Not fair

“What we are dealing with now is destination shopping. We bring the art to the collector rather than bringing the collector to the art. Fairs are beneath the dignity of art. To stand there in a booth and hawk your wares — it is just not how you sell art.”
New York art dealer Arne Glimcher, of the Pace Gallery berating art fairs in the NYT.

The gold standard

"If I had to give it up I would do so because I have no sentimental attachment to anything. That’s the investment banker talking. I might love a painting but, if I was offered megabucks, there’s a price for everything. All my decisions are clinical rather than emotional. I must have some emotion somewhere but I suppress it as much as possible.”
A Wellington art collector talks about his collection in the latest edition of NZ House & Garden

Snap shot

Anyone with an interest in the contemporary photography market will have had a fascinating week as the results of the latest Auckland auctions came to hand. Although Webb’s only offered three photographic items they scored with Michael Parekowhai’s large format Elmer Keith. From his series of sparrows and rabbits made in 2000 The Beverly Hills Gun Club, it went for $18,400. A couple of days later another photo of Elmer Keith No 1 (this one made four years later on a slightly different coloured background and pointing the other way) went for $17,600 at Art + Object. And good luck to future researchers trying to work out the titles, sizes and poses of all these sparrows if the original records are ever lost. The original BHGC works were sold for around $3,000 and over the years the prices have climbed steadily (in 2005 one sold for $8,226). Also at Art + Object a couple of Ava Seymour’s large-scale images went for over $15,000 between them.

However, despite the attractions of some large format photography the media continues to struggle to get the attention it deserves. The chance to purchase Peter Peryer's classic paired portraits of Erika Peryer for around $10,000 was passed up (Te Papa and the Auckland Art Gallery both have one each which probably put them out of contention as they were paired at auction). Peryer’s Octopus sold for a healthy $5,976 and sounds like it was purchased by a collector who has dominated the Peryer market at auction over the last few years.

But in spite of these specific examples there's still a great opportunity to build a major photography collection without spending mega dollars. Most of the images on offer, and many of them were classics, would have been hammered down for $2000 a piece. It can’t last.

An addendum to our post on the Friendlander photograph of Ralph Hotere vs the Hotere drawing. Game set and match to photography. The portrait went for $9200 and the drawing failing to get a bid.

Roll call

Over the weekend we visited our friend Simon Manchester. We've known Simon for a while now and have also come to know his remarkable collection of ceramics. Simon is one of those people for whom the word collector was invented. He is utterly incapable withholding a bid at auction or keeping his hands off his wallet if he finds a pot or a vase or a jug if he thinks is important to New Zealand’s ceramic history or hits him in the heart when he sees it. And his collection of ceramics, one of a number of things he collects in depth, is thousands of objects strong. Well it was. Unfortunately Simon’s apartment tops a tall, thin heritage building in downtown Wellington and, as the earth moved a few weeks ago, so did many of his prized pieces.

As we have seen in earthquakes before in Wellington, and as was shown many times in Christchurch, shaking and rolling has the strangest effects. And that’s how it was with Simon’s collection. A tall vase stayed put while a flat dish was thrown across the room. Things attached to the wall remained where they were supposed to be as pots, jugs and sculptures on the floor toppled, some shelves spilled everything while some nothing at all. The result is a huge clean up job and boxes of shards.

One thing Simon told us which is worth passing on is the fact that Quake Wax takes a few weeks to harden into its stay-right-where-you-are form. His experience was that a couple of vases that had been carefully quake waxed a few days before the shake obeyed gravity leaving a sticky wax ring behind them. The loss has certainly taken a toll on the Manchester collection and a toll on Simon himself and so this pic of them both in happier times.

The ring cycle

Who'd have thought a cultural smack down between two giant fashion houses would take place in Venice? 

In the left hand corner we have Prada with intellectual cred and a curatorial heavyweight. Germano Celant - a past director of the Venice Biennale and the person who first coined the term Arte Povera in 1967 - leads off for Prada. As we've already posted, Prada has filled its entire building with a highly researched recreation of the famous 1969 exhibition When attitudes become form. 

