Adrian Searle, the chief art critic for the Guardian’s quotes of the week at London’s Freize Art Fair were:
“I encourage young artists to go to fairs……..because it’s like toilet training………you need to know where your sh*t goes.”
“Your $5000 is the new $50,000.”
Just so you know Searle also contributes to the Frieze Art magazine
The Wallace Collection housed at Hertford House in London is a collection of 15th – 19th century paintings, furniture, armory and porcelain collected mainly by the 4th Marquis of Hertford. Included amongst the Old Masters are paintings by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Van Dyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Titian, Poussin and many more.
Damien Hirst has managed to arrange an exhibition of 25 of his latest works that opened this week and continues until January 24th 2010. He spent £250,000 (nearly $400,000) to help refurbish two rooms of the museum which including £60,000 worth of silk wall paper from France which will be removed at the end of his exhibition.
Hirst has been painting on his own, without anybody’s help since 2006 and this is the culmination of his efforts. The paintings in the exhibition titled “No Love Lost, Blue Paintings” are all predominantly deep Prussian blue. The motifs include Hirst’s well known signatures of skulls, shark jaws, dots, ashtrays and even butterflies.
According to the Guardian Hirst admitted that for a long time he had been afraid of painting, even though he admired painters more than other artists. “I was always very dissatisfied with my paintings; I always thought they weren’t very good. It was a big uphill struggle. But I suddenly thought, after everything I’ve been through, there was nothing to be afraid of. I did two years of absolutely rotten paintings and I wouldn’t want anybody to see them. They were just awful. For two years when I was painting them I thought, fucking hell, if I die now they’re going to come in here and go, ‘Oh, he fucked it up at the end. He was brilliant up to that point and then he did these and they’re awful.’ I was painting skulls and I couldn’t paint them properly so I put a fag in their mouth and a red jacket and it was like ‘Death having a fag’. And then I started painting the smoke and they were just awful. And then I told myself, just go back to the skull.”
Many of London’s critics feel the same way about the end result. The Time’s critic Rachel Campbell Johnston started her article “The paintings are dreadful” and gave one out of five stars for the exhibition. She continues scathingly, “these works are utterly derivative of Bacon (give or take a dash of Giacometti), but they completely lack his painterly skill. And their metaphors are as ham-fisted as the application of pigment.” Sarah Crompton of the Telegraph says “the paintings simply don’t pass muster”.
It is interesting that the Wallace Collection would host this exhibition. They have shown some modern and contemporary art over the years. The last living artist that they exhibited was Lucien Freud and there are several Francis Bacon paintings in the collection. Maybe there is a hope that a new generation of museum visitors would visit Herford House drawn by the Hirst exhibition and learn of the excellent permanent collection here.
Why Hirst would choose this venue is also of interest. Is he looking to validate his work with Old Masters? Does he want to compare himself to Francis Bacon, who he says influenced him? Or is it a prank, trying to get the public, critics and art establishment to go and see some mediocre paintings just because it’s by Damien Hirst? Is he brave to return to painting or should he have continued with his team assisted creations?
So am I going to go and see it when I’m in London later this year? Do I believe all the naysayers? Do I believe the critics? Or do I have to see it for myself? And if it’s as bad as they all say, will it have been a waste of time? Or will I learn something? Will I be a better and more knowledgeable person for having seen it?
All I know right now is that it’s given me a headache!
It’s always interesting to find out what other people want to see. Everyone’s tastes are obviously very different but I find that quite often a different perspective gives me pause for thought and makes me look at an exhibition from another point of view, one that I might have missed.
So if you’re interested, here is Jerry’s selection:
Performa 09, 3 week performance biennial at various locations
Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction at the Whitney Museum of American Art
Ree Morton: At the Still Point of the Turning World at the Drawing Center
Urs Fischer at the New Museum
A Voyage of Growth and Discovery at the Sculpture Center
1969 at PS1
Sarah Anne Johnson: House on Fire at the Julie Saul Gallery
Janine Antoni: Up Against at Luhring Augustine
Tauba Auerbach: Here and Npw/and Nowhere at Deitch Projects
Paul Chan: Sade for Sade’s Sake at Greene Naftali
Justine Kurland at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Peter Fischli & David Weiss
Lynda Benglis at Cheim & Reid
The Bruce High Quality Foundation Universtiy at Susan Inglett Gallery
Sylvia Sleigh at I-20 Gallery
For more information please go to New York Magazine.
What do you want to see this Fall?
Art criticism is obviously very subjective. The education, life experiences, influences and background of each critic makes each one uniquely different; appealing to some and not to others. Roberta Smith, the New York Times Senior Art Critic is one that I struggle to connect to.
Born in New York, but growing up in Kansas, she participated in an independent study program with the Whitney Museum of Art and then went to work at MOMA, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, Paul Cooper Gallery in New York, Artforum and Art in America before working for the Village Voice and the New York Times. She also workd for Donald Judd for several years and was heavily influenced by him. She is married to New York Magazine’s Senior Art Critic Jerry Saltz.
