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THE SOVEREIGN EUROPEAN ART PRIZE
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The Sovereign Art Foundation is
pleased to announce the 2005/2006 European Art Prize which celebrates the best in European contemporary painting.
3- 17 January 2006 Exhibition of short listed paintings at Bonhams. New Bond Street, London.
Friday 13 January 2006
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state a
state of art WINTER 2005
PART2
IN WLY 2002, Peter Schjeldahl, the
New Yorker's art critic, wrote a review
of Documenta 11 at Kassel. 'Documenta 11', he said, 'brings to robust maturity a style of exhibition I call it festivalism-that has long been developing on the planetary circuit. .. Mixing entertainment and soft-core politics, festivalism makes an aesthetic of crowd control. It favours works that don't demand contemplation but invite, in passing, consumption of interesting -just not too interesting-spectacles.' Coincidentally, on July 14th 2002, after several false· starts, The Baltic at Gateshead finally opened its doors. Austin Williams, who was there, described it in Spiked a s indeed something of a festival: 'Over 200 arts correspondents were ferried b y chartered trains to see the opening ... They cooed with excitement as the fleet of chauffeur-driven Audis ( A u d i sponsored the opening) dropped u s off at Newcastle's quayside.' The press view was followed by several other openings, colour coded, in hierarchical order presumably. These PR junkets, however, were only the prelude to a festival that unlike Kassel or Basel, was to be permanent rather than temporary. The Baltic's first Director, S u n e Nordgren, flushed with the confidence of being in charge of a £46,000,000 building and a £2,000,000 budget, was adamant that it would be a constantly dynamic 'art factory' as opposed to a museum. There would be no permanent collection, but instead the presentation of international contemporary art which would be brought to a broad audience. 'About that audience ...' I asked him after his languid introductory lecture. 'Have you ever been down the Bigg Market (the epicentre of Newcastle's party culture) on a Saturday night?' 'No, I haven't,' he replied, 'but my daughter has.' This gentle exchange was, of course, the merest hint that a programme of 'challenging' con temporary art, as the Arts Council loves to call it, might be inappropriate for an urban population that is amongst the most socially deprived in the coun try. (For the record, 46% of Newcastle's population is in the bottom 10% nationally in terms of the Social Deprivation Index, while 12 wards in the city are in the bottom 1 %.) Presumably the local politicians and culture industry apparatchniks promoting the Baltic had a vision of thousands of tourists, passionate about
'
0
The second part of a revealing essay on the financial and administrative meltdown at the North East's flagship cultural venue in Gateshead.
report WILLIAM VARLEY
video, performance, conceptual and 'issues' art beating a path to Tyneside and thereby boosting the economy. Nordgren, however, was insistent that the Baltic's planned educational programme would prevail. My own unease about that was that it seemed symptomatic of the 'no skills required' ethos of the television companies who seem to believe that novices can be turned into stars after only a few weeks of training. Then again, if I were launching the study of d rama, I wouldn't expect students to start with Waiting for Godot. Underlying all of this,· though, is a kind of totalitarian prescriptiveness beyond Lord Reith's wildest dreams. People are different: some like gardening, others like greyhound racing. Current politico cultural orthodoxy, however, suggests that they have no right to refuse State administered advanced art. If they do, they must be re-educated and force-fed. No matter. In the beginning festivalism seemed to work for the Baltic. Initially visitor numbers were in the hundreds of thousands as people flocked to see the new attraction with its great views across the Tyne. They also enjoyed banging the gongs in Jaume Plensa 's installation until the more feral kids started testing them to destruction. One of the key features of the opening was the contribution of American artist Chris Burden. Earlier in his career, Burden had himself shot in the name of art, and had also fired a revolver at an airliner taking off at LAX (Los Angeles' international airpor t). Luckily, he missed. A ctes gratuites don't play very well in Gateshead though, so on this occasion he was represented by a group of Meccano model bridges, including the Baltic commissioned Tyne Bridge, echoing the original visible through the windows. Burden's Tyne Bridge model
was, of course, a sop to local pride, the other local representation being mostly videos by the Wilson Twins. Whatever their reputation, they clearly operate in a medium approved by the cultural commissariat. Of the region's international heavyweights, Victor P a s m ore, Richard H a m ilton and Sean Scully, there has been no trace, presumably because for all their excellence, they are perceived as being old-world painters. Burden, however, has prospered. A few months after the Baltic opening, his Tyne Bridge model appeared again at the Gagosian Gallery in New York where it was sold to the Louis Vuitton fashion house for $700,000. Given the Baltic's past record of profligacy, it would be no surprise that, having commissioned the piece, they received no percentage of the sale. Copyright implications also arise given that Burden had an offer at Gagosian's: DIY kits of miniaturised versions of his Tyne Bridge model priced at $300,000 each. One of which is rumoured to have been acquired by Damien Hirst. This edition would not have existed, of course, were it not for the original commission. He appeared again on Tyneside recently - during the tall ships race - with a conceptual piece,
the world of cutting edge art that was merely a temporary blip. With a new name, Locus+, they were soon back in business, once again funded by the quangos. (What happened to Project UK's debts and who paid them remains an unanswered question.) Back in May when I first questioned the Baltic's unremitting programme of 'challenging' art and suggested the introduction of modern classics such as Matisse or Hopper that people from Tyneside travel to London, and pay to see, I w a s answered by A n d rew Lovett, the Baltic's Acting Director. He patiently explained that its remit w a s to focus upon p o s t 1 9 5 0 contemporary art and that a s i t often dealt with 'issues' it was likely to be produced in unorthodox media and be more thought-provoking than beautiful. Well, I have issues with 'issues'. W hen in the 1960's Susan S ontag promoted a 'new sensibility' and decreed that visual art should be 'a tool for changing consciousness', she could scarcely have imagined what she had unleashed- not least a deluge of moral self-aggrandisement. As David Den by pointed out, though, she lived to see her hopes dashed. Within a couple of decades, experimental art had been annexed by the media and harnessed to the sale of luxury goods. As Marxists say, art had become 'commodified'. Worse still was the cultural dumbing down. Whereas American pop artists reacted to the consumer society with metaphysical disgust, their postmodern successors are 'just lovin' it'. Historically, the politicisation of art was questioned as long ago as the 1920's in Julien Benda's The Treason of the Intellectuals. Countering the
The Ghost Ship, in which an unmanned boat 28 feet long sailed from the
idea of t h e 'engaged' artist, h e maintained that propagandising issues
Orkneys to the Tyne. A manned boat had to accompany it, just in case, and the project -call it challenging or call it whimsy- cost its sponsors £150,000. (I shall never look upon remote controlled yachts on park lakes in quite the same way again.)
exacerbates grievances rather than solves them. And, given my own
The eo-promoters of this event were a highly politicised conceptual art outfit which, in its previous incarnation as Projects UK, was every bit as improvident as the Baltic. It went bust some years ago having incurred massive debts but in L o c u s+,
resistance to the pieties offered in pidgin English at this year's Venice Biennale, he had a point. Then again, I ' m s o m e w h a t sceptical of the emotional integrity of the artists themselves. 'Let's do child abuse, or maybe the Holocaust, or perhaps make a case for the physically handicapped', one can hear them saying before they go off to do their factitious, literalist thing. Emotionally and formally, this is about as far removed from, say, Kathe Kollwitz's nightmare visions,
4state
state of art WI NTER 2005 At one level this i s mildly amusing but at another, disturbing, insofar as young arti sts quickly get the message "If you
TOP a Chrls Burden action: 8 shots at a 747, LAX, California, Jan u a ry 5th 1973 BELOW Chrls Burden - a Gagosian Gallery sale? or not? or maybe?
And that helps answer the question that I put to the Baltic and which Mr. Lovett avoided answering: who is the Baltic for? I ' ll answer it for him: it's for the art world nomenklatura and their
John Carey has a good deal of fun at
Danto
the expense o f this type of political posturing in his book What Good are the Arts? Focusing upon last year ' s Live rpool Biennial, he questions conceptual art ' s ability to emb ody concepts. 'Language,' he points out, 'is the medium that we have evolved for embodying concepts, and the usual ingredients of conceptual art- objects, noises, light effects - cannot replicate thi s function. The catalo gues and explanatory essays that accompany conceptual art 's installations often claim that they explore concepts. In the Biennial's catalogue, for example, we are told that a stack of plastic recycling boxes explores the idea of the self organi sing power of the city . . . a series of five trampolines explores personal memory and identity. These claims are clearly not sustainable. Their use of explores could at best mean only might
The current British Art Show at the Baltic is replete with similar stunts. One forthcoming performance piece, for instance, promises ' low level civil disobedience' . If much o f this is p l ain s i l ly, its apologists take it very seriously indeed. The texts accompanying the exhibits are invariably written in impenetrable artspeak whether at the B alti c or Liverpool. Professor Carey offers as an example of inaccessible language, 'The artists propose to claim the ontogenesis of community' and then correctly deduce s that ' its function, and the
as it is possible to get. Of course some political issues are more important than others: a project seeking institutional support for, say, the Israeli case in the
' art for us e ' , i n c l u s iv e n e s s and o ut r e a c h , the m e aningle s s p i ffle provided give the lie to any generosity of spirit.
cronies, those who read their Arthur (After the End of A rt) and realise that while art is anything you claim it to be, it's also 'too powerful a fo r c e in the wo rld to ab i d e the hedoni s m of aesthetes and the
punctiliousness o f art scholars . ' As evidence of this, here is one of the B alti c ' s new tru s t e e s , A n t h o n y Gormley, pontificating o n whether the programme should recognise modern classics or be wholly ' challenging' .
' The po int i s , ' he declared, ' what makes the Baltic's contribution to the cultural life of Britain distinctive? When the assumptions and practices of art are open to the participation and scrutiny of the curious; by which I mean all sentient human beings; and this is done in a serious and inclusive way, you create a critical and informed audi ence. It is not the only way but in my view is better than being instructed in the bri l l i a n c e o f already ac knowledged masterworks. I acknow ledge that there may be overview exhibitions that might for instance try to e l u ci d ate the b ackgro und to installation art with a showing o f a g e n d a - s etti ng p i e c e s . My main po int i s that the resources o f the Baltic are best directed to fulfilling the o r i gi nal v i sion which was to create an arts factory; not of the Warho lian kind but one in which new m e tho d s and mo d e l s co u l d b e debated with a new audi ence . . . The B altic gives us the po ssibility of a new paradigm . '
TOP Sune Nordgren inaugural Director of the brand new Ba ltic Mill, now under the cosh for alleged financial disasters in his latest post at the Norwegia n National Gallery ABOVE Peter Doroshenko new Director u nder pressure from the historic failings of the Baltic administration BELOW Anthony Gormley a new trustee with an enviable historic relationship with Baltic
T h e b l i t h e unr e a l ity o f thi s i s asto unding. S horn o f i t s pompous
tosh, this means ' Stuff the pub l i c .
Israel/Palestine dispute would have no chance, whereas the Palestinian would. Indeed the ideal symbiosis - as Roger Scruton (Great S atan o f the b ien pensants) described it - is one wherein
L et's keep it for ourselves. '
the artist ' challeng e s ' the funding autho rity (usually the State), ' the c urato r s d emonstrate their in dependence, and the politicians their liberality. Both sides can congratulate themselves on a relationship which neither would wish to revis e . ' (This is otherwise known as the 'bite the hand that feeds you' principle.) RIGHT Chrls Burden's contoversial Tyne Bridge piece: well was it sold by Gagosian Gal lery, New York to Louis Vuitton? NO (James Bustard ACGB) YES (BBC Television)
rub: despite all the posturings about an
want to get ahead, get a caus e ." Funding will follow and so the system perpetuates itself. Incidentally, the world o f practical, as oppo s e d to posturing, po litics is also removed from all thi s. If, for example, I asked anyone at the Baltic what impact the retention of the Barnett Formula1 has been on li fe in the North East, I ' m confident I ' d be met with a glassy, baffled stare.·
possibly stir some vague thoughts about.'
ABOVE Andrew Lovett acting Ba ltic Director with a not u n reasonable explanation for the existing curatorial programme
function of all explanatory materials in the brochures and catalogues, is to exclude the general public.' There s the
I
Meanwhile, i n the continuing soap opera that is the B al t i c , e arli er embarrassments surface at regular intervals, such as the massive bung that the first Director, S une Nordgren, gave Barcelona, having already paid a hire fee for the Oyvind Fahlstrom show (28 September - 24 November 2002). The thousands of pounds' worth o f expensive catalogues that he agreed to take now rest unsold in the Baltic 's bookshop, reduced from £25 to £ 1 a copy. Then there were the narrowly averted staff strikes and the cri si s meetil\g last year i n which the notion t h at the pro gramme was too
states
state of art WI NTER 2005
ABOVE looks familiar? Walsall A rt Gallery a new home for Stephen Snoddy, the ex-Baltic director against whom allegations of sexual impropriety were not su bstantiated.
(There i s , too, the small matter of the £700,000 shortfall which the Baltic will have to address when its lottery funding ceases in three years' time.)
challenging was finally d e b at e d .
taken for a ride.' In a recent press release the Baltic, announcing that its chief programm er, Pippa Coles, had "mo v e d o n" , ackno w l e d g e d h e r sterling contribution. What it didn't do
becomes the North East's equivalent of P. Y. Gerbeau, optimistically fiddling while the edifice bums. All he needs to do to turn things around though, i s to drop festivali sm and its playground
In the what happened next? slot we find Nordgren's successor, Stephen Snoddy, safely installed at the new Walsall Gallery. Nordgren's own fate is not so secure. He became, you may recall, arts supremo of Oslo where, in a case of history repeating itself, the mismanagement and profligacy of his Kiss the Frog proj ect, has led a leading newspaper to call for his resignation. As its Arts Editor put it, ' We have been
path. Ms Coles, it seems, enjoyed no ' hands on' art education (i.e. hadn't been to art school) but had obtained her degree in anthropology. After a short career as a civil servant she then joined the RCA' s curatorial cours e, fro m which it was but a s ho rt step to becoming a selector for the British Art Show and then programmer for the B al t i c . T h e new D i r e c to r, P e t e r Doroshenko must b e nervous lest he
art a chance.
was reveal her upwardly mobile career
diversions. All we are saying i s :
give
William Varley is a writer and former regional critic for The Guardian
1) The purpose of the 1979 Barnett Formula was to use English taxpayers' money to subsidise Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland perceived at the time to be impoverished. lt has never been repealed. This means that all Scots get 23% more public funding spent on them than all English people.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
s
OF PLAY ·
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Balticgate IN THE FIRST WEEK of October there were two BBC TV programmes featuring The Baltic. The first, cheekily populist, was by BBC Newcastle in the regional opt-out slot called Inside Out. A more fitting title would have been Balticgate, with reporters Chris Jackson and Dan Farthing in the Woodward and B ernstein roles. It focused on the Baltic's record of profligacy and incompetence, and while proving pretty conclusively that there were no artists' contracts1 (Sune Nordgren's successor, Stephen Snoddy, found no evidence of them). The programmes contained some choice and comical moments. James Bustard ofthe Arts Council, interviewed by Jackson over the controversial Gagosian Gallery sale to Louis Vuitton, gave a solemn assurance that Chris
Tyne Bridge model had not been sold. The fi lm then rapidly cut to the Louis Vuitton showroom in Paris, and lo ! - there was Burden's artwork clearly on display. In another canned laughter moment, former trustee Andrea Rose carefully explained how a possible Van Gogh exhibition had been turned down - before the ex-chairman Alan Smith strenuously denied such a show had ever been mooted. Then there was a sequence fi lmed in Oslo in which Sune Nordgren, when pressed about the mythical arti sts' contracts, volunteered ' gentleman' s agreements ' , whi lst ABBA tootled Money, Money, Money in the b ackground. Burden's
Not so amusing was the revelation that for his Kiss the Frog project at the Norwegian National Gallery, he 'd had 70% o f the permanent collection put in storage. Not to mention the overspend on this exhibition, currently at a sum not a million miles from £600,000. BBC 2's Culture Show feature reported on a different premise, examining the
Baltic amongst other large galleries featuring state-sponsored ' challenging art'
speCi:alblue �-
and the problem of their plummeting attendances. The main interest of this show was the statement of intent by Peter Doroshenko, the Baltic' s new Director. Don't be surprised if the ' arts factory' concept is quietly shelved and modem classics brought in. And yet again the Baltic bathed in television heaven with Channel Five' s popular
arts slot fronted by the genial Tim Marlow. The subj ect was the British Art 6 generated by the Hayward Gallery in London. You might have thought, given the title, that this represented a clear brief with a grand opportunity to see
Show
what British artists were up to and examine their responses to the rapi d evolution of this society since the Fifties (naturally assuming that the age range of the participants was likely to be 20-50 years old). It is a credit to Marlow that, as he went around the mish mash of ' entertaining' exhibits where a good gimmick appeared the essential ingredient, his voice became tinged with irony - his smile slightly sardonic - as he intoned over and over again: artist (unpronounceable name) from (faraway place) but who now lives and works in London. This is not to be confused with artists born and living in the UK but inci dentally from ethnic backgrounds. The DHSS is surely the greatest patron of the arts of all time? Such is the lack of guts amongst the new breed of ' curators' that they are too timid to even construct a show that does what it says on the poster. Or can it b e that CNN style internationalism i s all there is now? The notion o f 'Briti sh' being as insipid and indistingui shable as a Hilton Hotel.
Bobby Shaftoe
1) Critics of the Baltic organisation have repeatedly failed to get a clear answer to the question of whether or not artists were the subject of a proper contract and the specific terms for any works commissioned and paid for by the Baltic (ie. tax payer).
state
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Contributors This Issue FIONA DUNLOP LISA BOSSE ROWLAND THOMAS JEREMY HUNT GODFREY BARKER SARAH WALKER CHARLES KANE DAVID EBONY GEORGINA TURNER ROSIE MILLARD BRIAN McAVERA RENE GIMPEL WILLIAM VARLEY ROBERT VAS DIAS ROBERT HELLER JOHN KEANE STEVEN BERKOFF CLARE HENRY MARY·ROSE BEAUMONT
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6state
state of art WI NTER 2005
JAME S TURRELL IS A key figure in the light and space school, a movement in which perception is key to experience of the artwork, and the artwork is a mere light conduit for experience. His sculp tures, light pieces and models form part of a forty year study of the science of light resulting in works which affect the viewer's perceptual sense and brain activ ity. The desired phenomenon being that the immateriality of light creates works in which the viewer truly becomes an eye.
His work in light is surprisingly diverse and he has created a range of work which deals not only with the experience of light, but also as a medium in which sculpture is created. Indoor installations with artificial or natural light present tel evision monitors in a motel or percep tion cells - mobile single rooms which can be entered for personal experience. Outdoor skyspaces use light to make sculpture and architecturally inspired buildings in natural surroundings are artworks for the purpose of viewing, creating an empty space from which to look out.
' My desire is to set up a situation to
which I can take you and let you see. I am interested in light because of my in terest in our spiritual nature and the things that empower us. My art deals with light itself, not as the bearer of revela tion, but as revelation itself. '
Turrell is best known for his ongoing 30 year project at the 7, 000 feet high Rodeo Crater, 70 kilometres north of Flagstaff in the Painted Desert of Arizona, not far from the Grand Canyon. His most sig nificant magnum opus, decided upon af ter viewing it from the air during 500 hours offlying time. A Gulbenkian Fel lowship supported the project, with most of their budget reportedly spent in fuel costs. The creation of the natural light sculpture involves the excavation and transformation of an entire extinct vol cano into the Rodeo Observatory, the world's largest sculptural artwork. Lik ened to a one-man, modem-day Stone henge, the creation of seven sky-lit spaces forms a celestial observatory or great geological eye to experience the changing ambient qualities of sun and moonlight and making music with a se-
Turrell has developed an artistic persona as bearded guru oflight phenomena deal ing with - the religious, spiritual, tran scendental, meditative and mystical as pects of light. His artwork experiments with fleeting sensation oflight and space - effects that he describes as being :
like the wordless .thought that comes from looking in afire or something that directly connects you to a thought that is wordless, a thought that doesn't have a story line. Turrell's fascination with the phenomena of light is connected to a personal, in ward search for self-awareness and man kind's place in the universe. His ethereal installations communicate feelings of silent contemplation, patience, and meditation ultimately leading to tran scendence and the Divine. Part new-age thinker, part artist and part scientist/technician/engineer, Turrell
merges the objective world of the scien tist and the creative autonomy of the art ist. He first studied psychology, as tronomy and only afterwards moved to wards the visual arts. Born in California in 1 943 to Quaker parents, he maintains his Quaker faith, which he characterises as having a straightforward, strict pres entation of the sublime. The son of an
aeronautical engineer, he is an avid flyer, gaining his pilot' s license at 16 and con tinuing a lifelong passion for flying. This
alternative exp erience o f real ity, cosmological phenomena and tricks of perception offered by the different effects of light and space in the upper atmos phere has signifi c antly info rmed Turrell's work. The activity was also practical as while still in his late teens, following the 1 959 rebellion, he was fly ing Tibetan monks in single-engine planes across the Himalayas on 'alter native service' missions and later flew high-altitude spy planes for the Central Intelligence Agency. The experience of flying has been a continuous source of inspiration and provides a key for his epistemological
studies of perception and the under standing of reality. The metaphor o f flying echoes the image of the sparrow mentioned in B ede's Ecclesiastical
History of England : 'The present life of man, 0 King, seems
ries oflight.
James Turrell
·
When completed, the isolated Roden Crater will be visible through arranged art tours with guests staying at a four bedroom lodge, placed half way down the side of the volcano. This is reminis cent of the organised tours arranged to view Waiter de Maria's Lightening Field. A key time to visit would be for
the lunar standstill event in 2006, pre dicted to project an image of the moon directly into volcano's central Sun and
Moon Space.
JEREMYHUNT UiS c
ION
Turrell has been active in the British Isles, with current commissions at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Houghton Hall, Norfolk, and a forth coming exhibition and intervention at the Sir John Soane Museum, organised by Michael Hue-Williams at Albion, who
are developing art and architecture projects as a major gallery activity. He was responsible for the lighting in the Millennium-Dome's Chill-Out-Zone, the central area of the Eva Jiricna de signed Faith Zone and the uncompleted
to be, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein You sit at supper in winter, with your com manders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are entirely ignorant.'
