When art is money and money is art

Works of art are worth as much as the highest bidder would pay for them at auction (or the price set by the artist and paid by the buyer).
 

Denis Beaubois is a Sydney artist who is auctioning a pile of cash a sculptural object. From his website

The Currency project is the first work in a series that looks at money as an architecture of possibility. Twenty thousand dollars, consisting of one hundred dollar bills, will be presented as a simple sculptural object to be auctioned through a fine art auction house. The material/money for the work has been sourced from a “New Work Established grant“ from the Visual Arts and Craft section of the Australia council for the Arts.

All currency used in the creation of the work will not be altered or modified and will retain its potential function and value as currency. However each hundred dollar bill will have its serial number recorded to validate it as an authentic part of the work, thereby instilling a cultural value on top of the financial value. The tension between the economic value of the material against the cultural value of the art object will be explored through the process of the financial transaction.

The work will be auctioned by Deutscher and Hackett and its catalogue notes

Currency, poses fundamental questions about value and values. These questions are not so new: artists have been posing them for generations. In the twentieth century we have seen the ‘readymades’ by Marcel Duchamp, the use of non-art materials in Arte Povera, Campbell’s Soup cans as ‘high art’ via Andy Warhol, or Jasper Johns’ Painted Bronze of the 1960s where the artist disguises the high art material of bronze by painting it to give the illusion of a humble coffee tin full of used paint brushes.

Simply, the value of an art object is subjective and often it greatly exceeds its material value. Yet, the face value of currency tends to decline with time and inflation, unless of course the banknotes gain ‘collector value’ in the world of numismatics, or become ‘collectable’ in the art market.

The art doesn't stop with the object itself. The auction itself would have to be part of the art.

Sydney Exhibition
thursday 18th to tuesday 23rd august
11am to 6pm
55 oxford St (cnr pelican st)
surry hills 2010
ph: 02 9297 0600

Melbourne Exhibition
thursday 25th to tuesday 30th august
11.00 am - 6.00 pm
105 commercial road
south yarra 3141
ph: 03 9865 6333

AUCTION
wed 31st august
to be held at Melbourne address

See reporting in The Age by Giles Hardie and Kylie Northover.  As Hardie noted

So the Government gave Beaubois currency to purchase currency to be sold for currency, as art.

How much is money worth? Most people would try and bid less than the face value of the currency. How many would actually pay more than what the pile of cash is worth?  In the name of art.

More on Vivian Maier

In January, I wrote about Vivian Maier, a prolific photographer from Chicago who was largely unknown until her death when some of her work was discovered.

Mother Jones recently featured some of her work in its May/June 2011 issue, 'The Best Street Photographer You've Never Heard Of' written by Alex Kotlowitz. This sums up her work well

MAIER'S WORK IS PART OF THE decades-old genre of street photography, a field that has included such giants as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus. (Judging by her collection of books on photography, Maier was likely aware of their work.) These photographers speak to the profoundly democratic impulse to acknowledge that we all have a place—that our stories matter. She took photos of the downtrodden and the well-heeled. She took photos of festive people and people in distress. She took photos of children and the aged. She took photos of whites and blacks (notable, given the times). Her work is marked by serendipity; she appeared to have no agenda, but instead captured what she stumbled upon. Joel Meyerowitz, the co-author of Bystander: A History of Street Photography and a renowned photographer in his own right, says of Maier's images: "They are full of wit and surprise and playful spirit...Her basic decent humanism is evident everywhere in her photographs."

Read more, which includes some stunning photographs.

Photograph by Vivian Maier/John Maloof Collection

Vivian Maier, photographer extraordinaire and chronicler of Chicago history.

Vivian Maier - unseen photographer

Broadcast by PBS affiliate WTTW on Chicago Tonight (22 December 2010), this story about Vivian Maier has left many historians and photographers gasping. Vivian Maier was a prolific photographer in Chicago, whose work is only now coming to light, following her death in 2009. There are more than 100,000 photographs by Maier still to be seen.



The majority of the collection is now owned by John Maloof, with around 12,000 held by Jeff Goldstein.

John Maloof, Anthony Rydzon and Lars Mortensen are in the process of producing a full-length documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier. You can back the project through Kickstarter.


A book will also be published by powerHouse Books.

See also
- article in Chicago magazine
- John Maloof's website/blog vivianmaier.com
- Jeff Goldstein's website Vivian Maier Photography
- YouTube channel vivianmaierphoto (Maier also took some video films)

SOAP - The Show

Hot out of Berlin and following its success at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival comes Circle of Eleven's SOAP - The Show comes to the Sydney Opera House (click for ticketing information). Created in 2007 by Markus Pabst and Maximilian Rambaek, a bathroom is turned into a stage, where seven bathtubs allow performers to show their extraordinary gymnastic and acrobatic skills amidst the tubs and other paraphernalia.

