Open skies | June 2011

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the

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OS04_029-029

EDITOR’S LETTER

T

he best things in life always take that extra bit of effort – and such it is with Al Quoz; a dusty, rundown district that lies parallel to Dubai’s main thoroughfare, Sheikh Zayed Road. This warren of factories and car showrooms is home to one of the most interesting — and surprising — art scenes in the Middle East. This brings

me neatly to this month’s cover. Noma Bar has the most recognisable style of any graphic designer working today, and his cover – his take on Picasso – is striking and original.

Picasso is the subject of this month’s cover story, and his scruples, or lack of them, make for a fascinating read. Equally intriguing is the story of the largest art theft in the world, the Gardner Heist, which remains the biggest unsolved art crime ever pulled off. For another, different type of mystery, turn to page 112, where New Jersey resident, Matthew Albanese makes incredibly lifelike scenes out of everyday (and not so everyday) objects. Sunsets and volcanoes made from moss, sugar and ostrich feathers? Oh yes. Of course, all art is subjective, and in some cases, one man’s artist is another man’s vandal. Nowhere is this dichotomy more in evidence than in New York in the 1980s, when graffiti artists began spraying their names all over the city’s trains. These days, of course, graffiti is considered an art form. We trace its journey from the street to the gallery. There is always a danger of sounding pretentious when talking about art, which is why I will stop now. Enjoy the issue.

CONOR@OPENSKIESMAGAZINE.COM

Emirates takes care to ensure that all facts published herein are correct. In the event of any inaccuracy please contact The Editor. Any opinion expressed is the honest belief of the author based on all available facts. Comments and facts should not be relied upon by the reader in taking commercial, legal, ďŹ nancial or other decisions. Articles are by their nature general and specialist advice should always be consulted before any actions are taken.

PO Box 2331, Dubai, UAE Telephone: (+971 4) 282 4060 Fax:(+971 4) 282 4436 Email: emirates@motivate.ae

84,649 COPIES Printed by Emirates Printing Press, Dubai, UAE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Obaid Humaid Al Tayer GROUP EDITOR & MANAGING PARTNER Ian Fairservice GROUP SENIOR EDITOR (JOB +PIOTPO Ĺ&#x; HJOB!NPUJWBUF BF SENIOR EDITOR .BSL &WBOT Ĺ&#x; NBSLF!NPUJWBUF BF EDITOR $POPS 1VSDFMM Ĺ&#x; DPOPS! NPUJWBUF BF ART DIRECTOR 5JB 4FJGFSU Ĺ&#x; UJB!NPUJWBUF BF CHIEF SUB EDITOR *BJO 4NJUI Ĺ&#x; JBJOT!NPUJWBUF BF GENERAL MANAGER PRODUCTION & CIRCULATION S Sasidharan PRODUCTION MANAGER C Sudhakar GENERAL MANAGER, GROUP SALES "OUIPOZ .JMOF Ĺ&#x; BOUIPOZ!NPUJWBUF BF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER /JDPMB )VETPO Ĺ&#x; OJDPMB!NPUJWBUF ae SENIOR ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER +BZB #BMBLSJTIOBO KBZB!NPUJWBUF BF DEPUTY ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER Murali Narayanan ADVERTISEMENT MANAGER 4ISVUJ 4SJWBTUBWB EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS FOR EMIRATES: &EJUPS 4JPCIBO #BSEFU "SBCJD &EJUPS )BUFN 0NBS %FQVUZ &EJUPS 4UFQIBOJF #ZSOF 8FCTJUF Ĺ&#x; FNJSBUFT DPN CONTRIBUTORS: Noma Bar, &SJD + -ZNBO (BSFUI 3FFT 3JDIBSE -VDL (PMEJF $IFSJUI (SBDF /JDIPMM ,FSSZ $ISJTUJBOJ 8BFM "M 4BZFHI (FNNB $PSSFMM 1IJM 0I "MFY %BODIFW 4DPUU (ZCTPO 6MSJDI #PTFS %BOJFM (SBOU .BUUIFX "MCBOFTF Axis Maps, COVER ILLUSTRATION by Noma Bar MASTHEAD DESIGN CZ 2VJOU Ĺ&#x; XXX RVJOUEVCBJ DPN

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OS04_023-023

CONTENTS

JUNE ���� ROME ’S CULTURAL HERITAGE IS HAMPERING A NEW GENERATION OF ARTISTS (P29)… HONG KONG’S ART GALLERIES ARE GIVEN THE TWITTER PITCH TREATMENT (P33)… CHARLES SAATCHI IS AN ‘ARTOHOLIC’, BUT DOES HE MAKE ANY SENSE? (P35)… WE GIVE BEIRUT ’S MOST LUXURIOUS HOTEL THE ONCE OVER (P35)… MELBOURNE IS ONE OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE’S COOLEST CITIES (P36)… WE LOOK AT ANDY WARHOL’S PROLIFIC SPELL AS A FILM DIRECTOR (P40)… ARTIST, MUSICIAN, ACTOR AND ALL ROUND LEGEND, GOLDIE GIVES US HIS SKYPOD (P42)… WE TAKE A LOOK AT ONE OF SPAIN’S MOST INTRIGUING HOUSES (P52)… AND GO TO ONE OF EUROPE’S OLDEST AUCTION HOUSES (P54)… AS WELL AS BEING A GENIUS, PICASSO WAS ALSO A COMPLEX MAN. WE TAKE A LOOK AT HIS LEGACY (P62)… DUBAI’S ORGANIC ART SCENE IS UNMASKED AS WE REVEAL THE CITY’S HIDDEN GALLERIES (P72)… WHILE ULRICH BOSER TRIES TO UNTANGLE THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE ART WORLD’S BIGGEST ROBBERY (P82)… THE RISE OF A GLOBAL ART MARKET HAS CREATED AS MANY PROBLEMS AS OPPORTUNITIES (P92)… GRAFFITI HAS COME A LONG WAY FROM ITS ORIGINS. WE TRACE ITS JOURNEY (P102) …

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OS04_025-025

CONTRIBUTORS

TWO

ALEX DANCHEV

T HREE

Art is the highest form of hope. So says the artist Gerhard Richter.

I like that

DANIEL GRANT

ON E

ULRICH BOSER

Art is creative expression. Artwork is a commodity embodying that creativity, but it's subject to the laws of supply and demand

Art inspires passion

FO U R

ERIC J LYMAN Art is beauty, it is architecture, it is life around us

ART IS…?

FI VE

HUGO MARTINEZ Art is not relative and beauty is absolute

one

ULRICH BOSER: A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He writes about social policy issues and is the author of the best-selling book, The Gardner Heist. He has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate and Forbes.

two

ALEX DANCHEV: He is the author of a number of acclaimed biographies, among them Georges Braque (Penguin, 2007).

His most recent book is 100 Artist’s Manifestos (Penguin, 2011). He writes regularly for a variety of newspapers and magazines.

He is Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

three

DANIEL GRANT: The author of several books on the arts, including The Business Of Being An Artist and The Fine Artist's Career Guide. He is also a contributor to ARTnews Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Huffington Post.

four

ERIC J LYMAN: A writer living in Rome who has written for The Economist, USA Today, Time and The Sunday Times

among others. He has won a Silver Medal for the Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation.

five

HUGO MARTINEZ: The Art Director of the Martinez Gallery in New York, America's premiere showcase for graffiti. In 1972, he curated the first graffiti gallery show in New York, and he is considered the foremost authority on the genre.

25

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I

×Þ

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OS04_027-027

INTRO ×Þ º

P. ØÛ º melbourne mapped

P. 42 º goldie’s skypod

P. ÚÛ º Milan booty

ART MGOAGD H TO

FROM VAN RIEF E TRACE A B POLLOCK,W D’S L R O THE W HISTORY OF TS IS T R A URED MOST TORT

P46

erce dina: AIN, 689, MAN,

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Rom enco pass gest mar arch Th Alta mar Rom maj two Paci Priz deba love Bu univ Min mon cam may beca the som men rank thei buil

Eric

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OS04_029-029

OUR MAN IN

ROME ROME’S RICH ARTISTIC HERITAGE IS CAUSING PROBLEMS FOR A NEW GENERATION OF ARTISTS

F

or the first few months after it opened five years ago, anyone near the Ara Pacis museum in Rome’s historical centre was likely to encounter car horns sounding, with passing drivers often making vulgar gestures toward the glass and white marble edifice designed by celebrated architect Richard Meier.

The robust structure houses the Altar of Augustan Peace, an elaborate marble work commissioned by the Roman Senate in 13 BC. The first major public works project in Italy in two generations, the provocative Ara Pacis — like most work by the Pritzker Prize-winning Meier — sparked rich debate among art and architecture lovers around the world.

But in Rome it was almost universally panned. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called it “a monstrosity” and Gianni Alemanno’s campaign that made him Rome’s mayor in 2008 was won in part because he promised to remove the building and replace it with something “more appropriate”. Both men were echoing the thoughts of rank-and-file Romans, who voiced their views on the modern-looking building with car horns and gestures.

“Romans have an idea what buildings in the centre of the city should look like, and it’s clear the Ara Pacis doesn’t meet that standard,” said Antonio Basso, an author and retired architecture professor from Rome’s Sapienza University.

As the capital of the Roman Empire, one of the birthplaces of the Renaissance, and the depository of centuries of Papal commissions and collections, Rome is home to what is likely the largest collection of artistic and cultural riches in the world. But rather than inspire new generations of painters, sculptors, and architects, the consensus seems to be that the past can be as much of a burden as a source of inspiration. A contemporary art scene exists, but is fractured and surprisingly small.

Modern art galleries come and go, and critics report that the busiest exhibitions in Rome are still those connected in some way to classicism.

Most artists in the city have anecdotes about how Romans brought up amid so much classical beauty can be tough critics.

“When I first arrived in Rome I was a little surprised to find that when I’d work in public, people

would gather and wouldn’t be shy about telling me their views on how I should paint,” recalls American Wendy Artin, a painter who first moved to Rome in 1994. Ilya Gefter, a Russian-born painter who splits his time between Toronto, Jerusalem and Rome, said the beauty of the city also has an impact on a painter’s choice of subjects. “Rome is inspiring as a place to learn about art, to take in the wonderful facades of buildings, sculpture and paintings,” Gefter said. “But at the same time, doing any artwork that is personal is tremendously difficult in Rome.

The visual richness makes it easy to respond to what’s around you, but it’s not a great place to explore what’s inside you.” Ricardo Harris-Fuentes, a Mexican-American painter who lived in Rome for three years, said the city’s cultural touchstones represent their own challenges. “When I lived in Rome I remember feeling good about a few hours’ painting I’d put in, and I’d take a break by walking around the city,” Harris-Fuentes said. “I’d step into a church and find myself studying a painting by Caravaggio.

After that, the work I’d done didn’t seem as great anymore.”

Eric J. Lyman is a writer based in Rome. His website is www.ericjlyman.com 29

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GRAPH

ILLUSTRATION: MED NESS // HTTP://AHMERICARNATION.TUMBLR.COM

INFORMATION ELEGANCE

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9/11 3:01:41 PM

ILLUSTRATION: MED NESS // HTTP://AHMERICARNATION.TUMBLR.COM

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OS04_033-033

TWITTER PITCH

HONG KONG

GALLERIES Every month we profile a number of venues in a different city. The catch?

The companies must be on Twitter and must tell us in their own words what makes them so special. This month, we feature Hong Kong’s best galleries.

If you want to get involved, follow us at: www.twitter.com/openskiesmag

ufo gallery

ooi botos art

Established in 2009, ufo Gallery is

Ooi Botos is one of the leaders in

Hong Kong’s first gallery to present

photography and new media and

modern, edgy low brow and street

is respected for its commitment to

art. Currently by appointment only.

scholarship and education of Hong

www.twitter.com/ufoartgallery

Kong’s art-loving public. www.twitter.com/ooibotosarthk

mischmasch

Above second

videotage

Mischmasch is an online artist

Above Second is an artist-run gallery

HK’s most exciting alternative art

community with a gallery in

and studio space in Sai Ying Pun,

space, dedicated to the presentation &

Central where members show

Hong Kong. Showcasing young and

preservation of avant-garde video and

their work, highlighting young

emerging local and international

media art since 1986. We

contemporary artists.

contemporary artists.

creative technology.

www.twitter.com/_mischmasch_

www.twitter.com/AboveSecondHK

www.twitter.com/videotage

art &

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OS04_035-035

BOOKED

CHARLES SAATCHI — MY NAME IS CHARLES SAATCHI AND I AM AN ARTOHOLIC

A

dvertising mogul and art collector extraordinaire Charles Saatchi doesn’t do interviews. Or at least not many interviews. Despite his former firm Saatchi & Saatchi’s impact on the world of advertising and his continuing importance as an art collector, Saatchi is an illusive fellow, disinclined to indulge in the kind of self-promotion once favoured by the artists he championed — the likes of Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst.

So when this book was published in 2009 it was a bit of a surprise.

Even more unexpected was that the book is a Q&A session, with critics, press and the public providing questions and Saatchi providing the often pretentious, but always intriguing, answers.

Why Saatchi suddenly decided to give what is, essentially, a big interview is unclear. But, who wouldn’t want to hear what the man responsible for making Margaret Thatcher electable in the 1980s and turning a couple of art students into stars in the 1990s has to say for himself? After all, for more than a decade, Saatchi was British art. Phaidon, 2009

ROOM

1710

THE FOUR SEASONS BEIRUT

INTERNET SPEED: 2MBPs PILLOWS: Eight ENGLISH TV CHANNELS: Yes, 48

channels including CNN, BBC IPOD DOCK: Yes ROOM SERVICE: Yes, 90 dishes CLUB SANDWICH DELIVERY TIME: 26

minutes COMPLIMENTARY SNACKS: Fruit,

chocolates, nuts TOILETRY BRAND: Moya DAILY NEWSPAPER: The Daily Star EXTRAS: DVD player, iron and board, silk

padded hangers, double housecleaning BUSINESS CENTRE: Yes, 24 hours VIEW: 4.5/5 RATE: From $375 per night WWW.FOURSEASONS.COM/ BEIRUT

Beirut, for obvious reasons, is not a city of skyscrapers, which makes the view from the 17th floor of the Four Seasons quite spectacular, particularly at dusk when the setting sun lights up the mountains that surround the city. In a region where the star rating system is much abused, The Four Seasons is a true five-star hotel; every whim is catered for, and the service is impeccable. In a city of rather poor service, this is refreshing, although the trade off is that you could be anywhere. You definitely won’t get any local flavour while ensconsed within its pristine walls, but that is probably the point. The location, right by the corniche and a two-minute walk from bustling Gemmayze, is perfect. Beirut has more interesting hotels than this, but none more luxurious.

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MAPPED MELBOURNE

Melbourne has the understated urban cool of Tribeca or Berlin, not the hard-bodied flashiness of LA. In Sydney, everyone thinks they are a rock star. In Melbourne, everyone thinks they’re a barista. The weather is grim, but it adds to the theatrical nature of the city where, like London, the centre of life exists mainly indoors — in the galleries, boutiques and bookshops (it’s a city where people still buy books from independent bookshops). The city is as cosmopolitan as its demographics suggest (35 per cent of the population is made up of first-generation immigrants). Melbournites take their wining and dining very seriously and gourmet pretence is scoffed at. The best restaurants are small, dank, dark, and packed with rickety tables and rude waiters. HG2’s Luciano Di Gregorio explores Melbourne’s most interesting venues.

