would have been taught to see and to draw of

humours of each side are understood and appreciated as humour is difficult tb translate, and does not cross cultural boundaries easily. British irony can seem merely sarcastic if practised in French. Similarly, British artists have been influenced by D uchamp and Surrealism, yet both these strains are embedded in an anti-authoritarian reaction to an existing French establishment culture. The sense of humour enj oyed in this exhibition is insolently vital as Jean de Loisy puts it, with an ability to step backwards and sideways; to inventively represent by c onnotation or allusion; and to question the obvious and accepted. As in an early piece by Gilbert & George, The Bar N°1 , 1 9 72 , a detailed re­ construction of a British pub interior using charcoal and paper, made before their work b e c am e set in the photographic style of their second p i e c e Blooded, 1 9 8 3 . Or Bill Woodrow's The Plough and the Rose, 1 982, where four DS cars are carved

include the solitary salutations of photographs (Wild Flowers, 1 98 1 , Lizard, 1 983) or the geometric s ouvenirs o f Ric h a r d Long's reconstructions ( Winter Slate Line, 1 985, Cornish Slate Ring, 1984), or simply through colour as in the unrealised work of David Tremlett (Project for the Abbey· Saint-Michel­ en-Thierache, 1 989).

Hamish Fulton's

The exhibition includes an example of all the 287 documents published by Ian Hamilton Finlay between 1 969- 1 987.

His work establishes a poetic ordering of history, events and time derived fro m the morals and virtues o f Antiquity and the ideals ofthe French Revolution. For him 'The important thing is to attract chaos to oneself in order to give itform '. 4

M usee des Beaux-Arts d' Angers.

The Museum re-opened in 2004 having been closed since 1 998 for restoration, refurbishment and extension at a cost of 33,000,000 euros.

The last maj or exhibition in France on B ritish s cu lpture Un Siecle de Sculpture A nglaise at the Je u d e P a ume (Paris 1 996) c overed 1 00 years; the current exhibition, curated

by C a t herine Ferbos-Nako v in collaboration with A u de Bodet, is greatly enhanced by its two lines of selection: firstly, it spans precisely 20 years of British sculpture. From the 1 9 6 9 Ric h a r d L ong exhibiti on, Rainbow - made up of coloured glitter spread on the floor at the Yvon Lambert Gallery Paris - to the public touring group exhibition Britannica of 1 989.

It established a generation known in France as la n o uvelle sculpture anglaise (the New British S culpture).

This period coincided with moves by the French government since 1 982 to decentralise their cultural activities: 'It is not Paris that is the centre of France, but Lyon, Bordeaux, L ille, Marseille, Nantes. . . '2 A fresh cultural elite - pioneered by museums at Saint­ Etienne, Grenoble, Marseille and Toulon - were looking to buy and commission contemporary art and to build up their own regional collections.

Hence the second aspect of selection: all the works on show belong to French public collections: museums, Centres d 'A rt Contemporain (CACs) and Fonds Regionals d 'Art Contemporain (FRACs).

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There are 29 artists 3 in the exhibition.

Br uce McLean is notably missing although he is mentioned widely in the catalogue. At least two French artists are also included, Daniel Tremblay who is from the Angers region and died there in 1985, and Jean-Luc Vilmouth who lives and works in Paris. This might seem curious but is explained by the exhibition's interpretation of the notion of 'anglais ' . Namely, that

There is a crucial third factor concerning these artists that is worth mentioning. At the time they were making these works, they were

course, but moreover they would have sp ent time flaneuring ( a kind o f observational loafing) i n the streets, spending hours over single espressos in cafes discussing wine, women and p le asure. As it was, they were in London, so they drank beer in male dominated pubs and debated class, education and punk music. director and chief curator of the Musee des Beaux-Arts d ' Angers, stre s s e s the generous freedom or liberties allowed, and even encouraged, by the art school lecturers.

Andy Goldsworthy, for example, on announcing to his teacher that he preferred the beauty of the beach and would no longer be attending his lessons, was given a camera and told to bring back photographs. Some might frown at this irresponsible neglect but Jean-Luc Vilmouth was enthralled at the explosive vitality and social mix he exp erienced whilst at the Royal College in London.

Patrick Le Noene,

It remains that the French public art elite were remarkably generous in buying works by these New British s culptors . One reason for this favouritism may be their enjoyment of British humour. It is intriguing how the

tediously and persistently broke. Not desperate - since they were working and communicating - but definitely lacking funds. In their circumstances, it wasn't time that cost money but materials, travel and studio space. And this is the lasting impression of the exhibition: given that they were broke, the daring, energy and inventiveness of these artists is brilliant and hilarious.

Richard LONG Cornish Slate Ring 1984 Coli . FRAC Bourgogne Bill WOODROW The Plough and the Rose 1982 Coil. FRAC Rhune-Aipes, Villeurbanne

Effervescence: Musee des Beaux-Arts d 'A ngers. 2 July - 18 September Notes:

up and built up to loosely resemble a plough and a rose. (Incidentally, DS in French sounds like goddess.) Or again, Daniel Tremblay's ravens in Raven s Blues, 1 9 8 2 - 1 9 8 3 , made out o f wellington boots.

Another characteristic of the works in this exhibition is a cool sense of order.

D a vid Mach 's typ ical ly dry and inventive piece There wasn 't much room in the pool for individual expression, 1 9 8 8, typifies such a detournement (re-us e , re- inter­ pretation) of an obj ect. In this case the use of many ordinary bottles, some filled with coloured liquid, to construct an imag e . In contrast Jea n- L uc Vilmouth's Masques stays resolutely French in being neat but un-ordered debris, each item repeatedly adapted to become a mask, a non-abstract, definite thing.

