Standing room only

Not to be taking a position as leading authorities on living statues, but who’d have thought so soon after uncovering the living sculpture motherlode that we'd be witnessing a living sculptor smack-down in New Zealand? 

It all starts with rugby-themed living statue Creaghie Beere checking out Highly Flammable (it gets better) on Facebook and finding they're booked to do a ‘fire and ice’ themed event for the Bledisloe Cup (told you). Naturally they leaned toward living sculptures as one does in the Fire and Ice business and intimated as much on FB. Beere told the Dominion Post that this was clearly “stepping on an unwritten rule of street performing” (no, not pinching the money while the statue is looking straight ahead but copying another performer’s work). 

Logan Elliott of HF responded that acts like rugby living sculptures “had been staged all around the world for the past 50 years” and this is probably true. We found an example used to open a store in Florence last year. And, as the old saying goes, ‘if they’re doing rugby living statue work in Florence they’re bound to be doing it somewhere else’.

Images: from the left to right, Creaghie Beere in LS mode (Photo: CHRIS HILLOCK/Fairfax NZ), the Florence footy figure and a random football player living statue of whom there are many.

Cashing up

“What’s the greater community benefit, keeping Cindy Sherman's photograph Orange Sweater and showing it once every five years, or having a few more million dollars...to buy works of art?"
Director of Cleveland's Akron Art Museum. The museum realised $3,655,000 on the sale

Baby steps

Here’s something you probably won’t see in an art museum in NZ anytime soon. Ai Weiwei has just shown Baby formula 2013. It is a giant map of China made from hundreds of cans of baby formula featuring popular brands. Back in 2008 New Zealand's Fonterra was involved in the milk formula scandals through its investment in the Chinese company Sanlu. In that instance three children died and many were hospitalised after drinking milk contaminated with melamine. Even now years later Chinese mothers still travel to Hong Kong to get what they perceive to be safe formula. Ai Weiwei says of his work, “This is a most fundamental assurance of food, but people actually have to go to another region to obtain this kind of thing. I think it's a totally absurd phenomenon."
Image: Ai Weiwei's Baby formula 2013

Let it go Bob, let it go

“For that matter, the New Zealand official exhibit a few years ago at a European sculpture contest of a musical corrugated-iron farm toilet shed was certainly cause for national embarrassment.”

Bob Jones goes for the record number of factual errors in a single sentence (10) in attempting to describe et al.’s installation at the Venice Biennale in the NZH.

Head of state

When it comes to damaging public sculpture in the name of religion, politics or plain bad temper, heads get a real beating. A stroll through any antiquities museum will reveal broken noses, scratched-out eyes and, when things get really out of hand, full decapitation.  We had one of our own beheaded in 1987 when a group called Upokokohua took off with Sir George Grey’s head which up to that time had been located on top of his statue in Auckland’s Albert Park. A new head was made by sculptor Roderick Burgess (he also did the controversial Sir Keith Park effort in London which briefly appeared on the Trafalgar Square Fourth plinth).

All this brings us to another re-headed political statue. This time it's one of Margaret Thatcher currently on offer to her hometown Grantham. When on display in London in 2002 Thatcher’s head was removed from her marble body by an outraged visitor using one of the protective metal stanchions for the job (another reason to back OTN’s campaign to remove protective barriers around sculptures). The repaired sculpture is now on offer to Grantham but there's not a lot of support for the idea with one councilor opining that it could be ‘asking for trouble’.  There are two other sculptures of the ex-Prime Minister on view, one in Westminster (standing) and the other in the United States (sitting).

Images: Top Baroness Thatcher before and after. Bottom same with Sir George Grey

First Govett-Brewster director slams Len Lye Centre

Frustrated by a lack of progress after a number of meetings, founding director of the Govett-Brewster John Maynard (and the person responsible for setting it on its course as a leader in contemporary art over the last 42 years) has publically called for a halt to building of the Len Lye Centre. 