WWW.HG2.COM

HOTELS 1. Crown Metropol RESTAURANTS �. Giuseppe Arnaldo & Sons

2. The Blackman

3. The Windsor

4. The Como

6. Comme Bar

7.Vue de Monde

8. Stavros Tavern

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BARS / CLUBS 9. Spice Market GALLERIES 13. National Gallery of Victoria

10. Blue Diamond

11. Madame Butterfly

12. Silk Road

14. Ian Potter Centre

15. Heide Museum of Modern Art

16. Anna Schwartz Gallery

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MAPPED MELBOURNE

HOTELS 1 CROWN METROPOL

One of the swishest buildings on the Melbourne skyline is also one of the funkiest hotels in town. A range of rooms complements its world class dining, all close to some great shopping.

2 THE BLACKMAN

3

THE WINDSOR The elegant ‘Old Dame’ of Melbourne is more than 120 years old and exudes charm. Apart from its amazing rooms and impeccable service, it offers the best Sunday afternoon high tea.

4

THE COMO Packed with the city’s glitterati, The Como’s designer rooms and famed bar are not the only reason to stay, as Chapel St, Australia’s longest shopping strip, is located at its front door.

7

VUE DE MONDE The dynamic atmosphere and finest French cuisine in the city make Vue de Monde a sophisticated choice. The food is of the highest quality, the décor is sexy and the service unimpeachable.

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STAVROS TAVERN You might expect a bouzouki-playing Greek man to escort you to your seat. But the Stavros Tavern is all about the modern aspects of Greek cuisine, inspired by bellybursting lamb dishes.

The Blackman is one of Melbourne’s most luxurious designer hotels. With 209 rooms nestled in on the famed St Kilda Road, you won’t be far from some of the city’s leading restaurants.

RESTAURANTS 5 GIUSEPPE ARNALDO

& SONS GAS took Melbourne by storm. From the exterior glass panels etched with images of the porticos of Rome, to the contemporary Italian cuisine, GAS is superb.

6 COMME BAR

Comme Bar rolls classic elegance with modern chic and just a hint of French inspiration. Chef Daniel Southern breaks the mould, offering a ‘left field’ French bistro menu with a twist.

BARS/CLUBS 9 SPICE MARKET

Tucked away off one of the CBD’s main roads, this is one of the city’s busiest clubs. Get down and boogie on the weekends or come for ladies’ night on a Thursday. Cheesy, but a lot of fun.

10 BLUE DIAMOND

Bring it and swing it! Blue Diamond is Melbourne’s hippest jazz bar and is the place to be seen at the weekend. Get in early for a seat at one of its coveted lounge areas, complete with stunning views over the city.

11 MADAME BUTTERFLY

In the city’s ever changing bar scene, it’s good to see that this institution is as popular as ever. Its fame is partly due to its open-air roof terrace. Enjoy pitchers with views over the city’s financial district.

12 SILK ROAD

Don your gladrags and show off in this glamorous ‘East meets West’ bar where Melbourne’s party people converge.

Ever since its opening, Silk Road has raised the standards of the bar scene.

GALLERIES 13 NATIONAL GALLERY

OF VICTORIA Though it may look like a block of concrete from the outside, the NGV sports an extensive collection of ancient and modern art and is one of the city’s cultural ‘must sees’.

14 IAN POTTER CENTRE

It is fitting to enjoy the largest collection of Australian art in a gallery with a spot on Australia’s architecturally controversial Federation Square. The 25,000 pieces include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.

15 HEIDE MUSEUM OF

MODERN ART Competing with the more popular NGV collections doesn’t seem to bother the operators of this funky gallery, set in parkland about 8km from the centre of town.

16 ANNA SCHWARTZ

GALLERY Tucked away in Flinders Lane, one of the city’s creative hubs, its vision is a simple one: to showcase the best local and international artists in a minimalist environment.

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FLICK CELLULOID DISSECTED

W

hen he wasn’t painting soup tins, Andy Warhol shot movies that made a mockery of the mainstream. But if his films were strange, the fact he became a Hollywood darling was downright surreal.

Andy Warhol looks a scream Hang him on my wall.

Andy Warhol, silver screen Can’t tell them apart at all.

— David Bowie, Andy Warhol You might not have thought it to look at him, but Andy Warhol was one of the modern art world’s workaholics. Not content with painting Brillo Pad boxes and a certain brand of soup tin, the man born Andrew Warhol also found time to launch his own magazine,

Interview, and produce the Velvet

Underground’s eponymous debut album. And then there were his movies.

Between 1963 and 1968, Warhol made more than 60 movies. That extraordinary figure doesn’t include his trademark screen tests — blackand-white shorts he made whenever someone new visited his Factory studio. If it did, the number would be around the 600 mark. Prolific though he might have been, Andy didn’t tend to publicise his work. Indeed, there’s a good chance you won’t know the title of any of these pictures. That said, it’s just as possible you’ve heard about the eight-hour picture that consisted of a single shot of the Empire State Building (official title: Empire) and/or the picture he made of a man enjoying six hours of shuteye (aka Sleep).

“What odd movies,” you might say, and that’s exactly how Warhol would

want you to react. As his soup tin paintings raised the question “what is art?” so Andy’s movies left the audience querying, “what constitutes cinema?” To understand how pertinent a question this was, you have to remember that Warhol was shooting pictures like The Chelsea Girls (a brace of films designed to be shown side by side) in the days before Bonnie & Clyde and Easy Rider reinvigorated Hollywood film. At a time when the musical and the preSam Peckinpah western held sway, Andy Warhol thumbed his nose at a Hollywood he believed wasn’t fully realising the form.

Not that Andy’s directing skills would give John Ford and Orson Welles sleepless nights. As a talented artist, Warhol has a good understanding of composition but you’d be hard pushed to describe his

pictu Tha Holl the l relia com inde shoo to hi atte Ame O mov iron Holl once Ever I wa from man plas long fide

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pictures as aesthetically pleasing.

That said, while the great and good in Hollywood were bound to MGM and the like, Warhol’s daring and selfreliance — advertising and portrait commissions secured his financial independence — meant he was free to shoot whatever he pleased. And thanks to his standing, he was guaranteed the attention of both the art world and the American studio system.

Of course, Warhol’s experimental movies were underpinned by the great irony that Andy was a huge fan of Hollywood and its superstars. As he once said: “I love LA. I love Hollywood.

Everything’s plastic, but I love plastic.

I want to be plastic.” And judging from his behaviour in the 1980s, our man was keen to become a full-blown plastic person. Alas, Andy didn’t live long enough to transform into a bona fide movie star — he died in 1987, aged

just 58 — but his cameo appearance in Sydney Pollack’s comedy-drama

Tootsie hints at what might have been.

But it would take more than death to prevent Andy Warhol from conquering Hollywood. Since he was a huge, world-shaping figure, film-makers queued up to showcase Warhol in their stories. Just four short years after his passing, Crispin Glover delivered a spot-on impersonation of the Pope of Pop Art in Oliver Stone’s The Doors. Jared ‘son of Richard’ Harris also did a very good turn in I Shot Andy Warhol, a film about the 1960s radical and would-be assassin Valerie Solanas.

And LA Confidential star Guy Pearce also did a good job of channelling the man nicknamed Drella in the Edie Sedgwick biopic Factory Girl.

Given how mannered Warhol’s behaviour was, it’s perhaps no

surprise that the best big screen Warhol to date should have been essayed by a man widely ridiculed for his acting. “I thought David Bowie made a great Andy Warhol,” said Dennis Hopper when asked about the rock star’s performance in Basquiat, the film about the Haitian-American modern artist of that name. A Factory acolyte himself, Hopper had jumped at the opportunity to play Warhol’s agent, Bruno Bischofberger. But it was the Thin White Duke’s work that really impressed the Easy Rider star. “He had Andy down pat — every awkward flinch and pained grimace.

And David had been allowed to wear one of Warhol’s wigs. It was incredible — it still smelt of Andy!”

Andy Warhol — experimental moviemaker turned posthumous movie star. May his memory linger for many years to come.

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SKYPOD GRAFFITI GRAFFITI ARTIST, ARTIST, DISC JOCKEY DISC JOCKEY AND BOND AND BOND VILLAIN VILLAIN – GOLDIE – GOLDIE GIVES GIVES US HISUS PERFECT HIS PERFECT PLAYLIST. PLAYLIST. WWW.GOLDIE.CO.UK WWW.GOLDIE.CO.UK

M G a

CAN — VITAMIN C The most underrated band of all time.

Pioneers in experimental sounds and way ahead of their time. Their percussion and drums are out of this world and are still being sampled.

D

SEBASTIEN TELLIER – LA RITOURNELLE Beautiful arrangement.

Just a nice, uplifting tune.

BECK — NEW POLLUTION This is my MOD soundtrack. I put my shades on and have a dance whenever I hear this song.

PAT METHENY — THE WAY UP PART 3 My all time musical hero. The ultimate journey in music. I listen to this track every single day. Usually during bath time.

BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS — I LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW Classic soul tune. Really puts you in the mood for loving!

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MILES DAVIS – DECOY Given to me by 3D from Massive Attack on a cassette tape with the soundtrack for Taxi

Driver on the B side.

TALKING HEADS — CROSSEYED AND PAINLESS David Byrne is one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time and this tune is just class.

SAM PREKOP — SHOWROOMS Given to me by my friend Damon Way whilst snowboarding in Alaska. Beautiful and breezy with a laid-back west coast vibe.

PRINCE — SIGN O’ THE TIMES First song I heard on the radio station WBLS when I arrived in NYC in 1988 at the beginning of my graffiti career. A real portrayal of inner city life.

JUDIE TZUKE — STAY WITH ME ’TIL DAWN Probably the first time I heard strings arranged with such beautiful vocals. Still makes the hair stand up on my arms.

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SUPERTRAMP — THE LOGICAL SONG When I first arrived in Croxdene’s children’s home, after failing my third foster encounter, this was the record on the gramophone, which I played over, and over again until I had to be dragged out of the room kicking and screaming. It was the very first experience I had with becoming conscious through music.

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LOCAL VOICES

EMIRATI ART EMERGES INTO THE SPOTLIGHT

CURATING CHANGE

ART IS BECOMING AN INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT MEANS OF EXPRESSION FOR EMIRATIS, SAYS WAEL AL SAYEGH

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T

here was a time, not so long ago, when the only paintings you would see on entering an Emirati home were those with a strong theme of heritage. Among the most common were proud images of Arabian horses galloping in the open desert, falcons swooping down on their prey, and traditional wooden fishing dhows lying patiently on their sides waiting for the tide to come in.

This was artistic reality for the vast majority of Emiratis and other Gulf nationals. Paintings and artwork falling outside this comfort zone, in particular those that displayed the contours of human figures and faces, were deemed un-Islamic and frowned upon by conservatives. Abstract paintings were perhaps the only refuge for those who wished to venture outside the familiar circle.

Has this artistic reality changed

over the years? Thankfully (“If I see one more falcon painting, I’m telling you…”) the answer is an overwhelming ‘yes’.

First of all, art is no longer something confined to the inner walls of our homes; it’s everywhere.

It’s in our places of work, of recreation, and of entertainment.

Art is now a permanent feature of Dubai’s geography, with locations such as the Al Quoz industrial area and Al Bastakiya becoming well known cultural areas in the city, The modern sculptures and art galleries scattered all over the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) add much needed colour and energy to the black, white and grey of the financial world.

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artists’ programmes, it ushers in a fresh breeze of internationally acclaimed artists and buyers from all over the globe.

Locally, the Dubai Community & Arts Centre (DUCTAC) has played a vital role in reaching out to art lovers in the city. But perhaps nothing shows how serious the UAE is about the future of art more than government investment to attract international artistic brands such as the Guggenheim and the Louvre to its shores.

But how much have all these developments penetrated into Emirati lives, affecting hearts and minds? There are now distinguished Emirati collectors such as Sultan Al Qassimi, Muna Al Gurg and Mishall Khanoo. We owe much of the development of the art scene to these individuals, who have used their profiles to promote art and its role in modern Emirati life. And involvement in art can now provide a full-time career for some, such as the

prominent Emirati couple Yousif bin Zayed and his wife Shamsa, who own and operate the gallery Art Connections. To witness their son growing up surrounded by and immersed in art holds out a promise to future generations of Emiratis.

Then there are the Emirati artists themselves, a source of pride to the country, and our ambassadors in the world of art. Abdul Qader Al Rais, Dr Najat Makki and Abdulrahim Salim are just a few of

the way Ree who and hori hav not At are iden exp sign a ve

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TORTURED ARTISTS

1571

15 89

1853

1864

A painter of unreal abilities, Caravaggio was also a complete nutter.

He killed one man in a “brawl” in 1606 and narrowly escaped being killed in another street fight a few years later.

He even had a death warrant issued for him by the Pope. He died at 36, revered, but alone.

Johannes van der Beeck redefined painting in his lifetime. He was also accused of being a “satanist, heretic and blasphemer” by the Dutch government and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was eventually released, but not before undergoing a spell on the ‘Rack’.

The Dutch master, Vincent van Gogh was a genius, as well as being unstable and a manic depressive. He cut off his left ear in a brothel, was kicked out of a town for being a ‘redheaded mad man’ and eventually shot himself in the chest, dying two days later.

Henri de ToulouseLautrec was a dwarf, the result of some unfortunate inbreeding, and was dogged by bad health his entire life.

He died an alcoholic at 36, riven by syphilis and self loathing. His work fared better, one painting fetching $22.5 million in 2005.

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LOCAL VOICES

the pioneers who have paved the way for up-and-coming artists like Reem Al Gauth and Wasel Safwan, who are enriching our experience and expanding our artistic horizons. Their styles, all different, have also shown that Emirati art is not a homogenous field.

At a time when many Emiratis are struggling with issues of identity, which is only to be expected for any group exposed to significant changes in lifestyle in a very short space of time, art can

serve as a form of cathartic self expression, almost as a therapy. It allows for the channelling of much creative energy that cannot be harnessed by other means.

In a tribal culture, what society considers appropriate and not appropriate wields considerable influence over many aspects of life. Emirati artists are courageously stretching the boundaries, sometimes even breaching them altogether. The price to pay for such an approach

can be very high, ranging from unfulfilled expectations of marriage and family, to actual social marginalisation.

The great Spanish painter Pablo Picasso once said that “painting is just another way of keeping a diary”. With the Arab world currently going through an unprecedented awakening that makes us question the inner core of our lives, the art work produced now is going to be one worth keeping a close eye on.

190 4

1907

1912

1963

Unique is a much abused word, but the term applies to Salvador Dali. The Spanish artist was also extremely strange. He once arrived at a lecture dressed in a diving suit leading two Russian wolfhounds.

His ego was monstrous; he believed he was immortal. He died at 84.

Dogged by constant pain after a car crash in her teenage years, Frida Kahlo is a Mexican national treasure. Her paintings, often self portraits, are full of psychological pain. Some believe her death, at the age of 47, was suicide.

