Monkdogz Artblog

Rarely does a “undiscovered” masterpiece surface, a rarer still is a new discovery of Van Gogh.  Since 1970 there have been only five works which have been added to Van Gogh’s catalogue of some 900 pieces of art.  Yesterday was one of those rare days when experts announced that “Le Blute-fin Windmill” was indeed an authentic Van Gogh and worth millions.  

However it has taken experts 35 years to come to this conclusion, verifying what museum curator Dirk Hannema of the Netherlands had pronounced so many years ago.  The problem was one of the rare times when Dirk Hannema’s authentication had been proven correct.  Although Hannema was a respected director of a Rotterdam museum, he was considered a laughing stock as an authenticator of works for masters.  He boasted of many undiscovered Vermeers, VanGoghs and Rembrandts in his personal collection, but most of these were mistaken attributions or forgeries.  Partly due to this reputation, this particular work did not receive much attention from the art establishment after he had purchased the painting from a Paris dealer for 6500 francs and pronounced it a Van Gogh dated around 1886.

Today it is displayed  proudly at the Zwolle’s Museum de Fundatie which was the beneficiary of the work when Hannema died in 1984.  

Read more in the Telegraph.

President Obama has picked six people to join the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) according to the Culture Monster on the LA Times.   Amongst the list is Chuck Close who becomes the first visual artist on this committee which is heavy on actors and entertainment business executives. 

The role of the PCAH according to their not too well updated and very sparse website is “to initiate and support key programs; to recognize excellence in the fields of arts and humanities; and to encourage private-public partnerships around those disciplines through the three primary cultural agencies – National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)”.

The committee headed up by the First Lady as Honorary Chairman and currently lead by George Stevens Jr, film director and founding director for the American Film Institute in LA and Margo Lion, a New York theater producer, includes 12 federal including Hilary Clinton, Secretary of the US Department of State and Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury.  Interestingly it also includes Anna Wintour, Editor in Chief of Vogue magazine. 

It will be interesting to see if Close in conjunction with Earl Powell III, Director of the National Gallery of Art will be able to raise the profile of the visual arts amongst the heavy film and theatre crowd.

I went to an English boarding school that I was absolutely sure was the basis for Ronald Searle’s St Trinian’s school. If we wanted to, we could be absolutely delightful young ladies, well spoken with impeccable manners and angelic smiles. However more often than not we were wicked hooligans getting up to no good, smuggling contraband into the school, plotting and executing wild pranks and getting into very unladylike scrapes. We certainly looked very much like those St Trinian’s girls according to my absolutely horrified, very proper English guardians who came to see me at my first Speech Day.

So I was rather surprised to learn while reading an early 90th birthday tribute to Searle in the Times, that although he started drawing the St Trinian’s before he enlisted with the Royal Engineers at the start of World War II, much of the bulk of the content of these cartoons were the sublimation of his experiences at the Changi Prison, the Japanese POW camp in Singapore and working on the infamous Death Railway between Burma and Siam. According to Kaye Webb, his first wife and publisher “unconsciously (Searle) was seeking to reduce horror into a comprehensible and somehow palatable form”.

Searle documented the brutal conditions as a POW with drawings made on stolen paper and a smuggled fountain pen. He also helped illustrate a prison magazine “Survivor”. Some of the St Trinian’s cartoons were drawn during this time.

I haven’t heard Searle quoted but I should image that drawing was an escape for him, a way to numb the pain and suffering, and the salvation which kept him alive when 95% of those who worked on the Death Railway died in the jungle.

I’m half Japanese and half British. I was born and grew up in Tokyo until I went off to the English boarding school. Several of my Japanese uncles and cousins were military men involved in the war both in Japan and in the South Pacific. One of my uncles and his wife ended up as an Allied POWs in Borneo where his wife died from a lack of medical care. My father who is the same age as Searle on the other hand was British and an Engineer for the British Merchant Marine, sailing in the South Pacific bringing personnel and supplies to the war front. Add to this mix my Japanese grandfather who was a key player in ending the war.

I have been to Changi Prison and heard the first hand experiences of the war from both sides. What I know to be true is that war is a dreadful thing for everybody. The death of so many, the pain and suffering of those left alive. Worst of all are the memories, the grief, fear and hatred; the guilt of surviving that can haunt years after the war has ended. How those who survive a war cope and make peace with their memories is critical. Searle obviously threw himself into his work becoming a very prolific artist. He became a master of the modern caricature, a leader in graphic design, with his sharp wit and satirical humor, writing for Punch, Le Monde, and The New Yorker. He wrote books, travelogues and newspaper reporting. He drew illustrations, advertising posters, theatre designs, film animations and even sculpted medals for the French Mint. He has influenced many artists including according to Andrea Walker of the New Yorker,  Groucho Marx and John Lennon. He continues to expertly capture people’s frailties and failings but in a way that allows us viewers to be compassionate, understanding and loving nonetheless.

