SOTHEBY'S CHIEF BLASTED
Henry Wyndham, chairman of Sotheby’s UK, was in a grouse hunting accident in Scotland where he was shot in the arm, throat, and face, sustaining 52 lead pellet wounds overall. Wyndham is expected to fully recover. Wyndham closed the most expensive work at auction, a Giacometti, in 2010._DailyMailUK
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MUSEUM OF SEX PRESENTS: "F*CK ART"
"This is not an exhibition for the timid"
In response to the growing anti-institution sentiment pervasive in our culture, the Museum of Sex has engaged a group of 20 select street artists to occupy the third floor gallery at the Museum of Sex. Showcasing work that pushes the boundaries of our relationship to sexuality in public space, "F*CK ART" invites a dialogue around the power of visual provocation in the urban environment. <http://tinyurl.com/cdxm7e5>
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ART GALLERIES GO BIG by Blake Gopnik
This campaign season, the talk across America is about tightened belts and reduced expectations. The art world hasn’t heard it. New York’s biggest galleries are about to get bigger, and some smaller players are expanding as well.
“We’re doing well as a gallery, and the ambitious new space reflects that,” says Maureen Bray, a director of the Sean Kelly Gallery. She’s barely audible above construction being done on an arena-size space due to open late in October. The gallery is moving up from 6,500 square feet in the neighborhood called Chelsea, home of the world’s biggest art souk, to almost four times that floor space farther uptown. The 21-year-old business is known for showing avant-gardists such as Marina Abramovic (lots of nude bodies) and Joseph Kosuth (neon writing as art), but has recently added market favorites such as Kehinde Wiley, court painter to the lords of hip-hop.
Sean Kelly says that “instead of feeling the pinch in the recession—and I almost feel guilty for saying this—the high end of the market has been inured ... We’re in a unique kind of insulated bubble.” The “über-wealthy,” he says, have more money than ever and have a vastly enhanced interest in art—as do Americans of all classes. “There’s this incredible hunger for understanding our culture visually, and we’re the happy recipients of it.” Kelly insists that furthering such understanding is the true reason for his expansion. “I do not want to be Larry Gagosian light, like several of my colleagues do,” he says. “It’s about quality issues—I want to make the best shows.”
Art-world giants are also growing. David Zwirner’s gallery already fills most of a block, but he’s adding a new five-story building—plus a vast new venue in London. Hauser & Wirth, one of the European market’s most important forces, with galleries in Zurich and London, is adding 23,000 square feet in Chelsea. Even the 52-year-old Pace Gallery continues to grow, adding a new Chelsea space to its three other New York locations. New York is still the center of the global art market, but with so much competition dealers are looking elsewhere; Pace expanded to Beijing in 2008 and is opening a second gallery in London this October.
Marc Glimcher, president of Pace, explains that galleries are now judged by how many notable artists they represent, and as the rosters grow, the spaces must too. Expansion, he says, seems to be the art world’s main business strategy—and every dealer mocks his colleagues for embracing it when the bubble could burst any time. “Are we completely insane? Absolutely not—says the lemming to the cliff. I think it’s the blaze-of-glory thing.”_Newsweek/DailyBeast
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SUPERSIZE CHELSEA!: IN NEW YORK’S MAIN ART DISTRICT, IT’S GO BIG OR GO HOME
In the early 1990s, most real-estate-seeking New Yorkers overlooked the gray smudge on Manhattan’s West Side known as Chelsea, then still a wasteland of deserted freight tracks, turpentine fumes and auto-body garages. But for the throngs of art galleries being swiftly priced out of Soho by fashion boutiques and Dean & Delucas, it offered cavernous, column-free architecture at bargain-basement prices.
Twenty years, two Gagosian Galleries and a Comme des Garçons later, Chelsea art dealers are fretting that the legacy of Soho has come back to haunt them. About a third of the neighborhood’s galleries have been shuttered in the last five years as High Line-inflated real estate prices and an influx of deep-pocketed fashion and design firms have forced out many of the smaller dealers. At its height, Chelsea was home to more than 350 galleries; today only 204 remain, according to Rice & Associates real estate adviser Earl Bateman.
