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This Fine Island, a postcolonial ballad by Gavin Hipkins that revisits Charles Darwin's journey to the Bay of Islands in 1835, will have its first screening in Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, an event that aims to create a space between new cinema and contemporary art. In Hipkins' adaption, Darwin's nineteenth-century travel writing in The Voyage of the Beagle becomes a vehicle for present day tourisms, travel romance, and racial othering, against the backdrop of New Zealand's lush landscape.
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Comic book sale breaks through the $2m barrier
A rare copy of the first issue of Action Comics, featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold recently for a record price of $2.16 million. The issue was published in 1938 and cost 10 cents.
Image: cover of Action Comics No. 1
The art opening experience made over as art
Grant Stevens has been commissioned by Sydney's MCA to make a video work for the museum foyer to sit alongside the piece by Imants Tillers' featuring the names of the MCA's patrons. For between $1,000 and $20,000, a new generation of patrons can see their names in the video with its audio component echoing the conversations that might be heard at an opening.
Stevens says he is less interested in the politics of patronage than in drawing out the sometimes uncomfortable conversations between people in personal and social settings. “The starting point for the work is thinking about the experience of attending openings, specifically MCA openings, and my personal associations with the Imants Tillers painting in the foyer,” he says. “Hovering above the crowds…the work has a slightly intimidating presence for me. It is a reminder that art's history is intrinsically linked with people and money.”
Image: Grants Stevens, Crushing (2009), video still
Glenn Murcutt ruled out for Australia's new Venice pavilion
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt has been ruled out of contention for Australia's new Venice Biennale pavilion because he doesn't have previous experience with similar cultural projects. Spokesperson Simon Mordant, who is coordinating the project, says: “This has to start with the credentials and go on to the design, not the other way around.”
Image: Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre, NSW Australia, designed by architect Glenn Murcutt
Norman Foster reconstructs Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car for Design Miami
Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion car will be a feature of this year's Design Miami. The three wheeler, tear shaped vehicle that overturned and killed its driver at the 1933 World's Fair has been reconstructed by Norman Foster and will be shown alongside Fuller's Fly's Eye dome.
Image: Buckminster Fuller and his Dymaxion car in front of the Fly's Eye dome
Justin Paton picks up the 2012 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship
Justin Paton has been awarded the 2012 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, which offers a residency of at least 6 months in Menton, France and $75,000. Currently senior curator at Christchurch Art Gallery, he is also well known as the author of How to Look at a Painting and presenter of the accompanying television series seen this year on TV1.
Another Power 100 list
In its annual Power 100 issue, Art & Auction positions Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamid bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the daughter of the Emir of Qatar, as the most influential person in the art world. Shiekha Al-Mayassa is the chairwoman of the Qatar Museums Authority, an organisation overseeing the country's cultural initiatives including the world's biggest art buying spree.
You can see the Power 100 top ten here.
Image: Sheikha Al-Mayassa at the opening of Takashi Murakami's exhibition at Versailles in 2010
Hye Rim Lee's Crystal City goes under the hammer at Christie's HK auction
Hye Rim Lee's Crystal City (Grey) sold for USD22,500 (against an estimate of USD17,900-23,100) at Christie's Asian Contemporary Art sale in Hong Kong on 27 November.
Image: Hye Rim Lee, Crystal City (Grey) 2007, C-type print, 182 x 182 cm, edition of 5
Art museum goes underground to take on bank loans
Frankfurt's Staedel Museum is expanding underground to double its storage space and create room for bank loans. Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and DZ Bank agreed in 2008 to hand over more than 8oo works to the Staedel, including works by Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol. The loan includes an option to buy the art at 25% of its value, without interest over 25 years.
Image: Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt
Billy Apple®: A History of the Brand
Billy Apple®: A History of the Brand runs at Starkwhite to 8 December 2011. The works in the exhibition record the artist's transformation from an individual artist into a brand. The process culminated in 2007 when Apple became a registered trademark, formalising his status as an art brand.
Image: Billy Apple® A History of the Brand, Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam
Does art need bankers?