In a letter to today's Council meeting addressed to the Mayor and Councillors of the New Plymouth District Council, John Maynard claims the current building project of  “over exaggerated cultural benefits and underestimated costs”. The letter calls for the Council “to apply common sense to the problem … send the Len Lye Centre back to the drawing board… incorporate the Gallery extension and insist that the design complies with the architectural brief and the budget.”

Maynard gives five reasons for this Hail Mary pass to stop the plan.

·      The failure of the proposed design to provide the museum standards outlined in the brief.

·      The ongoing costs of maintaining a stainless steel façade (Maynard points to the stained base of Lye’s Wind Wand as an example of the problem)

·      The waste (Maynard estimates around $4million) involved in demolishing the Award-winning 1998 extension as part of the project

·      The risk to TSB and the New Plymouth Council of further commitments if the project runs over budget

·      Under-estimation of the budget

Maynard describes the Patterson-designed Centre as “dull, pompous and self important” and “an empty metaphor for a great artist who was known for playfulness, wit and humour.”

You can read the Council papers here and watch today's 4.30pm meeting on the future of the Len Lye Centre live streamed here

Popes

Seeing it’s be-surprised-by-the-Pope time here are a couple of Pope surprises served up by the arts. Top left the Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Velázquez and right the version done by Francis Bacon who famously never saw the original. Bottom La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) - you may remember the OTN post on an MP rush on this depiction of John Paul II by Maurizio Cattelan being thwarted by guards in Warsaw.

Go down Moses

One of the stranger art imports to New Zealand has been the life-size replica of Michelangelo’s Moses that was “specially commissioned” as a “work of art in its own right” by Auckland department store Milne & Choice in 1971 to celebrate its 100 anniversary. The previous year the store had imported a marble replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta but the Moses (according to the store’s brochure) posed its own “considerable transport and handling problems.”  And we assume considerable storage problems as the following year it was donated to the city.

The ‘life-sized’ figure of Moses arrived complete with two horns sticking out of its marbly forehead, protrusions still considered at that time (Michelangelo’s not Milne & Choice’s) to be a fair representation of the prophet's glory when he came down from his meeting with God (Exodus 34:29). The piece was carved in Carrara marble by the same team that had put chisel to stone for the Pietajob and was exact down to “its foot, worn down by the kisses of untold millions of pilgrims.”

Just over 40 years later (late last year) the Vatican finally allowed a cast to be made of its Moses (previously the replicas had to be carved based on models) and a bronze version, authorized by the Italian Ministry of the Cultural Goods and Activities, was cooked up for The Most Precious Blood Church in New York. And so another Moses has been added to the many hundreds of marble and stone versions scattered throughout the world. Auckland’s one sits in Myers Park at the bottom of the stairs leading up to St Kevin’s Arcade and K Road.

But not all has been sweetness and light in the world of Moses replicas. A couple of years ago a full sized Marble Moseswas toppled in an act of road rage (seriously). Brendan Pemberton, enraged by a traffic citation tipped the Moses sitting in the Worcester District Court off its podium and onto its back. From this position it became obvious to everyone that the 148 year-old sculpture, recently renovated to the tune of $20,000, was in fact hollow and made of plaster.  It has since been reinforced and returned to the courthouse. 
Images: Top, the Myers Park Moses photographed by Peter Peryer. Second row, Moses copies in Poland and US followed by bronze Moses in New York. Bottom, the toppled Moses and finally, a record of the restoration work done to get it up and sitting again. 

(and thanks for your help Auckland Libraries)

F bomb

Watching a painter obliterate the familiar mural from the side of the Moore Wilson’s building in central Wellington reminded us that not only did these product images stop endless tagging (some weird code of ethics between muralists and taggers that works throughout most of the city), but also that they had been painted where some sloganeering from the early 1980s had been. 

This was the site of the abandoned Thompson Lewis building which had housed the exhibition F1 (Factory 1) in November 1982. It was the brain child of Ian Hunter (then acting director at the National Art Gallery) and Andrew Drummond who was also on staff. F1 was a big shambling show that featured over its 2,800 metres just about every sculptor working in New Zealand and some more brought in from overseas. 

