Monkdogz Artblog

In our hunt for a new home for Monkdogz Urban Art, we went looking in New York’s Lower East Side today, now know as LES.  It’s an area roughly bounded by the Bowery to the West, Houston Street to the North, Pitt St to the East and Canal St to the South.  

It is an area rich in its 200 year history.  It was a neighborhood home for many new immigrants and birthed many entrepreneurs and small business owners.  Orchard Street with its street vendors and store fronts was one point one of the busiest commercial districts in the world.

In recent years, an influx of chic and trendy restaurants, clubs, apparel stores and creative businesses and services as well as artists’ studios and contemporary art galleries have started to take the neighborhood up market.  Young professionals have started to move into the area and there are signs of new and refurbished condominiums and apartments on many blocks.

There are currently between 50 and 60 contemporary art galleries in the area, spread throughout the neighborhood.  It makes for an interesting tour, with plenty of places to shop and eat as well.  Although there are many galleries which are smaller satellites of established Chelsea galleries, there are also some very cutting edge individual galleries, including the long established Fusion Arts Museum.  There is also the New Museum of Contemporary Art which opened in 2007 to great fanfare.  

There is no question that Monkdogz Urban Art would fit in very nicely into this environment.  However the question that does remain is whether the neighborhood will continue its revitalization and growth within this current economic climate, whether it will become a significant contemporary art destination and a wise move for Monkdogz..  

Any opinions?

(Images from top right clock-wise, Rivington Street, Delancy Street, Chrystie Street and Freeman Alley)

The Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London were the world’s most visited museums last year, drawing 8.5 million and 5.93 million people respectively, the Art Newspaper said in an annual ranking as reported by Bloomberg today.  The Louvre was first place in 2007 as well, but the British Museum had moved up from its fourth place in 2007.  

Much of this can be attributed to a 62 year old Scottsman, Neil MacGregor who took over the museum in 2002.  The museum was probably at its most dire point in its long history.  Debt was nearing $7million, annual visitor figures were declining, a third of its galleries were closed and what was left was only open for 3 ½ hours a day.  Staff moral was at rock bottom having lost a sense of purpose and many were picketing the building over redundancies.  To top it all off, the week he started, a marble head was stolen from one of its many temporarily closed galleries.

In the museum’s 250^th year since opening to the public and in the 7 years of MacGregor’s tenure as the Director of the British Museum, he has been turned around the museum from a musty laughing stock to a vibrant modern day institution, with popular and critically acclaimed block-buster shows, and vast financial improvements which should help it through the current crisis.  Today the museum has a phenomenal collection of over 7 million items from ancient Sumerian inscriptions to post-modern American art.

Neil MacGregor honed his skills with a fifteen year tenure at the National Gallery, where he was initially chosen despite no previous museum experience, straight from editing the Burlington Magazine for 6 years and prior to that, lecturing on History of Art and Architecture at Reading University.  

Charles Saumarez Smith, his successor at the National Gallery, called him “one of the most able, intelligent and intellectually supportive people I have ever known, with an extraordinary ability to get on with people of all sorts.” 

When The Times in London named MacGregor, Briton of the Year for 2008 and (at the same time named Barack Obama Person of the Year) Rachel Campbell-Johnston, chief art critic of the Times, praised him as “a man who had managed—by what often felt like charm and enthusiasm alone—to turn a financial basket case back into a cultural jewel….By emphasizing the importance of an international community of inquiry…, he has helped to create a global society that is quite separate from others that constantly get caught up in the squabblings of government and politics.”

It was rumored last year that the Metropolitan Museum of Art tried to woo MacGregor away with a very lucrative offer to replace the retiring Philippe de Montebello, but was turned down flat.  He declined the Met on principle. It was not a public institution, he said. And he wanted to stay at a museum that was free to everyone. MacGregor, it would appear, is profoundly democratic. Refocusing upon the founding ideals of the institution that was established by Act of Parliament in 1753 as a museum for the world,

He is apparently a very self-effacing man, refusing many of the trappings associated with his position such as a wonderfully grand apartment located within the grounds of the museum and turning down a knighthood.  And yet he has successfully and charismatically starred in two BBC documentaries.  

