Archive for the ‘Artition’ Category

Boris Johnson reveals the new London iconic Routemaster bus

Monday, January 30th, 2012

Boris Johnson is keeping his promise of reenacting the hop on hop off buss in London. The new bus, in service from early 2012, is inspired by the much-loved Routemaster and will use the latest green technology. Officials say it will be the most environmentally friendly bus of its kind, equipped with the best hybrid technology. The new bus, reminiscent of the iconic Routemaster, has undergone very extensive design and testing for the last few month, ready for eight initial buses to operate from February this year. Depending on the route and location the rear doors can be opened, ensuring a hop on and hop off service, especially handy for busy commercial streets, such as Oxford or Regents Street.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog

Hirst/Hockney/Rubens: Spot the Difference

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

David Hockney has joined a long list of far less illustrious figures criticizing Damien Hirst’s ‘factory’ approach to making art. It began with a veiled reference to Hirst (and by extension Jeff Koons and a host of other contemporary art ‘CEO’s’ for that matter) in the poster campaign for Hockney’s forthcoming Royal Academy exhibition — “All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally.”

Pressed by the Radio Times for clarification of whether this was a sly dig at Hirst, Hockney replied that the prevailing approach to art making promoted by today’s art schools and adopted by Hirst et al was “a little insulting to craftsmen.”

This inevitably invited the predictable gale of references to Leonardo, Rubens, and Rembrandt, all of whom used assistants. In fact, the history of art is replete with instances in which an artist’s success has prompted the recruitment of assistants to help meet the demand of a growing number of collectors.

But what these knee-jerk comparisons between Hirst and Rubens always leave out is that many of the collectors who sought to acquire a work by Rubens direct from the artist stipulated that the work be made entirely by him and not by his assistants. To some clients, not even those pictures to which the artist himself applied the finishing touch were acceptable.

Henry Danvers (1573-1643), art adviser to Charles I, wrote to his colleagues recommending Rubens for a royal portrait commission, but made clear that, “In every painter’s opinion he hath sent hither a piece scarce touched by his own hand,” and demanded that Rubens paint another “to redeem his reputation in this house.” Rubens, in response, promised “a large picture entirely by my own hand.” (Jerry Brotton, The Sale of the Late King’s Goods, Pan, 2006, p75).

Similar skepticism has long surrounded the work of Rembrandt for similar reasons. In the 1950s, David Roell, director of the Rijksmuseum, wisely declined an offer from Duveen Brothers in New York to buy aPortrait of Hendrickje Stoeffels, attributed to Rembrandt (right), stating that he did not “feel the inner conviction that it is entirely by the hand of Rembrandt.” (Suzanne Muchnic, Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture, University of Caifornia Press, 1998, p43). In the event the picture was sold in 1957 (as a Rembrandt) to Norton Simon for $133,500. Simon’s wife Lucille later inherited it as part of their divorce settlement, but it was eventually sold at Christie’s in New York in 2002 as “Studio of Rembrandt” for $152,500.

Such connoisseurial ponderings are unlikely ever to surround the work of Hirst or Koons since neither of them are artists in the sense that Rubens or Rembrandt were. Hirst and Koons are manufacturers and their output ought to be considered as ‘products’ rather than as works of art. The fact that they are not is testament to the impoverished critical judgement underpinning the contemporary art market. This is essentially what Hockney was referring to when he said “…you can teach the craft; it’s the poetry you can’t teach.”

This also helps explain Hirst’s justification for employing other people to execute his spot paintings — “I couldn’t be fucking arsed doing it,” he was quoted as saying.

That blunt statement implies a mean-spirited disdain for the art market and the credulous millionaires whose collective aesthetic myopia has made him rich as Croesus. In other words, they got the ‘art’ they deserved. The fact that his products lack poetry and indeed even craft (Hirst’s butterfly pictures tend to fall to bits) — is confirmation of the gaping chasm separating Hirst — and for that matter Koons, Murakami and the rest of that warehouse generation — from Rubens, Rembrandt, and yes, despite his ludicrous recent landscapes, Hockney himself.

Dr. Tom Flynn

[TOM+IN+UMBRIA+2011_2.JPG](Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

Saint Charles Saatchi blasts “vulgar, masturbatory, art-buying Eurotrash”

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

In 1971, the American artist Vito Acconci secreted himself under the floor of New York’s Sonnabend Gallery and masturbated while broadcasting his sexual fantasies through a loudspeaker audible to the gallery visitors above.