After a life filled with agony, she was at peace.

An alcoholic who died in a drink-related car crash, Jackson Pollock is regarded as one of America’s finest painters. He was also a depressive who cheated on his wife and suffered a nervous breakdown.

No amount of fame or money could tame his inner demons.

Tracey Emin is a very modern tortured artist. She has appeared drunk and swearing on TV, has had very public arguments with artists and journalists, and does not seem to be able to speak publicly without causing uproar.

Her work is equally controversial.

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INTERVIEW

MY TRAVELLED LIFE SALMA TUQAN, 26, CURATOR

ON INFLUENCES

ON ARTISTS

a Londoner, you can have an identity of

Since I was a kid I have been surrounded

I meet artists from around the world, from

your own, but still be a part of the city.

by artwork. My parents were collectors and

the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia,

loved art. I travelled a lot and moved about

and despite the very different backgrounds,

and that sort of life was normal for me.

there are some common threads. They all

ON THE V & A MUSEUM

My parents travelled a lot, they were always

have a passion and dedication. In a lot of the

The Victoria and Albert museum is the

open minded and adventurous. They would

locations I have been to, it is quite difficult

most prestigious art and design museum,

be my biggest influence.

to pursue art as a career due to financial and

with the largest amount of touring

political problems.

exhibitions, and it was one of the first institutions that collected Islamic art in

ON SURPRISES

when it was set up in the 1850s. I love the

The two places that were really surprising

ON LONDON

concern it shows about Islamic art and

to me were Lamu, off the coast of Kenya, and

What I love about London is that there is

artists from the Middle East and it is an

Pakistan. Lamu is a place caught in time, it

something for everyone. There is so much

amazing place to work. The Jameel Prize

has some Islamic influences, but you can’t

going on and I feel lucky to live there. In

is a great way to celebrate the diversity of

quite place where you are. Karachi was

London I feel I can be Palestinian and also

artists who are producing work right now

amazing, so energetic, and I managed to meet so many artists there.

ON BEIRUT Beirut is a fantastic art centre, there is a huge amount of creativity and the Beirut Art Centre and private philanthropy is at the heart of that. Of course, there are lots of other places in the region that are fascinating, such as Tunis. Who knows what the art scene will be like there in a couple of years.

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STORE U R B A N CA RTO G RA P H Y « PALAIS DOROTHEUM « VIENNA « AUCTION HOUSE

S

tepping into the vaulted atrium of the Palais Dorotheum, one of Europe’s oldest and most venerable auction houses, is like embarking on an epic treasure hunt.

Beyond this point who knows what you might find: Biedermeier silver, Wiener Werkstätte ceramics, Jugendstil jewellery, wartime toys. Vienna’s passion for art and aesthetics, its imperial nostalgia and its penchant for cuttingedge design are all reflected in these stately halls. “The Dorotheum is as Viennese as St Stephen’s Cathedral and the State Opera House,” enthuses managing director Martin Böhm, whose father used to take him on outings to the auction house as a child.

Founded by Emperor Joseph I in 1707, takes its name from the Dorotheum Convent that once stood here. In 1901 it was given a neo-baroque makeover by Hapsburg favourite Emil Ritter von Förster, the renowned Ringstrasse Boulevard architect. Today it hosts 600 auctions a year, across 40 different departments.

“What makes the Dorotheum special is its diversity, its willingness to embrace tradition and innovation. Contemporary art and design are among our most important departments,” says Böhm.

What strikes the first-time visitor is the Dorotheum’s ‘open house’ feel. This is not just the haunt of die-hard bidders seeking a Rubens or an Adolf Loos masterpiece. Art enthusiasts treat it as a gallery, shoppers as an antique shop, WORDS: KERRY CHRISTIANI

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the Viennese as a unique spot to meet for coffee. All are welcome to attend the daily auctions, with categories ranging from stamps and books to glass and porcelain.

According to Böhm, the best time to visit is during the four action-packed auction weeks. “Come in April and October for Old Masters and 19th century works, in November and May for contemporary and modern art and design,” These are the weeks of high prices and big-name lots. None more remarkable, in Böhm’s opinion, than Frans Francken the Younger’s painting Allegory Of Man’s Choice Between Virtue And Vice (1635) bought for a staggering $10.9 million (14 times the original estimate) in April 2010. “I always considered it something of a hidden gem, but the bidding war was astonishing and completely unexpected.

It was the highest price ever achieved for an Old Master painting in Austria and a world record for a Frans Francken.”

For those who shy away from the bidding, there is the fixed-price Dorotheum Gallery, Vienna’s largest antiques store, where an Augarten mocca service designed by Josef Hoffman is available for $993, a 1920s Viennese silver dish for a modest $130. Or take a seat in the Dorotheum Café to observe the auction-goers below over coffee and torte, and ponder how you would spend $10 million here if you had it.

Palais Dorotheum, Dorotheergasse 17. A-1010 Vienna, 0043 1 515 60; www.dorotheum.com

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Via Manfredo Camperio

PRODUCTS 1, 4 AND 5 ARE AVAILABLE AT HARVEY NICHOLS, MALL OF THE EMIRATES.

Store, Piazza del Duomo

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A celebration of the best in regional and global dance. www.dubaidancefestival.com

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Off-road motorbiking through Australia’s harsh Northern Territory. www.finkedesertrace.com.au

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“Turkey can count on solid know-how and a strong tradition in apparel manufacturing: this is why we have invested here for over twenty years.

Being here today means focusing on the energy, dynamism and determination of a young and modern country that is growing rapidly and looking to the future.”

Biagio Chiarolanza, CEO

• A population of 73 million, half of which is under the age of 28.8 • Approximately 450,000 students graduated from around 150 universities and other higher education institutions in 2009 • Over 25 million young, well-educated and motivated labor force • Highly competitive investment conditions • A country that offers 100% and more tax deductions on R&D expenditures

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• Access to Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa • 16th largest economy of the world and the 6th largest economy as compared to the EU countries in 2009 (IMF-WEO) • 15th most attractive FDI destination for 2008-2010 (UNCTAD World Investment Prospects Survey) • Fastest growing economy in Europe in 2010

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POLITICS, PROFIT AND PRIDE

BY ALEX DANCHEV

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P

icasso was nothing if not self-centred. He had a monstrous ego.

Classically trained and precociously talented, at the age of 25 he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a work that would be hailed as a revolution in art. At the time, however, it was hard to take. The visceral impact on those who saw it in the artist’s studio may be gauged from the legendary French painter, André Derain’s comment, often repeated, “that painting of this sort was an impasse, at the end of which lay only suicide; that one fine morning we would find Picasso hanging behind his large canvas”.

After that, in concert with Georges Braque, he cooked up Cubism, a revolution in art and in the way we see the world; but he did not truly become Picasso until after the First World War, when he was pushing 40. Amazingly, he maintained that position for another 50 years. He always wanted to paint forever, and in a sense he did.

He died in 1973, at the age of 91, at the height of his fame. The catalogue of his painting runs to a monumental 23 volumes, more than half of them devoted to the work of the last 20 years of his life, a stupendous overproduction by the most productive artist in recorded history.

Death hardly interrupted his work.

The posthumous productivity shows no sign of abating. As the shock effect of his paintings wears off, more and more of them have been assimilated into popular culture; the great Picasso is growing greater with every passing year. Not only has he entered the Louvre, the palace of bliss for the souls of the dead, he has his own

museums. The very last paintings, sex-obsessed and genitally-fixated, once described as “incoherent doodles done by a frenetic dotard in the anteroom of death”, have undergone a spectacular revaluation. His last works come garlanded with praise, for their verve, their candour, their lust, and their rage. In the awesome power of his artistic personality, Pablo Picasso took on the 20th century.

That project involved more than painting. Picasso was finely attuned to self-presentation – his image was carefully cultivated.

Contrary to his boast, he never learned to swim. He mimicked the strokes whilst keeping his feet on the bottom. He was larger than life, but human, all too human. What he was, or what he could be, was for him a source of endless fascination.

He who invented so much did not invent artistic self-fashioning, but he is the supreme exemplar of artistic self-fashioning in modern times.

He longed to be fêted, presented and preserved, always on his own terms.

No one strikes a better attitude, on and off camera.

In the Cubist period, long before there were celebrity photographers around, he took the photographs himself. Here, too, he was ahead of the game. He turned his best tricks with crafty casting – Braque, his beloved rival and partner in crime, appears as a barman, handy with bottle and glass – but his favourite genre was the self-portrait.

The self-fashioning extended into every aspect of his life, even his politics, in particular his commitment to the French Communist Party (the PCF), which he joined in 1944 and never ventured to leave. It is hardly

DRAWING WITH LIGHT AT HIS HOME IN 1948

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GUERNICA, PAINTED IN 1937

an exaggeration to say that Picasso bankrolled the post-war PCF, and underwrote various causes associated with it. In 1949, for example, the Communist newspaper L’Humanité acknowledged his donation of one million francs for striking miners in the Pas de Calais. One might say that he lent himself and gave his money.

The Party basked in the reflected glory and pocketed the cash. His value as a figurehead was priceless, but his greatest contribution was financial.

And yet, a note of caution is in order. The donation to the striking miners was matched by a donation to Fernande Olivier, his former mistress, in return for an undertaking that she would publish no more kiss and tell memoirs in his lifetime. Fernande was destitute. She was bought off.

Picasso’s principles were not much troubled. And one million francs more or less was not about to break the bank. Picasso was fabulously rich, and the means of production were safe in his hands.

The suspicion remains that his politics were gesture politics and that they were not to be taken seriously

The suspicion remains that in the end his politics were gesture politics, and not to be taken seriously; that joining the Party smacked of a publicity stunt; that Communism itself was more or less meaningless to this heedless party member; that his saluting of Stalin was at best deluded; that this was at bottom a mercenary affair, whereby the world-renowned painter was exploited by the Party for his famous name, his fleet brush, and his financial donations – in short, that when it came to politics, Picasso was a useful idiot.

When it came to his art, however, he was extremely serious. For all his prodigality, economy of means

was important to him. “He sees fundamentally in black and white,” noted the photographer Alexander Liberman. “He is not a colourist in the conventional sense but has the extra vision of the sculptor-draughtsman.

His great periods are essentially monochromatic – the blue, the rose, the grey-brown of analytical Cubism.”

His famous portrait of Gertrude Stein is a study in brown. According to Stein, it took some 80 or 90 sittings, an implausible number for most painters and an incredible one for the quick-draw Picasso.

In tackling the portrait, Picasso had the greatest difficulty with the head.

After reworking it several times from different angles, one day he painted it out completely – “I can’t see you any longer when I look” – and abandoned the picture.

He completed it, without any further sittings, only after an interval of several months and a respite in the Pyrenees. It was not considered a good likeness. The artist was unmoved. “Everybody thinks she is

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not at all like her portrait,” he said, “but never mind, in the end she will manage to look just like it.” In the end, Gertrude Stein proved him right.

Picasso’s borrowing has been well-described as pushing on beyond the point at which some other man stopped. He could make a copy, if so inclined; a forgery, even. Picasso was the greatest art forger in history, but he soon tired of those tricks.

He wanted to make his mark on the world. Taking possession meant taking liberties. Imitation meant deformation. Given his rapacious ways and voracious gaze, it is best encapsulated as Picassification.

Las Meninas, the classic work

by Diego Velázquez,demanded to be Picassified for a number of reasons. The image itself is a startling mixture of illusionism and realism. The relationship it proposes between actor, painter and spectator is a puzzle. “Look at it,” Picasso commanded, “and try to find where each of these is actually situated.”

Beyond that, it took him back to Spain, his original stamping ground, and to the greatest master that country had ever produced. All of this had to be reckoned with.

There was another issue, equally disconcerting. By hallowed convention, Las Meninas is the classic studio painting. And yet, by 1957 a new series of studio paintings had emerged, unheralded, as if to extend the tradition. They were passing strange, but Picasso was intimately familiar with the signature: Braque.

The collector Douglas Cooper bought one of these Braques and hung it in pride of place over the bed.

Whenever Picasso came to visit, he would seek it out and scrutinise it and

mutter, “comprends pas, comprends pas.” This call and response had a history. In the Cubist period, Braque and Picasso were as close as two artists could hope to be – roped together, in Braque’s celebrated metaphor, like two mountaineers.

Until very recently, the history of that ascent has given precedence to Picasso. Precedence was important to him; and he made a lot of noise.

Under his breath, however, he let slip a different story.

There were always things that Braque could do that Picasso could not, and he knew it. He was jealous of Braque – jealous of the man and the work, the marches he had stolen and their claim on posterity: Fruit Dish And Glass, for example, the first papier collé or pasted paper, complete with mock wood wallpaper purchased in a shop in Avignon while Picasso was away in Paris. (“The bastard. He waited until my back was turned.”)

Late in life, history was repeating itself. Braque’s mysterious Studios, the refuge of all things and all notions, challenged Picasso to raise his game creatively. He responded with the first and best of the variations on Las Meninas, With Picasso, it was never one thing or the other. His meaning, like his motivation, was plural. His best remarks were well-rehearsed. “On 2 August, 1914 I took Braque and Derain to the station at Avignon. I never saw them again.”

On canvas and in conversation, it is unwise to take him too literally. He could never remember whether he had said “I don’t look, I find” or “I don’t find, I look” – “not that it makes much difference”. His vision was vagrant.

What he saw was polymorphous and

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unstable. “A green parrot is also a green salad and a green parrot. He who makes it only a parrot diminishes its reality. A painter who copies a tree blinds himself to the real tree. I see things otherwise. A palm tree can become a horse. Don Quixote can come into Las Meninas.”

For all the jealousy and the raillery, the relationship with Braque endured to the end. When Braque died, in 1963, the most moving farewell came from one who famously shunned the dead and the dying. In his “Homage to Georges Braque”, Picasso addressed him directly, beyond the grave.

No one lived more in the present than Picasso. But the present was crowded with the ghosts of the past.

Picasso was a man haunted by a multitude of memories.

One day he showed Françoise Gilot an etching: “You see this truculent character here, with the curly hair and the moustache? That’s Rembrandt. Or maybe it’s Balzac; I’m not sure. It’s a compromise, I suppose.

It doesn’t really matter. They’re only two of the people who haunt me.

Every human being is a whole colony, you know.”

Despite his mischief, Picasso was a deadly serious artist. Goaded by an interviewer in 1945 on the relationship between art and politics, he interrupted the interview to scribble a written declaration, so that he would not be misunderstood. The declaration was pure Picasso.

“Painting is not made to decorate apartments”, he concluded. “It is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”

At the time he was working on the most powerful political painting he ever made – The Charnel House

PICASSO LOOKS AT A PICTURE OF STALIN IN ROME IN 1949

(1945). Picasso himself testified that the work was affected by the revelations of the real-life charnel houses of the Holocaust, and in this instance there is no reason to doubt him. The pages of the newspaper L’Humanité were full of graphic accounts of the camps, complete with grim illustrations.

An article on the crematoria at one of them included the macabre detail that the executioners had tied the hands and feet of their victims, like the central motif of the painting, and the heaped corpses in the death zone that constitutes the lower part of the canvas are reminiscent of the first shock photos of the camps – and of Goya’s Disasters Of War – images at once unprintable and unforgettable.

