I DON’T CARE ABOUT DAVID BYRNE ANYMORE? David, I received your missive in my Facebook feed. You know, the one where you pseudo-declare, “I Don’t Care About Contemporary Art Anymore?” The one where you complain that the art on view in the galleries you “peruse … when I return from jogging” are failing to raise your curiosity. You write, “I realize that I have begun to view the work itself as being either intentionally or unconsciously produced expressly to cater to the 1%.” You complain that the work is simply “inoffensive tchotchkes for billionaires and the museums they fund.” You say, “It’s sad.” And then you go on to complain about Damien Hirst, the loss of irony, and the cost and size of abstract art. Boo hoo, fuck off. But first, I have three thoughts to share with you. The first is a simple point of order. While I appreciate the solidarity with Occupy sensibilities, you don’t get to invoke anti-1% rhetoric while having an estimated net worth of $40+ million. And while it pains me that Axl Rose, Jimmy Buffet, and (ugh) Dave Matthews all have larger net worths than the man who took America post-punk and kept that anti-corporate sensibility in his pop music, when you are worth $40+ million dollars <http://tinyurl.com/m7m6u6t>, you no longer get to complain about the rich as if they are some other species. Noblesse oblige, motherfucker. Second, you don’t get to declare yourself an “outsider” unless you are actually an outsider. “I used to feel I could vicariously participate even if I was often viewed as an outsider,” you write. “The artists were always welcoming and eager to hang and talk about things with me.” Perhaps you’ve forgotten that your visual art is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery <http://tinyurl.com/lcf59sw> , one of the world’s most powerful; you studied at RISD; you’ve exhibited at Colette in Paris, Pulse Miami, in Italy, in Tokyo … You have an art résumé most artists I know would kill a small dog to get. And I know dozens of art centers across North America and Europe that would be more than happy to build an entire program where you can engage in a vigorous “forum for ideas and feelings about the world we live in.” All you would have to do is show up. They would probably pay your way. I agree with you that contemporary art has a problem, and that problem is the obscene amount of money passing through a globalized and elite corner of the art world. As an active member of said art world, I was embarrassed by the crap that came out of art fair week in Miami last year. I felt the heavy burden of “how am I going to explain this shit” when Damien Hirst unloaded his idiotic dots onto the world. I put up with awful museum curation that is little more than asset enhancement for private art collections that will be unloaded at auction houses a few years later. And I watch oil barons stock private art museums in old dairy barns with the saddest laundry list of safe, contemporary works and wonder how someone spending so much money on so much art could learn so little from it. Yes, the world is fucked up, and the art world is a reflection of that. But that brings me to my third point. “The galleries in Chelsea, on the west side of Manhattan” in the “zone of luxury condos” where you live are a tiny sample of the art world. They may be that part of the art world that everybody talks about; whose exhibitions get reviewed in glossy art magazines; from whom museums acquire new work — they may be the center of the art universe, but they are a minuscule part of it. Let me tell you about the one-armed punk chick who sews art dolls and sells them at Frenchmen Art Market in New Orleans. Let me tell you about the sculptor <http://tinyurl.com/bv69o7u> in Vermont whose constructions sing the entropy of the rust belt. Let me tell you about the painter <http://tinyurl.com/kwja65u> in Maine whose landscapes are a bridge between 19th-century Romanticism and 20th-century Modernism, landscapes that speak to a 21st-century way of seeing <http://tinyurl.com/lvb2akr> . Let me tell you about the nonrepresentational painter in New Jersey whose colorful paintings speak to the microcosmic/macrocosmic tension of contemporary life <http://tinyurl.com/la96xeu> . Let me tell you about the gallery <http://tinyurl.com/kzzvobw> in Portland, Oregon, that’s closing after a three-year run of exhibiting some of the most compelling collage and assemblage work being made today. Let me tell you