But it would be premature to pronounce the world’s premier gallery district dead. In fact, business appears to be better than ever for a few galleries—and it’s not hard to guess which ones. This fall and the months following, Friedrich Petzel, Sean Kelly, David Zwirner, The Pace Gallery and Hauser & Wirth, are set to engulf the West Side with a wave of new galleramas: stadium-scale exhibition centers with square footage stretching into the tens of thousands and calendars filled with blockbuster exhibitions.
This is the new Chelsea gallery scene—where competition has gone beyond survival of the fittest and evolved into a full-fledged superspecies. Even in the digital age, when business can increasingly be done online—and the art-fair era, when a large proportion of selling is done on a whistle-stop tour of the fairs that have sprung up around the world—an expansionist few insist that not only do brick-and-mortar galleries still matter, but that bigger is better.
“The artists like the idea of not having too many neighbors. It’s not a shopping mall; it’s about them and their work,” he said. Indeed, satisfying artists may be a more vital business practice now that elite galleries routinely face off to sign the top earners. In the past two years, Sean Kelly snagged Alec Soth from Gagosian, Pace won Yoshitomo Nara from Marianne Boesky and Friedrich Petzel poached Dana Schutz from Zach Feuer.
Or take this summer’s very public stealing of Thaddeus Ropac’s thunder. The Paris dealer had announced that Anselm Kiefer would inaugurate the opening of his second gallery in that city this October. Six weeks later, he was hit with the news that Gagosian Gallery had decided that it would open its new Paris space, also this fall, with its own exhibition of works by Kiefer. (Adding insult to injury, Kiefer called Gagosian’s space “so inspiring you can envision the artworks in it immediately.”) “The good galleries are having trouble keeping their artists unless they can offer them a global platform or a space that’s magnificent,” said art adviser Wendy Cromwell. Full article here <http://tinyurl.com/9828k9h> _GalleristNY
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GIRL WITH PICKLE
<http://tinyurl.com/8vmr3jr> <http://tinyurl.com/9l8fjs5> _AnonymousWorks
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WHY IT'S WRONG TO REJECT CHARLES SAATCHI'S GIFT TO THE NATION by Jonathan Jones
Why are Britain's public galleries spurning the generosity of Charles Saatchi? This week it was reported that the collector's personal treasury of late-20th-century British art, worth an estimated £30m and offered two years ago as a gift to the nation, has had no takers. A proposed deal with Arts Council England has proved elusive. More bizarrely, Tate galleries appear to have rejected Saatchi's offer, as well.
According to a spokesperson for the Saatchi gallery in London: "Nick Serota asked to see the proposal for the gift and a list of all the works which we sent him. He never replied so we took that to mean he wasn't interested." A spokesperson for Tate told the Guardian the galleries had not wished to intervene in ongoing discussions with the arts council. Either way, two years on, Saatchi's gift is without a home. The collector now plans to establish a foundation for the art works, and to appoint a board of trustees to manage it.
I find this snub baffling. There is plenty in Saatchi's collection that would surely become a visitor highlight at either Tate Modern or Tate Britain in London, not to mention the Tate galleries in Liverpool and St Ives. Is Tate Britain really so rich in contemporary wonders that it can afford to spurn Saatchi's collection of Grayson Perry ceramics <http://tinyurl.com/csp4ohr> , or the Chapman brothers' Tragic Anatomies <http://tinyurl.com/cyxo74p> or Tracey Emin's My Bed <http://tinyurl.com/d5jmvzt> ? Emin's bed caused a sensation at Tate Britain in 1999, when it was exhibited in the artist's Turner prize show. Why wouldn't they want it as a permanent exhibit?
Saatchi's offer also includes Richard Wilson's tank of glittering, eerily reflective black sump oil, 20:50 <http://tinyurl.com/c5tqx3> . Emin's bed has its detractors. But 20:50, first created at Matt's Gallery <http://tinyurl.com/c2b5jk4> in 1987, is not a piece of "young British art", a part of YBA culture; it does not represent an art trend or a celebrity artist. For me, it is simply a modern masterpiece, a contemporary classic. So why doesn't Tate Modern want it? The Bankside museum has just opened a sublime new space called, for God's sake, The Tanks. 20:50 could have been commissioned for it.