100 financiers, entrepreneurs, collectors, curators, dealers and academics gathered in Florence recently for a private conference on the future of art and finance. The cue for the conference was the exhibition Money and Beauty: Bankers, Boticelli, and the Bonfire of Vanities at the Palazzo Strozzi. The discussions ranged across a variety of topics including: whether financial centres necessarily became cultural centres, the shift of economic and cultural power from the West to the East, how art tracks money and power, and whether the art world has been hijacked by the same forces that possessed the world of finance. Read more…
Image: artworks from Andy Warhol's Dollar Sign series
Image: artworks from Andy Warhol's Dollar Sign series
Home Alone in Miami
Hedge fund manager Adam Sender has joined the ranks of collectors who mount curated presentations of their art collections during Art Basel Miami Beach. Sender's collection manager Sarah Aibel is presenting 70 works from Sanders holdings of over 1000 works in his vacant 5,0000 square-foot Miami property.
Instead of attempting the transform the house into a gallery, Aibel says she made the entire exhibition about toying with the notion of displaying art in a domestic space. Even the bathrooms have been given over to art. One is dedicated to Ramond Pettibon and in another Richard Prince's image of Brooke Shields hangs above a real tub in the children's bathroom.
Image:Urs Fischer's What if the phone rings, 2003
Art that is completed when the viewer is drunk
“For centuries, alcohol has played an important role in the art scene,” says Erwin Wurm, so it seems entirely appropriate for his latest series, Drinking Sculptures, to be opened at the Bass Museum of Art on the same day as Art Basel Miami Beach, an art fair renowned for its partying, opulent dinners and champagne-fueled hobnobbing.
The sculptures in the series open to reveal bottles of liquor and the artist considers them complete only when the viewer is drunk. At this stage it is unclear whether visitors will be able to drink freely from the sculptures, or whether the museum will hire performers to get drunk. Museum officials say the decision will be made by the artist.
Image: Erwin Wurm's Drinking Sculptures (2011) at the Middleheim Museum, Antwerp
Prospect: New Zealand Art Now opens at the City Gallery Wellington
Dane Mitchell is amongst the artists in Prospect: New Zealand Art Now which opens today at the City Gallery Wellington. The exhibition has been curated by Kate Montgomery who has since taken up a new position at Creative New Zealand.
Image: Installation view of Dane Mitchell's Radiant Matter Part II (2011) at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Mitchell is represented in Prospect with works from this exhibition
European Commission plans the world's largest cultural funding programme
The European Commission is planning to introduce the world's largest cultural funding programme – a €1.8 billion Creative Europe fund to be administered between 2014 and 2020 as part of a larger pan-European goal to stimulate the economy through cultural enterprise.While approximately half will be allocated to the film industry, €500 million will be targeted directly to the visual and performing arts.
The accidental art mogul
Her fortunes come from caring more about showing art than selling it. Newsweek's Blake Gopnik on Marian Goodman's path to success. Read more…
Image: Barbara Gladstone by Thomas Struth
Image: Barbara Gladstone by Thomas Struth
Hou Hanru to curate the 5th Auckland Triennial
Hou Hanru has been named as the curator for the 5th Auckland Triennial. “The Auckland Triennial interests me with the city's increasingly vibrant art scene, being one of the leading cities of the Pacific Rim with its Maori and Pacific influences,” he says. “The Triennial can be a particularly inspiring and challenging context for artists: to engage themselves in reimagining the relationship between their work and the changing world, to generate more energy and new vision to an already dynamic art scene.”
Damien Hirst's For the Love of God: a sign of the times?
A little over three years ago Damien Hirst abandoned the traditional method of selling art going straight to Sotheby's instead where the auction smashed top estimates to reach a record total of USD125m. Ironically it was also the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, setting in train a credit crunch and global recession which in turn sent a booming international art market into freefall.
As the sovereign debt crisis plays out in Europe and the world stares down the barrel of another global recession, Hirst is in the news again. His $78 million diamond-encrusted platinum skull, For the Love of God, is back in London courtesy of the Tate. The piece, which has yet to enter a major public collection and is owned by a consortium of investors including the artist himself, will be displayed in a special viewing room in the Turbine Hall during the first two months of the artist's retrospective at Tate Modern.