about the curator whose website <http://tinyurl.com/bkz29gf> sells beautiful, witty, smart contemporary artwork for less than $1,000. Let me tell you about walking into an installation <http://tinyurl.com/m6wokyh> in a gallery in Montreal, turning to my partner, and, for the first time, being able to explain, “this is how my brain works.” Let me tell you about the art that makes me angry, makes me cry, makes me feel like there is still hope for this world, and then let’s go to Provincetown or Harrisburg or Taos or Seattle and see it. I am over hearing from people within jogging distance of the Chelsea galleries that the whole of contemporary art is over; that art is no longer emotionally or intellectually fulfilling; that art is too expensive even for millionaires. I’m done reading articles titled “Why Does So Much New Abstraction Look the Same?,” <http://tinyurl.com/majz7lh> written by people who haven’t figured out that Manhattan has bridges and tunnels and a subway. And I’m tired of pretending that a global elite has a monopoly on the _expression_ of “ideas and feelings,” when there are thousands of people working every day outside of that slipstream as proof otherwise. So David, please, take your head out of your ass and your ass out of New York. Or, to quote you <http://tinyurl.com/d6er454> , “Here’s your ticket pack your bag: time for jumpin’ overboard / The transportation is here … ”_Ric Kasini Kadour_Hyperallergic >>> ALTERNATE HED Vatican realizes it commissioned a lot of jaw-dropping art made by gay men._TylerGreene >>> OVER 50 PERCENT OF ART IS FAKE As the auction and fair season gets into full swing this week in London, Switzerland’s Fine Art Expert Institute (FAEI) has a solemn warning for collectors across the art market: buyer beware."When you buy an apartment, you always get an appraisal first. But in the art world, until recently, you could buy works for 10 million euros without sufficient documentation," says FAEI chief Yann Walther. But that is changing amid soaring prices in an art market where works worth an estimated $60 billion change hands each year. The ballooning amounts up for grabs have also hiked the incentive for art forgers, and scientists like Walther and Mottaz are increasingly being called upon to supplement efforts by traditional art experts and conservationists to authenticate works. Half artwork in circulation fake The art world has in recent years been rocked by forgery scandals, revealing fake works attributed to a long line of masters, including Paul Gauguin, Marc Chagall, Jackson Pollock and Leger. Experts estimate a full half of all artworks in circulation today are fake -- a number that is difficult to verify but that Walther says is, if anything, an underestimate. Between 70 and 90 percent of works that pass through FAEI turn out to be fake, he says. His institute sits inside the Geneva Freeports, a heavily-guarded toll- and customs-free zone where collectors from around the world store more than a million artworks, including Picassos, Van Goghs, Monets and apparently a Leonardo da Vinci. It can be tricky spotting fakes with the naked eye, but top-notch lab equipment helps. _AFP/ArtDaily/artnet >>> BENDOR GROSVENOR TRIES TO UNSCRAMBLE THE REMBRANDT MESS by Marion Maneker The great Bendor Grosvenor tries to explain the mess that the Rembrandt Research Project has made of the artist’s oeuvre. Here’s how it happened but you’ll have to—and ought to—click through <http://tinyurl.com/ld7ol6u> to read Grosvenor’s very sensible explanations for why so many of the works that are still disputed have not be reclaimed by their institutions: "In the first half of the 20th century, Rembrandt was believed to have painted some 600-650 works. But from the 1970s onwards that number shrank rapidly to around 250. "What happened? Put simply, Rembrandt connoisseurship (that is, the ability to tell who painted what by close inspection) imploded. In 1968, the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) was established with an admirable objective – to say definitively what was and was not a Rembrandt. But two key factors doomed the RRP’s approach. First, it tried to make attributions by committee, thus allowing indecision and groupthink to reign. It is easier and less risky to say “no” to a picture than to say “yes”. In such situations, the hardest-to-please scholars gain kudos for being “disciplined”, and influence others. "Second, connoisseurship itself fell out of fashion. “New art history” (which became dominant from the late 1970s onwards) believed that connoisseurship was a redundant, elitist practice, and was no longer taught as a key skill for art historians and curators. Social, economic and philosophical generalisation was the order of the day. As a result, the wide and informed debate that should have taken place every time a Rembrandt attribution was questioned didn’t happen. Few ever came to Rembrandt’s defence."