MutualArt Open to All!

Thought I'd share some good news! One of my favorite art resource websites, MutualArt.com, just restructured its subscription service, allowing free access of the website without having to have a member profile (which is actually free anyway).

Keeping up with the art world is not easy, especially in a city like New York, with hundreds of galleries and dozens of museums. In order to stay up to date with the openings, events, happenings and news of the New York and international art scene, I check MutualArt.com every week because they have comprehensive profiles on galleries, art fairs, museums, artists and a free article database.

I signed up for a basic membership, which is free: you fill out a profile about your art interests, what artists or cities you want to track, and every week MutualArt emails you a list of events, venues, and artists that might peak your interests, based on your member preferences. And for the person who really wants full access to the website, there's a premium membership (offered now at a special price $19/month or $199/year) that has the works.

Anyway, I find the website pretty helpful and easy to use, so thought I'd share. Stay in the know--check it out!

Passion: Lesbian Visions

On the occasion of NYC Gay Pride (and this one is especially significant, given the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall crackdown and riots) I devoted one of my other blogs (I write a few) to what I think is an interesting and controversial topic: "gay art," and how to define it. Sadly due to its unusual length I didn't even get to plug the exhibition I plan on checking out for my gay art education!

The Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation and Gallery provided the cornerstone of my internet gay art education; their most recent exhibition just closed on the 27th, but their next exhibition opens July 11: in conjunction with the Fresh Fruit Festival, the gallery is hosting a show called "Passion: Lesbian Visions 2009," curated by Heidi Russell. There is actually not much information about the show on the Leslie-Lohman website, but the Fresh Fruit Festival has a more detailed write up:

What is a Lesbian? Who occupies post-modern Lesbos? Fresh Fruit has invited an international array of self-defined Lesbian artists to tell us what ignites their passion. Their unique perspectives are revealed in this multi-media gallery show. Sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, mixed media, installation, fabric art, video, sound, poetry, prose, and performance art all involve the on-looker in an astounding range of Lesbian creative passion. Among the participating artists are: Jeanine Alfieri, Prinny Alavi, Laura Cappadrione, Cecy Canarte, Leslie Cloninger, Felice Cohen, Giegia Cotellessa, Maggie Cousins, Marge Doherty, Liz Gold, Nicole Guest, Kanika Hodges, Joan Katz, Jill A. Kolodin, Nina Lourie, Lora Morgenstern, Mari Morimoto, Sara Mussen, Olga, Kenya Robinson, Daniella Shachter, Alina Wilczynski, An Xiao, Heather Young, Lisa Zilker

Friday, July 10th, 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm: Opening and artists' reception,
Saturday, July 11th - Saturday, July 25: Tue-Sat, 12 Noon - 6:00 pm
Special Events: July 15th, 7:00 pm performance art evening
July 21, 7:00 pm Readings
Admission: Free / Open to the Public
Leslie-Lohman Gallery, 26 Wooster Street, New York, NY 100013 (212-431-2609)

We're finished!

We finished our project and it went off without a hitch. I'm really impressed with our group for pulling it together at the last moment!

Part of what really helped us find all these great artists around the world is this new site I've been raving about called MutualArt.com. It's like a content aggregator that lets you put in your preferences and then suggests things that you'd like to read about and artists you'd like to learn about. We put in the names of a few artists we were already interested in and the website popped out all these other ideas. It also has some great recs on galleries, exhibitions, museums and everything. It's especially great if you live in NYC like I do but I imagine that other art world capitals are probably pretty well represented there too.

Check it out!

Project Update

Well, nothing much is going on around here in the big city. Well...I guess its starting to be spring-ish (not counting today where its like 20 degrees). It's been consistently warmer lately, everyone is feeling a little bit less sluggish and a little more annoyed at winter. I've just been going about my business trying not to be too overwhelmed with all the work I have to do at school.

For one of my school projects I have to put together an art collection for a fictitious "private client." It's been really run so far running around to all the galleries and art fairs trying to come up with a coherent collection. The focus of the project is on "new media" works - that means (or so much teacher says) that things plug into the wall. We've already got some cool works lined up by artists like Tim Tate, Anna Frants, and Anselm Reyle. It's a really great look into what the life of an art consultant is really like. 

I'll let you know how things turn out as the project progresses.

Santa Fe

I'm here in Santa Fe, New Mexico right now. And I must say it is considerably colder than I thought it would be, but still an incredible town. There are 200+ galleries for a population of about 65,000 people. That's the largest per capita art gallery population of any city in the world. While not all the galleries are world class, there are quite a few very good ones with some mid-market artists. The most noticeable difference is the "look" of the galleries - they are more like homes with fireplaces, front doors and porches, and the kindness of the owners and operators. This is the only place I've ever been where EVERY SINGLE gallery person said hi, got up and shook my hand, and asked how they could help. It was such a nice change from Chelsea galleries. 

