Monkdogz Artblog

I wonder what it is that makes people excited about the biggest, smallest, oldest, longest, heaviest, fastest, shortest or most expensive. What ever it is, it does seem to add value to the item. I suppose that often it makes the item unique, there can only be one biggest, one smallest etc. etc., unless there’s a tie of course and that probably doesn’t happen too often at any one time.

So here is Picasso’s largest work in the news. A stage cloth that measures 10 x10 metres (approx. 33 x 33 feet) that he created for Serge Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes called Le Train Blue in 1924, is to be part of an exhibition at the V&A Museum in London titled “Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909 – 1929” from September 25 to January 9 2011.

It was not actually painted by him, but by scene painters who created it from the original painting titled “Deux Femmes Courant”. However Picasso was so pleased with it he signed the canvas and dedicated it to Diaghilev, the man credited with revolutionizing ballet.

Picasso was one of several renowned artists who collaborated with Diaghilev such as Vaslav Nijinsky the dancer and choreographer, Igor Stravinsky, the composer, Coco Chanel the designer and Henri Matisse a fellow artist. These artists working together must have generated dynamic creative environments which lead to results which are still enjoyed by many today. I would have liked to have been there.

For more read the Times….

What a prize just for information!  The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is offering a $5million no-questions-asked reward for information leading to the recovery in good condition of old master artworks stolen in the largest art theft in history which was valued at nearly half a billion dollars.  The US Attorney’s Office is also offering immunity to anybody offering such information.  

Tomorrow sees the 20^th anniversary of the theft and a renewed move by the FBI to try and recover the paintings and sculptures.  The theft of the 13 works of art was carried out by two men who appeared to have significant knowledge of the museum’s security system.  They bound and gagged the two security guards during the very early hours of the morning and took nearly an hour and a half to select an intriguing range of artwork.  The heist included artwork by Degas, Manet, Rembrandt and Vermeer, but did not include one of the museum’s most valuable paintings, a self portrait by Rembrandt, which was taken from the wall but then left behind.  Lastly, the thieves took the only VHS tape that would have recorded them from the security office.  

The Boston Globe reports in full.

Anyone with information about the theft, the location of the stolen artworks, or the investigation may contact the museum’s Director of Security Anthony Amore directly at 617-278-5114 or theft@gardnermuseum.org. The museum can ensure complete confidentiality.

Even the art world is impacted by the sports world on occasion.  An interesting wager has been set up based on the results of the Super Bowl XLIV which will be played this coming Sunday, February 7^th to determine the American football champions of 2010. 

Tyler Green who writes the Modern Art Notes blog at ArtsJournal has instigated a bet between The New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  If the New Orleans Saints win on February 7^th, the Indianapolis museum will send “The Fifth Plague of Egypt” by J.M. Turner to the New Orleans Museum, which gets to show it for three months.  If the Indianapolis Colts win instead, then the New Orleans museum will send the “Ideal View of Tivoli” by Claude Lorrain to Indianapolis for a three months exhibition.  

What a great way to bring these two worlds together.

I’ve always boycotted Walmart and it’s subsiduaries as I’ve disagreed with their business model which I think ultimately depresses an economy. My views were further entrenched when I’d hear stories of Alice Walton, snatching artwork away from the Metropolitan Museum and the National Gallery of Washington by paying over the odds for the work, when the museums were trying hard to keep it in the public eye. She’s also currently embroiled with the Fisk University’s financial turmoil offering to take shared ownership of Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs pending an appeal with the Georgia O’Keeffe museum according to the FT.

However I’ve had to sit back and think twice about the Crystal Bridges Museum that Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation have spent $50million on. The 100 acre site in Bentonville, Arkansas will be home to a beautiful museum of American art, housing much of Alice Walton’s art collection in the midst of a wonderful nature park.

The unique glass and wood buildings have been designed by Moshe Safdie which will lie by a natural spring called Crystal Spring gives the museum its name. The museum is hoping to become a venue for outdoor concerts and public events as well as for private meetings and events such as weddings and conferences. It also states on its web site that “encouraging community uses and activities (is) of its highest priorities.”

The plans look fabulous and it will be a wonderful development for the region. Current plans expect the museum to open next year. I will look forward to visiting it and hope that it succeeds in its mission.