The son of an aeronautical engineer, gaining his pilot's license at 16
. . .
flying Tibetan
monks in single-engine planes across the Himalayas on 'alternative service' missions and [he]later flew high-altitude spy planes for the Centra/Intelligence Agency.
""
state7
state of art WINTER 2005
Eduardo Paolozzi Sculptures from the 1960s
8 NOV
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Eduardo Paolozzi Nuribo 1 968/69 Bronze 50
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3 DEC 2005 00 �
Flowers Central
21 Cork Street London W1 S 3LZ Tel: 020 7439 7766 Fax: 020 7439 7733 central@flowerseast.com
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and now abandoned Thames Light Project, a £3 million scheme to create a
work of light art within 500 metres of the River Thames, London's own Heart of Darkness. This would have defmed the area by highlighting river frontages and landmark architectural features. The Square ofLight would have linked build
ings on both banks of the river from Som erset House, across Waterloo Bridge to the South Bank Centre site, encompass-
light and colour projections and instal lations. It features Wide Out, originally created for MAK in Vienna, Austria in 1998, which envelopes the entire gallery space and viewer in a blue radiance, rec reating a 'ganzfeld experience' where atmosphere diversity and the powerful mass of light gradually become physi cally felt. A new site-specific commis sion to be unveiled in Spring 2006, The Deer Shelter, involves the renovation
by the existing topographical features of the area - promontories, monolithic stones, circular mounds and subterranean passages, the constantly changing sky and weather-the resulting garden con sisted of a crater, a tumulus-like mound, a truncated, four-sided pyramid, and a rectangular enclosure with a network of passageways and outdoor rooms which framed landscape, viewer and sky, fos tering new perceptions and interactions.
parent. As these times approach, the in ner lighting system becomes active and illuminates the floor of the tunnel en trance. A visitor entering the tunnel au tomatically switches on the lights in the main chamber, which appear to give a low level of illumination at first but as the light levels outside fall, this inner lighting comes to fill the space with a warm, ambient light illuminating the up per walls and ceiling. Through the roof opening, the sky - that during the day seemed clear and focused- now becomes a circle of constantly changing intense colour. Appearing to be at the same level as the ceiling, this circle of light bears
Turrell said of his Kielder Skyspace at the Kielder Forest Park in North umberland:
little relation to colour of the sky out side. The expectation that the colours we observe in our surroundings are constant, provides us with compelling evidence
The Irish Sky Garden, 1992, initiated by the Liss Ard Foundation in Skibbereen, West Cork, was not necessarily meant
to observe the sky but rather to repro duce the order ofthe universe. Inspired
'I wanted this low cloud, maritime envi ronment, to work with, this beautiful soft light that I don't get in Northern Arizona where we have this very crisp, but some times quite hard defming light. These are the skies of Constable and Turner and this space works a little bit that way too. So there's a lot of debt to people who have gone before and looked at these qualities of light, and I am happy to be amongst them.'
that we constantly modify and in some cases create colour within our own minds as a response to our surroundings. 'I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some way gather it, or seem to hold it. So in that way it's a little bit like Plato's cave. We sit in the cave with our backs to reality, looking at the reflection of reality on the cave wall. As an analogy to how we perceive, and the imperfections of perception, I think this is very interesting.'
Sited at Cat Cairn, a rocky outcrop com The 7000 feet high Roden Crater, 70 kms north of Flagstaff in the Painted Desert of Arizona
ing Jubilee Gardens and the Royal Na tional Theatre. Turrell's idea was to choreograph an integrated lighting scheme installed in the water, under bridges, and on tops of buildings to be seen by aircraft passengers. Attracted to the soft Northern European light of Caspar David Friedrich, Turner and Constable as well as the ar chitectural archaeology and legacy of prehistoric henges, circles, menhirs, tumuli and mounds, he has developed a special relationship with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the current exhibi tion (5 November - 14 May 2006) will transform the new 600 sq. m. Under ground Gallery space with a series of
of a derelict folly in the Bretton Park landscape. Other works include a tem porary skyspace, The Elliptic Ecliptic, 1999, at Tremenheere, Cornwall constructed as a platform from which to view the solar eclipse. In a field overlooking Penzance with a view of the coastline and St. Michael's Mount. The cham ber with a hole in the ceiling framed a moving, constantly changing image of sky. Using the sky as the canvas the colours changed from light blue, deep blue to black at sunrise and sunset and the experience was described as if the sky had been framed and brought closer.
manding spectacular views, a couple of miles from Kielder village and eight miles from the Scottish border, the Skyspace is a buried cylindrical cham ber entered through a tunnel and capped by a roof with a 3 meter diameter circu lar opening in its centre. Continuous seat ing is placed around the base of the in side wall with a white, visually uninter rupted surface above. Illumination from low-energy light sources gives a continu ous ring of ambient light on the walls and ceiling. Visitors fmd themselves in the middle of a precise manipulation of in terior and exterior light causing the sky to seem an almost solid form and appear ing isolated from its surroundings. However, it is in the time immediately before dawn and following sunset that the effects of Turrell's art are most ap-
Turrell is preparing intriguing exhibition collaboration with the Sir John Soane Museum (31 March - 26 August 2006). This will include models and drawings for new works including the SIWA Skyspace, Egypt; Houghton Skyspace, Norfolk; Craigenor skyspace; and the DeerShelter, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The exhibition will include limited in terventions within the museum space through lighting and coloured gels over some of the roof lanterns. Jeremy Hunt is a curator, writer and the editor of
Art & Architecture Journal LINKS James Turrell is represented by Michael Hue Williams at www.albion-gallery.com Sir John Soane Museum www.soane.org
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EUROSTATE
eastern promise
:
r
literary scene, Hari Kunzru, Hanif
catalogue. Tellingly they relate to sex and politics - the fields in which Islam still wobbles. One was Jonothan Horowitz':
Kureishi, Esther Freud, Deborah
Moggach and Ekow Eshun, with, in the
other camp, Arab poets such as Mahi
Official Portrait of George W Bush Available Free from the White House Hung Upside Down, the other was a
Binebine, Charbel Dagher, Mehdi
Akhrif and Saadi Youssef.
photo by and of Tracey Emin gleefully stuffing banknotes into her lower parts :
Pulling out all the stops in the visual arts field was Vanessa Branson, sister of the mercurial entrepreneur, whose exhibition of her Wonderful Fund was the kernel of the festival. With both siblings and their parents involved in Moroccan hotel projects (V. B.'s riad being arguably Marrakesh' most spectacular and R B. s kasbah on the road to the Atlas one of the
report FIONA DUNLOP.
Good Smile Great Come. Asked about the absence of these pieces, the museum director Naima Ben Jalloun said: 'I .worked with confidence in Vanessa and Prue's selection but did not actually see the collection before it was hung. But it's not the moment to provoke - the medina is a difficult area and it's also Ramadan. Extremists may come in looking for trouble.' It was hardly surprising then to see that an image of a naked woman on Grayson Perry's vase We Three was turned to the wall.
'
TEETERING THROUGH the medina in gilded Manolos and evening kaftans or, in the male case, strolling in mandatory
most kitsch) their presence was a given.
linen suits, was a gossiping band of Brit Arts celebs. Flown in from London, they wended their way from art gathering to cocktail party to literary discussion. Labyrinthine alleyways of flaking walls led off to the side, soukh stall-holders watched in bewilderment, stray cats slunk round corners and a solo vendor crouched in front of his sum total of wares: three cigarette packets. Incongruous was not the word.
The Wonderful Fund, however 'far out' its name sounds, is actually a serious initiative set up by Vanessa and Prue O 'Day five years ago. Collectively owned by a circle of 17 friends that includes Hoare Bankers, Matthew Bannister and Richard Branson (who confesses to having no idea about art pretty obvious when you see his kasbah) it is not a bad idea. Each member contributes the same amount annually,
This was the first ever Arts in
Later, in the cosseting comforts of Marrakesh' new exclusive arts club, the Kssour Agafay, a gobsmacking 16th century courtyard mansion (riad for the initiated) canapes and champagne were consumed as if tagine had never existed. The tone was set for the next few days as the select band of arts personalities (including Alan Yentob, Annie Lennox, Anthony Gormley, Tat/er-editor Geordie
proved again what a chasm remains between our two contemporary art worlds, despite Morocco's ongoing cultural links with France. Staged in a vast courtyard of the Bahia Palace, it was hung regimentally on temporary panels. Works were mainly paintings, all earnest and technique-driven, in many cases neo-abstract expressionist and, to our perhaps jaded Western eyes, derivative. But something to remember is what the curator M o h a m m ed Melehani underlined, that painting as an art-form has only existed in Morocco for about 50 years - it is young and still fresh, unlike our Western psycho complexities. So perhaps, after all, the
gives carte blanche to the two curators, and bingo, after five years they part-own a prestigious collection of 100 or so
Marrakesh Festival (MiF) a private
initiative designed to open up cultural communication between two countries that have never had much to do with each other due to the vicissitudes of colonial history. But was it to be a clash of civilisations or a meeting of minds?
The counter exhibition of Contemp orary Art in Morocco: An Overview
pieces of contemporary art. Jullan Ople Bernard, School Boy 2001
Greig, Harpers' party gossip Stephanie Theobald plus assorted publishers, literary
agents and hacks) drifted from one riad to another, wilting in the September heat before revelling in starry, fizz-fuelled nights on riad rooftops.
The five-day festival took place in the heart of this Muslim city on the eve of Ramadan, bringing British and Moroccan artists and writers together to read, exhibit and discuss. Enter the representatives of our multi-cultural
What is paradoxical is that Marrakesh and, more specifically, the ornate extravaganza of a palace that is now the Marrakesh Museum, was the stage-set for the collection's first outing. Put it in the context of a Muslim country that until 1999 was repressively ruled by King Hassan ll, and you wonder how apt and even comprehensible the images are to locals. Heavy on irony, whimsy and graphics, the collection includes Julian Opie, Ric h ard Billin g h a m , J o h n Colplans, th e Chapman Brothers and Grayson Perry. Two pieces were never hung - although they feature in the
Arts in Marrakesh exchange worked, in that it made us aware of this 'work in progress', a perception that could be applied to a much wider geo-political platform. Fiona Dunlop is a critic and specialist writer
SPEAK ARABI C I N 60 SE C O N DS: SOUKH (ARAB MARKET PLACE; A BAZAAR); RIAD ( COURTYARD MANSIO N); MEDINA (OLD ARAB OR NO N-EUROPEAN QUARTER OF A N. AFRICAN
TOWN); YENTOB (OLD BEARDED MAN SEEN EVERYWHERE); KASBAH (CITADEL OF A N. AFRICAN CITY, ARAB QUARTER NEAR THIS).
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I
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state of art WINTER 2005
STATE O
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element of success (and the only success here is media recognition) it is then
regurgitated as a thin pastiche with scant resemblance to the original. Overtly derivative nonsense has parallels aplenty in the a la mode art world which, naturally, soon embraced this caprice as a valid concept: appropriation being a
� OT L
favourite definition. One can almost admire the cocktail of arrogance, conceit and ignorance with which the s e individual acts of ersatz creativity blunder into our psyches.
Yet this is the unending and historic dilemma with presenting contemporary
opinion MIKE VON JOEL ·
WHEN BILL VARLEY ' S text first crossed this editor's desk (or flickered across its flat screen monitor might be more accurate) it was obvious it was going to cause a systemic spasm - all the necessary incendiaries were within (cultural institution, squandered public money, contemporary art, big c ash salaries, self-styled artists ... ) and so it proved.
The New Statesman out
manoeuvred interest from a couple of quality nationals to secure the reprint and the world at large learned that the Baltic arts monolith was apparently at war with the gritty inhabitants ofthe Newcastle area When STATE OF ART contacted the Baltic with the offer of unedited space for a (presumably) contra-opinion, it was courteously and politely declined whilst simultaneously claiming Varley's piece to be ' an unbalanced view ' . A personal letter to the new director, Peter Doroshenko, also went unanswered. A BBC television special screened in the North East' - proffering much the same critical analysis as Varley-was presumably likewise purged from the present memories of the incumbent Balticles. Whilst the Baltic hierarchy might have felt under siege, it is, in fact, not difficult to sympathise with their position. The current debacle might well be viewed as a microcosm of the malaise which has been crippling the British art world since the early 1 980's. Consider the ingredients of the B altic situation. The eternal gripe o f all provincial satellites is the perceived London-centric focus of all that is important, innovative and contemporary. The Tate out-reach projects aside, this complaint has not, historically, been without foundation. Once prices for contemporary artworks vaulted into the stratosphere (read travel insurance), a shortage of suitable venues (read security, suitable access) then seriously limited touring possibilities. On the flip side - the great historic art shows - it is often forgotten that snotty lenders frequently refuse to see their prized trophies leave a prestigious London venue for the netherworld. After all, who wants to host a private-Private View cocktail party for chums in Manchester. Who actually has chums in Manchester? The star burst of new designer venues around the UK has reversed this arcane rule of thumb and it is to the Arts Council's credit that non-London activity
centres are now getting a taste of the limelight. But it is ironic that along with an artworld postcode (London NE950?) the Baltic and its relations have inherited the canker that has exercised serious minded artniks in·the Capital for the last 25 years: art as entertainment. Already there is evidence emerging that those who chose the entertainment business to present their work, and who have enjoyed some degree of success whilst strutting and preening for the mass
art. Here's the liberal viewpoint: no one would expect to walk off the street into a nuclear phy s i c i s t ' s laboratory and conduct a lively, coherent debate on the inherent weakness of Strontium 901. Or, more apposite, jump on stage at Sadler's Wells and partner Sylvie Guillem in a quick pas de deaux. But that same individual holds the absolute belief that he/she can enter a gallery and pontificate with credit on a work created by someone· who has possibly spent their life working with the visual arts. The creating of art is an intellectual discipline, it has a specific language of its own which might
In this Age of Anxiety we need cool reflective exhibitions that let the mind contemplate higher planes of intuition and learning.
media, are harbouring regrets as they mature to fmd the doors of the serious art world shut fast. For once the money is in the Bank, it is meditations on posterity that absorb the daylight hours. The much maligned Tracey Emin must wish, as 50 appears on the horizon, she had kept her mouth shut on numerous occasions and curbed the flights of fancy that lately include a kinship to Django Reinhardt. Hirst, another BritArt luminary in much the same position, is alleged to be buying up his early works and regretting the way he was used by a headline greedy media that never - ever laughs with you. Not to mention his relations with a well known art speculator. So are the criticisms of the curatorial positions adopted at the Baltic unfair? Surely it is absolutely valid to present an art of today that reflects a con temporaneous society: its strengths and weaknesses, complete with cultural mores and fads of fashion? Art does not operate in a vacuum. It is not immune from the virus that has affected virtually all branches of the creative arts : the belligerent DIY amateur. And this is not just restricted to 'yoof' culture. Should you spend five minutes (no more) watching ITV's The
X-factor, it is soon apparent that whole
swathes of English society are more or less permanently delusional. Having identified what 'they' deem to be the key
be learned by study and application. Why should the uninformed opinions of someone not versed in this vocabulary matter a jot- any more than your (or my) opinion on the dynamics of nuclear fission? Where did this rumour of 'art for the people' originate? In the context ofthis argument the answer
is simple: when the people were made to pay for it !
Ifthe Baltic were self-financing (through private/corporate sponsorship, sales revenue, etc .) its position and pro gramming would be unassailable. The formal discipline of being accountable for its own fmancial practices could be nothing if not beneficial for the organisation and the venue (it is a splendid building by any measure). Being liable for pecuniary losses focuses the corporate mind wonderfully and engenders a real respect for the all important - supportive - audience. The Baltic is additionally fortunate in having the space to incorporate all manner of exhibitions without necessarily losing the integrity of any aspect of the current programme. The jury ought to be still out on public funding. History will surely reveal that the biggest curse on the development of visual arts in Britain was the concept of an Arts Council, of grant aid, of public sponsorship. It is not a complex equation:
mix a fascist (small t) system with human nature and you immediately generate
friends and enem ies . Gather right thinking 'friends' around you and you then inherit their enemies. In no time you
arrive at the Orwellian State of Art in Britain today: those that are in and those
that are decidedly out. Of course it is arguable that it was ever thus, with even Michelangelo scrabbling and conniving for that lucrative Papal commission, but the poignancy today is the addition of that fateful extra ingredient: a diseased and corrupted cultural infrastructure. The art sector funded by taxpayers cash is populated on the whole by individuals that have little or no resonance outside it. It is a body of self-referencing, self congratulatory individuals endlessly scrabbling for the lucrative key jobs. To be a ' safe pair of hands' is regarded as an asset in this otherworld of smoke and mirrors. The emergence ofthe self-styled contemporary art 'curator' is sympto matic of the ineffable nonsense that p ervades the ' approved' exhibition circuits and g·rant aided venues. And amongst these desperately earnest hipsters the great cosmic fear is the arts equivalent of: 'the man who didn't sign the Beatles' . Was it Robert Hughes who noted in Time magazine that modem art is paralysed by the notion the next Picasso is lurking somewhere unknown, undetected and unrecognised? As all curators are only as good as their last exhibition (success here means visitor numbers, catalogue sales, positive media coverage) these indicia are studied with all the absorption of ncTAR2 ratings. To be the one that rejected Picasso nouveau does not bear thinking about. It is an all pervasive dilemma - you may recollect (as long ago as 1 962) after failing David Hockney, the Royal College reacted to his sudden Sunday supplement fame and success at Kasmin by dragging him back for a gold medal (apocryphal ? !). Alfred H. Barr might have invented the
'blockbuster' exhibition at New York's
MoMA in the 1 93 0's - but that was a
long time ago. Pre-television arts; before technicolour supplement art p ages; before lavishly illustrated art books. Today Big does not mean Best. In this Age of Anxiety we need cool reflective exhibitions that let the mind contemplate higher planes of intuition and learning. That offer an authentic experience in which surely some aspect of personal education should be present? The self styled 'contemporary artists' - who have promoted themselves as ' interesting characters' - are not in the art business, they are in the entertainment business. They should stick to amusing the auditorium - thankfully it's a short life, if a wonderful one. Mike von Joel writes occasionally.
NOTES
1) Strontium-90 is one of the most abundant of the materials resulting from the fission of uranium in a nuclear reactor, Sr-90 is a highly active source of beta particles and is one of the longest lived beta-emitting substances, with a half-life of some 27.7 years. Its daughter product being yttrium-90. So next time you visit the lab... 2) Jictar ratings are the viewing figures by which all TV progs (and their makers) survive or fail.
1 0state
state of art WI NTER 2005
EUROSTATE :centenary celeb
TH E DACTYLOG RAPH I C HYENA The invasion o f Normandy b y the rabid societies dedicated to the canonisation of John Paul Sartre is every bit as fearsome as a D-Day landing
report RIENE GIMPEL IN THE S EVENTEENTH c entury chateau ofCerisy-la-Salle in Normandy, a 'Decade' on Jean-Paul Sartre was held in July, a homage for the centenary of his birth. The 'Decades' are 1 0 day symposia on cultural, political and scientific subjects, ,held in this private rural castle where several generations of the same family have hosted summer talk-ins since the 1 920's. The Decades boast an impressive backlist of dis足 tinguished sp eakers, from Andre Malraux to Gide, from Heidegger to Derrida, not forgetting Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
wing claiming not only that Sartre was
not a (admittedly modest) resistance
fighter during the war, but had been a passive collaborator. This was based on the slenderest of evidence, subsequently disproved, but enough to whip up the philosopher's enemies in France, where Sartre is still viewed with suspicion by an establishment who never managed to eo-opt him. The false charges laid against Sartre have earned his accuser the title of apostate.
