State of Art - January / February 2007

Page 1


GLENYS BARTON 19 JANUARY-

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FEBRUARY 2001

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state of art JAN/FEB 2007

state a

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

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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


----�----

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

�"'

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

!;; <ii

<J> '<

:;:: � IJJ

'" A' Cl)

" �


------- ---

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.

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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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www.state-of-art.org

You pay only your own postage - no extras Go to our web site for a downloadable form

.-l-


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

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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

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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 . . . '

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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

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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 .


.

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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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ICESTATETORONTO

n

e

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

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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

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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

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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 com­

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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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 establish­

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 mono­

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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Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.