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state of art JAN/FEB 2007
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state
STATEOFMIND
0 F -AR T 2 0 0 6
I
EDITOR
MIKE VON JOEL mvj @state-of-art. org
art and television
I • •
There's no business like no business
DEPUTY EDITOR
MICHAELA FREEMAN m if@state-of-a rt. org
PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION MIKE VON JOEL
STATE MEDIA ed itori a !@state-of-a rt.org PUBLISHING ASSISTANTS LOUISE HENDERSON
Contributors This Issue
experience it was too. One of the most
(salary £3 million+ pa), Jeremy Paxman (c.£1 million pa) et al for good. At the moment the BBC is protected by the 1949
SIMON KINNERSLEY IAN MCKAY
interesting aspects of discovering the Antipodes is realising just how far away it
Wireless Telegraphy Act, which requires a licence for any 'receiving unit' - as
pals are deemed low class oiks, some production filly figures a Scouse accent should just fit the bill! Provincial Italian, with English subtitles, would not even have entered her head!
is from anywhere familiar. Back then it was a sort of 1950's England in the heart of Asia, today modernisation has reputedly
opposed to paying to watch the actual BBC output. Surely a gong for the rabid app a ratchnik with the foresight to
This current state of affairs has crept up on the discerning public over the last 30 years.
made it more a version of 1980's England -now one can only pray that the Aussies
formulate that clause!
A FEW YEARS ago I went on a lecture tour of Australia, and a very warm hearted
EWAN DAVID EASON
JEREMY HUNT JACK PIZZEY ALAIN ADAM ALASTAIR GRAHAM LYKKE STRUNK TREVOR PRESTON DAVID LEE WILLIAM VARLEY WALDEMARJANUSZCZAK AND REA CARSON ROLAND THOMAS ROBERT HELLER GODFREY BARKER ANDREW HURMAN
Cover Image Jean Bakewell Late Night Line-Up ©BBC
My second note of interest was the fact that
- Editors at Large USA CLARE HENRY UK ANDREW HURMAN FRANCE JEREMY HUNT GEORGINA TURNER IRELAND BRIAN MCAVERA CIARAN BENNETT CANADA AND REA CARSON
STATE MEDIA PO Box 52173 E2 SXR
Tel: 020 7739 4078 TUESDAY- FRIDAY 11-4
editorial@state-of-art.org www.state-of-art.org _
Printed by Trinity-Mirror Group. Watford Plant
STATE OF ART is an independent publication. Views expressed herein are those of the individual authors and not necessarily of the Editor or the Publishers ALL MATERIAL© STATE OF ART
even some of the most exalted scions in the Australian art world were only familiar with great works of art, old and new, through the pages of art books. This meant that an experience of, say, J ackson Pollock, was reduced from the original
PUBLISHED BY
London
will never make it to a new millennium version of 'the old country'.
2007
State of Art acknowledges support from Angela Flowers plc Momentum Publishing PSI (London)
mJPfi�
wall sized impact down to an l l x8 inch book illustration. Pollock is an apposite example, as the uproar resulting from the Whitlam administration's purchase of his Blue Poles 1952, allegedly helped bring the government tumbling down. (I) The fault lies not with Australia of course, but in the fact that the insurance and ancillary costs of getting any original material 'down under' is so prohibitive, that they fall off the trans-Atlantic carousel. And this does not even consider mealy-mouthed lenders who baulk at risking their treasures to the shipping companies and the elements. The situation in Australia is mirrored here by art-niks who, when examined closely, actually 'know' their art only via television. Obviously, a painting on television is not a painting, it's an illustration of a painting - with approximate, variable colour values, depending on the quality of the s·et itself. It is not surprising, therefore, that art and television has been a problematic marriage since that first artist profile (broadcast in 1951, BBC: Henry Moore) with much
�
soul searching by the broadcasters. You pro ably had to be there to appre�iate _ the genume awe and wonder of televiSIOn technology, as it sprouted from the corner of living rooms in tenements and palaces across Great Britain. Fulfilling the BBC's raison d'etre<2l was no problem in the late 1950s of course, with a subservient post War nation grateful for a chance to wait five hours for a three minute consultation with an NHS hospital doctor. Then, television was not just a marvel -it was an authoritative marvel - and the licence fee was a privilege to pay. Now, of course, this is seen as an invidious tax -enabling fatcat salaries for the politburo- whereby the people pay for a (BBC) service that ought to be supplied gratis by central
You would have to be an industry insider to
The great days of Tempo, Arena, Monitor, Omnibus, Without Walls, Aquarius, seem long gone - though surprisingly, some
know exactly when viewing figures (ratings) became an obsession with TV companies<3) It was most likely the bragging of the independents to their advertisers that set 'head counting' in motion and galvanised the BBC. But whenever it was, visual art was
lingered on to the early 90's. Yet the modus operandi they devised has become the norm, albeit with a modern 'celebrity' twist. Thus the steady diet of presenter ('personality') lead cigarette-card-reductions of art and artists rolls on regardless.
the sector that usually disappeared off the bottom of the eyeball barometer. Visual art is a minority interest overall-well, so what?
I was as seduced as anyone else by this smooth transition into daydream culture,
-and the viewing figures ably demonstrate it. Interestingly enough, as contemporary art is now clearly an entertainment industry, and artists entertainers, television is much more receptive to giving the subject air time. The whole business has become a variety performance with little differential between channels.lt's also interesting how artists, critics and academics are willing to prostitute themselves to achieve the ersatz celebrity that TV exposure brings. It is now difficult to accept, say, Brian Sewell, as the erudite and well informed critic who could illuminate the most impenetrable subject matter, since he has voluntarily become a pantomime dame. Although the tears welling in his old eyes at Cafe F l o r ian, Venice, whilst reminiscing on his own youthful 'grand tour', was a truly moving moment. Adam Hart-Davis obviously knows his history, yet we have to suffer his bilious Hawaiian shirt collection and odd coloured shoes. Someone ought to tell him that one thing the Romans Did For Us was to introduce refined and elegant clothing. Yentob's unstructured suits, the ridiculous bad habits of 'sist e r ' Wendy Beckett,
until a barely noticed event jolted television arts back into focus. Some genius decided to fill a hole in the schedules with a re-run of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.<4l Here, suddenly, was a cast iron example of before and-after arts broadcasting. The urbane Clark, anonymous dress code, presenting in an educated (yet eminently appealing) modulated tone, the history of European culture over nine centuries. A glorious and harmonious mix of text, image and sound. W hether one agrees with his interpretations is irrelevant, it's the presentation that stands out and appears, quite bizarrely, cool and fresh by comparison with today. No mugging for
the
camera,
no
trying
to
be
'unforgettable', no circus tricks. Clark's demeanour is everything that his successors from the 1970s onward despised. But maybe it's no coincidence that the other giant of television art scholarship, John Berger, adopts a similar, Clarkian, persona on screen. Simon Schama's monumental feat of getting any art material on screen at prime time, can
be ably judged in the light of a phone call I made to the BBC press office. Attempting to pin down the actual broadcast data for that recent Civilisation re-run (our Royal Charter
Dimbleby's Land Rover antics, all are part of the new breed of presenter a s 'personality'.
here at State is to: 'inform, educate & entertain') I spoke to two press and publicity people - they'd never even heard of Lord Clark - or the milestone BBC2 epic ... !
The final distillation of all this i s encapsulated i n Simon Schama's televison series formula. Rightly deducing that most
These two are most likely typical of the 1634 year old viewer all the channels are obsessed with attracting.
of the viewing public are too stupid to sit through a lengthy arts 'lecture', the Schama school have devised an 'entertainment' whereby fact, faction, fiction and pure fantasy blend so thoroughly you need a Courtauld degree
Government. Digital means refinement, and the BBC are paranoid that (not if, but when) point-of-use, selective choice
to spot the seams. Earnest shots of the presenter strolling through locations across the world (Tahiti in the case o f Januszczak's excellent Gaugu in) are interspersed with a theatrical 'reconstruction' - complete with 'likely' dialogues derived from 'sources'. This
comes, millions will save the fee and suffer the pain of switching off Jonathan Ross
engenders comic moments when - say Caravaggio's (or Rembrandt's) drinking
The two omnipresent faces of visual art on TV are well past 34 years old - Melvyn Bragg and, lately, A lan Yentob. It is interesting to note that both are television executives that appear to hire themselves for front line duties.<5l Melvyn Bragg, editor and presenter of flagship The South Bank Show (1978 -), Controller of Arts for London Weekend Television and a myriad of other activities, including Radio 4 presenter and novelist, is a truly remarkable man. Enjoying CONTINUED O N PAGE 9
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
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Confessions of
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over three minutes at a stretch without
Television Arts Programmes is that there is
consulting a mobile phone. And as soon as
a proportionate relationship between a
you have the effrontery to mention payment,
presenter's visibility and the wretchedness
they can't get you off the line quickly enough.
of the programme.
Some are audibly put out by the mention of
My understanding of art and television is that
is that working on pre-production TV
it works something like this: a group of
perfectly echoes working for art publishers.
money. How dare I expect payment! Thus it
Talking Head
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realised years ago that The First Law of
under-35s sit on Breuer chairs around a glass
They think you ought to do it for the kudos
table in Clerkenwell. No expense has been
of working for them. And, again like art
spared kitting o u t their offices, for
publishing, television gets away with it
appearances are all. They are conversing in
because it feeds on the Fool's Gold of vanity.
a tribal language which occasionally nods in the direction of English. A commissioning
In production companies, ignorance is
deadline is approaching and they need as
behavioural as well as factual. They believe
many
many
it is your privilege to work for them and it
commissioning editors as possible. So here
is their privilege to waste your time as
they are, pads and pencils at the ready, having
lavishly as they see fit. Once a company
ideas
to
pitch
to
as
a brainstorming session. They live in hope
has milked you for all it can extract, the
that -M ammon willing -one of their ideas
silence is deafening. Even after a decent
will, when printed out on coloured bond, find
elapse of time, any enquiry as to their
WHAT FOLLOWS is not sour grapes - not
favour with someone ... anyone ... anywhere.
progress up the commissioning ladder will
entirely anyway. I haven't watched much
These creatures have a life awareness entirely
be met, if at all, with audible irritation and
television for two decades and haven't even
conditioned
encyclopaedic
the implicit criticism that you are an
owned a set for three years, so I have limited
familiarity with trash television. Believe me
i m p e rt i n e n t p e s t guilty of at best,
by
their
experience as far as viewing is concerned.
they know nothing at all about anything else,
harassment, and at worst, stalking. If the
My comments are nothing to do with the fact
and, as they'll tell you before you sit down,
company answers your phone calls or emails, it will be to tell you that the
that the only good idea for a television
they have programmes in production for
programme I've ever worked on - a film
channels you've never heard of. You
proposal
about a historical subject I know something
wouldn't credit that i n a supposedly
commissioning round/on the desk o f some
is...
awa1tmg
the
next
about and would have loved to have written
certificated person, the global reach of their
big shot/has been passed to a different
and presented- was given the bum's rush.
ignorance could be quite so complete.
d e p a rtme nt/is a w a iting an imminent
Curiously, it was rejected not because it was
d e c i s i o n/has b e e n resubmitted t o a
no good - indeed it was the only surefrre
'I know!' blurts Connie. 'Let's do a series
different
winner I've ever been associated with - but
of five-no ten!-on Art and War. I'll phone
budgetary settlements which are i n the pipeline/is awaiting the appointment of a
c h a n n e l/is
contingent
on
because it was a one-off, and you can now
that gullible twat David Lee and he'll work
only get arts programmes commissioned if
for a couple of days for nothing researching
n e w c o m m i ssioning editor/is b e i n g
they are in series of at least four, preferably
and writing a detailed submission with some
considered very seriously. They will always
six, and can be produced for 'peanuts' .
interesting facts and crossovers. When I was
tell you what they think you want to hear.
at Goose Shit, we got him to do a treatment
No lie is too great if it gets you off the phone. The very last thing they will tell
The mainstay o f m y income, which is, b y the
on Artists and Locations which was
way, significantly below the Government's
tremendously detailed and even got as far as
you is what everyone in the company has
poverty line, is giving television interviews
a
Assistant
known for months, which is that the
on arts-related topics for news, feature and
Commissioning Editor's second cousin of
proposal you participated in so willingly
documentary programmes on both television
Channel 97 on Tristan da Cunha. I'll soften
was rejected as a dead duck within seconds
and radio. I do quite well, considering that
him up by telling him he can present it/write
of its submission and is currently floating
in our populist and politically correct age, I
it/be in it as an expert/have a credit for his
belly up somewhere off Gravesend. I still
lunch
w ith
the
Deputy
start from a position of serial disadvantages
mother.' 'Good idea Con! Art and War! Yeah!
don't know what happened to most of the
- I am white, middle class, grey-haired,
We could use Gramsci's 1712 Overture on
submissions I've worked on. Rest assured
expensively educated at fine universities,
the credits. Like it! Get rockin!' shouts the
though, that if they are asked to clarify any
have no breasts and, relative to most, am
company's Head Controller of Ideas
aspects of the programme they will be on
uncommonly well-read and profoundly
Development.
to you immediately and expect further
knowledgeable about certain recherche
unpaid work at very short notice. Then
corners of art history. In short, I have nothing
Little do they realise that the gullible twat,
radio silence will descend again, without
whatsoever to recommend me. I work for
though still a twat, has shed his gullibility
doubt terminally.
television, a medium for which I have an
like snakeskin. After nearly twenty years of
almost physical aversion, for no other reason
these proposal bribes, with nowt to show for
So, all of you out there who recognise from
than money - although the idea which was
them, he has finally got wise. He's prepared
painful experience the truth of these words,
recently turned down, I loved so much, I
to write down his thoughts for a series on
read, learn and inwardly digest ready for
would have done it for nothing. Their loss
Art and War, or art and anything else for that
regurgitation the following conversation and
matter, for a flat fee of £1,000 (in advance)
we'll all of us be better off in the end:
and, sadly, mine.
nothing less. He calculates that this is a sufficiently high sum to deter timewasters and, if offered, represents a serious
quantity than quality. They don' t want
commitment from the company. I should
Researcher: 'Hi David, it's Connie Shaftem
progr ammes people will still be watching
point out here that they normally expect you
Guddenpropper here. You may remember
with fondness in twenty years or more. They
to work for nothing.
•
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worked together on Artists & Locations. I
grand a pop, as they can wring out of you.
In recent years this gullible twat has been
The reason why you see Tim Marlow
asked to 'flesh out' proposals for the
the way. Well, I'm now working for Moose
pretending to be an expert on everyone from
following programmes, and these are only
Shit Films and we're in the planning stages
Caravaggio to Titian to Raphael-he'll throw
the ones he can recall: art & natural history,
of a series about Art & War. Would you have
in Renoir next year - is because he's dirt
art & scientific illustration, modem art & the
a minute to talk?'
cheap. L i k e most art books, TV arts
church, foreign artists who worked in
CO
programm es have a shelf-life of minutes.
Britain, fakes, art &
pornography, disabled artists (yes, even that
be. They form part of a tabloid entertainment
one - squinting old masters, one-legged
industry and are designed only to make a
cubist sculptors, and so forth), theft,
five minutes, er, we' l l use you in the
marketable commodity of the presenter, who
vandalism in museums, restoration, the
programme definitely, for sure, guaranteed,
will be impertinently prominent in the
Italian Renaissance, Impressionism (a series
without a shadow of a doubt- promise...'
programme because-you guessed it- that's
of six, two of which had to be those well
nudity,
art &
cheap too. Sometime ago I watched part of a
known
programme about British art presented, for
Constable), the contemporary art market...
I m pressionists,
Turner
and
some reason, by David Dimbleby. His
Believe me, hardly a week passes without
knowledge of British art seemed to have been
some 12-year-old jughead coming on the
picked up from a half-hour sprint through
phone.
sequence, I had an encyclopaedic knowledge
I
•
•
loved your spot on BBC2 the other night by
Few are repeated-and they're not meant to
Gullible Twat: 'A thousand quid please.' Researcher: 'Er, we don't normally, er, just
Gullible Twat: 'Fuck off!' Brrr.
David Lee is editor of vis ua/ arts paper The
Google and by the end of the ten-minute
-;:
Ring Ring.
me. I worked for Goose Shit Films and we
want as many half-hour slots, filled for forty
:;; 0 -;::
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At the low level at which I operate, arts programming is more concerned with
Production companies are staffed by lazy
of the presenter's left profile and ear, because
people, from a generation used to devolving
most of the show was shot inside a Land
effort to those who actually know something
Rover - obviously a product placement. I
and who are capable of concentrating for
LIN KS dg.lee@virgin.net
Jackdaw
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state of art JAN/FEB 2007
STATEO
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creative energies I had left, on making TV
Fields, and then shot himself. I'd never been
films about it. I started off as a director, with
there before. But I thought I knew this
an ambitious three-part life of Picasso for
landscape as I had seen it so often in the
Channel 4, presented by his biographer, John Richardson. On camera, Richardson was a genius: charming, eloquent, insightful, brilliant. Off camera, he was a c**t. By far the most difficult man I have ever had to work with. I'd done a bit of presenting myself on the Late Show, Omnibus etc, and decided
paintings. It was only when I got there that I
' I WOULD ACTUALLY FIND IT DIFFICULT TO
it would be more peaceful and pleasant if I
nature abruptly opened out into a huge vista
did the presenting myself. Life was too short
covered with corn fields in every direction,
DECIDE IF ART HATES TV MORE
to spend any of it attempting to fathom what
across which the sun shone fiercely and the
was going on inside the crazy heads of other
wind blew freshly. I had always believed
people in the art world.
what I had read about the final Corn Fields:
The first TV biography I wrote, directed, and
paintings. But they're not. They're paintings
presented was a life of Gauguin for BBC2.
about open space and airiness.
Art Wars •
.
.
OR WHETHER
IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND '
realised that Auvers was in a gloomy valley by a river, and that the Corn Fields with the crows in them that Vincent painted just before he died, were actually at the summit of a huge hill. To reach them, he had to climb every day to the top. And when he got there,
that they were dark and claustrophobic
OPINION WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK
I still think it's my best film. Making it took us to Peru, Martinique, Brazil, and Panama,
So that's why TV and art are, in my opinion,
as well as Tahiti. All those places were fun,
made for each other. With films, you work
ON PAPER, art and television should get on
favour in allowing us to show this art to three
of course. Gauguin's story had never been
·rather well. Not because both of them are
million people.
not only with words but also with pictures.
told on television, and it followed a
Get the two of them working together in sync
highly effective mediums of co=unication that do most of their co=unicating through
The artists were, if anything, worse. A few
the eyes. That's just a coincidence. More
of them, the media-savvy ones, the Damien
important than that is the crude political fact
Hirsts and the Tracey Emins, knew they were
that each of them has something the other
addressing a huge audience, and enjoyed that
wants.
power. But most of them were muttering,
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resentful, embittered loners who couldn't TV waves in front of art the carrot of a
string a decent sentence of explanation
gigantic audience. Even a poorly watched
together, or look you in the eyes, or smile,
film on Channel 5 presented by T im
Marlow will get 250,000 people following
or do any of the things that normal people do when asked the simple question: what are
it. Imagine how many gallery exhibitions you
you trying to say? Working with BM Queen,
would need to mount to amass 250,000
on a plush series about the Royal Collection,
visitors?
Art,
meanwhile, offers TV
involved a far more relaxed human access
something it desperately needs: a moral
than working with Grenville Davey on his
excuse for being there: an alibi. Melvyn Bragg has been presenting the South Bank
dismal contribution to the Turner Prize.
Show on ITV for 30 years, not because ITV
I could go on (and on and on and on) but
audiences are dying to watch the South Bank
you're probably an art world type yourself,
Show in huge numbers, but because ITV
so you'll be thinking: what about the other
requires, for reasons of TV diplomacy, to be
side of the equation- what about television's
seen to be doing something for the arts.
treatment of art? Hasn't TV cheated on art
Melvyn, with his big mouth and his
habitually, and dumbed it down? Isn't one
unmatchable address book, is actually a very
of the reasons why you turned to art in the
cost-effective way of doing nothing much
first place because it was about something
while appearing to be doing lots. He gets into
deeper and better than TV? Do the words
the papers. He starts a rumpus every now and
'Rolf' and 'Harris' not tell you everything
then. He's on the radio regularly. He's the
you ever need to know about art's dread of
perfect one man retort to the accusation that
television? TV is the enemy.