This er, seminal performance piece was not, however, what ‘super-collector’ Charles Saatchi was referring to in today’s Guardian when he blasted the denizens of today’s art world as “masturbatory”, although as Acconci’s performance piece makes clear, onanism has long been a feature of the art world.

Saatchi doesn’t often address the media, generally preferring to keep his opinions to himself. Something of an art vampire, he is rarely glimpsed, only venturing out to feed on the freshest young contemporary talent for his Chelsea gallery.

I was therefore surprised, on emerging from the White Cube stand at the Frieze fair a few weeks ago, to spot the curmudgeonly old collector strolling towards me (above left), his features cast in a rictus of disgust, presumably at the acres of expensive tat that surrounded him. But given his usual reticence, it was even more surprising to see that look of disgust translated into an article for The Guardian, in which he rails at the “Eurotrashy, Hedgefundy, Hamptonites,” and the “trendy oligarchs and oiligarchs…nestling together in their super yachts” at this year’s Venice biennale.

He is right, of course. Loud money is everywhere in the art world. The big media draw at this year’s Frieze fair was a super yacht and matching Riva power boat (right) by Italian company CRN, both of which had been blessed by German artist Christian Jankowski to become something more than mere maritime vessels…or so they would have you believe.
Luca Boldini, CRN’s marketing director, told me, with an alarming lack of irony, “This is very much in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp and the idea of the Readymade. I am very confident that we will sell it. If we do, it will send a great wave around the world that will confirm the value of the project.” It didn’t sell. It sank like a rusty rowing boat in a force ten gale of mocking laughter. It’s amazing that the Frieze curators give tent-room to this stuff.

Such crass stunts surely endorse Saatchi’s central point, which is that the art world is overrun by witless opportunists with no taste and too much money. He suggests that “the success of the uber art dealers is based upon the mystical power that art now holds over the super-rich.” But ’twas ever thus.

You could probably track this trend back to the period of rising post-war affluence when Greek shipping magnates like Stavros Niarchos and Basil Goulandris — the oligarchs of their time, thanks largely to the Suez Crisis which made their shipping businesses so profitable — were paying top dollar for Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings to stick on the walls of their many mansions. At the Biddle sale in Paris in 1957, Basil Goulandris bought Gauguin’s Still Life with Apples for $297,142 (buying power equivalent to $2.3m today), at which point “…the entire audience rose and burst into applause,” reported the New York Times.

Art has always been about conspicuous consumption (Veblen coined the term as far back as 1897), but it was really the Cognacq, Lurcy, Weinberg and Goldschmidt sales of the 1950s that marked the moment when the newly wealthy really discovered what Saatchi dismisses as the “pleasure to be found in having their lovely friends measure the weight of their baubles.” (At least a Gauguin was a bauble worth measuring, unlike the dismal rubbish commanding top prices in the market today.)

Saatchi clearly has a problem with the oligarchs (one assumes he means Russianoligarchs) and on that point he’s right on the money. Anyone who has bothered to read the recent history of Russia’s power struggles and the turmoil in its economy will know that the Russian people were robbed blind by a few ruthless individuals in the early 1990s (Londongrad by Mark Holingsworth and Stewart Lansley is a good place to start.)

Recent BBC Radio 4 reports have focused attention on the corruption in Moscow’s civic government and one can only wonder how far its tentacles spread. How much dirty money is being channelled into art? One sensed a good deal of it washing around Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams this week as all three houses dispersed Russian art to rooms full of what looked like paddle-waving gangsters with their anorexic girlfriends in tow.

The ‘art world’ has never been a particularly pleasant place in which to do business, but whether it’s as bad as Saatchi maintains depends on your moral bias…or your taste (or lack of it).

Then again, Saatchi himself has hardly been an unequivocal force for good. Ask those artists whose paintings he bought back in the 1980s before unceremoniously dumping them a short while later. I’ve spoken to one or two who still can’t bury the hatchet. Back then his approach to art was widely perceived as just as crude and philistine as the crapulous oligarchs and other freeloaders he’s gunning for today.

Plus ça change…


Dr. Tom Flynn

[TOM+IN+UMBRIA+2011_2.JPG](Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

It doesn’t matter how long ago it was stolen, French museum property is “inalienable”

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

“[B]ased on our legal knowledge (and well founded), the [Nicolas Tournier painting ofThe Carrying of the Cross] is indeed, in principle, the property of the Musée des Augustins. Works in French public collections are inalienable and imprescriptible, a fact we have always fought for here. This means that an object which enters a museum cannot be taken away, in any way, forever in time, which implies that although it may have disappeared for almost two hundred years, it will always belong to the establishment.”