The show runs from 4 to 23 January 2010 at the Sydney Opera House, followed by a tour to Blackpool/UK before returning to Berlin, then a tour to Amsterdam.

Below is a preview


An in-depth preview of Eike von Stuckenbrok's performance


More of Eike von Stuckenbrok in detail


The work may seem familiar, as Markus Pabst had created a similar piece for La Clique with bathtub acrobat David O'Mer, which has been a part of the Sydney Festival in 2006 and 2009.

Australian Didj Wentworth will perform on the straps as shown below (Michael Lanphear)


It looks stunning and breathtaking.

Andrew Baines' surreal human sculptures

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - JUNE 27: Suited volunteers in bowler hats stand in the surf holding umbrellas aloft at sunrise at Bondi Beach on June 27, 2010 in Sydney, Australia. The human installation is the latest in a series of 'surreal human sculptures' by artist Andrew Baines, which included businessmen reading newspapers in the surf of Manly Beach in Sydney, and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra playing in the surf at Cottesloe, Western Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)
Content © 2010 Getty Images All rights reserved.

Mr Baines actually called for volunteers to attend the photography session dressed in their own clothes. From his website

Sunday 27th of June at 7 am, Artist Andrew Baines will create his latest Surreal Human Sculpture! To participate you will need to wear a dark suit, white collar shirt and tie and bring a dark umbrella, brief case optional! (no shoes or socks required)

Not really that much different to Spencer Tunick is it?

Sun at night

Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has installed a large-scale public art installation at Federation Square in Melbourne called Solar Equation. It is a simulation of the sun and was commissioned by Federation Square as part of The Light in Winter.

my two photos below




official Fed Square photo

Centre Pompidou-Metz

As part of cultural decentralisation in France, the Paris-based Centre Pompidou (and one of my favourites) built a new cultural centre in Metz, capital of the Lorraine region in the north east and near the German border.

Designed by Shigeru Ban and Jean de Gastines, the centre was built by Demathieu et Bard.

The Centre Pompidou-Metz building is a superstructure curving at both sides, held together by wooden slats forming hexagonal units, and supported by a central metallic spire and four conical pillars.

The structure is covered by a membrane in Poly-Tetra-Fluoro Ethylene (PTFE –fibreglass covered in teflon). The facades are made of retractable glass panes and vast picture windows. The three galleries and the support function areas (storage, offices, etc.) are concrete.


photo by AP via Der Spiegel - more


photo from BBC (see also report)

Built at a cost of €70 million, Centre Pompidou-Metz was officially opened on 12 May 2010, with free admission on 16 May.

In addition to the artwork exhibited, the building is worth a visit.

Another Banksy destroyed

This blog has followed the travels and travails of the artist Banksy for over two years.

It seems that another significant Banksy work has been destroyed by over-zealous cleaners contracted by the city council of Melbourne. Reported in The Age,

MELBOURNE City Council sent the cleaners into Hosier Lane on Thursday to tidy up the rat-infested garbage, but they caught the wrong rat.

A request by deputy lord mayor Susan Riley to clean up the laneway, world famous for its colourful street art, inadvertently resulted in the painting over of a stencil of a rat by the celebrated British graffiti artist Banksy.

''I went down there on Thursday and saw the cleaners and said: 'You realise you have just painted over a Banksy?','' Hosier Lane resident Kerry Butcher told The Age yesterday. ''And they said: 'We are just doing what we're told'.''

Read more.

A picture of the work, a parachuting rat, can be seen here.

Nevermind, it was just paint over stencil. Banksy can always recreate it.

Nature by Numbers

An awesome movie by Cristóbal Vila, inspired by numbers, geometry and nature.



Also check out the theory behind the movie at Etérea.

The Base

New York photographer Spencer Tunick was at the Sydney Opera House early this morning, directing 5000 nude volunteers for his latest work 'The Base' as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.


photo by AAP/Dean Lewis via ABC News

More photos from
- ABC News
- News Limited
- Sydney Morning Herald
- Sydney Morning Herald (multimedia slideshow with narration)
- Reuters video via Guardian

Removed from all their clothes, people have nothing to hide.

Art attack

Precious artworks are unique items that are irreplaceable, so when they are damaged, feelings run high. A Picasso work was damaged a few days ago and the art world collectively sighed that the damage was repairable.

Statement by The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Accident Involving Picasso's The Actor

(New York, January 24, 2010)— An important painting by Pablo Picasso was accidentally damaged in the galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Friday afternoon, January 22. A visitor attending a class lost her balance, falling onto Picasso's The Actor, a large, Rose-period painting that was painted in winter 1904-1905. The accident resulted in an irregular vertical tear of about six inches in length in the lower right-hand corner.