In other works this mania for order can make for a poetic appreciation of nature and landscape as in the works of the travelling land artists that

1

Comme ifs son amusants! Que/s plaisir! Tu

vois, ifs vivent cette sorte d'humour qui est rapide, fin, teger et aussi tout a fait

inoub/iab/e! Jean-Hubert Martin, then Director of the Kunsthalle in Berne, now Director of the Museum Kunst Palast in Dusselldorf 2

Dominique Fretard , L'Art dans toutes ses

regions, Paris, Autrement, 1986, preface 3

Roger Ackling, Edward Allington, Kate

Slacker, Gavin Bryars, Tony Carter, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Tony Cragg, Michael Craig-Martin, Bill Culbert, Richard Deacon, lan Ham ilton Fin lay, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Andy Goldsworthy, Anthony Gormley, Sh irazeh Houshiary, An ish Kapoor, Richard Long, David Mach, David Nash, J ulian Opie, Eric Snell, Daniel Trem blay, David Tremlett, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Richard Wentworth, Alison Wilding, Bill Woodrow 4

Alex Harding, Blinds/Little Sparta &

Kriegsschatz, Sarkis-lan Hamilton Fin/ay, Brussells, Lebeer Hossmann (published with the exh ibition organised by the Association pour I' art contemporain Nevers, 1985)

Georgina Turner is a writer and curator based in Paris.

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comment GODFREY BARK a market like no other. It goes up when other art markets go down. It goes up because those who buy and sell in it want it to go up. In the 1 980s, at auction, it rose from a high of $ 1 98,000 for a living artist at the start of the decade, to a high of $20.68 million in 1 989 - a rocket­ launch rise of 1 0,444 % in nine years.

That Contemp orary Art crashed between 1 990 and 1 995, variously by · 25% to 75% according to artist, has in no way diminished the numbers of those who punt in it. Contemporary Art is not just that. It is Contemporary Speculation.

CONTEMPORARY ART IS

based nudes, has soared from $ 1 4,300 to $847,000. But Currin has the dealer support ofLarry Gagosian, placed at the top of the Power 1 00 this year in Art Review, so anything is possible.

Richard Prince clocked £265,600 this summer for a pulp fiction book cover, Bachelor Nurse. Everyone at Sotheby's was astonished but memories are short. Prince is one of the world's forgotten $I million artists.

He hit $ 1 . 024 million for A Nurse Involved in 2002.

When I asked Tobias Meyer, worldwide h e ad o f Sot heby 's Contemporary Art, why Rothko had quintupled in eight years, he replied: "because the p eople who had $ 3 million to spend on Rothko i n 1 996 have $ 1 5 million now. " There 's an element of Through the Looking Glass to that explanation. B ut this truth remains. No oil stock, no Martha Stewart department store miracle has got near the returns to be had from calling it right on the Contemporary

Take the lives of the rich and famous.

In 1 996 the artist high for Rothko (at auction) was just $3 .63 million. It is now $ 1 7.37million. For Andy Warhol, in 1 996 it stood at $3.74 million for the Coca-Cola Bottles. Highest now are $ 1 5 . l million for Mustard Race Riot from his Death and Disaster period of 1 962-4, and $ 1 7.4 million for Orange Marilyn. Look at individual pictures.

Francis Bacon set a new record this summer in London with a double estimate £4.93 million ($8.98 million) for the superb double portrait of George Dyer Staring into a Mirror (the price helped upwards, giving credit where it is due, by a magnificent Christie's catalogue note). In 1 995 it sold for £922,571 or $ 1 .43 million, a rise in dollars of 627% in a decade.

John Currin,

he of the B otticelli-

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We' ve got so used to this - so used to the tables of 'Fast Risers' printed by Hislop, so familiar with artist records octupling in an evening - like Mario Merz at Christie's last February - that most art market commentators treat it as the natural order of things.

At one l e v e l , they are right.

Contemporary Art markets have gone haywire before. They did so in 1 7th century Holland, in late 1 9th century France (Millet and Meisonnier) and especially in late 1 9th century England, when l l living British artists were sent higher than the £2000 twice paid by the National Gallery for Michelangelo in 1 8 6 8 and 1 8 7 0 . In p eriods of low interest rates, 1 00% on a living artist like Land seer or H olman H un offered a fantastic breakaway from the snail-like returns on 3 % Consols.

But shake your head and you suddenly remember: for most ofthe 20th century, living artists did nothing special at all in price performance. It is not, always, the natural order of things. Americans were in love for 5 0 y e ars with Raphael, Gainsborough and Reynolds, the Germans execrated the modem movement and the British were bemused by it, and only the French, not the worl d ' s richest nation, were suffused by their own genius. Picasso moaned at his poverty until 1 948.

So what's changed now? The main thing: Contemporary Art has become the chief target of ' art investors ' .

It takes heavy money to ride Warhol and Rothko from $5m to $ 1 5m and then get out with a profit. But it's anybody's game to go to G oldsmiths and the RCA where starting p ri c e s are typically £ 1 000 to £5000 and place your bets to win five times the money in five years. There are Corporate Art funds in London which now aim for entry into the market at around £ 1 0,000 and exit within fiv e y e ars around £30,000, or entry at £3 0,000 and exit at £90,000.

It looks astonishing but there are plenty more like it. Descend to the middle ranks of the market and you find the aucti on high for Californian E d Ruscha was $297,000 in 1 996. That was for Honey, I Twisted Through More. Last year he hit $3.52 million for Damage. With Maurizio Cattelan, you can actually watch his artist record growing each year like a tree. The world's best-known plastic j oke The Pope Struck by a Meteor ite was $880,000 at Christie's in 200 1 ; it sold at P hillips two years later for $ 3 million.

At the foot of the market, if you can call it that, Marlene D umas has advanced from $4400 in 1 9 96 to $ 1 .98m last February (The Teacher).