"0
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ITV isn't on civilisation's side. I have plenty of sympathy with these views. So, on paper, TV and art need each other,
Not long after I started working as the art
and should get on. But those of us who
critic of the Guardian, a TV type from the
straddle both worlds are fully aware of the
BBC phoned up and asked if I would like to appear on a new talk-show they were piloting
real dynamics of the relationship. Not to mince words: they loath each other. I would
with someone called Terry Wogan. They
actually fmd it difficult to decide if art hates
wanted me to talk about an exhibition that
H i s i m pressive d e but as auteur i n c l u d es two first class fi l m s on V i n c e n t Va n Gogh a nd Pa u l Gauguin
Waldemar Januszczak
TV more... or whether it's the other way
was opening at the
around. I should know. I've been dodging
of work by Jannis Kounellis. In those days,
from one to the next for my entire adult
I liked Kounellis. The show had lots of soot
particularly fascinating and barely believable
and the impact is downright magical. Not
career, as a critic and broadcaster.
narrative. But the chief reason I found it all
and gas-jets in it, and was exciting in a
only can you describe the places that are
doomy, industrial way. Wogan came to the
so exciting was because, through making the
important, you can actually take people to
I suppose art's hatred of TV is the more
film, I got to understand Gauguin's art so
gallery to interview me. He took me aside
them. I didn't know all this when I decided
visceral and heartfelt of the two. Basically,
and told me he had a degree in psychology
much better. Take it from me: for knowing
to make art films rather than write art books.
and feeling the dynamics of a painting, there
Having produced a few remaindered tomes
WhitechapelArt Gallery
art looks down on TV with the sort of
or something from Dublin University, and
snootiness that Maria Callas reserved for her
is no process as revelatory as looking at it
that I should talk to him as if I were
earlier in my career, I had merely grown to
though a high definition camera. Tracing its
dread the sheer endlessness of the writing process. Books sit on your head and stop you
maids. Anyone who has ever tried making
addressing a typical Guardian reader. So
an art programme that involves filming in a
every inch. Living with every detail of it. If I
that's what I did. Halfway through the
busy gallery, or interviewing nervous artists,
interview, a man with a broom who was
hadn't made the Gauguin film, I simply
from breathing. They imprison you, and
will know already what massive reserves of
wouldn't have realised - couldn't have
cleaning the floor in preparation for the
won't let go until you fmish them. TV is a
mistrust and resentment they are forced to
realised- what an intelligent and courageous
opening that night, accidently walked into
co=unal process, however, and allows for
encounter.
picture-maker he was. In particular, I saw
the shot. The TV people quickly started
a decent sharing of the burden.
what a fearless pictorial adventurer he was
filming the heap of rubbish he had made. I One of my worst sins as a TV executive when
said to the director: that's a heap of rubbish.
I was Head of Arts at Channel 4 was to put
It's not part of the exhibition. He said OK.
the Tu rner Prize on television. It was like
So you can imagine how I felt when the show
trying to marry a Muslim to a Jew. The Tate,
was finally aired, and there I was spouting
a snooty organisation in any situation, got
carefully edited nonsense with canned
extra snooty when TV types were in the
laughter burbling away beneath my entire
room. I have never had as obstructive a set
interview, and a dramatic shot of the pile of
of meetings as the ones that were needed to
rubbish suddenly looming up and being
get the Turner Prize on television, and then
presented as a key artefact in the exhibition.
to keep it there. The
Tate,
creepily playing
the role of the protective parent on every
So yes, I know what TV does to art. And I
in
his
underestimated
impressionist
can do for art. And I love what art can do for
After Gauguin I did Van Gogh. The same
up with all the dnmb TV executives who push
thing happened. I thought I knew him. It
you into lousy slots and then complain when
it. I love it so much that I'm prepared to put
turned out I didn't. More recently I've
you don't get the ratings. And I'm prepared
tackled Toulouse-Lautrec. I've done films
to put up with snooty art world types who
about the Sistine Chapel, about Islamic art,
never watch television but who think they
Chinese art, and the art of Kazakhstan. And
know enough about it to despise it anyway.
in every one of those situations, I learnt and
Which camp is worse? They're both as bad
learnt and learnt. Making TV films forces
as each other .. . !
know why the art world mistrusts it.
you to look at art more thoroughly than any
measured out their available time in
And yet, a decade or so ago, I made a
thimblefuls, and generally conveying the
decision not to write any more danm books about art and to concentrate whatever
an obvious example, when I was making the
point, obstructed our access to the artists,
impression that they were doing us a huge
The fact is: I love television. I love what it
paintings, long before he left for Tahiti.
other creative situation I can think of. To take
Van Gogh biography in France I had to visit Auvers where Vincent painted his final Corn
Waldemar Januszczak is an art historian and critic. He has worked extensively in the print and television media.
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
6state IN THE EARLY Sixties, London was already 'swinging', and as far as the arts were concerned, almost anything seemed to be possible. London was fast becoming an epicentre for the weird and the wonderfuL At the highly fashionable Royal College of
STATEO
�RT
Art on Television was big - lt's the audience that Just got small ! ABC·TV's arts flagship TEMPO created a format still familiar today
New Tempo was born. Hodges was a film man (he later went on to direct Get Carter). Gone were the studios, the front man, the dinosaur cameras, the static presentation; gone was television theatre. We were on the move, outside in the world, on 16mm; and it was like a breath of fresh air to a drowning
Art, David Hockney was buying his gold lame jacket and Ken Russell was filming
edge: a film on the built-in obsolescence in
Pop Goes the Easel. Over in the
society was particularly powerful. With the
man. Programmes started to have a political
RCA's
recently established school of Film & TV
new small cameras we could virtually go
Design (which later mutated into The Film
anywhere, shoot anything, we could be more
School) a group of students were being
far reaching ... and even go abroad to make
approached by the executive producer of
programmes.
Tempo, an arts programme produced by ABC Sunday
We fast became a very tight group of
afternoons. H e invited them t o take over a
filmmakers, based in a studio complex where
Television
and
screened
on
studio, to write, direct, produce -and act -
COMMENT TREVOR PRESTON
in their own programme, the inventing and
the other production teams were still working with semi-obsolete equipment. We were
making of a television comment. At that time,
viewed with an envious suspicion -and we
it was a first, but even forty years later, it
were on the cutting edge of the use of film
might still be regarded as pretty progressive. The result was The Medium-Sized Cage. The title came from Samuel Beckett's Murphy, where it is used to describe the desolate, anonymous - yet enclosing -qualities of the typical bedsitting room.The students' comment was neither play nor documentary, nor was it .plain performance. It was something that moved between all three, designed to illustrate the special properties of that medium-sized cage - both the room, literally, and as a metaphor for the television box.
'The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy sat out of it, as though he were free, in a mew in West Brompton. Here for what might have been six months he had eaten, drunk, slept, and put his clothes on and off, in a medium-sized cage of north-western aspect, commanding an unbroken view of medium-sized cages of south-eastern aspect.'
The programme took the audience from the devising
of
the
programme
to
Murphy by Samuel Beckett
the
for television broadcast. Previously, the producers of Tempo, for various reasons, had forgone cinema as a subject, had confined themselves to the scope of the television camera. Now the genie was truly out of the bottle. Cinema had become one of the most talked about and stimulating of the arts, it was absurd to ignore it. It was decided to do a film profile of Jean
Luc Godard in Paris. From early researches Tempo had gathered that Godard, an enigmatic man, was difficult to contact and almost impossible to interview. We were not put off. We did contact him and we were invited to Paris to discuss the possibility of
presentation itself: the portrayal, internal and
a programme. Godard agreed to a single day's
external, of an art student 'moving digs'.
filming, and so we had to decide a quick, pertinent method of filming the interview.
Against a jazz sound track, the foreground
and directors strove to use the potential in
revealed an empty bedsit that changed from
new and exciting ways. One of the most
Since 'the car' plays a very definite role in
anonymity to obsession as it filled up with
inventive programmes was The Bundle - an
most of Godard's movies, a large American
random possessions: pin ups, comic photo
exploration of children's imagination. A
convertible was driven round Paris, while
montages, science-fiction masks, items
fight-dance by kids from a Tottenham
Godard, looking like a prohibition gangster
which gave our student hero his existence.
secondary modem school, which started in
in his dark glasses and smoking corn paper
a ballet-like slow motion, slowly speeded up
cigarettes, was interviewed in the backseat.
A self reflecting monologue ran over the
until the fight was fast and furious. Over the
A subsequent film on Jacques Tati led the
detailed camera work. 'Interests-sex, being
dance sequence was laid the words of a small
audience into this artist's deeply human and
alive a n d myself ' . 'Organs, religion,
boy's poem, a prize-winning entry for a
surreal world.
churches repel me'. (And this on a Sunday
competition in a national daily newspaper: While in France, extending the concept of
afternoon!) A single set with a single actor, the man and his things; his self-mocking
'A strange place, a place unknown, only a
art, Tempo went to Le Mans and made a film about the art of motor racing. Back in Paris,
stream of consciousness voiced over.
stone 's throwfrom the Human Race . . . This
Different objects being caressed, his world
place you shall neverfindfor it is mine and
a film was shot showing the very latest
of lusts, fantasies, ambitions and frustrations:
mine alone, strangest of all no place is so
performance craze-the 'Happening'. I was
'I could make one of those working class
unknown.'
interested mainly in painting and sculpture,
This was access television at its most
previously. On two occasions, I tried to set
engaging.
up an art film, the first time with the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, the second with the painter Francis Bacon. At first both agreed, then for some unknown reason, perhaps they felt it too exposing, they withdrew.
both of which had been almost ignored
films. Just give me the money '. In fact, I wrote the script of The Medium Sized Cage myself, and, with a good deal of help from the technicians, directed the piece.
In those early years of Tempo, there was an
This was acce�s television long before it was
impressive list of people and projects: Truman Capote, Isaiah Berlin, Oscar Brown, Juliette Greco, Michael Flanders, lan Fleming, Elia Kazan, Franco Zeffirelli, Graham Sutherland, the Western Theatre
an established concept. As a result, when I graduated, I was offered a job as a researcher on Tempo.
Then the plot thickened. Much as with old Tempo, new Tempo was left alone to follow
Tempo had started in 1961, and with editors
Ballet. Jacques Lecoq presented a mime of
its own creative course, and there was no
like Kenneth Tynan and Peter Luke, with
a swimming pool. The director created
interference or censorship from above. Then
programmes introduced by the Earl of
people swimming underwater, using the few
the decision was made to do a film with R.D.
Harewood, it specialised in interview and performance. The technical facilities - a small studio with a cyclorama, sets that wobbled, lumbering turret lens cameras, cables everywhere - enforced a static, theatrical feel to most of the early productions.
technical tricks that were available at the
Laing, the radical psychiatrist. We were
time. Kenneth Macmillan created Dark
going to use all the cinematic tricks to create
Decent, a chamber ballet specifically
the effects of an acid trip on television(!). A
choreographed for television cameras -this
set was built: a small white room with a spiral
was also 'a first' too. A famous French
staircase, a white table and chair, on the table
photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson,
a glass of water, a packet of cigarettes and a
documented the English on holiday.
box of matches. Using a super high-speed camera, an actor was filmed coming down
For years, television had been the scapegoat
Forty plus years ago there was no pressure
the staircase, sitting at the table, drinking the
for the decline in the arts. The Tempo
on the production team; there were no ratings
water and lighting a cigarette. In acute close
philosophy was solely concerned with
to fret about; creative people ran the
up, slowed down until perceptibly hardly
presenting art and artists to a public who,
programmes not pencil-neck accountants and
moving, the head of the match striking on
with a sort of smug philistinism, might not
out of focus focus groups. The budget of
the box looked like a dozen small volcanoes
otherwise be exposed to them. The aim: to
Tempo was negligible compared to today; the
foster pleasure in music, painting, poetry,
people who made it were left to themselves,
drama, ballet and architecture. The overall
and the whole endeavour had a sort of
task was to try to throw some light on
creative innocence about it. However, in
whether television, apart from fostering other
1963, there was a sea change. Mike Hodges, who came from producing and directing World in Action, one of the hardest hitting of documentary programmes, came in to take over Tempo.
arts, had any creative originality to offer? Was it just a medium, or itself an artform? Forced into studio production, the writers
TEMPO m a d e films with the h eavyweight a n d e m erging t a l e nts o f the time From Top Left: J a z zm a n Roland Kirk during h is residency at Ronnie Scott' s in London's Soho. e a rly 60s Playright Harold Pinter (1965) Hollywood legend Orson Welles (1961)
state7
state of art JAN/FEB 2007 erupting. Then the call came. The stuffed
BRITISH TV is primarily Coronation Street,
suits had seen the film, were horrified, and
not Cork Street, but nevertheless, there are
had withdrawn it from transmission. We
surely enough painters and sculptors on
argued, of course, but they were adamant;
television? Eight of them, from Caravaggio
creating an acid trip on Sunday afternoon
to Rothko, have just been socked to us by
television was not their idea of an arts
BBC2's Simon Schama . lt ' s not long since
programme . Perhaps they had a point, but
BBC ! 's Rolf Harris was painting The
whatever, the film was never shown.
Fighting Temeraire before our very eyes, and
New Tempo pushed ahead with films on
watched by millions; not long since the
Harold Pinter and Alain Robbe-Grillet, the French author: 'My career has been built on insults' . The designer Charles Eames, was another subject, he was the first man ever to have a one-man exhibition of furniture at the Museum ofModern Art in New York. Orson Welles, whom Jean Cocteau called 'a giant
theatrical but penetrating Brian Sewell was
then going on to paint the Queen in sittings
strutting his stuff among the canvases in Graham Sutherland's old studio; and David
Dimbleby was travelling the country matching landscape paintings by old masters with the actual locations. So is art on TV in good shape?
with a child-like face; a tree filled with birds and shadows; a dog who has snapped his
Well, no it isn't. Not if you mean art by living
chains and lies in the flowerbeds ' , was
painters and sculptors. Not if you weigh the
interviewed at length (this was 35 years
programme-minutes allocated to them
before Alan Yentob was to interview him for
against the progra=e-years of material put
the B B C ) . The film we did on A ndre
out by our TV channels. That comparison
Courreges, the couturier, was a fashion show with a difference: his clothes somehow dictated their own settings . Wandering through a technorama of computers at IBM, the models were transformed into terrestrial
makes art about as visible on TV as a gnat in a flock of crows. But does it matter? If you want to see works by living artists why not just go to Cork Street? Or the Tate· Galleries? Or to Frieze and the Affordable Art Fair and to a thousand other public shows and
astronauts.
galleries? My fondest memory of new Tempo was in Ronnie Scott's jazz club, where we were
I, for one, wouldn't be as interested in art if
multi
I' d merely seen it on walls or plinths and
instrumentalist, Roland Kirk. An invited
occasionally tried my awkward hand at it.
making
a film
on
the
blind
audience packed the place and the great man
What sparked my interest- what enlightened
was playing his heart out. Everyone was
me - was a television documentary about a
having a terrific time. Then he came to a
living painter. It was on Melvyn Bragg's
number called Panic. Everyone had been
original ITV strand Aquarius and it followed
supplied with whistles and kazoos, and at a
the late Euan Uglow as he painted a nude.
given spot, he stopped playing and the
The film began with the monk-like Uglow
Make art films for TV? Veteran television Journalist JACK PIZZEY gave lt a by and proved it doesn't take long to get the Bum's Rush
audience blew - it was simply the most
pacing round a bare third-floor studio in
THE DARK SIDE OF BRITAIN
perfect panic sound.
Battersea. His deal with ITV was that
proposal for a documentary
Aquarius would provide a studio for the year I read somewhere that the arts are always in
that he would spend dashing off the painting,
a rather exciting and hopeful state of
and this was the space they were offering
flourishing neglect. Looking back on old and
him. U glow circled the studio a few times
new Tempo, I realise that we tried to alleviate
and then shook his head; it wouldn't do, he
that neglect by giving a l arge modern
said, sorry, but it wouldn't do. Why? Because
audience a greater understanding of the arts.
when a bus went past in the street far below,
The impact of Tempo on the arts over the
the light in this studio took on a brief
years it was transmitted was, I think - I hope
pinkness. He couldn't stand that. Impossible.
- positive. Old Tempo was comfortable, reassuring, entertaining. New Tempo was
At that point the word pseud formed in my
very different, challenging, cheeky, non
mind, surely the little man was acting up!
patronising, quite as good as anything in arts
Well, they found him a studio where the light
programming today. It certainly seemed a lot
was unpolluted, and he set to work. He lay
more fun . . .
his model on � crescent-shaped table so that all parts of her body were the same distance from his eyes, and he began sketching. Half
In a series of large and powerful paintings, Richard Bagguley takes you i nto Brita i n now - a Britain of white v a n drivers, of m ugged old ladies, ofSteven Lawrence's killers walking free from court, of young Brits giving the Fascist sal ute. Bagguley's B rita i n seems in a spiritual void: i n h i s Christ on the Northern Une he h a s Jesus, wearing a loin cloth, sitting unnoticed in a crowded train. A bleak view? This is certainly not Stan\eySpencer's exuberant Christ at Cookham of forty years ago. Yet Baggu\ey is no pessimist and makes his main living from portraits and from s u n ny m u rals com missioned for private houses on both sides of the Atla ntic. So why is he exploring the dark side? Follow h i m on film as he p uts h i mself into football crowds, mass demonstrations, hoodies' h a u nts, m osques with militant mullahs - into places in the spiritual desert - and then emerges and settles down at his easel to chronicle, with a touch of Hogarth and a flash of Slake, ourtime of fear and loathing.
a-TV-hour later he' d finished his painting and I knew that he was no phoney. r d glimpsed a great talent at work in a way that no gallery could ever demonstrate. At about the same time, Ken Russell was filming another painter - a neo-Seurat you might call
The first ten paintings are already complete. To see them:1. Click on this link: www.art-richardjbagguley.comjsite/ 2. Click on the film clapper-board at top left 3. When that gives you a gallery of thumbnail pies, click on each individual image to enlarge it a n d see its title.
him - for a film he called The Dotty World oflames Lloyd. Again, watching the process was pure lightning. I was hooked. So I myself know h o w television can
Ideas for the next s ubjects in the Dark Side Series are coming up: three young men with back-packs at a tube station? Buddha, Krishna and M o h a mmed all being snubbed? Plato and Aristotle too? And bouncers practicingtheirtender craft - how did we come to need so m a ny bouncers? A woma n walking home i n fear . . .
enlighten when it works with artists and, if there ever was enough of that, I don't believe there is now. To see how our TV Channels
Richard Bagguley, besides being a gifted self-taught p a inter, is a good talker. U nstoppable actually - a TV natural.
react to a plea for more, I sent round a
proposal for a film. The film would be about
Richard Bagguley, an artist whose work should interest a good number of viewers. I can't claim that the TV channels would react to all proposals as they did to mine, of course, Trevor Preston is one of Britain's most
but here's what happened. My outline read
respected screenwriters and has scripted a host of television's most successful dramas: Cal/an (1967-72); Fox (1980); Hazel/ (197880); Out (1978); Public Eye (1965-75); The Ruth Rende/1 Mysteries (1987 -2000); Special Branch (1969-74); and was the core writer for The Sweeney (1975-78). He won the BAFTA Writers' Award in 1980. More recently Preston created and wrote the film I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (dir. Mike Hodges, 2003) starring Clive Owen and Charlotte Rampling.
as follows (see panel).
And me? You can see two short films I've done with a rtists a nd also my filmography at www.fil msforartists.com Is this for you?
it's the likes of George Michael who get
been drinking in the Sky Bar at the London
The BBC came back with an answer the very
a SBS. That just leaves SkyArtsworld and
Coliseum and watching the ENO's Sky
next day: not right for any BBC channel.
they emailed 'Looks interesting but our
Artsworld sponsored Marriage of Figaro.
Channel Four took only a week to say 'it's
budgets only run to about £8, 000. ' That's
Maybe Richard Bagguley and I should take
not something we canpursue at the moment. '
better than an outright rejection, but a real
singing lessons?
Channel Five explained that their arts output
budget for a 50-minute art film would be
is 'generally the Old Masters and Co, linked
more like £ 1 5 0,000 and, even when I
to exhibitions, events and anniversaries. ' ITV's South Bank Show hasn't replied: they
pulled in a eo-producer who could have
did do Peter Blake recently but these days
£1 0,000, Sky Artsworld said no. I'd just
helped me make a film of sorts for just
Jack Pizzey is an experienced television journalist, former TV presenter - and a BAFTA nominated documentary film maker.
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
sstate
The phone would go and it was Woody
THE VOICE is instantly recognisable,
Alien asking if he could appear. Meanwhile colour television was just starting and they
w arm and rounded with e v ery w ord weighed out and measured with cut glass
were using me as a tester. One night I would be in stripes, another in spots, then
precision. So too is the face, the long dark hair, high cheekbones and rich smile.
bright colours or white - none of them
Sitting in her London home, not far from
worked, they would just be a swirl. In the
where Sylvia Plath once lived, Joan
end the only one that they could use was
Bakewell remains a magnificent advert for those in their seventies.
beige, and I wasn't a beige kind of girl ! '
Still appearing on television and radio, still
Like s o many people who have made it onto the small screen, Joan's arrival came
giving lecture s , and still so much in
both by accident and in part through
demand that she is in the happy position
failure. She started out at the BBC as a
of being able to turn down work that
studio manager, 'I was hopeless, I knew
doesn't appeal to her. Even after almost 50
nothing about electricity and was always
years in broadcasting, she remains one of
putting all the plugs into the wrong
the most influential figures in the British
sockets , ' she recalls. The Corporation was
arts scene.
rather more paternalistic and forgiving in those days, so she was shunted across onto
Nevertheless, all these years later, it is
the other side of the microphone.
impossible to underestimate the impact that J oan had on the national appreciation of
Although she had read history and
art during her seven-year stint on BBC 2's
economics at C ambridge, it was her
groundbre aking Late Nig h t L in e - Up,
passion for the arts and particularly art that
which catapulted onto the screens in the
drove her programme ideas, so when the
mid-sixties. One night it could be the
idea for Late Night Line-Up was mooted
Renaissance painters, another Pop Art or C o n c eptua lism,
and
in
she was a natural fit. With her beautiful
b et w e e n ,
looks, in what was a male dominated world
Impressionism. N o fad too new, no style
at that time, being a major plus. Not for
too old.
nothing was she christened 'the thinking man's crumpet' by Frank Muir.
Initially, the intention of the programme had been to review the previous night's
'Today, you couldn't get away with what
television using a rota of presenters -
we did' , Joan admits. 'If you look at old
including Sheridan Morley, Tony Bilbow
tapes, it looks terrible, it was so ad hoc,
and John Stone, as well as Joan herself.
and quite chaotic. But that's what made it
However, as they quickly discovered, with
so exciting. We used to have this rota of
the show going out seven nights a week,
last minute guests who would bale us out
the format soon proved severely limited.
if someone couldn ' t make it. George
Melly, Terry Jones, Barry Humphries who started developing Dame Edna on our programme - and Jonathan Miller were all regulars.