The upper zone is less horrific, though no less eerie. Elements of a contemporaneous still life can be made out: Pitcher, Candle And Casserole (“you see, a casserole too can scream”), the candle, symbol of hope, obliterated. The Charnel House

is the offensive and defensive weapon deployed: indictment, tribute to sacrifice, howl of despair, and proof positive of art after Auschwitz.

Pablo Picasso lived and died a phenomenon. “What is a painter?” he asked, in his inimitable fashion.

“He is a collector who puts together a collection by painting the pictures he likes best.”

That collection, perhaps the most prodigious, certainly the most promiscuous in the history of art, was assembled by an artist-creator of extraordinary virtuosity: a paintersculptor-photographer without peer.

“Picasso doesn’t stint himself,” said Braque. “He speaks every language.

What talent! What vice!” As his rivals immediately recognised, “Picasso is the issue, Picasso is the one to beat.”

Picasso lives, although his legacy is not quite what it seems.

Alex Danchev’s latest book is 100 Artists’ Manifestos (Penguin Modern Classics).

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riving through the Al Quoz, it is hard to imagine this dust-swept district of warehouses, cement factories and labour accommodation to be anything other than a stereotypically soulless industrial area. When the wind picks up, sand swirls across the streets and visibility is reduced to a few metres; the unfinished, pot-holed roads shake with passing trucks.

Even on clear days, it is hard to be enthusiastic about this vast vicinity of apparent nothingness. And yet, listen to anybody involved with culture in the Emirates and they will tell you Al Quoz’s numbered streets are not the only similarity it shares with New York’s Greenwich Village.

The district is thriving, they say; offering up an grass roots arts scene to rival anywhere in the Middle East, which attracts discreet drop-ins

from collectors based as far afield as Belgium and Canada. While the UAE – and the Gulf – makes the headlines for its big name tie-ups (everyone from the Guggenheim to the Louvre seems to be making its way to Abu Dhabi), it is here, in this industrial sprawl, that Dubai first started gaining attention for its art scene.

Located just off Sheikh Zayed Road, this low-rise neighbourhood is often regarded as a blot on the blueprint of a blossoming tourist destination. It is, after all, sandwiched between two of Dubai’s most recognisable – and visible — landmarks: the Mall Of The Emirates and Burj Khalifa. However, with the right directions and a little perseverance, a journey through Al Quoz’s labyrinthine of streets can yield a bohemian underground unseen, and unspoilt, by the city’s burgeoning population.

Much like the majority of Dubai, the city’s art scene is relatively new.

The difference between Al Quoz and other neighbourhoods in the emirate, however, is that while areas such as Dubai Marina and Palm Jumeirah were planned megaprojects, Al Quoz evolved organically.

Antonia Carver, former editor of

Bidoun magazine and current director of Art Dubai, believes the scene in Dubai developed slowly. “There were film competitions, art events and groups of artists, such as the Group of 5, who have been working in the UAE since the 1970s. In the early 2000s. a group of UAE-based young people, mainly long-term residents who’d grown up here, began to transform their city by organising cultural events with both local and other Arab and Iranian artists.”

One of these returnees was Sunny Rahbar, an Iranian artist who grew up in the UAE but attended design school in New York. She returned to the Emirates at the turn of the

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century intent on illuminating the city’s art scene. In 2005, alongside Claudia Cellini and Omar Ghobash, she co-founded The Third Line: the trio settling, after much deliberation, on a large, empty warehouse in Al Quoz. And so it began.

“When we first thought about opening the gallery, there was no central area for the arts in Dubai,” says Rahbar. “We knew people would ask questions about Al Quoz, but it was out of a necessity more than anything else. We needed the largest wall spaces for the least amount of rent and, as we looked, it just seemed to make sense.”

The Third Line, a whitewashed twostoried gallery, focuses on showcasing contemporary art from the Middle East to the world. Artists with unfamiliar names, such as Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Hayv Kahraman, display their work on the gallery’s walls, treating visitors

to exhibitions with titles such as,

Kaleidoscope and Pins And Needles.

Now, six years on since the gallery’s opening, the arts scene has expanded exponentially and the “dirty industrial district” that Rahbar moved into has grown into a cultural hub. “The history of the area is short, but it first started when The Third Line moved in,” says Rami Farook, the Emirati founder and director of Traffic, a capacious warehouse-cumgallery that relocated to the area in November of last year. “ Al Quoz has really exploded in recent times thanks to the low rents, high ceilings and bigger spaces. Now there are about 20 galleries and there are more set to open in the months ahead. It just keeps growing.”

Traffic, like the majority of the recent artistic additions that are spread across the district’s few square-kilometres, carries only a small sign and minimal fuss. Farook

describes it as his gallery’s “reaction to the excess of advertising that is going on, not only in Dubai, but everywhere: the big billboards and the bright lights.”

Instead, positioned on the periphery of Al Quoz and flanked by a non-descript hangar and a factory providing ‘integrated plastics packaging’, Traffic can be identified by an external exhibition that involves a hulking, bulking heap of yellow hard hats assorted together into a chaotic tower.

“We like to be low-key and gentle, to communicate in a wise and civil, yet radical, manner,” explains Farook, surrounded in his gallery by books by Warhol, Liechtenstein and Saatchi.

Traffic’s towering hard-hat display renders the need for a signpost irrelevant, but other projects, including The Shelter and The JamJar, are attracting many of their visitors courtesy of ArtMap, a 75

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SECRET GALLERIES

guidebook to the UAE scene that in four years has evolved from a single foldout sheet to an 84-page magazine published every four months.

“As Al Quoz evolved and more galleries started opening, it was becoming a bit of a nightmare to find them all,” explains Ije Israel, a Nigerian who doubles up her role as advertising co-ordinator of ArtMap with that of studio co-ordinator at The JamJar. “That was basically why he first produced the magazine, and the reception it received was great.”

With detailed maps of specific areas, as well as a directory of every gallery and studio and exhibition centre in the country, ArtMap has made the city’s culture scene more accessible than ever before.

The last edition listed Al Quoz as home to 21 galleries, with two more scheduled to open later this year.

Music venues, incubator spaces and coffee shops have also started sprouting up.

“Al Quoz has become our own version of London’s Soho or East End,” says Rahbar. “They have both become independent destinations in their own right over the years; and that is what is happening here now.”

If visual proof was ever needed, Capital D Studio can provide it. Hidden up an alley, off an unmarked roundabout that sits at the end of an otherwise disused cul-de-sac, the reception is clean and cosy. But it hasn’t stopped somebody scribbling their name on a white lacquered table. “Paris Hilton xoxo” reads the signature; the socialite having popped in while visiting Dubai two years ago.

Yet there was a period when the future of the area’s arts scene

appeared as bleak as the nameless streets Ms Hilton navigated prior to her putting pen to paint.

In 2007, as Dubai’s real estate economy surged skywards and foreign investors arrived with chequebooks in hand, Al Quoz too experienced an influx of interested parties. Almost overnight, the old empty warehouses disappeared and in their place stood new galleries, new studios, new exhibition halls. The organic feel of the area was fading.

Then came the rumours. Culture Village, a new luxury development to be constructed next to Dubai Creek, was to focus on the arts and would force galleries to relocate. Al Quoz was going to degenerate back into a

Al Quoz has become our own version of Soho or the East End. It is becoming a destination in its own right

state of dereliction; either that or be razed in order to build new housing.

Owners waited anxiously for confirmation, but it never appeared.

Instead, something similarly fearsome showed up. “The recession didn’t stop us, but it definitely affected business,” says Rahbar.

“In some ways it was beneficial because it weeded out all the people who jumped on the bandwagon and opened up during the explosion simply because they heard of art selling for millions. They disappeared as quickly as they had shown up.”

What has survived is a pool of galleries that are thinking long-term

and, complemented by government initiatives such as Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennial, the landscape of Al Quoz once again looks viable and vibrant, figuratively speaking at least.

As Carver says, Dubai is doing for art what it has done for other areas of the economy for centuries. “It is acting as a meeting and trading point for South Asia, Iran, the Arab world and the east coast of Africa. If you look at the Gulf region as a whole, Dubai plays a vital role.

“It is a refuge for artists, the base of the commercial arts scene, home to more galleries than anywhere else in the region and it is the meeting point”.

It is a case then of art imitating life.

What Dubai does well in trade and industry, it does well in art. It just happens to be that the centre of this is not Dubai Creek’s wharfs or the financial centre, but a grimy industrial district.

Yet while the paper factories and electrical workshops that dot the sidewalk-free streets mean the area is sustainable, until the infrastructure improves, Al Quoz can only dream of becoming Dubai’s answer to Hoxton or Le Marais, says Farook.

“We are not exactly in London or Paris, and it is not a pedestrianfriendly city. If it was in London, you would walk around — here you can’t do that,” he concedes.

“But Al Quoz is not that big so, if we had more galleries and a path or cycle track, it could improve.” For now, anybody seeking Dubai’s arts scene will need to make do with a car, a map (see page 88) and a little bit of perseverance.

Scott Gybson is British author and journalist

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GUNS, GANGS AND GETAWAYS — ULRICH BOSER ON THE WORLD’S GREATEST UNSOLVED ART HEIST

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THE ART HEIST

I

t’s the early morning hours of March 18, 1990.

Dampness hangs in the air. A light rain fell earlier in the day. Most of the city of Boston is out celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day with drunken cheer.

Shortly after midnight, two crooks dressed as police officers approach the side entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The institution is one of New England’s most romantic locations, a building overflowing with masterpieces by Botticelli, Velazquez and Reubens.

The thieves tell the night guards that they are investigating a disturbance.

They are buzzed inside.

“This is a robbery,” one of the thieves says to the guards. “Don’t give us any problems, and you won’t get hurt.”

“Don’t worry,” one of the guards mutters, “they don’t pay me enough to get hurt.”

The thieves tie up the guards and loot the galleries for more than an hour, stealing a dozen artworks including one Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and five Degas. The theft is the largest art heist in history. It is the biggest burglary in American memory. Today, some experts estimate that the stolen paintings are worth as much as $500 million.

But it has been more than two decades since the heist occurred, and despite dozens of investigators, thousands of leads, and a $5 million reward, not a single artwork has been recovered, not a single person arrested. The case has become one of America’s most enduring mysteries — and the museum serves as a sort of reminder of the unsolved challenges of art theft, that even some of the

world’s most esteemed institutions could do more to deter greedy thieves.

The problem is a nationwide one. A few years ago an investigation found that the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC did not even have enough guards to respond to alarms.

Over the past few years, however, it appears that the Gardner case might finally be breaking open, and new evidence about the theft has made headlines across the United States. Or as Anthony Amore — the museum’s current director of security and lead investigator of the theft — says: “I have no doubt that the art will again be displayed.”

I first got involved in the Gardner case in late 2004, after writing a magazine article about art detective Harold Smith. One of the world’s most famous stolen art detectives, Smith had recovered lost Renoirs; he had exposed forged Da Vincis; he had even cracked the country’s largest gold robbery. Smith had also worked the Gardner heist for years, all while skin cancer ravaged his body. When I met him, he wore an eye patch and a prosthetic nose. Weeks after our meeting, Smith passed away. I decided to pick up where he left off and search for the lost art.

I soon realised that mystery is at the heart of the Gardner caper; mystery is what attracts people to the paintings themselves. Consider Vermeer’s

The Concert, one of the paintings stolen by the thieves. Born in Delft, Holland, only 36 works of Vermeer’s paintings remain, and at first glance, his subtle canvas features a man and two women playing music together.

But look at the painting again, really study it, and you can’t tell what the relationship is between the man and

two women. Are they just playing music together? Is there something sexual? The painting gives no definitive answer; there is no clear solution. For experts, that’s why the painting is so powerful. Art historians have long hailed Vermeer as “the Sphinx of Delft.”

But what surprised me the most was the size of the art underworld.

Over the past few decades, the theft of arts and antiquities has become one of the world’s most lucrative illegal activities, an estimated $6 billion black market. Organised crime is increasingly getting involved in the trafficking of stolen art. So are terrorist groups. Two years before flying a plane into the World Trade Center on 9/11, Mohamed Atta tried to hawk some looted artefacts apparently to help pay for his flying lessons.

Some thieves are obsessed with art. Some want to impress. Most want to make money

The motivations of art crooks are not always clear. Some steal because they’re obsessed with art. Others steal to impress their criminal friends. Most often, though, crooks steal for the money, and even in today’s sluggish economy, the art market continues to skyrocket. A Picasso canvas sold for more than $100 million in early 2010, the world record for any work of art ever sold at auction. To put that sum into context, for that very same amount of money, the buyer of the

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Picasso could have landed a mid-sized tech firm and had enough money left over to buy a five-bedroom beach house in the south of France.

While soaring prices attract greedy criminals, security remains an issue, and thieves will often find it easier to hold up an art institution than their local hair salon. With limited budgets even in the best of economic times, museums often skimp on protection services. And while the Gardner museum’s security was average for its time and place, one of the guards who worked at the institution later admitted to smoking marijuana on the job. He also lacked adequate training and misspelled the word ‘guard’ on his application.

Not enough museums, though, have learned from the Gardner’s experience, and in 2006, a man slipped into the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna by clambering up some scaffolding. The thief managed to nab a rare Cellini masterpiece worth more than $5 million, and while a motion detector went off, none of the three security guards bothered to check the room. The heist was discovered the following morning by a cleaning lady.

Museums like the Gardner also suffer from a security Catch-22.

Because if institutions make it easy to experience great art, they also make it easy for crooks to steal it, and when institutions don’t provide an intimate, nose-to-the-canvas environment, visitors complain.

After crooks pilfered Edvard Munch’s masterwork The Scream from a Norwegian museum, Oslo’s Munch Museum turned their institution into an art-world Fort Knox, with metal detectors and an X-ray machine. The

THE GARDNER ART MUSEUM, TWO OF THE MISSING WORKS AND THE LEGENDARY ART DETECTIVE HAROLD SMITH

press dubbed the building ‘Fortress Munch,’ while art-lovers grumbled, saying that they couldn’t appreciate the masterpieces because of the thick, protective glass.

For their part, though, collectors often think too much of thieves.

And while Hollywood films often depict art crooks as glamorous Pierce Brosnans and Cary Grants, they’re usually a far less artful crowd.

Museum crooks don’t rappel through skylights; they don’t wear turtlenecks.

Rather, they are usually low-level

thugs, ageing purse snatchers and out-of-work drug dealers. Art detective Harold Smith once tracked down a gang that hijacked copper sculptures from college campuses in order to sell as scrap metal.

Nor will the crooks ever be able to hawk the stolen Gardner artworks on the open market; no one really knows their underworld value.

When thieves steal a minor item — a small, terracotta statue or an Audrey Beardsley sketch — it can easily be slipped back into the legitimate trade.

But when crooks swipe a worldfamous Vermeer, they typically 85

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THE ART HEIST

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find themselves in a bind. While it might have been an effortless heist, the thieves can’t unload the artwork at an auction or sell it to a fence or even ease it into the blackest of black markets. The work is too well known, too recognisable.