Dumas is now an art world celebrity not j ust through the p atronage of Charles Saatchi b ut from the Transatlantic competition of dealers Acquavella and Hauser & Wirt h .

Quite recently, however, she was so totally lacking in fame as to be listed in Hislop's Art Sales Index with a question mark: "20th century Dutch?"

between 1 0,000 and 1 1 ,000 despite the urgings of the authors of that dream volume, Dow 3 6, 000. Contemporary Art exhibits the price stampedes, the euphoria and the financial calculations that Wall Street saw in the D rexel Lambert takeover years in the 80s.

How much has this to do with art?

r

Richard Prince clocked £265,600 this

summer for a pulp fiction book cover, Bachelor Nurse. Everyone at Sotheby's was astonished

This is price fulfilment of a s ort undreamed of by Wall Street, NASDAQ or the FTSE. Many artists go up for no reason that can be easily analysed.

Art market. Contemporary Art goes up because it's gotta go up. Between 1 980 and 1 985, it went up when every other art business s e ctor went down causing David Bathurst, Christie's chairman, to call it "the p erfect market". As a financial instrument, it has done everything hoped for but not achieved by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, still stubbornly lodged

Art investors in 2005 love it more than ever. Contemporary Art has 'tipped over ' , in Malcolm Gladwell's trend psychology phrase, from a minority fad into a mainstream, must-have product.

The speculators are everywhere that the suckers will play the game, as in the Jack Vettriano market (the Singing Butler - £2000 God bless it in 1 99 1 reached £744,800 i n 2004).

Question: if the buyers are as cynical as this, how long can the artists stay innocent?

Godfrey Barker is a critic, authority on the art market and contributor to Art+Auction, Die Welt, the Wall Street Journal amongst others.

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state of art AUTUM N 2005

STATE$ I

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hostess photos make him the most welcome man in the city.

a

Debs and Dol lars: on the Gala circuit CLA

This y e ar ' s Whitney Fall Gala, celebrating its 75th year, honors Flora Miller Biddle, great-granddaughter of Gertrude founder Whitney Vanderbilt W hitney and former president of trustees 1 977-95 . The Whitney also tries to link its galas to

N RY IN NEW YORK

EVERYONE LIKES A party - but in New York almost every party comes with an agenda. This agenda is not hidden but blatant - serious million dollar fund­ raising which takes many forms, from small soirees to mega socialite events.

T he

Metropolitan

Museum's

Costume Ball - considered la creme de la creme raised $4 million last year and was attended by such A list celebrities as David Rockefeller and -

Miranda

Kaiser

D u ncan.

Director An n e L Poulet with Emily T. Fri ck at the 2004 Autumn Dinner of The Frick Collection. photo: Christine A. Butler

T he

Gala, a glamorous splashy black-tie evening, raised $2 million and attracted Dionne Warwick,

W hitney

of Modern Art

artists. This year Richard Tuttle - who is having a major Whitney show - is designing the gala too. Gala profits go to support the exhibition and education programm e.

The Whitney 's Spring black-tie do, the American Art Award, (winners include

Meanwhile the other "non-profits" as they 're called here: opera, dance and music institutions, education, churches, synagogues and s o c i al work organisations, are doing the same thing with equally big ev ents and c ash raising. Why? One reason is that so much of all this is tax deductible. The rich can deduct up to 5 0% of their income and so benefits help their tax situation. With tickets ranging from $ 5 0 0 to $ 1 0,000 a seat and tables costing up to $25,000, often the whole shebang can be written off against tax,

and Joel Shapiro) also gives a strategic award to a major corporate commitment, (they don't say how much dosh is involved,) which this year went to the President & CEO of HSBC Bank. The National Academy 05 gala honoured the Art Dealers Association plus architect Caesar Pelli. Money goes to fund their school and scholarships. "We rely on it" they say.

Real estate folk play such a major role in New York life that among its five benefits the Met has a Real Estate Benefit Dinner. "The real e state community in New York is very strong.

They like to be together, so ten years ago we started a separate event for them," said a Met spokesman.

"Business people feel it in their interest to attend when a high profile real estate

Hilary Swank, Sharon Stone, Joan Collins

along with

Richard Serra,

Frank Stella, Kiki Smith, Ellsworth Kelly plus the Christos.

The Museum celebrated its $ 8 5 8 million capital campaign for its new building with its famous Party in the Garden in June raising (gross) $3 million dollars. Its Annual Corporate Luncheon in March, attended by a mere 287 people, brought in $ 1 .62 million.

Tony Oursler, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon

Christo and Jean Claude at the Whitney Museum of American Art's Annual Fall Gala, Now Art Now Art Now Art Now in Celebration of Contemporary American Artists. Whitney Museum of American Art, October 4, 2004 Photo: © Patrick McMu llanjPMc

except for the $50 per ticket allocated to actual food. US museums receive almost no government funding, so galas are essentiaL The second driving force is entirely social. High Society life in Manhattan revolves around these balls, galas and fundraisers, the place to see and be seen. Galas can be very hard work for the Chairs and Co-Chairs. However there are so many charity events and host committees that virtually anyone

can be called a socialite if she or he has the right connections, cash and marketable personality potential. Often invitations list as many as ten eo­ Chairs and 62 Vice-Chairs (I counted!) as well as honorary chairs like Beverly Sills or real estate mogul William Rudin, who need do nothing but add their prestigious name to attract the social climbing punters. "Getting a good chair and eo-chairs is half the battle" said one arts organiser. Some inherit this responsibility. The Lauder daughters help chair the fundraisers for Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie.

Another vital ingredient is the honoree.

The American public is so fascinated by celebrities that they will pay through the nose to get within six tables of a famous artist, TV anchor, philan­ thropist, real estate tycoon or any bold­ face New York name.