She has very definitive views, a plus for any art critic. She also allows her emotions to dictate the direction of her writing. Perhaps this makes her more accessible to some readers, but I don’t always understand her motivation and so probably fail to appreciate her views. As Bob always says, “it’s better to understand than to be understood”!
However I came across her article in the New York Times yesterday about the new United States Postal Service stamps which depict the Simpsons. Now I’m not a great fan of the Simpsons, (I liked the first couple of seasons but found the rest too much of the same,) so I wouldn’t have really looked at them, but Roberta Smith made me stop and look, giving me an experience and an appreciation that I am pretty certain I would have missed if not for her. Thanks Roberta!
Since the demise of MJ last week, Bob has kept asking where Bubbles was. People magazine has helpfully found out that Bubbles, now 26 and a hefty 160lbs, is alive and happy in a primate sanctuary in Florida. Chimpanzees, can live to be 60. He should continue to live a good life and he has already been immortalized by Jeff Koons, so he should have no worries.
The sculpture that Jeff Koons created back in 1988 of Michael Jackson and Bubbles was as part of his “Banalities” series which really launch Koon’s career. On the eve of his latest exhibition “Popeye Series” at the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Guardian newspaper has printed an interview of Jeff Koons by Jonathan Jones.
I’ve always struggled a little with Koons, because he employs a team of 100 in his New York Studio to help create his work. However if I’m objective and honest, it shouldn’t be an issue. Throughout man’s history, from the artists in the early civilization of Sumer, the Italian Renaissance to modern and contemporary art, teams have created art. Sol Lewitt’s work continue to come to life even though he passed away last year. Levine Werner’s work are concepts that can be replicated by anybody and the artist encourages you to do so. Digital photography has come about because many people’s efforts to make it accessible to everyone.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a good enough reason to have reservations about his work. I have to determine for myself whether I think his art work shows artistic merit.
He’s certainly had an impact of plenty of artists who’ve followed. He’s already part of today’s culture, easily proved by the inclusion of his balloon dog in the movie “Night at the Museum – War of the Smithsonian”. The Tate Modern has opened a room of his works which has been donated to the national collection by his former dealer Anthony d’Offay.
In his interview, he talks about his young son with his wife Ilona Staller, and the ensuing custody battle after their divorce. He explains his “Celebration” series as a way to communicate with his son in the future, to explain that he was thinking of him during his younger years while they battled for him. It brings an interesting dimension to his work.
Jonathan Jones respects Koons and is at the opposite spectrum in terms of views to Robert Hughes who completely dismissed him. Who will be correct? Will he be sought after in 20, 50, 100 years?
I think I need to see more of his work.
Esther Barend very kindly sent over a link of Ben Lewis’ latest article about the dire straits of the contemporary art world in the London Times today.
Ben Lewis is a British art critic, journalist and documentary film producer. He has been predicting the “armageddon” of the art world since 2006; a little premature, but he is now feeling vindicated and is taking every opportunity to tell everyone “I told you so”. He has such a negative spin about the contemporary art world that he was banned from the Sotheby’s Damien Hirst auction, a distinction that he is inordinately proud of and which he wrote about in the Evening Standard.
He is currently making a documentary film about the contemporary art world which is expected to air later this year. The working title is “Brave New Art World” a very jaundiced view of the contemporary art boom, based on statistics such as published by the Contemporary 100 Index, which suggests that the top 25% of the 100 highest selling artists increased in value by 3010% since 1984 and that 2000 percentage points of that happened between 2005 -2008. Interestingly, he was turned down for interviews by many of the people and organizations that he approached,
His focus is mainly on artists such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Zhang Xiaogang, Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami and dealers such as Larry Gagosian and museum directors such as Sir Nicholas Serota of the Tate Gallery. His outlook is very pessimistic and he doesn’t offer an solutions, except for some banal suggestions, in a talk he gave late last year, of “civil disobedience” such as “behaving like an artist – do really stupid things……and say that you are appropriating stupidity to critique it”.
I think he is right in that there will be changes to the art market, but I’m not ready to jump off the roof just yet.
Growing up in Japan and in England before the advent of the internet, I rarely had the opportunity to read the New York Times. The occasional invitations to the American Club in Tokyo or friends visiting from the US, gave me a glimpse of this legendary publication. You didn’t read the NY Times for it’s news; the world tended to be a rather small place according to them, where nothing much existed passed the borders of the 50 states unless there were visiting Americans at the foreign destination involved in something newsworthy. Rather we devoured the print for its prose. The writers of the NY Times were revered world wide for their writing, whatever the subject.
Holland Cotter, an 11 year veteran, staff art critic of the New York Times received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism last week:
“for his wide ranging review of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.”
He is a worthy journalist in the tradition of excellence from the New York Times that I remembered from my youth with the added benefit of extended borders. Cotter writes frequently of non-Western art; so much so that on the rare occasion that he is criticized, it is about his focus on personal specialties.