'Lo oking back, the freedom we enjoyed was just extraordinary, ' Joan observes. 'Essentially we were allowed to create a programme that we enjoyed presenting. The sense was that if we found something
' Of course there was a lot of opposition to
interesting, then it would be interesting to
us from within the BBC. We would be
the viewers. It quickly became apparent
talking about a play that B B C 1 had
the only rule about the programme was that
screened the previous night and saying
there were no rules, the only brief was there was no brief.
how terrible we thought it w a s . Not
' I c an remember that I w o u l d s a y
pretty upset. In those days, producers and
surprisingly, the people involved would get directors weren't used to criticism, so took
something like: "A new exhibition opened
it badly, particular when it came from
today, and we just happen to have the artist
within.
here." And I would then conduct a half hour interview with them, which would go
'Both the Head of Drama, Sidney Newman,
out live, completely unedited. We just
and
invited g u e s t s i n ; it c ou l d b e Karl
NOTES SI M ON KI NNERSLEY
There were no long debates about whether
of
by David Attenborough who was then controller ofBBC2. Every now and then our editor would be told to: "Cool the kids down,
' O n e of the great strengths
they're getting a little too wild!"'
of the
programme was its immediacy. We would discuss shows and exhibitions the day after they opened, whereas Late Night Review that runs at the moment, always feels like after the
Head
own work? We were defended very strongly
invited them along.
long
the
Why is the BBC mounting a critique of its
we thought them worthy enough, we just
too
Singer,
and wanted us closed down. Their view was:
who we thought would be interesting. We would get them to talk about their work.
it's
Aubrey
Documentaries, hated Late Night Line-up
Stockhausen or Harold Pinter, anyone
event,
and
consequently lacks that sense of urgency and excitement. We were able to lock into things while they happened. 'I remember Marcel Duchamp coming in. He arrived with a heap of bottles and things and talked about conceptual art. In between worrying about whether the studio would be full of broken glass, he was absolutely fascinating. It was the only television interview he ever gave and a copy of it is now held at the Tate. Little did we know that those bottles would one day form what has come to be regarded as great works. 'Essentially, we were just making the programme up as we went along. We would change the lighting, move the studio around; try changing from chairs to stools.
The spirit of the 1960s propagated the Arts as never
It was, she says, a dazzling time to be in
before. The media exploded with the new technologies of
buried under an avalanche of new ideas,
colour printing and colour television. the
Sunday Times Colour Section
Queen
(later
magazine,
Magazine,
1964)
and the rest were soon outpaced by dynamic television Arts programming:
Monitor (1958), Omnibus
New Release (1964),
Tempo
(1961),
(1967),
Aquarius (1969).
This new vehicle required a new breed of on-screen journalist, and those that forged their careers in the
television. The old Reithian days<1l been faces and names. Programmes such as World In Action, Desmond Wilcox' Man A live and This We e k were brushing everything aside. With j u st two main channels, BBC 1 and ITV with BBC2 still in its infancy, the impact of this new wave was remarkable. 'Television dominated entertainment in a way that is hard to imagine today. With no video recorders or DVD players, and just a couple of channels to choose from, there
crucible of the new contemporary art scene soon became
was no competition for people's attention
household names. Without doubt, JOAN BAKEWELL
same programme at the same time and
is the most evergreen of them all . . .
following morning - what you would now
which meant that everyone watched the th a t ' s what p e ople talked about the call water-cooler conversation. 'The whole nature and future of television
" :::r 0
b () 0
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state of art JAN/FEB 2007
state 9
��---w-·� . � ..,, �.,.,
CONTINUED FROM PAG E 3 Enjoying perhaps the best job in the Arts ever, his output is consistently fertile and of the highest standard. In fact, probably his only bad career move in the last 20 years was declining to be interviewed for this issue of State . Despite the Cumbrian wizard, SBS
viewing figures are in decline, possibly due to a rescheduled l lpm late night slot, and surely competition from satellite channels. Yentob is more controversial, due to the fact that he accesses tax payers cash via the licence fee, and a recent skirmish with BBC accountants over his expenses (totally exonerated). The recent TV search for
'Maria' <6> ably demonstrated the wealth of
young talent available today, so one might
ask - what makes Yentob think his own aging phiz sho1,1ld be projected into the homes of sensitive viewers. But then, who can actually . gainsay him? The key question might be: how can he fulfil his extensive directorial duties back at the office whilst he is out cruising the world of cool? He and Bragg joiried the BBC as trainees in -the 1 9 6 0 ' s , it was obviously the decade for time lords.
Maybe Yentob looks in his mirror and
identifies with another bearded wonder huffing entertainer (and arti st) Rolf
. ' O n T h u r s d ay 11th S e pte m b e r l969. J o a. n B a kewell w i l l ta l k to H a rb l d P i nter i n t h e fi rst of a n e w s e r i e s of in-d e pth i nterviews to b e s cree n e d i n Line-Up o n BBC2 ' ra n t h e BBC PR b l u r b . J n a ctu a l fact. t h ey h a d b e e n h av i n g a s. ecret affa i r s i n e� 19 6 2 (.s h e ' m et h i m at a p a rty i n 1 9 6 0 , before eith e r o f them w e r e fa m o u s ' ) . T h i s stu n n e d t h e p u b l i c w h e n i t h it the press fo l l o w i n g M i c h a e l B i l l i ngto n ' s b i ogra p hy o f P i �ter i n 1995 . Photo ©BBC J e a n B a kewe l l gave h e r own vers i o n of t h e ·fa cts in h e r a uto b iogra p hy, The Centre of the Bed (Sce ptre. 2003)
was being forged. Although we had the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over us constantly - Mary Whiteiu)use hated us, p articularly when we reviewed the opening night of Oh Calcutta - we just ploughed on, trying to do subversive things all the time.
had their way as it shutdown forever. Ahead lay her new and perhaps perfect job, BBC Arts Correspondent. Once again she found herself in her favourite role, interviewing artists. Having never had the chance to paint (there was a desperate shortage of materials during her childhood on account of the war) her self-taught appreciation of art came from hours spent
'I can remember covering a Television Festival in Prague, the year before the Russian tanks rolled in, to find out what was
happening there. Then going to New York with a crew and nothing scheduled, interviewing some of the Chicago - 7, including Tom Hayden, who later became a senator and married
Jane Fonda, to talk about their opposition to the Vietnam war. '
Mail in the summer of '68 during the white heat of the Paris
'When I started out on Late Night Line- Up, I was falling at the feet of the artists, my questions were very much in vein of: How do you do it? I was the humble learner rather like the viewer. That hasn't changed, I am still the student, when I'm interviewing an artist; I want to know about them, it's not about me. I'm not and never have been a fan of art critic talk, I like · things to be cut and dried and simple. Let the work and the artist do the talking.
student riots. It shows two gendarmes looking at the deserted streets with not a protester in sight: 'It must be because the
ringleaders are appearing on Late Night Line - Up' the caption goes. Indeed, they were in the London studio airing their· grievances and explaining. their position. Such a programme, Joan: insists, would now be inconceivable today. Quite apart from the fact that it wo�ld be impossible to attract guests with the ease that they did, and out of the question · should they hav� nothing to plug, but far more sign�ficantly,
. . 'For that reason I find that Simon Schama tends to overshadow the painting and gets in the way. I don't need to see lots of hand waving and gesticulating, he tends to over-egg things .in a way that isn't necessary. Even today my approach is the same
they · wouldn't be afforded the freedom of format or that opportunity to evolve ..
· ·we had such freedom·, everyone involyed ·in the programme was a kindred spirit .. People don't feel that way today, everyone has career plans and strategies, people move from one job to. · the ·next in order. to enhance their career. We never thought about things in that way; but then there wasn't the competit_ion either, -you didn't have to fight for people's attention- in the · way :that you do now.' · Joan left Lat� Night Line- Up in 1 972,' shortly before the programme hit one crisis too many and the detractors finally
by Lucien Freud's A Room In Paddington - and then to Rome and Florence as a student at 1 9 - her approach to covering art has always been both simple yet highly intuitive.
Joan gets out a copy of a cartoon that appeared in. the Daily
'Everything today on television is very formulated, controlled and struCtured. You don't just let a group of young people go in a studio and see what happens, every idea is discussed· and analyse.d endlessly, worked on, then tested in focus groups ; nothing i s left t o chance: Money and resources are much tighter, ·although we didn't spend a. fortune; money wa� never 'a reason for not doing something. : .
gazing at .dusty postcards of the grand masters as a schoolgirl: Since taking herself off to Manchester to see the Arts Council Touring Exhibition of Contemporary Art and being mesmerised
·
.as it always has been, if I was covering say, David Hockney ·or Tracey Emin; I would want them to do all the talking, all they need from me is a little prompting. Hearing what they have to · · say would be fascinating.' On the walls of her home hangs the evidence of her passion fox: art. There- are works by John . Piper., _Patriclc Hugli es; John Hoyland, Sarah Rafael, Alb�r� Irwin, Bridget Riley, Davi� Mach and three by John Bellany, including a large portrait of Joan. It is filled with colour, ·vitality and passion, a true image of the woman who has shone ·such a light on art. ;>imon Kinnersley is writer !Jn award
. NOTES
winning Fleet Street journalist..
-
(1) John Reith, highly influential Director General BBC, 1922-1938, . was a Scot (originally an engineer) famous for his strict, highly moral tone. Later Lord Reith, Baron Stonehaven.
Harris. Family favourite Rolf was the most successful art programme of 2002-2005, and probably of the last 10 years. Rolf on Art was B B C l 's only major visual arts series of 2002, h i s four programmes
attracted audiences of 7 milli o n , 5 . 2 milli o n , 4. 8 million· and 5 . 1 million respectively. On into 2003, RoA continued to be a ratings · success, with six pro grammes on Sunday · �ftemoon attracting
3-5 million viewers. By 2004, Harris was at it again, adding four Star Portraits with Rolf Harris to the mi;x., and continuing to attract between 4-5 million viewers. Not to mention his portrait of . HM Queen,
screened on New Year' s day 2006 to -record breaking ratings . Rolf Harris comes from - Australia - isn't that where we came in?
N OTES (1) Purchased by the Austra l i a n W h itl a m Government i n 1973·. for t h e Nati o n a l G a l l e ry of Australia. at US$2 m i l l i o n (A$1.3 m i llion) this was then the highest price ever pa id_ for a mod ern p a i nti ng. The purchase was deemed excessive. especi a l ly as the Nati o n a l G a l l ery d i d n o t o p e n u ntil 1982. T h i s was seen a s o n e of the factors which led to the d i s m issal of the Whitlam Government i n the Austra l i a n constituti o n a l crisis o f 1975. The p a i nting h a s s i n ce i n creased in v a l u e a n d is one o f the ga llery's most popular exhibits. (2 ) The Royal Charter of the BBC notes: 'the wi desp-read interest which is taken by Our Peoples i n broadcasting services a n d of the great va l u e· of s u ch services as m ea n s of d issemi nating information, edu cation a n d · enterta i n ment' . (3) BAR B . Broadcasters Audie nce Research Board, an i n d ependent body: - www. b a rb.co.uk (4) Civilisation BBC-2: 13 Episodes 23 Fe bru ary - 18 May, 1969. Kenneth C l a rk. D i rector: M i chael Gill. Producer: Peter M o ntagnon (5) ·. .. we believe in a broad ch urch. Melvyn is the boss and hps the final say on commissions. ' G i l ly G reenwood. Executive Prod u cer of The South Bank Show, Dep uty Co ntro l l e r of· Arts & · Features Dept._ 'Aian .Yentob is Director of Drama, Entertainment and caac: in June 2004 he also · became the BBC's Creative Director. Aian is at ' the creati-:e helm of the BBC · B B C Press Office (6) Andrew lloyd We bbe(s televised sea rcl1 for an unknown to star iri h i s Souhd of Music ·. amazed absol utely everyone with the sheer brillia n ce of the wa n n a b e sta rlets.
-
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
1 0state I WAS FIRST introduced to Ib K. Olsen through a friend who said: here's a man really worth making a film about - a great j azz musician and an artist - but he is a modest and shy fellow, so it may be difficult to convince him to be filmed. I was intrigued. I had just finished another documentary (First There Was Boogie Woogie) also to do with jazz, but here was a chance to make a film about both music and art. I was convinced that this could be great and didn't think twice when starting the work. Little did I know that it would take more than two years to get the film off the ground. I knew very well that it would be for an audience with a special interest in art and traditional j azz, but I had been enthusiastic about the creative possibilities of the film and not yet thought through what was to become the hard work of raising finances. I was being both the director and the producer. On the one hand working on establishing my relationship with Olsen, on the other being busy researching sources of fmancing, writing application letters to every thinkable private fund or film organisation, as well as banging on doors of broadcasters. The result was disappointing. I only had rejections, camouflaged as polite letters explaining
that my subj ect sounded
interesting, but unfortunately not what they were l o oking to fund at the moment. Nonetheless, all wishing me luck with the
film.
EUROSTATECOPENHAG EN
I soon realised what I was up against and I could only fmd one answer: Olsen wasn't famous in the traditional sense of the word, he was known for his jazz music, yes, but he had not made his mark as an artist. His works weren't already well-known and that made
TH E M ISSING YEARS O F IB OLSEN - A TELEVISION PROJ ECT FOR DK4
lb � F�
it very difficult, maybe impossible, to get people to invest in the project. I tried to look at it in a different way and asked myself: What can television do for art? I wanted to make a film about art told through Olsen's personal story. I wanted to make television a
Lykke Stru n k is a fou n d e r m e m ber of the ava nte-ga rde Da n ish fi l m a kers co-op
G rou p 101. More at h o m e with cutting
vehicle to introduce an artist whose works were not only engaging, but also interesting in a historical context, because many of them were characteristic of Danish art between the 1 930s and 1950s.
edge, experi m e nta l d ocu m e nta ry work,
Olsen is 87 years old, he's Danish and lives
m eeti ng with a n 87-yea r old jazz
in Copenhagen. Art has always been part of
m usicia n a n d a rtist see m ed u n l i kely to
his life - he started drawing as a young boy and then went on to do painting and lithography. His natural creativity enabled
provoke a lengthy col la bo ratio n . . .
him to experiment with every form of visual expression but ultimately, and for practical reasons, he chose a professional career as a graphic designer, eventually retiring at the lithographs and posters. Hours passed as we
dedication to art that I needed to uncover.
had never cared a bit about fame and didn't
went through the mass of material found in
One thing kept me intrigued. In his early
feel the need to compare his own art with
On my first visit to Olsen I knew only that I
drawers and cupboards, with Ib Olsen
youth, Ib had been a promising painter and
others, and yet his works were of the same
was to meet a man best known for his music,
carefully pointing out details and answering
had been a close friend of other artists who
intensity as that ofrecognised painters whose
his band had been going since 1957 ! But as
my many questions. This was his territory,
went on to become famous with their work,
work was representative of Danish art. Had
soon as I entered his home I knew that there
his den, and he ' d invited me in. That
an important part of Danish art history. But
Olsen been of a different temperament, it
was potentially much more to this story.
afternoon I left feeling elated, it was as if I'd
why had Ib only exhibited on two occasi"ons
could easily have been his paintings hanging
While we were talking, I surreptitiously
been given a special privilege, seeing
- and that was back in 1 94 1 ?
in museums and galleries.
studied the paintings on the walls and as soon
artworks that had been hidden away for years. Some of m y questions were answered when
At this point I was still working hard to
age of 75.
as I could redirect the conversation onto the art, I did.
What fascinated me was the wide variety of
I got to know Ib better and he said: 'It takes
get someone to see the value of my film
genr�s Ib had worked in. He was a
a special temperament to make a living from
and invest money in it. This was definitely
Ib Olsen is a man who leads a quiet, but
perfectionist with the wonderful skill to shift
painting - if you want to be a good painter
not an expensive production, my aim was
active life, playing the cornet with his jazz
freely between styles, but his art also
that is - it .takes perseverance and a
to tell a story and make a visually strong
band. But more importantly, he is a man who
reflected a colourful imagination. He said:
willingness to give up everything else, and I
film, it had never been my ambition to
reads books, listens to the radio - but he
'Because I wasn't making a living from
didn't have that courage. ' Although being
make it commerciaL It was not that kind
never watches television. In fact, he doesn't
painting, it was a challenge for me to try it
indisputably talented, Olsen is not an
of subject.
think highly of the voracity of television
alL That's why I ' ve worked in so many
ambitious
people. Would it be possible for me to invade
different ways and painted in nearly all
his routines? With Olsen' s disinterest,
manners. When I could master one style, I
perhaps dislike, of television, would he allow
went on to try another. '
me to? Ib's story clearly had two sides: the art and
·
man
and
definitely
not
competitive. He is not one to make too many ·
because I had chosen a subj ect which
ok,
he probably wouldn ' t have felt
people didn't already recognise. I couldn't
comfortable as an artist having to work
help wondering why it would have made
within an established art world.
Olsen's story so much more attractive if
I saw that as a strength and began to see that
more inspiring or more beautiful, because
he'd been famous ? Does it make art better,
On my second visit he trusted me enough to
the music, and Ib is as passionate about music
take me to his study and reveal what turned
as he is about art. I wanted to reveal it all,
out to be a l arge collection of his art:
but as music was so omnipresent in Ib's life
as the driving force of the film . Here were
draw i n g s ,
today, it was the perspective on his life-long
all these great art pieces made by a man who
paintings,
watercolours,
The project was at risk of not being made
compromises in life. I sort of understood that,
it's made by an artist used to exposure, an artist who is already a household name or
state 1 1
state of art JAN/FEB 2 007
When we fmished that evening, the space
who i s o r has been associated with people influential on the art scene?
was transformed from a white, neutral space
I decided there and then to dig out and to
portraits, views of
to a colourful life story told by faces in the lively streets, lazy
Sundays in the country and a whole wall of
dust off the whole collection and re-present it to the world in the film, and as an extra
posters each with a special character. It was
bonus we would have Olsen's jazz music to
all ready, and tomorrow was the 'big day ' .
accompany all the pictures. This film was
going to create the opportunity to give lb the
It was a S aturday - the opening o f our 'one
exhibition he hadn't had since 1 94 1 .
day show' . It turned out to be the hottest day ·
of the summer, and normally people would leave for the beaches and their summer
Then the detective work began. Firstly we collected everything that was in Ib ' s
cottages. The question was - how many
apartment. Then w e got o n to his family
would turn up? In fact, people began arriving
members who had lb's paintings on their
minutes after we opened. lb was happily
walls or hidden away in their attics. And then
greeting everyone, all the time closely
there were pictures which lb only had photos
followed by our camera crew. He didn't seem
of, paintings that were in the possession of
to notice it any longer. Earlier I had worried
old friends ' children, some of whom lb had
that he would never be comfortable during
never met or even spoken t o . Ib was
the filming, but now he seemed to just be in
enthusiastically engaged in our efforts to
the moment. He was surrounded by family,
track down the works. He went to visit - and
friends, former colleagues and fellow jazz
borrow - his own pieces from people who
musicians, and the atmosphere was seething
had known the paintings all their lives, but
with bonhomie and energy.
not the painter. I was pleased that he showed such an interest in preparing and collecting
It was with some sadness that we had to take
everything for the exhibition. This had
it all down after the camera crew had gone.
become a genuine collaboration - even
We stripped the walls of the dynamism the
though I was working within the despised
paintings had given them, we stacked the
television arena!
frames up and packed them away - such a short lease of life. But these were the rules
I was, however, just about to explore other
of the game, we had known all along that
routes of getting the film made, when I
this was not a 'proper' show, this was film
decided to give it a last try with a broadcaster.
and what we had done was to create a
Fortunately my luck turned and I was invited
fictional art exhibition for the purpose of the story. This was what television could
to a meeting with the television channel DK4.
Because I had worked on the film on my own
do for art.
for such a long time, I had already taken it to The film is called The Cornet and the
the fmal development stages, meaning that the broadcaster would not have to invest in
Canvas, scheduled for transmission in early
the lengthy development phase. The
2007. It has its own life now and as a
broadcaster liked the subject, naturally, but
filmmaker I have to let it go. Naturally, lb
this was also an opportunity for them to get
and I are now friends and in the future I will
a f!lm to broadcast which had cost them only
learn more from his quiet way of sharing his
little money.
knowledge about art and the way he pulls
We had been on hold for months and at
fascinating about making portrait films is
you into his way of seein g . What is last we could get on with it. During the
getting close to special individuals who teach
passing months, I had received the odd
you about a subject they have dedicated their
lives to - and in this film it was the artist and
phone call from members of Olsen's jazz
musician Ib K. Olsen.
band, curiously asking me about the situation. Maybe they had their doubts if this was ever going to happen? It was a
lb Olsen Portrait of Helmuth Lassen. o i l on c a nvas 1938 Private Coll ectio n
relief, when I finally could tell people that
This article has been translated from the Danish by Lykke (pron. Luc-ker) Strunk
we would soon start filming and soon record the music.