"The higher the honoree's profile the more fanfare, the higher the attendance and outright donations," one eo-chair told me. But being honoured is just the hook to pull in more guests, sell more tickets to friends and those who want to be friends.

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Honorary Chairmen Nathalie Kaplan, Marina Rust, and Martha Loring (Frick's great great granddaughter), with Chairman Tinsley Mortimer and Chairman Lauren Davis.

D ressed by J. Mendel and wearing jewellery by David Yu rman. Photo: Alan Klein

Then there's the press. For any event to be a real success, it has to appear on Bill Cunningham's Evening Hours society page in the New York Times.

Cunningham dresses like an old guy o ut o f Norman Rockwe ll and is reputedly a tyrant, but his host &

Gilles Mendel with Lauren Bush (wearing J. Mendel) photo: Alan Klein

;)

state - of art AUTUM N 2005

state23 �

:Iu "' ;I � -

Guests in the Garden Court (looking toward the "Living Hall" in the Frick mansion) photo: Alan Klein

emphas i s on the artistic pro c e s s .

Profile raising i s as important as fund raising. Our 2004 Burlesque Bash netted $90K, (almost a 1 Oth of our budget) with Issey Miyake, Gucci, Laurie Anderson and Loo Reed among 600 guests. Yes, we did once have honorees - but we gave them a lava lamp !"

""

Another smaller outfit is A r t Walk, which raises $600,000 for the homeless via artists' studio tours plus cocktails or dinner. Run by Company Agenda who typically charge 20% ofthe budget for their skills, the firm reminisces about problems with the flowers, the

Bryant Gu mbel and Paula Zahn at the Wh itney Photo: Billy Farrell © PMc

Of course all these dinners and dances have spawned c ompani es l ike Hemming & Gilman Productions and Comp any Agenda who make their living from organising them - often for fees of around $ 1 00,000. Then there are the chefs who cook, the caterers, flower arrangers, flower suppliers, champagne sellers, napkin ring makers, gown designers, tuxedo retailers, dressmakers, high heel repairers. No one, I guess none going to a gala would use a shoe repair man. Throw out the Manolo Bl. . . and buy new ones is the answer here !

·-

Then there are the sponsors - in the case of the Frick, from 2 0 0 0 on: Tiffany, Burberry, Badgley Mischka, Dior, Carolina Herrera, J. Mendel &

with Moet Hennessy for their new May 2005 event at the International Fine A rt Fair which raised over $200,000. Some sponsors are more subtle than others. Dior insisted on their name in lights shining in the Frick garden, making no mistake about who was paying that year.

David Yurman,

philanthropist is honoured. It builds corporate affinities and allegiances."

Harlem's Studio Museum also relies on their gala fundraising for exhibition, educati on and artist- in-residence programmes. Recent honorees have included collectors Eddie & Sylvia Brown of Baltimore and Dr & Mrs Waiter E vans of S avannah. Their silent auction offered a s culpture, $ 4 0 0 0 American Express trav el vouchers and one year ' s supply of flowers for your Park Avenue abode.

As with all products there really is something for everyone, from the top drawer, select annual Frick dipner the room only accommodates 220 people but raises $450,000 - where honorees include Robert Hughes, John Russell, and this y�ar, the new Duke of Devonshire, to the alternative psychedelia evening held in a Times Square sex club by Creative Time. " We are anti-benefits" laughed Creative Time's director of external affairs. "We don't do sit down dinners.

We put on a wild, fun evening with the

Soledad Deleon Hurst, Vanessa Hoermann, Heather Mnuchin and Brooke Neidich at the Wh itney Museum of American Art's Annual Gala Photo: ©Patrick McMul lanjPMc Miranda Kaiser Duncan with her grandfather David Rockefeller, Party in the Garden MOMA 2005, ©Patrick McMullen

music, the sponsors, eo-chairs who d o n ' t turn up : "Pretty s c ary " , extravagant clients, bad weather, a clash of dates (there is a gala web site now to avoid this) even a chairperson who fired the caterer the day before the big event !

Another expert told me, " Smaller inexperienced organisations can waste or lose money. They get into terrible trouble. Fundraising is an iffy affair. · Established charities can rely on people to take a tab l e , but with all the overheads, you have to charge a lot per ticket to make any event pay. " Is the tax dodge the prime motive I asked? "No ! No! It's the feel good factor," I'm repeatedly told. "Ameri­ cans like to help, contribute, give back, benefactors love to support institutions of their choice. Benefits are intended to build a sense of goodwill towards the organisation and this gradually tran s lates into general financial support," said one museum official.

"People ready to pay $2000 a seat obviously have considerable means."

Sponsors use their marketing budget to target a certain demographic - be it champagne or j ewels - and there' s no better way than a gala! Sponsors who underwrite $75,000 worth of costs of a fundraiser are obviously looking for more than goodwill! Spend! Spend! is of course Manhattan's slogan.

As several folk admitted, it's insane!

But on it goes, year after year (at 5 0 years old the Met's Costume Ball i s the dowager 'do,') with ever more events fighting for space and cash on the social calendar. A few years ago some sensible and very eminent eo-chairs decided enough was enough. Why not ask people to just give a donation?

Write a cheque?

In the end the v ast m aj o rity still preferred a party ! The merry round of e ating and drinking c o ntinues unabated. Fundraising is an unusually American art. Bravo !

Clare Henry is an art critic based in New York

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state of art AUTU M N 2005

24state '-

than chronological ly. A chapter on Franju's cinematic aesthetics offers a new synthesis of existing writings, com bined with the author's responses to the films. A fu l l introduction and conclusion set Fra nj u 's d i rectorial career in the context of his l ifelong comm itment to Fra nce's cinema i nstitutions. This text will be of great i nterest to resea rchers, academ ics and stu dents in French and in film studies.