Perhaps there have been arguments behind the scenes about curatorial influence (Saatchi loves to curate: does he want a say in how galleries show his collection?) Perhaps there have been quibbles about obligations to show the work continuously, rather than keeping it in storage. This is speculation: those involved have said they do not wish to comment further.
But I do know that Tate prides itself on a very different aesthetic take on contemporary art from that identified with Saatchi. The Tanks, for instance, opened with a festival of live art. Love it or loathe it, this is the kind of stuff Saatchi would not touch with a bargepole. His art collecting in the 1980s and 1990s, a period when he was central to new British art, was strong on shocks and thrills, low on the sort of cultural theory that loves such forms as live art. By contrast, Tate has tended to champion what it sees as the "real" international avant garde, artists who are big on theory, and weaker when it comes to image-making power.
Tate did not light the fire of modern British art; Saatchi did. It was he who threw money at Damien Hirst when he was young and new and dangerous – and genuinely worth paying attention to. If art is about the new, we ought to have greater respect for Saatchi's championing of the Young British Artists, at a time when they really were young. The Tate made no such bold commitment, and now appears to want to write his achievement out of history.
A legacy of startling, provoking and occasionally genuinely great art stands as a testimony to Saatchi's guts. It is idiotic to reject his gift._GuardianUK
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CAPE MAY ART GALLERY UNVEILS ONE OF LAST KNOWN THOMAS KINKADE PAINTINGS
History was made this weekend when one of the last ever Thomas Kinkade paintings was unveiled. A picture is worth a thousand words <http://tinyurl.com/dxrybky> , and for the dozens of paintings that hang on the walls of the Victorian Walk Gallery; a thousand is just the start. The pieces are all part of the Thomas Kinkade Limited Edition Series. On Saturday the first in a series of paintings was unveiled in historic Cape May. The works were discovered in Kinkade's studio following his death.
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PETITION URGES CORCORAN LEADERS TO RECONSIDER BUILDING SALE
The New York Times reports that the opponents of a plan to sell the Corcoran Gallery’s 17th-century home in Washington D.C. have collected the signatures of 3,200 people asking the museum’s board to reconsider the recent decision to sell the space. The signatures were collected by the nonprofit Save the Corcoran Coalition._GalleristNY
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LA-LING by Che Schimmelvera
The 27 words of a LA artspeak to signal a group of people who are bound by language and appreciate nonpopulist art. The language shows a distain for the recent activities initiated by Jeffrey Deitch and the MOCA board of trustees under the influence of Eli Broad. Simultaneously this language is in solidarity with the released director Paul Schimmel. The 27 words are symbolic for the number of years Schimmel was the director at MOCA. The words should especially be used when viewing or attending LA art exhibitions.
1. Deesch /ˈdēsh/ adjective, An expressive term used as a sign of distaste for art that is overtly trying to appease a wide populist swath. /see-Transmission LA/. The word is a conflation of the sound of the transgressive director of MOCA and the distasteful onomatopoeia, jeesh.
2. Baldeseeya http://tinyurl.com/cdyz9z2
3. Opiened /ˈō pēnd/ Someone or something that was Baldeseeyaed in a negative way: “MOCA was opiened by several artists on the board of trustees after the firings of Paul Schimmel.” The word is derivative of Catherine Opie’s departure from the MOCA board after John Baldassari.
4. Barrymade <http://tinyurl.com/c7utz8y>
5. Obeyhed /ōˈbā hed/ adjective, Describes exhibition design or graphic materials around an art exhibition that are more suited for t-shirts or are gaudy, not reflecting modernist design associated with standard museum exhibition design.
6. Broaten /ˈbrō-ten/ adjective, The state in which the mission of the museum is inherently broken by powerful forces due to money and ego rather than the prevailing academic ethos of an era.
7. Schimmeyed <http://tinyurl.com/bqtqfwu>
8. Hellya Skellya /ˈhel-ē ə ˈskell- ē ə / verb, noun A curatorial boon; the act of presenting a great show that may define an epoch for a city.
9. Stong /stäng / verb, The action of a museum ridding itself of educational workshops and education-based curators. This phrase derives from the firing of curator Andrea Stang, coupled with the word gone; also a term for just being collateral damage in a bigger cleansing movement.