The sisters who run Cerisy do so as the
grandes dames of their domain, very much noblesse oblige in grace and spirit,
except that F ranc e is r e s o lutely republican and, thankfully, no titles were in evidence. A discreet staff of25 ensures that castle life remains gracious, and house rules are maintained. When the bell rings atop the chateau, guests are being summoned to dinner, a lively occasion and one to enjoy fine cooking and food from the farms and vegetable gardens of Cerisy.
s e curing tenure and the sheer impossibility of getting their writings published. All looked forward to the much-anticipated visit of the media足 savvy B ernard-Henri Levy, a philosopher feted in France. Levy let it be known that he would be flying in to Paris from New York in order to attend the conference, before flying out again
A previous symposium on Sartre at Cerisy occurred in 1 979 and several speakers from that conference were present at this one. Sartre, of course, was absent (he was also absent at the earlier conference: fmding his time put to better use at the Elysee palace soliciting government help for the Vietnamese boat-people). The sympo s ium was a maratho n : between 7 and 1 0 hours a day, 3 5 papers, 3 round-table discussions and all subject to l engthy question-and-answers sessions. Speakers came from the four corners, most with copies of their latest book on Sartre. I came with my Ferrari. Sartre may have been left behind by the p o st-moderni sts, eclipsed by Baudrillard, Derrida and Lacan, but his devoted followers are legion. In France alone this year, 80 books on Sartre have been published. There are 8 0 0 avowed S artrean s p e cialists worldwide. There are Sartrean societies in every country and where there is a society there is cause for disharmony. Germany is the largest, with a revisionist
Meanwhile, back in Cerisy all is not well. Professor Arno Munster, president of the prestigious German society, rises to denounce, in the most vociferous and intemperate manner, a presentation on Sartre and the war in Vietnam given by Olivier To d d , an Anglo-French journalist and writer who, older readers may remember, already enjoyed being in the thick of disputes back in the 1 960's when he broadcast for the BBC. As the temperature climbed in the already hot atmosphere of Cerisy's library, uproar followed until the maj estic figure of Madame Rybalka rose and roared above the din: "Etiquette demands that Professor Miinster show the standards expected of German politeness and withdraw from the library." Was that a smirk I noticed on Todd's face? A quiet interlude ensued, with the y o unger, p enniless philosophers confiding in me the difficulties they face
the next day to continue his research on Tocqueville (and negotiate film rights with Hollywood on a book about the murdered j ournalist Daniel Pearl). Bulletins of his trip to Normandy were relayed to us until the man himself made a grand entrance - in his trade-mark open-to-the-breastbone white shirt and bespoke designer suit. Levy's chauffeur waited in his limousine at the entrance to the chateau, visible through the library windows. Which did not prevent a wag piping up and asking, Levy, who began his talk with a remark on his note-taking during the drive, "Don't you concentrate on the road ahead when you're in a car?". The young philosophers were torn b etween admiration and indignation towards Levy. Much to my own disappointment, it turns out that L evy ' s wealth is inherited. Dreams of making it big as a philosopher have _been shelved for the moment. Symposia like this one often bring to the fore s o m e fas cinating nuggets of
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, icon of the
French left in his libra ry. A life judged controversial and the subject of devoted adulation by an international horde of intel lectuals and inextricable from muse and lover, writer Slmone de Beauvolr (below left)
information about the subject in question. For instance, during Sartre's ultra-left involvement with the Maoist newspaper
La Cause du Peuple, his erstwhile
comrades on the journal told him not to
bore them with Gustave Flaubert, to which Sartre replied that he was too old to stop writing, writing, writing. Sartre had been here before: in 1 952 at a Soviet足 backed congress for peace in Vienna, where a delegate had accused him of being ' a dactylographic hyena' . The French communist party, irritated by the success of existentialism, denounced S artre for his philo sophy of total freedom. The party daily l 'Humanite asked its readers what sort of person c h oos e s each morning between communism and fascism. Further tensions arose when Michel Kail, on the b o ard of Les Temps Modernes, ( S artre and S imone de Beauvoir's publishing house), gave a talk on Sartre's masculinity. Kail suggested, in the most roundabout manner, that Sartre's attitude towards and behaviour with women would not meet current standards of acceptability. Acceptability was something that Kail failed to get, as his audience geared up to defend Sartre
state 1 1
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her carnival sparkle, her latino dress sense and her lively manner. A car was due to pick up Deise from the station at Caen, but a last-minute hitch meant that I was asked to go in its stead. Deise,
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STE P H E N C HAM B E RS THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. U RS U LA
delighted in being fetched in a Ferrari, wished to be photographed beside it in order to impress the folks back home. She was duly photographed that evening, languishing across the bonnet - but not by m e ! Instead, D e i s e dragged a protesting lecturer to take the photo, under the impression that the car was his. I deduce that either Deise thought of me solely as the hired chauffeur; or that the car was so memorable that nothing of myself and my features registered at all. Either deduction, philosophically
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Bernard Henrl Levy star turn (but no Ferrari)
Ven ice Project 20 Oct
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20 N ov 2005
speaking, is preferable to a lurking suspicion that Deise simply mistook the elderly, stout, bald lecturer for myself. Deise is president ofthe Brazilian Sartre society, but it was not for this that she delighted us all, despite giving an excellent paper. Within 24 hours, the only romance of the 1 0 days was in full
Ste ph en Chambers Canal with September Rain 2005 Monotype 38.5 x 44.5 em s / 1 5% x 1 7% ins
swing - well done Brazil & Belgium and the rest of us partnerless participants took vicarious interest in its progress.
F LOWERS G RAP H I CS 2005 24 N ov - 1 5 Jan 2006
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The 1 0-day symposia are marathons and Delse Qulntllllano added Brazilian pzazz
Edith Heurgon, one of the two sisters from the chateau, emphasised that a proper symposium should be thus, taxing us to our limits. So that it came as a surprise to fmd that the oldest speaker and lively participant in the debates, Maurice de Gondillac, is 99 and going
Arno Miinster influential German delegate
strong. Always impeccably and nattily dressed, Gondillac asked questions or passed comments on all the contributions. What was even more surprising was to discover that he had attended every symposium that summ er since early June (Jacques Ranciere and present philosophy) and would remain
F l owers G r a p h ics 82 Ki n g s l a n d Road London E2 8 D P Te l : 020 7920 7777 Fax: 020 7920 7770 g ra p h ics @fl ow e rs e a s t . eo m Tuesday - S at u rday 1 0 - 6 S u n d ay 1 1 - 5
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until the last symposium early in October
(Bretons and Normans in the Middle Ages) . And to top this, Gondillac has attended every sympos ium every summer, without fail - since 1 953 ! He does relax in between apparently, comparing French trans lations of Heidegger with their originals.
In the seventeenth century Normandy chateau of Cerisy-la-Sa lle, a 'Decade' on Jean-Paul Sartre (d.1980) was held in J u ly, a homage to celebrate the centenary of his birth.
on what, I would have thought, was a perfectly obvious remark. Sartre and de B e auvoir were predatory in their relationships, in addition to which they routinely exchanged lengthy epistolary accounts oftheir seductions. Les Liasons
,Dangeureuses? On this note one speaker, Deise
Quintilliano, sashayed in from Sao
Paulo and electrified the assembly with
01 Art Services Ltd
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At the end of the symposium I took the pilgrimage trail to Paris, to view a fme exhibition of Sartre manuscripts at the B ibliotheque Nationale . Which reminded me of a comment at the symposium, made by a researcher from the Bibliotheque, that 5,000 manuscript pages ofSartre remain unpublished. And will do for a long time to come, because copyright resides in Arlette Elkaim Sartre, his adopted daughter.
tra nspc tati o·r'
Who is at war with everyone.
Sf.1-vices for private. commercial and
Rene Gimpe/ is managing director of Gimpel Rls (est. London 1946); and a committed socialist He drives a custom, hand built Ferrari Testarossa. LINKS Centre Cutturel lnternational de Cerisy-la-Salle www.ccic�erisy.asso.fr
What has reasoning to do with th_e art of painting? William Blake in Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses (1808)
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1 2state
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Vence, a fit home for their Miros, Picassos,
buyers are confined to lesser works and thus
Giacomettis and much, much more. In other
greater risks. They have no buying power to move the market, which is notoriously
words, it's notthe rapacity of the dealers that explains their riches, but their courage in
i l l i quid. The places and times when
buying work of great merit early and staying with the art and the artists on the sometimes
contemporary work can be sold by an owner are limited. If you choose an auction, the
long and arduous road to general recognition.
outcome is always uncertain and may be disappointing.
!ver
1!1
Ill
opinion ROBERT HELLER
The super-dealers would never have reached their exalted status without the indefinable
But be of good cheer. A New York couple
quality known as 'taste' . Nobody's taste is infallible, but a dealer with a high reputation
named Dorothy and Herbert Vogel worked in humble white-collar occupations, but
can do much to help the fame and hence
devoted their energies and one of their two
prices of their chosen artists onwards and
small salaries (he never earned over $ 1 6,000)
upwards. Saatchi at first glance might seem
to buying art. They built a 2,00 0-work
an example of a collector who has achieved
collection of American minimalist and other
WHAT IS ART TRULY worth? Art and
similarly gratifying financial results - but is
artists, worth tens of millions, which is
money have always gone hand in glove. Most
Saatchi super-collector or super-dealer?
p as s ing to the National Gallery in
civilisations, plus a myriad of smaller (but
Certainly his gallery on the South Bank (now
annuity. The Vogels are a reminder that in
not lesser) masterpieces, were paid for in coin
heading for Chelsea) seems more super-store
the unique economics of the art market, well
by magnates whose fortunes were mostly
than· temple. But you can't begrudge his profits, or those of anybody else who bets
placed love conquers all.
massive beyond belief, and who could easily purchase this evidence of their might. If the
hard money on a personal belief in the 'soft'
gold also bought a lifeline to paradise from
Robert Helier is writer on art, artists and
quality of works of art. Big money helps because it can pay big prices. The lesser
international business matters.
o f the
m i ghty
monuments
o f past
=l
Washington in return for a no doubt generous
a grateful God, so much the better. This top
'"""'
end of the market is still where today's super collectors congregate - people who purchase social kudos and a kind of immortality along
RESTATE
with their collections (think The Frick, Ludwig, presumably Saatchi, etc., etc.)
:
private view
The relationship between art and money is by no means so clear-cut in general. Art has
no intrinsic monetary value. The value in art is aesthetic, and there, of course, opinions vary notoriously.
Art isn't like gold, a
commodity market in which one ingot is
Dorothy and Herbert Vogel devoted their energies and one of their two small salaries (he never earned over $16,000) to buying art. They built a 2,000-work collection worth $millions
always 'worth' the same as any other. One Robert Rauschenberg may sell at a vastly
respectably to the higher paid Americans and
different price from another of similar size
Europeans. The Tate's influence has been
and quality. Would-be purchasers have
notable, with the Turner Prize propelling
supposedly been haggling at around $34 million for an earlier painting by this artist
opinion DAVID EBONY
short-listed artists into new price territory
Chris Ofili being an example. Whether or
many times the current rate for a steaming
not his elephant dung adds aesthetic value,
hot product from his art factory.
it certainly provides the Unique Selling
IT IS GRATIFYING THESE days to see that
Proposition which ad people master at their
Graham Sutherland ( 1 90 3 - 1 980), after
Here, supply and demand, those inseparable
mothers ' knees. It could cost you over half a
years of unfair neglect in Britain, is enjoy
twins of economics, are at work. The earlier
million pounds to buy a prime cut of Ofili.
ing a serious revival in his homeland. A num ber of gall!;!ry and museum exhibitions were
painting is celebrated, and there's only one like it. The current output is much more
The popular image of all this activity centres
held throughout the nation in 2003 in honor
accessible, and the interest of big-budget
round rapacious dealers who exploit innocent
of the centenary of his birth.1 And this past
bidders is l o wer. The supply- demand
artists to create undeserved wealth for
summer, the Dulwich Picture Gallery
equation is unreliable, anyway. Take the
themselves and their loved one·s. The image
mounted Graham Sutherland: Landscapes,
popular theory that artists' works soar in
has been maintained by ugly examples, such
War Scenes, Portraits 1924-50/ focusing on
value the moment they die. Sometimes this
as the
the early part of the artist's long career, be
happens; often not. Although the supply of
Marlborough's Frank Lloyd dealt with the
fore his permanent relocation to the French
Picassos became finite with his death, there
Rothko estate. But down the ages many
Riviera in 1 955.
indefensible prices at which
was so much work abounding worldwide that
artists have proved far from naive frnancially
it took some time for the artist's irresistible
- and the contemporary world is certainly
The show reinforced the significance of
march up the price charts to be resumed.
no exception.
works from the years when the London-born
Picasso was always prolific. In theory, you
Today's nexus between art and money, first
abroad as Britain's most important painter.
might expect artists who rarely produce a
and foremost, revolves around the artists -
Sutherland's richly impastoed, brilliantly
painting, like Richard Hamilton, to attract
and very properly so. Without their toil, there
colored paintings and works on paper, fea
the highest prices. He doesn't, even though
would, of course, be nothing new to buy and
turing abstracted landscapes and fierce ren
artist was widely regarded both at home and
he is a master; he does, however, command
sell. Without their brilliance, shown in
derings of twisted roots, thorn trees and other
goodly prices for his graphics, which sell in
infinite variety, there would not be the
forms found in nature were quite unlike any
suitably large editions. And Lucian Freud's
enabling excitement among buyers that is the
thing being produced in Britain at that time.
prices have soared into the millionaire zone
second most important factor in the market.
Parallel to Henry Moore's achievement in
since his output, once famously limited,
The enthusiasm of collectors for works of
sculpture, Sutherland's work was viewed by
became more abundant.
art is indispensable - and 'collectors' here
many as a major force in leading British
includes curators and dealers.
painting out of the doldrums of prewar pro
In sum, no obvious economic laws determine
Graham Sutherland at work on an etching plate
vincialism into the arena of the post-war in ternational avant-garde.
the money value of art. Marketing, however,
Most of what dealers 'collect' is only passing
is another matter. It is surely no coincidence
through, true; but the great Lord Duveen
that the sensational material success of the
always regarded anything that passed through
Sutherland began his career as an etcher, af
formed into towering and somewhat menac
Young British Artists began and burgeoned
his hands as a Duveen for ever more. A contemporary like the late Betty Parsons left
ter inadequate math skills thwarted his am
ing creatures.
under the patronage (originally almost exclusive) ofone collector, Charles Saatchi,
convinced his father to allow him to study at
After the once lucrative print market col
whose fortune rested on his brilliance as an
a tidy fortune thanks to the Pollocks and other
purchases to which she clung, even as the artists
Goldsmiths College and was inspired early
lapsed during the Great Depression in the
advertising agent. Be that as it may, Damien
emigrated to other, richer dealers. The prince
on by Blake, Turner and especially the vi
early 1 930s, Sutherland assumed a teaching
Hirst, Tracey Emin and others have either
ofBasle dealers, Emst Beyeler, once said that
sionary works of Samuel Palmer. At Gold
post at the Chelsea School of Art and also
In the latter, plant and tree forms in a bu colic setting appear exaggerated and trans
bition to become an engineer. In 1 9 1 8, he
needed no lessons in marketing hype or have
he made his living from the work he sold and
smiths he met Kathleen Barry, a fashion
took on design work including posters, tex
mastered them at full speed ahead.
his fortune out ofwhat he kept.
designer who he married in 1 927, and re
tiles, china and glassware. Inspired by a 1 93 4
mained with for the rest of his l i fe .
visit t o Wales, h e began to work i n oils. The
The S erota/Saatchi/YBA/Rosenthal axis,
The proof lies partly in the distinguished
Sutherland achieved considerable success
young painter was moved by the extraordi
while itself fluctuating and complex, has
Beyeler Foundation. Likewise another
with small, densely packed compositions
nary landscape of Wales's coastline, where
dealing family, Maeght, has financed a
such as Cray Fields ( 1 925) and Pastoral
high winds and harsh terrain allow only the
marvellous foundation in S aint Paul de
( 1 930), featured in the Dulwich exhibition.
hardiest oflife forms to survive. Here began
simply helped to push the prices of several artists to
levels
that
compare quite
I
I
·�
state 1 3
state of art WINTER 2005 centered on forms found in nature, is some what less abstract.
RESTATE
:
private view
For some U.K. cntlcs, Sutherland had reached his prime by the early 1 950s, and his subsequent work, largely produced in France, was regarded by some as second-rate and a rehash of older themes. His work in portraiture was particularly controversial ever since his debut effort in the genre, the extensively reproduced and by-now iconic Somerset Maugham ( 1 949), in the Tate, cata pulted Sutherland to obscene levels of fame and fortune that most painters could only dream about. His success in this field often clouded subsequent critical judgment of his work as a whole. He remained focused throughout his career on a remarkable study of nature and natural forms, which has no true precedent. And so
'·
far, he has had no direct followers, which makes his multifaceted career all the more difficult to categorize, another major obstacle in a critical reassessment of his achievement. To my mind, in these days of incredible artistic conformity, it is more important than ever to examine Sutherland's unique achievement.
urne opinion JOHN KEANE
SOMEONE ASKED ME the other day whether reviews of my shows made any difference to me, and, after a moment's thought, I had to say I wish they did - I can't actually remember the last time there was a review in anything other than the local press, or an ill-informed paragraph in Time Out, if ! was lucky. This is a situation that was highlighted last year, much to my annoyance (and inflating the chip on my shoulder to considerable proportions) when a touring show in five public venues, a museum retrospective and a private gallery show, failed to entice a single critic out his box. I unburdened my outrage in a letter to The Guardian, complaining of the herd instinct of the critics as exemplified by the saturation coverage of a particularly mediocre Tate Britain show featuring the usual suspects. I was surprised a few days later to receive a letter from a critic on a national newspaper with whom my sentiments, particularly regarding the show in question, had struck a chord. He had at first refused to review this show but it was his· arts editor who had insisted. He declared that it wasn't the editor's opinion the show was worth reviewing, it was simply a social fact.
Graham Sutherland Somerset Maugham 1949 oil on canvas (©Tate)
his lifelong study of metamorphosis and his fascination with organic forms whose con torted shapes reflect the struggle of every liv ing thing to withstand the violent forces of nature. During the period, he produced nu merous works on a paper, whose over wrought surfaces of harsh but eloquent char coal line and acidic yet engaging tones in gouache convey a feeling of struggle and survival. One of Sutherland's most important paint ings, Entrance to a Lane ( 1 939), is a bril liant composition in green and yellow, with passages of thick black paint and bold ges tura! markings. The canvas suggests great distances and an intense play oflight, all the while emphasizing the purely abstract quali ties of its densely textured surface. Antici pating Ab Ex and art informe/, the painting, in the Tate's collection, is a key work in the development of modern British art. During World War II, Sutherland's friend and patron Kennetb Clark, then director of the National Gallery, appointed Sutherland to
document the war as an official war artist, along with Henry Moore and Paul Nasb. Stunningly relevant to the current climate of violence and fear in the world today, Sutherland's war-time drawings and water colors are vivid depictions of destruction, bombsites and shelters that evoke the terror of the Blitz. Yet, as the numerous fine ex amples in the Dulwich show reveal, they are ,J
uncompromisingly experimental in ap proach. Sutherland's distinctive, deliberately faltering line and harsh color schemes are instrumental in conveying the war's horror as well as a sense of personal angst. After the war, Sutherland began to spend more time in the south of France, traveling with his wife and their then close friend Francis Bacon. Sutherland met Picasso and Matisse in this period, and visits to their stu dios had a direct impact on his work. In char acteristic Sutherland paintings of the time, such as Pink Vine Pergola ( 1 947), his pal ette is brighter than previously, the paint han dling is looser and the imagery, which still
And so it is with the Turner Prize, the annual art event for which the media is but blotting paper. I wrote a piece for the Independent on Sunday a few years ago which was critical
Graham Sutherland Gorse on a Sea Wall
1939 oil on canvas (©Ulster Museum B elfast)
Adding to the problem of Sutherland's late work is the fact that most of the large, lush paintings that he produced after 1 9 5 5 were acquired en masse by several ultra-wealthy Sutherland admirers in France and Italy who were determined to cover the walls of their villas with his canvases. Many of Sutherland's important late paintings, some of which are among the best of his career, have never been shown in England, and his critical reputation in the U.K. has suffered as a result. The enormous collection of post war Sutherland works assembled by the Ital ian industrialist and filmmaker Pier Paolo Ruggerini, for instance, contains numerous key pieces that are almost never loaned for public exhibitions. While shows like the re cent Dulwich exhibition have been successful in restoring Sutherland's early work to its proper place among Britain's most important contributions to the development of modernist painting, the critical perception of the artist's later efforts would be vastly improved if some ofthe works held in key collections abroad were shown in England today. Hopefully, such a comprehensive Sutherland exhibition is nottoo far off in the future.. David Ebony is associate managing editor of Art in
America. 1) These exhibitions reviewed in Art in America, Jan. 2004, pp 42-47. 2) Graham Sutherland: Landscapes, War Scenes, Portraits 1924-1950, at the Dulwich Picture
Gallery, June 15-Sept. 25, 2005. The show was accompanied by a 176-page catalogue featuring an essay by the curator, Martin Hammer.
nominations are considered and that this year one had even found its way onto the shortlist (since I called as a friend and not as a hard nosed investigative j ournalist I fought shy of trying to establish which artist this is). The juror also claimed that the Turner is not so different in the sense that there are plenty of other art world awards that receive media attention, like the John Moores Prize and the BP Portrait Award (each of which, incidentally, are selected from open submission). But even if we accept in good faith the integrity of the shortlisting procedure, it still would be disingenuous to suggest that any other award enj oys the profile of the Turner, which can claim two media sponsors, The Guardian and Channel
4, before it has even started.