_ArtMarketMonitor >>> FRIEZE: CO-FOUNDER DEFENDS 'IKEA FOR MILLIONAIRES' Matthew Slotover has just launched into an impassioned defence of the millionaires who will flood into London this week to buy works by established and rising stars of the contemporary art world. The co-founder of Frieze, one of the most successful contemporary art fairs in the world, rejects criticism that buying art has become little more than rich people showing off their wealth. “We should be grateful to them,” he says. “They are supporting museums and the whole system that makes it all work. That means artists can get a good living.” The 12-year-old fair has become so successful that it has sparked a mini arts jamboree in London each year for the four days that it runs. Hundreds of satellite events have sprung up, as the major international collectors, galleries and artists come to town. With that success has come criticism, however, that the event is little more than an “Ikea for millionaires”. The art writer Sarah Kent once said that it was mostly about “pig ignorant” rich people looking for a safer investment than the stock market. It was more commerce than creativity, she said. “Most don’t see art as purely a display of wealth. For many, there is a genuine engagement and they want to support the culture, and enrich their lives and engage in lifelong learning,” Mr Slotover says. “They could go and buy planes or yachts or cars, which wouldn’t do any of those things. It’s a minority of the wealthy that decide to buy art. If you look through the Sunday Times Rich List, most are not art collectors.” He also rejects claims that the fair is over-commercialised. “Of course, it’s commerce, because it’s all for sale. But to say that it’s not creative is inaccurate. We could have run the fairs in a more commercial way and made higher profits, but it would have had less of a cultural impact. “We don’t want that to be forgotten. We feel really strongly there’s a cultural, intellectual and city-conscious aspect as well. If it had just been pure commerce, like an auction house, it would not have been interesting to us.”_IndependentUK >>> ERIC FISCHL: ‘WHAT AMERICA WANTS IS ARTISTS WHO ARE DOING VERY EXPENSIVE TOYS’ ‘I’d always avoided art fairs like the plague,” Eric Fischl is telling me in his studio on Long Island, New York, surrounded on all sides by his own larger-than-life paintings of art fairs < <http://tinyurl.com/k4wvmtg>> . “Now I have been I still think they are the plague,” he says. “It’s like every single reason for art to exist does not exist in those places.” An exhibition of Fischl’s art-show paintings (priced between £200,000 and £400,000) will open at the Victoria Miro Gallery, in London, this week, to coincide with the Frieze art fair. He hopes that people can go to Frieze and then come to his show and see what they looked like at Frieze. If you have never been to Frieze, his paintings capture much of its dead-eyed atmosphere, its comic and dispiriting juxtapositions. In Fischl’s Art Fair: Booth #4 The Price <http://tinyurl.com/n9xz4x4> , a distracted crowd of buyers cluster around an amorphous Ken Price sculpture, not looking. Behind them, an enormous intimate self-portrait by Joan Semmel goes unremarked. “The big collectors do this kind of speed-dating thing,” Fischl says. “They try to get in and out before anyone buys what they are after and certainly before the hoi polloi gets to look. And then you’ve got people who are just there for the social scene. So you have people texting or not paying any attention at all. It is as if the art is not there, or that they think it has no effect on them. But when you stop the moment you can see this weird world that is taking place. They are being regarded and judged by the work itself in some ways.” “Instead of any grown-up conversation, what we have instead, what America apparently wants, is artists who are doing very expensive toys,” he says. “Jeff Koons is a good example. What kind of culture expresses itself only in childlike behaviour? Shit jokes and childish humour – and is greeted with huge popularity.” Fischl’s art-show paintings, for all their cool comic appeal, were made to portray the emptiness of that compact. “That world has just become a celebration of money-making,” Fischl says. “I went to a fair a few weeks ago and in the middle of this thing was a De Kooning painting. I thought ‘Wow!’ It turned out it was in a booth for a real estate company. They had this De Kooning for sale as well as the $40m homes. You could buy the house and get the painting for an extra $5m or whatever. The barriers have collapsed between the commercial and the art world. It is not irony – it is just cynicism. The work is not intended to have you look and think twice, which is what irony does. It’s cynical in that they couldn’t give a shit whether you get it or you don’t get it.”_GuardianUK >>> THERE IS A $240 SUSHI ROLL ON THE MENU AT LARRY GAGOSIAN’S NEW RESTAURANT _NYObserver >>> CADY NOLAND PHOTOCOPY by greg What even is this? <http://tinyurl.com/mcx7b9t> I flipped by it without noticing until now, but Christie's is selling this Cady Noland photocopy in London this week <http://tinyurl.com/pde54ef> . It's actually a trimmed photocopy [7 5/8 x 6 1/8 inches] with the title Tanya, and it's dated 1989. The estimate is £15,000 - £20,000. At first I figured it was some kind of production document, an intermediate step between the wire service photo of Patty Hearst and the giant silkscreen on aluminum sculpture of her, which is at MoMA. <http://tinyurl.com/bas2c95> But as you see, it's nothing of the sort. The photocopy looks to be at least one generation lower resolution than the sculpture. It's derived from the sculpture's source image, a fork in that image's road. Maybe this is how Noland explored ideas and form: making copies, and cutting and sizing them into various configurations. Maybe she makes some copies, cuts them, and then recopies the results. Or maybe it's a souvenir of some kind. An edition? Who knows? But if you want to see what it's like, just print the image above in landscape on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, then trim the sides, and you'll get pretty close._greg.org >>> KOREA’S TOP COLLECTORS AND THEIR MUSEUMS by Marion Maneker There’s a lot of talk in Europe and the US about private and corporate-funded art museums. But in Korea, the connection between corporate authority and art has been established for some time. So much so that The Korea Herald decided to do a round up of the collectors and collections drive the Korean art world” "What makes art so fascinating to the superrich? Collecting artwork can be seen as a high-class hobby that befits the lives of society’s wealthiest. In fact, one way to measure wealth in modern society is how avid they are in collecting expensive art. "This measure has become gender-irrelevant. While men were not frequent customers in the world of art in the past, the situation has changed drastically. "Instead of collecting random pieces of work, these superrich collectors focus on finding those that can reflect their tastes and personalities. Art has also become an important factor in managing their businesses. The Korea Herald Special Investigative Team has researched some of the collections and galleries owned by Korea’s top corporate tycoons"._ArtMarketMonitor >>> BERN ART MUSEUM WALKS BACK REPORTS OF DECISION ON GURLITT HOARD by Marion Maneker Art Lawyer Nicholas O’Donnell does a fine job sorting out the confusion over yesterday’s apparently premature declaration that the Bern Museum had made a decision upon the gift of the the Gurlitt hoard: "yesterday the Sonntagszeitung reported that the museum had indeed reached a decision to accept the collection and the role (which would, presumably, extend beyond the 1,280 works taken from his Schwabing apartment in Munich, and also to the several hundred objects in Austria, which are beyond the reach of the Bavarians). Reuters took up the story in English, with the headline that “Swiss art museum to accept German hoarder’s paintings: paper.” "Today, the museum walked the story back in multiple Swiss publications (all in German, from what I have found so far). The Tages Anzeiger in Zürich has an article today entitled “Bern Kunstmuseum Denies Gurlitt Decision.” The article describes the Sonntagszeitung article as “premature and partially incorrect.” The museum