I am looking forward to be renewing my acquaintance with the St Trinian’s girls with a very different perspective this time. I wonder who and what I’ll find.

Two English friends have bought a wall from a construction site in south London.  It sounds like the start of a joke and may yet turn into one.

The wall has a stenciled image of a punk rocker reading an instruction booklet for an Ikea furniture flat-pack.  It looks very much like a Banksy graffiti and the pair thought that they might be able to sell it for around $780,000.  It took the two men nine days and nights to dig the wall out of the ground and then had to hire a crane to lift it out in a specially made metal cradle spending a total of just under $47,000. 

Now the joke is that Banksy, despite having an image of the wall on his website some time ago, has refused to authenticate this as his work.

The problem is that there have been a lot of Banksy “fakes” of late and selling unauthenticated pieces may be difficult and face a lot of opposition. However there are also organizations that are offering their own authentications.  

Read more on the Telegraph

The Courtauld Gallery at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London opens a fabulous exhibition of drawings and writings by Michelangelo displaying his love for the young Roman nobleman Tommaso de’ Cavalieri who was renown for his outstanding beauty, gracious manners and intellect.  The friendship which grew between the two men was to last for 30 years.  

The center piece of the exhibition is “The Dream” which is, according to the very informative gallery press release, one of Michelangelo’s ‘presentation drawings’, a magnificent and famous group of highly refined compositions which the artist gave to his closest friends.  These beautiful and complex works transformed drawing into an independent art form and are amongst Michelangelo’s very finest creations in any medium.   Drawn at the height of his career, his skill is abundantly clear for any to see.

Michelangelo’s drawings that he made for Cavalieri have not been seen together for over twenty years and this is the first time that The Dream will be shown as part of this group. 

The Telegraph suggests that “As far as is known, that love was physically unrequited, though that does not mean it was chaste. For Michelangelo expressed his desire for Tommaso openly in letters, poems” and the gift of these drawings.    “At one level the presentation drawings are moralizing allegories intended for Tommaso’s edification. But whether consciously intended or not, their sexual innuendo must surely be seen as part of his surprisingly public courtship of the youth.

In medieval and Renaissance art, the vices were invariably personified (as opposed to illustrated), lest their explicit representation tempt the viewer to commit the very sin they are being warned against. But in representing the sin of ‘Lust’, Michelangelo departs from this convention by including two erect phalluses as well as scenes of heterosexual copulation.

This unique exhibition starts February 18^th and continues until May 16^th and is accompanied by a catalogue written by the curator Stephanie Buck.

We learned with great sadness that Anthony Cuban passed away earlier this week.  

Tony was a big part of the art scene around San Diego, CA., working for several art organizations helping promote art and artists.  He had a wonderful attitude towards his art:

“I am an artist that makes art to please no one in particular, except myself.  I paint what I like to, at the time that I paint, without regard as to whether or not it would be a saleable product.

I would rather paint what I like than to paint what others like and if it doesn’t sell……
that’s too bad.   I’ll find a place for it on the wall of one of my family members’ homes, or a friend’s.   

I use bold, vivid colors, and strong lines to define my feelings when I put them on canvas. I rarely use models for my paintings since I prefer to use my mind’s eye and my memory. What I can’t remember I freely adlib. I make things appear to be as I wish them to be.”

One of the last things Tony did was to create a piece of work for the Haiti Art Fund for which we are very grateful.  Tony Cuban will be missed by many.

Our thoughts and prayers go to Jo, his wife and his family.

We have been getting a wonderful response to the Haiti Art Fund project.  Already we have 50 artists and 74 images up on the site with many more promised.  We also have people registered and bidding.

I have been so impressed with how generous in terms of time and effort that artists have been in donating their original works of art.  I know that some people have been challenged by the size constraints as they usually work in much larger sizes and yet they have persevered and created some excellent pieces.

We are asking artists to donate works flat works sized 5″ x 7″ (13cms x 18cms) to be auctioned online.  If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact info@haitiartfund.com

To all those who’ve already send works or are in the process of creating artwork to donate our heartfelt thanks.  We’ll keep you updated!