- The Art Tribune, commenting on the case of the disputed Baroque painting by Nicolas Tournier which is pitting London dealer Mark Weiss against the French Ministry of Culture.

If it is indeed true that works in French public collections are not subject to conventional statutes of limitations (and if found in the trade cannot therefore be legally transacted) then this increases the need to incorporate data about missing museum objects into due diligence databases. If the French Ministry of Culture places no time limitations on objects missing from its museums, then due diligence providers should do likewise.

Dr. Tom Flynn

[TOM+IN+UMBRIA+2011_2.JPG](Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

Art Loss Register defends its Due Diligence vetting at TEFAF

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

The Art Loss Register, responsible for the annual Due Diligence vetting of the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht, has responded rapidly to a suggestion that its vetting processes might have been at fault after a Nicolas Tournier painting (left), sold on two occasions at the fair in 2010 and 2011, was later revealed to have been stolen in the early nineteenth century.

As the newswires reported yesterday (and which I blogged here), the painting of Christ carrying the Cross by French Baroque artist Nicolas Tournier was, according to the French state, stolen from the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse in 1818. When the picture turned up on the stand of London Old Master dealer Weiss at the recent Paris Tableau art fair, the French government immediately stepped in to try and confiscate the picture. It was reported that an export block would be placed on it.

It was also reported that Weiss had bought the picture from French dealer Didier Aaron at TEFAF Maastricht in 2010 and then offered it on their own stand at TEFAF in 2011.

The Art Loss Register has now written to Messrs Weiss and Aaron (below) to reassure them that the picture was checked by their staff on both occasions, neither of which revealed any problems with its provenance. At present, the ALR’s records do not extend back as far as 1818.

This would seem to indicate that some improvement in communications is required between agencies like the ALR and those state bodies who see a duty to intervene when problematic pictures appear at art fairs in their jurisdiction. It is embarrassing for the dealers and it is embarrassing for the ALR which, on this occasion, seems to have done what it was required to do.

How far back should stolen art databases go? The Tournier picture may have been stolen way back in the mists of the early nineteenth century and a statute of limitations may have expired long ago; but the theft remains part of its provenance. Information on the 1818 theft ought to be included in the painting’s historical profile. That data can only be acquired and incorporated if data companies work proactively with state departments to blend all the known data. That might be a step towards an even more comprehensive process of Due Diligence.

Forewarned is forearmed.

[I thank the Art Loss Register for sending me a copy of the letter below]

Dr. Tom Flynn

[TOM+IN+UMBRIA+2011_2.JPG](Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

More ‘loot’ from the Beijing Summer Palace at Salisbury auction in November

Thursday, October 27th, 2011

Not my word, but that of the man who looted it.

The fine and rare Chinese Qing dynasty Imperial gilt metal box (shown left), appearing at Woolley & Wallis’s November 16 sale of Asian Art, bears an inscription — “Loot from the Summer Palace, Pekin, Oct. 1860. Capt. James Gunter, King’s Dragoon Guards.”

Rarely does colonial booty declare itself with such proud candour. The box is estimated to make £50,000-80,000 and is just one of half a dozen lots at this Part I sale that requires prospective bidders to register and provide financial guarantees and deposits prior to the sale. (There is still some caution in auction circles despite rumours that Bainbridge’s Qing vase account has finally been settled).

Another item likely to get Asian pulses racing is a rare Chinese celadon jade seal of the Empress Xiaoyiren (right) which isestimated to fetch £500,000-800,000, but how does one estimate such a thing?
For the time being Chinese mainland collectors remain preoccupied with securing from Western collections examples of Imperial jades and porcelains, some of which were legitimately acquired during the eighteenth century, but many of which (like the box referred to above) were looted during the era of colonial confrontation.

By contrast, Chinese dealers and collectors have yet to catch on to mark and period Export Porcelain — those wares made and decorated specifically for export to Europe and elsewhere.

However, it is a widely held belief in the relevant European and North American trade and collecting communities that this will eventually change. It is not a matter of if, but when the Chinese will recognise export wares — but that ‘when’ could turn out to be sooner than many expect. And it may be when the store of imperial objects from European collections dries up.