stated that the foundation’s board (responsible for the museum) declined to comment, citing ongoing confidential conversations with both Germany and Bavaria about the handling of the case. Foundation President Christoph Schäublin was cited as fearful of being “overrun,” and therefor declined to make a public announcement, according to museum spokeswoman Ruth Gilgen Hamisultane in her communication to the TA. The Berner Zeitung followed suit in confirming the lack of an actual decision. "So as of today, the deadline remains November 26, 2014." _ArtMarketMonitor >>> THE DAILY PIC by Blake Gopnik I saw this piece <http://tinyurl.com/qbx35ev> by Andy Coolquitt at Lisa Cooley’s art gallery in New York, and it reminded me that I’d meant to write about him when I saw his work at Art Basel’s design fair in Switzerland this summer. That gets at what I like about him: How, when he’s at his best, he perfectly straddles both design and art. His improvisatory, almost-expressionist, close-to-sculptural, lamp-like objects undo the sleek design-y-ness of so much that passes for “avant-garde” furnishing. (In the case of today’s Daily Pic, titled white/worm/bad/perm/lean/squeeze/wipe/learn/lip/germ/iight, the categories are further confused by the fact that the plush “painting” behind the “lamp” in my shot is actually part of the same, two-piece artwork. You are supposed to lean into its comfy stuffed painting as you contemplate its light.) On the other hand, the fact that many of Coolquitt’s objects could be mistaken for lamps–or rather, actually used as lighting–gives them a more-than-a-pretty face energy that a lot of similarly “unmonumental” sculpture never achieves. My enthusiasm for Coolquitt comes less from what his work is, as from what it is not: it is not-design and not-sculpture, at the same time._BlakeGopnik >>> “HOME” IN EL SEGUNDO by William Poundstone For its new exhibition “Home,” the El Segundo Museum of Art has been sub-divided into a designer show house. A series of model rooms display mid-century modern design and ESMoA’s typically recherché selection of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Here <http://tinyurl.com/nvk3ct4>, an unfinished bathroom has a Joseph Cornell collage in lieu of a mirror. The sink is by Henry Dreyfuss and the towel rack is an untitled 2012 sculpture by Taka Kagitomi. Partly visible through the corner gap is a copy of van Ruisdael’s The Jewish Cemetery by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, the genius of the Austrian Biedermeier. This room <http://tinyurl.com/o565ks2> combines a Eero Aarnio Bubble Chair with a Dreyfuss refrigerator that’s seen plenty of use. Framed, domestic-themed photographs are by Bernd and Hilla Becher and Julius Shulman and Juergen Nogai. There are interesting small paintings by Corot, Maurice Denis, and Henri Le Sidanier; a Joseph Cornell box and collages; photorealism on paper by Richard Estes and Ralph Goings. Worth a trip to El Segundo itself is a classic Jan van Goyen monochrome, Dune Landscape with Travelers Near an Inn, a Church in Distance <http://tinyurl.com/krga6bx>. It was auctioned at Christie’s Amsterdam last year. As usual for ESMoA, there’s a Teutonic accent. Witness a Landscape in Hessen (1868, <http://tinyurl.com/l9vfwug> ) by Andreas Achenbach, a near-abstract nocturne by Fritz Overbeck, and an 1849 Arnold Böcklin Ruins in Moonlight (Böcklin was a favorite of both Hitler and Duchamp <http://tinyurl.com/k458och> ). Like motorcycles in museums? Check. They’ve got a 1972 Honda CB750. Burnt out by iterations of Duchamp’s urinal? ESMoA presents a toilet for what it is, a modern design object. It’s Henry Dreyfuss’ Crane “Criterion” model, 1951. But the toilet can’t compete with Egmont Arens’ Streamliner Meat Slicer <http://tinyurl.com/lfzbwyo> , or the rustic den dressed up with aqua floor and drawings by Edouard Vuilllard and Lyonel Feininger <http://tinyurl.com/l3cv2lw> ._LosAngelesCountyMuseumOnFire >>> THE HAMMER MUSEUM HAD ITS ANNUAL GALA, AND THIS YEAR IT HONORED L.A. ARTIST MARK BRADFORD. And even though half of Hollywood showed up in couture, the best dressed person at the party was John Baldessari, who wore a Rodarte women’s football jersey. <http://tinyurl.com/kwuwohv> _NYObserver __._,_.___ Art Faul The Artist Formerly Known as Prints ------ Art for Cars: art4carz.com Stills That Move: http://www.artfaul.com Greens: http://www.inkjetprince.com Camera Works - The Washington Post . |