Experts call it the curse of the stolen masterpiece, and it can stymie the most experienced criminals. A few years ago, a gang broke into a gallery in England and pocketed half a dozen prints by Van Gogh, Picasso, and Gauguin. The robbery was deftly executed. But some days later, the police landed a tip that the art was stashed behind a public toilet. While the criminals left a note claiming that they wanted to “highlight a breach in security,” they appeared to care little

he Year

for the prints. The artworks had been stuffed into a cardboard tube. Police now believe that the thieves simply ditched the items.

There are markets for stolen masterpieces, to be sure. Thieves might use a looted painting as collateral for a bank loan or a financial deposit and make some a small sum of money from the theft.

Professional art crooks might wait a few years and then attempt to ransom the looted painting back to the owner.

Museums will pay for a particularly valuable stolen work, usually about 10 per cent of its value. A middleman — a defense lawyer or underworld front man — will typically arrange the deal, delivering the paintings to an empty hotel room or airport lounge where

the works are “found” by police.

What’s clear, though, is that there’s one place that the stolen Van Goghs and Matisses don’t go, and that’s to a shadowy, art-hungry billionaire.

It’s a familiar trope. Somewhere in the Caribbean, in the basement of a columned mansion, a tuxedoed gentleman pulls back a set of velvet curtains and admires a stolen Monet.

He ordered a cat burglar to swipe the painting for him, and now, holding a snifter of brandy, staring at his illegal masterpiece, he says softly: “All mine. It’s all mine.”

But it’s a Hollywood myth, say police. And while art lovers will occasionally purchase items with dubious origins, law enforcement has never found any evidence of a 87

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THE ART HEIST

dedicated collector, a so-called Mr. Big or Dr No. Indeed, the thieves who robbed the Gardner museum knew so little about art that they sliced two of the Rembrandts out of their frames, potentially destroying them forever.

I ended up working the Gardner case for years. I evaluated countless leads. I spoke to countless people.

I hired private investigators to help me shadow suspects. I visited maximum-security prisons to talk with jailed mobsters.

I eventually helped to uncover new evidence that implicates Boston gangster David Turner. Hailed by local newspapers as “the Teflon gangster of the South Shore,” Turner might be one of the most infamous criminals ever to have come out of Boston. Detectives believe that he helped run a million dollar cocaine ring. Investigators believe that he was behind a half-dozen murders, and investigators believe that he robbed Boston’s Bull and Finch pub, which was the inspiration for the American TV show Cheers.

I discovered files from the FBI, that describe how Turner’s crime boss, Carmello Merlino, twice tried to return the paintings in exchange for a reduced prison sentence in a different crime. I also spoke to the last witness to see the thieves before they entered the museum. He described one of the thieves as having “Asian eyes,” and Turner fits that description.

When I confronted Turner with the evidence, he denied having any role in the theft, but then he began to sort of brag. He told me that I should put his face on the cover of my book.

The evidence against Turner and his underworld crew has continued to mount. In 2009, Richard Reissfelder,

a retired National Guard military policeman, came forward, saying that he recalled seeing one of the lost Gardner paintings in the apartment of his brother George. “When I see [the canvas] I have the same reaction every time. ‘I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the painting,’” Reissfelder told the Boston

Herald newspaper.

George Reissfelder had run with Turner’s underworld crew. He also looks remarkably similar to one of the sketches of the robbers made after the heist, and a confidential informant once told the FBI that George Reissfelder was one of the thieves who robbed the Gardner.

The museum’s director of security, Anthony Amore, helped to develop the Reissfelder lead by reaching out to the family. “I don’t know if Richard Reissfelder saw our Manet, but I do believe that he believed he saw our Manet,” Amore told me.

But George Reissfelder died of a drug overdose a year after the theft, and it seems clear that Turner doesn’t have access to the lost art.

the person who took control of the paintings died, or was killed.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Turner appears to have murdered many of those who participated in the robbery. A government informant once claimed that Lenny DiMuzio was involved in the heist. He was shot to death — his body found under a bridge in East Boston — and law enforcement believes Turner was the triggerman.

FBI files also indicate that Charlie Pappas may have been one of the thieves. He turned state’s evidence against Turner, and he was shot a few days before he was supposed to testify against Turner. Again police believe that Turner was behind that murder.

The evidence suggesting the involvement of Turner and his crew doesn’t close the case. Not at all. And really what matters is the return of the paintings, and investigators — from the museum’s Amore to federal law enforcement — continue to hunt for them. Indeed, there remains a $5 million reward for the missing art.

There remains a $5 million reward for the missing art, the largest ever offered by a private institution

He is in prison until 2032 for armed robbery, and he has never been charged with the museum theft.

But if I were to speculate — and this is definitely raw speculation — it would appear that the thieves most likely stashed the paintings in a safe house somewhere outside of Boston in an attic or behind a well, and

The museum’s reward is the largest ever offered by a private institution and is exceeded only by the $25 million that was on offer for Osama bin Laden.

And for many, it’s the reward that holds the most promise for the return of the Gardner’s art. “There’s very little that happens in this world that

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THE ART HEIST

some other party doesn’t know about,” Smith told me, “and I know everyone likes money.”

To be sure, when thieves steal paintings, they rarely come back.

Some estimates of recovery rates are as low as five per cent. But the rates for well-known paintings like the masterpieces nabbed from the Gardner tend to be higher because the works are nearly impossible to sell on the open market. Plus, it often takes years, decades, even centuries, for top-flight works to be returned. In the 1860s, Union Army soldiers stole North Carolina’s Bill of Rights out of the State Capitol, and the artefact remained missing for 140 years. Then, in 2003, two antiques dealers tried to peddle the work for $4 million — and the FBI picked it up in a sting.

To battle the illicit art trade, the FBI created a national art theft team a few years ago. The squad depends on a network of art world insiders, and when a curator at the Army Center of Military History in Washington DC recently reached out with information that a Kansas dealer was hawking a very rare Civil War flag, the FBI team immediately set up a sting. The dealer wanted a paltry $20,000 — and the agents were able to recover the work.

Still, law enforcement could do more to recover fine art. While art theft has become big business for criminals, it is still not a top priority for many local police agencies, and the lack of investigative interest makes for unexpected recoveries.

Stolen paintings will be discovered behind a dishwasher as part of raid, or an oblivious crook will bring a looted canvas to Sotheby’s.

(Most auction houses use stolen art

POLICE SKETCH OF DAVID TURNER

databases to ensure that they do not sell looted artefacts.)

This makes the continued efforts by both the Gardner and law enforcement to return the missing paintings all the more impressive.

In 2010, the FBI posted billboards of images of Rembrandt’s The Storm On

The Sea Of Galilee along highways outside of Boston along with a tollfree number soliciting leads, and when the new head of the Boston FBI office, Richard DesLauriers, recently announced his top investigative priorities, he listed the return of the Gardner paintings among them.

Whatever happens, the Gardner caper will not soon be forgotten.

There are the lost paintings, for one, exquisite works of art whose loss continues to be mourned. Or as art detective Smith told me: “When art is stolen, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are deprived of seeing it. Art theft isn’t just a crime against the owner. It’s a crime against the American people.”

Missing, among the works, is Rembrandt’s The Storm On The

Sea Of Galilee. The painting is the only seascape ever created by the Dutch master. It presents a dramatic interpretation of a famous biblical tale — Jesus and his apostles fighting a savage thunderstorm, their small, unsteady boat summiting a massive breaker. An early Rembrandt, the work shows all of the artist’s unbound audacity, and he slipped a small self-portrait into the canvas, painting himself as one of the disciples, looking straight out at the viewer.

‘Look at me’, he seems to say, ‘Can you see what I can do?’ When Isabella Stewart Gardner first received the painting, she wrote a letter to her famed art dealer, Bernard Berenson, saying: “I am now as a tramp who has the Sun all to himself.”

As for the Gardner museum, security is much improved. The museum has also broken ground on an expansion that should be completed in late 2011.

But much stays the same, and Gardner stipulated in her will that nothing in the museum’s galleries should be changed; today the empty frames still hang on the walls from the night of the robbery.

While the frames look sad, lifeless and tragic, art lovers everywhere remain optimistic that the museum’s lost Vermeer and Rembrandts will soon be returned.

“I live in hope. I dwell in possibility, as Emily Dickinson says,” Anne Hawley, the museum’s director, told me. “I just have to believe that the stolen paintings are still out there.”

Ulrich Boser is the author of The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft.

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THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION THE PROFITS AND PITFALLS OF THE GLOBAL ART MARKET

BY DANIEL GRANT

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THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION

T

he Asian art and antiques sales at Eldred’s Auction Gallery in East Dennis, Massachusetts have gone well, with occasional exceptions.

One-third of the buyers are from China and some of them had not read the contract when they registered to bid, or perhaps they didn’t understand what they were read, but as soon as they win the objects they began to haggle with Eldred staff over the price and the auction house commission.

“You never see that in the US,” said Josh Eldred, president of the auction house. American and European buyers know the rules: You pay the price you bid, plus the auctioneer’s stated premium. Foreign buyers need to have the process explained to them gently, so that they follow through on their purchases. Push them too hard, and they will just walk away, without much recourse on the part of the auctioneer. Everybody’s learning something, and for Eldred the lesson is that “there are cultural differences in how you buy things.”

These differences are also part of what is involved in developing a global art market, bringing new buyers from all over the world, whose wealth has helped to buoy galleries and auction houses in New York and Europe.

“We are adding new clients all the time from the emerging markets,” said Heather Barnhart, Christie’s US regional director. Along with their money occasionally comes some parochial ideas of how transactions take place, such as saying you will buy something and then walking away, or refusing to pay, or assuming that an auction represents the beginning of a period of negotiation.

Aileen Agopian, director of contemporary art sales at Phillips de Pury, noted that despite rules published in each sale catalogue that payment must occur within 30 days of the conclusion of an auction, she has seen winning bidders from the developing world “ask for payment terms, stretching out over weeks or months at times.”

The auction house, which was bought two years ago by the Moscowbased Mercury Group, doesn’t like making exceptions, “and we certainly wouldn’t want to do it a lot,” but accommodating this crop of new buyers has forced it and others in the art trade to become more “flexible”.

One hears that word often these days. However, new wealth in China, India, Latin America, the Middle East and Russia has brought about new players in the art market now and new prospects for the market in the future.

“We were affected like everyone else in 2008 by the recession,” said Adam Sheffer, one of the owners of New York’s Cheim & Read contemporary art gallery, but a drop-off in sales from past buyers was more than offset by “an enormous surge of business in the Middle East. There has been an enormous increase.” He, and others at the gallery, have met Middle Easterners at various art fairs around the world, and “we have travelled to homes in the Middle East” to meet individually with prospective collectors “who have an interest in the artists we represent.”

That’s the good news. However, he noted, “one out of every three ‘sales’ we make doesn’t take place,” because a collector may agree to purchase a specific work but never send the money to pay for it. “After several

months of waiting, we just put the work back on the market. You can’t hold a grudge or say ‘I’m never going to deal with that person again.’ People in the Middle East like to complete conversations and not leave things hanging for another time. They will say, ‘Yes, I want to buy this painting,’ even if they don’t intend to actually buy it, because they think this is the way to be polite. What we’ve

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learned is that you can’t do business in another culture the way you do it here.” Certainly, he added, “in a down market, you don’t turn down business.”

In an ideal world, the payment should be straightforward. The dealer and the buyer may negotiate a system of payments over time, perhaps lasting as long as several months, after which the artwork is shipped to the purchaser. The reason for the delay is

often that the buyer needs to monetise assets, which may include selling one or more works of art, in order to produce the cash to pay for the piece.

Not every dealer and auction house takes these cultural differences in their stride. David Nash, partner in New York’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash, stated that the gallery’s buyers are “100 per cent Americans and Western Europeans. We have had

inquiries from Russian collectors, but they’re not very straightforward.

They say they’ll buy something and then not pay for it.”

Auction houses maintain black lists of buyers who fail to pay, and they provide information on those people to other auctioneers who make inquiries. Still, in a world where new wealth sometimes creates instant art collectors, auction houses reliant 95

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on Google and recalcitrant foreign banks are forced to be flexible and to take much on faith. That appears to be the mantra of those operating in the global art market. “You have to give people the benefit of the doubt,” Eldred said, although “I am more comfortable with domestic buyers than with overseas buyers.”

The global market for art is for the work of artists around the globe. “Chinese art is very desirable and, basically, the whole world is now catching up,” said Ludovic Bois, director of Beijing’s Chinese Contemporary gallery, which also has branches in London and New York. Certainly, the Asian world is catching up, because the vast majority of buyers at private galleries and in public sales are Asian.

“There’s never been such a wave of Chinese and Asian money being thrown at the art market,” he noted.

The lure of selling to the world’s fastest growing economy also brought London-based Bonhams auction house to hold its first ever auction in Hong Kong in 2009, where its sale of traditional and contemporary Chinese paintings, as well as Chinese ceramics, jade carvings, lacquers and bronzes, brought over $5 million, the highest total Bonhams has ever achieved for an inaugural sale.

“Buyers have shown wide-ranging interest in many areas of Asian art, although it has been perfectly obvious that the most excitement is in Chinese art,” said Colin Sheaf, chairman of Bonhams’ Asia department.

Bois characterised half of his gallery’s Asian buyers as “speculators, there to make money,” and has seen the same artworks sold at a Chinese auction house on the market again

in a public sale in the West at some multiple of the original price. Quick resales were noted by a number of gallery owners and auctioneers.

Ingrid Dudek, associate specialist in Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department, stated that “flipping happens quite a lot,” and Zhang Xioaming noted that consignors to Sotheby’s “are sophisticated enough to hold onto work for a couple of years and then place them at auction.”

Michael Goedhuis, owner of Goedhuis Contemporary, a Chinese art dealership with galleries in New York City and London, stated that he doesn’t “know the ultimate objectives” of his Asian buyers, who constitute a third of his sales, but he has found some of his Western collectors also flipping works at Chinese auctions.

contemporary market are sound and prices will continue to advance.

“The prices of Chinese contemporary artists are between one-third and onehalf the prices of their counterparts in the West, and those differences will diminish,” he said. Prices are likely to triple or quadruple, he added, because the number of Asian, and particularly Chinese, buyers will increase substantially, placing pressure on prices. “Dealers such as myself are finding it much more difficult to obtain the stock we can afford.” Additionally, a “few top Western museums” — New York’s Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art, as well as London’s Tate Gallery — “have declared an interest in collecting contemporary Chinese art,” which will bring even more prominence to this realm.

Prices of Chinese contemporary art is likely to triple in the next few years as the number of Asian and particularly Chinese buyers increases

“Auction prices in China tend to be higher than in the West,” he said.

Goedhuis expressed some concern about the connoisseurship of some buyers, noting that some of the most notable artists — he singled out Zhang Xiaogang — are “past their prime” and “reproducing less good quality versions now” of the images that initially brought them acclaim.

He also was concerned that Chinese auction houses, instead of handling works on the contemporary market, are the sites of first sales of some of these artists. However, he claimed, the fundamentals of the Chinese

The “globalisation” of the art market has produced a large supply of new work by artists in China, India, Africa, South America and the Middle East. In many cases, the number of new artists has far outstripped the volume of new collectors in these countries, creating the opportunity for reasonable prices until the collectors catch up.