A woman has joined a select club of people who’ve accidentally put a tear in a painting.

Wandering around with her art class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Friday, she stumbled onto the Picasso painting “The Actor” considered to be worth $130million and a rare example of his rose period when he painted itinerant acrobats in costume according to AP and MSNBC. The damage, a six inch irregular vertical tear in the bottom right hand corner is expected to be unobtrusive when completed.

The other person to famously tear a Picasso is Steve Wynn who put his elbow into “Le Reve” when he was showing it to some friends just after he negotiated to sell it to Steven A. Cohen for reported $139million. Wynn put a small thumb-sized hole in the canvas and the deal with Cohen fell through. It’s rumored that he said at the time “Thank goodness I did it and not someone else!” I hear that it hangs in Steve Wynn’s office today.

Unfortunately, I am also in this club, not a Picasso, but a large painting “Wild Irish Rose” a rose colored work that Robert d. Hogge gave me when I first really got to know him. I was hanging the work up in the house, when my hand slipped and it fell onto a sharp corner of a cabinet. It made a right angled tear of about 3 inches in the middle of the lower half of the painting.

I felt absolutely awful. Really sick to the stomach. Mortified. Devastated.

I feel dreadful even now when I think about it. I don’t know how I plucked up the courage to tell Bob about it but I did, knowing that he would see it before long. He was very good about it and brushed it off; reassuring me and saying he could repair it easily.

Bob did repair it well and he kindly says that he can’t see where it was now, some 7 years on. I can sense it, because it’s burned into my mind but it is hard to see. It hangs in my bedroom today where I see it every day. It’s one of my favorite paintings. It reminds me to be grateful, humble, know that life goes on and that friendship survives.

When’s the last time there’s been so much gossiping, oops sorry, creative discussion about an art world personality?  The art world is abuzz, with the news that Jeffrey Deitch of Deitch Projects has been chosen to be the new director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. 

MOCA has been going through some turbulent times of late best summed up by the LA Times’s Mike Boehm and David Ng:  “(Jeremy) Strick, now director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, was MOCA’s director for 10 years. On his watch, MOCA received consistent acclaim for its exhibitions and programs, but fell, on average, about $2 million a year short of raising enough money to balance its budget as it grew to more than $20 million a year. MOCA spent down a $38-million endowment to keep funding operations, and had no reserves left to cope when the global financial crisis hit in September 2008. Emergency fundraising ensued.

A divided board of trustees eventually accepted a $30-million bailout offer from Eli Broad, the billionaire art collector and philanthropist who had been MOCA’s founding chairman in 1979. MOCA leaders say they raised another $34 million in donations and pledges from others during 2009, the museum’s 30th- anniversary year. However, the year also brought layoffs and a large budget reduction at the museum, which expects to spend $15.5 million during the fiscal year that began in July.”  

The Museum has also faced stiff competition from two other institutions in the city, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum of Art at the University of California.  Both have had recent new directors at their helm and have been competing strongly for public awareness, funding and art acquisitions.   

Interestingly on a side note, Eli Broad seems to have had significant input into this appointment as he did on the appoitnment of Michael Govan the former director of the DIA Foundation to the current position of director of LACMA.  Thats a significant influence on the city’s art.

So what does Deitch bring to this very precarious situation?

Jeffrey Deitch, born in 1950 grew up in Connecticut and studied art history at Wesleyan and then went on to do a MBA at Harvard Business School.  From there he went to Citibank where he co-founded the bank’s art advisory and art finance programs. In 1988 he became an independent art advisor to wealthy collectors whom he had associated with at Citibank such as Steve Cohen a9the billionaire hedge fund manager and founder of SAC Capital Advisors) and Dakis Joannou (the Greek Shipping magnate).  

In 1996 Deitch opened his first gallery in Soho.  However very shortly afterwards, he nearly went bankrupt helping fund Jeff Koon’s Celebration project and he had to sell a 50% stake of his business to Sotheby’s who stepped in to rescue him in 1997.  Today he has two galleries in Soho and a studio space for special events in Long Island City.  