Holland Cotter grew up in a family immersed in the arts and he spent many days at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where the excellent collections from Japan and India sparked his interest in non-Western art. He continued his studies at Harvard, City University of New York and finally fished his doctorate in early Indian Buddhist art at Columbia University where he taught Indian and Islamic art.
His undergraduate studies in poetry writing and his years teaching are clearly evident in his writing. His articles are very evocative, re-creating atmosphere and visuals. I never feel ignorant reading his work as he is able to simply explain and pass on his knowledge, experiences and opinions. I find myself emotionally involved with his subject matter and I find I can smell the aromas, feel the environment and see the vistas that he shares.
He also always makes the think. His articles always require a second or third reading; there’s so much to take in that my limited capacity struggles to take it all in. He is open-minded but sure in his critique. I may not always agree with him, but I always want to hear his views.
Selection of articles by Holland Cotter:
Miró, Serial Murderer of Artistic Conventions, October 31st 2008
Old South Meets New, in Living Color, November 7th 2008
In the New York Times today, there is a story about the little wooden crucifix attributed to Michelangelo, that the Italian Culture Ministry purchased for $4.5 million in December last year at a vastly reduced price by exercising it’s preemptive right to purchase the artwork in order to prevent the piece from leaving the country.
The controversy surrounds whether the attribution to Michelangelo is correct or not. Interestingly Francesco Caglioti, a specialist in Renaissance sculpture is quoted in the paper as saying that there were at least a dozen skilled artisans capable of making crucifixes like the one in question and that it was typical of those made in such workshops at that time.
He astutely continues “Unfortunately,……every time something beautiful emerges, they (my colleagues) attribute it to a famous name. It would seem like everything done in Renaissance Florence can be attributed to 10 people with a thousand hands”.
The thing is that the problem doesn’t really stop with Renaissance Florence. Today in major capitals of the contemporary art world, it would seem that there were only a handful of artists, Warhol, Picasso, Hurst, Koons to name a few, who create exhibitions worthy of the attention of the establishment. There are other artists today who create masterpieces worthy of our attention. Maybe the Italian Culture Ministry should be looking to support their own excellent group of contemporary artists.
Jerry Saltz once came into monkdogz and we had an unusual conversation about belly buttons of all things while looking at of one Jean Marc Calvet’s early works titled “No Comment”. It confirmed to me at that time that Saltz was indeed a unique art critic.
I’ve always enjoyed his style, his wit and the fact that he appears to write what he feels and really thinks, rather than what he thinks he should write. He entertains as well as educates; managing to be funny and yet maintaining credibility in an industry which has a high percentage of people who think rather highly of themselves and take themselves much too seriously.
Who else could be in the Power 100 list by ArtReview and slam the list itself in an article that they publish next to his name? He starts by saying “I love being on the ArtReview Power 100 list. People congratulate me and I get to pretend that I don’t really know about it or care. Before making the list, I made fun of it; now that I’m on it, I dread being taken off.” However he goes on to say that “Lists like this have almost nothing to do with vision, art ideas or originality.”
“The market is so dumb that it believes anything you put in front of it. It simply likes what they see other people liking. It buys what other people buy. The market isn’t about quality; it’s a self-replicating organism that assigns values, fetishises desire, charts hits, lauds junkie-like behavior, enforces pecking orders and creates ambience. Mostly men make lists like this because mostly men have always made lists like this. That’s how stupid the market is.”
However he does go onto say that this artworld is so obsessed with power and money that it is a time that critics can write whatever they want and it has no effect on the market. Now that, I disagree with. Like being on the “list”, he can pretend that what he says doesn’t make a difference, the rest of us know that he does.
I like the fact that how ever much he may protest, he is part of the “art establishment” whatever that is, and yet he is comfortable lambasting the very existence of such a being and those who play a part in. He’s one of the few art critics who can actually make me laugh. He can probably do it only because he has such an amazing understanding of art and artists. He writes passionately without being gushy and understands the role of history and those who’ve gone before. He often explains why the art is important to those of us who don’t pretend we understand and know it all. He doesn’t expect us to agree just because he says so. In a time when the sayings “everyone hates an art critic” and “everyone is an art critic” is truer than ever, especially will the advent of the internet, the world wide web and blogs, talented, experienced and gutsy art critics are needed more than ever. Critiquing is a honed talent that only a few do well.
And yet, I have found that his tone had changed since joining New York Magazine in 2006. Tyler Green put it very succinctly in a recent post on his blog saying that he wanted to get the Jerry Saltz version 1.0 back, the Saltz with verve and acuity. Green suggests that the Editors at New York Magazine are looking for something different and that Saltz is struggling to find his new voice.
We all develop and change as times move on. We can’t always keep on an upward path; we all have our downturns as well as our upturns. We grow and sometimes we grow up. Sometime we end up doing things because we think it’s what we’re supposed to do. Maybe that old maxim “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” holds true. I wish for my benefit as much as the rest of the art world, that Jerry Saltz continues to do his “thing” with the credibility that he prizes so much. Long live the art critic and may God have mercy on their souls!