In the Middle East, the key player is Iran, one of the most populous countries in the region and the one that produces by far the largest number of artists. Iranian artists, both living in Iran and in other countries, create artworks that 97

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refl and and incr stag worl Iran may Fa retir art c pain and note mes nega polit mes you prom Pe

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THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION

reflect many of the same interests and concerns of artists in the West and elsewhere and Iran is competing increasingly for attention on the world stage. For many collectors around the world, some of whom view all things Iranian with suspicion, these artists may be promoting their nation.

Farbod Dowlatshahi, an Iranian retired oil refinery builder and art collector (1,891 and counting paintings, sculptures, installations and videos) currently living in Dubai, noted that “for 30 years, the only message that came out of Iran was negative. Because of the current political situation, the only positive message coming out of Iran is the young people. The younger artists are promoting a very positive future.”

Perhaps nothing, however, has

demonstrated the desirability of Iranian and other Middle Eastern contemporary art more than the auctions that have taken place in Dubai and Qatar. Christie’s was the first international auction house on the scene, holding its first sale in Dubai in 2006, followed by Sotheby’s (in Doha, Qatar) and Phillips de Pury (in London) in 2009, and these have become twice-annual events.

“This is the wealthiest area in the world,” said Lina Lazaar, a contemporary art specialist at Sotheby’s who arranges the auction house’s sales. “When the collecting spirit and habit has matured, you can expect prices to jump.”

And there lies the opportunity for buyers right now. Ordinarily, one wouldn’t want to get into a bidding

war with people of unimaginable wealth, but many of the richest people in the Middle East are not yet collectors of the contemporary artists in their midst. “Traditionally, Iranians have bought carpets as investment,” said Mamak Nourbakhsh, owner of Tehran’s Gallery Mamak.

“Today we see many rich Iranians buying artwork, and in rather large numbers. Indeed, this has already led to higher prices for the works of many artists and has affected the art market here in general.”

For the past three years, London’s Waterhouse & Dodd Gallery has arranged an annual survey of contemporary Middle Eastern art in its gallery, as well as created minishows in its booths at art fairs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, in order to spur

A MURAL BY IRANIAN ARTIST SHIRANA SHAHBAZI AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

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THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION

greater interest in collecting this art.

At present, owner Ray Waterhouse claims, the greatest potential for growth in buying “is still in the Middle East. We have sold many photographs and oils up to a value of $100,000 in the West, but above that price the collectors tend to be Middle Eastern buyers in the Middle East or living in the West.” Becoming a patron of the arts has developed considerable cachet among the rich in this part of the world, for it is “the desire of locals to collect and to be seen collecting.” He has given talks in Kuwait, and the UAE on how to build a collection, and one of those talks was to the crown princess of Abu Dhabi.

Lazaar noted that Middle Eastern collectors have looked to Western institutions, such as the auction houses, and collectors to signal which of their artists are of greatest value and importance.

“Because no institutions did this type of job until a few years ago, we’re doing a lot of the curating job that a museum would do.” She added that Iranian and other Middle Eastern art galleries have used the auction houses’ catalogues as a way to educate their buyers, because of the critical essays in them. In the UK,

SOTHEBY’S IS EXPANDING INTO NEW MARKETS

brought energy and money into the galleries and auction houses and a little uncertainty. Who are these new buyers? Where did they get their money, and are they on the level?

Since much of the action at the major auction houses is actually taking place not on the sales floor but among staff members holding telephones, signaling to the auctioneer a bid on the line from a would-be buyer far away, auctioneers have had to do more to know who the bidders are. Money laundering has become a concern.

“This is our Know Your Client programme,” said Jane Levine, worldwide director of compliance at Sotheby’s. Her job, and that of the team of lawyers working for her in

Because no institutions did this type of job in the Middle East until a few years ago, we are doing a lot of the curating that a museum would do

the University of London also made a purchase of 200 catalogues from one art sale for one of its art courses.

The new globalised art market has

the US and elsewhere, is to ensure that both consignors and buyers are reputable and that the auction house is not used to launder money. The

problems are not new, but heightened security in the wake of 9/11 have led to government-mandated greater vigilance on the part of corporations, even when the business is the buying and selling of art. “We want to know who the client is, and we want to verify the identification with various forms of ID. If there is going to be telephone bidding, we want to know in advance who’s on the phone. Every call is recorded, and we also make the call; we don’t accept calls.”

She said that Sotheby’s would not accept money from an unknown numbered bank account, nor authorise to a bank account not in the consignor’s name. Christie’s publishes a “Notice to Bidders” informing those for whom this is their “first time bidding at Christie’s” of the various pieces of identification required, and asking for “48 hours in advance of a sale to allow sufficient time to process the information.”

“Trusts and offshore companies, are advised to show the auction house tax documents, a certificate of incorporation and proof of address.

Perhaps the largest challenges have come from buyers and sellers in the developing world, such as China, India and Russia, where there are “different ethical standards and different levels of government enforcement, presenting us with a culture clash.” Levine added that turning away would-be consignors and buyers is rare, but “we tell people that we’re not comfortable doing business with you if you’re not willing to do it our way.”

Daniel Grant is a writer based in the US, who writes about art for The Wall Street Journal

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ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE MARTINEZ GALLERY

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THE RISE OF NEW YORK’S MOST UNLIKELY ART FORM

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE MARTINEZ GALLERY

BY DIMITRI & GREGOR EHRLICH

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raffiti today is such an accepted part of youth culture that it’s hard to imagine what New Yorkers experienced in the early seventies, as they watched their city become steadily tattooed with hieroglyphics.

Some saw it as vandalism and a symbol of urban decay. But for the writers who risked arrest, and the teenagers, film-makers, and, eventually, curators who admired them, graffiti was an art form.

Galleries caught up to this view in the early eighties, when graffiti was briefly part of the era’s art boom.

Modern graffiti began in Philadelphia in the early sixties, when Cornbread and Cool Earl scrawled their names all over the city.

By the late sixties, it was flourishing in Washington Heights, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. The New York Times took

notice in July 1971, with a small profile of a graffiti artist named TAKI 183.

By the mid-seventies, many subway cars were so completely covered in paintings that it was impossible to see out the window.

For writers, this was a golden age, when the most prolific could become known as “kings” by going “all-city” — writing their names in all five boroughs. Mayor Lindsay declared the first war on graffiti in 1972, beginning a long, slow battle that seemed to culminate in May 1989, when the last graffitied train was finally removed from service.

Yet today, graffiti etched with acid can be seen on subway windows, and it’s alive and well on buildings around the city. And thanks in part to the internet, it is a worldwide phenomenon in every language.

What follows is the story of the people who invented graffiti, and those who watched them do it. Names of writers are rendered in the style in which they appeared on the city’s walls and subways (all caps usually indicates an artist from the seventies).

1969 THE BEGINNING IVOR L MILLER, AUTHOR OF AEROSOL KINGDOM: SUBWAY PAINTERS OF NEW YORK CITY Humans have been writing symbols on walls since time immemorial.

But it’s safe to place the origins of a New York style in the late sixties, as a younger generation’s artistic response to the public protests of the Black Power and civil-rights movements.

Clearly something new happened with the invention of the spray can, the influence of psychedelic posters, and colour TV. The Manhattanville projects just north of 125th Street in West Harlem were the residence of an important writer named TOPCAT 126.

SHARP TOPCAT 126 came from Philadelphia in the late sixties, maybe ’68, and he started tagging the streets. [Tagging is writing your name] And he hooked up with Julio 204 and TAKI 183, and they grabbed the torch.

C.A.T. �� In the late sixties, I saw the name TAKI 183 in little letters everywhere, and JOE 182 and Julio 204. One day I was playing stickball on 182nd Street and JOE 182 came out. He was one of the hottest graffiti writers then. He said, “Look what came out in the papers!”

There was a cartoon of a guy catching someone writing graffiti, and saying,

“Are you JOE 182?” And the writer said, “No, I’m his ghost.” Because nobody could catch them. They were just like these mysterious figures.

MICO It began in different neighbourhoods.

But we all had one thing in common: We wanted to be famous. I started writing in East Flatbush in 1970. Then slowly I met people from the four other boroughs. Everybody went to the writers’ bench at 149th Street and Grand Concourse in the Bronx. In Washington Heights, it was on 188th Street and Audubon Avenue. We would hang out, see our work, and everyone could get autographs

TRACY ��� I grew up in the Bronx. Me and my friend FJC4 were in Queens and we just took a marker out. We never thought we’d see the tag again, but on the way back, we caught the same train and it already had some other writing next to it. It was like a communication. At the time, New York was all dark. We had the Vietnam vets coming back, all pumped up. We had the war protesters.

And we had the street gangs.

gang the and wou and you sepa in be Even off, as th

C.A.T. �� I was in the Savage Nomads. You had the Saints at 137th Street and Broadway, and in the 170s you had the Young Galaxies. But if I was C.A.T. 87 and the guys from other neighborhoods saw my name, instead of trying to beat me up they would ask for autographs.

JEFF CHANG, AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF THE HIP HOP GENERATION There were graffiti writers in many

MIC

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HU OF U

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FROM LEFT: CASE2,. MIDDLE TOP: MICO, MIDDLE BOTTOM: TRACY 168, FAR RIGHT: THE UNITED GRAFFITI ARTISTS IN 1973 [FROM LEFT, FIRST ROW: COCO 144 AND HUGO MARTINEZ; SECOND ROW: RICAN 619, LEE 163, AND NOVA 1; THIRD ROW: RICK 2, RAY-B 954, CANO 1, SJK 171, SNAKE 1, AND STAY-HIGH 149; FOURTH ROW (STANDING): STITCH I, PHASE 2, CHARMIN 65, BUG 170]

gangs, especially the larger ones like the Black Spades, the Savage Skulls, and the Ghetto Brothers. The writers would mark the gangs’ clubhouses and often their turf. At the same time, you had graffiti crews that moved separately from the gangs and could slip in between their territorial restrictions.

Eventually, as the gang structures died off, the graffiti writers could be seen as the heralds of a new era.

MICO

In 1971, when CAY 161 and JUNIOR 161 painted the 116th Street station, they painted a top-to-bottom wall there.

That’s considered a milestone. And Norman Mailer wrote about it in The Faith of Graffiti — that was the first book ever about graffiti.

CAY ��� The biggest and most dangerous place was where your piece was recognised the most. I wrote my name with white spray paint on the wing of the angel in Bethesda Fountain and a lot of people said, “Wow, how did he get up there and do that?” I grabbed one of the wings and climbed up.

We didn’t call it graffiti in the early seventies. We would say, “Let’s go writing tonight.” Graffiti is a term that The New York Times coined, and it denigrates the art because it was invented by youth of colour. Had it been invented by the children of the rich or the influential, it would have been branded avant-garde Pop Art.

RICHARD GOLDSTEIN, AUTHOR OF THE GRAFFITI HIT PARADE FEATURE FOR NEW YORK MAGAZINE IN MARCH 1973

HUGO MARTINEZ, FOUNDER OF UNITED GRAFFITI ARTISTS

I loved the idea that graffiti defaced surfaces and re-created them in a different image. It was immensely

creative in the way it re-created decrepit space, derelict buildings, and crumbling subways into real centres of energy. I found Hugo Martinez, who was a student at that time, and he introduced me to these kids.

1971 ST YLE WARS JEFF CHANG Your name is your brand, and writing your name is like printing money.

Quality (aesthetic style) and quantity (the number of trains and walls you’ve hit) are the primary ways that the brand gains market share. If you’re the biggest name on a line or in an area, then you’re the king. After The New York Times wrote about TAKI 183 in 1971, there was more competition, which means styles changed quicker.

LEE It was a reflection of the great side of capitalism, where everyone wants 105

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AMERICAN GRAFFITI

to have the biggest stock or bond portfolio, or the fastest or most expensive car.

I had no competition there. One of the most important moments in my career was when I was voted into United Graffiti Artists.

MICO In 1971, I was in the Sheepshead Bay layups one night — that’s the tunnel where trains rest in between rush hours. And we found the names of PAN 144, COCO 144 and ACE 137 on some of the cars. The paint was still wet. That opened our eyes to going all-city.

COCO ��� I lived close to the IRT, and there was a layup between 137th and 145th Street between the stops. We were there every Saturday and Sunday morning, destroying the trains inside and out.

My style back then was what we called a hit: just a signature, a single line.

MICO “Hitting” was just about getting up, getting around. The more hits you had, the more famous you became.

“Killing” or “bombing” was a little more intense. It means carpeting an area — just hit hundreds of MICO, MICO, MICO, and kill that subway car. Or you could do a masterpiece, a really big piece that was generally planned out in a sketch.

HUGO MARTINEZ I started United Graffiti Artists in 1972 as a collective that provided an alternative to the art world. I saw this as the beginning of American painting — everything else before this came from Europe. These kids were rechanneling all of those hippie ideas about freedom, peace and love by redefining the purpose of art.

They represented a celebration of the rights of the salt of the earth over private property.

MICO It was the top writers from the different boroughs. You had to be

nominated by a member, and if you were good enough, you would be called in for an interview. I had my first art-gallery show in SoHo in 1973, at the Razor Gallery. The first canvas that was purchased by a collector was my Puerto Rico flag canvas, for $400.

It was an effort to bring the art form from the tunnels into the galleries.

graffi polit its e subw New poin figh

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1972 THE CRACKDOWN

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LEE Most writers were more concerned about going out into the elements, not being put together on gallery walls. Young people were interested in making a mark, literally, in their territory. It was seen as heroic.

RIFF 170 IN 1975

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I got buse got t I hid jum und cam got h all f

COCO ��� I was the first to use a stencil. It said COCO 144 with a crown on it. I was trying to develop speed, and I was able to work faster that way.

MICO

19

The letters got more refined and larger and larger. We were each trying to outdo the other. I was doing socialpolitical work, and unfortunately,

DA

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graffiti in 1972, it became the focus of political campaigns, and in this sense, its effects lasted much longer than the subway-graffiti era. Since then, every New York City mayor has at some point reaffirmed his commitment to fighting “the war.”

LEE

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It wasn’t so much that the city did a single crackdown. It came in increments. At one point, Richard Ravitch, the MTA chairman, was in talks with a group of graffiti artists.

The offer was that if these guys were given the green light to decorate, could they get the 30,000 other kids to stop?

Of course, it went south. But they had a bargaining table and everything.

MICO

on

75

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Especially in the beginning, it was a guerrilla war. We had strategic maps of the subway system, of which yard or layup was hot or cooled off.

We gathered intelligence info at the writers’ bench. And if you got chased out at Coney Island that morning, you came to the bench and told everyone it was hot.

basic piece, to lettering, to stylized lettering, to cartoon characters, to doing whole subway cars.

IVOR L MILLER The movement really grew and blossomed on the trains, since it interacted with the city’s population, not just other writers. Writing is meant to be an “art in motion.” The form was developed with movement and the space of the train car in mind.

BLADE When Lindsay was mayor, each train you painted would actually run for years. It was beautiful. It was like thousands of rolling billboards. Beame painted all the subway trains brandnew in 1975, and then everyone did everything big, with paint rollers. In the mid-seventies, you couldn’t see out the windows anymore.