LIN KS lb K. Olsens Jazzband has been playing
http:jjwww.group101.dk
together for more than 40 years, but on the day of recording, a certain nervousness
Lykke Strunk (b. Copenhagen 1961) Independent documentary filmmaker. Studied and worked in London 1989-1998. BA Hons in scriptwriting 1993. MA in screenwriting and screen research 1996. Established own independent company in 1998, based in Copenhagen. Founder member: Group 101
melted with the excitement. This was a day when everyone wanted to play their best and it was very important they were all happy about their playing. It was a sensitive area and when we had to do some re-recordings, I didn't think twice about it as this was an important issue for the band members. Finding an art gallery to rent turned out to be tricky. We only had three days for filming, and every venue in town was booked for months ahead. And which gallery owner would be prepared to empty their space for only three days anyway? The solution was to rent a loft space and with the limitations of our time schedule, we had to accept what was, fortunately, a small compromise.
lb Olsen Klampenborgvej waterc o l o u r 1940 Private C o l l ecti o n
The first day of filming and expectations were high. We arrived on location in cars p acked with paintings of all sizes and posters in all shapes. We were strangely excited and looked at the white, blank walls waiting to come alive. None of us knew what the space would be like by that same evening. B efore long, we had the show lined up along the walls and had started to get a chronology and a flow. I soon realized that lb was in charge. Despite his 87 years and his bad hip, he threw himself into this role with great enthusiasm.
In 1941 . 01sen was invited to exhibit with the artists ' group Ka mmerate rne on the recommendation of the renowned painter Folmer Bentzen. In newspaper reviews, Olsen was predicted a promising career as a painter and a lithographer.
lb K. Olsen (b. Copenhagen 1919) Finished apprenticeship as lithographer in 1940. I n 1941 Olsen was invited to exhibit with the artists' group Kammeraterne on the recommendation of the renowned artist Folmer Bentzen. In newspaper reviews Olsen was predicted a promising career as a painter and a l ithographer. Started playing the cornet in the early '50s, a member of the band Hot Club of Denmark, inspired by Armstrong's Hot Five, Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Wailer. Soon after started his own band: l b K. Olsen's Jazz Band. While working as a lithographer got to know and became inspired by influential artists amongst others lb Andersen, Folmer Bentzen, Jens S�mdergard, Hans Scherfig and Henry Heerup. With a large fam i ly to support chose to make a living as a graphic designer, and in 1962 he established an i ndependent design practice. Olsen is still active on the jazz scene and just as committed to his art Olsen's Jazz Band still exists and still plays live sets.
1 2state
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
THE YEAR of the Sex Olympics was a play written by the late Nigel Kneale for BBC2 in 1 96 8 where a prole-ish TV audience responded to the 24-hour broadcasting of athletic soft porn. But numbed even to permanent live sex, the only images that stimulated a response from them was the voyeuristic reality of gory murder observed by remote cameras. In a parallel universe, perhaps overstimulated by too many late night art revues, the Channel 4 (C4) Richard & Judy programme employs an artist in residence, Mark McGowan, to create art stunts. His deadpan projects include: The Running Tap, leaving a cold water tap on in
VIRTUALSTATE
television
NOT CONTENT WITH MAKING DOCUMENTARIES AND REPORTING THE ARTS, TELEVISION STATIONS NOW DIRECT THE CREATIVE PROCESS
enormous amounts of unnecessary pollution. More mundanely, crawling on his hands and knees from London Bridge to Canterbury with a rose clenched between his teeth, 1 8 boxes o f chocolates tied around his wrists and ankles and a triangular roadsign on his back saying Could you love me. I'd stick my penis into your rectum. The latter maybe a little too public realm for Richard & Judy, who work in a medium where attention span is limited to instant gratification.
programmes; from raising the money, to the process of selecting, managing and com missioning artists. In a clandestine move by Carbon Media (the Big Art Project series producers) the American guru of architectural light installations, James Thrrell, was helicoptered in to the Isle of Mull to view the potential of the site. So much for community consultation,
The heavyweight corporate cultures of the BBC, Arts Council England and C4 are, however, reaching out to each other· in a conscientious attempt to fulfil their public roles updating the BBC's early Reithian aspirations to ' info rm, educate and entenain' . In particular, the BBC and C4 have been jostling for position in the area of
broadening the audience and involvement in the arts. More a case of when the art is in doubt - hire a celebrity.
reaching beyond the scope of a television series to effect real change in communities'. The first investment was £ 1 . 6 million towards the production of the Channel 4 Big
to nominate sites for public art. The series was to follow the progress of six art commissions: an industrial quay in Cardigan; Waterworks Park, North Belfast; derelict terraced houses in Burnley; the Beckton Alps slag heaps in Newham, East London; the Meadowhall cooling towers in Sheffield; a
communities. With each commission ... in whatever medium, permanent or ephemeral, we hope to push the boundaries of that debate and expand ideas about what constitutes public art and who can be involved in it.'
Art Project. The programme strategy was to Public Art in Britain today and was originally advised by the experienced art consultant and curator Isabel Vasseur. A C4 selection panel comprised curator and cultural historian, Dr
blank canvas site in the Isle of Mull. These were recently joined by the former Sutton Manor Colliery in St. Helens, Merseyside.
The world of art in the public realm is heaven sent for corporations, institutions and independent production companies with an eye to satisfying the public taste for reality TV. An intention of the combined muses of the arts and media is to repeat The Angel of
Augustus (Gus) Casely-Hayford, cultural broker Peter Jenkinson OBE, and regen eration facilitator, Kevin Murray. In Louise Wardle they had an assiduous producer who
It started out with every good intention but somewhere things didn't quite work out as planned. Some observers feared that to complete six or seven major commissions in two years was too ambitious a timescale. The
the Nonh effect at Gateshead where Antony
commissions. Even the PR's were part of the connected art establishment, Bolton & Quinn Ltd, retained media specialists to
Gormley's steel winged figure has achieved iconic status and been adopted as a landmark symbol of regional pride and resurgence, and a metaphoric gateway to economic re generation. The Angel was produced as a result of long-term arts strategy and activity in Gateshead which helped it gain public approval. Although the dilemma for the
views on modern art; temperamental artists refusing to compromise on i s sues of aesthetics; helicopter shots of the low-loader carrying the sculpture delayed en route; and the civic unveiling complete with celebrities, dignitaries, consultants, artists and com munity representatives waiting for the made for-TV version of Four Weddings and an An Funeral. The root of the problem is a lack of belief in the media towards the arts sector, and the professional abilities of the art curator. In particular, the fear that the potentially mundane process of commissioning public art does not make a good TV programme. The media have used their status to manipulate the contribution of art towards the safe A-list celebrity associated with major London exhibitions, or art-as-fun represented by Tracey, Banksy and BritArt. For the TV producer and non-specialist media, there is nothing more frightening than the prospect of the unrecognised B-list artist with their unknown front-of-camera charisma. It was no surprise then, if the producers logically began to control every aspect of the
House Gallery, Camberwell for 1 2 months, wasting 1 5 million litres of water; The Unnecessary Journey, keeping an Audi 80 engine idling for a year in order to produce
art reality TV and consequently in the area of real-life art commissions promoting art for the people. This current interest can be summed up by Jan Younghusband, C4 Commissioning Editor, Arts, announcing the C4 Big Art Project: 'At a time when art is bursting out of the confines of museums and galleries, we want to take a creative part in the debate about how artists can influence
the commissioning process. Cue to visions of Councillors with frrmly held conservative
explore and debate the questions around
immersed herself in the opinions and issues of the specialist world of public art
selected sites were criticised for losing sight of the art and more concerned with re vamping old buildings that had lost their
Alan Yentob and Tate.
purpose with an archaeological makeover of industrial revolution eyesores as part of the regeneration agenda. There were concerns
The Big Art Project, was an open invitation
that the need for tele-drama would corrupt
In addition to the razzmatazz funding provided by C4's Breakthrough Fund, the process and costs of commissioning were to be met through the leveraging skills of the host organisations, local steering groups and the selected commissions agent. A variety of Regional Development Agencies were part of the funding bids, offering significant sums of money to attract the C4 programme. Rather than a programme about qualitative artists' commissions, the magic of media exposure had created a magnet for related tourism and marketing potential, visitor attraction, economic prosperity and inward investment. Louise Wardle is no longer involved with the programme and neither is Isabel Vasseur, who resigned in July. As a sign of no confidence, the initial trustees, Andrea Rose, Samir Shah, Andrew Wheatley and John Ladd of The Big An Project Trust (established as a charitable trust to create and promote art in the public realm, particularly in non-gallery settings) have also all subsequently resigned. The B B C has been involved in the commissioning of public art since 1932 and
making of art is that short-term media thinking requires a provocation of production values for immediate results , pitting
is involved both i,n commissioning for their buildings and for broadcasting. The Eric Gill statues of Prospero & Ariel, at Broadcasting
confrontation against collaboration. The resulting emphasis on instant celebrity and personality is at odds with the idea of communities working to change their long term environments. As Sally O 'Reilly pointed out in a recent article in the Financial Times, 'Given that art and television are both using strategies of self-generation', it is no surprise that there arises a potentially
House in Portland Place, caused some comment initially as Gill had his peccadilloes. The naked figure of the young Ariel apparently aroused complaints about his overlarge penis until commanded to make amendments by John Reith, then Director General of the BBC. Since then the BBC has commissioned temporary or permanent works, usually, but not always, associated with a BBC building, programme or event.
intrusive situation where 'the integration of broadcasting with art production so that the making and distribution of art becomes bound up with themselves ' .<1l
the
programmes
C4 created an arts funding operation, The Breakthrough Fund, with £ 1 0 million available to fmance 'particularly innovative and risky projects that offer the prospect of
Broa dcasting House. Architect: Lie uten a nt Col o n e l G . Val Myer. was built i n 1932 a djacent to N as h 's All Souls C h urch.Badly b o m b e d during th e Seco n d World War it was h a d two modern exte nsions i n 1961 and 1995, the bui l ding h as ofte n b e e n compare d to a s h i p, with its ' prow' l ike front s ecti o n b e a r i n g a clock tower a n d a eri a l m ast. Artist com missions cover the b u i l d ing, n ota bly the statue ove r the front entrance of Prospero & Arie/ (from S h a kespeare's p l ay The Tempest) by Eric Gill, s e e n at work o n the p i ece ( a bove). Photo courtesy Corbis
In London, a Public Art Group is chaired by · BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob with members from BBC departments and local stakeholders . Yentob was also part of a separate group setup to manage the White City art programme. In the fmancial year 2004-05, £ 1 95,000 was spent on eleven temporary and permanent artworks. This
-·
"'
state of art JAN/FEB 2 007
state 1 3 outside the Oratory in St.James's Gardens, adj acent to the Anglican C athedral in
E
.. .<:::
E
Liverpool. Senior BBC publicist Janet Morrow emailed Vanda Rumney, Head of BBC publications and was concerned that: 'unlike other BBC public art to date, it's not
<!:>
� </) ..
;;:
connected to a BBC building, nor is it linked in any way to a BBC broadcast or BBC activity - the BBC has purely used license fee money to create a public sculpture' . The rogue email stated that: 'Alas, the [BBC] public art committee doesn't have a clear rationale about why the sculpture was commissioned, so_ . . I have invented the line below which is plausible (up to a point)' . The invented press memo was to claim a long history of commissioning going back to Eric Gill, which subsequently became the public line of Alan Yentob.
•
•
there was some organisational and man agement confusion about the procedures for commissioning public art at the BBC The
management malfunction and chaos occurred as authorisation for a publication on the White City art commissions, written by
delivery process for the Emin sculpture was surprisingly random, lacking in public involvement and commissioning protocol,
William Feaver, was abruptly withdrawn. Vas seur ' s con sultancy, Art Project Management, were left with costs of
with not a curator in sight. Elements of the work were partly prompted by spontaneous ideas on a day trip and tour of Liverpool
£20,000, seriously threatening the survival of the company. In a bizarre corollorary, Claire Sefton temporarily covered the costs for the book personally. Subsequently the
elliptical courtyard of the new BBC radio building in Church Lane, Liverpool in Alan Yentob (59). known to s o m e a s the Eminence Grim of the B BC. h a s b e e n Di rector of
Dra m a , Enterta i n m e nt a n d CBBC s i n ce April 2000 . In 2004 h e a l s o b e c a m e th e B B C's Creative D i re ctor. In 2003 Yentob b e c a m e th e controversi a l prese nter of BBC1's Imagine. H e j o i n e d the BBC as a j u n i o r i n 1968 - w ith i n 10 years h e had created the m o u ld-brea k i n g a rts s e ries Arena. a n d was its Editor u nti/ 1985. N owa d ays h e a ls o s its o n the B o a rd s of The S o uth B a n k a n d t h e I nternati o n a l Aca d e my o f Te l ev i s i o n Arts a n d Sciences. a n d C h a i rs t h e I CA.
included Song, a sculpture by Paul de Monchau:x, resulting from a TV programme which voted for Winston Chuchill as the greatest Briton. The cost of £50,000 was met by profits from the viewers telephone votes - making it probably the world' s first interactively commissioned public sculpture. The B B C Broadcasting House Re development, London, 2002-09 is a planned art strategy and programme led by Vivien Lovell, curated and managed by Modus Operandi Art Consultants. The permanent commissions include: Ron Haselden, Close Up , an ongoing ever-expanding digital archive of portraits of BBC staff and visitors. A camera invites visitors and BBC staff to have their photograph taken and the digitised image then scrolls onto a series of colour LED screens building up an archive of
Brian Catling, Nick Danziger, Tom Gidley, John Riddy and Catherine Yass were all invited to respond to the history and activity of Broadcasting House before it closed for refurbi shment in 2 0 0 3 . In addition, Education and Community Projects were undertaken by William Furlong, Ruth Maclennan and Richard Wentworth - the latters interest was in the Sound Effects Store - 'a larder of sound' crammed with objects used in radio dramas. The BBC Television Centre at White City includes earlier commissions, including a .giant mural by John Piper and a sculptural fountain by TB Hu:xley Jones. The new BBC Media VIllage, designed by architects Allies & Morrison, incorporates Foreign Office Architects' new BBC Music Centre, whose facade will visually reproduce the music
portraits, displayed randomly. Jaume Plensa's, Breathing, is an inverted glass cone projecting out of the roof of the new East
being played inside the studios through a grid of colour-changing LED lamps with
Wing; it incorporates a poem by the artist, and is dedicated to news journalists killed
The BBC White City Visual Arts Programme, was led by Isabel Vasseur, and the series of
on location. For a briefperiod at night, a thin
art commissions, continuing from 2001-08, aims to increase public access and integrate the BBC far more into the local community.
vertical line of transparent white light will project from the sculpture, connecting the building to the night sky. Mark Pimlott's, World, is a proposal for the Langham Street public space based on a fragment of the globe, its surface inset with lights that can be imagined as stars or cities, lines indicating latitude and longitude, and engraved with names of places. A discreet sound element in the languages of the places or cities inscribed is linked to World Service output. Temporary Commissions were presented by William Furlong, Fiona Rae, Liz Rideal and David Ward_ The Artists-on-Site scheme initiated Rachel Whiteread 's plaster cast of Room 1 0 1 , the inspiration (in part) for Orwell's room-of-terror in 1984. Whiteread,
changing digital patterns of colour and light.
Following the Button Report in January 2004, there was a bloodletting at the BBC with 5,300 job losses (20% of BBC staff) and £320 million of budget cuts. It also appeared that there was a 'sticky situation on the public artfronL . which might blow up '_ This was exposed in article by Antony Barnett in the Observer, when he revealed leaked emails dating from 22 February 2005. These concerned the commissioning of a sculpture as part of the publicity to mark the BBC's contribution to Liverpool Art 05, a regional Conference and Awards event. Roman Standard by Tracey Emin, is a tiny bronze sculpture of a bird on a steel pole sited
Seatter. Although Modus Operandi were subsequently reinstated to complete the commissions - when it was realised that the project needed professional management support to develop them through to realisation.
Between 2003 and 2005, it appeared that
to help Emin identify a temporary site. Lewis Biggs, Director of the Biennial, understood that the diminutive scale and upright shape of Emin ' s work was designed with the
•
manager, Claire Sefton, became responsible for Artistic and Cultural Projects with Robert
The demise of the White City commissions preceded the Hutton Report. But with job losses and reorganisation on the horizon, the scheme was a victim of BBC corporate culture and infighting_ An indication of
accompanied by Laurie Peake, Liverpool Biennial public art manager, who was asked
J"u$"'{" l M P.Gt i N E
Beleschenko, senior architect Richard MacCormac resigned and the second phase of the project was awarded to Sheppard Robson Architects. Modus Operandi also lost their long term contract, as in-house managers took over the £3 million commi s sions budget. Itinerant B B C
mind. Although that building was completed in October this year, the courtyard will not manifest itself until the BluecoatArts Centre is finished in 2008. This final location is not, however, acknowledged in the internal BBC e-mails. Emin had, in fact, opened the first Liverpool biennial in 1999, along with Jarvis Cocker, and associated the sculpture with The Liver Birds. A reference to the TV comedy programme rather than the symbol of Liverpool. The sculpture was purchased for £60,000, and is on loan to Liverpool until 2008, at which point it will be moved to become part of the B B C permanent collection. The BBC experience in Liverpool appears to be part of a random public art commissioning activity at that period. Managed by Claire Sefton - a BBC arts producer responsible for Artistic & Cultural partnerships and involved in commissioning art for BBC regional centres in Leeds and Hull - and revolving around the monocratic figure of Alan Yentob.
BBC did settle the accounts outstanding, but then cancelled the book and wrote off the writers' fees and set up expenses - with the result that there is little public knowledge and recognition of the scheme's art content. There is, of course, a vast difference between commissioning art for property and for broadcasting. There are signs that the relationship between art and the media is moving on. C4's planning has been relatively long term and includes The Jerwood Artangel Open in association with Arts
Council England, The Jerwood Foundation and commissions agency Artangel_ The intention of the £1 million project is to provide a completely open brief for commissioning three contemporary large-scale artworks, or events for specific sites and situation, across the UK between 2008-10. The BBC have moved in quickly creating temporary art commissions from ' some of the UK's most exciting contemporary artists' within a highbrow programme, The Power ofArt, which provides a template to access contemporary art. Presented by Simon Schama, The Power ofArt claims to tell us why art matters, 'This is not a series about things that hang on walls, it is not about decor or prettiness. It is a series about the force, the need, the passion of art'. It offers a series of Artist Tours located in different UK cities and accessed via a mixture of media and live event.
Nicola Stephenson, an art consultant with the Culture Company based in Leeds, was invited to research artists (including Charles Quick and Rob & Nick Carter) with regional connections for the B B C commissions. While initially excited b y the
A public media debate - on issues of space, place, community and transformation, to push the boundaries and to expand ideas
project, the experience of working with the B B C resulted in a sense of deep dis
about what con stitutes public art and contemporary urban culture - is still in
appointment and no artworks were commissioned_ There was little interest in a
process. Or is still to be decided in a marketing meeting . . _ somewhere in London.
commissioning protocol and good practice; presentation meetings were cancelled and models and plans not properly considered. While these are standard bugbears of the commissioning process, more significantly, the Culture Company had to wait twelve months for fees of £10,000 given to artists to be repaid. Subsequently a five-man BBC Public Art Committee was established for 2005/6 onwards. At Broadcasting House, the MacCormac Jamieson Prichard scheme was eroded by value engineering, a technical term for cost cutting_ After a public row about the integrity o f the design, partly involving the cancellation of a glass screen by Alex
Jeremy Hunt is editor of Art&Architecture magazine and Paris bureau chief of State of Art
NOTES (1) Do Not Adjust Your Set. Sally O'Reilly. FT Arts & Weekend. 6th October 2006.
LIN KS www. b be. eo. u k/a rts/ powerofa rtj eo m miss ions www.thejerwoodartangelopen.org. u k www. channel4.comjbigart www. artshole.co.ukjmarkmcgowa n . htm www. modusoperand i-a rt.com www . a rtoffice.co . u k
1 4 state
EUROSTATEP. •
I
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
IS
people to make a decisive break with the past, just at the time when their instincts required that change. Anything was now possible but it was Africa, with its unorthodox way of
.fr1c
looking at the world (by western standards) which encouraged new directions in painting and sculpting the human figure, new ways of formulating space and teased out an unusual degree of freedom and boldness of artistic expression.
HIDDEN TREASURES IN THE HEART OF THE CITY opinion ALAIN ADAM
Alain Adam is an artist and collector based in Paris
SMALL, SPECIALISED museums have the strategic advantage and the disciplinary requirement to create exhibitions with a
LI NKS http/jwww.dapper.com.fr
narro w focus. The more modest means at their disposal also limit the potential impact of a now familiar heavy handed or over
M usee Dapper, 35 rue Paul Valery 75116 Paris. Tel: 01 45 00 91 75.
powering design concept. Shortly after my somewhat disastrous visit to the Musee du
Kuba ( a bove) Congo Masque wood, meta l. s h e l ls . pigment
quai Branly in Paris (see SoA-8) I had the
good fortune to be taken to the very discreet
Musee Dapper, whose focus is Africa, to see
their superb exhibition of masks and
reliquary figures from the Gabon (Presence des Esprits; September 2006 - July 2007).
The Dapper Museum was created in 1 986 by Michel Leveau and his wife, Christianne Falgayrettes-Leveau, who is the museum's director and an academic of considerable experience in African art and literature. The museum organises one or two major exhibitions each year and also promotes a
broad range of cultural activities connected with Africa. Contemporary artists with an
African connection are also invited to show their work in another part of the museum.
Set on a side street in the smart 1 6eme arrondissement, the building is quiet, undistinguished but elegant. Inside, I was struck by the sense of good taste and
thoughtful design used throughout. That same sense of unfashionable (God forbid,
,s
Makonde ( l eft) Ta n z a n i a Masque w o o d , pigment
Cheikh Diouf (right) Mother and Child conte m p o ra ry s c u l pture
b ourgeois) sensibility is used in the exhibition. The result: clarity of structure,
range of expressive forces at work and the interconnection between the numerous tribal groups inhabiting this vast area containing only a million inhabitants.
available). Lastly and most importantly, the exhibition includes a spectacular choice of obj ects of the highest quality shown thematically and most sympathetically.