Our conversation left me feeling that maybe they do as good a job as they can, under the circumstances, and my quibbles can be dismissed as merely the cantankerous carping of the disenfranchised. Certainly the art establishment as personified by the Turner has always induced in me a sense of disenfranchisement (not because I don't enjoy some of the work it promotes - I do) and I have survived and o c casionally flourished in spite of it rather than because of it. So, rather perversely, in 2002, I wrote to Sir Nicbolas S e rota, outlining my misgivings and offering my own services as
of what I thought of as an opaque and tendentious exercise, manipulated from the top by the selection of a jury who will come up with a selection of artists free of any surprises. When asked to write a piece about the prize here, I imagined that that it would pretty much be a rehash of the same view.
a juror, pointing out that the Booker always has an author, the Mercury has musicians, why no artist for the Turner? His reply, naturally, declined my offer, and indicated to me the key fact that the general public probably don't perceive about the prize: since
However, since it turned out that one of this year's jurors is someone I know, I felt I ought to put a few questions regarding the misgivings I had aired before. On the whole I ' m fed up with complaining about the Turner, (particularly when the chief reason,
Art, it has never concealed the fact that it's
if!' m honest, is that I have never myselfbeen nominated - thankfully now I am too old) but I wanted to run past this juror the questions regarding the rigour and comprehensiveness of the shortlisting procedure. Previously I had compared the Turner with the Man Booker selection, which I believe to be pretty rigorous under the circumstances. The Turner, by
be an acknowledgement that our single most important institution of state patronage of contemporary art, and the major annual art event with which it is inextricably entwined, are both doing a disservice both to the public and the broad spectrum of art practice in this country. But what ifthey were to do so? Media attention and controversy would be substituted with the worthy and the dull. Such is the world we have made for ourselves.
comparison, seemed flawed. Whilst every Booker juror is obliged to have read or at least tried to have read every submitted novel, the Turnerjury have not all seen every show that those on the shortlist have been nominated for. Not least because some ofthe nominees' shows are in foreign countries, and similarly some ofthe jurors are also from foreign, different countries. Nevertheless my juror was able to make a convincing case of the conscientiousness and thoroughness of the endeavour, but of course art exhibitions by definition are not commodities that can be passed around or absorbed on a train j ourney the way that books can. I was also susp i c i o u s of the public nominations scheme, by which 'anyone' can nominate any artist (under 50 of course), and wondered whether this list is given serious consideration or binned, as rumour has had it. I was assured that indeed the public
it was initiated by the Patrons of the New essentially concerned with new devel opments rather than acting as a survey of all tendencies in c ontemporary art. Never concealed, perhaps, but also never promoted itself as actively partisan. For to do so would
Being critical of the Turner Prize, one is in danger of finding oneselflumped in with the fuddy -duddies or, heaven forbid, the Stuckists, and I have no wish to identify with reactionaries of any description, so let me make that clear. But on the other hand, nor do I think that Marcel Ducbamp was God. Now this is positively my last word on the bloody Turner Prize. We have been told that it's good for all of us, artists and public alike, and we should be grateful for the benefits it has brought. I resolve never to moan about it again, and although I don't think I shall ever learn to love it I suppose we have to accept the Turner Prize for what it is, monolithic, tendentious, ageist and auto cratic. But it's the only one we've got. John Keane is a painter
1 4state
PROFILE
state of art
PET
MOWS
THE BEST OF nMES THE WORST OF nMES IN CONVERSATION WITH
5
:VEN BERKO
Scottish painter Peter Howson is accustomed to making headlines. l ndentified with the rise and fa ll of the so-called new 'Glasgow Boys'; a crash and burn rock star lifestyle; an alleged fall out with Madonna over his use of her image in a series of paintings; depression; addiction and born again Christia n ity. Throughout all Howson kept on producing his powerful, large scale works. As far removed from the post BritArt trends in current British art as you can get, Howson's internationa l star is very much on the rise. I n October Christies achieved a record for the a rtist
(Sisters of Mercy : $186,000) at the very influential
mid-season sales in
Manhattan . Acclaimed British a rt collector, actor, writer and Hollywood movie star STEVEN BERKOFF is a long term admirer . . . PETER HOWSON IS A painter who arises perhaps just once in a generation. This kind of painter seems to draw up from his background and imagination all the elements that are part and parcel of our culture. It is a rare and special talent that seems to dredge up the mulch and muck to create with it a kind of visual record of our time - a mythic route whereby we somehow recognise our world shockingly revealed while at the same time he is describing his own. The two seem to meet and meld. Howson's paintings embrace the world in a loving and yet vice-like grip that is as bold as it is sometime Satanic. It is a lover's fierce embrace where passion can sometimes be seen by the outsider as a form of rape. Many ofhis works in fact deal with thes e physically brutish intertwinings, such as his Bosnian war paintings where the rape of women are like terrible collisions of flesh. He manages, as do all singular artists, to shape or to defme the world according to his own vision which is, of course, apocalyptic. Some painters record our history in the same way as fossils embedded in the rock strata reveal our biological time. Francis Bacon does this and the earlier Lucian Freud - and of course we can learn more about Europe from Magritte, Max Beckman, Otto Dix, Dali, Max Ernst etc than we can from the petty and ugly strifes that pockmark our centuries. What is probably the most remarkable aspect of Howson's work is its sheer variety, its bizarre diversity. He reminds me of a great character actor who is impelled to tell as many stories as possible. So Howson is a compelling storyteller and he seems to wish to tell us the bizarre tales that stir inside his ever fervent mind. In Howso n ' s brutal portrayals of the Bosnian landscape he reminds me of Goya's war paintings. I know of no other British painter even attempting this. Sometimes reminding me o f B osch with h i s incredible allegorical painting The First Step. This
is an astonishing p ainting as Man crawling out of the abyss is weighed down by the demons that possess him.
had a few friends but I was very caught up in painting apocalyptic scenes, I looked at Dtirer and Bosch, people like that... So you admired someone like Diirer or Bosch as craftsmen or for the content, the savagery of the work?
For me the art has always been about getting this mix between technique and idea and content. I ' ve always been interested in this trilogy ofthe things that must work for art. It was only really explained to me a few months ago: the trilogy of ldea (as the main thing), then Technique and then Message. If you don't have those three things there's something lacking in the piece basically.
I was in the Army for a year. For just a year? Still, that's quite a long time.
It's a form of autism which means that social interaction is quite difficult, you have to learn it . . .
To have responsibility taken off you
Madness, I just thought I ' d try it out. Was it a desire to be with a group?
for a bit?
There was a romantic notion as well...
... It's the nature of artists as well. . .. of course. But you were still very
Maybe it is as though the art is almost a silver lining? If you ' re able to channel that or re-address whatever . . .
Did you get on with your Mum and Dad?
Yeah, I did actually.
young weren't you, 18 or 19?
Yeah, I was about 1 8, 1 9, I think. I was in the Infantry and then because they thought I would go onto different things they put me in .the Scottish Divisional Squad. All sorts of mad things in that, but I couldn't handle it. I was too young, so that's why I left. They let me leave. I spent about a year doing other j obs before I went back to Art School. When I returned I still continued being unhappy until one day a new tutor came called Sandy Moffat. I don't know if you've heard of Sandy Moffat? He was going through all my drawings and the drawings were mostly crap; until the last few at the bottom, the ones that I had hidden away. They were the Army drawings. And they were all these things about regimental baths, all the stuff that happens in the Army. He went crazy for
Dad encourage you to paint?
these drawings - so that was the start of me getting, I suppose, more confident. . .
Well, there's always a difficulty with
. . .then when you left Art School, how
Did they encourage you? Did your
fathers, you know? Mothers are different.
did you live then? Did you just start painting or find a dealer?
Steven Berko.lf: So Peter, we'll start
Of course. That's always interesting.
on very basic stuff, simple bread and butter - when you were young did you have any strong influences and who were they?
think I was about four years old when my grandmother gave me my first set of oil paints. I was interested mainly in Renai s s ance art, in Michelangelo, Leonardo, people like that. I was interested in violence even then - in fact I was obsessed by it. I used to do battle scenes - but they weren't like childish drawings they were actually quite detailed. Battles are a little big for kids, people get arrows in their eye; Harold, William the Conqueror are influences. As I went on into teenage years, I became obsessive about things and I thought the world was going to end, apocalyptic even then. I was a recluse. I Peter Howson: I
I had a kind of hate. Like when I was 1 3 , I was sexually interfered with by one of the lodgers you see, so that affected my whole outlook on sex from the start. That was a bad thing to happen but it made me go deeper into my art really. When I was 1 3 I went through Picasso and Cubism and the Blue period, the lot, just copied them. I just fed on things I suppose. I read and read and read, locked myself away and painted all the time. When I left school I went straight into Art School when I was 1 7.
"""
I was in the Royal Fusiliers.
Yeah.
I don't think I know one artist that actually says what is 'normal' in any [kind of] field. So the thing is - I was cut off. I was born into a strange household of lodgers and people like that, and discipline, a very strict religious upbringing to some extent.
with an uncommon passion. By doing so they enable us to see this world with a clearer vision since - like the Greek myths - they tell us something more than the subject first reveals.
How long did you join the Army for?
What's Asperger's Syndrome?
Howson touches us in a way that few painters are able to do today, since there is something in our own psyche that must respond to his work, that finds some echo
of anguish that is shared with other
clue. They were asking me to do things like collages and cut out shapes - things like that - I wanted to do narrative paintings, so I left. I failed First year at Art School! Then I joined the Army and after that I worked at a supermarket as a storeman.
What made you go into the Army?
Well I think there' s a very thin line between autism and artistic people; I think everyone's got a form of it, but artists defmitely.
creative artists. These souls seem to be possessed of a drive to express the world
than I was anyway. They didn't have a
Diirer's drawings and woodcuts really affected me when I was very young. When I was young I felt odd, it's been explained to me now because I've got Asperger's Syndrome . . .
So painters like Howson are very important to us since these people are the brief witnesses of our time and to be valued. Since without such artists we may get swamped in a plethora of superficial junk spewed out to satisfy an unending taste for mindless innovation and decadent trivia.
in our own primitive past. Those who don't, or can't, may have been able to shut off or tighten the tap that flows from the unconscious and may well wish it that way. Sometimes I like to think that there is a common link, a theme, or even a well
WINTER 2005
No, again I got into difficulties with money and things like that. In F eltham, in London, a workers community centre asked me to do a 1 00 foot long mural. They weren't going to pay me but they said they'd pay for my materials, so I did it and signed on as well. The mural, which I think has been destroyed now, was the first time I'd done the really big muscly figures. Where did you get the idea to not only describe the muscularity of the figures, but to give a dynamic rendering of the sub-class, the down-and-outs, the
So in a way you were privileged. 1
hobos?
I was privileged to get in, yeah. It's a long story and I don't want to go into it too much, but the Art School didn't work out because I thought the tutors were worse
Something happened to me in the Army, I think. I was never that interested before. I was interested in Apocalyptic things b e fore, maybe, but never in the
ďż˝
state 1 5
state of art WINTER 2005 Underclass so much. Certainly in the Army something happened to me. When I moved to work in Gallowgate as well, because that's where all the down-and outs are in Glasgow, and the prostitutes and the drug addicts and all that. You get bad things happen there . . . . . . a n d they always have the m ost interesting
.•.
.. .it's brilliant, yeah, it's great. I mean: these people are real people, that's the thing. I met some brilliant people there, that's where I discovered you could make something heroic out of it. Gallowgate in Glasgow is an amazing place really. I enjoyed working with. . . I got interested in . . . football hooligans ! There ' s something about the way that they dance and the way that they fight. Well, that Working Class energy, there's a . . .
. . .a creativity . . . .. .it is, whether it's boxing or whether it's football, there's a certain dynamic.
People don't understand it, you see a lot of people don't have a clue. They don't know why that is. Theyjust think ofthese people as being scum basically and they can be so wrong about them. There is that tremendous energy. Well, certain painters focused in on that didn't they? Like Lautrec or Van Gogh, or even writers like Wait Whitman saw the energy of the Com mon Man, and lovingiy described their limbs and the muscles. And Eugene
certainly used that ea rthy, m a d
O'Neill's Hairy Ape of course.
maelstrom of energy. You mentioned
Which is amazing actually, that's a great play and when you mentioned it . . . I went out and bought it and it struck a chord, because I knew what you were talking about.
more mature, were there any more
The Hero by Diirer, but as you became modern painters, like 19th century painters, that you admired?
Yeah, Gericault and Delacroix, I liked Courbet as well.
The Hairy Ape. Did you ever like the German School,
Yeah, because there's a monumentality about it. Remember there's a painting I did called The Last OfEngland? I think basically thes e p eople are real in comparison to the people who generally hang about the Art world, you kno�? Yeah, that's right, they are. But in a way you sought to make them more so, to celebrate their energy and also to give them a certain platform, so they're not j ust scum andj ustyobos
"'
.•.
I don't like them that way, no, I give them the dignity, there is a dignity there. In my flat in Glasgow you can hear these drunken howls and noises in the street but in a way I always think these people are nearer to salvation than the suburban Middle C l a s s . . . because they ' re desperate, they want it, you know?
Expressionists like Otto Dix?
Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, people like that? Fantastic. Did they, in their time, get the response that they deserved? Did it take a while?
Germany in that period.
Some of the power and the passion behind their work are amazing, that's where I got. . . I'm always to-ing and fro ing between tightness and painting, tight technique and brashness as well. I can do a painting in two or three days - or I could spend six months doing one. I'm always caught between; it depends on the subject formula. The painting that you've got round the corner there, Crusader, well it was done in a very short period of time and it was done in a mad frenzy of activity. Arid then there's the painting I've just done, it's taken about three or four months - a different kind of thing altogether.
I don't know the history of these...
I think they did. There's a difference between Beckmann and Dix. Beckmann gave people a definite dignity, whereas Dix saw it with a complete cynicism and a sort of hatred almost. They're still
You seem to relate a lot to the European painters - they define a period, they give the period a soul, just as great writers do.
I think you've got to do that.
I was thinking who else . . . ? The Renaissance painters? Did they use the . Common Man? For models certainly...
brilliant artists but they just saw life differently. I think Beckmann was a lot more hopeful; he was very prophetic as well because he saw the Nazis coming in his incredible paintings - he did Mussolini hanging upside down well before the war even started. I was interested in German Expressionism, definitely, but it was Sandy Moffat who encouraged me. He told me about Otto Dix and people like that.
... Yes, yes.
They're powerful - also what I find is
among the curators, it seems they've
that they define a p e riod. These
lost the plot rather. We don't sense that Britart is even interested in the
Artists like Bosch and Brueghel
Yes, and I think you define a period. When people look at England in the ' 80s and ' 90s, then you, in a way, symbolise that period.
There are only a few people who recognise that though. Certainly the museum curators don't recognise it. There seems to be a blind spot. I think there's a blind spot everywhere
pa inters m a ke y o u t h i n k a b o ut
Peter Howson Th e First Step 2000
oil on canvas 180 x 214 ems
environment or how we're living, they're interested in the concepts. What is your feeling regarding the contemporary British art, is there anybody there to admire?
No. I don't think there's anyone at all actually. I can't think of anyone. I don't think there's one Britart artist that is any good, I don't think they're any good at all. I think they're con men actually. Clever people like Charles Saatchi and Jay Jopling brought on Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin -they started the whole thing up. The whole meaning of Art has gone because ofthe lack ofan absolute: what's good and what's bad? If you don't know . . . I can't tell if Damien Hirst's work is good or bad, you see, because there's no defining thing there to test whether it's good or bad. The whole question of Art has become too misty for me. Whereas I know what I'm doing. I can say ifl do a painting ' That's a good painting' or 'It's a bad painting' . If you look back in 50 years on this period, people will see it as a bad one for Art. I think they see this already.
They' ll also see it in television and theatre and cinema as well, they' ll see it in all sorts of areas . . . You would think that a curator, say of the Tate, would have more insight than
1 6state
state of art
we do yet they're taken in by it. I see
is a gimmick really. If you showed their
some of the worst perpetrators are
art to Gericault or Courbet or someone like that, they' d laugh. I think Art also has become too mixed. Science is mixing
praised by critics and I think 'Is there something we are missing?' What is going on?
I don't understand, I'm trying to put my fmger on it, the only thing I could say there is this whole lack of passion. The critics actually don't know anything, they don't actually seem to know what they're talking about. There are people like Andrew Graham-Dixon that do know about Art he writes brilliantly about old ,
artists and yet when it c o m e s to contemporary Art they don't have a clue. Waldemar Januszczak, for example, I don't know where he stands. I don't know
where any of these people stand, they don't seem to have any views about what's good or bad. The Tate gallery owns six of my pieces and they've never ever hung any of them - so what's the reason for that? They've got a Bosnian painting, a big one, and they've never hung it and I don't understand why. Maybe someone will come along in five years, ten years; maybe Britart will be fmished. I don't know what you think about Lucian Freud and people like that; they're the artists that have survived. To me, Lucian Freud is still just an academic painter who doesn't actually have imagination. Artists have to have imagination. Lucian Freud can't paint anything that he doesn't see in front ofhim. I think he's a great technician and all that, a great academic artist, but when you see his portraits of people, there's a kind of emptiness, there's no heart there. The way I paint is instinctive a lot of the time. It is also full in-yer-face which modern critics can't stand, they can't write twaddle about in-yer-face paintings. I also notice a lot of artists now who are very successful, they are swingers; you read a b o u t them in s o ciety columns. Bizarre!
It's not even bohemianism any more, it's total Establishment, hanging out with fashion models and things like that. Going to the best parties and being seen in the Press in the right places. It's not even like Francis Bacon's time with the C o lony Room - a different thing altogether. If the artist's life becomes more important than the art then we've had it really. That's the thing. I mean, an artist is going to be interesting anyway, but if pers onality becomes more important than the art we're in trouble. Absolutely. So bow do you explain Gilbert and George's work? They seem to have been accepted. And in Europe, hugely accepted.
How do I see them? Again, I see them as con men. Their life and their . . . they are the art really and yet their art isn't any good, you know, ultimately. Ultimately, foi: me, if you're inspired by something, you have to be able to convey it in a technique and a craft. To j ust take photographs and re-arrange big huge prints, it doesn't work, it's not strong enough. The Tate are taken in by it.
Totally taken in. It's very sad actually. It
WI NTER 2005
with Art and theatre and performance and television, and it's all become too . . . There 's no such thing as ' p ainting' anymore. Painting will come back because there's no computer or camera that can produce an oil painting. I think it is coming back. When there was the fire at MoMart's warehouse, people were sayin g ' Ob, there is a
God!'. It was very cruel. For paintings
to be destroyed and the reaction of people is to have glee is not natural. The Working Class love property, they love paintings, they like their things, they wouldn't have glee unless they felt there was something that was fundamentally decadent.
It's called Truth, they recognised the Truth you see. The thing is the Working C lass has always been completely underestimated by the Arty Squad and it's critics. Art today has become more
elitist than at any other time in some ways
Is there any other country that has this weird phenomenon that is Britart? Is there a New York Art, or is there a Paris or a Berlin Art? Do you think it's j ust something that applies to England in some peculiar way?
I think New York's just as bad and Los Angeles is bad. There are great artists . out there and it will take a long, long time for them to come through. I think in a few years time . . . I mean S aatchi 's dumping his c o l l e ction and h e ' s apparently going back to painting. It's not
)
state 1 7
state of art WINTER 2005 very good painting but at least it' s painting. And I think Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin will be totally unheard of in a few years, they ' ll j ust be like abhorations really. This is a difficult period for an artist to survive as well. For myself, I've got my collectors and I've got people who are interested in me- I don't need the museums. I ' d love the museums to be interested because then the wider public would get to see my work. You are in museums, but you need to
be more in the London museums?
But even in Scotland now, the museums aren ' t buying my work anymore. Scotland's behind London actually, I mean, London's starting to get back into painting but Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Funnily enough, I wrote a play many
It's funny because I don't own any of my
years ago which they performed in
own paintings. I don't keep any because I feel as if, once I've done them, I send them out into the world to try and help people. I don't mean that in a pious way because people either love my work or they detest it! Which is great because it means you don't get that apathy; the
prison and the prisoners said this was the first time they'd really managed to be able to express themselves and they felt healthier for it. And then I had a letter from Jimmy Boyle who was at Barlinnie Gaol and he says it was the
Your last collection was very positively
play East that helped him, kept him
reviewed. Are there any critics that
going, and I thought 'This is amazing!'
have got it in for you?
Oh God, yeah, Adrian Searle ! !
Most of the people that I 've met that are involved in gangsterism know that
whole Britart thing is based on apathy, it's based on intellectual chatterings. I ' d rather have someone that hates my work than just is apathetic. The Arts Council, whenever they come into the studio, they never say anything about the paintings, they never make any comment about them . They never go ' C or, that ' s fantastic ! ' o r ' I hate that ! ' . They' re always so guarded about what they feel. It's as if they don't want their true emotions to come out. And also maybe they're frightened of not being thought intelligent, in case they back the wrong horse!
That's true, that's true. Well, that's very, very interesting bow it feels to the ordinary man in the street, which is a thing that Art should do and what modern Britart doesn' do at all. Yo u r output is q u ite phenomenal, so your energy must be quite phenomenal.
Yeah, I've got a lot of it. Do you run out of ideas?
No, I never run out of ideas, never. The difficulty is to choose the best ideas flowing into me . . . ...d o you just get u p in the morning and sketch it out first?
Yeah, I get up in the middle of the night and sketch it out. I draw all the time and I'm like a volcano, I just erupt, and some of it is good and some of isn't. I have to just keep on producing and the funny thing about the ideas . . . they come from inside you, obviously, from your brain and from your heart, but they also come from outside. I can feel that energy coming from God, that's why I believe in God because I can feel an energy. Now that might be an abhorrence, or some people might say 'How can that be?' but I believe it! Why not? So you feel yourself to be like a medium for energy coming in . . .
. . . yeah, exactly ! I t comes i n at the funniest times, it normally comes in when I'm really low, you know? So I get this
above Peter Howson 2 Become 1 1997 oil on canvas 152.5 x 122 ems
top left Peter Howson Crusader 2001 oil on canvas 214 x 153 ems
left Peter Howson Last of England 1992 oil on canvas 122 x 153 ems
So do you still rely o n good reviews to sell or not any more?
No. The first year or two you have to get reviews but not anymore. The news papers are interested in me anyway, whatever I do. I don't get written about by Art critics, I get written about by j ournalists. They're interested in the bad things more than the Art! I get a lot of letters from prisoners who love the work, there's something there that really means something to them.
they're bad. They know that they need help. It means that when they see a painting it moves them.
energy that rejuvenates me. The only way to get inspiration really for me is to work, you know, work through it. You don't sit in a chair and suddenly . . . . ..what happened when you used to ge
I'm not sure where I first saw your
pissed?
work but I think it was at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith in ' 94, and there were these huge canvasses and
Well, bad ideas actually. No, the ideas weren't good.
very stylised powerful figures. I think what your work tends to do, more for
What was your work like then? Did
people like me, it gives us a little bit of connection so we can see our faces in
you manage to sustain your painting?
that, in a way, we can get hope even.
I was able to drink and take drugs and
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1 Sstate
state of art WI NTER 2005
then work right through the day even 'til four in the morning - have an hours sleep and then get back to work or whatever. I went through these periods but it took it out of me physically and mentally I got brain damage.
even use computers now because I ' d soon b e in the Clink for i t - anything that's dark draws me. The whole sexual thing
•..
you use it to
a great d r a m a tic effect in your paintings since some of them are
You'd made a success of your art, you
highly sexual.
were already being bought around the world, so why would you want to d a m age the thing that was m ost
I do use it all the time. I've done a few of them actually, thatkind ofthing, women . . .
precious . . .
Destroy it, I think. Just destroy,
destroy
all the time. There was something else, not just that, there is something else there. Did you think 'Well I can paint easily' therefore I can drink and take drugs and it won't affect me?
I think I drank and drugged because I enjoyed drink and drugs. Well Francis ·Bacon, he drank every day of his life that he painted
••.
. . .there comes a time when you have to stop it though, you know. I stopped it and I haven't drunk for 5/6 years now, but I'm not counting. The thing is, my ideas are coming stronger now because of it. I certainly don't have so many depressions now. But the depressions are good for you, you see, that's the thing. Ifyou don't have them then you don't have the tension . . . They can be a friend to you in a way, pulling you back, making you focus inwards.
But
a p a rt
from
the
When you think of the imagination,
But they also get upset about so many
when you ' re thinking of someone
things; anything seems to trigger it, a
weird one . . .
like
painting or a book by Salman Rushdie.
That's a strange one yeah . . . it's quite powerful, it took quite a long time to do but it's still got that kind of energy about it. The sex thing interests me, you see, because I've always had a problem with it and I think it goes back to my childhood. Because I was abused by a woman I've been taking it out on them ever since. It's only recently that I've started to understand women more and
love them in a good way. I think it's also a problem that is fundamental to being human. It's also fundamental to my belief in God in that there's this dichotomy
between sex and spirituality. It's
that
Protestant
S cottish
puritanical upbringing . . .