The Deitch Projects has had a well earned reputation as a cutting edge venue with exhibitions, installations and performances with strong emerging artists such as Cecily Brown, Ryan McGinness and Kristin Baker as well as introducing Street Art in New York.  He was close friends with Jean-Michel Basquiat and dealt in his artwork.  In 2006 he presented according to Cityfile “one of Dash Snow and Dan Colen’s infamous ‘Hamster Nest’ installations, which involved the artists and their friends getting together, filling the space with the remains of thousands of shredded phone books, getting high, and ransacking the place, peeing on the walls and worse.”  He is also quoted in the New York Times as saying that he ran his gallery “like an art center, with historic exhibitions where only minor things were for sale” and helped create ambitious projects, like a recent floating installation by the street artist Swoon that he called “practically unsalable.”

However in order to fund these exhibitions, he brokers deals in the secondary markets and advises clients.  He also administers and represents the Keith Haring Foundation.  However in order to take on this new role, he will be closing his galleries.  

Deitch will be the first dealer / gallery owner to take on the directorship of a major US museum.  There are some very strong and differing views from the art establishment about his commercial and business skills, whether he has the ability to woo trustees, raise funds, balance artists, curators and employees, improving public awareness and critical acclaim.  Some suggest that there will be too much of an ethical conflict; others say that it will be the best shot in the arm to the museum world.

The one thing that nobody is disputing is that Deitch will leave a large hole in the contemporary art world in New York and will be sorely missed in the gallery scene.

Today, I wandered up the wide stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and into the hallowed entrance hall of this behemoth. With the afternoon stretching in front of me, without any commitments for the day, I felt an excitement akin to a child walking into a toy or candy store.

I had come ostensibly to see the “Art of the Samurai” before it closes on Saturday. However wondering around the museum trying to find my way there, I wondered through a history book of art starting with the Byzantine section, then the Medieval, The sculpture garden, The Renaissance, Art Deco, Modern and Contemporary. I passed through these rooms, thinking only of getting to the Samurai exhibit first and then spending time in the other rooms which housed the permanent collection.

The Met is a wonderful collection of art from all period and around the world, but this is also a double edged sword. The density and proximity of many of the rooms and artifacts are so intense that I tend to find myself over whelmed and over stimulated when I try to cover too many rooms. I tend to find myself with brain freeze. The other problem is that many of these rooms are like being given a small taster spoon and then finding that even if you like it, there is no more. It leaves me with a hunger that cannot easily be satisfied. So perhaps that is why I tend to go the Met only for the special exhibitions or to study very specific single pieces of art.

The ‘Art of the Samurai’ was a blockbuster. It was an amazing collection of swords, armor and other war paraphernalia that was brought together from over 65 institutions and private collections in Japan. A feat that has not even been attempted in Japan itself. The beauty and soul of these impeccably created swords which required amazing skills and technological expertise and understanding was awe inspiring. I stood mesmerized in front of many a “national treasure”. Personally and probably because of my Japanese heritage, I found the exhibition humbling.

So it was with not a little relief that I came across a very refreshing and clever exhibit “Pablo Bronstein at the Met” on the mezzanine level attached to the contemporary section. It’s the artist’s first solo show in New York. WOW! What a way to start. Admittedly he has been in the Tate Triennial and has had solo shows in Italy, Britain and Germany, but still! He was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but currently lives and works in London, having graduated from Goldsmith College and The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

Bronstein’s work is architectural and in this exhibit he creates blueprints of the Met’s 5th Avenue façade and several specific galleries in the museum which suggest mythical histories and hypothetical futures. One example is a rendering of the façade that shows the Met converted into a residential condominium. He implies that power and politics play an inevitable role in the creation of all great constructions. The exhibition continues until February 21st 2010.

I also met a wonderful Metropolitan Museum guide, Barbara Etra who was taking visitors around the contemporary art collection. She was knowledgeable not only of the works on display, but her well rounded knowledge of the history of art and the many other contemporary artists not yet displayed at the Met, was significant. More than anything, I was impressed at her ability to match her tour and explanation to the group who gathered around her, with the members ebbing and flowing as people dropped away or joined along the way. She was very patient with questions and encouraging. It was a pleasure to listen to her.

I have to mention that I did walk passed Damien Hirst’s shark titled “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, Jackon Pollock’s “Autumn Rhythm”, and Warhol’s Mao, Jackie (Kennedy) and self portrait. It’s always good to see iconic work up close and personal.