H B £40.00

AUTUMN RELEASES : FINE ART BOOKS Be CATALOGUES EDITED

CHARLES KANE

BACK TO BLACK: Art, Cinema and the Racial Imagination Exhibition cata logue: Wh itechapel Gal lery (J u n e 7 - September 4, 2005).

192 pages, illustrated throughout in colou r a n d b&w.

This cata logue presents a major su rvey of the Black Arts Movement in the US, Jama ica a n d Brita i n in the 1960s a n d 1970s. l t traces the Black Arts Move­ ment's cultural im pact in painting, scu l pture, photogra phy a n d d rawing a n d focuses on the fashion, m usic a n d fi l m that emerged over two decades. The exhibition bri ngs together over forty a rtists whose work testifies to a complex a n d widespread range of influences, b reathta king in their geogra phic, temporal a n d cultural sweep. African sym bols and traditions blend with images of contem porary l ife, revea l i ng a common visual l a nguage shared a mong artists across the Black Atlantic, and p rofo u nd ly influential to subsequent generations.

fa m i ly a s h is subject matter and then later, h is turn to hand-pa i nted a bstract films, inspired generations of fi lmmakers who refused the rewards of the m a instream fi l m i n d ustry and instead tried to m a ke cinema an a rtform d i rected by its own i ntegrity a n d the vision of h u m a n emancipation. The essays i n this book, by historians and fi l m make rs and other a rtists, describe Brakhage's contributions to the rich history of fil m m a king i n the world.

Pb £17.95

Essays by Richard J. Powell, David A. Bailey, Petrine Archer-Straw, Kellie Jones, Kathleen Cleaver, Kodwo £shun, Manthia Diawara, Paul Gilroy, Mora J. · Beauchamp-Byrd Hb £24.95

gallery. As in his poetry and music, Childish's paintings are as brutal and challenging as they are lyrical and PB £24.99 moving.

G EORGES FRANJU. l nce, Kate. 208 pages, 11 ill ustrations.

Hardback. 2005

This is the most comprehensive study to date of the little-known French d i rector, the eo-founder of the Cinematheque Franqaise, a n d the first book on h i m i n English since 1967. Born i n 1912, Franju only e njoyed h is d irectorial debut in 1948 with his n otorious and extraordinary documentary about Parisian a batto i rs Le Sang des Betes (The Blood of the Beasts). This ground breaking, highly o riginal work evidenced the d i rector's acute sense of the uncanny, which would later distinguish Hotel des lnvalides ( 1952), and his horror classic Les Yeux Sans Visage (1959). Common to the docum entaries a n d the feature films is an attention to everyday objects and su rfaces, which become dreadful i n their very banal ity. The visual la nguage of Le Sang des Betes, deeply poetic and

CHILDISH: Paintings of a Backwater Visionary 192 pages, illustrated throughout in colour and b&w. Paperback. 2005.

STAN BRAKHAGE: Filmmaker. James, David E. 240 pages, 20 illustrations.

Paperback. 2005

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L....

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A collection of essays, ph otogra phs, personal statements and rem i n iscences a bout the celebrated fil m ma ke r, who d ied i n 2003. The producer of some fou r h u n d red films, he i s widely recognized as one of the great a rtists of the med i u m .

H is i n novations i n fast cutting, h a nd-held camerawork, and m u ltiple super­ i m positions together created a n u n p recedentedly rich texture o f images that provided the voca bulary for the explosion of indepe n dent fil m m a king in the 1960s. H is use of h is own l ife a n d

In 1977 the 16 year old Billy Ghildish pu rposely smashed his own hand with a 3 l b . c l u b hamme r and wa lked out of his job as an a pprentice sto ne mason at the Royal Naval Dockyards, Chatha m . Over the following 3 yea rs he was accepted no less than 4 times into a rt schools on 'the genius clause' (a provision for stud ents who lacked the normal entra nce qualifications but showed exceptional a rtistic potential), but this was not a happy u n ion. Conti nually at odds with the . art school b u reaucracy, Childish was fi nally expelled from St. Martins School of Art in 1981 for refusing to paint pictu res within the art school as he 'did not wish to become conta m i nated' and publishing poetry that one tutor described as 'the worst type of toilet wa l l h u mour I have ever seen'. Since t h e n h e h a s produced a staggering body o f work, including 3 novels, 100 LP records, over 40 col lections of poetry a n d pa i nting a n estimated 2500 plus pa i nti ngs, carving h i mself a reputation as one of Brita i n 's leading independ ent a n d u ntamed cultural voices. This timely book focuses on the a rt of Billy Childish, for the first ti me bringing together a selection of paintings from this 'visionary from the backwaters'. lt is accompanied by the release of a blues/poetry a l b u m o n the Damaged Goods label, the publ ication of a new novel, and a n exh i b ition of new work at The Aquarium's london a rt

clea rly influenced by the more tra nsgressive Su rreal ists such as Bataille a n d Aragon, is cha racterised by slumpi ng, convulsing bodies, matted fur, squirts of blood a n d clouds of steam and condensed breath. Les Yeux Sans Visage once again exploits the stra ngeness of the Parisian Zone - the location of the a bbatoirs i n the earlier documentary - where prosthetic l i m bs form a grotesq ue window d isplay in a shop, a n d wh ite cera m ic tiles in a hallway reca l l the same tiles in an earlier scene i n a morgue. l nce takes a new approach to Franj u 's films, investigating the a reas of gen re a n d gender, and grou p i ng the fil ms thematically rather

SUMMER OF LOVE. Grunenberg, Ch ristoph (Ed itor).

Exhibition cata logue: Tate Liverpool, May 27 -September 25, 2005). 240 pages, 200 ill ustrations. Paperback.

Summer of Love is the first defin itive

guide to the art of the Psychedelic era.