But the Catholics have got it too! You know, you can totally accept it and live the life, or you can completely shut it out - then you become even more perverted in some ways because you're shutting out the thing. So somehow you've got to understand and try and just deal with it.
depression, which may be the common Sometimes when I look at painters, I
any
or
sometimes think that painting is also
abhorrences or obsessions that you
a good opportunity to get close to sex.
suffer or that can impede your work
Maybe I ' m j ust a plebeian - I see
or does it help?
L u cian
m ental
hang-ups
I think probably the biggest problem I've
you fmd there is not very nice a lot of the time - but it's a j ourney that's amazing.
moment. I think the more that our life in the West is brought out of its apathy and its laziness by Islam, the rise oflslam, and the rise of Fundamentalism... the secular world is horrified by this idea that someone can kill themselves and still believe in a God. There's something about the way people think in that Extremism which actually excites me a lot of ways; I don't know what it is, it's something.
The one of American Women is a very
currency for Artists, do you ever have other
If you're an artist, a painter, whatever, in theatre, you can let your imagination go to so many places. At some point you've got to state: 'This is what I believe', you know, nail your colours to the mast. But imagination is a funny thing, you can go so deep into the sub-conscious and what
Freud
and
he's
always
painting women with their legs open. It's an opportunity to spend hours just
had in my life which is debilitating and soul destroying is pornography and lust - things like that - which still get to me
staring at women. Of course its 'Art',
and every now and then I ' ll say 'Right, I have to stop what I'm doing ' . But it still draws me, so it's a discipline thing. I'm not trying to say I'm angelic or anything like that. I'm being honest - I cannot
in, an opportunism?
and it's a human body, but sometimes I think is there a lustfulness that creeps
Yeah, defmitely. l've been thinking about imagination and how free you can be. I mean, imagination can let you run riot.
..•
was it Bosch who painted the
Garden of Earthly Delights? . . . I mean
Has your work ever upset religious
there's imagination and pornography,
groups?
everything. Dreams and fantasy,
I could well do, yeah.
Yeah, all the time, Jewish, Christian, Croatian. I even got death threats from Croatians when I did the Rape painting, because they said 'We don't do that' .
What's the next for you? What kind
Most people admire thatRape painting.
everything in that Do you see yourself maybe going one day towards that area?
of things do you have in mind for your next works?
The modern thing is that to be an artist you've got to totally come up with a new gimmick every time you have an exhibition - well why not just get better at what you do? So that's what I want to do, I want to get better. Subject matter, I don't know, I don't know what I'm going to do. I intended to do Jacob wrestling with the Angel. There are so many of those biblical stories which inspired the Renaissance
Yeah, it's a powerful painting. You see rape has always been a subject in Art that's been glamorised. Where as that painting over there, Two Become One it's powerful as well. [refe"ing to the Howson
work Steven Berkoff bought of the rape of a Muslim woman] Very much so. It doesn't glamorise it at all, but what it does, it sets it up.
I think what's interesting about life is the contradictions in life, you know? That there's nothing that you can ever say is . . .
painters, didn' t they? I think they're wonderful.
. . . the Truth?
I too think they're good. A lot of people say 'Keep away from it, keep away from
. . . exactly, that it's so very contradictory. That the biggest lies are the half-truths you know?
it' but the Bible is an amazing book for getting inspiration, it's absolutely tremendous. The thing is you can add your own, not to say change, the stories, but you can still make them part oftoday as well! They can be timeless. I had an idea of doing . . . something struck me about the London bombings . . . it was that in the Tube there were people praying. I was thinking about the carnage in London - I saw some brilliant photographs from newspapers - and I thought about doing a drama. The world is an incredibly interesting and apocalyptic place at the
Is work selling enough that you can keep yourself in the manner in which you want? You must be rich now.
No, not rich at all! The thing is I was half a million quid in debt a few years ago. I spent all my money and I wasted it on drink, drugs, women, whatever, but I'm coming round. I've paid it off, I never went bankrupt. I paid it off, struggling. Now I've actually got a wee bit.
London Paris New York
HoxtonS (Jl uare . com/events I
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More than 2000 Art Galleries contributing Listings of Art Events
state 1 9
state of art WI NTER 2005 DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY and advertising have a lot to answer for. You can hear it when you go round a smart exhibition in town. Say, the Whitechapel Open, or a Gilbert and George show. At first, people admire the artwork on
EUROSTATE red november
upon wholesale image manipulation which goes a bit further than j ust setting
display. Then they stand back and start grumbling, criticising it for being digitally manipulated.
Hand Made in Somewhere Cold
Now that we all have our Epson printers at home, our Olympus digital cameras and our phones - which can take out red eye, put in sepia and generally waggle about with the image for, well, as long as we have the patience - the veracity of artworks which may use the same techniques are themselves in doubt. The design guru Step hen Bayley says this is why Tate Modern has acquired the status of a cathedral, since in Tate Modern reside artworks of undoubted prov enance, singularity and realness, which endows them with iconic status. Rather like splinters of the True Cross, the artwork in Tate Modern declares that our contemporary gods have indeed been
report ROSIE MILLARD
present in the creation of the work. Lucian Freud Woz Ere, as was Monet, Richard Long and the rest of them. This month I went to Moscow, to interview some contemporary artists before a collective retrospective showing highlights of the last I 0 years in Russian art: Moscow Breakthrough1 opens on London's South Bank. There, they have a term for 'real' works of art. They say it has been 'made on the knee', as if the artwork in question was a knitted blanket made by the guttering light of tallow candles. In the case of artist Leonid Tishkov, whose pieces include cloth blankets knitted from strips of family clothing, the saying is probably quite near to the truth. But the rest ofhis oevre, which includes red stuffed feet with faces (which he calls Dabloids), and hand-drawn cartoons also have the weight of authenticity. Tishkov's work, which he creates either at his family home in the Urals, or in his studio on the 25th floor of one of Moscow's seemingly endless suburban tower blocks, is a bit like Early YBA. Tracey Emin 's tent, which she obviously
stitched herself, or the first spin paintings by Damien Hirst, which were done with a child's toy on little sheets of A4 paper. Why are these pieces so powerful? Because they were done before the artists concerned became a brand. Tishkov acknowledges the power that the obviously home-made gives to his work. 'Through my Dabloids, you can see the world clearly, like a child.' Like having home-made pickle on your sandwich, rather than a spoonful of Branston's, the taste of something stewed up at home by an individual gives you a bit more to chew on. The 'scandalous' artistic duo, The Blue Noses, a pair of S iberian wags now working in Moscow, have a lot of time for doing their work 'on the knee' . For them, their deliberately home-made films, vandalised posters and scrawled
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It's certainly the case with the artistic group AES&F, a group of Muscovites who produce flawless huge canvases of rather stunned looking children holding weapons, or immaculate youngsters dressed in blindingly white underwear standing on the pavement at Times Square. Think Benetton meets Richard Prince, and you get the idea. Tanya Arzamasova (the A in the group) goes to great length to explain to me how the Times Square photo was achieved; ' We used children from a modelling agency, dressed them all in white and set them up in Times Square. Nothing was digitally manipulated. Everything was for real.' Even a series showing AES&F with slashed throats was
Gosha Ostretson the new Political Art
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•
up a photograph, perhaps artists need to retrench somewhat and remind us of the authenticity of their position.
done by each artist wearing his or her own
:.GP ete Fraser •
Of course, the story of art has always b e en about the image o f reality manipulated in some way; but now that advertising and the media has embarked
tel: email web:
020 7734 0080
info@petefraser.com petefraser.com
artwork is in direct contradiction to the airbrushed, immaculate Official Art which so many artists were bidden to do in the days ofthe Soviet Union. You can see them at the State Tretyakov GaUery; canvas after canvas produced in the Second World War years, showing heroic peasants, noble leaders, dastardly Nazis and so on. 'The position ofthe artists was high,' say The Blue Noses, (separately Viacheslav Mizin and Alexandr Shaburov, but who, like most artistic duos, tend to speak as one). 'That was imposed by the State. Art was grand, and official artists were magnificent. When the Wall came down, it was apparent however that the world was made of small people.' Even though they have a piece in central Moscow's glossy Russian Pop Art exhibition The Blue Noses, have cultivated a deliberately 'unofficial' stance, and therefore produce pieces which are lowly, disrespectful and undoubtedly hand-made. Even when the work i s far more sophisticated and glossy, artists go out of their way to insist that it is pure and undefiled by the tinkering digits of, well, digital. Oleg Kulik, probably the best known contemporary artist in Moscow (largely due to his outrageous performance pieces wherein he apes a dog, naked save for a collar, and bites art critics) has recently produced a series of perfect photographs showing young girls supposedly in pools ofwater. They are very beautiful and mysterious, but Kulik goes to great lengths to show that they were achieved by putting young girls actually in pools of water and pressing the shutter on an old fashioned camera. Alongside the pictures, he exhibits documentary evidence, showing how the photographs were set up, to better corroborate his story.
Oleg Kullk
-
favourite Moscow performer
piece of ' slashed throat' latex. So what does this all add up to? Perhaps its quite a canny move; successful Western contemporary artists wealthy enough to hire their own stable of assistants, do so, and enj oy the sales receipts as their work flies off around the world. Leading Russian contemporary artists however, perhaps mindful that they have arrived rather late on the international market, insist that the marks from their grubby fmgerprints are firmly embedded in the work. Or possibly their insistence on doing everything 'on the knee' is a reaction from spending so long working within the nameless, soulless artistic ambitions ofThe Party. Whatever the reason, this characteristic certainly gives their work a p e r s o nality, a personality which the curse of the unsigned ' limite d e dition ' , the ' authorised workshop' , and the glossy S unday magazine has b l e d out of Western contemporary art, like the effect of a leech on the leg of something living. Rosie Millard is a critic, writer and TV presenter and was BBC Arts correspondent 1995-2004 1) Moscow Breakthrough: Nov 4-18 at Barge house; Nov 19-30 Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. LINKS www.academia-rossica.org
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state of art WI NTER 2005
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BELGRAV E SQUARE IS the home to numerous international embassies. Amidst the decorum and serious affairs of state, the Ambassador's wife, Ursula Matussek, presents a remarkable exam
ple of German initiative at the Residence
Gallery, which she inaugurated within the German Embassy three years ago. The Leipzig Lens, the new photography
and video exhibition, is still in the proc ess of installation and Frau Matussek curiously inspects the work, admitting with a smile that she does not really know herselfwhat will be on display. Although most exhibitions are curated by her, Susanne Altmann from Dresden is the
art outside the Embassy. At last year's Frieze opening she organised in collabo
ration with Anthony Reynolds Gallery and the German Culture Department, a video-streaming of Mark Wallinger's performance
Sleeper in Berlin. It was
screened on ten plasma screens at the
Residence Gallery and attracted numer ous Frieze visitors. Due to this event Mark Wallinger was then invited to Ven ice. She is trying to get in touch with as many German artists in London as pos sible. 'It is quite difficult to track them down. There is no register as such' she says. However she highly enjoys studio visits and to see what the current gen
Her work consisted of rather porno graphic writing and Ursula particularly liked the sculpture. 'I very much hoped she would win, but you are never quite sure what the committee of the Turner
guest curator for this show.
eration is up to.
Prize is really looking for. ' Speaking
Ursula Matussek originally studied paint
We inevitably come to talk about this
Matussek tells of meeting Richard
ing and pedagogy at the Diisseldorf Academy. She tells how Gerhard Rich ter arrived there in 197 1 and she moved
straight into his class, seizing the chance to learn from one of Germany's most im portant painters. In 197 5 she left the Academy and moved with her husband
year's Turn er Prize nominee Gillian Carnegie, who created a shock wave by
being nominated for traditional genre paintings ofstill life and landscape: ' Well this is what Richter did already... ' A nominee she vividly remembers though is Anya Gallaccio from two years ago.
about memorable art encounters, Frau Demarco for the first time in the 1970's
in Edinburgh. Demarco was one of the fi rst to introduce artists from the Diisseldorf Academy such as Joseph Beuys, Palmero and Guenther Uecker
to the British audience. His persistent efforts and strong belief in this respect
to London for the first time. However it was not until later, living in Washington, DC that Frau Matussek thought about or ganising exhibitions. During this time she
her private house, which were celebrated with a big summ er party each year. Now a second time around in London, she was so overwhelmed by the premises at the German Embassy, she felt inspired to
run
exhibitions there on a regular ba
sis. Indeed, the rooms are breathtaking, but at the same time also rather unusual for an art space with the rich decoration and stucco-embellished walls. It took about one year of preparation before she opened the first exhibition, but since then Ursula Matussek can look back at a record of successful shows of museum quality with renowned artists such as Joseph Beuys, Thomas·Florschiitz and most lately the celebrated Saxony artist Eberhardt Havekost. 'Certainly I cannot
organise all these exhibitions by myself' she says. She networks with many galler ies and institutions to make these exhibi tions a success. The Leipzig Lens for ex
private view
Sandra Blow · a view with a room report MARY ROSE BEAUMON"f SAND RA BLOW IS without doubt one of Britain's finest abstract artists and it is fitting that her (unbelievable) 80'h birthday is being celebrated in style with a small exhibition at Tate Britain. Small in number maybe, but the work is magnificent in size and panache. The colours, verdant greens and flamboyant reds, throb and glow off the canvas,
Frau Matussek is also very committed to
Sandra Blow's life has been one of a c onstant s earch for h e r own very particular means ofexpression whi«h has
gramme and realised in close collabora
n
tion with the Goethe Institute.
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lifting the heart with their life-affmning exuberance.
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ample is part of the
D Saxony
Matussek points out, was the
Richter Exhibition at the
Gerhard
Whitechapel
in 1979, initiated by Nicholas Serota. Ursula Matussek says that she very much likes visiting the Serpentine, the Whitechapel and the Tate Modem. Back in Germany, one of her favourite places to go is the
Insel Hombroich near
Diisseldorf. She considers this place as very unusual and something you would not find in England as such. Almost cre ated as a
Gesamtkunstwerk, the visitor
The rehang at late Britain has a room dedicated to
ambitiously got in touch with many lo cal artists and organised exhibitions at
left a remaining impression on her. An other exception in this respect Frau
been extraordinarily consistent,. despite superficial changes of direction. Her concerns have ever been with space and light, with the weight of physical matter, and the need to balance architectonic shapes in a lucid manner. S h e began her art education con ventionally enough at St. Martin 's School of Art, where she was taught all the usual skills of still life, life drawing (one of the models was Quentin Crisp) and portrait· painting, which she was remarkably good at. This was followed by a brief unhappy spell at the Royal
Schools from whose restrictive regime she was rescued by a visit to Italy in the summer of 1947 which opened up for her until then unimagined
Academy
horizons. From the rigours of post-war London, isolated and out of touch with events in Europe, she found herself in an artistic ferment in Rome. Introduced by an acquaintance to the ideas of the great artist-teacher Hans Hoffmann, she became aware of the spatial possibilities of abstract art and colour. She enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, taking leave of absence from the Royal Academy Schools.
Whilst grappling with these n e w possibilities she met Alberto Burri who became her mentor and guide. Burri epitomised the ravages of post-war Europe in his art; using degraded materials such as sacking, even at times burning his canvases. His example and dedication was an inspiration not only to the young Sandra Blow but also to the succeeding Arte Povera generation of Italian artists. However, after a year travelling in Italy and absorbing the glories of Renaissance art with Burri, Blow returned to England in 1949, feeling that she must work out her relationship to the canvas·in the privacy
state of art WINTER 2005
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will fmd an exceptional unison of nature,
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architecture, sculpture, an artist in resi
is the successor in the post will encour
dency program - and a fantastic art col
age a desire to continue with the gallery.
lection, making it overall a unique art ex
Would she establish a gallery at her next
perience. 'It is literally an escape from
destination? She is not quite sure yet - it
the outside world. You pay a one off ad
might be a very different place and situ
mission fee and even get potatoes with
ation. But with so much creativity and
quark at the cafe for free.'
imagination, we can be sure she will come up with a brilliant idea to bring
Finally I want to know what Ursula
German art to the furthest corners of the
Matussek's wishes are for the Residence
world.
Gallery. 'I would love it to be a proper gallery' , she says. 'People really start to take this project seriously now and I hope it will develop further into a space where the British audience can encounter with contemporary German art.' Obviously she will not be around in London for-
Usa Bosse is a writer, a curator and is completing her MA in Curating a t Goldsmiths
The Leipzig Lens is at the Residence Gallery,
to 4 November. Viewing by appointment only. For the Residence Gallery program contact: culture@germa n-embassy.org.uk. ,.,
Sandra Blow - a time to reassess? of her own studio. She did adopt the use of sacking and other rough materials, which she still employs to this day, but her approach was and is altogether more gentle and subtle than Burri's violent abuse of his materials. There is a pleasing circularity in the course of Blow's career. A Londoner born and bred, she has spent nearly all her working life in London, for many years in a wonderful studio in Sydney Close, with the exception of a year in Cornwall in 1 957-58. Now again, for the last ten years, she has returned to Cornwall, specifically St. Ives, where she occupies the studio of the late Karl Weschke. On that first visit she made the
breakthrough painting Cornwall, 1 958, in oil, plaster and sacking on wood. The palette is earthy as if, like Picasso and Braque in the early stages of Cubism, she could not cope with colours as well as dealing with the problems of space. The materials hang like veils across the support, gently ruffied by a non-existent breeze. If this work is a harbinger of things to come in terms of space and the arrangement of its elements, Blow had · still to struggle with the desire to achieve
the marriage of colour with architectonic component parts. This came to triumphant fruition in Green and White,
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1 969, now on view at Tate Britain. Along with many of her contemporaries,
Blow had been knocked out by the exhibition of New York artists at the Tate Gallery in 1 956-57, the last room of which was devoted to the Abstract Expressionists. The exhibition had a transforming effect on many British artists who enthusiastically embraced the notion of abstract colour, space and an increase in size, but it took some while for Blow to assimilate the implications for herself. Green and White was her first really big painting, 1 0' square, in acrylic, ash, charcoal and collage on canvas. Its creation owes a certain amount to chance : she had painted in the broad horizontal band which she stained experimentally with tea and ash from her stove. She then painted in the two vertical white rectangular strips, the narrow channel between them tensely vibrating, and drew the horizontal charcoal lines as a tribute to her friendship with Roger Hilton. The two different greens were then painted in. At this point in the painting's creation a volatile visitor made an 8' vertical slash in the canvas which was, in Blow's words, 'a happy accident
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which made the picture. ' She sewed it together, glued a tall narrow strip of canvas into the gap and painted in a third shade of green. Eureka! Happy accidents are not the norm however, and Blow's paintings and collages are hard-won. She will endlessly shift pieces of canvas and paper around until she gets exactly the right balance. Because they look so right, they seem to be easy, but the energy which informs even the smallest sketch is palpable. The acrylics on canvas with collage which she is exhibiting at Beaux Arts with John Hoyland and Phillip King (until 3'd
Sandra Blow archive photograph c.1979
(deta il) by Saranjeet Walia
December) are shining examples of what in music would be called 'perfect pitch'. There is a clarity and elegance both in the large, blocky Clodgy, 1 997, and in the fine singing lines of L inear Rhapsody, made this year. Line and colour in space are poised in a delicate balance, triumphantly achieved. Mary Rose Beaumont is a teacher, writer and critic
LINKS www.beauxarts london.co.uk www.tate.org.uk/britain
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state of art WINTER 2005
2 2state AS A POET AND MODEST collector of art, I have always been fascinated by
the relation of art and poetry, but it was not until a recent collaboration with the artist John Wright1 that some of the pragmatic principles involved became clear and were thrown into sharp focus. Our themes were the uncertairities and anxieties of everyday life, and we envisioned poems and images that would broadly reflect these concerns. As the proj ect developed, we were seduced by the legacy of early 20'h C entury livres d 'artiste, tho s e sumptuously produced examples o f the printer 's art: the gloriously coloured lithographs, oversize dimensions, heavy art paper, artful bindings, and custom made cases for limited-edition books that helped dealers such as Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler spread the currency of his artists' names - if not to fill his own coffers. We were mindful of the current popularity of livres d 'artiste, such as the recent Jane Eyre by Paula Rego2, as well as limited-edition monographs on artists that incorporate original signed prints or even, in the case ofWilliam Packer's limited edition John Ho u ston3, fifty original watercolours. The images in our book were oil and mixed media paintings scanned and then reproduced by Iris inkj et printing on archival p aper. Objectively speaking, the book was a success - the images were astonishingly faithful to the originals, the book looked gorgeous and sold enough copies to pay for the expense of producing it. And yet I have wondered what would have happened if we'd gone another route and made something more spontaneous, more accessible, less limited, less a livre
Collections of a major library, or relying on reproductions, there is little
opportunity to examine the original editions. But clearly the decision to publish the Caulfield Laforgue in this format was eminently suited to the conception and realization of the work: without doubt it is one of the 20th century's finest examples of the livre
d 'artiste.
A major part of the decision about how to present a contemporary collaboration is working out how many is multiple, and what are the relative costs, which will naturally lead to reviewing the formal and production options. The writers and artists of the Russian Futurist movement combined their talents and resources to produce small books very cheaply, using disparate materials and an
astonishing variety of means : lithography, woodblocks, linocuts, stencil cuts, hectography (an early duplicating process), potato prints, rubber stamps, and watercolour. Though some editions were small and distributed mainly t o fri ends, others were reproduced in editions from fifty to a thousand. Their significance today is summed up by Johanna Drucker, in her fascinating account of the evolution of artist's books : ' This work radically reconceptualizes the book as an artistic form, not a publishing enterprise, not a fme press production, not a portfolio of prints, but a new hybrid form without rules or limits. ' 6 The artists included some of the most prominent of the time (19121 9 1 6), such Nataliya Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Olga Rozanova, and Kazimir Malevich, along with writers
Aleksei
Kruchenykh,
Velimir
Khlebnikov, and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
The publication of a new edition (the fourth) of Tom Phillips's cult classic, A
Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel,
has opened up new possibilities of word
and image combinations. The book's conception, suggested to Phillips by the cut-up techniques of William Burroughs, is to subject pages of a pre existing text, in this case a novel by W. H. Mallock published in 1 892, to an overlay of paint - mainly watercolour and gouache - leaving isolated words and phrases to create what Phillips calls 'a unity of word and image, intertwined as
John Wrlght (above) at work on The Guts of Shadows, and writer Robert Vas Dlas (below)
d 'artiste than a book of art and poetry that people, i.e., book-buying, poetry loving people, could afford, and that would reflect the febrile take on modern life we' d started out with.
in a mediaeval miniature. ' Its zany quality is tempered by its pathos and gnomic but surprisingly apt statements about aesthetics and books and love, which are all the more thought-provoking for being hidden, and then revealed by the artist-as-archaeologist (it's 'a book exhumed from, rather than born out of, another')'.