JEFF CHANG The MTA’s attempts to whitewash the trains only further intensified the process of stylistic change, because there were many more potential targets, and they are all clean canvases.

C.A.T. �� I got caught with a friend hitting the buses on 125th Street. As soon as we got there, guards came with weapons.

I hid under the bus and my friend jumped into the Hudson. I crawled under the buses to 133rd Street and came out covered in mud and ice. I got home, and my friend showed up all frozen. He swam downtown.

ADAM MANSBACH, AUTHOR OF ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY

1973 ALL- CIT Y KINGS

If you watch Death Wish, the Charles Bronson movie from 1974, he lives in a graffiti-saturated world, and it pushes him to the tipping point. Middle-class commuters from Jersey or Long Island got increasingly alienated, because not only is there a conversation going on that they are not a part of, they can’t even read what is being written.

DAZE

TRACY ���

It elaborated from a signature, to a

I started wild style. Wild means

untamed, and style means I have class. So I was like an animal but with respect. And they used that word for the hip hop movie. They thought it was a saying that was all over the street, but it was just the way we lived.

LEE When wild style came around in the mid-seventies, it was sculpture in motion. They broke down the alphabet and turned it into a three-dimensional thing. I thought it was riveting, but I wanted people to understand and not be confused. On a moving train, the art is coming at you, so it shouldn’t be antagonising, it should be tantalising. It should open up your pores and seep in.

TRACY ��� You can see my name on the door of the train if you watch the opening of Welcome Back, Kotter. I wrote GOD BLESS AMERICA for the bicentennial. I did three pieces in red, white, and blue, and it was so beautiful that the MTA immediately painted over it. They couldn’t let anyone know that we loved America.

1977 STREET STARS LEE The electricity blackout was the tipping point. It was a stepping-stone to graffiti becoming a worldwide phenomenon. That was a chapter that ended when people said to themselves they can jump right in and develop themselves as artists in a new context.

TRACY ��� We changed the whole world in ’77. After the blackout, they started using roll-down gates on stores because all the windows were busted 107

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from the looting. When the gates came down, they looked dark and weird, so we painted them to make them look beautiful.

CHARLIE AHEARN The strongest memory I have is 1978, coming across all these handball courts north of the Brooklyn Bridge by Lee Quiñones [a.k.a. LEE]. They were exploding with colour. They had a lot of control. They had a great deal of comic sensibility. I would ask the kids, “Who made these?” And they would look at me incredulously, like, “LEE is the most famous artist in the world!”

GLENN O’BRIEN, ART CRITIC There was a great moment around 1978 when all of these stars were emerging — LEE, Futura 2000, SAMO and Keith [Haring], Lady Pink and Zephyr — and you would go out and see stuff that was unique.

CHARLIE AHEARN

BLADE I wanted to make sure you could see a train from five blocks away and you could read it. COMET 1 and myself invented the blockbuster in 1980: very large, square words, but very legible.

We painted over 5,000 trains each, over the span of those years.

1980 HIP HOP

that said fab 5. Right in the middle of Times Square.

FAB � FREDDY, HIP HOP IMPRESARIO

JEF

You have to remember that in those days your prowess — being stealthy, sneaking into the train yards, breaking the law in a crazily insane manner, not getting busted — was a big part of the energy. I helped explain to people that graffiti was part of hip hop. It was always something I saw as one cultural movement.

COCO ��� I was listening to jazz, Latin jazz, and rock. This was before hip hop was created. Anybody that does their homework knows graffiti came first.

CHARLIE AHEARN In the summer of 1980, I was making an art show in an abandoned massage parlour in Times Square.

Fab 5 Freddy started talking to me about making a movie about graffiti and rap music. So I got Fab and Lee to do a piece on the front of the building

The Fred such

GLENN O’BRIEN It’s like, what’s the connection between jazz and Abstract Expressionism? They weren’t the same people doing hip hop and graffiti, but there was a cultural, mental, and spiritual connection.

Ther espe writ graffi hop mov War And whe fash even shap

RIC

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19

MIC

PHOTO: HENRY CHALFANT

By the summer of 1980, competition had reached a fever pitch. You’d see

a whole car by Futura, a whole car by SEEN, a whole car by LEE, a whole car

by MITCH — they were just popping up on a daily basis. These were massive pieces. You could watch a train emerging aboveground, and you might see three or four fresh whole cars done in the past couple of days.

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The only one who did both was Fab 5 Freddy, and that’s because he was in such a hurry to become famous.

JEFF CHANG There is still a raging debate, especially amongst older graffiti writers, as to whether hip hop and graffiti are linked. But once hip hop was presented with graffiti in movies such as Wild Style and Style Wars, history took a different turn.

And clearly, the art of hip hop now— whether we’re talking graphic design, fashion, painting, conceptual art, and even sculpture — has thoroughly been shaped by the language of graffiti.

A lot of people became discouraged from writing on the subways because some of these toys started destroying our work. I was wasting my energy. So I decided to start putting my work on canvas to be able to preserve it.

LEE The crackdown couldn’t have come at a better time. Things had reached the peak of achievement artistically.

The fine art world was embracing it.

We had front-row seats to a lucrative atmosphere that opened doors.

PATTI ASTOR, OWNER OF FUN GALLERY

1981 BUT IS IT ART? MICO

CRASH

RICHARD GOLDSTEIN The reason graffiti didn’t cash in the way rap music did is that it was illegal, and it didn’t have the misogyny and violence that so appeal to white teenagers.

I was painting on rooftops. So the first time I got to a gallery where I could control elements like wind and rain, it gave me the opportunity to do more than just my name.

SHARP

I met Fab 5 Freddy at a party downtown.

And through him, this whole world got opened up to me. I showed Jean-Michel, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, LEE, Zephyr, Dondi, Fab 5 Freddy, Revolt, A-1, Rammel-zee, Iz Da Wiz, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, Crash, Daze, and lots of others. Some said that by going into the galleries, it would lose its purity.

PHOTO: HENRY CHALFANT

e of

In 1981, you had a show called Beyond Words at the Mudd Club with Lee and Fab 5 Freddy. That was really the beginning of cross-pollination between downtown and uptown.

FAB � FREDDY The word artist was rarely used at that time, until I began to have shows.

Keith Haring would tell you he was not a graffiti artist, but he was inspired by it. He was very conscious of the racial dynamics of fitting in with the black and Puerto Rican kids. And he did it.

DAZE Keith and Jean-Michel were never true subway artists. People had an easier time digesting what they did because they could refer back to art history. Whereas with our work, it

A WHOLE CAR BY CASE 2 FROM 1979

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was like learning a new language, and most people didn’t want to.

RICHARD GOLDSTEIN There was this period when major art dealers were after all the graffiti artists. I told the artists not to trust the galleries because they would give them 15 minutes of attention and then dump them as soon as they got bored.

Which is actually what happened.

LADY PINK The art world people are sharks like anyone else, so it kind of prepares us, being underground, to deal with the art world aboveground. At least with a guy in the tunnel, you know what his intentions are.

1989 THE END DAN OLLEN, A FORMER NY C PROSECUTOR WHO HANDLED HUNDREDS OF GRAFFITI CASES Graffiti got way out of hand in the eighties and early nineties. Some time in the early nineties, I began to notice a change. Although I am sure the drafters of the Anti-Vandalism Act would like to take credit for this change, I don’t believe the enactment of two misdemeanor crimes had much to do with the abatement of graffiti.

I believe the public got fed up with young men and women damaging property that did not belong to them.

20 06

HUGO MARTINEZ Graffiti is much more prevalent than it was in the early seventies. It’s on every building in the city. It’s much more than 11,000 train cars!

Museum has pieces in their collection. The Museum of the City of New York has pieces in its collection.

The museums are the last stop on the subway line.

SHARP

BLADE

I think what people are doing today is really destructive. I feel conflicted about even having that opinion. I don’t see any artistic value in etched windows. This glass costs thousands of dollars. I’m going to be 40 years old, and I’m a property owner.

In 2003, I made the cover of Sotheby’s auction catalogue.

MICO

JEFF CHANG

Ironically enough, my full-time job today is in the New York City court system. And we get graffiti cases all the time.

What now exists is a massive global art movement that some people call “neo-graffiti” or “post-graffiti.” There are hundreds of galleries around the world that support so-called street art, and a growing market of buyers.

COCO ��� When I was out there, it was a misdemeanor; now it’s a felony. It takes a lot of balls to be a writer today.

CRASH The Museum of Modern Art showed something of mine. The Brooklyn

CRASH Graffiti is much better off today than it was 10 years ago. Because of the Internet, it has become so global.

STASH I own a few businesses, and when people bomb my windows, I’m the guy that goes out there with the bucket and paints over it. But I do it with that coy grin on my face, like, “Payback!”

GRAFFITI FOREVER

KAVES They declared victory, but it was a farce.

The graffiti moved off the subways and went aboveground. Now it’s on rooftops and churches all over the city, and it has become a private-property issue.

GRAFFITI ON A WALL IN SHANGHAI, CHINA

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Matthew Albanese is a New Jersey-based diorama artist who creates remarkably lifelike scenes from everyday objects. This scene is made of steel wool, cotton, ground parsley and moss. Each of the landscapes featured on these pages took months to create and were painstakingly planned, designed and photographed.

He uses a variety of different photographic techniques to force the viewer to see these everyday items in new ways.

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5/30/11 5/19/11 3:07:41 5:00:16PM PMOS04_112-121_Pho

STRANGE WORLDS

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5/30/11 3:07:42 5/19/11 5:00:27 PM PM

STRANGE WORLDS

Icebreaker Twenty-five pounds of sugar cooked at varying temperatures (hard crack and pulled sugar recipes). It’s basically made out of candy, salt, egg whites, corn syrup, cream of tartar, powdered sugar, blue food colouring, ink and flour. This diorama took three days of cooking, and two weeks of building.

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9/11 5:00:48 PM

Breaking Point This volcano model was made out of tile grout, cotton, and phosphorous ink. It was illuminated from within by six 60 watt light bulbs.

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STRANGE WORLDS

Salt Water Falls This model was made out of glass, plexiglass, tile grout, moss, twigs, salt, painted canvas and dry ice. The waterfall was created from a time exposure of falling table salt.

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STRANGE WORLDS

Fields After the Storm This model is made simply out of faux fur (ďŹ elds), cotton (clouds) and sifted tile grout (mountains).

The perspective is forced as in all of my images, and the lighting effect was created by simply shifting the white balance.

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Aurora Borealis This one was made by photographing a beam of coloured light against a black curtain to achieve the edge effect. The trees were composited from life (so far the only real -life element in any of these images). The stars are simply strobe light through holes in cork board.

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STRANGE WORLDS

New Life #2 A diorama made using painted parchment paper, thread, hand dyed ostrich feathers, carved chocolate, wire, rafďŹ a, masking tape, coffee, synthetic potting moss and cotton.

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STYLE • MAPPED SERIOUS MEN SHOW OFF THEIR FASHION SENSE

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5/19/11 3:08:22 5:12:39 PM 5/30/11

EMIRATES NEWS

ANNUAL REPORT 2010-2011 THE EMIRATES GROUP HAS POSTED record net profits of US$1.6 billion (Dhs5.9 billion) in the 2010-11 financial year, making it the most successful in its 25-year history.

The recently released 2010-11 Annual Report for the Emirates Group — which consists of Emirates Airline, dnata and its subsidiaries — shows that in the past 12 months the company achieved a record net profit increase of 42.9 per cent.

On its own, Emirates Airline achieved net profits of $1.6 billion, an increase of 51.9 per cent from last year’s already high levels.

The airline’s revenues rose by 26.4 per cent to $15.6 billion, which is remarkable in a year that witnessed constant widespread disruption to the aviation industry.

With the backdrop of environmental obstacles, such as the global interruption of flights due to the Eyjafjallaökull volcano eruption and the heavy snowfall that forced airports to close across Western Europe and the US, the profits achieved by the Emirates Group are a credit to its ability to efficiently manage the different areas of its business.

His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline & Group, attributed the success of the Group to its solid business strategy, its loyal customers and suppliers and to the talent of its 57,000 employees across the globe.

The past 12 months saw the highest

The past 12 months saw the highest ever level of passengers flying on Emirates — with an 80 per cent capacity on all fights

ever level of passengers flying on Emirates — with a load factor of 80 % (percentage of seats occupied). This is even more impressive considering the substantial increase in passenger capacity (13 per cent) over the same 12-month period.

After a decent recovery in the previous financial year, Emirates SkyCargo also posted impressive figures with its total tonnage rising 11.8 per cent, hauling a total of 1.8 million tonnes of cargo, and seeing a revenue increase of 27.6 per cent to a record $2.4 billion.

Emirates also expanded its global

footprint, adding six new destinations, including Amsterdam, Prague, Dakar and Madrid, to its extensive network — while even more destinations are planned for the coming year.

The global airport and travel service provider dnata also had a successful year with its acquisition of the Alpha Flight Group Ltd, allowing it to become the world’s fourth largest air services provider and significantly expand its international presence.

The Annual Report can be seen in full at www.theemiratesgroup.com

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ǠȮȮŮȢ ǠȮź ǙȮƄȮƸȮȮŮ

Located in the heart of Dubai Centre of Dubai’s business district Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall – 5 min.

Metro Station in front of Hotel

Our Location

Abu Dhabi Airport – 45 min.

Dubai Airport – 15 min.

Jumeirah Beach – 5 min.

Mall of the Emirates/Ski Dubai – 10 min.

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P.O. Box 32161, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Tel: +971 4 323 0000 I Fax: +971 4 323 0003 reservation@emiratesgrandhotel.com OS04_029-029_EdsLetter.indd 129

5/30/11 3:08:24 PM

EMIRATES NEWS

GOODS TO GO

SPEED AND EFFICIENCY ARE KEY FOR AIR FREIGHT

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36.3

Pradeep Kumar, the Senior Vice President of Cargo Revenue Optimisation. Kumar says that SkyCargo’s use of the Emirates’ widebodied fleet allows them to transport cargo to ‘secondary’ airports, and not just capital cities.

“In England, for example, we fly to London, Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham. Whereas other airlines only tend to fly to the main cities and then transport from there via trucks,” says Kumar.

An example of this is the development of the SkyChain

system — a streamlining process unique to Emirates. With cargo susceptible to variable dimensions, such as weight and volume, it was created to marry the commercial and the operational aspect of transporting cargo, allowing for instant updates on what stage a particular cargo is at, or how much availability there is on a freighter.

In March 2011 Emirates SkyCargo launched its first 100 per cent paperless freighter flight carrying 103,884 tonnes of cut flowers between Nairobi and Amsterdam.

The initiative — E-freight — aims to revolutionise the cargo industry by removing paperwork, streamlining it into an electronic barcode.

So far 51 of the 111 cities Emirates SkyCargo serves are now E-freight compliant, illustrating Emirates’ commitment to progress.

38.4

SkyCargo’s use of the Emirates network allows us to fly into secondary airports

47.9

THE PERCEPTION FOR MANY IS THAT transporting cargo is as simple as checking in and getting on a flight.

However, the reality is far more complex, a process that relies on multiple checks, logistical planning and security monitoring.