Richly ill ustrated, the book prese nts a u n ique range of images of works of a rt, alongside a wealth of contextual material and a n u mber of i nformative, authoritative yet accessible essays.

Covering a wide range of issues, they reflect the pervasive penetration of the art and culture of the 1960s by the aesthetics of psychedelia. At the same time, the catalogue will provide the historical co ntext in which the art was created , an era marked by political protest, the cou nterculture, recreational d rug use, student revol ution and sexual l iberation, reconstructi ng the original creative and utopian potential of psychedelic art and locating it within the wider cultu ra l and political context of the 1960's and early 70's. The inclusion of psychedelic a rt created by major figu res such as Andy Warhol and Yayoi Kusa ma ill ustrates the critical role of psychedelia with in the contemporary aesthetic and styl ish d iscourse, provid i ng a complex and more comprehensive picture of the art and cu lture of the 1960s. N u merous long-neglected a rtists are represented with rarely seen or specially reconstructed wo rks and insta l lations.

The spectacular and participatory nature of many of the works shown, as well as the close relationsh i p between psychedelic a rt, fashion a n d decoration, provides multiple points of entry for d iverse aud iences. The international l ist of contributors incl udes leading academ ics, cultural theorists, and critics from the worlds of a rt, fi lm and rock music. The publ ication's design will m irror the colourful and experimental spi rit of the times . .Including works from the U n ited States, the UK, Europe and beyond, the book is targeted at an international aud ience and will serve as a much needed critical re-evaluation of this era in art and cultural h istory.

Texts by Barrie Curtis, Dick Hebdige, Dave Hickey, Chrissie lies, Barry Miles, Simon Reynolds and Sally Tomlinson.

Pb £19.99

ANTON HENNING: Sandpipers, Lizards and H istory.

Cork, Richard. Exhibition catalogue: Haunch of Venison, London (April 28 -

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state of art AUTUM N 2005

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June 25, 2005). 80 pages, illustrated in colour throughout. Hardback.

This catalogue showcases Anton H e n n i ng's paintings as insta lled in the ga llery in his first major show in Lo ndon.

H e n n ing a lters the exh ibition space itself, painting geometrical shapes onto the walls which often frame h is ca nvases. Born in Berl i n in 1964, H e n n ing is a painter whose d iverse subjects and styles, fro m abstract to figu rative, from pin-up girls to interiors are plundered knowingly from art h istory a n d popular culture. However, u n l ike Picabia, to whom he has been com pared, Henn ing's d iverse paintings are un ited by a delight in sensual pleasure, a passion for the tacti le quality of paint, and a critical a n d su bve rsive wit. Although he shuns conventional notions of styl istic consistency as readily as he opts for a heterogeneous a rray of media, recurring motifs a n d s u bjects particula rly the 'Hennling', a propeller­ l i ke protea n sym bol - reveal further u n ity within his oeuvre. There is a tension in Henn ing's practice between h is a bstract a n d figu rative works, a n d this tension is often played out with i n a single ca nvas.

For exa mple, in Pin-up No.96 (Ariadne), 2005, a sunbathing n a ked wo m a n is overpai nted on an abstract patterned background that ca n be read as a huge beach towel. However, H e n n i n g has given the work a black horizon, introd ucing a n element of p u re abstraction, a n d giving the total com­ position a sense of the surreal. This playfu l combination of d ispa rate elements a n d styles h e l ps to make seemi ngly fa m i liar imagery stra nge a n d a rresting. B y overpainting he creates further te nsion between spatial depth a n d the picture plane. The insta llation shots include colo u rful m u rals, co mforta ble furniture, paintings and l a m ps, which create the effect of a n u n rea l world, a n d a sense o f being inside one of Henn ing's paintings; i ndeed, his insta l l ations are loosely based on his earlier paintings of lou nge interiors. Hb £25.00

conception of the act of painting - a conception related to the spontaneous composition he had pioneered i n his books. Ed Adler's essay offers an u n p recedented view of Kerouac, the visual a rtist. Rich in a necdote, a n d d rawing on extensive quotation from Keroua c's letters, n otebooks a n d published writings, Adler's essay demonstrates the biogra p h ica l a n d thematic preoccupations c o m m o n to Keroua c's writing a n d painting, especially Kerouac's struggle to integrate the two spiritual traditions, Catholicism and B u d d h ism, to which he was devoted.

No consideration of Kerouac will be complete without reference to this heretofo re unseen aspect of his l ife a n d work. P b £15.99

Ansel n1 Kiefer she spent at the canvas. N ickolas Mu ray's photogra p h ic portraits of the artist, including many pioneering, early colour images, have a l u m inous, painterly qual ity, described by Diego Rivera as being 'as bea utifu l as a Piero della Fra n cesca ' . The lush, satu rated colours do fu l l justice to the elaborate costu mes that were a n intrinsic part of Kahlo's self-image a n d masked the real ity of her physical suffe ring. Ka h l o met M u ray i n Mexico i n 1931 a n d they bega n a passionate, if interm ittent, affa i r that was to conti n u e over several years, sustained from a d ista nce by a n excha nge of paintings, photogra phs a n d ardent love lette rs, a selection o f which are included in the book. Hb £29.95

This publ ication of d rawings a n d works on (and with) paper offe rs a small sample of contemporary work from the dynamic a n d diverse contem porary art scene of Ma nchester, as documented i n a n exhibition a t the Galleri s.e, Bergen , Norway i n 2004 a n d travelling to the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, i n April 2005. Beneath the otherwise singular and highly individual a p p roaches of the artists, the works share a poetic sense of 'someth ing dark' - from M a rtin Vince nt's reductive treatment of momentous issues in sh eet m usic a n d Osbaldeston's hand-made a r t fa nzines, to David Mackintosh's bleak a n d d istu rbing i n k sketches, Pave! Buch ler's i l legible d i a ry and Dean Hughes' obsessive play with u n remarkable everyday materials. This 'darkness' contrasts with the extreme economy, i m m ed iacy a n d forma l elega nce of the means by which it is expressed. it creates a tension between an existe ntial pathos and anxiety, a n d the often ambiguous h u m o u r which is equally cha racteristic of the work. Pb £10.00

I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU: Frida Kahlo & Nickolas Muray 128 pages, 91 colour illustrations.