A Humument is available in the trade
What usually happens with a collaborative book published by an artist and poet is that collectors of the artist's work will buy the book but not readers of the poet's work. That's in the nature of things, you will say: art is more of a
edition and as a number of original prints. Thus Phillips benefits both from the traditional way of marketing prints and from a potentially widely circulated book with exceptionally fme reproductions (all the pages of this new edition have been
go on to publish the work as part of a future c o l le ction. A c o l l aboration between a living artist and a dead writer
There is no reason why, with new print technologies and the modern resources at the artist and writer 's dispos al,
commodity, and certainly a pricier one, than poetry. And, anyway, the poet can
newly reproduced from the originals).
whose work is in the public domain, on the other hand, obviates this concern, as was the case with many ofKahnweiler's books. A contemporary example is Some
affordab l e , more widely circulated multiples ofhigh-quality images and text cannot once again revolutionize ways of creating and seeing.
Poems ofJules Laforgue with Images by Patrick Caulfield4, a splendid livre d 'artiste which appeared in three limited
NOT ES
editions; its 22 silkscreens were printed on Neobond synthetic paper, a heavy plastic-like sheet, which was ideally suited to Caulfield's flat, hard-edged images with their heavy black outlines and brilliant colours. The cool, met iculously wrought prints appear as meditations on objects associated with states of mind or emotions - 'a visual correlative', in Sean O'Brien's words5• The images complement the words and together they create the total effect of a work which, let's remind ourselves, is a book. But, short of fmding the work on exhibition, examining it in the Special
PICVURI WR OTDNG T
1) The Guts of Shadows, Poetry by Robert Vas Dias and Images by John Wright. London, Art First and Permanent Press, 2003. Produced at Pratt Contemporary Art, Sevenoaks, Kent. 2) London, Enitharmon Editions, 2003. 3) Aldershot, Lund Humphries, 2003. 4) London, Petersburg Press, in association
The graphic novel might be the new publishing phenomenon but artists' books have been around for years
with Waddington Galleries, 1973. 5) A Week of Sundays: Jules Laforgue and Patrick Caulfield, in Patrick Caulfie/d: The Poems of Ju/es Laforgue, catalogue of the Arts Council Collection National Touring Exhibition and Hayward Gallery. London 1995
comment ROBERT VAS DIAS
6) The Century of Artist's Books,
second
edition. New York, Granary Books, 2004. 7) London & New York, Thames & Hudson 2005
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AFFAI RS OF STATE
:
BBC World Service, I was almost
cultural politics
h
humbly aware that there might be list
eners in Iran under the mind control of
t
ayatollahs - millions for whom the
freedom to accept or rej ect Islam, to attack it and to speak without hindrance on what is wrong or evil in it, is the most important freedom they lack. And
n----
sculpture God is Great N°2 to go on display. Its reason: bombers were still l o o s e in L ondon after the 7 July Piccadilly Line murders; Latham ' s work might inflame fresh outrage. S o Step h e n D e u c h a r , Tate B ritai n ' s
has happened, they are mistaken.
director, plucked God is Great from a small retrospective of the 84-year old art i s t ' s work. L atham c al l e d h i s decision ' censorship' and 'cowardice ' . Ten days l ater D e uchar and S i r Nicholas Serota led a standing ovation
is the chant of S addam Hussein ' s supporters i n the first Iraq War.
What Latham means (see below) and what the public sees in God is Great are a sub-text to the main question, whether Tate was right or wrong to ban i t . L e t us not m i s take what has happene d : whether for the best of reasons or not, Tate has banned it. A number of critics and a large slice of public opinion, as concerned for free expression as for habeas corpus, has made clear to Tate that it is alarmed at the threat to liberty in any act of ' censorship' . Stephen Deuchar replied in The Guardian that 'running a public gallery is different from writing a rhetorical newspaper column' and that displaying God is Great might be seen as wilfully provocative or as a political act. Indeed Tate had been warned of ' a very high r i s k ' to this e ffe c t . Deuchar implied that grown-up people would have no difficulty in seeing that
�
God is
-i
Great sends a message to artists. It announces : there is a limit, in your comments on religion, beyond which you may not safely go. The comparison is wretched but a similar announcement to novelists came from the men who
for him at a private view. Everyone is confused.
Latham made God is Great in two forms but both show the B ible, the Koran and the Talmud embedded in a vertical sheet of glass, their pages cut and tom. Beneath them is a quartet of black, maybe burned, books. The title
Much history proves that ideas are not laid low by armies but only by other ideas . Art is as powerful a force in spreading new ideas and attitudes as is literature or film. In this sense art, especially conceptual art, is stronger than any Crusading army; stronger than
damage to Latham's freedom to show his work? I fear that if Deuchar and Nick S erota believe that this is all that
Their action in withdrawing
..; 0 "31
British lives at stake, Tate's decision is not easy to defend.
Deuchar apologetically. So is Tate right to imply that it has done nothing of harm here except some short-term
(
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here was Tate in L ondon, b owing remotely t o the c ommand o f the ayatollahs. In these terms, even with
comment GODFR!EY BARKER TATE BRITAIN decided on the 261h S eptember that lives were at stake if it a l l o w e d J o h n L a th a m ' s 1 9 9 1
El
put a fatwa on Salman Rush die 1 5
years ago. Movie-makers were told the same thing by the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004 for his Dutch film about violence against Islamic women. Sir Nlcholas Serota and Davld Deuchar
John Latham God is Great N°2 glass, hardback books, silicon and paper Presented to the Tate by the artist 2003
he did the right thing. But did he? H i s argument is that of Blair on detention without trial. If life and blood
are at risk, freedom must be sacrificed. It is a matter of balance; and on balance life and blood are more important, especially if the threat to freedom is temporary, as Tate and Blair insist it is. ' God is Great will no doubt go on display in the future,' writes Step hen Deuchar, and there's an end to it. I think at one level it is as simple as Deuchar makes out. Britain is at war and in wars down the c e nturi e s , freedom o f speech i s placed under limits (and other freedoms too). Wars produce censors. Horrible; but it is one price among many we pay for victory, to save lives and to limit damage. ' I regret the work i s not o n show, ' says
Looking for Divine intervention at Tate Britain?
What has since happened in the novel is that no one has launched a radical attack on Islam of the ferocity and contempt of The Satanic Verses. Set aside, for the moment, that God is Great is not an attack on Islam at all (Latham has totally different purposes). What will surely follow is a similar caution among artists. A sizeable part of public opinion will
any nuclear bomb. Tate, however, has told artists to be careful. It did not mean to but it did not think about it. In that sense this tiny decision has altered the nature of art in years ahead, and possibly altered history.
What is absurd i s that p o o r John Latham never attacked Islam in the first place. His work for 5 0 years has been
cheer. Many people are disgusted by blasphemy and by a failure of respect for beliefs held by millions. Many believe that the world's religions are entitled to freedom from derision - not least those who subscribe to multi culturalism and the equality of all belief systems. Unfortunately, history
about books. He has burned them, split them, shredded them, at all times focussed on their power for good or ill.
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He appears to argue that sacred books ultimately derive from a universal culture and that all religious teaching comes from the same source. His is a m e ssage of unity and hop e . He i s rightly fur i o u s a t h a v i n g b e e n sacrificed on the altar o f intolerance.
shows that the world's religions have as often acted as a force for tyranny as a force for enlightenment.
The freedom to question the Spanish Inquisition, Oliver Cromwell and 2 1 51 century Islam i s indivisible. All were or are tyrannies and denials of human right s . When I d i s c u s s e d Tat e ' s removal o f John Latham's work on the
Godfrey Barker is a critic, authority o n the art market and contributor to Art+Auction, Die Welt, the Wall Street Journal amongst others
P RATT C O N T E M PO RA RY ART PRATT E D I T I O N S
Printers, Publishers and Dealers London Artists Book Fair I CA, Nash House, The Mal l , London 25 - 27 November, 2005.
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CLARE HENRY IN NEW YORK
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AS THE SONG SAYS, you can't take it with you when you go ! But while storybook heroes can be transformed by inheritance or legacies, in real life, estates are often a huge, unsought responsibility.
condition of her father's drawings 'It's embarrassing. I've spent literally years trying to sort them out. As to my mother's work (painter Sally Avery) that's still in a mess.' But she embraces the responsibility. 'I take great joy in it, it's a pleasure. '
Never more so than when an artist dies, leaving widow or companion to tackle the task of archival documentation, dispersal, storage or sale. A recent Rutgers b o o k : Artists ' E s tates : R e ptutations in Trust by Magda Salvesen and Diane Cou�ineau high lights this overlooked side of art. The book has 3 0 personal interviews with those entrusted with the job (what one calls ' a millstone round the neck') of caring for the work of artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, David S m ith and Richard
Money i s a factor: money to curate and care for the work, for catalogues, money for exhibitions, cons ervation, etc. Esteban Vicente's widow says flatly,
'Estates sack dealers, trustees can get rid
of dedicated Foundation directors and sometimes dealers dump estates! ' says Salvesen. 'Moreover lawyers can quif after a decade. The family inherit a job for life . ' Gregory Gillespie's widow Peggy, searching for a gallery, found
some dealers didn't even ring back, but is now happy with Salander-O'Reilly. There are of course nightmare heirs. For 20 years, Clyfford Still's widow refused
The book highlights different strands of often convoluted processes involving
relatives, lawyers, dealers or foundations. Legatees relate the trials and tribulations of muddling through with 'no slides, no inventory, no written records either.'
it away, or burn it.' Needless to say she did neither, spending two y ears photographing all his pictures until,
practically finished, she stopped, burned out. 'I couldn't deal with it anymore.' Fairfield Porter's widow, Anne, did give it away - to the Parrish Museum on Long Island. ' Yes, it was a cop-out. But I know the pictures are safe . ' What about her five children's inheritance?
'My children are remarkably ungreedy! They never gave a thought to what they could make from selling their father's paintings. ' She does worry about de accession ing (the bane o f all benefactors) and resents having to pay taxes, twice. ' The IRS said the paintings had been under-appraised, so they charged interest. ' She suggests a class action on taxes by all widows. '"I do admire Kate Rothko for challenging her father's gallery. '
S cottish painter, Donald Bain, was notoriously difficult, with far-reaching results. His long-suffering widow was so scunnered with the whole business that she destroyed his papers and sent all his ,::::
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work to auction.
Happily these cases are rare. Most relatives are loyal to a fault. March Av ery admits to the muddle and
The Lichtenstein Foundation is exemplary in encouraging exhibitions, maj or l o ans and serious research. Founded in 1 999 by his widow Dorothy in his former studio building, over the last 5 years, 5 staff have facilitated 42 international museum exhibitions, 1 6 commercial shows and hundreds of long term loans in the US and Europ e . Cassandra Lozano, managing director, worked with Lichtenstein as studio manager for 8 years till his death in 1 997 and continues to oversee a panoply of projects. This Foundation started with around $ 1 0 million endowment. 'The income meets about half our operating expenses. The rest are cheque-written
from the estate. '
& Nash represent Lichtenstein. They gained their expertise with the De Kooning e state - ' a nightmare, no planning, a mess,' with $300,000,000 worth of works on which the estate paid $ 1 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 tax.
Mitchell Innes
Lichtenstein worked hard, from 10 to 6pm each day, producing about 5000 unique works. There are Fall(Autumn) shows in New York, Brazil, Austria, Spain, Seattle, Las Vegas, Portland. A genuine desire to help anyone interested in the artist, from students to curators, has served them well. The Foundation recently initiated a Council of Artist Foundations to help others dealing with estate problems. There are about 45 foundations in the US, ranging from Albers to Warhol, Demuth to Calder.
Diebenkom. It makes fascinating reading, and should give artists pause for thought.
The most radical route is the one suggested by Herman Cherry to his wife Regina, 'Make a big bonfire. Give
triangulating everything. We tape people who knew Roy and then, Rashomon-like, fmd the truth is someplace in the middle.'
Roy Llchtensteln Cosmology 1978 Oil and Magna on ca nvas
'Caste//i offered me a bea utiful Lichtenstein - for nothing, ' recounts collector and writer B.
H . Friedman. Why ? Because it
would have hung with his Pollock, Motherwell and Giacometti nearby. ' Don't b e naiv e . It all depends on money. ' Keeping an artist in the public eye is expensive, yet vital. Says art lawyer Christopher Schwabacher, ' Some museums won't take works unless there's market interest. On the other hand, museum exhibitions develop sales. That's why we recommend clients to give works to significant museums and then try to get art history professors writing about the artist.'
to loan any works, meanwhile storing rolled canvases in a barn.
Dealers do a similar thing. ' Castelli offered me a beautiful Lichtenstein - for nothing,' recounts collector/writer B. H .Friedman. Why? Because it would have hung with his Pollock, Motherwell
Salvesen, herselfthe widow of American abstract expressionist Jon Schueler, asks
and Giacometti nearby. 'Castelli did wonderful things for his artists in terms of building up prices.'
Dealers interviewed include Jeffrey
Bergen ofACA Galleries who represent
1 7 estates, the most frustrating that of
Rom are B e a r d e n . After y e ars of
involvement, when the wife died in 1 996 all was inherited by her seven sisters and 45 nieces and nephews who ' stopped everything', even the catalogue raisonne.
a pertinent question - do widows shape myths? - while also quoting art historian Lloyd Goodrich, 'Never believe the
widow or listen to the children! ' . Jack Cowart, Lichtenstein Foundation director comments, ' We get through by
The family has no des ire for ·a Lichtenstein museum. However the Calder Foundation has recently been disappointed in its plans for a building on Philadelphia ' s museum m i l e . Paolozzi, now represented by Flowers Galleries, was more fortunate. His home city, Edinburgh, did him proud in his lifetime with a splendid home, the Dean Centre.
At the other end of the spectrum, we all have our own precious objects. David Lackey ofwhirlwindspace.com, drew on this to create a memorable New York exhibition: Gathering of People and Things, now ori the web. 'Pick an object and talk about it' was his
command. The result is 2 1 st century anthropology: 1 00 personal treasures selected by folk like film maker Barbara Kopple, AlA director Rick Bell, collector Joan Davidson, sculptor Jon Isherwood, writer Karen Wilkin, Yale prof Joanne Freeman. What did I choose? A beautiful George
Rickey drawing of apples he sent to my
husband and I . Rich in personal
connections and memories (I gave George a 75th birthday party in Glasgow) its main value comes from the all important ties that bind.
Clare Henry is a critic and writer based in New York
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comment GEORGINA TURNER FOR PROBABLY THE first time ever Paris is under the auspice of a socialist Mayor, Bertrand Delano, who also happens to be out. The Mayor's Office, the Ville de P a r i s , has a l o t o f influence and decision-making power in the running and funding of the culture of Paris. The cultural j ewel of his crown is the ever popular Centre Pompidou. But he i s also proving active in promoting e qual ity, accessibility and non-discrimination in
the festivals and popular cultural events that are organised, such as the fourth annual Nuit Blanche. This took place on 1 st to 2nd October between 7pm to 7 am and was open to all pedestrians, public transporters and anything running on two wheels rather than p etro l . In i t ' s third y e ar, it comprised arty and music events all over Paris, supplied, supported and sponsored by over ninety public and
private comp anies, academia, the Church and individuals. Five itineries were organ i s e d within P ari s : the Central Backbone path, the New Wave path, the Funny Places path, the Night Festivities p ath and the ways o f Paradis e. Tho ugh tempted b y paradise, I investigated the F unny Places. Some of itfruled (brushed) the uncanny such as Joe C u tler and Steven D uv a l l ' s arrangement, Familiar Terror. But the path to terror for me lay with On Kawara 's One Million Years in collaboration with LiveAwake Projects which I waived via Edwin van der Heide's light and sounded tunnel (www.evdh.net) for Philippe Meste's installation in rue de P icpus - me smeri c . You can still participate in his ongoing proj ect Spermcube (www.g-a-s-m.org) if you feel you've missed out. T h e C e ntre George P o m p i d o u transformed this once louche but lively part of Paris into the maj or art-tourist stop in Paris. After renovation work from 1 997 to December 1 999, it re o p e n e d to the pub l i c again on 1
January 2000, with some 6,000,000 people visiting it each year. And it is an excellent space to meet, eat and v i e w - the ultra- design concious restaurant and bar on the top floor is definitely commended. There is a great variety of exhibitions such as the current retrospective of works on paper by Antonio Segui, an Argentinian artist in Paris since the early 1 960s. Or the maj or Dada retro spective that opened on Wednesday, 5th October and retra c e s the history of this s u b v er s i v e art movement. An exh i b it i on b acked up by F r e n c h
galleries at the 32nd FIAC (International Contemporary Art Fair), in p arti c u l ar by the 1 9 0 0 - 2 0 0 0 Gallery, a Parisian gallery excelling in Dadaism and Surrealism.
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The FIAC was an incontestable leader amongst Contemporary Art Fairs when
housed in the giant greenhouse that is the Grand Palais in central Paris . Unfortunately, i n June 1 993 the Grand Palais suddenly began crumbling with
v i s itors in s1tu and had to be shut pronto. Closer inspection revealed it
was also sinking faster than Venice and the Ministry of Culture announced it's re-opening for 2007 after restoration budgeted at over 1 0 1 million euros. Part of the building has stayed open to the public and the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais new exhibition, Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kokoschka, ends 9th January 2006. In addition the re-vamped nave was opened to the public for Patrimony Day from noon to midnight, exhibiting the terrestial and celestial Coronelli globes. Over 4 metres each in diameter, 1 2 metres in
circumference and weighing one and a half tons each, they are the largest spheres built in the 1 7th century. Presented to Louis XIV, the Sun King, to symbolize his enlightened will and power, they were presented with an installation by Thierry Dreyfus (light) and Frederic S a n c h ez ( sound) to spectacular effect. And even if the FIAC is still squeezed into a lacklustre venue at Porte de Versaille and moreover facing acute international competition - from the Frieze Art Fair
in London, for example - the FIAC organisers were able to entertain their visitors in the Grand Palais' nave with convivial artistic events. It's pursuit of foreign galleries with increased alacrity and vigour also paid off with galleries such as Austin Desmond exhibiting for the first t i m e . S ince 1 9 9 9 an alternative International Modern & Contemporary Art Fair (this year called artparis06) also takes place at the same time at the Carrousel du Louvre.
The Museum of Modern Art (MAM or MOMA in English) is housed in a wing of the Palais de Tokyo. Closed since October 2003 it is due to re-open on 25th January with an exhibition on Pierre Bonnard and a new hanging of its permanent collection. The opposite wing harbours three year old Palais de Tokyo Centre for C o ntemporary Art. (www.p alaisdetokyo-2 . com) . C ontrov e r s i ally r e c e i v e d for i t s negative architecture look, it's future continues to hang on a whim and a
shoestring. It is a chill-out blend of raw and experimental art e t c , sort of managed but certainly not controlled by Nicolas Bourriaud and Jerome Sans. An odd couple, according to
Thierry Raspail, who have ' embodied
the serenely frantic image of a certain form of temporality, at once excessive and comforting' . It is difficult to know what's going on there but visiting the w e b s i t e is a fai rly symptomatic experience . Thierry Raspail created the Lyo n
Biennale in 1 9 9 1 and has been its
Artistic Director ever since and i s D irector of t h e Lyon M u s e u m of Contemporary Art. Now in its eigth edition the current Lyon Biennale has
linked with various countries such as CAC (Vilnius), Migros (Zurich), PAC (Milan), the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Portikus (Frankfurt) and the Tramway
(Glasgow) . Experiencing Duration turns around notions of time - speed, acceleration, slowness, pause - and asks such questions as Will Time End? The guest curators are in fact Nicolas Bourriaud and Jerome Sans, who propose time as a building material and a major aesthetic issue. They typically seek to 'reaffirm that a work of art is first and foremost an event before
Coronelll globes, an installation by Thlerry Dreyfus (l ight) and Frederlc Sanchez (sound) in the restored n ave of
the Grand Palais.
b e ing a m onument o r a s i m p l e testimony; and that aesthetics are also a matter of energy . . . ' M o r e prag matically we re-visit the post-68 years to assess the ' energy and patterns' in the Fluxus and conceptual movements. From time to change at Vertigo, for Spring in S eptember p r e s i d e d by Marie-Therese Perrin at Toulouse, a fre e art fe stival e x hi b iting 2 5 international artists i n eight historical venues followed by nomadic nights. The aim is to ' capture vertigos ' , as Rim b a u d would have it, through ' diverse destab i l i s at i on strategies ' which include scultpures by Siobhan
Hapaska, an Irish born, London-based
artist, and a ghastly pink installation by the Viennese Franz West at the Abbatoirs . At the old monastry Les Jacobins, Sigmar Polke nestles with the latest sex cri by the Chapman brothers, and Cindy Sherman shows c lowns by herse l f in the Chateau d ' Eau.
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Georgina Turner is a writer and curator based in Paris.
LINKS The Vllle de Paris: www.paris.fr Centre National George Pompldou, www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou FIAC 2005 www.fiacparis Carrousel du Louvre.www.artpa ris.fr
Se Blennale d'Art Contemporaln www. biennale-de-lyon.org EMOC site for Grand Palals: www.emoc.fr
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2 6state
state of art WINTER 2005 EUROSTATE
:
the republic booms
1Trying to keep pace with the marfket opinion SARAH WALKER
gallery that both sells work for and represents the artist is equally rare. Caldwell's, despite being overrun by beautiful furniture, does j ust that, exhibiting artists l i ke N eil Shawcross, Basil Blackshaw, Jim Manley and Colin Davidson, artists that can and do get shown in large public venues like the
public from the commercial venues. Why is the divide so noticeable here?