He wants the British Museum, he says, to be ‘a place where people can learn about global citizenship’. His aim, he has said, is to create ‘different ways of walking round the world, different worlds to walk around.’  He has walked this talk not only with the British Museum by also other institutions and countries, notably by helping Iraq protect their priceless cultural heritage collections from the effects of the war. 

In a time where integrity, leadership and dynamism are in short supply, it is reassuring that there are one or two people still around with these characteristics in abundance.  And it all started with a young boy of nine who was transfixed by and profoundly affected by Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John of the Cross which led to a lifetime of interest in art.

Thank-you to Rembrandt for highlighting this interesting and rare interview of an influential man in the art world.  If you want to find out what Charles Saatchi is yawning about, it’s a good read from The Times in the UK.

Max Planck (1858-1947) was a German physicist, best known as the founder of quantum physics.  He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918.    He said something about science that I think is very appropriate to the art world. 

“ A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because itopponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

Perhaps this is what happens with new art.  Perhaps that is why the major names in art today are still people who were discovered around 40 years ago.

Came across this on Art Info.  It’s an article about censorship that involves a campus in Ohio of all places. Seems an artist James Parlin showed a piece involving a middle school girl performing oral sex on a male teacher. The campus pulled the piece from the show. So the gallery closed the rest of the exhibition in protest due to the piece being pulled. Now the national Coalition for censorship is protesting the piece of work being pulled.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I once did a show where someone took offence at one of my works and wanted it pulled on religious grounds because they thought it depicted Satan.  It was one of the other artists exhibiting who complained.  Truth be told I think they over reacted, contrary to promoting Satan I try and stay as far away from the son of a bitch as possible.  So I do understand how it feels to have other people upset by what they perceive to be a works meaning to be.

There’s nothing quite like censorship to bring the art community together.

My thinking is this. Parlin just had his fifteen minutes of fame. I feel bad for the other artists involved in the show because I am sure they worked hard to exhibit their work.

The gallery, well they did what they felt was right or covered their ass.

The National Coalition of Censorship found a cause.

I am not sure if bullshit like this helps or hurts the art world.  I have no problem with controversy.  However, I do not support the idea of promoting pedophiles or the abuse of children for personal gain or any other reason.

And I am sure this artist had something much more profound to communicate than just another kick in the ass, shocking revelation on society or higher education.

Maybe the artist, school board, and coalition can all get together and give each other blow jobs as a performance piece of art……..as long as everyone is a consenting adult and in doing so come together in understanding and a commitment to the betterment of the arts.

Prosecutors claimed that he defrauded his victims by stealing or promising them fraudulent investment opportunities.  They said he sued the money to support an “extravagant lifestyle, which included travel by private jet within the United States and to Europe, lavish parties and for the purchase and maintenance of his Manhattan townhouse and a 66-acre estate.

No we are not talking of Bernard L. Madoff or of Robert Allen Stanford but of art dealer Lawrence B. Salander of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries LLC., of the largest galleries in New York.  So the New York art world has its own Ponzi schemer.   

In the grand scheme of things, he’s small fry; he only defrauded 26 victims of $88million, although some estimates suggest that this will increase to $100million.  He has been charged with 100 counts including grand larceny, forgery, perjury and securities fraud over 13 years which ended in 2007after a judge ordered Salander to cease trading after several lawsuits were filed against him.  He is accused of selling shares to investors in art which he didn’t even own or selling the same share in an artwork several times over.

One of the litigants is the Bank of America who lost $2million with a personal loan which was secured on several pieces of work that he did not own.  

Defense attorney Charles Ross said he expected Salander to make bail and be released by tomorrow. He said his client “pleaded not guilty to every charge and we’re going to vigorously defend against every allegation in court.”  He is being held on $1million bail.  If convicted of first-degree grand larceny, Salander could face up to 25 years in prison.