Hardback. 2004 Frida Kahlo made the self-portrait the cornerstone of her a rt, and she m a n i p­ u lates her self-i mage as effectively before the lens as she d id in the hours

DEPARTED ANGELS: The Lost Paintings.

Jack Kerouac.

Ad/er, Ed. 224 pages, 50 colour and 50 b&w illustrations. Paperback. 2004.

Jack Kerouac took h i mself seriously as a visual a rtist a n d on a n u m ber of occasions told friends he would have been a painter if he wasn't a writer. His enthusiasm for art was o m n ivorous, he d rew, he painted , he designed covers for his books a n d as he sketched with words, so he sketched with images: o rga n ized a n d deliberate but spon­ taneous, and supported by typically Kerouac methodically deta iled theory.

This first-ever collection of Jack Kerouac's visual art i ncludes nea rly every existing full-colour painting collected and p reserved by the Kerouac estate i n Lowell, Massach usetts. Also included are dozens of black-and-wh ite line d rawings, sketches, a n d facsi m ile reproductions of Kero uac's notations from his u n p u bl ished notebooks. I n writing, Kerouac's restless a n d relentless experimentation - what he called "spontaneous bop p rosody" - pushed la nguage to the bou n d a ries of mea n i ng.

In painting a n d d rawing he fou n d a compleme ntary means of expression. A friend a n d a d m i rer of painters Willem d e Kooning, La rry Rivers, Fra nz K l i n e , a n d Dody M u ller, Kerouac was a n ardent a n d deliberate student who worked to develop a n d refin e h is skills a n d h is

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viewers a cha nce to ga i n a better u n d e rsta n d ing of the technique a n d vision of this revolutionary pai nter.

Hb £12.99

FUNDACIO ANTONI TAPIES, Barcelona.

144 pages. Fully illustrated in colour and black & white. Paperback. 2004.

ANSELM KIEFER: Heaven & Earth Auping, Michae/. Exhibition catalogue: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (September 18, 2005 - January 8, 2006). Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal (February 12 - May 7, 2006); Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (June 11 September 10, 2006); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (October 15, 2006 - January 14, 2007). 184 pages, 90 colour and 16 b&w illustrations.

Hardback.

SOCIAL CLUB. Richard Hylton, Kurt Johannessen Exhibition catalogue: Galleri s.e., Bergen, Norway (2004); Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (April 9 - May 21, 2005). 80 pages, 76 b&w illustrations. Paperback.

2005.

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From his earl iest scul ptures to his recent high ly-textured pai ntings, Anselm Kiefer has woven themes of heaven a n d earth into h is work, exploring the pola rities of these ideas while struggl ing to define the transcendent qual ity that places art sq uarely in between. Destruction a n d reb i rth, glory a n d shame, s i n a n d redemption a l l figure largely i n Kiefer's often controversial depictions of Germany's physical a n d c u ltural landscape. This retrospective cata logue includes Kiefer's first work, Heaven, as wel l as n u me rous other rare early works. lt features watercolou rs produced specifica l ly for the publ ication as wel l as a n i nteryiew with the artist.

Pb £35.00

EGON SCHIELE: Erotic Sketchbook (Erotische Zeichnungen).

Wolf, Norbert. 64 pages, 30 colour illustrations. Hardback. 2005.

Schiele's fiercely d rawn lines a n d confrontational compositions com m a n d o u r attention. H is e rotic a rt, m ost o f a l l , evokes feelings o f discomfort, titi l lation, cu riosity, and even repulsion, and yet bears testimony to his talent a n d passion. This beautifully crafted collection of e rotic masterpieces showcases the themes Schiele wove i nto a l l of h is work: a fascination with the h u m a n psych e and sexuality, and a desire to d estroy the conservative facade of mora l righteousness a n d expose the i n ne r truth. Designed to resem b l e an a rtist's sketchbook, this book offers

The aim of this book is to h e l p m a ke the work of Anto n i Ta pies more widely known through the study of the collection housed by Fundacio Antoni Tapies, a n d to d isse m i nate t h e activities d evoted to modern a n d contempora ry art that have taken place at the Fundacio since 1990.

Luscious textures a b o u n d in the profuse colou r i l l ustrations of Ta pies' cha racteristic work i n paint, straw, varnish, wood a n d cem ent. Perhaps m o re intrigu ing are exa mples of h is less cha racteristic early work from the forties a n d fifties. The book ends with a n i l l ustrated chronology o f events held at the Fundacio, includ ing exhibitions by Victor B u rgi n , Steve McQueen, Andy Warhol, Asger Jorn, Dan G ra h a m , Lygia Clark a n.d Ch ris Ma rker. Pb £12.50

AMSTERDAM TRAFFIC (Amsterdams Verkeer): Photographs by Hans van der Meer.

74 pages, i l l ustrated in b&w throughout.

English a n d Dutch text. Hardback. 2005.