OrmeauBaths Gallery. However, the designer
Proposition Gallery, fondly remembers
furniture everywhere you turn is a constant reminder that, like all the other private 'galleries', these are really retail outlets whose produce just happens to be art. Compare them
spending his days sitting in the cafe opposite - his attitude was that he could see who went
versus green, sit the galleries of the North: on one side public venues funded largely by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and
Golden Thread Gallery they had a break
in where some of their equipment was stolen. It turned out it had been kids - a local
city council funding; on the other privately owned venues. Each is sitting solidly on their own side of the metaphorical fence: there is no surrender! The j ournalist Ian Hill once
'commander' returned it telling them to be more careful in the future.
When you ask people to name !Qe top galleries
When the whole point of galleries is to get people looking at art does it really matter what type the y ' r e looking at? It ' s a contentious issue, and one that seems to be the crux of the matter in the great gallery debate. Curating exhibitions is arguably the most important, and yes the most creative, part of a gallery director's job. Galleries are made or lost on the quality of exhibitions that
in the North the main contenders are undisputed: the Ormeau Baths, Millennium Court, Void, Context, the Golden Thread,
they secure for their gallery, and careers are founded on the ability to envisage the perfect exhibition to suit the space. So if an exhibition
and Fenderesky's. The question also seems to provoke a certain nostalgia for galleries that once were - the Orchard and the Octagon
hasn't been curated, but rather dictated by what work has been secured at auction, how can they compare to the curated galleries?
said, while talking about artists chosen for the Venice Biennale, that 'few ifany chosen for Ulster's first representative team for the Venice Biennale have their work in the upmarket galleries of the Antrim or Lisburn Roads. ' Does this say something about the quality ofthe work that these galleries show?
were named by most (and no, not just by their directors). Many other names crop up, including Arts & Research Exchange,
Ubiquitous International style Golden Thread Gallery.
Below right: Queen Street Studios
Catalyst and Seacourt Print Workshop, but
with galleries such as Catalyst or Context, venues run for the benefit of artists, by artists or art-orientated people, they're stark opposites - green versus orange. So the polarisation ofNorthern Irish galleries seems to be an ethos thing - an attitude issue. When making money is seen as a bonus, rather than the point of a venue, the whole fo cus of a gall ery changes. Curating exhibitions and hanging them become art forms themselves - the gallery being the means to an end of showing art to maximum effect. It's some thing that many of the Northern Irish commercial galleries simply don't do - there are exceptions, but all too many of these 'galleries' provide little or nothing in the way of curatorial imput. It seems hard to believe - when you look at galleries in pretty much any other capital city, it's virtually impossible to distinguish the
I nsta llation by Anthony Key at Ormeau Baths, part of the Citizens show despite their blooming existence the private galleries tend to be largely ignored. The maj ority ofBelfast's private galleries are on the Lisburn Road, an area whose affluence and fme architecture is shared by the doctors, yo ung profe s s ionals and ubiquitous students ofBelfast. The road appears to go on forever, and interspersed between designer boutiques and trendy restaurants there are numerous private venues rup.ply catering to those rich enough to buy.
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in anyway. One hazy day he met a group of guys on his stairs calmly attempting to steal his computer - they put it back and went on their way. Can you imagine a similar change of conscience happening at a commercial venue ! Similarly, when Gail Prentice ran the
STRANGELY PARALLELING Northern Ireland's strict religious divide of orange
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The people have a different attitude to subsidised galleries, at least the less monied, more accessible and friendly ones. The artist lan Charlesworth, who used to run the
manage to maintain a profitable career without 'selling out' to commercialism. There are always exceptions, but for every Bill Crozier, there are scores who choose to work two jobs to protect their 'artistic integrity' . The average price for a picture i n a Lisburn Road gallery is £5,000. Bearing in mind that the average wage in Northern Ireland is around £ 1 1 ,000, it can be concluded that these venues are not where the majority of the art-buying population invest. However, the fact that one road can sustain a clutch of
The private galleries can roughly be divided
private venues is testament to the fact that
unto two categories - those that actually
the section who do so spend freely.
represent artists, and those that buy at auction and bypass artists altogether. Subsequently, those galleries that represent, and therefore sell to the benefit of the artist, are rarely the ones that turn the most profit. Maybe that explains places like Caldwell's - a beautiful space as full of designer furniture as it is of art. It's a fine balance for the artists too - few
The cross-section of artists that exhibit in both the public and private venues is small but those that can, have virtually guaranteed their place in the art history books, a Northern Irish artist both artistically respected and making good money being a rare breed. As previously stated, the private
The Derry galleries (of that well publicised Derry vs Londonderry debate) have always been held in high esteem - but with the Orchard (formally run by Declan McGonagle) closed, how do they fare now? Long after the closure ofthe Orchard there was a distinct hole in the Derry art world. The aptly named Void opened recently, run jointly by Colin Darke and Merissa Pierce (both artists), but with a Board who decide their exhibition schedule. The space is clean and crisp, there's a comfortable seating area, one of their upcoming exhibitions is Simon Starling, nominee for this year's Turner Prize. Their audience figures are not what they should be. S ituated i n the same building as the Playhouse Theatre, a dark, cold, slightly
damp building, is the Context gallery. Along with Void they are the two most prominent galleries in Northern Ireland's second largest city (Declan Sheehan: the Director, Greg McCartney: Director of the Archive). Also along with Void they have trouble getting
state of art WINTER 2005
state27
visitors, it seems to be a problem gallery wide. Maybe all the commercial galleries
It's a serious point though - audience figures
Excepting the star names of contempo rary a rt, the British Art & Antiques market is i n crisis. Secondary auction houses are closing, trad itional m arkets like Victorian landscape painting stagnate. In stark contrast, a new confidence and sense of h istory has created a n economic boom i n I rish Art a n d culture
are nowhere near what they could or should
with an accent on M odern painting
with their JB Vallellys and Lichtensteins are stealing the audiences that would otherwise
be forced to view contemporary talent.
b e , and the problem with that is that
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exhibitions can end up being audience led. Commercial galleries exhibit the type ofwork
REAL
that they know has a market, and it seems to work. Obviously they're making a good
TATE
:
ireland arise
annual Irish sales of Sotheby's and Christie's, and one has a very healthy outlook.
0
profit, because if they c e a s e d to b e commercially viable they ' d quite simply close. The majority of subsidiesed public galleries sell very little - certainly there's no way that they could be self-sustaining. Should these galleries be learning a lesson
comment BRIAN McAVERA
from the commercial ones and only exhibit artists with a collector base? For those not familiar with NI galleries, the
spectrum of the actual premises is broad,
ranging from the vast, airy, minimalist
IN THE LATE 1980'S, to quote
splendour of the Ormeau Baths, to the concrete coldness of Catalyst, reached by
an auctioneer, the Irish art market exploded 1 . Jack Yeats' Harvest Moon suddenly fetched
flights of somewhat dank steps. The image of the destitute artist has never quite left, and many of the premises housing their work have
over £280,000, and pictures by quite minor painters like Frank McKelvey were making £2030,000. In retrospect, it was obvious why. Ireland's economic boom - The Celtic Tiger - was in full swing. The government, which had turned a blind eye to tax avoidance for
continued to live up to that image. Queen Street Studios are under the constant threat of closure - it's a health hazard to say the least, others would say due for demolition. They have their own gallery, but as the digital studios are the only ones making any profit, it looks like they'll be expanding into the gallery, and it will have to close. The maj ority of subsidised galleries are
years, started to clamp down and various amnesties were offered, with the net result that there was a lot of money sloshing around and the art market was the obvious place to invest it.
struggling to stay afloat while commercial galleries are flourishing. If the former are to continue, there are lessons to be learned how to become at least part self-sustainable for one. Peter Richards, Director of the Golden Thread Gallery, and himself a practising artist, agrees. He thinks that the divide between the blind commercialism of the private venues and the blind faith of the
Only earlier this year, a woman won €70,000,000 on the lottery and was ranked only number 70 of over 700 millionaires in the Republic alone. Add to that beneficial tax laws which encourage donations to museums and galleries and you have a clear reason for the huge upsurge - recently one businessman bought a large collection ofNorthern Irish art, gave roughly 25% of it to a major museum in Dublin and
subsidised galleries is blurring - becoming a grey area. 'At the Golden Thread Gallery we're diversifying our portfolio of activities, packaging and selling shows as well as individual art works, in order to generate additional income.' So supported venues are looking towards generating income - becoming commercially viable businesses not 1 00% reliant on funding applications to survive. Some ofthe commercial
venues are actually representing artists, notjust
selling their work. There is a decidedly grey
area now - maybe they 're not such polar opposites after all.
because that is where the best prices will be obtained. Add to this the knock-on effect of the
received €3,000,000 in tax credits, as well as keeping the rest of the works. Ironically, although many of the key artists come from the North, the place to sell their work is in the South. Obviously money is the major draw. Northern Irish collectors are famously canny. They don't have the purchasing power of their southern compatriots, so they wait for a dip in the market in relation to any particular artist and then they buy. But it is a fact that they prefer to buy in the South, rather than in the North. There are probably three reasons for this. The first is that the auction houses in the south, such as Whyte's, De Veres and Adam's, are highly professional and tightly run, as opposed to their more lackadaisical northern confreres. The second is that Northerners see Northern work being offered in the South as a validation of the work, which is another way of saying that they don't trust the opinions of other northerners. And the third is that most of the best work is sent to Dublin auction houses
Since 1 997, the Irish auction market has seen a steady and consistent rise with, in some cases, artists rising tenfold in price. Currently contemporary work by the likes of Le Brocquy, Souter, and Egan are doing well with dramatic rises for artists such as Charles Brady and Tony O'Malley. In the nineties you could have bought a Brady for £600 whereas now you will pay at least £8- 1 0,000. Brian McAvera is a playright, critic and author and based in Northern Ireland
NOTES
1) For example, Sotheby's within the past year set a few world record s: Roderick 0' Conor's La Lisiere du
Bois fetched £792,000, the sculptor
F.E. McWilliam's Eve sold for £114,000 while works on paper by Louis Le Brocquy and Jack B. Yeats made £148,000 and £40,800 respectively. Conor's The Picture House Queue made £89,500 last year, a series of Harry Clarke stained glass panels went for £331,500, Paul Henry's The Lobster Fisher made
£298,150 while Sean Keating's The Feast of Bridget made almost
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£140,000. Passing the magical one million mark are Sir John Lavery whose The Bridge at Grez made
£1,321,500; Louis Le Brocquy's Travelling Women with Newspaper at
£1,158,500 and Sir William Orpen's Portrait of Gardenia St. George with Riding Crop which made a whopping
£1,983,500.
Sarah Walker is a writer based in Northern Ireland
Jack Yeats to Now ;>';
Part 1: Irish Art 1900
-
1945
Part 2: Irish Art 1945-1969
Part 3: Northern Irish Art 1969 to the present Part 4 Art in the Republic of Ireland 1969 to the present
B E SURE OF YOUR COPY - S U BSC R I B E (POSTAG E ONLY} AN D ENJOY EVERY EDITI O N DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR D I R ECT FROM TH E P R I NTERS � 114hJ...t ..t.fW.CJf..ft
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state of art WI NTER 2005
2sstate
ism in the modern visual arts is also ex plored: the attempt to create a definitive, positive style that was capable of transform ing not only art but society as a whole, be came the obsessive quest of succeeding generations of artists, architects and design ers. By dealing with issues at large in the contemporary art and design scene, and by speculating about the next phase of mod ern practice, the book identifies the collapse of idealism in the modern arts as being of central concern today.
WI NTER RELEAS ES : FI N E ART B O O KS & CATALOG U ES EDITED CHARLES KAN E JENNY SAVILLE 166pp, coljb&w. Hb. Rlzzoii-Gagoslan Gallery. £27.50
Born in Gambridge in 1970, Jenny Saville took her diploma in the Glasgow School of Art in 1992. Her first exhibition was bought up in its entirety by the Saatchi Gallery in London. Numerous international awards, and many group shows and solo exhibitions have followed. Although much has been made of her debt to the giants of twentieth century British figuration, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, Saville herself claims the work ofWillem de Kooning as 'my textbook of painting... and Pollock - his paintings are balletic'. Linda Nochlin characterises her as being 'at heart a conceptual artist' who 'has more in common with feminist performance art and the imagery of the photograph_ed body-object than with that of an old-time paint-slinger like Freud'. ltseems thatSaville is that rare creature - a 'painterly' painter with an underlying conceptual rigour that does nothing to diminish her evident and immersive delight in her materials. This is the only monograph devoted to the critically acclaimed young artist and features all of Jenny Saville's paintings to date, including many previously unpublished. RT NOUVEAU REALISME Arman, Cesar,
Christo, Deschamps, Dufrene, Hains, Klein, Raysse, Rotella, De Saint Phalle, Spoerri, Tinguely, Villegle. 272pp, 91 col 1 71 b&w illus. English + German text Pb. Verlag fiir Moderne Kunst Niirnberg £20 With the publication of Nouveau Realisme, the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (MUMOK) launches a new series to document key works in its collection includ ing the project records of Cityrama 11, a city tour around Cologne planned byWolfVostell and Stefan Wewerka for 2 March 1962 but never carried out and to which almost all the Nouveau Realisme artists were invited. Along with invitations and project descrip tions, the material includes photos and let ters, etc. These give an impression of the intentions behind the city project, which not only represents an important contribution to the artistic activities in the Rhineland of the 1960s, but also disproves the art-his torical theory that art in public places came exclusively from sculpture. RT
SILENTnDES Douglas Dunn & Norman
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Ackroyd. 160pp, illus. Hb. Royal Academy £65.99 This beautifully produced book brings to gether Norman Ackroyd, one of Britain's fore most landscape artists, and the award-win ning poet Douglas Dunn in a collaboration that takes the reader around the coast line of Britain through word and image. The jour ney begins with an introduction by Douglas Dunn looking at the rich literary and artistic tradition of artists and writers who have chronicled thewriety and splendour of the British coastline. Dunn's specially commis sioned poems find a visual response in the
REVIEWS ROWLAND THOMAS (RT) BRIAN M cAVERA (BA) M ICHAELA FREEMAN (MF) M I K E VON JOEL ( MVJ)
subtlety of Ackroyd's aquatints that reflect the variety of landscape to be found along the coast of Britain. RT
philosophy, and words - will inspire artists and art historians alike. RT VITAMIN D: New Perspectives in Drawing.
ARAKI Self, Life and Death Exhibition
Emma Dexter. 352pp, 500 col illus. Hb.
catalogue: Barbican Gallery (Oct 05 Jan06). 720pp, 800 col 400 b&w photographs. Hb. Phaldon Press £45 Nobuyoshi Araki is arguably Japan's great est living photographer and certainly its most controversial. The more than 300 books he has published over the last four decades attest to his inexhaustible creative energy, while his work, which often chal lenges social taboos surrounding sex and death, has drawn critical attention both at home and abroad. This major publication provides the most comprehensive overview yet of Araki's highly prolific forty-year career, including key series of works alongside many new and previously unpublished photographs. RT
Phaldon Press £40
MATIHEW BARNEY Drawing Restraint Volume 1: 1987-2002. Ex. cat Kanazawa, Japan; Seoul, Korea; and San Francisco. Ed.by Hans Ulrich Obrist, fiction by Francis McKee, interview with Matthew Barney by Hans Ulrich Obrist 94pp, 6 col 65 b&w illus. Pb in PVC cover. Waiter Konlg £31 Drawing Restraint has been Barney's con tinuous project since 1987. The works were inspired by the idea that resistance makes muscles larger and stronger. 'I was inter ested in hypertrophy,' Barney has said, 'how a form can grow productively under a self imposed resistance, so I wore a restraining device to make drawings. They were linked to my interest in how a muscle can grow under the resistance of a weight ..The Draw ing Restraint project proposes resistance as a prerequisite for development and a vehi cle for creativity'. The project documented here, involving 'facilities to defeat the faci� ity of drawing' such as trampolines, bungees and blocking sleds (used in American foot ball training), is thematically related to Draw ing Restraint 9, Barney's recent film collabo ration with his partner Bjiirk. RT GONE Site-Specific Work by Dorothy Cross.
Robin Lydenberg. 120pp, 123 col 3 b&w illus. Pb. University of Chicago Press £24.50 Over the past few decades site-specific art has evolved into an international phenom enon, drawing viewers to installations in fa miliar public arenas as well as remote and unusual places. Irish artist DorothyCross has emerged as one ofthe form's most compel ling practitioners, one who never abandons the actuality of place, the materiality ofthe object, or her eye for unexpected beauty. Gone presents the first book-length study of Cross's work and the only permanent documentation of her site-specific art. With full-\:ol photographs, Cross's own account of the construction process, and detailed analysis by scholar Robin Lydenberg. this catalogue manages the seemingly imposs� ble: capturing the ephemeral quality of Cross's work. Cross's goal is not to make a fixed monument to the abandoned and for gotten, but to collaborate with and transform each site. She also collaborates with her au dience, inviting viewers to encounter the work on a physical as well as a psychic level. Lyden berg's text explores three major themes in Cross's work: the return of the repressed, the impossibility of desire, and the inevitability of loss. Gone - its images,
This survey of drawing in contemporary art is the companion volume to the acclaimed Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting. Emma Dexter's introductorytextoffers a er� cal account of the recent evolution and role of drawing in the art world, and introduces some of the trends, methods and artists in cluded in the book. In the following and larg est section of the book (over 300pp and ap proximately 500 illustrations), the 109 art ists are presented in an A to Z order. Some artists are presented on 2pp, some on 4pp. About 5 selections of work are reproduced for each artist, along a text written by an au thor who is a specialist on the artist's work. The 500-word texts are brief surveys of the artist's career to date, and aim at introduc ing the methods and subject matter at is sue in their recent works. A selected list of exhibitions and bibliography also comple ments the reproductions and text on each artist Artists include: Francis Alys, Devendra Banhart, Michael Borremans, Cai Guo Qiang, John Currin, Tacita Dean, Marlene Dumas, Sam Durant, Marcel Dzama, Urs Fischer, Ellen Gallagher, William Kentridge, Toba Khedoori, Dr Lakra, Michael Landy, Vik Muniz, Gabriel Orozco, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Matthew Ritchie, David Shrigley, Lucy Skaer, Banks Violette and Kara Walker. RT
MONIKA'S STORYA Personal History of the Mu sgrave Kinley Outsider Collection. Monika Kinley. 240pp, Pb. Musgrave Klnley Outsider Trust £12.95
Outsider artists are, in the words of Monika Kinley, 'artists who are untrained and work for, and by, themselves. They know little of cultural history or the tradition of Fine Art'. From artists who sufferfrom psychiatric con ditions, to those driven by an inner spirit, this disparate collection of international art ists share a compulsion to create powerful, un mediated expressions of the self. The Musgrave Kinley OutsiderArt Collection was established in 1981 by the British writer, film-maker and gallery d irector, Victor Musgrave, and his companion, Monika Kin ley. The Collection was to have formed the nucleus of a proposed public museum of outsider art When that was not possible the Collection was offered to the Irish Mu seum of Modern Art - its first public home. Since Victor Musgrave's death in 1984, Monika Kinley has continued the work of forming a representative collection to be made available to the public. The Collection now includes such well-known names as Aloise, Carlo, .Henry Darger, Madge Gill, Ha user, J . B . M u rry, Sekul ic, Oswa l d Tschirtner, Van Genk, Scottie Wilson, Wiilfli, Zemankova, as well as numerous lesser· known artists. RT
the lease was up, the new owners tore it down). The book features photographs of
the house, set in 80 acres in upstate New York, which he bought in 2003. Prince in cludes pictures of its contents, 'the yard, out back, across the street, next door, up the road, in the woods, on the property, not far from the house, within a mile ofthe house, as the crow flies'. All the featured artworks are in the house now or were in the house recently and all the people in the book are neighbours or visiting friends. RT CONRAD SHAWCROSS The Steady States. Ex cat New Art Gallery, Walsall July 2005; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Nov 2005). Essays by Jenny Uglow and And rea Bellini. 128pp, illus col+b&w. Pb. New Art
Gallery, Walsall. £10 This publication concentrates on a series of works by Conrad Shawcross that combine his interest in sculpture and science- in par ticular cosmology, quantum mechanics and musical theory - and demonstrate the intel lectual rigour, technical dexterity and sense of drama associated with his work. An es say bythe writer and historian Jenny Uglow con siders the historical relationship between se� ence and the arts, while critic Andrea Bellini situates Shawcross's work within recent deve� opments in contemporary art RT I •""' -...- � ·-'"" •--: •. • .
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SWEET EARTH Experimental Utopias in
America. Photographs by Joel Sternfeld. 136pp, 60 col illus. Hb. Steldl. £30
As laissez-faire market forces sweep the
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MODERN IDEAL: The Rise and Collapse of Idealism in the Visual Arts from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism. Paul
Greenhalgh. 272pp, with illus. Hb. & Albert Museum £35 Over the last three centuries the world has been modernized. From the first stirrings of industrialism to the definitive arrival of glo balization, artists, craftspeople and design ers have engaged with modernization in or der to make sense of the transformations it continually imposes. They have been, by turns, brutally critical and profoundly ideal istic about the ongoing state of things. The Modern Ideal explores the idea of moder nity, returning it to its historical context and showing how theory and practice in the mo� ern visual arts emerged over three centu ries. Concepts which are central to the meaning of modernity are explained, includ ing style, modernization, progress, ideology and universality, and movements across all disciplines are discussed, from neoclassi cism to postmodernism. The rise of idealVIctoria
GUSTAV METZGER History History. Ex.