Recent auctions in the UK — even those held in the British provinces — have demonstrated the lengths to which Chinese dealers and collectors will travel — and indeed how high they are prepared to bid — to secure imperial wares. Their buying power has now reached a level at which few Western dealers can compete, as the recent May sales of Asian Art at Duke’s in Dorchester and Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury made clear.

Equally notable is the quantity of such material now being secured by provincial firms. Not so very long ago, most significant consignments of real quality would have been destined for London hammers. Yet firms like Duke’s and Woolley & Wallis have demonstrated that they can offer as efficient and expert a service as their London counterparts and often at more competitive rates.

The next opportunity to test the market — and the to gauge the extent to which the Chinese and other Asian buyers remain active bidders for such material — comes in mid-November when Woolley & Wallis mount three sales. On 15 November they will offer around 360 lots of Yixing Zisha wares, including items from the Arthur J. Harris collection of Yixing teapots. This was doubtless prompted by the success of Woolley & Wallis’s last Asian Art sale back on 18 May this year when a small selection of the distinctive and characterful Yixing red stoneware teapots from the Arthur J. Harris Collection performed encouragingly well.

The example illustrated (left), estimated at £1,200-1,800, fetched £105,000, one of a host of examples that roundly demolished its pre-sale forecast.

These little stoneware teapots are not just beautiful and historically interesting works of art. Woolley & Wallis inform us that the Yixing unglazed stoneware actually enhances the taste and olfactory pleasures of the tea brewed within. In fact many believe one should never wash a Yixing teapot but simply rinse it. We’re led to believe that over time the red ware body absorbs so much of the tea’s natural character that one can even brew a pot of tea without using any tea leaves. I’m not sure the Irish would buy that.

In economic terms, it goes without saying that Yixing wares have proved a superb investment for collectors like Arthur Harris, but anyone who has assembled a quality collection of Kangxi or Qianlong mark and period export porcelain is also likely to be quids in when the Chinese eventually come round to understanding it.

It is perhaps a measure of its basic rarity that there are no significant export wares included in Woolley & Wallis’s Asian Art Part 1 sale on 16 November (nor indeed in Part II on 17 November). Imperial wares, on the other hand, are plentiful. It will be interesting to see how many Asian buyers are present on sale day.

Dr. Tom Flynn

[TOM+IN+UMBRIA+2011_2.JPG](Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

Pierrick Sorin. Optical Theaters and Video installations at Galerie Albert Benamou, Paris 21/10/2011

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

Pierrick Sorin is an important figure in the French Video Art scene. Sorin has realized films and video installation that have been shown at numerous international museums. His current exhibition at Galerie Albert Benamoupresents seven “Théâtres Optiques”, two video installations, and a series of 30 photographs.

In his short films and visual devices, Pierrick Sorin makes fun of human existence and artistic creation. In his films he is often the only actor (and he has also starred in two feature films). Since 2006, Pierrick Sorin dedicates himself to the staging of performances, opera in particular. With his “Théâtres Optiques”, he blends new media and the traditional diorama. In these miniature stage sets he magically appears as small hologram.

Pierrick Sorin was born in 1960 in Nantes, France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Nantes and received his Diplôme national supérieur d’expression plastique in 1988. In 2010, the culture center Lieu Unique in Nantes organized his first major retrospective. The exhibition at Galerie Albert Benamou runs until October 21, 2011.

Pierrick Sorin, solo exhibition at Galerie Albert Benamou. Interview with Pierrick Sorin, September 22, 2011. Video by VTV correspondent Christophe Ecoffet.

Unprovenanced Arts of the Islamic World under London hammers

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

 It may be just a coincidence; it may be another consequence of the growth of the Middle East as yet another ‘emerging market’, but one could not help wondering at the sheer quantity of unprovenanced material under the hammer at Sotheby’s sale this morning of ‘Arts of The Islamic World’.

Admittedly, the reports of looted museum collections in Libya and elsewhere — which have been appearing with increasing frequency on the Museum Security Network in recent weeks — remain largely uncorroborated.

As with the Iraqi cultural heritage crisis, and indeed the plight of heritage sites in strife-torn Georgia in 2008 (which I reported on here), the ‘fog of war’ makes a proper assessment of the situation very difficult. Yet that seems an even more compelling reason why the major international auction houses ought to be exercising greater caution and responsibility towards cultural heritage on the open market.

Given the recent turmoil in the Maghreb it’s extraordinary that the London auction houses are still blithely packing their catalogues with hundreds of lots of highly portable unprovenanced material. But then who is going to stop them?