All in all, it was a great day at the Met.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a very unusual exhibition planned for later this month. It is an exhibition from a very different sort of collector, London’s Metropolitan Police Force. To be exact it is the Art & Antiques Department’s collection of forged art work.

The exhibition 23 January – 7 February 2010 will showcase some of the investigative methods involved in detecting and preventing the increasingly sophisticated crime of art forgery. Using historical and contemporary criminal cases, the broader financial and cultural impacts of art forgery on modern society are considered and explained.

Some of the works of John Myatt considered to be perpetrator of one of the “biggest art fraud(s) of the 20th century”, Shaun Greenhalgh who with his parents and brother was named as “possibly the most diverse forgery team in the world, ever.”

It is an interesting concept for a museum show, especially as it exposes some art world experts and establishment as being fallible. Good Gracious! What a thought!

As the holidays become more and more commercially driven sales events, vehicles for political agendas or lobbyists, the original message seems to diminish. Integrity, compassion and beauty seem to become negligible values as opposed to “reality”, shock and scandal. So it was with great surprise that I saw the Tate Britain’s 2009 Christmas tree.

Since 1988 a contemporary artist has been invited each year to create a Christmas tree which is placed in the rotunda lobby of Tate Britain in London. In previous years, the tree has been hung upside down with its roots covered in gold leaf, a garbage dumpster (skip) has been filled with holiday detris including a dead fir tree, torn wrapping paper broken decorations, and trees have been wrapped in various materials. Last year Bob and Roberta Smith built a tree of recycled bits of wood, bicycles and lamps.

This year Tacita Dean a British born artist who now lives and works in Berlin displayed a simple fir tree decorated with real beeswax candles on the branches. In an interview with the Telegraph she said “I was struck when I arrived in Berlin by the simplicity of Christmas there. I felt the Germans had managed to hold on to something of its purity and magic….they have a great tradition of Christmas decorations and are still unafraid to have real candles on their trees.”

Impressively the authorities allowed naked candles to be used despite worries about health and safety after significant precautions were taken. The positive will to make things happen rather than just complaining, denying or blocking things from happening is a very refreshing change. So is the vision to allow simplicity and beauty to shine through.

You’ve all probably heard the story that’s been flying for the last month or so about the incestuous exhibition being planned by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan of collector Dakis Joannou’s (who also happens to be one of the museum’s trustees) private art collection to be curated by his good friend Jeff Koons, who’s work is also collected by the said collector. There’s a lot more to this incestuous inner circle which if you’re interested in you can read in the various links I’ve attached to the bottom of this post.

I wasn’t particularly interested in this turn of events as it was just more of the same usual “stuff” that goes on in the art world. What surprised me was the degree of moral outrage that it’s spawned.

The art world is probably one of the last unregulated industries left. Consequently, although there are many good individuals and businesses within the industry operate with integrity there is also a fair share of those who don’t. In truth, does regulation help that much anyway? Just look at the worlds of finance and pharmaceuticals; although proponents of regulation I am sure would point out how much worse it would be without any regulations.

Having said all that the art world has it’s share of forgers, chandelier bidding, insider trading, cronyism, nepotism, price fixing, cartels, money laundering. You name a nefarious activity and the art world probably has it and maybe more than in other industries. If you hark back to the early days of this blog, Bob wrote about the Intelligence Squared US debate on the proposition “The art market is less ethical than the stock market” which was held in February of this year in the very midst of the financial crash. Those for the motion won the day with 55% of the votes.

So everyone knows that it happens. So why suddenly is the New Museum being singled out for public outcry? Is someone harboring a grudge against Lisa Phillips the Director, Jeff Koons or Dakis Joannou?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a very healthy thing to air and discuss working practices in our industry and a little bit of self regulations is “a very good thing” as our once incarcerated Martha Stewart likes to say.  However I am much more interested in the motivation forthis sudden soul searching and self-scrutiny in the mirror.

Do you have any insider information? Who hates whom?…Who wants to do whom in?…..I’d buy you a cup of coffee and a donut for the down and dirty……meet me behind the dumpster on 27th street……….

Associated articles:

ArtInfo
New York Times
New York Times Art Beats
New York Magazine