Gat Generali Foundation, Vienna. Sabine Breitwieser. 300pp, 35 col 150 black & wh ite illus. Hb. Hatje Cantz. £29.99 Gustav Metzger (b.1926, Nuremberg) has had a pointedly radical and revolutionary approach to art since the early sixties. His artistic production is firmly rooted in current political, economic, and ecological topics; in his manifestos and demonstrations, for example, Metzger reacts tothe threat posed by the global nuclear arms race. His aes thetic concept ofAuto-Destructive Art, which addresses the destructive potential of the twentieth century, was intended as an at tack on the capitalist system and the art in dustry. This monograph is the first to pro vide a comprehensive overviewof Metzger's career, also taking into account more recent works such as his series Historic Photo graphs, which are closely linked to Metzger's experience as a survivor of the Holocaust A detailed chronology presents the artist's ac tivity in the context of historical and politi cal developments, honouring Metzger for the first time not just as an artist, but also as an activist RT RICHARD PRINCE Second House. Ex cat:
Gladstone Gallery, New York. 224pp, 221 col illus. Hb. Waiter Konlg. £43.50 1t is the second house that Richard Prince has 'done over' (his first was in 1993 - which he worked on for 3 months and then, when
globe and the earth's future seems endan gered, the dream of living in concert with nature and with one another is increasingly essentia l . A common h u m a n longing throughout history, the utopian community ideal has taken root firmly in America over the past 200 years. In Sweet Earth: Experi mental Utopias in America, Joel Sternfeld has selected sixty representative historical or contemporaryAmerican utopias, combin ing an image of each with a text on its his tory. Neither a conventional history nor a conventional book of photography, Sweet Earth brings together what might otherwise seem disparate, individualized social phe nomena and makes visible the community of communities. RT THE ART OF THE FILLMORE The Poster
Series, 1966 - 1971 Gayle Lemke.
239pp, illus throughout in col. Thunder's Mouth Press
The epicentre of West Coast acid rock, Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium opened in San Francisco in 1966. Its success led to the establishment of the Fillmore East in New York in 1968, by which time Graham was promoting concerts across the US. This revised edition of Art of the Fill more seems timely, given Tate Liverpool's recent Sum mer of Love exhibition, and the continued mining of imagery from the psychedelic era by artists like Verne Dawson, Eva Rothschild and Turner Prize nominee Jim Lambie. Re cent vogue has seen grand claims made for this original work as Great Art, so it's almost refreshing to see a collection of the posters presented simply in a graphic design con-
state of art WI NTER 2005
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BOOK OF TH E MONTH
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INTERNATIONAL ART GALLERIES Post -War to Post -Millennium ed. Uta G rosenick & Raimar Stange 450pp, 427 i l l us incl 227 col. Hb. Thames & Hudson £45 The season of giving approaches a n d , as it is m uch better to receive, this is a tome you sim ply h ave to receive.
International Art Galleries is a n absol utely b ri l l i a nt book that is a n essential for a nyone
conn ected i n any way with the visual a rts. I n a way it is a new m i l l e n n i u m s uccessor to the m u c h sought after
Private View (Nelson) - a picture a n d text su rvey o f t h e British Art world b y Snowd o n , International Art
Robertson a n d Russell issued in 1965. B u t t h e a rt trade i s no lo nger insular a n d
Galleries reflects this with a world wide su rvey of deal ers, gal leries a n d a rt.
it's format is add ictive: each decade has a d ivision to itself (the '40s a n d 50's a re com b i ned) up to the 21st centu ry. Within each section there is a n orientation text; then selected key ga lleries a re profi led with [where necessary a rch ive] p hotogra phs a n d biogra p h ica l data. The listing of the various evolving, expa nding, gallery add resses is of poignant interest here and never more so when the last line denotes the closu re of a well loved and respected space ( Betty Parsons 1946-1977; Anthony D'Offay 1965-2001; Rudolf Zwirner 1959-1992 etc.). This book is no hagiography: the various
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contributing authors stick to the h isto rical facts and present a balanced view of their s u bject su pported by a plethora of a rresti ng im ages a n d very high production va l u es. There can not be single person working with in the visual a rts arena who will not get hooked on the wealth of a rt h istory within these pages. For exa mple, the fa mous Paris ga llery, Den ise Rene, is not a person
per se, but
a n a m a lgam of Geo rges Bleibtreu's da ughters (Denise and Rene-Lucien ne) and origi nally their own pre-War fashion stud io. Older heads will find the detailing of the Peggy Guggenheim, Aime Maeght, Leo Castelli generation a bsorbing whi lst new bloods can d rool through the '60s spa ces a n d onto Gagosia n , Karsten Schu bert, Lisson a n d Wh ite C u be (not to mention the h ighly relevant non-U K ga lleries fa mil iar from the p rofusion of international conte m porary art fa irs.). Ka rsten Schu bert gets justice for h i s work i n Charlotte IAG roa ms worldwide: from Sha nghai to Johan nesburg; Sao Pa u l o to Costa Rica and Mexico. The
Street. The o n ly minor criticism of this otherwise
major a rt centres of Germa ny, Switze rla n d and America; Pa ris, Lo ndon, Amsterd a m , To kyo, Rome
splendid book is a design one: throughout, the blocks
and Vienna pred o m i nate. Cu riously, Austra lia fails to get a mention despite a growing n u m ber of
of text a re
seriously impressive spa ces being b u i lt there. lt is somehow fitting that the book jacket (at least the
u n necessary affectation. Most h ighly recom mended
U K edition) depicts the Lisson Gallery, i l l u m i nated with a 2001 Julian Opie insta llation; and that
a n d easily worth dou ble the price.
text. In any case, these pieces are most 'revolutionary' on those terms, where sobri ety and legibility is traditionally prized above all else. Many of the designs in fact man age a pleasant sort of exoticism through rehashed Art Nouveau or Victorian a, with out really pushing any formal boundaries. Maybe this is an appropriate visual equiva lent for Eastern ragas played over hoary old blues progressions. But. like the handful of truly original psychedelic bands, some ofthe artists here managed to forge somethingsig nificant and enduring. Often using a re stricted palette of two or three flat cols, Lee Conklin stretches and compresses his oleaginous lettering into organic forms, bringing the text to the point of disintegra tion. Rick Griffin's beautiful shaded and lined type is harsh, bony and attenuated and similarly illegible - whilst Wes Wilson and Bonnie MacLean's ground breaking and iconic designs are a violent departure from the grid format of the traditional playbill. Alongside over 400 such col reproductions, reminiscences contextualise and enliven the work. All the artists were fans of the bands they drew for - Stanley Mouse describes himself as a 'dancing fool' - and all, with the exception of Mac Lean, were enthusiastic imbibers of LSD. Wes Wilson's account of being fired by Graham after he smuggled dissent into his posters raises the grim spec tre of the 'hippy' entrepreneur; in light of this, Jerry Garcia's commentthat 'Everybody in the place was high except Bill' seems a little sinister. RT VIENNA
1900 Klimpt, Schiele, Moser,
Kokoschka Ex.cat.Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. 368pp. 236 col illus. Hb. Lund Humphrles £50.00. This is a marvellous book, of the kind that Lund Humphries - one of those publishers
who specialise in catalogue tie-ins - does so well. The basic thesis is that the stand ard version of Modernism (Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Abstraction) is over-rated at the expense of the alternative version championed here (Viennese Seccession, Symbolism, Expressionism). One ofthe strik ing aspects of the book is its almost com plete sidelining ofthe standard English texts of the subject: there's not one reference in the bibliography. The other notable aspect
is the (largely successful) quest to insert Kolomon Moser as a key protagonist The essays, mainly by Austrian scholars, chart the period from 1890-1918 and brim with the enthusiasm of unexpected insights. As a book production, this is enviable: really fine plates, biographies and bibliography (but unfortunately no index or list of illustra tions, thus substantially reducing the book as a reference tool) and an excellent selec tion of essays by Joachim Riedl, Patrick Werkner, Mathias Bocckl, Dieter Bogner, ltzhak Goldberg & Marie-Amelie zu Salm Salm. BA VENEZIA Art of the 18"' Century.
Ex. cat Hermitage in Amsterdam, State Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg. Henk van Os, contributions by Mikhail Piotrovsky, Ernst Veen, Serge Androsov, lrina Artemieva & lrina Grigorieva. 128pp. 66 col. illus, Hb. Lund Humphries £19.99 Neat idea this: Venetian C18"' art from the collection of the Venice of the North, St Petersburg, explored by Russian and Dutch curators, in another city famous for its ca nals, Amsterdam. As a publication it is very stylishly designed, using different coloured papers, the illustrations are excellent, and the various essays cover topics ranging from 18"' century drawings to the links between Russian and Venetian artists. There is a good catalogue at the rear but as this is not cross-referenced to the illustrations, and as there is no list of illustrations (nor an index for that matter), it is not easy to use for reference purposes. BA CONSTRUCTED ABSTRACT Art in England after the Second World War, Alistair Grieve, pp.288, 309 illus in col &
b/w. Hb Yale University Press £40.00 The title may be cumbersome but this is an important book. Whether the loose affilia tion of artists that includes Victor Pasmore, Kenneth and Mary Martin, Adrian Heath, Robert Adams and Anthony Hill, can be called 'major' is open to question, but this is the first book that I know of which explores the world of these artists in considerable detail. Scholars will respond to the wealth of new material that has been unearthed from archives, personal letters, and Grieve's own discussions with the artists concerned.
Substantially illustrated, and with chapters devoted to all of the key figures, the aca demic aspects are well served by a detailed chronology, equally detailed notes and bib liography and a very good index. Mercifully, it is largely free of jargon and although not the kind of bookthatyou would read through at one sitting, it is well organised and well written. BA AN ANTHOLOGY OF THE ARTS
tightly boxed with a coloured keyl i n e - a n
list of works and index. The main text, con cerned primarily to give an overview and trace influences, is clearly and straightfor wardly written. One might not get much in the way of interpretation or evaluation, but then again, that is not really the function of this book. it's entirely admirable in terms of giving future critics the materials with which to work. BA
& CRAFTS
MOVEMENT, ed.Mary Greensted, 128pp,
16 b/w ill us. Hb Lund Humphrles £45.00 Organised into five sections, starting with the development of the movement between 1880-89, and ending on the legacy of the movement from 1920 onwards, this anthol ogy, which concentrates primarily on the writings of the architect, designer & teacher W.R Lethaby(1857-1931), the architect and designer Ernest Gimson (1864-1919), and the architect and designer C.R. Ashbee (1863-1942). The editor has concentrated on articles that have not been reprinted, and has added in journalism of the period as well as letters and original documents. There is an index, bibliography and biographical section as well as brief notes on the texts and an introduction which, along with the texts, charts the development ofthe move ment. it's a very useful introduction for schools and arts colleges. BA SCULPTURE OF WILLIAM TURNBULL
Amanda A. Davidson 208pp, 12 col & 306 b&w illus. Hb Henry Moore Foundatlon+Lund Humphrles £45.00. William Turnbull (b. 1922) is probably as well-known for his abstract painting as for his sculpture. He's been a constant pres ence though he rarely gets the recognition that he deserves. His two years in Paris (1948-50) gave sustenance to his career, first in the plaster works influenced by Brancusi, and then during his determinedly abstract work of the sixties. By the eighties, and not unlike Moore and Garo amongst others, his work had started to resemble the sculpture of earlier civilisations. This is the first major book on the artist which includes an almost complete catalogue raisonne. The whole book is scrupulously sourced and edited with detailed chronology, exhibition listings, details of collections, bibliography,
ART PHOTOGRAPHY NOW
Susan Bright 261 illus, 254pp col Hb Thames & Hudson £29.95 Including the word NOW in the title of a book is a bit trickY. it somehow makes it immedi ately outdated. But it's not the currenttrends and the youngest and hottest of talents around that Susan Bright presents. Instead she focuses on the discourse of how the photography is categorised and perceived NOW. Internet and Photoshop have changed the way we now look at photography, Bright points out. it 'takes us awayfrom reality and into the realm of fantasy". Now is interest ing for art photography, she explains, be cause it's finally been accepted as a proper art form. it's included in a number of major gallery exhibitions as well as cross-pollinate media and fashion pictures. Bright's se lected many photographers that have been well known for at least a decade (Wolfgang Till mans, CindySherman, Sam Taylor-Wood). She doesn't discover much for experienced photography exhibition goers but rather re hearses the selection that could have been seen in London in last few years. Few less famous international artists are the excep-
MvJ
tion, well worth it (Zwelethu Mthethwa, Jitka Hanzlova, Naoya Hatakeyama etc.). Works by almost 80 photographers have been di vided into 7 sections: PORTRAIT, LAND SCAPE, NAR RATIVE, OBJ ECT, FASHION, DOCUMENT and CITY. Each entry contains few images, a short introduction and help ful quotes from the artist, although in a slightly nauseous oversized font One of the reasons why PORTRAITS are so seductive, says Bright, is that we are fascinated byfaces even though they don't translate the entire character. When the background is re moved, the viewer is further starved of clues, like in Cindy Sherman's selfportraits on the brink of reality and fiction. Tin a Barney's The Europeans series, on the other hand, depicts teal people in their own environment. Pic tu ring LANDSCAPES has dramatica l ly change in the 70's, notes Bright. Its roman tic notion has been replaced by the impact humans have on it. Furthermore, 'land scape photography offers the space to ex plore ever-present artistic and philosophi cal concerns about our place in the world'. Of course Andreas GurskY is represented here, as well as Dan Holdsworth and Rich ard Misrach. NARRATIVE photography can be 'staged' on different levels, we learn. Gregory Crewdson can't do without a crew of 60 and needs about 2-3 days to obtain the right frame of his suburban night scenes, whilst the Russian collective AES&F add computer generated guns to their photo graphs of adolescent children. Photograph ing OBJECTS, once a traditional still life, now 'deals with the actual act of photographing·, such is the case with Wolfgang Tillmans' everyday objects, Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'con ceptual forms' and Laura LetinskY'S table compositions. Although the boundaries of art and FASHION seem to interest Bright, this section is s little dull and not as exciting as it could be, considering the number offash ionjart magazines and photo books around. DOCUMENT comes out slightly better, with intimate diaries (Sophie Galle, Nan Gold in) and works dealing with global issues (politi cal statements by Bruno Serralongue and backstage of oil tanker catastrophe by Allan Sekula). Working in the CITY, Phillip-Lorca diCorcia creates unusual iilrtrait by flash ing light into the crowd.� hilst Melanie Manchot's fascinated by coincidental con-
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state of art WI NTER 2005 centration of strangers in the city. ART PHOTOGRAPHY NOW is not an exhaustive survey but visually, it is a very useful ref erence book, as well as a great starting point with its explanatory entries and reading list. MF
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Christopher Mason 400pp, Hb.
Glbson Square Books £15
GEORGE IV - A Life in Caricature
Kenneth Baker. 224pp. 211 ill us 206 col. Hb Thames & Hudson £24.95 AS THE CURRENT interest in the cartoon and ·graphic novel' continues apace, with graffiti being re-discovered as a raw and exciting art form, Kenneth Baker's book on this self indulgent monarch is very timely. Although ostensibly about Baker's speciality subject - the dandy 'Prinny', Prince Regent and future George IV - the book is actually about the cartoonists of the day. And it was George's misfortune and our gain that these individuals were themselves the kings of the caricaturist's art. George IV died in 1830 and wit hin no time his successors, insipid brother William IV and later the young Victoria, had all but erased him from the official memory of the State. Across the board George's indulgences and caprices, out rageous profligacy and immoral lifestyle (in fact all that is admired today) earned the opprobrium of polite society and of contemporary h istory itself. But to the great narrative artists of the day he was manner from heaven and they were relent less, and u nrestricted, in their comic venom for the increasingly fat a n d Bunterish GeorgeAugustus Frederick. The role call of draughtsmen and engravers was a veritable who's who of the art: from Thomas Rowlandson, James G i l l ray, George & lssac Cruikshank, to the per haps lesser known John Marshall, William Heath and William Dent. The (coloured or plain) single side prints were designed for mass production and for wholesale distri bution to the populace - often an illiter ate audience. Their genius lies in being able to transmit a comic message where the actual words (often in cartoon 'bub bles') were an extra fillip to the action tak ing place in the panel. The parallels with popular theatre boo and hiss 'melodra mas' are obvious and the Prince Regent's
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LIBRARIES - Candida Hiifer 268pp 137 col illus Hb. Thames & Hudson £42 WITH THIS season's list Thames & Hud son really are excelling themselves. Can dida Hiifer's survey of the grand library, those vaults of learning and h istory, ranges across the world as she enjoys access to some of the most stunning and thrilling manuscript collections in the civi lised world. But it is a modern view, not an invocation to the antique. Hiifer stud ied at the Dusseldorf Academy with Bernd Becher - perhaps best known for his wa ter tower studies, produced with wife Hilla - and in the images on this Library safari she surely remains cool in her appraisals of architecture that roams from the Ba roque to the minimal ist. Typically she presents each photo without the distrac tion of the human form, there are one or two exceptions, and does not hesitate to included spaces that could easily pass for a modern office environment (Biblioteca UNED Madrid or the Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles). These compliment the visual excitement and awesome quali ties of the cathedral or mosque, inherent in libraries such as the Real Gabinete Por tuguese de Leitura Rio de Janeiro, and the Stiftsbibliothek, St. Galien. Philosopher Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) pro vides an equally cool introductory essay on the notion of the library in society and as an ingredient of received wisdom. Just as it is not required to hold any religious belief whatsoever to sense the 'occasion' of a mosque, church or synagogue, the 'presence' inherent in a library, and es pecially when a grand historic edifice, is similarly impressive. So much so that it is almost impossible to imagine a world with out them. An unexpected and worthwhile collection from a contemporary photogra pher of note. MvJ
LORDS & UARS Class, Greed, Excess - the
Christie's - Sotheby's Conspiracy.
Jacket i mage : The Extinguisher by Georg e Cruiks h a n k 1821 crowd of cronies lent themselves admira bly to the caricaturist's art, not least the hirsute Charles James Fox. Many recipi ents of these print editions presumably could not read, but it did nothing to spoil the fun of seeing their society toffs' lat est indiscretions so graphically revealed. Although George did not ascend the throne until 1824, when his intermittently deranged father finally died, he had en joyed a long existence as Regent and petulant son. Since his illicit affair with Mrs Robinson ('Perdita') at the age of 18 in 1780 he had also enjoyed the atten tions of the satirists and some fifty years were to pass before he ceased to be a subject for derision and political censure - surely something of a record. lt says much for the man - who after all brought us Regent Street, the National Gallery, Brighton Pavilion amongst a profusion of
worthy Arts initiatives and patronage that he himself collected these prints, of ten buying hundred's at a time. Indeed, the Cruikshanks' used to send a proof copy to be 'dropped' at Carlton House on the eve of publication. Kenneth Baker, it might be remembered, spent many years at the hub of Government serving under Mrs Thatcher (not literally one supposes) which included a spell as Home Secretary. His inside knowledge of political intrigue adds an extra dimension to the transla tion of the 'message' inherent in each caricature image he presents and dis cusses and this, added to his obvious love and scholarship of the art form, results in a quite brilliant bookthat benefits hugely from exceptional production values. Con temporary cartoonists might never appear quite so satirical - or quite so clever again. MvJ
New York Times social butterfly and arts writer Chris Mason makes a first class job of this A-Z of the plot that nearly caused financial meltdown at the world's two lead ing auction houses. it's a credit to publish ers GBS thattheytook up the challenge after Putnam allegedly cried off a British edition, worried about UK libel laws. Mason creates a pacey novel out of the m ish mash of com ments, interviews, court transcripts and statements made by the host of figures en meshed in a scandal that has its origins in an odd piece of legislation, active in the USA but at the time absentfrom British law. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act relates to 'price fiX ing' between competing businesses. Albeit a major, federal, crime in the States price fiXing is (was) regarded in the UK (with its history of nationalised supply) as somewhat obviously par for the course: be it auction house or public house. 1t was a difference in attitude to have calamitous results. Ma son presents a series of propositions, be ginning with American multimillionaire de veloper (shopping malls) A. Alfred Taubman buying up Sotheby's and injecting a little 'good ole boy' business style into its stuffy public school operation. This results, the book alleges, in Big AI and newly appointed Christie's chairman, Sir Anthony Tennant, getting together to stop the endless dis counting and cash guarantees that appear necessary to secure the 'high net worth' sales, and cause a major drain on profits. Enter the high profile chief execs at C&S, Christopher Davidge and Diana (dee-dee) Brooks respectively, who deal with the actualities of the 'conspiracy'. For anyone in the art and antiques trade this all makes vibrant reading, right up to the end game of court appearances, jail sentences, huge mil lion dollar fines, great escapes and the in dividual scrambles to avoid prosecution. Although the denouement occurred in 2002 the scandal still rocks on, massive repara tions handed down - after court action by disgruntled high-roller clients - are only just being distributed. And, in the way of things, Christie's and Sotheby's today carry on in unison regardless - each hike in commis sion rates from one House being matched, pdq, by the other. Mason's story first ap peared as The Art of the Steal in 2004 (Putnam) and this might explain a little oddity in an otherwise neat publication: the book is sprinkled with typographical errors - the text has either been re-paged or scanned. it's a minor flaw, if a curious one. The major omission is, of course, a complete lack of illustrations, surely an essential in gredient when dealing with such a varied cast of players? Nevertheless, this is defi nitely required reading for artworld movers and shakers everywhere - and look out for the movie!? (Gibson Square Press have gen erously offered readers a discount : @£13 per copy, inclusive of UK p&p. Call 08700 748 494 to order direct.) MvJ
Sotheby's A . Alfred Tau b m a n
Christie's Sir A nth o ny Ten na nt
Sotheby's Diana 'd-d' B roo ks
Ch ristie's Ch ristop h e r Davidge
S H I PLEY BOOKS L O N D O N Top Ten Art Books - Autumn 2005 1
Egon Schiele: Erotic Sketchbook (Erotische Zeichnungen) £1 2.99 2 A Treasury of Hours: Selections fr Illuminated Prayer Books. Getty Trust £1 2.99 3 Frida Kahlo. Exhibition catalogue Tate Publishing £35.00
4 Stubbs and the Horse. National Gallery Yale University Press. £30.00 5 The Book ofShrigley. Ed. Gooding Rothenstein. Redstone Press £20.00 6 Patrick Caulfield: Paintings. Marco Livingstone. Lund Humphries £35.00
7
T h e Rijkmuseum library i n Amsterdam, p h otogra ph e d by Candida Hiifer
Auguste Rodin: Images of Desire. A-M Bonnet. Schinmer/Mosel £22.99 8 Impressionism Abroad: Exhibition catalogue: Royal Academy £25.00 9 That Divine Order: Music & the Visual Arts Phaidon Press £39.95 10 Cahiers d'Art: Matisse Drawings. Tzara and Zervos. T&H £29.95
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