What struck me throughout was the degree
elegant presentation and thoughtful, well documented scholarship made easily accessible (an excellent catalogue is also
For once, I left the exhibition well informed,
of visual sophistication of the works and the power contained in the pro cess of abstraction, used with infinite variety and so much a part of Africa's rich sculptural tradition. That same force and energy was,
A sufficient number of sculptures from each region of the Gabon helps to illustrate the
I couldn't help seeing the works of Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi, the Blaue Reiter group and countless other Western artists since. Chance and good fortune had allowed these
more knowledgeable, and visually more attuned to a part ofAfrica which has provided an unusual amount of memorable works of great variety and power.
as is well known, to decisively influence the course of 20th century western art.
We specialise in out of print, second-hand and rare books on 20th Century art, especially modern British
art.
We
frequently acquire libraries and collections and undertake archival work and valuations. Located opposite the main entrance to Tate Modern. Open 10.30 - 18.30 Monday to Saturday and 12.00 - 1 8.00 on Sunday
43 Holland Street. Loud on SE I 9JR T +44 (0) 20 7261 0 1 1 1 F +44 (0) 20 726 1 0 1 29 in r<>@ rnarcuscarnpbeli .C<>. ttk
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You pay only your own postage - no extras Go to our web site for a downloadable form
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Picasso 's priva te
collection revealed
>'editor 1\t i KE· VoN- JOEL
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A History of the NEAC Kenneth McConkey RA
260pp numerous col illus. Hb. Royal Academy Press £40.00
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But Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeeri ng at everythi ng that looks strange. Samuel Pepys. D iary 27 Novem ber 166 2
LAST YEAR the Redstone Press celebrated its 20th birthday. This anniversary marked a prolonged and fruitful collaboration between Gooding and Rothenstein, whose small, idiosyncratic press has proved an unexpected success on all fronts. The commercial triumph of their annual Diary has enabled more esoteric publications, Dr. Clock's Handbook being a fine example. The Oxford English Dictionary attempts to define absurd as: adj. (of an idea, suggestion, etc.) wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate; or noun: (the absurd) that which is absurd, esp. human existence in a purposeless chaotic universe. To attempt to produce a book on the subject is therefore patently absurd in itself. Redstone make a good fist of it, because delight in the absurd is an age old
Or Clock's Handbook The first definitive handbook to the absurd!
Ed. Me I Gooding & Julian Rothenstein. l ntro Andrey Kurkov 168pp 100 col illus Hb. Redstone Press £16.95 diversion not just confined to the English, although we are specialists both as reporter and progenitor of 100% pure absurdity. Absurdity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Whilst the innate freedoms of a democratic society enable one sensibility to pillory the susceptibilities of another, the passage of time is the great leveller. One only has to see newsreel footage of hippies, cavorting in muddy fields 40 years ago, for an embarrassed flush to appear around the collars of many a CEO in the City. Or a Redstone editor to quickly stuff his kaftan to
the back of the closet! Dr. Clock's Handbook offers up a soup of paradox, contrariness, ridiculousness and AI ice-like logic, from a multitude of artists and writers who have deliberately - or inadvertently - created material befitting the general idea. Some, like G len Baxter, Tony Earnshaw, David Shrigley and Les Coleman, specifically work with visual l anguage and perception. Others like Ed Ruscha and Duane Hanson, might be curious to see their carefully considered expressions of irony elevated by the editors to the realms of the absurd. A wholesome
part of the book contains found images which, isolated from their original context, can be read in an unimpeded manner and without the handicap of connotation. Some need no context and stand alone as monuments to the great human weakness of vanity, obsession and credulity united. Redstone books are for those with a love of literature, love of publishing and of interesting ideas well presented. it's absurd for critics to actually read the book they are reviewing, but to get into the spirit of Dr. Clock, I made an exception - there's a typo on page 143 ('ring me' instead of 'bring me') which serves to prove it Also, I might well be absurd to warmly recommend this type of book as a perfect, all year round gift to yourself, but I wilL If it's not too ironic to do so? (MvJ)
THE FIRST serious assessment and history of the New English Art Club since its founding in 1886, and there could not be a better man than Ken McConkey to attempt it One is tempted to say that the the N EAC is a quintessentially English sort of organisation, for that is how it's perceived nowadays, with its exhibitions in venerable locations and impressive list of a/umini. But in rea I ity, it was a quite continental type of outfit in the beginning, very much in the French mode of artists' collectives and Sa/on des Refuses style politics. lt was spawned in an era of ladies' art classes and the myth of Paris - the run down studio, impoverished circumstance, lengthy cafe debates on art In fact, all the cliches so comically ridiculed by Tony Hanco,ck, in The Rebel (1960). The reality, of course, was that the vast body of faceless atelier artists, of varying talent, came from the middle classes. Working class scions (predominantly male) with a modicum of artistic talent would be lucky to secure a job in some print shop or factory drawing office. Whilst the NEAC combined to exhibit works under their own volition and were anti-Academy in their stance, one gets the vivid impression that all of the founding members would have been most pleased to be welcomed inside that all powerful arbiter of acceptable taste and style. Whatever their motives, the NEAC captured a spirit within English art that has survived to this day. McConkey's thorough research and attention to detail offers a rewarding read, and the true success ofthis book is the fresh exposure given to many artists long since relegated to the sidelines of art history. With a large quota of colour images available, the reader can be reminded of the merits of such, now overlooked, painters as Fred Du berry, Margaret Thomas and Wilfred de Glehn - amongst many others. The NEAC still does, as it as always done, embody sincerity, traditional concerns and the painterly skills. That is quintessentially English, and we are the richer for it ( MvJ)
state of art JAN/FEB 2007 THE LINK between Picasso and the 'primitive' arts of Africa and Oceania is well known. His friends Apollinaire and Paul Guillaume had been great champions of the sculpture and artefacts from
Francis Bacon The Violence ofthe Real
Edited by Arm in Zweite This volume presents about sixty of Francis Bacon's disturbing yet captivating studies of the human figure, encompassing works from the late 1940s until his death. Texts by a range of Bacon scholars offer new insights into these radical and discomfiting images, so brilliantly reproduced on the pages of this book. £32.00 hb
Africa following the 1 900 World Exposition in Paris, which reproduced 'authentic' African villages as a spectacle. As Picasso visited Paris for the first time in 1 900, it defies belief that he would have failed to attend such a major public event himself. France had a long history of colonial meddling in Africa and had followed other major European capitals by establishing an 'ethnographic' museum in 1 87 9 . This was later to become the Musee d'Ethnographie, located at the Palais de Trocadero in 1 882. In 1904 Picasso relocated to Paris and, by 1906, he was very much part of the mileu of avant-garde,
c ontemporary arti sts in the city. Maurice de Vlaminck is actively buying and collecting African
masks at this time and is persuaded to part with one significant example to his friend Andre Derain. Later, in Derain's studio, Picasso and Matisse discover the Ivory Coast white mask hanging on the wall and are overwhelmed. Subsequently, both avidly pursue primitive artefacts, each claiming to
How to Read a Modern Painting Understanding and Enjoying the Modern Masters jon Thompson
have influenced the other as to the veracity of the artform. In typical mode, Picasso goes on to claim
In this accessible, practical guide, jon Thompson analyses more than
200 works of modem art, helping readers to unlock each painting's meaning and providing the key to works by some of the greatest and most popular artists of the last
that whilst Derain and Matisse identified the intrinsic 'sculptural' qualities of the pieces, it was he, himself, who responded to the 'magical'
150 years, including Bonnard, Van
Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, Rauschenberg and WarhoL £19.95 nexibound
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Thames & Hudson
For fwther dWlils of our list. news of ev�nts and special offers. visit us ani� at
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Art Fa i r 2007 • •
HSBC ID The world's local bank
showcase artwork from leading modem and contemporary art galleries from
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PICASSO'S COLLECTIO N OF AFRICAN & O CEAN IC ART Peter Stepa n
The NewcastleGateshead Art Fair will be the first of its kind in the region to within the
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and abroad. it will be the largest commercial selling exhibition of
original artwork ever held in the North of England.
136pp. 266 i l l u s , 136 col. Hb Prestel £50
For sponsorship and exhibition opportunities or to attend please visit www.ngartfair.com, email ngartfair@benchcom.co.uk or contact the event office on
01 91 241 4523.
Supporting Sponsor
qualities that set African sculpture aside from other ethnographic arts . The Negro works, he claimed, were intercesseurs (mediators) and that 'I always looked at fetishes . . . I understood what the Negroes used their sculpture for . . . '
Supported by
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These details are well to known to the art world
and have been amplified in s c h o l arly re examination by such as William Rubin and Anne B aldassari<1J. Picas s o ' s much analysed major painting of 1907, Les Demoiselles d 'Avignon, has a strong relationship to one of the artists growing
collection of picture postcards of African subjects, according to B aldassari - in this case Edmond Fortier 's 1 906 photograph of types of women in the Sudan. Unusually for Picasso, there is a dearth of preparatory drawing or studies for Les Demoiselles and so the field is wide open to speculation. [In December 1 92 1 , Andre Breton will write to J acques Doucet stating that this painting 'marks the birth of cubism'.] However, Stepan notes
that: 'unlike Matisse, Picasso only made use of photographic s ources from Afri c a very occasionally' and that they: 'seemed to have played a much less important part than African figures and masks ' . Interestingly, Les Demoiselles has been x rayed and there is a second phase of painting after Picasso's visit to the Musee d 'Ethnographie du
Trocadero. Revealed beneath the top layer of paint are heads in the Iberian style.
#
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state of art JAN/FEB 2007
The man in the wooden mask BOOK OF THE MONTH MIKE VON JOEL For Picasso himself, it was to be a life
discussing ethnic sculptures and associated
long love affair with tribal artefacts and
matters of acquisition, clearly illustrates
he retained many of the individual pieces
that his interest was both fervent and
until his death in 1973. Here, the true depth
c ontinu o u s . The b o o k ends with the
and breadth of the arti s t ' s interest i s
catalogue of the Picasso collection. The
revealed, i n its totality, for the first time
double
by Peter Stepan. It is a stimulating and
storer o o m ,
inspiring endeavour of historical research.
page
spread
p acked
s culpture s ,
is
of with
the
Vill a ' s
' dormant'
c arefully
annotated numerically, en This book is an outstanding piece of work.
abling the reader to turn to
A year after Picasso died at the Villa
the corresponding catalogue
C alifornie
entry for elucidation - in
in
Cann e s ,
a
s eries
of
photographs were made of the interior
some
which coincidentally documented over 75
remini s c en t o f the
works of non-Western art in the artist's
umentary photographs taken
arcane
way,
it
is
doc
possession. Some, fascinatingly, could
by
even be seen in the background of earlier
Tutankhamun ' s t o mb , s o
photographs taken in Picasso's studio at
many years before.
Ho ward
C arter
in
the B ateau-Lavoir in 1 9 0 8 . Today, 1 1 0 obj ects can b e identified as having once
Obviously, such a detailed analysis would not have been possible without the full co operation of the P i c a s s o family
and
the
Musee
Picasso, Paris. Here, Prestel have not failed to fulfil their role in this project and have delivered a quite excellent, intriguing and beautiful book.
NOTES (1) An ne Baldassari is the director of the M usee Picasso, Paris and author and curator of numerous authoritative works on the artist. (2) William Rubin. Primitivism in 20th Century Art... (1984)
Storeroom at t h e Vi l l a C a l ifo rnie, 1974 © C l a u d e P i casso Archives been in Picasso's personal collection (96 African, 12 Polynesia, and two from Indonesia). William Rubin's highly critical assessment of Picasso's hoard'2l has since been re-evaluated by modern observers. Judged on its qualitative merits by Rubin and found l acking, P i c a s s o
cle arly
preferred character and idiosyncrasy, being well able to afford to purchase the prime examples of the genres Rubin found so distressingly absent at the Villa C alifornie. Peter Stepan has taken the rudimentary photographic survey and developed it into a major work of scholarship, isolating each piece of art, identifying it and providing a full description and interpretation. Full page c o lour photographs of the most significant items ably demonstrate the intellectual source material provided by these fabulous (predominantly) wooden items. Following a series of introductory essays, Stepan presents the plates - first Oceania, then Africa - followed by an inv aluable chro nology
of P i c a s � o ' s
evolution a s an artist i n the c ontext of A fr i c an
his tory.
Pic a s s o ' s
endless
correspondence t o friends and colleagues
�� �I �
u ,..;
R I G HT: Cro u c h i ng figure, C18th . Eastern S e p i k River regi o n . Pa p u a N ew G u i n e a . Musee Picasso Paris BELOW: Picasso's stu d i o at the B o u l ev a rd Cl ichy 1910: t h e P u n u Face M a s k on t h e wa l l . P h oto © Picasso Arc h ives, Paris BELOW RIG HT: Face M a s k . Punu. G a b o n .
Musee Picasso Pa ris
BELOW LEFT: Fo r e h e a d Mask C20th. S i e rra Leone. Utraya C o m p a ny Ltd .
.
mJi[41HW
state of art JA"'/FEB 2007
simultaneously as a vibrant picture book (endless colour photographs) a travel guide (useful index of opening ti mes a n d tra n s p o rt deta i l ) a n d catalogue o f important p u b l i c art sites across the world.
Destination Art Amy Dempsey 272pp 406 col i l l us. Hb. Thames & Hudson £24.95 NO MATTER how many art books hit the shelves, Thames & H udson are guaranteed to conj u re up some of the most original and provocative titles. Here, Amy Dem psey provides a real art-niks delight, a simple idea yet so very effective - a tour of the worl d's best public art spaces. lt functions
Dem psey divides the journey into stylistic zones: the 'personal visions' sector incl udes, for example, Nek C h a n d ' s Rock Garden and l a n Hamilton Finlay's Uttle Sparta (see SoA a rch ives). ' M on u m ents to a modern age' typically encompasses LA's Watts Towers and the epic Mount R u s h m o re m e m o r i a l . ' D ese rts, forests, city centres and churchyards, o n farm l a n d a n d m o u nt a i n s , alongside highways and rail roads',
these are, the author assures us, the goals for Destination Art, with 50 sites featured in detail and a further 150 other locations outlined in brief. it's an impressive undertaking and so very well executed. Amy Dempsey is a Courtauld graduate and Fellow of the Royal Soci ety of Arts; s h e cu rrently works a s a consultant to national museums and ga lleries in the U K. For those jaundiced by gallery art and depressed by the fads of a metropolitan artworld, this could. well be the inspirational tome to (literally) begi n a j o u rney of psychological rehabilitation. For others, that mental rej uv e n ati o n c o u l d j u st as well h a p p e n in the co mfort of an armchair. (MvJ)
Cult Rock Posters 1972-1982 Roger Crimlis & Alwyn Turner 192pp numerous col ill us. Pb. Aurum Press £18.99 A BOOK that delivers what it says on the cover, with the proviso that 'cult' in this context is more to do with the punk and neo-punk 'cu lt' than the everl asti n g d es i r a b i l ity of t h e individual artworks. There are some true classics of course, Anarchy in the UK (Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols, 1976) Roxy Music (N ick de V i l l e , 197 2) a n d Ed B e l l ' s m e m o r a b l e artwork for David B o w i e ' s Sca ry Monsters. But the Seventies decade was no La Belle Epoque, or Sixties graphic revolution, as evidenced by the posters collected here. Towards the end of the 19th century, th e great period for l ithogra p h i c posters, artists s u c h a s H e n r i d e To u l o u s e- La utrec a n d A l p h o n s e M ucha prod uced images that sti l l retai n t h e i r original brilliance and visual i m p a ct tod ay. A s i m i l a r renaissance occurred in the Sixties. T h e a rr i v a l of a new gra p h i c tec h n ology, especia l ly the P h oto Mechanical Transfer (PMT) machine, e n a b l e d the s i m p l e creati o n of photographic based images. Fondly k n o w n as a 'j u ke b o x ' , the P M T process camera let designers quickly source any material that could be copied on the adjustable flat bed. lt rapidly became the essential tool of any graphic studio and there was a queue to buy the brand leader: the Agta Repromaster (now they are not even worth their scrap value). The subsequent boom i n graphic imagery i n the l ate 1960s m i rrored the a ppetite for the poster of La Belle Epoque, c o m b i n g art nou vea u
Imagined I nteriors: Representing the Domestic Interior Since the Renaissance.
Jeremy Aynsley (Editor}, Charlotte G rant (Editor) 320pp numerous col illus. Hb. V&A Publications £45
Rembrandt's Bankruptcy Paul Crenshaw, 221pp, 39 b/w illus, H/B Cambridge U. Press £45.00
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graphics with psychedelic palettes to pro d u ce memorable posters from designers l i ke H a ps a s h & t h e Coloured Coat, Michael English, Nigel Weymouth and the legendary Martin S h a r p (classic i mage: Bob Dyl an Blowin in the Mind}. But the S ixties d i d n 't have the incredibly photogenic Deborah H a rry - or David Bowie. His and her striking images are omnipresent in 70's rock imagery where photographs and DIY p u n k gra p h i cs a b o u n d . H owever, connoisseurs of the art and time will delight i n samples of work by Barney Wan, Nick de Ville, the late Barney Bubbles (Colin Fulcher}, and Barry J ones. This is a d ecent piece of investigative research and one might even agree that Cult Rock Posters is the definitive review of the decade's music graphics. For those that were there 30 odd years ago, it's a fond trip down memory lane. (MvJ)
REVIEWING ART h istory books can often be a task rather than a pleasure, but in the case of this book, the emphasis is decidedly u p o n the pleas u re. With Rembrandt's Bankruptcy, which is a study of the artist, his patrons, and the art market in seventeenth-century Netherlands, P a u l Crenshaw b l e n ds eco n o m i cs, s o c i a l h istory, biography and Dutch law into a penetrating study of Rembrandt's bankruptcy. I n the course of this, he reveals a great deal about the soci a l circumstances of the production of art, and aboutthe relationship between the artist and his work. As he neatly points out, previous art historians have largely assumed that the bankruptcy happened to him, rather than being caused by him. The portrait that e m erges of th e a rtist as a m a n is n ot fl atte ri ng: Rembrandt was dishonest and ruthless, and had no intention of paying his debts - if he could get away with it. On the other hand, a portrait also emerges of a man one thinks of Picasso - entirely consumed by his own production of art and determined to go to any lengths to feed his passion. Thus, even when owing substantial sums of money, he kept on buying a rt (reckless trading, we would call it now) so as to feed the voracious appetites of his muse. The book, which has a strong element of the detective story, is meticulously researched. I ndividual chapters are d evoted to to p i cs s u c h as the D utch a rt m a rket, Rembrandt's patrons, and the artist's financial problems but the real pleasure is the manner in which the author manages to assert a real sense of narrative drive within his marshalling of dense and often complex detail. After you have read it, you will look at this artist with a new eye. The book has a fine index, excellent bibliography and very readable, detailed notes. (BMcA)
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THE V&A HAVE an enviable reputation for first class quality in all their publications, and this epic study of 600 years of the interior is no exception. The editors can draw on a virtual army of experts to contribute to the text. including their own in-house connoisseurs of furniture, fabric and design. The result a terrific volume of history, inspiration and nostalgia. Our understanding of interior design before the advent of photography comes mainly from art, the depiction of room sets in painting. Of course, there are numerous architects' and designers' style books of all periods extant, but a real sense ofthe different periods in history comes from painting, especially of the medieval age. There is an unconscious idea that 14th-15th century life was somehow primitive by modern standards, and of course on many levels it was, especially if you happened to be a serf. But as diverse paintings of the time illustrate, the affluent domestic interior would be comfortably familiar today, with some aspects almost completely unchanged.· Thanks to the photo-realist style of painting in the Renaissance, we enjoy fastidious detail in the works of artists like van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. The latters' Annuciation (mid-1430s) typically shows the Virgin assailed by the Angel in a room, the photographic details of which can work on two levels. As the authors point out, each object seen is possibly encoded with meaning and symbolism, which the learned are able to interpret and contemplate. But the painting also operates on a second, more human and mundane level. In the case of the Annunciation, the room has a large 12th century style open stone fireplace, obviously cold and draughty because the artist shows it neatly filled in with wood panels, and a long bench seat carefully placed across the hearth to disguise it A simple little insight that breeches the gulf of six hundred years and brings the society to life in a vivid way. This particular image is j uxtaposed with Jan van Eyck's famous 'marriage of Arnolfini', more correctly the Arnolfini Double Portrait (1434). Again, intense detail brings the scene to life - interestingly, the red velvet drapes and style of bed is common to both paintings, indicating a popular fashion amongst Europe's affluent society. These peeks into the past never cease to interest contemporary observers. lt is no accident that Dutch genre paintings of 17th century Flemish life have never lost their power to enthral! and delight
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Imagined Interiors is full of such fascinating insights to another age, other lives - with the irony being that, whilst the subject matter might well be imagined, most of the time the actual interiors depicted were real and accessible to the artist As van Eyck noted on the wall above the ornate mirror in the Arnolfini portrait 'I have been here'. A fabulous book that succeeds on every level, and maintains the high standard of scholarship to the very last page - Modernism on the COte d'Azur in 2004. (MvJ)
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ADVAN.CE INFORMATION : FI N E ART BOOKS & CATALOG U ES EDITOR ROWLAN D TH 0 MAS
REVIEWS ROW LAND THO MAS (RT) BR IAN McAVERA (BMcA) SARAH MCAVERA (SMcA) M VON JOEL (MVJ) CHARLES KANE (CK)
Conrad Atkinson Landescapes
The Art of Street Jewellery
108 pp col illus. Pb
Christopher Baglee and Andrew M orley. 220 pp 600 illus. H b New Cavendish Books £ 35.00
John lsaacs Books £ 18.99
From Britain's most influential political artist comes this review of his landscape work. More than 30 years after his leap to the forefront of the art world with the watershed exhibition Strike at Brannans at London's I nstitute of Contemporary Arts, Conrad Atkinson is rightly regarded as one of Britain's most important living artists and one of the most influential political artists working anywhere today. His forging together of conceptualism and activism makes his work a vital contribution to contemporary art history and practice. While widely exhibited and collected (and represented, for example, in the collections of the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The British Museum, the Australian National Gallery, the Pushkin Museum and the M useum of Modern Art) Atkinson's work, unlike that of his peers and disciples, has not until now been represented i n print to the extent i t deserves. In the first of what is planned to be a complete series of publications on the various aspects of Conrad 'Atkinson's career, Conrad Atkinson . Landescapes is a review of his work relating specifically to landscape, and is published in response to the inclusion of his early massive masterwork, For Wordsworth, For West Cumbria , as one of the centerpieces of A Picture of Britain, a recent major exhibition on British landscape at the Tate Gallery. The book includes an essay by Richard Cork, chief art critic of The Times, an interview with Antony H udek of the Courtauld I nstitute, and original writings by Conrad Atkinson. lt is a testament to a modern-day master of technique and commentary, in whose concept of landscape is revealed a radical strain informed by acute sensibility to human suffering as a result of political and commercial manipulation.