The Impressionist and Modern Art Sale at Sotheby’s was hailed a huge success and a return to pre-bust days.  The highest price at auction was exceeded with the sale of Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche1 (The walking man1) which sold to an annonymous telephone bidder followed by a chorus of “oohs” and “aaahs” for £65 million ($92.5 million, or $104.3 million with fees). 

The work was estimated at $19.2million – $28.8million but eventually brought in nearly 3 times the previous record for a Giacometti which was set by Chrisite’s in New York  in 2008 at 27.4million for Standing Woman II.  

The previous overall record of artwork sold at auction was held by Pablo Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe (Boy with a pipe) which was also sold at Sotheby’s in 2004.   There have been several other pieces of work which have been purported to have sold for more in private sales.

Gustav Klimt’s Church in Cassones that I wrote about last month which was tangled in a ownership web sold well above it’s estimate of $19.6 –$27.7million at $43.2million which would be split nicely between the current owners and the pre-war owners.  

The sale brought in £146,828,350, a record for a sale in London.  Of 39 lots only 8 were unsold. 

Does this mean that the art market has recovered?  What does this mean for the Contemporary art market?  With financial markets down all around the world today and the DOW falling below the 10000 mark, it really is hard to determine.  

I have a suspicion that in the rare and quality works category which the Giacometti falls very nicely into, there will always be a market regardless of the financial situation.  The fact that few exceptional pieces of work have been placed on the market will also have had an impact.  Whether this all translates into a general recovery for the art market is impossible to gauge at this point.

Do you have any further insight?

For those of you who live outside the US, the Superbowl is the championship game of the National Football League of the United States. It is the most watched broadcast in the entire year in the US. It is estimated that over 93 million people watched last year’s Superbowl of which about 40 million were women. CBS who will be broadcasting the game this year, estimate that over 100 million people will have watched the game today.

The Indianapolis Colts were probably the favored team having won four years ago. However the New Orleans’ Saints came through for the first time in their 43 year history. It is a very emotional win for a team that was affected by the Katrina Hurricane and had to play away from their home stadium for the entire 2005 season. In the team is also a player of Haitian descent, Jonathan Vilma who has a lot of family still in Haiti. This win will mean a lot to the people of New Orleans and to Haiti.

“Monday morning quarterbacking” has already started now with everyone having their opinion on what won the game.

I think it was brave leadership from the coach, with years of practice by the whole team, a determination to keep trying, a cool head in adversity and a sure belief that they would win. I hear that the team was practicing as hard as they would normally be doing mid-season, instead of taking it easy before the last game thinking they’d already done the hard work getting to the championships.

I think that everyone can take away the same lessons and apply it to their own lives. It’s hard to win the Superbowl. It’s hard to make it in the artworld. You have to be brave, keep honing your skills, be determined, not become discouraged by adversity and believe that you will make it.

It’s what keeps me getting up every morning!

There is a lot of geometric work in Chelsea at the moment. It often happens that galleries in Chelsea end up having similar styles of work at the same time, despite the fact that forward planning cycles differ between galleries and most don’t tend to discuss detailed scheduling with each other. It must be just one of these mysteries of the universe.

The wealth of geometric work is very diverse in quality and one of the best of them is Jack Tworkov “True or False” at Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery on 26th street.

Born in Poland Tworkov immigrated to the United States when he was 13. He grew up to become one of the founding members of the New York school which was the home of the abstract expressionist movement which included at the time, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Arshile Gorky. He taught art at many universities, colleges and schools, including the Pratt Institute, Queens College, Columbia University and Yale University. At the latter he was Chairman of the Art Department from 1963-1969 influencing many young rising stars including Chuck Close, Richard Serra, Nancy Graves and Brice Marden.

Although originally he was known for his very bold, gestural brush strokes and flame colors, in the 1960s he moved into more analytical and geometric form paintings. These are the works being displayed in this exhibition (1960-1975). The title of the show, according to the press release comes from a 1968 Tworkov quote: “True and False. Blind man’s bluff, hands outstretched in the darkness feeling, wondering what is true and what is false, because our life depends on knowing the difference.”

Standing in front of the canvases, I found myself drawn towards a hypnotic quality of the works. There is a depth and emotion to these abstract works that is very compelling. They appear very simple at first glance and perhaps a little mesmerizing, but I found them catalytic and refreshing the longer I stood in front of them.

This exhibition continues until February 20th, 2010.