The floors were taken up by large-scale installations like Extensums by Pauline Rhodes and in the upper rooms and amongst the beams Andrew Drummond practised his Shamanistic arts. Richard Killeen was there, so too was Peter Nicholls. In fact Nicholls's work Full stop (he convinced the New Zealand Army Engineers to drop a three tonne boulder on to a sheet of heated steel) was on view on the Wellington harbour coastline for years after but seems to have vanished when we looked for it the other day. 

 And the slogan connection? We’ve mentioned it before, “When is a factory not a factory? When it’s a closed shop.” 
Images: Top, mural out. Bottom left, Thompson Lewis back in the day. Right, Peter Nicholls Full stop

It’s a wrap

When Queensland chose to spend over a million bucks on Michael Parekowhai’s large bronze The world turns, you had to figure there would be some grumbling. First out of the gate was local artist Fiona Foley who played the not-made-here card-not-made-by-us card. It’s hard to believe the criticism would have been leveled at art super star Rirkrit Tiravanija (who was also on the short list) had he won the commission – it’s a close neighbour thing. 

Now it’s the turn of the new Arts Minister Ros Bates. Her first job, as she told the media back in April, was “to find out where all the bodies have been buried.” This week she’s taken the better-ways-to-spend-the-cash (i.e. on Australian artists) route and singled out Parekowhai’s sculpture as a rod to beat the previous administration's backing. 

Bates - previously a health professional and media consultant - declared the work a hangover from the previous Government’s “shocking misuse of taxpayer dollars” adding (in case you didn’t get how an art work could bring down an Australian state’s economy) “it’s this kind of reckless spending that drove Queensland into a spiral of debt.” 

Nothing new in Australian politicians (well most politicians really) giving art a good kick. Back in 1978 Canberra was set alight as MPs tried to out-do each other insulting the Colin McCahon painting Victory over death 2 when New Zealand gave it to the National Gallery of Australia. 

This time round, apart from Parekowhai’s work being used to bash a previous administration, there’s another more intriguing angle. There is a definite possibility that the Minister is using Parekowhai to try and create a good old art scandal diversion. Turns out her son is currently the subject of a nepotism scandal with a Crime and Misconduct Commission looking into his appointment to a Government job. This subject she is not so keen to talk to the media about. 

Finally, against all the stereotypes, the Queensland Premier Campbell Newman says he can see the artistic merit of Parekowhai’s sculpture. "Having had a look at the artist's impression, I rather like it myself," he told a Brisbane radio show. 

Image: The world turns being lifted out through the foundry roof and onto a truck to start its trip to Australia. Coming ready or not. 

A clash of symbols

We’ve mentioned before how hard it is to find out what’s being included in the big art exhibition supporting NZ’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair, but a Twitpic in the stream from Frankfurt let in a chink of light.  It shows a Peter Robinson triptych that features (among other elements) a version of the swastika. 

Although the swastika Robinson has chosen is the reverse of the Nazi one and shown on its side, its standing in as a symbol of Nazism and the far right is self-evident. Not surprisingly Germany has specific laws prohibiting the use or display of the swastika even when done satirically or in opposition to Nazism although this prohibition is usually limited to the specific swastika design used during the Nazi era. 

Robinson in his use of the symbol is of course addressing the continuing and disruptive power of the far right internationally as well as in New Zealand and pointing out how far we are from reaching some level of real equality.

Still, you’d have to say including this work in an exhibition in Germany is certainly a stand-up provocative act of curation. After all the curators will be aware of the conflict that surrounded Jenny Harper hanging a similar Robinson swastika work in her Victoria University office back in 1998. Presumably, having taken the work into Germany, the curators, CNZ and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage are all prepared to stand behind it should there be any similar objections from a public somewhat more sensitive to these issues than we are. 

Image: Top, Peter Robinson’s work being readied for exhibition in Frankfurt. Bottom, the modification of a swastika to a less offensive form the Olympic stadium built in Berlin in 1936

LATER: You can now see a few images from the opening here on Barbara Walzer's photostream and more installation images on the St Paul’s Facebook page. 