The painting was taken immediately to the Museum's paintings conservation studio for assessment and treatment. Fortunately, the damage did not occur in a focal point of the composition, and the curatorial and conservation staffs fully expect that the repair—which will take place in the coming weeks—will be unobtrusive. The painting will be displayed, as planned, in the forthcoming exhibition Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art—among some 250 works by Picasso drawn from the Museum's collection—that will be on view from April 27 through August 1, 2010.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) painted The Actor on an unusually large canvas (77-1/4 x 45-3/8 inches) that already had another painting on it. It inaugurated Picasso's shift from the Blue-period world of tattered beggars and blind musicians to the Rose-period imagery of itinerant acrobats dressed in costumes taken from the commedia dell'arte. The Actor has been displayed prominently ever since it was given to The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Thelma Chrysler Foy in 1952, and has been included in many major exhibitions of Picasso's work in Europe and America.

This is the work

picture from Pablo Picasso cubism

Of course, not all artwork are as protected as Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.


photo from Wikipedia

Art curators must have cringed watching the Mr Bean movie.

Banksy at Sundance

A new documentary by Banksy will premier at the Sundance Film Festival called Exit Throught the Gift Shop.

Trailer


See also report by Animal NY on Shepard Fairey's spoiler.

Apparently, to coincide, there are reports that Banksy's works have been appearing in Park City, Utah - the home of Sundance. See The Salt Lake Tribute.




(photos via Animal NY)

Unfortunately, City Park officials have ordered the removal of most of the works (reported by Deseret News).

Banksy's sinking feeling

I've previously written about a number of Banksy works being destroyed.

Londonist has reported four new Banksy works in Camden (north London).

One in particular, located next to Regent's Canal, appears to be a statement to climate change skeptics, or those who are stonewalling political action.


(photo by Luke MacGregor, Reuters via ABC)

Starry Night Over the Rhône comes to town

Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888) is one of 112 works of art from Musée d'Orsay (in Paris) that will be exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia as 'Masterpieces from Paris'.

It is one of my favourites, along with his other Starry Night (exhibited at MoMA, New York). I am also excited about Monet's Lily Pond, Green Harmony (another in the Japanese Bridge series, which is also in town).

When the value of art is actually priceless

Van Thanh Rudd is a Melbourne artist who is currently exhibiting a very expensive piece of work at Off the Kerb gallery in St Kilda.

Used Car Part from Afghanistan is priced at a hefty $1.2 billion





Video of artist talking about this work


Reported by ABC

Rudd claims the work contains a small piece of an Afghan civilian car, destroyed by an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) missile in southern Afghanistan.

"All art must be priced and the price paid by victims of war is astronomical. So my price tag should reflect this," he said.

"I know it's beyond reason to put $1.2 billion on this object, but everything out there in the global market place is extremely devoid of reason. The global recession is showing us this."

Rudd says while he has not been approached by anyone willing to fork out $1.2 billion for the work, it has generated a lot of interest.

"[I've had] no prospective buyers so far, but just general commentary as to whether it's a genuine article, where it's come from and how it came here, that sort of thing," he told ABC News Online.

But he would not say how he came to be in possession of the piece.

"That's just the mystery part of the artwork. I can't reveal any more," he said.

He says he has not been to Afghanistan himself.

Rudd says he examined the pricing strategies of the elite auction houses, Christies and Sothebys, but decided his work should be priced more realistically.

He says instead of pricing which is based on an artist's profile, he decided to ask for a figure which he thought reflected the art work's message.

Cost of war

Rudd says his pricing analysis included a breakdown of the multi-trillion dollar US war budget in the Middle East since 2001, and other variables such as the cost of civilians and soldiers wounded.

Once he came up with the figure, he instructed the gallery director to put it in the catalogue.

Off The Kerb's director Shini Pararajasingham says the work is probably uninsurable.

Damien Hirst's Beautiful Inside My Head Forever set the record for the most expensive single artist auction - going for $203 million in 2008.

If Rudd's Used Car Part sold it would eclipse this figure - although Rudd admits a sale is unlikely.

"Christies and Sothebys would no doubt argue that my piece is unsellable," he said.

"This is totally the point."

Rudd is not a stranger to controversy. The artist, who is the nephew of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, is known for his left leaning political views.

Last year his painting, depicting Ronald MacDonald carrying an Olympic torch past burning monk Thich Quang Duc, was at the centre of controversy when it was banned by the Melbourne City Council from being shown at an exhibition.

Rudd says Used Car Part From Afghanistan will probably become part of a larger collection he is working on that will have similar price tags.

"They'll be, in terms of the formal aspect, they'll be presented in a similar way - museum sort of style and very minimal," he said.

"I guess it'll be a work in progress in which objects that are displayed do have a mystery narrative or mystery background."

Rudd says he does not know what he would do if someone actually wanted to buy the work.

"To be honest I haven't thought that far ahead. It's almost out of the question," he said.