10. Elidazzled /ˈē-lī-ˈda zəld/ verb, The act of trying to cover up a major house cleaning of personnel by writing misleading documents. It also stands for conflicting and grey shaded actions that seem to be without a clear idea of what has happened and course for what will happen next.
11. Byrned /bərnd/ noun, The fear of a conspiracy involving an art institution, that major investments were made to gain control of the institution to slowly dissolve the institution and gain its major assets.
12. Martinalize /märt ˈēnəlˌīz/ verb, When a once preferred art group is disavowed by an institution and left without a voice of influence.
13. Blogstipation <http://tinyurl.com/cw6hcqw>
14. Scoopagula <http://tinyurl.com/cu322j5>
15. Derushayed /dē ro͞o SHād/ adjective An artist who engages in a movement late or behind others but is generally considered to have made the right decision
16. Opidion /ˈō pidyən/ noun, A posting in an opinion section of a public news source seen as a cover up or an opinion by a power institution, which is idiotic and riddled with falsehoods.
17. Discoamatics /disco ə matiks/ noun, A policy of ridding an art institution of challenging exhibitions for more populous exhibitions, still losing money but less per visitor.
18. Philanthrohole /fəˈlanTHrə hōl/ noun, Someone who spends a considerable amount of money on public endeavors and once was favored by the action but is now seen as an egomaniac in danger of destroying the very culture they once were viewed as saving.
19. Impressafist /imˈpres ə fist/ noun, A hegemonic force who wrongly believes they can see the genius vision of a director, curator or art movement when nobody else can. Like seeing that Impressionist art was an important step away from 19th century art academies.
20. Deitchbag /dē CH bag/ noun, When an art director misuses their power or influence to talk down or intimidate subordinates.
21. LA-LAlinger /lə lə ling ər/ noun, One who speaks in the LAling language at institutional events to find other LAlingers, as a way of establishing similar knowledge or views on art topics.
22. Ling-signs /liNG-sīns/ noun, verb, Waving at someone in an art institution by flashing a peace sign /two fingers held palm out/ on the right hand in a spread five fingers, palm out, and terminating with a re-flashing of the peace sign. The sign designates the Laling hello by indicating the number “27”, the years of Paul Schimmel’s tenure as director at MOCA.
23. Mocadus /mōkə dəs/ noun, verb, An exodus of a once preferred audience from an art institution.
24. Saturmocation /saCHər məˈkā SHun/ noun, The tipping point for either side of a story about the politics of an art institution that causes the audience to stop paying attention.
25. Defixedmocalation <http://tinyurl.com/bpwttkn>.
26. Eliternity /ēlī ˈtərnitē/ noun, When the institution facing an insurrection controls the message long enough to keep its controversial policies in place in perpetuity due to defixedmocalation.
27. Che Schimmelvera /SHā SHimel vərə/ noun, A martyred figure in art who causes an audience to rebel against institutions it once supported._baldeseeya.blogspot
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AMANDA HOPKINSON REMEMBERS PHOTOGRAPHER MARTINE FRANCK
One of only a handful of women to be part of the Magnum agency. Writes Ms. Hopkinson: “Her first solo exhibition was planned for the ICA in London [in 1970]; when she saw that the invitations were embossed with the information that her husband [Henri Cartier-Bresson] would be present at the launch, she cancelled the show.” <http://tinyurl.com/czemvbt> _GalleristNY
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TRANSCENDENT ARTIFICE by Blake Gopnik
This <http://tinyurl.com/d4puemt> is “The Monument to Cleopatra”, a gilded marble solid made by the late James Lee Byars in 1988, now on view all by itself at the Michael Werner gallery uptown in New York. The piece has some of the quasi- (or pseudo-) mystical force of the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001. Whether or not you buy its apparent claims to transcendence, you have to credit Byars with having captured the feel of a fetish.
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PORTRAIT OF A LADY: HANS HOLBEIN'S LADY WITH A SQUIRREL AND A STARLING by Jonathan Jones
Hans Holbein’s mesmerising, waxen realism preserves this woman’s <http://tinyurl.com/bpjquga> features forever. Suddenly we are in the modern world. Where medieval tomb effigies pictured people as ideal types, this is a meticulous visual record of an individual – a true portrait. The German painter Hans Holbein the Younger brought the new artistic skills of the Renaissance with him when he visited London in the 1520s. Imagine seeing portraits of this quality for the first time. Holbein revolutionised art in Britain. He is one of British art’s true geniuses.