In an industry where perception is everything and business is done on trust, integrity is an essential attribute.   Individuals who damage this trust not only hurt themselves and their victims, but the industry as a whole including those who legitimately work hard for their artists and clients.  Those remaining have an uphill battle to reverse the negative impact of cases like this.  However that extra effort to provide improved transparency and openness, which I’ve often mentioned, is probably not a bad thing.  

While my business partner Marina is on a continual quest to discover “What’s next?” which may or may not be discovered sometime before or after the Holy Grail, my associate Sebastien looks to the heavens, astrology, numerology and all other forms of the mumbo jumbo seeking to discover the one true path to the future of art.

Me?  I like to think I’m more pragmatic. I scour over information coming in from Europe, Asia, and South America; the gallery scene worldwide, fairs, the secondary markets and their analytical reports of what’s going on, as if at some point the information I am looking for will float off the report and point me in the right direction like a golden compass.

But truth be told, the information usually tends to create more questions than answers.

And all the so called experts are just as uncertain as the rest of us. Offering opinions like a sports caster at the Kentucky Derby, only to discover at the end of the race, the horse that no one believed had a chance did in fact win and in a big way.

This morning while working myself through another cup of bad coffee I received an e-mail from Jean Marc Calvet with some images of new work he has been developing. While looking at the pictures it occurred to me Jean Marc may have discovered the answer or at least part of it to the questions floating around in our heads……..

Work harder, do more, create more explosive work, reach higher, be accountable, and believe that what you do has value and meaning.

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

Born   25 October 1881   Malaga, Spain

Died   8 April 1973   Mougins, France

Current Exhibition

The National Gallery in London is currently hosting the very successful exhibition “Picasso: Challenging the Past” which continues until June 7th.   It is billed as the unleashing of a frenzied, Spanish bull and explores the ways he took up the artistic concerns of the painters of the past and made audacious responses of his own.  It is based on his renditions of many of the classical masters.  El Greco, Velázquez and Goya were of crucial importance to him, as were Rembrandt, Delacroix, Ingres, Manet and Cézanne. He tackled the likes of Velázquez, Delacroix and Goya head-on, proclaiming: “Any work they could do, I can do better.”  

Various sources differ on Picasso’s volume of work, but one thing is certain, Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. John Selfridge (1994) states “the total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50,000, comprising 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. 

Picasso did not leave a will and on his death many of his paintings which were still in his possession were taken by the French government in lieu of death duties.  Many of the pieces in this London show is on loan from the Museé National Picasso in Paris following a financially successful, but critically slammed show last year titled ‘Picasso et les maîtres’ which showed Picasso’s works next to works by the classical masters that the curators claimed were the inspiration for Picasso’s pieces.

Quotes

“Bad artists copy.  Great artists steal.”

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.“

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. ”
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. “

What makes art ART?  Is a Rube Goldberg installation art?  This one at least uses a painting……..

Having written about the lack of funds earmarked for the arts in the stimulus package on Friday, I now find that the British have taken the lead and are hosting a “New Deal of the Mind” tomorrow at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s residence, with over 50 leaders within the creative industries of culture, media and new technology.

Martin Bright a British journalist challenged the government to discuss novel ways to deal with the economic downturn which became a catalyst for this symposium. In the Times today he writes “we risk losing a generation of talent and intellectual capital if we don’t react immediately to the challenge of the financial crisis”.

“It is intended that the meeting will lead to further work in each of the main sectors of the industry: visual arts, design and architecture, film and television, writing and publishing, theatre and dance. At the same time, the New Deal of the Mind is keen to encourage the geeks and inventors who drive innovation in technology and science.”

The WPA founder Harry Hopkins understood that not every single one of the 234,000 pieces of art, 4,400 musical performances and 1,813 plays created would be works of genius, but the theory was that only if significant numbers of artists were supported would greatness emerge. His most famous quote was a version of teaching a man to fish: “Give a man a dole and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit.” His vision helped notable artists such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Philip Guston and Mardsden Hartley.

So are we leaving the British to develop and improve on a significant cornerstone of American modern heritage? What’s the United States of America going to do about this? What is the capital of the Art World going to do next?