Written by the pioneers of enamel sign collecting, this book is the definitive guide to the subject. Enamelled iron street signs were used for advertising from the 1880s to the 1950s, and were found everywhere from street corners and shops to warehouses and railway stations. The hard wearing substance from which they were made reflects not only the Victorian preoccupation with permanence and stability, but also a very different advertising world from the one we know now, where products did not constantly update their image - and often outlandish claims could be made. I n this beautifully presented volume with its own miniature enamel sign on the cover, Baglee and Morley present an outline of the historical, technical and visual elements of the enamel advertising medium.
life and the creative process. As such, it was a theme that he consistently explored throughout his career. This book examines the artist's personal and visual fascination with wheat, analyzing the significance that the motif, and by extension the peasant at work in nature, played within the social and cultural framework of nineteenth century France and in the works of other artists of the time. Focusing on his Sheaves of Wheat at the Dallas M useum of Art-one of thirteen canvases completed in the last month of his life - this beautiful book features illustrations of Van Gogh's works as well as personal correspondence and letters. Related images by such prominent contemporary artists as Emile Bernard, J ules Breton, Charles F. Daubigny, Paul Gauguin, Jean Francois Millet, Claude Monet, and Camille Pissarro are also included. Together, these works reveal the larger social and political trends of nineteenth-century France.
'lt was the way conceptual art emphasised and utilised the perception of the viewer which was so useful to feminist artists. lt was a way of connecting directly to other women without any of the prejudices they might have about aesthetic language and this is why artists chose documentary, popular mediums such as film, photography and performance. These mediums enabled us to find a. gap i n perception in which to situate our work within popular culture.' This exhibition catalogue focuses on Auckland-bern Alexis H u nter's photographic works from the 1970s, including the Approa ches to Fear series, which proposes various · correctives for the oppression of women. Often bitterly ironic, these works are filled with fetishised h igh heels, guns, and engine oil in slick parodies of commercial photo graphy. Crucially, they posit the existence of a female gaze, thus 'turning the tables' on men. Lucy R. Lippard situates H unter's work in � feminist discourse, and John Roberts interviews the artist.
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Alexis Hunter: Radical Feminism in
Barcelona and Modernity: Picasso,
the 1970s. ed. Lynda Morris.
Gaudi, Mire, Dali. William H. Robinson and Jordi Falgas.
Exhibition catalogue: U npaginated, col and b&w illus. Pb. Norwich Gallery £ 20.00 'For feminist artists the personal is political' was one of the most important slogans in the 1970s. Being subjective as women in our work was the bravest and most radical thing we could do at the time. This female subjectivity became the most hated aspect of our work: myself using my own hands not the hands of models; Mary Kelly using her son's diapers; Susan H iller photographing her pregnant belly; Tina Keane making performances based on her relationship to her daughter. Although we were selected to show with male conceptual artists this gap between our subjectivity and their masculine objectivity was obvious, opening up a distinction between 'socio-political' art and CO(lceptual art.
Exhibition catalogue: 352 pp 400 col ill us. H b Yale University Press £40.00 During the years after the September Revolution of 1868, Barcelona experienced tremendous industrial growth and emerged as the most politically and culturally progressive city in Spain. Barcelona and Modernity examines this remarkable seventy-one-year period, when Barcelona also reigned as one of the most dynamic centers of modernist art and architecture i n Europe. Focusing on the Catalan Renaixen<;;a , Modernisme, Noucentisme, avant garde movements of the early 20th century, and artistic reactions to the Spanish Civil War, essays by an extraordinary international team of scholars offer new insights into the work of such Catalan artists as Antoni Gaudf, Pablo Picasso, J oan
Ed. Dorothy Kosinksi with Bradley Fratello and Laura Bruck. Exhibition catalogue: 112 pp, 50 col ill us Artist Biographies. Selected Bibliography. Hb Yale University Press £22.50 Vincent Van G ogh viewed wheat as a central metaphor of the cycle of
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Literary Lives. Edward Sorel, 112 pp illus. H b. Bloomsbury Books £ 9.99
Literary Lives is a book of decidedly unauthorised biographies by the acclaimed caricaturist Edward Sorel, who has long believed, that next to composers, writers are the craziest people in the world. The ten writers he has used to prove this thesis are Norman Mailer, G eorge Eliot, Marcel Proust, Jean Paul Sartre, Lillian H ellman, Leo Tolstoy, Bertolt Brecht, William Butler Yeats, earl J ung and Ayn Rand. Although these comic strips are clearly meant to amuse, and the facts uncovered are sometimes hard to believe, each and every statement is absolutely true. Antoni Tapies: Works, Writings, Interviews. 160 pp. col ill us. H b Poligrafa £ 24.95
Antoni Tapies was born in 1923 to a Barcelona family of p ublishers and booksellers. He began drawing and painting as a young m a n , during a convalescence, and in the end gave up studying law to concentrate on art. By the 1940s, in his twenties, Tapies was already exhibiting widely. As an early Matter painter, he added dirt and other solids to his canvases, transmuting them into art and rem inding . viewers of the earth to which they would return. Later, i n the era of Arte Povera, he worked in foam rubber and spray, varnishes, and,
TOP TEN ART BOOKS DE C E M B E R 2007 . .
Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat.
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M i ro, and Salvador Dalf, among others, by setting them in context with the art of their teachers, colleagues, and rivals. With approximately 350 works in a variety of media - painting, sculpture, photography, furniture, decorative a rts, and architectural design - this intriguing book also explores how Catalan artists derived inspiration from local traditions while contributing their own innovations to international modernism. Broader in scope than any previous treatment of the subject, this book is sure to alter popular perceptions of Catalonia and become a fundamental text for years to come.
0 Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art S . Peake and Eldred, Peter Owen £35.00 @ Evelyn Dun bar: War and Country Clark, Redcliffe Press £24.95 � Bauhaus 1919- 1933 Droste, Taschen £6.99 0 Paul Klee: Hand Puppets Hatje Cantz £1 9.99 0 The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self Portrait Ed . Lowe, Abrams £12.95 (3 Fashion and Fancy: Dress & Meaning in Rembrandt's Paintings de Winkel, Amsterdam U niversity Press £37.50 @ Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick Uglow, Faber & Faber £20.00 @ Alchemy & Mysticism: The Hermetic Museum, Roob, Taschen £6.99 CD Freud At Work: Lucian Freud in Conversation, Dawson and Smee, J onathan Cape £30.00 (ID At Home: The Domestic Interior in Art, Borzello, Thames & Hudson £24.95
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as Modigliani, Pissarro and Frida Kahlo, among others, and discusses these themes within the paintings of Barnett Newman and the sculpture of Richard Serra. His accompanying text explores the connection between J udaism and art and culture, helping readers approach familiar images through a new and exciting perspective.
Emin herself has always been both vocal and explicit with details of her life and it is perhaps symptomatic of the 'Big Brother' culture, obsessed with the personal lives of others, that Brown feels the need to regurgitate these details instead of giving the work a separate entity. The autobiographical nature of Emin's work is well documented, but by scrupulously explaining every aspect of her work in terms of her life at the time, Brown denies her an artistic voice where the art speaks for itself.
for creating objects or sculptures, refractory clay and bronze. Coming from a bookish family, he also produced a number of artist's books and editions, working with collaborators such as Brodsky and Saramago. This collection of the artist's writings is available here for the first time in English. My Grandparents, My Parents and
1: Jewish Art and Culture.
Edward van Voolen. 192 pp 200 col + 60 b&w ill us. H b. Prestel £35.00 In this beautifully illustrated book, Rabbi and art historian Edward van Voolen has brought together numerous works that expand our view of Jewish life and art Organized in a loosely chronological order, this book introduces readers to works that reflect the dramatic events of the past a nd explore the eternal search for Jewish identity. He points out the Jewish aspects of works by predominantly nineteenth and twentieth-century artists such
chapter headings. Each chapter is well illustrated (there are a hundred illustrations throughout) both by Emin's own work and those that influenced her. Brown is obviously highly sympathetic to his subject, but an overly hyperbolic use of description, such as describing a scream in a video piece as "of a soul from hell", has a tendency to dull the impact, or change it from something tragic into something comic.
Tracey Emin Neal Brown Modern Artists Series 128 pp Pb Tate Publishing £14.99
Tracy Emin isn't exactly a serious critique of the highly successful artist we all love to hate, but it does make an enjoyable read. The book is broken up i nto six chapters, or more accurately mini essays, each concentrating on a different aspect of her practice. Starting with · monoprints, fabric works, writing and performances, video, film and photographs, The Tent and My Bed and other wooden sculptures are all
Examples of work documenting the traumatic history of Em in are rife, and looking at pieces such as Terribly Wrong and Why I Never Became a Dancer, it is inevitable that her past, the abandonment by her father, the rape, abortions, rejection and humiliation she received from the men she sought comfort in, intrudes. H owever, it is more than that, and it is not Em in's intention that it should only be read in relation to herself. Em in said 'There should be something revelatory about art it should be totally new and creative, and it
should open doors for new thoughts and new experiences'. I n other words art shouldn't be pigeon holed - if only Neal Brown had listened. While Brown is viewing her with sympathy, the irony is that by over symplifying and over-explaining her work he has effectively denying her a voice. Everybody has a view on .Tracy Em in, if they hadn't noticed her before My Bed, the Turner Prize nominated monument to the slagheap that was her bedroom, complete with condoms, pregnancy test and blood, ensured her notoriety if not always appreciation. She lost the prize to Steve McQueen, but the engagement that the public had with the work of 'Mad Tracey from Margate' (her own description) and the controversy that ensued have continued. While My Bed instilled revulsion, its all access snapshot into Tracey Emin's own private hell only served to whet the appetite of the public. These days, weekly doses come in the form of the Independent's My Ufe in a Column Tracey's weekly public diary or musings. Extracts from interviews with Em in and edited transcripts from selected videos break up Brown's text and help keep it pacey and easy to read. Why I Never Became a Dancer is particularly well illustrated, although a good cross section of her work is viewed. Em in recently revealed that she will be representing G reat Britain in the next Venice Biennale: if you've never looked further than Emin's drunken ramblings on the pre Turner prize debate, this is a good brief read to fill you in - and it will
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look great on your coffee table.(SMcA) Edgar Degas: The Last Landscapes An ne Dumas et a/, 128pp. 100 col.illus. H b Merrell £19.95 You might not think that another book on Edgar Degas was n ecessary, considering the spate of them in recent years, but think again. This explores one of the areas of the oeuvre - the landscapes - that have not been exhaustively mined before. The major credit goes to Richard Kendall who pioneered this area of study, and he is represented here by a rewritten version of a chapter from his 1993 Yale book on Degas. An ne Dumas, who curated the exhibition upon which the catalogue is based, contributes a splendid, highly readable essay, and the book is rounded off by another two essays from Flemming Fribourg and Line Clausen Pedersen. U n usually in collaborative books of this kind, there is little repetition. The publishers have produced a very attractive book with excellent plates on heavy surfaced paper. The design is first class, and the appendices - a clear and concise chronology, a list of works (unfortunately not cross-referenced) and brief bibliography as well as index, mean that the book has a substantial reference value. it's also very good value at the price. (BMcA) STATE WELCOM ES CATALOG U E SUBM ISSIONS F O R T H E INDEX
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assumption, but one that ignores the fact that the BBC's monopoly of arts programmes ended years ago. Nowadays, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, not to mention the digital and satellite stations, all offer programmes about art and artists as well as miscellanies such as ITV ' s South Bank Show or BBC2's Culture Show.
Not having satellite TV, I thought I would restrict my (wholly unscientific) survey to programmes from terrestrial television, beginning with the much-trumpeted Power ofArt series by Simon Schama. First came my Henry Reed moment though. To explain, in 1 940, the poet Henry Reed wrote a sardonic poem called Naming of Parts (a metaphor for Britain's unpreparedness for war) in which a bullying instructor drills new recruits in assembling a rifle, several bits of which are missing. The repeated trope is 'Which, in your case, you have not got' . Well, the first of Schama's programmes was on Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and I missed it so I don't propose to judge it's
content or presentation, but having been a Caravaggio pilgrim for years and having seen most of the great paintings in situ, I can't resist an entirely gratuitous comment (my Caravaggio addiction, incidentally, is so chronic that there's an embarrassing photo of me standing in front of the Merisi garage in the town of Caravaggio, clearly hoping to accost a mechanic to ask him if he' s a descendant of the great master). Schama, as the trailer promised, focused upon Caravaggio ' s David with the Head of Goliath, the decapitated head bearing the artist's anguished self-portrait. Shortly before his death, Caravaggio sent that painting to Cardinal Borghese as an act of contrition for past misdemeanours and that neatly conforms to an account of his life and work as a kind of Shakespearian tragedy. But (and here comes the gratuitous bit) there is a painting in Rome's Doria Pamphili Gallery that reveals another kind of Caravaggio, one that doesn't fit the template of 'transgressive' artist. The Rest on the Flight to Egypt is an early (1595) masterpiece of sublime beauty in which Joseph holds up a sheet of music from which an angel plays a lullaby on a violin. Resonant with theological symbolism, it precedes those dramas where the action takes place at the base of the canvas. I wonder if Schama mentioned it? suspicion
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WHEN I told a friend that I was about to write about visual arts coverage on television and that, in order to give some perspective, I would watch a few videos from the past, he replied that it 'would probably reveal how much the BBC has changed' . That's a pretty safe
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compounded by seeing the second programme, on Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa, in the Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria (just across the road from Rome's Termini station). This was the programme that I took to calling 'Full-on Bernini', so determinedly populist was S chama' s language and content. It had all the patronising elements that I'd feared, actors dramatising the rivalry between Bernini and
Borromini for instance. 'Patronising' may be a bit harsh, but what makes producers
think that the audience for a 17th century sculptor needs spoon-feeding? (Sorry about the contagious j argon, but that's just a 'no brainer': they have an ingrained certainty that the average attention span is about two minutes). Still, for those who prefer their art history as a branch of celebrity culture, Bernini is ideal. Painter, theatre designer, architect, sculptor, relentless self-promoter, power broker, lionised across Europe, Bernini was the 'divinely gifted' artist that Pope Urban VIII 'would have liked to embalm (to) make him eternal ' . Schama provided plenty of this, from the architectural illusionism of the Vatican's Scala Regia and dynamic sculpture such as the Apollo & Daphne, as well as much about his life, his disreputable brother Luigi and his affair with Costanza Bonarelli , which yielded the famous intimate portrait. Much of this provided a historical rather than art historical context: Bernini seems to have appeared on earth as a fully fledged genius unaffected by influences from other artists (Michelangelo, Maderno and Giambologna for example) save for his father. .And then of course there is the main feature, The Ecstasy ofSt. Teresa, originally known as The Vision ofSt. Teresa. It's difficult, I suppose, for contemporary secularists to see this piece as other than psycho-sexual, the ecstasy, of course, being that of the female orgasm, but it was her own description of the event which was decisive in her canonization. Admittedly, her words such as 'in his (the angel in human form's) hands I saw a long gold lance with an iron tip, from which I thought a tongue of flame issued. With this he appeared to pierce my heart several times and this penetrated my most innermost parts . . . the pain was so intense that I groaned a number of times . . . ' will seem comical to post-Freudians but perhaps that really was the language of mysticism in the 17th century. Besides, if there's sex, then it's probably Bernini's, not Teres a ' s (the merest glance at her autobiography reveals what a forthright and intelligent woman she was). As for Bernini, the eroticism of the Rape of Proserpina and the torrid relationship with Constanza simply confirms what we already know, that he was a man of lavish sensuality. The climax, so to speak, of the programme was the discussion of Bemini's overall conception of the monument. Frequently, reproductions simply concentrate on the swooning St. Teresa but here we were given an unedited version, a 'tableau vivant' as Wittkower described it (we would call it an installation) with members of the Cornaro family watching the event from the boxes on either side of it. This theatrical set is said to be Bernini's version of the choir of The Convent of the Incarnation at Avila, the site of St. Teresa's vision. It's an intensely dramatic construction and lends itself to differing interpretations; of pious wonder or prurient curiosity. Bernini appears again in Sir Kenneth Clark's The Light ofExperience, the eighth in his Civilisation series. In 1665, Bernini
met Sir Christopher Wren in Paris, who remarked that he would have 'given his skin' for one ofBernini's drawings for the Louvre (typically, Bernini treated the French with such condescension that, exasperated, they rejected his scheme) . Clark's mandarin style has often been mocked by brave class warriors and it's true that his attempts at humour have all the grimness of a feared headmaster. Furthermore, his cultural references are absolutely uncompromising; poor people in Rembrandt's etchings, for example, are likened to the prisoners in
To repeat my earlier question, farragoes such as the Holbein feature really make me wonder who they are presumed to be for. Are they
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Simon Schama m a n of the m o m e nt. U r b a n e
P rofessor at Co l u m b i a (NY) a n d judged to a p p e a l e q u a l ly to 16 - 60 yea rs o l d TV v i ewers the bible in terms of emotional truth' ) Sanredam, 'the vulgar D e Hooch' and Paulus Potter. Among philosophers and scientists are Descartes (who lived in Holland) Boyle, Newton, Bailey as well as Wren, all contributing to the study of light and the stars as well as the development of scientific instruments. In fairness to S chama, his Rembrandt programme seemed to be a genUine labour of love, as one might have expected from the author of Rembrandt's Eyes. This time there seemed to be fewer dramatisations (give
for people who know a bit about art and want to learn more, or are they tasters intended to whet the appetite of the uninformed? The best of the programmes from my random survey, a 1 982 Omnibus feature on Piero Della Francesca, was exemplary in making no concessions, but making the full use of television's resources to engage its audience. TV producers can choose to have a familiar presenter fronting the programme or an acknowledged expert, but the Piero had an international line up of scholars; Professor Marilyn Lavin, Martin Kemp, Nicholas Penny and Sir John Pope-Hennessy (whose accent makes Brian Sewell sound like a guttersnipe). There were notables too, such as John Mortimer and Harrison Birtwhistle and even an artist, Tom Phillips. The Piero trail was undertaken in winter and Tuscany looked magical in the snow. Early in the programme, the scholars asked the 'Shakespeare' question: 'if Piero could be considered the most important mathematician of the 15th century, where did he get his education?' That remained a mystery, but the analysis of The Flagellation was superb, there were Philip Steadman's three-dimensional model of its spaces, digital projections and Professor Carter's (Professor of the
Perspective at the RA) discussion of its symbolic geometry. There was also discussion of its role as a metaphor of the tribulations of the church (Constantinople hadjust come under attack from the Moors) as well as meditations on its Neo-Platonism and poetry. It required concentration but that was an effort hugely repaid.
or take the occasional life model) and a greater emphasis on vivid biography, with Rembrandt as inspired 'psychologist of the human condition' . The p olitical and economic background to his career was deftly sketched in and the emotional consequences of his relati_onships with Saskia, Geertje Dircx, and Hendrickje Stoffels anatomised in detail. As well as
In recent years, a group of experts including Tim Marlow, Neil McGregor, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Waldemar Januszczak and Brian S ewell, have come to be associated with highly professional and accessible programmes. With this group, one
familiar masterpieces such as the Nightwatch and the Slaughtered Ox there were splendid drawings and etchings, among them treats such
of seriousness and independence that, given the intimidatory nature of television hard won. Brian Sewell? Yes, of course. I know
as the vicious Satire on Art Criticism. After this, it seems churlish to have been so disappointed with the Turner programme. Gone were the
that he's loathed by the Dave Sparts of the art world, but his recreation of the Grand Tour was one of the most honest things
suspects that they, rather than TV 'creative' types, call the shots in terms of programme style. Each of them is characterised by a level
Turner of 'colour-beginnings' vaporous
appearing in a not p articularly honest
atmospheres and the abstract sublime, the Turner that Ruskin admired. Instead was a
medium during the last year. Of course it wasn't really the Grand Tour, but a recreation of his journey throughout Italy with three other art history students fifty years ago and their adventures in an unreliable car, getting stuck at Todi for instance, and rattling down steps into the piazza, made the business of experiencing great art in Italy ( 'museo chiu s o ' ) c o me vividly alive. And his selection of the art worth seeing was utterly, stubbornly personal. What's more, he got it right. Anyone who can introduce a vast audience to the surreally Baroque Park of Monsters at Bomarzo has to be applauded.
politicised Turner, The Slave Ship - one of the most shameful episodes of British history. No matter that Turner specialised in shipwrecks, snowstorms and epic tragedies, or that apocalyptic events were the common currency of Romanticism - witness John Martin; Turner had to be seen to be using his art in the cause of racial justice. However, if the Turner program was contentious, the Holbein was simply crass. Seeing the Dead Christ in Basle, which was painted from a corpse, is an experience which will stay with me forever and the programme duly started with it. After that though, things went downhill fast. The programme would
8 ?;I
favour of relevance. If anyone was helped to understand the p olitical subtext of The Ambassadors, I'd be amazed. It was the worst
hugely impressive. The Light of Experience covers, for example, Dutch 1 7th century affluence, the collapse of the tulip market, Hals, Vermeer, Rembrandt ('reinventing
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form featuring Chris Patten and David Frost. The upshot of this was that all mystery and gravitas was stripped from the painting in
cultural experience I'd had since I went to a Happy Clappy christening earlier this year.