Image: Damien Hirst's For the Love of God (2007)
Martin Basher: melding minimalist sculpture and retail display at the Rockefeller Apartments
Martin Basher has installed two new works (Paradise Sale and The Everyday Solution for Shakey Hands) in the courtyard garden of New York's Rockefeller Apartments. The installation is a further development of his 9-month New York Public Art Fund project at the MetroTech Centre in Brooklyn, and the latest in an ongoing series of artists' presentations at the apartments.
Images: Martin Basher's Paradise Sale and The Everyday Solution for Shakey Hands (2011), installation views (day and night), Rockefeller Apartments, New York
Curator defends artist's use of imagery of Christ's crucifixion as a metaphor for human suffering
The Brooklym museum is refusing to budge in the face of calls for David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire My Belly to be removed from the Hide/Seek exhibition, saying the artwork is “an expression of the artist's outrage at indifference to human suffering during the early years of the AIDS crisis.
The co-curator of the exhibition, Jonathan Katz, has also weighed in saying the work belongs to a centuries-old tradition of using the imagery of Jesus Christ's crucifixion as a metaphor for human suffering. “What gets lost in all this brouhaha is how thoroughly informed he is by a Catholic iconographic tradition and how he is reinvigorating it to describe new social realities” Katz said of the artist. “This is a work of art of great complexity and sensitivity.”
Image: David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (1987), video still
Brooklyn bishop calls for A Fire in My Belly to be banned
The Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn, Nicholas DiMarzio, is fueling the furore over David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly, calling for it to be removed from the Hide/Seek exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum on the grounds that it is a disrespectful and blasphemous attack on their religion. In a strangely telling video statement on the web Bishop DiMarzio says that he admires Wojnarowicz's identification with the suffering Christ but that he shouldn't be allowed to express it publicly in art. Read more…
Image: Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio and David Wojnarowicz
Gavin Hipkins' film This Fine Island previewed at Centre Pompidu
This Fine Island, a postcolonial ballad by Gavin Hipkins that revisits Charles Darwin's journey to the Bay of Islands in 1835, will have its first screening in Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid, an event that aims to create a space between new cinema and contemporary art. In Hipkins' adaption, Darwin's nineteenth-century travel writing in The Voyage of the Beagle becomes a vehicle for present day tourisms, travel romance, and racial othering, against the backdrop of New Zealand's lush landscape.
Hipkins' experimental narrative screens at Centre Pompidu on 21 November in People's Television, a film programme curated for Rencontres Internationales by Laura Preston and Mark Williams.
Image: Gavin Hipkins, This Fine Island , 2012 (production still), 12 mins, 16mm transferred to Digibeta
MOCA gala raises $2.5m with Marina Abramovic's An Artist's Life Manifesto
The controversy surrounding Marina Abramovic's An Artist's Life Manifesto didn't dampen the enthusiasm of guests at the recent MOCA gala, an event that Jeffrey Deitch said “fused an art experience with a social experience”. Attended by more than 750 guests, the gala raised $2.5m for the museum.
Image: Deborah Harry and Marina Abramovic at the MOCA fundraiser
Review of Ann Shelton's in a forest
You can read a review of Ann Shelton's exhibition in a forest here.
Image: Ann Shelton, Seedling, Imre Harange's Olympic Oak (These trees were awarded at the 1936 Olympics and are sometimes also called 'Hitler Oaks'), Nyiradony, Hungary. C-type print. 1.2 x 1.5m, 2011
Benetton's controversial “Unhate” campaign
In Italian clothing label Benetton's ideal world, foreign dignitaries from opposing sides would lock lips. Benetton took the concept to heart, making it the subject of its controversial “Unhate” campaign, which features political enemies getting a little too close for comfort. The company debuted its ads recently at its flagship Paris store much to the chagrin of the world leaders it featured. Read more…
Image: The Pope and al-Tayeb share a kiss on the latest United Colours of Beneton advertisement
Putting a spin on plunder culture
Artefacts of historical and cultural significance which are displayed in major museums around the world should not be returned to their country of origin according to British Museum director Neil MacGregor. During an address in Australia recently he sprang to the defence of museums holding contested cultural property “The value of an object is to explain history to as many people as possible and explain the present to as many people as possible and that may not be achieved by it being returned to the place where it was made”, he said. “When you see these objects they will mean more to you in your own experience than they would in the place they were made.”