Then, in the right hand corner we have Gucci (YSL, Bottega Veneta, Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney etc etc) for the François Pinault Foundation. Director Martin Bethenod is a journalist and previously Chief of Staff for the President of the Pompidou Centre. This might seem a little lightweight but the Pinault Foundation brings into the ring a gigantic installation by Rudolf Stingel at the Palazzo Grassi. Stingel has photographed an oriental rug, enlarged it and then had the enlarged image printed onto carpet. 

But wait, there’s more. Lots of carpet. It's been impeccably laid over the entire 5,000 square meters of the building, floors and walls. It’s about 4800 meters more than we needed.

A knock-out for Prada in the first round.

Images: Top, Rudolf Stingel at the Palazzo Grassi and bottom, a detail from Prada’s recreation of When attitudes become form. Photo: Attilio Maranzano for Fondazione Prada

Open door policy

‘If that’s coming in, you’re going out.’

Mega UK collector Frank Cohen’s wife Cherryl in response to a new art acquisition as reported by the Financial Times.

And his favourite opera? Gotta be Starlight Express

"He's a strange one, isn't he? I just find it all a bit ... bleak ….There is too much gloomy art in New Zealand. There is not enough light and frivolity."
 

Minister of Culture and Heritage Hon. Chris Finlayson commenting on Colin McCahon’s Muriwai Canvas and Necessary Protectionin the Parliamentary collection. (According to the NZH Mr Finlayson's own favourites hang in his office and include one of Piera McArthur’s series on Bishop Pompallier)  More here if you want to punish yourself further.

Image: Finlayson and McArthur Pompallier painting

Stand up and be counted

We've posted before about the millions of photographs taken of artworks in museums every day and how the Mona Lisa and other destination paintings are almost impossible to see for the hordes of point-and-pressers crowded around them. Now the latest iteration of art-photography is gathering steam: snap a photo in front of your own special artwork. Two for one - an artwork and a friend.

Less endearing are the photos of the rich and the powerful standing in front of paintings they own or control.  It's a modern day version of the tradition by which landowners have their estates oiled in behind them by the likes of Thomas Gainsborough and the rest. As John Berger said of Gainsborough’s famous landed gentry painting Mr and Mrs Andrews, “their proprietary attitude towards what surrounds them is visible in their stance and their expression.” So too with modern day portraits of high flyers and their art.

We were reminded of all this when we saw these pics of businesswomen before art in a Next magazine (who knows what issue, we’re talking doctor’s waiting room here). Inevitably the two paintings are by men, but then you can’t have everything.

Images: Top to bottom, Thomas Gainsborough Mr and Mrs Andrews, snapping at the Mona Lisa, peace-signs and Pollock and what comes in Next

Die hard

We nearly missed one of David Walsh’s King Hits at MONA in Hobart. The standalone gallery featuring the French artist ChristianBoltanski is next to the wharf where the ferry ties up and most people (well everyone really) heads past it and straight up the 90 stairs to the museum entrance. Then as they queue up at the top of those stairs to leave, everyone tends to hustle past again so as to get a good seat for the ride back to the city.

If you do stop and go inside you see a bank of monitors that screen video of Boltanski’s studio in real-time as well as highlights from previous days. As his studio is in Europe we don't reckon many MONA visitors catch Boltanski in real time but the feed is part of a bet-cum-purchase he has with Walsh. Walsh is a committed gambler (that’s where the money for the museum and its collection has come from) and in his purchase of The life of C.B he is making another call. 

In Boltanski’s words, “We decided to work on the basis of this old tradition of a lifetime annuity. To buy en viager in France is a transaction by which you pay someone fixed instalments until their death, at which time the payments stop and you inherit the property. David gives me a bit of money each month. In eight years time he will have paid me the agreed amount. If I die in five years time, he gets a good deal.” 

So, the longer Boltanski lives, the more Walsh will have to pay. Boltanski is 68 and has refused to sell Walsh his ashes.

Image: DVD records of the days already videoed with slots good for another nine years worth of recordings line the ‘Boltanski room’.