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that this was an enlightened post-modem production, a stunt was arranged whereby The Ambassadors was recreated in contemporary
Fidelio, but as an uomo universale he is
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be 'an art historical detective trail', so we were treated to the Bond and Pink Panther themes as accompaniment and, lest we hadn't realised
Wifliam Varley is a writer and former regional critic for The Guardian in the North of England
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state of art JAN/FEB 2007
ICESTATETORONTO
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ov A CURSORY Google of this year's Thrner
Prize announcement found coverage in the Telegraph, the Guardian, on BBC news and on Channel 4, among ·others. The same search conducted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada's annual $50,000 art prize that Inuit
./
. turning to art fairs, museum exhibitions and relationships with curators abroad to expose their artists to an international audience. Galleries that don't turn to an international
,..
collector base, end up dividing a very small pie between them, relying on self-educated
artist Annie Pootoogook won in October,
collectors, many of whom prefer to buy in
found coverage from CBC.ca and arctic
the US or Europe. Many dealers find the
paper, the Nunatsiaq News. Montreal Art
situation in Canada intensely frustrating.
H igh profi l e Toronto M ayor. David M i ller. dup l i cated the success of Jerome Sans· P a r i s a d venture in nocturn a l art a ctivities with a C a n a d i a n version of Nuit Bla nche - to great a c cl a i m
Blog Zeke's Gallery published a rant about
'Access is harder when there isn't some
art - legendary experimental film artist
C ontemporary Art Thing' was a great
the lack of media attention, noting that
debate', says dealer Jessica Bradley. 'The
success,
although he'd found brief coverage in the
public doesn't have the means of sensing the
Nuit Blanche is at the centre of the 10 day
attracting
425,000
p e ople
Globe & Mail, Canada's national newspaper,
zeitgeist
they only hear about art when
Michael Snow lives in Toronto - a situation that continues thanks to video representation and distribution agencies like Vtape in
he 'had to search with a fine tooth comb to
there's a huge blockbuster. ' Working with an
Toronto, Videopool in Winnipeg, Gl. V in
long High Lights festival). The media was
find it' . Zeke also noted that the $40,000
international audience is expensive and
Montreal and Video -In in Vancouver.
instrumental in promoting the event, proving
Giller Prize, Canada's literary prize for fictio n , attracted considerably more coverage.
impractical, yet judging by the eighteen or
Canadian media does cover the visual arts,
that with more exposure, the visual arts
so Canadian galleries participating in Miami
although no artist is in danger of succumbing
would have an eager audience.
fairs this year, for most it is the better option.
to art-stardom any time soon. The CBC's
Europe's relationship to culture is firmly
Because media coverage feeds the market by
cultural programming and CBC.ca has an arts
young artists remains to be seen. How will
embedded in historical tradition, stretching
creating consumer interest and then demand,
page that covers art-related news. Bravo
their practice mature? Will their careers have
-
national coverage includes visual art in its
(compared to 140,000 in Montreal, where
The effect of media stardom on so many
back to ancient Greece and the private
Canada's lack of visual arts coverage has kept
Television is a self-described 'New Style Arts
longevity or burn out after a few years? How
collections of the Renaissance. The con
the market terribly undervalued. This is a
Channel ' . The various provinces have
will that affect the secondary market for their
tinuation of that tradition is part of what fuels
good thing, I think, since the media can be a
government supported cultural programming
work? One only has to look at the 80's art
contemporary art's relevance with the public
double-edged sword. With recent sales of
too, and the Globe & Mail and National Post
stars whose careers have suffered - julian
ana the media. In Canada, the lack of a strong
newspapers feature weekly reviews of
Schnabel, David Salle and others, some of
historical tradition coupled with the divisive
Andy Warhol paintings topping $ 14 million (US) each and 25-year-old artists selling
nature of our territory has led to a continual
paintings at Chelsea galleries for $25,000,
J e ff Wall,
an artist with a n i nternation a l profile, prese nts o n e s i ngu l a r v i ew of C a n a d a
... a n d a nother view - trad ition m e ets c l i c h e
museum exhibitions and gallery shows.
whom are presently making a comeback. In in our visual artists. The goal should be to
search for national identity. We defme and
you have to wonder if the art world has lost
compare ourselves to the Other, primarily the
its grip on reality. How do artists feel about
United States. Furthermore, Canada's size
the situation? Gerhard Richter was quoted
requires a localized media, making it difficult
in Der Spiegel last year: 'At first it's nice to
for those on one coast to relate to events on
hear of such high sums; at the same time it's
another, particularly cultural ones. None
horrifying . . . There is a complete lack of
theless, for the media to virtually ignore a
balance between the value and relevance of
$50,000 contemporary art prize is simply
art and the absurd prices that are paid for it' .
inexcusable. In the birthplace of erstwhile media guru Marshall McLuhan, Canada's
While those of us in the visual arts often
media remains oblivious to the role that it
bemoan the lack of media attention in
can (and should) play in the shaping of the
Canada, looking at these figures, I wonder if
visual arts scene. What this means is that
we shouldn ' t count our blessings. The
contemporary art in Canada operates in a
opportunity to view another city's media
vacuum. Public outreach on a grassroots
spectacle from the outside provides a healthy
level is common, with a number of art blogs,
perspective that shouldn't be underestimated.
gallery and museum newsletters, seminar
In the New York Review of Books in 1984,
series, art walks and tours in Toronto for audiences and the media promotes virtually
Robert Hughes referred to collector ' s confidence i n the value o f art a s being fed by a system that included criticism,
none of them.
j ournalism and PR: 'This creation of
While the media isn't particularly supportive
last half of the twentieth century, far more
of the visual arts, Canada has got a good
striking than any given painting or sculpture ' .
instance, but they all attract different
confidence . . . is the cultural artifact of the
government granting system for artists on the
Canada, we would do well to take more pride
local, provincial and national levels. There
Canadian artists h a v e h a d a l o n g and
is also a comprehensive network of artist
The coverage is nowhere near comprehensive
run-centres and video distribution agencies
intriguing history with the media, but as creators . In 1977, the Toronto-based artist
enough, partly because each city has its own
incre ase public awaren e s s , nurturing
across the country that promotes Canadian
collective General Idea made a work titled
independent scene, with little crossover
promising talent without casting young
work abroad. Since many artists make use
Pilot that was aired on TV Ontari o .
between them. Toronto, the largest art market
artists as disposable starlets, hot one day and
of these systems to sustain their careers, the public remains unaware of the world-class
Subsequent works included cablecasts,
in the country, is host to Canada's major art
gone the next. Certainly the media has been
slowscan transmissions and television
fair in October, but even its public galleries
successful in their support of Canadian film
artists who are working in Canada:
broadcasts in the US and Europe. Canadian
don't host Canadian traveling exhibitions as
and literature - the average Canadian knows
Commercial galleries, meanwhile, are
¥lists have also been pioneers in new media
often as they might. And no venue in Canada has hosted either of the recent iritemational
Atom Egoyan and Margaret Atwood. Here's hoping the public can get to know, and appreciate, great Cana9ian artists like JeiiWall, Michael Snow, Rodney Graham and their successors.
In the birthp!ace of erstwhile media guru Marshal/ McLuhan, Canada's media remains oblivious to the role that it can- (and should) play in the shaping of the visual arts scene.
Jeff Wall retrospectives, one of which was at the Tate Modem last year, the other of which is currently touring the United States. There have been some positive changes of late, though. Toronto's mayor, David Miller has shown an interest in the city's cultural scene by hosting the city's frrst Nuit Blanche last O ctober,
2006 .
The
' All Night
.>
Andrea Carson writes on art, architecture and design. She is based in Toronto, from where she publishes VoCA, the b/og on contemporary Canadian art: www. viewoncanadianart. blogspot. com
7'1-
state of art JJ\N/FEB 2007
2 4 state
STATEO
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'back to back paintings ' : 'anybody can order these from me in any numbers and cover their buildings with them ! They are like tiles. Thousand, ten Thousand? Just call me'.
d
•
•
•
a comment ROBERT H ELLER ARTISTS ARE a gabby lot. S o it's not surprising that art blogs have sprung up like mushrooms all over the art shop. Blogs are something like personal websites without the bells and whistles, but with the ability to receive comments aimed at the blogger and the bloggees - the surfers who may easily be numbered in the hundreds of thousands for a popular blog. One of the myriad art blogs may have reached these magnitudes, though ,J doubt that this applies to any of my visitations. The Times allegedly named the Liverpool Art blog as the best in Britain, to which I can only reply, God help the others. The first Liverpudlian message I read was looking for an artist to participate �n an Oral Health project (I kid you not), ·and other singularly unattractive invitations followed - including this piece: . 'We will meet at the church at 19.30 Tuesday 3rd October to be shown around the space by the lovely and helpful James who works there. Following this we can go for an informal beverage at one of the many excellent hostelries nearby and talk heartily about our plans for the space' .
·
I needed several hearty beverages to get over that one, and never mind the 'hostelries ' . At a more rarefied height, Forbes Magazine (which used to style itself as the drama critic of American business) has taken the art blog to its bosom, motivated by the belief that 'The art world sometinies feels like another
country with its own language and customs ' . Though blogs might 'mirror the insular and gossipy nature of the art world, there are many that are thoughtful, accessible and dedicated to taking (at least some of) the mystery and intimidation out of the looking experience ' . Liz Tunick goes o n to say that 'blogs revive the fine art of discussing ideas' , and are an antidote to 'one-sided, jargon-filled critics' pronouncements' . That praise must apply (by sheer force of numbers) somewhere in the forest of art blogs marshalled by Google. But the good tend to get lost among the bad and ugly foliage that features (for example) Kimberley Greene and her attempts to 'reconcile dance, arts issues, my life, and all the blurred nonsense in-between' .
Blurred nonsense mdeed. The trouble is that the very attributes which give blogs their vast appeal militate against their quality. They are undisciplined, unedited, and open to anyone - generally free of charge. That sounds rather like art chat, w�ch in fact is mostly what you get But Forbes Magazine is no harum scarm chatterbox. It no doubt has commercial motives for taking blogs under its wing, as do many other leading bloggers. _ For example, Google ranks firsr a blog-filled site from absoluteart.com whose bloggers· appear mostly to be trying to sell their work to innocent electronic pas sers-by. They · include one Alaadd.in Cakirerk who does
Don't believe Aladin when he claims to be 'Just kidding and having some fun with my blogging' .. That's how many art blogs read, but these· artist bloggers are committed to their art (as well as their bank balances). And that art is overwhelmingly contemporary. The work I ' ve seen, and the words that accompany the images, are in the Turner Prize rather than Turner territory. What artbyus.com calls 'more unusual stuff' is, in fact, more like run of today's milL The stuff includes ' the artist in England who's using road kill in her art to comment on the treatment of animals as commodlties ' . Oi- the item abo�t the Native American artist who uses skateboards to create a 'jarring juxtaposition of images, skate-rat culture and American Indian pride ' . Akrylik.com advises you to 'catch an interview with Canadian sculptor David Altmejd, famed for his series of werewolf heads, or read an essay on Laura London's photographs of teen girls' . Laura London's pictures are actually quite _ orthodox and proficient colour snaps, but she claims to have taken them 'at the onslaught of self-awareness and self-discovery that · tran scends the usual difficulty and awkwardness of adolescence' . That sentence, while not difficult; is certainly awkward; it's typical of the language of much artwrite, blogged or not -Most of today's 'young art' is not self-explanatory, as great art has always been, but has to be explained by words which usually break under the burden. Far more often than not, of course, the blogged verbiage fails to deliver the rewards for .which the artists hanker. John Perreault's Art Diary has an acid comment 'Question: where does all the young art go at the end of the month? Answer: into storage. The secret of the art world is that the front end has,. as its main purpose, the creation of customers for art warehouses. Storage ! That's where the real money is' . .
Even where artists are admitted to _the inner circles of high-priced dealers, they may well engender lingo like this (from Gagosian in London), describing a 'cracked blue egg' by Jeff Koons: 'With its impressive scale, pure lines and flawless, highly reflective surface Cracked Egg (Blue) resonates with iconic significance'. The iconic Koons', for his part, says that when about five: 'we'd make things out of Popsicle sticks. We' d work with Play Doh ... That's what I hold on to in the world. And whatever I made at that time, I know is equivalent to what I'm doing now. And that was, for me, really art' . But blogging is not for the stars like Koons or Emin. The gods and goddesses of contemporary art have umpteen sites devoted to their work. The blogs are most useful much lower down, taking the less initiated into an intimidating real world where snotty assistants guard gallery doors, lofty critics pontificate from aloft, and museum shows doggedly seek out the new and often inexplicably One blogger managed to 'sweet talk' his way into a St Louis preview of the. Whitney's travelling exhibition, Remote Viewing (Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and
Drawing). He no�ced that almost everyone
at the preview was staring at iPod screens as much as at the art: .'I totally missed the delicious irony here: video tours. for an exhibition called Remote Viewing' . ·
In the blog world irony abounds, delicious or not. The bloggers will undoubted1y mature, but that doesn't necessarily apply to the news they cover, some of it surprising. I didn't know, for example, that 'a U.K. dealer offered potential buyers 25 % off if they stripped in the gallery in order to "feel closer" to the nude pictures on view' . But then, perhaps in the brave new art world that the blogs portray so vividly, this story is no surprise at all.
· Robert Heifer is a writer on art and artists and a · leading a uthority on international business practice. You can visit and interact with his own blog at: www. thinkingmanagers.comjblog!
Laylah Aii
the kiss and other WarriorS The first U K exhibition of paintings and
·
newly commiSsioned drawings by the internationally acclaimed artist Laylah Ali 17 January ....: 24 Feb 2007. 12- 6pm, Wed-Sat. •
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iniVA, 6-8 Standard Place
Rivington Street, London EC2A 3BE
020 7729 9616 www.iniVAorg. _
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l.aylah Ali, Untitled. 2006. (dotal� ink •n<! pencU on paper•. . Image courtesy of 303gallery, New :r'ork. • Supported by Arts Council England and Esmtle FIIJrba;m Foundation inIVA
fc.o.,•:: �Esm!c: fair�. 4av·"'«�
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
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'I'M NEVER happier than being out in the vast expanses of New Mexico and being in awe of what I'm seeing without knowing why', says Bernard Cohen. lt's a theme that he returns to frequently during the course of . our discussion, and I can't help feeling that there is something criminal about me discussing the matter with him in the basement confines of his gallery on a chilly winters day in London. We are conversing without a horizon. Cohen doesn't seem to mind though: amiable, gentlemanly and in very good humour, he appears only too happy to share glimpses of a life spent looking, intensely and without prejudice, at the vastness of the world around him. 'I'm not talking about phenomena,' he continues, 'I' m talking about the vastness of something that existed before human beings. It is about me
being deeply moved . . . a revelation thing . . . about being in the desert. If I ever had a subject at all, it had to do with emergence, by which I mean moving from dark to light. In the desert things can become blindingly clear.' As Cohen speaks of his last sixty years or so, I am reminded of Mozart's masonic opera, Die Zauberflote, in which the main protagonists undergo a series of trials on their way to enlightenment. The path to en lightenment seems as central to Cohen as it does to Tarnino, Mozart's hero, and I want to probe the darkness from which Cohen's search began. Has he been trying, all his life, to get out into the light? The outbreak of war seems a good place to begin. Born in 1933, the year that Hitler came to power, in 1939
he had found himself, aged six, with several hundred other kids, about to be evacuated in his case to Exmoor. 'We were put on a train and taken off into the unknown, not to see our parents again for four years - not recognising them when I returned - I had a very stressful war and it made a very strong impression upon me. Then, of course, c·oming back to London in 1943; the V 1 and V2 rockets, having my school bombed in Leytonstone, and the building in which we lived, bombed too. The sky was full of tracer bullets and searchlights every night - I remember the latter part of the war quite vividly.' As the son of Belarusian immigrants who came to London around the turn of the century, Cohen grew up amongst people from
the same stedtl that his parents were from: 'I grew up hearing a mixture of Yiddish and Russian spoken, as much as English,' he says, and it quickly becomes clear just how much of a culture shock life on Exmoor must have been. Latterly, he has gone back, to Dunkery Beacon where, as a young boy, he watched dogfights over the Bristol Channel but, as Cohen relates it, this is no act of mere reminiscence, more an ongoing search for meaning that draws upon a multitude of references. Listening to him, one is transported (often in the same breath) from Exmoor to New Mexico, from Pueblo Indian culture to the tundra of Newfoundland, and the breadth of his wholly eclectic take on creativity can be thoroughgoing and without compromise. For Cohen, there is something to be learned from even the most modest
'-;:�
2 6state
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
creative practice. 'I learned something
stocking. He has looked so danm hard that it
tremendously important from a woman in
ceases to be a stocking. The problem arises,
New Mexico,' he says, 'she'd lived with
therefore, from your desire to see clearly and
Navaho weaving all her life, and I asked her,
your dissatisfaction with what you see . ' We
how do you tell a great weaving from
are clearly light years away from 'art' (as business) here, and it quickly becomes clear
another? "It's nothing to do with the pattern", she replied, "it's to do with the weave". If
that Cohen eschews the 'art' business as
the tension is equally taught in every square
much as he eschews subject and genre.
inch of the weave, then you know you've got a great weaving, and what is woven into
'I have a great love of things that human
it will therefore be great. And I thought that's
beings have made. Visual things; some of
just like painting ! Every square inch of the
which are utilitarian, some are made for
painting must have that tension, both
aesthetic pleasure. I have a great love of
pictorially and in terms of the way the canvas
weaving; Navaho weaving, for example, and
is stretched too ! '
Mimbres pottery too; I love painting of all kinds from all countries ; but something
Cohen's first conscious involvement with the
happened in the earliest part of the twentieth
idea of being an artist was his enrolment on
century - the Duchampian thing about what
a commercial art course at Walthamstow Art S chool
in
1 947 ,
though
due
to
was, and what was not, a work of art. It was
an
an absolute red herring. I don't give a toss
administrative cock-up, he found himself
whether it's considered a work of art or not.
doing life drawing for the first week instead.