"But hopefully what comes across is just the actual point of it being so extreme."

Symbolism.

Monet's garden at Giverny

I like this painting by Claude Monet of the Japanese Footbridge (1899) and hung at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.



I also like this photo taken by Tran Huu Dung, managing editor of Arts & Letters Daily.

the greatest artist in the world .com

Arie Levit is 'the greatest artist in the world dot com'. According to artsconnect

Arie was born in Israel in 1969, and migrated to the northern beaches in Sydney in 2002. From a young age he discovered the joy of surfing, and the ocean has become a great source of his inspiration.

After migrating to Australia, Arie developed a new and unique style of painting. Using the same techniques as the great masters, Arie creates fresco / stucco paintings from ground marble that he mixes into a tinted paste and applies to high-quality board as his canvas. The results are stunning large format abstracts on board, painted solely with a builders trowel, as never seen in the art world today. No brushes are used in the creation of his work.

Arie's work is unique, never before has an artist modernised the technique of the old Masters with such dedication, vigour and passion. In each piece can be seen the ethos, love and unique style of this artist. The beauty of Arie's work lies not only in the visual experience, but in the beautiful tactile experience of touching each piece, which he openly encourages the viewer to do.

To glide one's hand over the cool smooth surface of his paintings is both surprising and relaxing. The textural quality that he masterfully emulates in tinted marble leads you to expect a one-of-a-kind experience, then delivers another. Arie's work exudes a kind of visual happiness, and in each piece he leaves a distinct imprint of his own playful personality.

Arie Levit at Double Bay Art Gallery

Double Bay Art Gallery has offered a million dollars (Australia) to anybody who can reproduce his work using the same technique.


" The Lions Den "
1220mm X 1220mm



It's a bold claim to style oneself as the greatest artist in the world. An interesting gimmick that works. Seriously, over hundreds or thousands of years in the history of art, it would be an immense task to overtake Leonardo da Vinci

Poster Boy NYC

I've written about Banksy a few times. There is something about artful vandalism that is appealing.

Advertising posters at New York city subway stations are undergoing artful vandalism by a mysterious artist called Poster Boy NYC.





You can see more of his art here (flickr), read an interview with him by Marissa Neave, and a write up by Brian Raftery in NY Mag.


(Photo: Christopher Anderson) in NY Mag





Defacement of public (or private) property = vandalism, or art?

Banksy work destroyed

I first wrote about Banksy earlier this year and mentioned his work called 'Little Diver' in Melbourne (painted in 2003).

Unfortunately, some vandal has destroyed this work. See The Age

The painter painted: Melbourne loses its treasured Banksy

Janae Houghton
December 14, 2008

The Little Diver by Banksy (right) and after the vandals struck (left)

HE IS a small, faceless man and was supposedly well protected with a piece of perspex plastic, but famous laneway graffiti artwork 'Banksy's little diver' has been destroyed by vandals.

It is believed the less-than-one-metre-tall grey figure, wearing a duffle coat and diving mask, was stencilled in 2003 when the famous British graffiti artist known just as Banksy visited Melbourne.

The little diver lives on a wall, surrounded by rats and rubbish, on the back of the Nicholas Building on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane.

A piece of screwed-in plastic, paid for by the building's owners, has protected him from the elements and damage since April this year.

But someone has ruined the iconic little diver, by tipping silver paint behind the plastic protector and tagging 'Banksy woz ere' on the plastic, potentially ruining the artwork forever.

Earlier this year, the little diver's potential value went up when another Banksy artwork on a London wall was sold for £208,000 ($A472,528) on an eBay auction.

Banksy, the elusive street artist, keeps his identity secret and hardly ever gives media interviews.

Fans and buyers of his works include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Christina Aguilera.

http://www.banksy.co.uk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

What makes this senseless act of vandalism even worse, is that the vandal knew it was a Banksy.

Even so, Banksy would have been aware of the risk in leaving art in such publicly exposed places.

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This week is going to be a very strange one at work.

Banksy the vandal

Banksy painted a seven metre (23 feet) high mural on a building wall at Newman Street (near Oxford Circus) in London.



The local jurisdiction, the Westminster City Council doesn't like it, calling it graffiti and want it removed.

See
- Graffiti artist Banksy pulls off most audacious stunt to date - despite being watched by CCTV (Daily Mail, 14 April 2008)
- Writing is on the wall for Banksy's west end mural as council demands it be painted over (Daily Mail, 24 October 2008)
- Council orders Banksy art removal (BBC News, 24 October 2008)
- Westminster bid to remove Banksy art stalled (Local Government Chronicle, 24 October 2008)

Painting (stencil) on a wall without permission is vandalism. However, if the painting is a valued piece of art, then removing it is even worse.

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Today was another busy day of de-cluttering and spring cleaning.