MacGregor has an ally in British Prime Minister David Cameron who shares his view on the repatriation of cultural property. In a 2010 interview he explained why the Kohinoor diamond, which was seized by the East India company to become part of the Crown Jewels when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877, could not be returned. “If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty”, he said.
Image: Interior carving and panels in the Mataatua Wharenui or meeting house. Originally built as a symbol of unity and strength by Ngati Awa, it was uplifted by the New Zealand government and shipped overseas to represent the country at anthropological exhibitions. After enduring a century of foreign travel it was finally repatriated in 1925 to be housed at the Otago Museum where it remained for another 70 years. After being lost to its people since 1880, Mataatua Wharenui finally returned to its rightful place in Whakatane in the 90s. After 15 years of work to restore the house to its former glory, it opened on 17 September 2011 with a traditional dawn ceremony. The meeting house is now a central point in a complex that provides a maori cultural tourism experience for visitors, allowing them to hear the story of the wharenui and learn the traditions and history of the tribe – all brought to life with the latest interactive digital technology.
Australia's Indigenous Art Triennial back on the calendar
After being put on the backburner twice, with National Gallery of Australia director Ron Radford pointing to “fiscal responsibility” as the reason for the last postponement, Australia's National Indigenous Art Triennial is back in the mix. The NGA has announced that the second Triennial, unDisclosed, will run from 11 May to 10 July 2012.
The theme of the Triennial alludes to the spoken and the unspoken, the known and the unknown, what can be revealed and what cannot, capturing the disclosed and the undisclosed embedded within the works in the exhibition. You can see the lineup of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists selected for the Triennial here.
Image: Vernon Ah Kee, Yidindji Tribe Circa 2007, 2007
Interview with Paolo Baratta on how he revived the Venice Biennale
As chairman of the Venice Biennale foundation, Paolo Baratta has been credited with reinvigorating the Biennale and ensuring it is largely self-funded. With the news that his successor Giulio Malgara (an ally of Silvio Berlusconi) has withdrawn his nomination to head the Biennale, some expect to see him reappointed to the post. In an interview first published in Il Giornale dell'Arte, the man who gave Venice a new lease of life looks back on his tenure. Read more…
Image: Paolo Baratta, outgoing chairman of the Venice Biennale foundation
Shanghai Expo sites to house new art museums
Two new art museums are to be created in Shanghai using former Expo sites along the Huangpu River. The former China Pavilion on the Pudong side will become a museum of modern art with 70,000 square meters of exhibition space and the former Pavilion of the Future on the Puxi side will become a contemporary art museum with 15,000 square meters of exhibition space.
Image: China Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo, Shanghai which is to house a new Museum of Modern Art
How can art compete with Hollywood?
The Guardian's Jonathan Jones travels to Los Angeles to talk to Paul McCarthy about what it means to be a serious artist in the shadow of Hollywood. Read more…
Image: Paul McCarthy
Sacrilege and the sacred: round two
David Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly is drawing flak from Catholic groups as the National Portrait Gallery's Hide/Seek exhibition heads to the Brooklyn Museum. So far Brooklyn's Catholic Diocese has requested the work be censored from the show, the Daily News is fueling tabloid-ready outrage in advance, and Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman says he has received thousands of pre-programmed emails in protest.
This link takes you to our earlier posts on the Smithsonian's controversial decision to withdraw A Fire in My Belly from the Washington showing of Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.
Image: David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly (1987), video still
Berlusconi's ally withdraws nomination to head the Venice Biennale
Outgoing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ally Giulio Malgara has withdrawn his nomination to head the Venice Biennale. Malgara was set to replace Paolo Baratta, a decision that sparked an outcry due to his lack of experience in the field of culture.