A great deal of what has gone on throughout
'By the end of that week I was completely
the last century is to do with that debate and
hooked and switched courses. What grabbed
has nothing really to do with human beings
me about it was the freedom to think for
making things. I'm only interested in what
myself, and the freedom to relate to other
human beings make and why they make
people who were thinking for themselves. On
them. As a painter I am constantly learning,
the bus on the way home, I thought, my God,
but what I'm not learning from is that quite
not only have I been able to make decisions
recent phenomenon called 'art'. 'Art employs
for myself all day, but I went off with people
people. ' It is partly for this very reason that
that I've never met before and we comÂ
Cohen e s chews subj ect and genre so
municated with each other in a way that I've
vehemently and without compromise. As he
never communicated with others before. It
explains it, the artist who subscribes to a
wasn't pretentious, it wasn't arrogant - it wasn't anything like that. It was just that we were all so impassioned about what we'd
genre is 'guaranteed an audience of some
Generation 1962. Egg te m p e r a a n d o i l on l i n e n . 244 x 244 e m s
been doing. '
kind' . Similarly, 'there have always been artists who gather together an audience by having a subject,' but to paint a picture without a subject or a genre? - 'I've always
It was around the same time that h e was to
been interested in things that didn't fit into
visit the Treasures of 'Vienna exhibition in
genres and I didn't inherit one, but I think
London which, in terms of Cohen folklore,
this is something that has played very heavily
was the epiphanal moment which sealed his
upon me - I've eschewed that whole thing
fate; 'I can't remember anything in the
because I just don't believe that I can
exhibition except one painting by Albrecht
function within it. I can't paint within it . . . I
Diirer of three women of the Holy family
can't think within it . . . I can't be me within
wearing nun ' s cowls. That one picture
it . . . If I have a subject or subscribe to a genre,
knocked me sideways. I can't imagine why
it ensures that I'm not lost, and I need to be
it did so, but it was the first experience I'd
lost. I can't go into my studio to work ifl am
ever had of being completely overwhelmed
not in a state of complete confusion. '
by a painting. Subsequently, I became increasingly in awe of paintings but that is
>
In light of the above, i t i s therefore quite
rather different to that first experience. '
evident why Cohen should be so bemused
Turner, Piero della Fran c e s c a , Goya,
when I suggest that the Situation show in
Velasquez, Rembrandt and Tintoretto are all
which he participated in the early sixties have
artists he lists with the power to 'take the
become milestones in the annals of recent
ground from under me', but nothing has ever
art history, celebrated by Mellor in his 1993
quite compared to that first experience. In
Barbican Exhibition The Sixties Art Scene
the works of them all however, it is simply
in London. As Thomas Crow was to describe
their vigour, passion, and humanity
it in Artforum, the Situation show of 1960
contained within their work that draws him
was to become remembered as ' a public
in. 'The point about all those artists that I so
swing of allegiance to American criteria of
admire is the challenge that they give me to
value in painting,' indeed, Crow even writes
fmd out who I am and how to be myself fully, because that is what they did. Turner had no
Roxy 1 9 6 2 . O i l a n d Egg te m p e r a o n ca nvas, 1 8 3 x 244 ems
successors. Velasquez had no successors for
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Iďż˝ n
-
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of a 'Situation aesthetic' . Cohen will have none of this however; 'No one looked at the Situation exhibition! ' he exclaims, drawing
a very, very long time - I remember Clement
of the existential writers, looking into the self
At the heart of Cohen' s practice therefore, is
attention to the fact that the exhibition got
Greenberg once telling me; 'well of course,
and the creative process, more than out to
the creative process itself - he is at pains to
no more than thirty visitors a day. 'There may
modern painting began with Manet, you
the public role of art. With Eliot's The
stress at times that he is a painter without a
be plenty of people who tell you they saw it,
realise', and I said to him, 'but I thought that
Wasteland as his inspiration, he had already
subject - and as he sees it the most important
but when the show closed, there was a deficit
Manet got it all from Velasquez' , and he
won a prize in the summer composition
moment, creatively speaking, is when things
of about sixty or seventy quid - it was
turned to me and said; 'Don'tbe so pedantic ! '
project of 1952 at the Slade - 'It could be
get out of control. 'You don't seek a situation
reviewed badly by one or two people, but hardly anyone saw it or cared about it. If it is
But he did get it all from Velasquez for God's
that, at the end of my life, that will remain
where things start getting out of control, but
sake ! '
the best picture that I ever painted' he says
they do. The harder you work, and the more
revered, then I' m utterly astonished. If it has
now - but studying Eliot's poem also had
clearly you try to see something, the less
become part of art history, I ' m equally
Educated during those post-war years of
the effect of opening him up to a wide range
satisfied you are with it and it gets out of
surprised . . . The idea that there was this thing
reconstruction and on the cusp of a new order
of literary inputs; not least the work of Sartre
control. At that moment it is important to go
in painting that was making itself known to
and Camus. ' The Myth of Sisyphus had an
right through the middle of the problem (not
going on in English painting is not at all true.' If anything, the show was to merely mark
the public at the Festival of Britain, one
enormous impact upon me,' he recalls, and
to circumvent the problem!) and if you don't
the coming of the end of any pretension there
might have expected Cohen to have become
it is clear that it still does: 'The question of
get the problem, you don't get creative. ' For
might have been concerning a sense of
thoroughly embedded in the Festival ethos
why we go on . . . I ' m constantly setting
Cohen this is the crux of his being as a
independence from the establishment. 'My
(indeed, he was at the Festival, for sure, but
mysel f these ridiculous tasks in my
painter, but 'the problem' cannot be invented;
sixties and the determination of artists to do
only because he had a job washing dishes).
painting . . . having to have a reason to do this
'You can't invent the situation where you
their own thing go from about 1958 to 1963;
At the Festival, he quickly developed
thing. The reason is not a big show coming
have a problem: the harder you look, the
the establishment starting taking control after
'something of a distaste for the public art
up or a retrospective, because that's all
more you want, the less satisfied you are with
that. We were being told which of us were
work, because it was forced, it had standards
superficial crap . . . There has to be a reason,
what you are doing.' Seurat provides him
good and which of us was bad . . . which of
that I didn't recognise. I hated the big Victor
beyond having a good studio and enough
with an example; 'I once saw a little study
our works were relevant and which weren't . . .
Pasmore mural at the Festival, but it was
money in the bank, to want to go into your
for his painting of The Three Graces and
it was like the establishment had taken
something that went on at the time; this
studio and make something. That reason is
there' s a woman sitting with a stocking
control of something that was free, alive and
notion that if it is public then it must be
the hard bit. Creativity is not there as an act
draped over her knee. He has looked at that
spirited.'
g o o d . ' Instead, he was embedded in a
of vanity. It is a reason, for me, to go on
stocking so closely that it's no longer a
thoroughgoing search that took in the works
living.'
stocking. It is no longer recognisable as a
Cohen's 'white paintings', some of which
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
state2 7 El
were shown in his 1972 retrospecti:ve at the
"',
Hayward, have met with equal establishÂ
d
ment's bemusement since they were shown
8
in the mid-sixties. Still relevant today, 'the
s:
white painting s ' , he says, ' were not understood by anyone at all. They were shown in 1967 in New York and they weren't understood, even at the B etty Parsons Gallery. Similarly, in this country they were
.,.. ¡-
regarded as just nonsense, but I wanted to make paintings that were so bright but at the same time were like being in a fog. They were about pictorial space, and that was something that was never understood. When they were shown here in 1972, one critic asked me why I hadn't painted the edges of the canvas white, and I told her that it was because they weren't objects, they were pictures. She said; "well you really lost out there then, because objects are what painting is all about now." "Great. . . but these are pictures", I said and she looked at me as though I was completely potty. I still have most of those pictures rolled up in my studio at home - those that the Tate don't have, of course.' Is it the apparent stylistic variety ofhis work, I ask him, that proves so disconcerting to the art establishment? In his eschewing of both genre and subj ect and the refusal to compromise, there is much that will rile for obvious reasons. But then Cohen finds stylistic concerns irrelevant and that, therefore, is to miss the point. 'Hopefully some meaning or life-force comes through . . . whatever I do, it is concerned purely with the transformation of materials.' Ultimately we are talking here of process again, and it is the process itself that dictates the outcome. ' Over the forty years or so, the way I have worked has determined what would go on, on the canvas. It has determined the way I could interpret the world too. I long to pick up a palette and brush loaded with oils, but it's not true for me to do it. In three weeks, I shall go back to Venice, and I shall look at Tintoretto ' s St Mark's Body Brought to Venice, and I shall be in awe, and I shall sit and weep in front of it. But it would not be true for me to do it. I was conscious, very early on, of how redolent an oil paint brush mark is. Monet's The Deluge in the National Gallery shows willow trees that are no more than brush marks, but you can feel the
Fa ble 1965. Ac ry l i c o n l i n e n . 244
x
244 e m s
immense volume. That was never something that I could identify with. It didn't seem honest for me to make a volume that I had not constructed. It didn't seem right for my world. That was one reason why I stopped using both oil paint and brush. For many
but not necessarily understood. I once did a
years now, I have not used a brush at all.
journey that has affected my whole life as a
First of all I used an airbrush where the
painter. I flew from England to Dallas but it
volume was not within the mark, and then
was one of those very rare days where you
later on I began cutting stencils. Initially the
left at around 10.30am and it was daylight
stencils would be cut at a table and then
all the way and not a cloud in sight. It was
carried to the canvas. Later I began cutting
one of those miracle days where you fly over glaciers, then you fly over the sea, then
stencils on the canvas itself. '
Newfoundland, and it's mid-winter and The result has been a body of work that is
everything's covered in snow, and you go
diverse and highly complex in both the way
over great lakes that are frozen and of a
the marks are applied and the form that they
different colour, and then you move down
take. Common motifs reappear over months
through the Rockies and into Oklahoma, then
and years whereas others are spontaneous
down into Texas as the snow peters out and
and fleeting. Even colour has disappeared for
you're into desert, and then you are into
a time, heavily influenced by the monoÂ
tracks and traces where the dinosaur roamed,
chrome of Mimbres pottery, before chroma
or the buffalo, where covered wagons once
was again introduced under careful control
ran, and one can see it all razor sharp. But
and in limited use. Traces and courses are
the presumption we make - that before we
common themes that recur, as intricate as
can love something we have to understand it
filigree work yet as dazzling as the sun at
- is blown to smithereens at that moment.
times. What so many ofthe recimt works have
What I find most fascinating is that I see
in common however, is that moment when
things that living beings have made, whether
the familiar becomes conflated with its
it be tracks and traces, or a Navaho weaving,
opposite and meaning (as it is commonly
or African beadwork, and I don 't know the
found) breaks down. As Cohen describes,
reason for it. At that moment one is pushing
'one can be looking at something and be
clarity to the point where you can barely see
deeply moved by it without knowing what it
what's going on.'
is. One can see it absolutely crystal clearly without knowing what it is. That, I find, intriguing. I'm very much concerned now with those things that can be seen very clearly
fan McKay is author and academic based in Hampshire
Prospect 1966-2006. Acry l i c o n c a nva s. 91 . 5 x 91. 5 x 4 e m s
...
X
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
28state R EA L ES TAT E
art market
c
comment GODFREY BARKER WINDS HOWL, snow swirls in the air and the art market in dead of winter sleeps deeply. Yet oddly, the January diary is full. On the 17'h, the London Art Fair opens at Islington; the same day, the
LAPADA
Fine Arts &
Antiques Fair at Birmingham. On the 23rd,
of-the-art stands; and a quick browse, walk on walk-off experience without need of exchanges with disdainful Sloaney girls and dealers either intimidating or loquacious. Fairs are multiplying because the gallery is in difficulty, at several levels.
in Battersea Park, we have the Decorative
Antiques & Textiles Fair. Why January?
London is a year-round destination for the
Idly I turn to www.exhibitions.co.uk, which
world but every Bond Street and East End
knows about art fairs off my immediate radar
Looks Familiar: the G e r m a n Art Fa i r: ARTCo l ogne (Ap r i l )
dealer reports dead months when few push
screen. It lists 10 UK art fairs for this frozen
open the door. If it's hard here, how is it .
month alone, Exeter, Shepton Mallet... you
outside London? One S omerset dealer
name them. I scan the rest of 2007. There
phoned me as I write, with news of four
must be over 300 art fairs in Britain in a full
visitors in the whole of November.
,..
year - yes, three hundred! The gallery is also a tough place to visit, even Art fairs are taking over our lives. They are multiplying and they succeed. They move goods, January to December, that no gallery
for the 2 1 st century's educated art market. Art was sold overwhelmingly to business people in 2006; the aristocratic market, now
can. Dealers no longer disdain them, as the
represented by Sultans, Saudi princes and a
grandest used to do; Wildenstein, Gagosian
handful of kings, is a minority by volume
and Acquavella from New York have all
and value; and business people don't like
appeared at Maastricht in the last four years,
away games. The art gallery is definitely an
Partridge has gone to
even
away game. I remember the difficulty of
Thomas Gibson sat it out one year at the Armory in New York, taking a Gains borough chair for the ordeal.
Daily Telegraph, through gallery doors near
Olympia,
Art fairs are international big business. These fairs announce a new way of selling art and an alarming one. The alarm is rung in
Art Cologne ' s
2006 publicity, which
announces goodnight to 'the stuffy old
getting Conrad Black, the proprietor of The Piccadilly and Conrad, who liked pictures, was afraid of nobody. He and a thousand others feel ill at ease in the imprisoning, small space and dislike the elitist feel. Business people, who thrive on a command of facts, are disadvantaged in a gallery by their lack of expert knowledge on artist, market, price
gallery' . The 2 1 st century vision of the art
and comparables. They want to separate their
fair groupies is that within two decades, the
viewing of the goods from the negotiation
art gallery will be as dead as the 1 7th century kunstkammer. RO Dealers will simply spend the year moving from one art fair to another. 'It all makes sense,' Richard Green once
on them.
Looks Familiar 2 : T h e London Art Fa i r: Frieze ( O cto b e r) Lisson Gallery sta n d in fo regro u n d
And if that's the customers, the trade isn't that thrilled with the gallery, either.
shrugged to me on his deep pile carpet in
Many Bond Street boys now depend on a
but few do it in the West End and Mould is
Maastricht, for which fair-weary feet are so grateful. Palm Beach in January, Maastricht and the Salon des Dessins in March, Grosvenor House and Olympia in June, Paris in September, Frieze and New York in October, Miami in December - the calendar's all there,
handful of loyal major customers rather than
very much the exception, not the rule.
with a thousand other art fairs worldwide to be stuffed in from Sydney to Singapore to Beverly Hills, and all the art trade will do in future is follow the rich round the world,
as
it used to
on those who push open the door. In some galleries, the passing trade is a positive
For most dealers, art fairs are an answer to
nui sance. Hugh Leggatt once vividly
all problems. They have become, for many
explained to me why he hadn't changed the
collectors, unrnissable events; and they are
picture in his Duke Street window in four
now unrnissable business events for the most
years: 'we don't want to attract strange
elite of dealers too. Fairs put the buyer on
people in here, old boy! This gallery looks
the spot and in a competitive situation: act
after a dozen key clients. We haven't got time
now, or lose it to someone else in the crowd.
enough for anyone else.' If this is so, and
They also set fashions at a speed that few
do before 1939.
Leggatts' attitude to the art business is a
gallery exhibitions can achieve:
growing attitude, then the street-level art
Miami has become
The art gallery? Those £1 ,400 per square foot
gallery is a luxury that need no longer be
among art fairs, with the kids rushing from
ground floor premises with large windows
afforded; one can deal from home, like
in Mayfair and St James' s where, long ago,
stand to stand as they hear that Charles Saatchi or S.I.Newhouse has just paid $ 1 00,000 for a painting by a chimpanzee from Diego Garcia.
business there any more? Does anyone meet
Martin Summers in his gorgeous house in Glebe Place, or from upstairs, like the 200plus dealers who form the hidden Bond Street and the hidden Cork Street, or from the East
new clients there? Aren't we more likely to
End, or even from a telephone number, like
sell art in the 2 1 st century in restaurants,
more than a few I could name.
Wildenstein, the most aloof of dealers, were crowing in the midst of Maastricht last year.
Yes, there are exceptions. Philip Mould's
of the directors shouted like a schoolboy at
new gallery for British portraits in Dover
me amid the crush on the stand.
business was done in the 20th century? What, exactly, is it for? Does anyone do significant
hotels, casinos, bank lobbies in the City of London, night clubs like Annabel 's? Any where that money for luxury is produced in
Art Basel
a Cannes Film Festival
'We had no idea it would be this good! ' one
quantity? And, at a serious level, at art fairs,
Street is a commercial triumph in its first
above all else?
month: six walk-in, brand-new clients who all bought between £1 00,000 and £500,000.
behind them. But one hopes that today's
The art fair is ruling the world not just
'I should have done it ten years ago,' says
hurricane does not totally destroy yesterday's
because of its obvious advantages. These, it
Mould, but ten years ago he might not have done everything right: size, space, huge glass
gallery.
world's centres of luxury for the super-rich
windows, decorative feel, easy entrance and
and the super-busy; better showcasing of the
exit, no visible intimidation. Some key East
Godfrey Barker is a leading authority on the international art market and a contribuor to the Wall Street Journal, Daily Telegraph amongst others.
seems to me, are one-stop shopping in the
goods with ultra-modem lighting and state-
Looks Familiar 3: Swiss Art Fair: ARTBasel (June)
End spaces took this route a long.while ago
Love them or hate them, fairs have the wind
Looks Familiar 4: USA: ARTBaseiMiami ( December)
·--
state29
state of art JAN/FEB 2007
$TATE$1DEMIAMI
'
$6 hot dog (albeit that included a dollar' s ·
worth o f onions).
Were there bargains to be had? Well, I bought myself an unlimited edition Yoko
Ono piece. For a dollar, I got badge that read 'Imagine Peac e ' , a classic from the days when conceptualism meant something - at least some people thought it did. And
-<._ .
for those who really wanted to try and track down s omething, maybe more dynamic than the fairly standard, fairly classic works that filled the main show, there were the dozen spin off satellite shows dotted around town:
Scope, Pulse, Nada, Bridge Art, Aqua Art, Photo Miami and on and
report ANDREW HURMAN
on. A lot of these were showing c-word 'DON'T JUST write about the money and
The hub of all the activity, of course, is
the people, write about the art as well . '
the transformation of two of the bleak,
That was the heartfelt plea from Samuel
industrial-style warehouses of the Miami
Keller, Director of Art Basel Miami Beach , at the inaugural press conference of this year's art fair. The inference being
Beach Convention Centre. Installing acres and acres of partitioning walls creates around 200 specially vetted mini galleries
that it's easy for the hapless hack to get
cum-sales booths - a quite amazing maze
sidetracked by the tawdry glamour and
of little white cub e s , rectangle s and
extravagance of the occasion and somehow
rhombuses. At the centre of each open box,
forget that there's a nobler, deeper purpose
the dealer patrols up and down scanning
to the fair - namely, the promotion of art
the passing crowds, just as ready to hug
and cultural excellence.
and air-kiss an old client as they are to flatter and compliment a potential new one
Well, maybe, but try telling that to the main
or look straight through the majority who
sponsor, UBS Bank. When their reps got
are
up to talk to the press, they didn' t mention
windowless little spaces.
j u st
w i n d o w - shopping
these
stuff, which depending on your personal l e xi c o n c o uld m e a n cutting e d g e or challenging, which were the most favoured euphemisms that I heard. The visual image that will stay with me long after I've dusted the fine white sands of the beach from my shoes, came on the taxi ride back to the airport where the dri ver
c arri e d
on
simultan e o u s
conversations o n two mobile phones - one held to each ear - and steered using just his elbows. I don't know if it that's counts as Miami art or Miami vice
-
but it's
certainly memorable. Andrew Hurman is a critic and writer on contemporary cultural issues.
art history or aesthetics. They were much more concerned to let us know about the
While the gallery o wners c arefully
4,000 private clients they had invited to
scrutinize the masses shuffling by, using
the VIP preview. And, unsurprisingly, all
their professional X-ray eyes to check for
their special research and analysis into art
disposable income, everyone else looks at
l o oks at the market with the aim o f
everyone else with the normal interest of
designing better investment strategies to
the amateur people watcher.
make the rich richer, not make them more
some people are more interesting to gawp
Sweet cigarettes
Ciga rs wait i n h o p e fo r A. S c h w a r z e n egger ..-.;
Naturally,
cultured. When it comes to achieving this,
at than others. There didn ' t seem to be
they reckon that they're pretty good at their
many celebrities at this year' s parade but
j o b , as Karl Schweizer, Head of Art
there were a few, from the hip to the hip
B anking, proudly boasted, 'We have never
hop and the hippy Hopper. Keanu Reeves
yet made a mistake ' . A statement that
was there, walking around looking cool;
would have carried more weight, had his
apparently Beyonce and Jay Zed blinged
colleague in Corporate Communications
about and Dennis 'Easy Rider' Hopper
not just spilled his coke and ice all over
actually seemed to be looking at the art.
the table. Which reminds me . . . the art. There was a But more about the money later, what
lot of it about, although after walking for
about the people? Well, most of the visitors
mile upon mile of corridors, the works start
to the fair - and certainly the early bird
to blur and coalesce into one gargantuan
VIPs - looked like they had a lot of money.
installation. Added to which, there seemed
But it's not just the rich who are different
to be little coheren c e to the way the
from you and me in Miami, everyone here
galleries displayed their w ar e s . The
seems to be living in their own special,
common style seemed to be to place just
sunshine state. Take the man behind the
one or two pieces each from half a dozen
counter of the Surf Style souvenir shop on
of the artists from the gallery' s stable. If
Ocean Drive, north from where AI Capone
you didn't know the artist's work - not that
had a hotel and a couple of blocks from
anyone would admit to being quite so
the mansion where Gianni Versace lived
gauche - then it was not easy to figure out
and died. According to him, this whole art
what they were about.
D ress Down Fri d ay Lawrence Weiner s h ows h ow it's d o n e
Keep t h e old flag flying
Leslie Waddi ngton - l e a d i ng fro m th e front
extravaganza was started about five years ago by some guy called B asil. Weather in
There 's little point trying to describe the
Miami in early December changes by the
art in general terms except to note that the
hour from blue sunny skies to grey clouds,
vast bulk was contemporary (with very
light showers and a wind that bends the
little dating even much before the pre-Pop
palms trees and blows the beach sand right
era) and that it was of a style that might be
into your eyes. It's always pleasantly warm
called Global A rt Fairism. Just about
but too changeable to ensure that all
whatever you wanted to see was there, from
important, all-o ver even tan. It's low
the sublime to the ridiculous and the even
season and the lotus-eaters and Lotus
more ridiculous. On the one hand, some
drivers stay away and the lovely art deco
luscious Sean Scully paintings, on the
hotels stay empty. Evidently, at some point,
other. . . well, take your pick, how about
the eponymous Basil realized that this left
the photograph of a nude fire-eater blowing
a gap in the Miami economy that could be
flames from his mouth while the nozzle of
ne atly
an extinguisher is shoved up his ass?
filled
by
the
well-heeled
':>.'
globetrotters o f the art world gang. So, for at least a few days each year, brash breezy
Of course, most of it was very highly priced
Miami get a Swiss makeover as the fair
and there really is no way of avoiding the mercenary mechanicals so let's not be coy.
comes to town. The tacky souvenir shops may not benefit much from any art world
$ 1 .2m would have bought a small Fontana
gravy trickling down but it certainly keeps
or
the hotels and bars happy; restaurants fill up; it makes the wheels turn for the taxis and valet p arking services; and maybe some of the designer clothes shops get to shift some out of season apparel.
a l arger bunch of p s y chedelic Murakami mushrooms. A small Andy Warhol Chairman Mao for $2.2m was the most expensive painting that I spotted, but the art fair inflation that hit me personally the most, was the $4 can of Coke - and the
B u s m a n ' s H o l i d ay
Dennis Hopper ( p a i nter. c o l l e ctor. d e a l e r. fi l m m a ker. sta r) with M i a m i Fa i r D i rector S a m uel Keller
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