'In the m id-nineties I frequently moved a ro u n d Amsterd a m on my bike, carrying a n outsiz� cam era a ro u n d my neck. The Amste rdam Funds for the Arts and the Amste rdam M u nicipal Archive had comm issioned me to p h otogra p h panoramas o f traffic situations i n t h e city centre .. .' M uc h m o re fu n than va n d e r M e e r ma kes i t sound, t h i s collection takes a wry look at the a ltercations, aggravations and s p i l ls e n d u red by Amsterdam's road users. A sense of broad sla pstick p reva ils as d rivers execute complex m a noeuvres, del ivery men block roads, cyclists cut o n e a n other u p a n d trams conti n u a l ly th reaten l ife a n d l i m b . The c u m u lative effect reca l ls the fi lms of Jacques Tati or Harold Lloyd. Hb £16.50

IVAN ZULUETA: Mientras Tanto 3 paperback volumes, illustrated in colour throughout, with 2 dvds. English and Spanish text. 2005.

This publ ication, c o m p risi n g three vo l u m es and two dvds, collects 800 polaroid photogra phs from lvan Zulueta's exhibition in La Casa Encendida in Madrid. Although it acco m p a n ies the exh ibition, this set is representative of Zulueta's entire oeuvre, i n c l u d ing h is work in Su per 8, as well as a docu mentary fi l m . Throughout h is career, Zulu eta made many short movies i n super 8 ( most of them m uc h longer than the average short movie). Some have a surreal na rrative of sorts, but m a ny ca n be considered, from a contemporary point of view, as p u re pictorial exercises without begin n i ng or e n d . Zul ueta's films

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have been shown in international festivals: Porto, San Sebastian, Toronto, a n d he also designed the posters for several of Pedro Almod6var's ea rly films.

E'b £27.99

HOW TO HUNT Tri ne Sondegaard & Nicolai Howalt.

Essay by Anna Krogh U n paginated, i l l ustrated in colou r throughout. Green moleskin over boards.

2005 .

'

Judged by its (bea utifu l ly bound) cover, complete with silver em bossed grouse, a n d its title, this book a ppea rs to be a n u pma rket m a n u a l for co n n o isseurs of cou ntry p u rsu its. Ta ke a look at the exq u isitely printed d o u ble-page images inside, though, a n d someth ing infin itely more intrigu ing reveals itself. In her fascinating i ntrod uctory essay The Hunting Ground, Aarhus Kunstm useum c u rator Anna Krogh describes Sondegaard and Howalt's photogra phs as 'consisting of m u ltiple exposu res d igita lly i nterwoven to show a n entire h u nt in a single image. One photogra p h ­ one collated story. lt is not i m m ed iately a pparent that the photogra phs consist of severa l images, but in several of the works a crowd of h u nters sta n d at the edge a i m i n g s i m u ltaneously at a large n u m ber of b i rds in the s ky. An u n l ikely situation, even on the most staged h u nts. These images do n ot reflect a n actual situation. Sondegaard a n d Howalt focus o n the relationship of people to nature a n d the photographs function to a la rger d egree as l a ndscapes rather than actual portra its or gen re images. There is: 'a fascination with the stories of passionate hobby h u nters m i m i n g the origi n a l con d itions of h u m a n existence.'

The question of what is ' natural' is often central to fiercely-contested contem porary d ebates about h u nting. I n this collection, So ndegaard a n d Howa lt's own husba n d ry of their d igital i mages seems to cast d o u bt on the very existence of 'nature', or 'the origi n a l conditions of h u m a n existence'. J a rring d ifferences i n scale a n d bewildering perspectives are s u btly i ntegrated i nto these l a ndscapes, which a l ready bea r the scars of centuries of h u m a n exploitation. H b £24.00

Sex Cri mes of the Futcher AUTHOR Bi lly Ch i ld ish UBil.ISHIED Hangman Books ICE £7.99

295pp. Paperback 2005 REVIEW ROWLAND THOMAS KURT COBAIN, BECK,

and latterly The White Stripes may have cited Billy Childish as a formative influence, yet - much to the chagrin of the prolific painter, writer and musician - he's most often mentioned in connection with Tracey Emin, his girlfriend in the early 1 980s. Since then, their relationship has soured, with Childish accusing her of deriving her confessional style directly from his own work, and Emin threatening legal action.

targets for Loveday's spleen in his perpetual search for 'truth' and ' authenticity' . Like Artaud, his touchstone is Vincent van Gogh, a 'painter of hart'. When he refers to his childhood sexual abuse and evokes a terrifying paranoiac world of "sex ghosts", Loveday reveals a possible mo.tivation for his quest.

If this sounds unremittingly grim, it isn't. Imagination, comic timing and a subtle, multivalent self-awareness see it clear of the pitfalls traditionally associated with the subj ect matter. If Loveday often seems morally beyond the pale, this may be due to Childish's refusal of an obvious cause-and-effect narrative to explain or excuse his actions: It's tough going at times, but Sex Crimes ofthe Futcher is a rewarding work from a singular talent.

Childish's third novel, written in the first person as William Loveday, is certainly not short on confessions, with Loveday's abusive relationship with his girlfriend Karima furnishing some of the more distasteful chapters.

Karima, a half-Cypriot fashion student turned artist ' from M* ' , may seem familiar to some readers.

Loveday's world is an eccentrically-drawn Thatcher 's Britain, disrupted by archaic turns of phrase, references to a colonial past - a vending machine hasn't worked ' since the Boer War ' - and his Boys' Own fantasies involving Indian princesses, German soldiers and witches on Kent rooftops. His preoccupation with sex murder is straight out of Weimar Germany.

Despite his promise to tell his story 'without pretensions, without hiding of any kind' , the fragmented narrative of the book is full of contradiction. He declares he has ' no interest in gimmickry' and claims to 'refuse to have style ' , yet the b o o k is written in a phonetic, exaggeratedly dyslexic prose (Childish himself is dyslexic). A sign of authenticity perhaps, but this conceit also aligns Loveday with provincial visionaries of old like John Clare, as well as being hilariously at odds with the pedantic, officious way in which he relates the many slights and misfortunes he's suffered.

His father, the tutor who expelled him from the local art school, and most distressingly, Karima, all become

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