When Ron and Larry got unmarried

The world of art dealers and their clients is not often thrown open as it has been in the recent flurry of suits in the New York Supreme Court, so let's make the most of it. Larry Gagosian and long-time collector and client billionaire Ron Perelman are about to duke it out over a Jeff Koons sculpture that isn’t even finished. The depositions have been filled and contain encouraging phrases like “clouding the title”. 

The pending cases also demonstrate the immense power mega-artists like Koons wield over their market. Essentially Koons had a deal with Gagosian over his yet-to-be-completed $US4 million granite sculpture of Popeye that if it was on-sold at any time in the future he (Koons) would get 70 percent of anything above the original sale price. It’s the artist’s resale fee on steroids. And just in case anyone thought there would be some wriggle room, Koons also insisted on 80 percent of any resale profit should the sculpture come back into Gagosian’s hands before it was completed. That’s a seriously powerful player at work. 

Welcome to the world of dealer/artist/collector relations where collectors not only purchase works from art dealers but also consign them back for resale, exchange them for other works and sell back direct. Tons of room for confusion and misunderstanding there. As one US attorney put it, “There’s a certain level of informality in the art market that is not helpful to any of the parties.” 

The court papers filed by Ron Perelman (you can get them here) claim that as the already paid for Popeye sculpture was running seven months late, it was decided to add it to some other art works as part payment for yet another, grander acquisition. All the pieces went back and forward with Larry Gagosian receiving the returned Perelman’s works and Perelman getting his new painting. 

Then all hell broke loose as Perelman claimed Gagosian “Fraudulantly induced [Perelman] to purchase Popeye a sculpture by Jeff Koons and forced [him] to accept an exchange rate significantly below its fair market value”. Gagosian responded in kind accusing Perelman of engaging in “a series of sham settlements and deceptive maneuvers”. 

Put simply, Larry reckoned that Ron hadn’t paid for Popeye so obviously he wasn't going to get the full price back for it but Perelman found out about Jeff's 70 percent so he figured that Larry wasn’t going to offer him very much at all because he wasn’t going to make any profit so Ron decided to sue which really really upset Larry who thought Ron was a friend and anyway he hadn’t ever sued one of his clients before but what the hell you have to make a start somewhere besides so far as Larry was concerned Ron didn’t even own the damn Popeye work because he hadn’t paid for it duh not that Ron was having anything to do with that as an idea because he had copies of his cheques. It’s complicated. 

You can read the whole amazing story here in the Huffington Post and in even more juicy detail here via Bloomberg. 

Image: Jeff Kons's Granite Popeye (simulation only)

Touching

Last night there was a panel discussion we were part of on Marcel Duchamp in New Zealand at the Adam Art Gallery. A lot of the talk was around the Duchamp exhibition that came to New Zealand in 1967. It famously got some older members of the art museum (the director of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery at the time was a tortoise inspiring 74 years old) profession extremely agitated. The fuss ended up with two of Duchamp’s works - Please touch, a false breast made by Duchamp to stick on the cover of a book and Fountain his famous readymade urinal, being removed from the exhibition at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch. The director allowed 'artists' and arts students to view them in his office and queues formed in protest with students returning to the back of the queue after they had had a look in an attempt to keep the director fully occupied showing Fountain and Please touch to 'artists' every waking minute of his day.

In memory of all this Duchamp history action here are some latter day tributes to Fountain. They range from a sticker you can use to convert your own toilet into a Duchampian gesture to a remote-controlled urinal signed R (the R was for Richard) Mutt.

Images: Top to bottom, left to right. Sherrie Levine’s Fountain (After Marcel Duchamp), Michael Parekowhai’s Mimi, R Mutt sticker from Thwart Design, Fountain parade float, cake by Hannah Hull, R Mutt figures and Raphael Rogenmoser’s remote-controlled Fountain (you can see it in action here)