Although most of the lots at Sotheby’s evening sale on October 4 were predominantly sourced from the documented Harvey Plotnick Collection (and a few lots from that old favourite — the “European Private Collection”), the vast bulk of the 350 lots dispersed at this morning’s day sale entered the catalogue entirely without provenance.

We know that Saif Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator’s LSE-educated son, had bought a great deal of the material contained in his Islamic Museum in Shari’ Sidi Khaliffa at Sotheby’s Islamic sales in recent years. Some reports maintain that the Libyan Islamic Museum has been looted by rebels. Officials inside the country insist that the looting in Libya is not as bad as the media have suggested. (They said that about Iraq, too).

Sotheby’s saleroom was packed this morning with Middle Eastern gentlemen huddling, conferring, marking their catalogues, battling with the telephone and internet bidders. One man in the room was particularly active, buying across the price range from a few thousand up to hundreds of thousands of pounds per lot. Afterwards I approached him to ask whether he was buying for himself or for an institution. He was very forthcoming. “I am a private collector, buying for myself,” he said, “but I am planning to build a museum in Turkey.”

How ironic that Western nations, hamstrung by cultural heritage laws and provenance restrictions, can no longer add to their museum collections via the open market, while Western auction houses continue, unchecked, to supply the new museums of emerging nations with unprovenanced objects. Am I missing something here? I don’t think so.

Dr. Tom Flynn

[TOM+IN+UMBRIA+2011_2.JPG](Dr. Tom Flynn is a London-based writer and Art historian and is frequently blogging about interesting issues in the Art business. He has published books and  written journalism at numerous magazines including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, ARTnews, Art Review, Art Quarterly, Apollo, The Spectator, Museums Journal, The Sculpture Journal, etc.)

Visit his blog

THE REGENT’S PARK PROJECT by Eleonor Lindsay-Fynn

Friday, October 14th, 2011

One of Artition’s great artists Eleonor Lindsay-Fynn is showcasing her work at Regent’s Park Tube station in London at this year’s Frieze Art Fair.

So if you happen to visit the Frieze by Underground you will pass her works in the tunnels!

Commissioned by Art Below, this October Eleanor Lindsay-Fynn has taken over the advertising space on Platform 1 of the Bakerloo Line in Regent’s Park Tube to showcase provocative images from her ‘Yellow Face’ project during Frieze Art Fair.

Says Ben Moore of Art Below:

‘We are really excited to work with Eleanor on this project, no one will understand her work more than Frieze goers and if they don’t understand it on their way to Frieze they will definitely understand it on their way back!’

The exhibition will run till the end of October and is backed by Crunch Art Festival and Quintessentially.

For a full set of images click HERE

 

Do I Really want to be in the World?

The ‘Yellow Face’ project turns the view of the art world onto itself and, more specifically, people at Frieze. Inhabiting the images are the instantly recognisable members of the London art world – in one image we see Richard Wentworth, Matthew Collings, Louisa Buck, Sir Norman Rosenthal, Jasper Joffe, and Matthew Slotover (Co-Founder of Frieze) speaking at the debate Art Fairs are about Money not Art, in the Saatchi Gallery.

Do I Really want to be in this World?

These figures have been painted ‘yellow-faced’ by Eleanor, adding something she feels is missing from a standard photograph. The ‘yellow face’ captures a kind of alienation we all feel at places like art fairs: a sense of just how odd cultural events are. This is not a wake-up call. Rather, ‘Yellow Face’ demonstrates the autopilot we switch on in order to cope with the huge quantity of information forced onto us.

 

 

Yellow Faces in Regent’s Park
Yellow Faces in Regent’s Park
Yellow Faces in Regent’s Park

 

 

Tesco: Homeplus Subway Virtual Store

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

The British supermarket chain Tesco has launched a new way of grocery shopping in Korea. As statistics say, Koreans are the second most hard working people in the world. Therefore they do not have any time to go grocery shopping and if, they are not willing to spend a lot of time browsing. With an interactive smart phone advertising campaign Tesco has revolutionized the concept of a supermarket into nowadays society. It is working very well, also due to the well organized postal service in Korea. Ordered goods will be sitting infront of your door in 24 hrs in a specific time you have scheduled. It will take its time to implement in London, as there isn`t even reception on the underground yet.

Kleine Wundertüte

(Kleine Wundertüte is a collection of all wonderful things that we come across in our every-day life. The project is based on the idea to document, connect and share interesting information from different kinds of media.)

visit “Kleine Wundertüte’s” blog