A trip to Emirates SkyCargo gives an idea of the size of operation that is carried out behind the scenes.

With eight specialised Boeing 747 and 777 freighter jets, hauling a total of 1.8 million tonnes of cargo, Emirates SkyCargo now ranks fifth internationally in scheduled freight tonne kilometres (FTK, the measurement of one metric tonne of revenue load carried per kilometre).

“One of our main goals is to provide the customers the best value for money by focusing on the service and quality,” explains

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UAE IS MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE. Gulf News is UAE’s No. 1 English newspaper. As validated by independent research, it enjoys a 70% higher readership over its nearest competitor.

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9/11 6:12:06 PM

Gulf News, as well as its Classifieds and Tabloid publications, rank as the 3 most-read English publications.

Audited figures for Gulf News confirm a circulation of 108,750 copies within the region, making it the clear

3.7

9.1

11.5

16.0

17.8

25.0

26.4

27.0

36.3

38.4

47.9

leader by far, even if compared to the unaudited figures claimed by the competition.

Source:

IPSOS MediaCT - NRS -UAE - 2010

BPA Circulation Statement

Average Issue Readership across all Non-Arabs in the UAE.

OS04_029-029_EdsLetter.indd 131

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bca.

15%

EMIRATES NEWS

EASE AGE DECR THE AVER T IN PR T O IN NOISE FO EW N H C IN EA N GENERATIO FT A R C IR A OF

GREENWEB Here is a list of some of the most influential and active tweeters who are going green online.

MUST FOLLOW:

smart waste ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES ENCOMPASS A LOT MORE THAN OIL SPILLS AND commercial logging. Even the constant updating of technology can have a damaging environmental impact, leading to a rise in surplus electronic goods around the world, known as e-waste. With electronic products, such as mobile phones, laptops and televisions being made from a variety of materials, recycling them has often been difficult. Recycling facilities are now beginning to cater for e-waste, by dismantling and reusing the necessary components, such as the metal casings and the electrical components.

The Emirates Group has begun to tackle this growing problem, recently launching a new IT and e-waste recycling programme. The programme looks to encourage the green disposal of electrical devices. The Group has installed tailor-made, wooden recycling boxes at their offices — encouraging their employees to dispose of their goods cleanly in order to minimise waste.

@350 A grassroots organisation of online campaigns, consisting of thousands of volunteer organisers from 188 countries. @ECOINTERACTIVE Costa Rican-based eco preservation society. Inspiring action and empowering people through conservation,

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reforestation and education.

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@GRIST Highlighting the best of environmental journalism. A beacon

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in the smog.

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GREEN LIFESTYLE TIPS:

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@DOTHEGREENTHING A not-for-profit public service that inspires people to lead

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a greener life. Features active community members around the world.

THE AMOUNT OF ELECTRICITY GENERATED FROM RENEWABLE BIOMASS AT THE BOEING

80% 5,000 787 PRODUCTION PLANT IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

GREEN INDIA

TREE HUGGERS

EARTH DAY

THE BIG THIRST

Mark your calendar

People are helping

To celebrate Earth Day

Charles Fishman’s The

as June 5 is World

the UK’s National

on the 22nd April 2011, Big Thirst explores the

Environment Day.

Trust decide online

a total of 100 trees were problems and the

India has been selected how to run a real-life

planted around the

innovative ways that

by the UN as this year’s working farm in

Dubai’s Sevens cricket

will potentially arise

global hosts, with the

Cambridgeshire – with pitches by Emirates

the 2011 theme being

each of the 10,000

staff. Earth Day was

the Earth’s water

‘Forests: Nature at

participants paying a

celebrated by millions

supplies. An important,

Your Service’.

£30 subscription.

around the world.

timely book.

regarding the future of

THE NUMBER OF CITIES AND TOWNS THAT PARTICIPATED TO EARTH HOUR 2011

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5/23/11

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EMIRATES NEWS

BEFORE YOU R JOU R N EY CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE TRAVELLING IF YOU HAVE ANY MEDICAL CONCERNS ABOUT MAKING A LONG JOURNEY, OR IF YOU SUFFER FROM A RESPIRATORY OR

IN THE AIR

CARDIOVASCULAR CONDITION. PLAN FOR THE DESTINATION � WILL

TO HELP YOU ARRIVE AT YOUR destination feeling relaxed and refreshed, Emirates has developed this collection of helpful travel tips.

Regardless of whether you need to

rejuvenate for your holiday or be effective at achieving your goals on a business trip, these simple tips will help you to enjoy your journey and time on board with Emirates today.

SPECIAL MEDICATIONS? GET A GOOD NIGHT’S REST BEFORE THE FLIGHT. EAT LIGHTLY AND SENSIBLY.

AT TH E AI R PORT

SMART TRAVELLER DRINK PLENTY OF WATER

YOU NEED ANY VACCINATIONS OR

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ALLOW YOURSELF PLENTY OF TIME M

FOR CHECK�IN.

TRAVEL LIGHTLY

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AVOID CARRYING HEAVY BAGS THROUGH THE AIRPORT AND ONTO

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THE FLIGHT AS THIS CAN PLACE THE

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BODY UNDER CONSIDERABLE STRESS.

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ONCE THROUGH TO DEPARTURES TRY

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AND RELAX AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. K

REHYDRATE WITH WATER OR JUICES FREQUENTLY.

CARRY ONLY THE ESSENTIAL ITEMS THAT

DRINK TEA AND COFFEE IN MODERATION.

YOU WILL NEED DURING YOUR FLIGHT.

DU R ING THE FLIGHT SUCKING AND SWALLOWING WILL

MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE

HELP EQUALISE YOUR EAR PRESSURE

KEEP MOVING

DURING ASCENT AND DESCENT. BABIES AND YOUNG PASSENGERS MAY SUFFER MORE ACUTELY WITH POPPING EARS, THEREFORE CONSIDER PROVIDING A DUMMY.

LOOSEN CLOTHING, REMOVE JACKET AND

EXERCISE YOUR LOWER LEGS AND CALF

GET AS COMFORTABLE AS

AVOID ANYTHING PRESSING AGAINST YOUR BODY.

MUSCLES. THIS ENCOURAGES BLOOD FLOW.

POSSIBLE WHEN RESTING AND TURN FREQUENTLY.

WEAR GLASSES

USE SKIN MOISTURISER

AVOID SLEEPING FOR LONG PERIODS IN THE SAME POSITION.

W H EN YOU ARR IV E TRY SOME LIGHT EXERCISE OR READ IF YOU CAN’T SLEEP AFTER ARRIVAL.

CABIN AIR IS DRIER THAN NORMAL THEREFORE

APPLY A GOOD QUALITY MOISTURISER TO

SWAP YOUR CONTACT LENSES FOR GLASSES.

ENSURE YOUR SKIN DOESN’T DRY OUT.

P.O. Box

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9/11 5:35:38 PM

P.O. Box.17684, W/H: FZS1/AJ02 , Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai - UAE Tel: + 971 4 886 0715, Fax: +971 4 886 0716 E-mail: cathy@sourcerite.ae

OS04_029-029_EdsLetter.indd 135

Available at : BAHRAIN : Debenhams, Sun & Sand Sports, The Athletes Foot, Heels Boutique, Shoe City, Al Boom Marine, Duty Free || KUWAIT : Debenhams, Shoe Mart, The Athletes Foot, Intersport || LEBANON Dbayeh || OMAN : Shoe City || QATAR : Courir Go Sports, Debenhams, Galaxy Sports, Shoe Mart, The Athletes Foot, Blue Salon, Shoe City, Ozone || UAE : Dubai Duty Free, Go Sports, Harvey Nichols, Impressions, Intersport, Shoe City, Jumeirah Sports House, K Corner, Picnico, Shoe Mart, Sun & Sand Sports, Beyond The Beach, Shoes 4 Us, Rip Curl Stores, The Athletes Foot, Debenhams || SAUDI ARABIA : Shoe Mart, Zahid Trec, Sun & Sand Sports, Intersport, Shoe City, Go Sports Debenhams,

5/30/11 3:08:45 PM

CABIN L BE CREW WIL LP HE HAPPY TO D E IF YOU NE

EMIRATES NEWS

ASSMISPTLEATINNGCE CO THE FORMS

EL

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TO US CUSTOMS & IMMIGRATION FORMS

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WHETHER YOU’RE TRAVELLING TO, OR THROUGH, THE UNITED States today, this simple guide to completing the US customs and immigration forms will help to ensure that your journey

is as hassle free as possible. The Cabin Crew will offer you two forms when you are nearing your destination. We provide guidelines below, so you can correctly complete the forms.

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I

CUSTOMS DECLAR ATION FORM

IMMIGR ATION FORM

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T

All passengers arriving into the US need to complete a CUSTOMS DECLARATION FORM. If you are travelling as a family this should be completed by one member only. The form must be completed in English, in capital letters, and must be signed where indicated.

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A

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A

A

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T

The IMMIGRATION FORM I-94 (Arrival / Departure Record) should be completed if you are a non-US citizen in possession of a valid US visa and your final destination is the US or if you are in transit to a country outside the US. A separate form must be completed for each person, including children travelling on their parents’ passport. The form includes a Departure Record which must be kept safe and given to your airline when you leave the US. If you hold a US or Canadian passport, US Alien Resident Visa (Green Card), US Immigrant Visa or a valid ESTA (right), you are not required to complete an immigration form.

TH BE

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OS04_134-135

E

o

9/11 5:38:58 PM

ELECTRONIC SYSTEM FOR

WILL EXPIRE ALONG WITH

TRAVEL AUTHORISATION (ESTA)

YOUR PASSPORT.

IF YOU ARE AN INTERNATIONAL

APPLY ONLINE AT WWW.CBP.GOV/ESTA

TRAVELLER WISHING TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES UNDER THE

NATIONALITIES ELIGIBLE

VISA WAIVER PROGRAMME,

FOR THE VISA WAIVER *:

YOU MUST APPLY FOR

ANDORRA, AUSTRALIA,

ELECTRONIC AUTHORISATION

AUSTRIA, BELGIUM, BRUNEI,

�ESTA� UP TO �� HOURS PRIOR

CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK,

TO YOUR DEPARTURE.

ESTONIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, HUNGARY, ICELAND,

ESTA FACTS:

IRELAND, ITALY, JAPAN, LATVIA,

CHILDREN AND

LIECHTENSTEIN, LITHUANIA,

INFANTS REQUIRE AN

LUXEMBURG, MALTA, MONACO,

INDIVIDUAL ESTA.

THE NETHERLANDS, NEW

THE ONLINE ESTA SYSTEM

ZEALAND, NORWAY, PORTUGAL,

WILL INFORM YOU WHETHER

SAN MARINO, SINGAPORE,

YOUR APPLICATION HAS BEEN

SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA, SOUTH

AUTHORISED, NOT AUTHORISED

KOREA, SPAIN, SWEDEN,

OR IF AUTHORISATION

SWITZERLAND AND THE

IS PENDING.

UNITED KINGDOM**.

A SUCCESSFUL ESTA

*

APPLICATION IS VALID

** ONLY BRITISH CITIZENS QUALIFY UNDER THE VISA WAIVER PROGRAMME.

FOR TWO YEARS, HOWEVER

AD

80 mm wide x 224 mm high

SUBJECT TO CHANGE

THIS MAY BE REVOKED OR

THE DOLLAR VALUE IN BILLIONS OF THE AGREEMENT SIGNED IN ���� BETWEEN EMIRATES AND BOEING FOR �� �������ER AIRCRAFT

9.1 430

THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF STAFF IN THE EMIRATES CATERING FACILITY KITCHEN AT ANY ON TIME:

OS04_029-029_EdsLetter.indd 137135 OS04_134-135_EKVisaGuide.indd

WHERE ARE YOU GOING? TELL US OR UPLOAD A PIC AT FACEBOOK.COM/OPENSKIESMAGAZINE TWITTER.COM/OPENSKIESMAG

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EMIRATES NEWS

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EMIRATES NEWS

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9/11 5:45:07 PM

AD 139

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5/19/11 3:21:46 5:45:09 PM 5/30/11

THE MIDDLE EAST’S ULTIMATE DESTINATION FOR STYLE

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

www.twitter.com/WeAreLovestyle

For m

www.facebook.com/loveLOVESTYLE

lovestyle_mastercard_laptop_ad_openskies.indd 1 OS04_029-029_EdsLetter.indd 142

5/24/11 5/30/11 3:26:30 3:21:49 PM

OS04_141-143

THE FLOENETTAINS

C OUR FLEET ADE 153 PLANESS. SMENGER PA UP OF 145 D 8 CARGO PLANES AN PLANES

YLE

H

4/11 3:26:30 PM

For more information: www.emirates.com/ourf leet

OS04_141-143_EKFleet.indd 141 OS04_029-029_EdsLetter.indd 143

5/19/11 3:21:49 5:48:42 PM 5/30/11

FLEET GUIDE

Boeing 777-300ER Number of Aircraft: 54 Capacity: 354-442 Range: 14,594km Length: 73.9m Wingspan: 64.8m

Air

Boeing 777-300 Number of Aircraft: 12 Capacity: 364 Range: 11,029km Length: 73.9m Wingspan: 60.9m

Air

Boeing 777-200LR Number of Aircraft: 10 Capacity: 266 Range: 17,446km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 64.8m Boeing 777F Number of Aircraft: 2 Range 9,260km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 64.8m

Air Boeing 777-200 Number of Aircraft: 9 Capacity: 274-346 Range: 9,649km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 60.9m

Boeing 747-400F/747-ERF Number of Aircraft: 3/2 Range 8,232km/9,204km Length: 70.6m Wingspan: 64.4m

Air

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5/19/11 3:22:06 5:49:19 PM 5/30/11

OS04_141-143

9/11 5:49:19 PM

Airbus A380-800 Number of Aircraft: 15 Capacity: 489-517 Range: 15,000km Length: 72.7m Wingspan: 79.8m

Airbus A340-500 Number of Aircraft: 10 Capacity: 258 Range: 16,050km Length: 67.9m Wingspan: 63.4m

Airbus A340-300 Number of Aircraft: 8 Capacity: 267 Range: 13,350km Length: 63.6m Wingspan: 60.3m

Airbus A330-200 Number of Aircraft: 27 Capacity: 237-278 Range: 12,200km Length: 58.8m Wingspan: 60.3m 143

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5/19/11 3:22:20 5:49:49 PM 5/30/11

maha

NEXT MONTH… C

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n the world of aviation, most things just keep getting better. There was a time when planes had to fly around mountain ranges, and your inflight meal consisted of whatever sandwich you remembered to bring with you.

Life was not all that bad however and next month we go back in time to celebrate all things retro. We take a long and crazy trip via the ‘Hippy Trail’ a journey that takes us through some of the most fascinating places on the planet, now sadly, mostly off limits to all but the most fearless travellers. We also look at what was supposed to be the ultimate ‘city of the future’, but turned out to be an urban nightmare. Add to this our regular mix of great content from around the world, and going back in time has never been so much fun.

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STARRING

NICOLE KIDMAN

More information available at OMEGA Middle East, Emirates Towers, Dubai, UAE. Tel: +971 4 3300455

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