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CHIEFS TACKLE A NEW PROJECT: ART AT ARROWHEAD STADIUM
Kansas City in the 21st century has a split personality. It’s an arts town! No, it’s a sports town!
Now that duality of identity is being reinforced by the Hunt family’s latest idea: a “world class” collection of art to be installed at Arrowhead Stadium.
A broad call for artists has been issued. Letters went out last month to several local gallery owners, inviting participation in the Kansas City Chiefs Art Program. Top executives of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Kemper Museum and the Kansas City Art Institute are on board.
Dallas-based Sharron Hunt Munson, daughter of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, is directing the program with input from her brothers: team chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, Lamar Hunt Jr. and Daniel Hunt. She envisions artwork at Arrowhead that “celebrates Midwestern culture.”_KansasCityStar
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CREATIVE TIME’S INAUGURAL ARTIST SAND CASTLE COMPETITION, IN PHOTOGRAPHS
<http://tinyurl.com/d8den4u>
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CREATIVE TIME WANTS YOU!
For the 2012 Creative Time Summit, we are seeking a cultural producer from our dynamic global audience who is tackling issues of inequity and using creative strategies to mobilize social change. The Summit will be held on October 12th and 13th, 2012 at New York University’s Skirball Center. We seek an inspirational 8-minute talk about a single project that speaks to the issue of wealth inequity, highlights the political implications of your practice, and showcases what your work has done to discuss, expose, or challenge a specific issue. More details here. <http://tinyurl.com/cuyv53v> _NBC40
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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE SPEAKS UP ABOUT PUSSY RIOT
The Department of State released a short statement Friday with the heading, “Sentencing of Pussy Riot Punk Band Members in Russia,” through spokesperson Victoria Nuland:
“The United States is concerned about both the verdict and the disproportionate sentences handed down by a Moscow court in the case against the members of the band Pussy Riot and the negative impact on freedom of expression in Russia. We urge Russian authorities to review this case and ensure that the right to freedom of expression is upheld.” _viaGalleristNY
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ITALIAN-AMERICANS OUTRAGED OVER MAYOR'S PLANS FOR COLUMBUS CIRCLE ART PROJECT
Hey, show a little respect for Christopher Columbus! Italian-American activists are outraged over a new plan to place an art installation around the statue of the explorer that stands in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. The planned installation, by Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi, is supposed to give New Yorkers a new perspective on Chris by enclosing his statue at the top of his pillar in a trendy, modern living room six stories above the street. But some Italian-Americans hate the idea so much, they’re crying fuhgeddaboutit! “Christopher Columbus is turned into some clownish figure in the middle of the room that many visitors are sure to find amusing — [it’s a] fun-house view of Christopher Columbus,” said Arthur Piccolo, a vocal Italian-American advocate in the city. Rosario Iaconis, chairman of the Italic Institute of America, called the plan “a bit of an abomination.” “Erecting this living-room set around the statue demeans the community,” he said. “Mayor Bloomberg has had issues with the community and the Columbus Parade. He’s never made amends. I think [The statue] is the height of folly.” Bloomberg put out a statement supporting the installation <http://tinyurl.com/bod29yd> , which will open at Columbus Circle on Sept. 20 and run until Nov. 18. Columbus Day is Oct. 8. _NYPost
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KIM SELECTED FOR VENICE BIENNALE KOREA PAVILION
The Arts Council Korea announced Monday the appointment of Kim Seung-duk to curate the Korea Pavilion of the 2013 Venice Biennale. A nine-member group of art experts selected Kim as the commissioner for the Korean exhibition for her expertise in and knowledge of international art as well as international curatorial experience and a broad network that can effectively promote Korean art to an international audience, the council said. Kim, 58, is the director of international exhibitions at the French contemporary art center Le Consortium and project director for city development projects of Doha, Qatar. She hinted that she will not present a solo exhibition, but will consider combining different art fields such as music or video and come up with ways to better represent Korean art._KoreaHerald
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INTERVIEW: ROBERT LONGO
<http://tinyurl.com/c3kyzor>