Image: outgoing Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi
Museum of Modern Art dusts off its Diega Rivera murals
In 1931 the Museum of Modern Art commissioned Diego Rivera to paint 5 portable murals for a 5-week exhibition. Now after 80 years in storage, the murals are being rehung. Read more…
Image: Diego Rivera, Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), photograph from the MoMA website
Takashi Murakami's New Day: Artists for Japan charity auction raises just under $9m for earthquake and tsunami relief fund
Takashi Murakami's recent charity auction at Christie's raised $8,756,100 million from the likes of auction house owner Francois Pinault and dealer Larry Gagosian for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami that hit the northeastern art of Japan on 11 March. The highest price fetched on the evening was $1m paid by an anonymous bidder for Jeff Koon's' Balloon Monkey Wall Relief.
Murakami said estimates were kept purposefully low to encourage biddiing for charity but that he was surprised by the priced fetched. “I'm very appreciative for that”, he said adding that he found the turnout and sale total for his auction “heartwarming.”
Image: KAWS' Kawsbob Enters the Strange Forest, 2011 (detail)
Paul McCarthy's Tomato Head (Green) fetches $4.5m at auction; will the artist get a slice of the action?
26 artworks from the collection of Peter Norton went under the hammer at Christie's on Tuesday night. All of the lots were sold bringing in $26.8 million and a few set new records for artists with Paul McCarthy's Tomato Head (Green) topping the list at $4,562,500.
Although he has multiple residences, Norton is identified in Christie's news release as “the Los Angeles collector and software entrepreneur”. According to the California Resale Royalty Act, a seller or seller's agent must give 5% of the resale price to the artist provided that the seller lives in California or the transaction takes place there, making McCarthy's cut $228,125.
So far Norton has not responded to requests for comment.
Image: Paul McCarthy's Tomato Head (Green)
Dane Mitchell's RADIANT MATTER reviewed in ARTFORUM
The latest issue of ARTFORUM includes an Anthony Byrt review of Dane Mitchell's RADIANT MATTER, a series of three exhibitions presented at three public galleries across New Zealand.
Images: Dane Mitchell, Radiant Matter III. The Smell of An Empty Space (Liquid) 2011, Artspace, Auckland. Photo Sam Hartnett and courtesy of Artspace
Los Angeles novelist and art critic Chris Kraus talks to Martin Rumsby
Chris Kraus talks to Martin Rumsby on her experiences of growing up and studying in New Zealand and how those experiences shape her work. View video
Image: Chris Kraus interview with Martin Rumsby
Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg on the rise of performance art
Performance art is everywhere these days – the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale, MoMA, the Guggenheim… To understand the phenomenon, ARTINFO spoke to Performa founder and art historian RoseLee Goldberg about the rise of performance art. Read more…
Image: Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present exhibition, MoMA 2010
Dying river poses a threat to the Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal, the white marble tomb built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1648 for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal, could soon sink into the sand. The mausoleum's mahogany post foundations which are sunk into wells fed by the Yamuna River are reportedly rotting and brittle because the river is drying up due to pollution and deforestation. The main structure showed cracks last year and the four minarets around the monument are tilting due to the weakening of the foundation.
Ramshankar Katheria, a member of parliament from the northern city of Agra where the iconic monument is located, is leading the movement to save it. He warns that “if the crisis is is not tackled on a war-footing, the Taj Mahal will cave in between two and five years.” He has proposed a $110m dam to maintain the water levels necessary to preserve the foundations, saying, “the river is a constituent of its architectural design and if the river dies, the Taj cannot survive.”
Donations pour in to Ai Weiwei
The New York Times reports that in the days since the Chinese government delivered a tax bill of $2.4m to Ai Weiwei, more than 20,000 people have together contributed at least $550,000. The artist said one businessman had offered him 1 million renminbi, but he turned it down saying he preferred to receive smaller sums. Others had folded 100-renminbi notes into airplanes and tossed them over the wall of his compound. Read more…