Some of my favorite galleries here were Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Gerald Peters Gallery, Linda Durham Contemporary Art, and William Siegal Gallery. There is one road in town called Canyon Road where a majority of the smaller galleries are - it's worth visiting here for a couple of days just to check out all of these. And to take it slow. We tried to do a whole day of Canyon Road and were completely tired out by the end of it. Seriously exhausting to see that much art. 

Armory Show

I went to the Armory Art Fair today. It was awesome! And I'm so glad I went today (I was sort of considering waiting for the crowds to die down - today was opening day - but it wasn't even crowded today). There was some amazing art - one of my faves is this 150 year old wagon wheel that was lit from behind by color-changing LED lights. It costs 80,000 Euros! Ga! That's a lot - and for a wagon wheel. Oh well, one day perhaps.

There was some a lot of great new media stuff, very few photographs, some (but not much) weird mixed media sculpture, and a lot of staples. I thought that the prices would be lower because of the economics....ahem....problems, but just about everything that I asked after was VERY expensive ($100,000 expensive). I couldn't really get a feel for how things were selling - but a girl I'm doing a project with in class was walking around with me pretending like she was an art advisor and EVERYONE was willing to give her a 20% discount. That would have been RARE last year. Definitely.

All in all today was a great day. I love that I live in New York City where these sorts of things are at my fingertips. It's really incredible. This weekend will be very busy - I've got papers upon papers to write and then I'm going to Santa Fe for a week! Yaay! 

More Chinese Drama

In the wake of all the YSL sales bliss, the winning bidder of the the two controversial Chinese bronzes has been announced: a Chinese man with connections to a Chinese non-profit called the National Treasures Fund. But there's a catch: he's not paying. 

Cai  Mingchao says he never had any intention of paying for the bronzes and just wanted to raise awareness about their true home in Chinese cultural history. He says they should be immediately returned to the Chinese - who, also, shouldn't have to pay for them. 

In one of my classes we're studying Cultural Property and Arts Repatriation initiatives so this is a really interesting side note to all this. The LA Times was one of the first to break this story and put an interesting spin on it. 

An Auction of a Lifetime

Well, Christie's has done it! They've pulled it off, maybe saved their company, maybe saved the whole art world. We'll have to see. 

What they did do is they managed to sell $477 million dollars - that is 96 percent of everything offered - worth of art, furniture, goodies, etc. Major winners include the two Qing dynasty bronze heads for $40 million, a dragon chair for $28 million

“This was a once-in-a-century sale,” Hugh Edmeades, deputy chairman of Christies South Kensington, said in an interview. He has been involved in single-owner collections at the London-based auction house since the 1980s and said, “I can’t remember anything like it. I’ve never seen people queuing for hours to view an auction before. Patriotism was definitely a factor.”

It is certainly something that I will remember for a long while. And hopefully it will be one part of the puzzle that pulls the art market out of its downward slump. But we've got to remember that this is a single person sale - and I don't see YSL dying again any time soon. It was Christie's one big chance and opportunity but it was also a one off deal. Hopefully they can continue taking risks, working hard, and making the art market work to their favor. We've just got to keep our heads up and everything will be ok. 

ADAA: The Art Show

Every year the Art Dealers of America Association throws a major art fair at the armory. This year there were over 70 galleries which participated this year in the fair, despite a falling economy and anticipation of diminished sales. 

Most of the galleries brought a high proportion of secondary market pieces (secondary market means that the work has already been marketed by a gallery, sold to a collector and is being resold through another gallery by the collector). Secondary pieces are a tried and true way to way some money when times are hard. For the most part, pieces that go to the secondary market are by better known artists, artists whose reputations have already been established, pieces that have accumulated in value by collectors who want to capitalize on value. These sorts of shows with lots of secondary market pieces are often more like a museum show than an art fair - people will gather around Picasso's, de Kooning's, and any number of other well known artists' work. 

Michel de Broin

Wow, I've been absent for quite a while. Such is the life of a student during a long holiday weekend :)

Here's some food for thought - some candy for the eyes. 

The artist is Quebecois Michel de Broin. He is currently represented by the new Lower East Side Gallery On Stellar Rays. At the group show's opening last night, he brought this awesome piece - half television, half fireplace. The piece could be hooked up to a fireplace and used accordingly. And the owners would sit around the "TV" like people used to. :)

Appraisals

We had an appraisal specialist come into one of my classes today. It was really fascinating because for all that I know about art and the art market I still have very little idea about how value comes about. And its a very interesting process. 

We haven't really learned how to do an appraisal (and, granted, that is not really the type of school I'm in) but we have learned what it's all about. Appraisers are basically super intense researchers - they aren't specialists in any particularly field but know a little about everything and have the wherewithall to find just about any information possible. We looked at two Frederic Remington sculptures sold within several months of each other at auction- both were from the same cast, but from different years (around 15 years apart) and different foundries. The prices varied drastically - the earlier version was valued at between $500,000 to $700,000 and sold somewhere in between while the later version was valued between $100,000 to $150,000 and BI'd. It's sort of crazy. I mean, I couldn't tell any difference between the two and I don't know that I'd even really care about those 15 years (especially when its a cast sculpture) but obviously someone does. 

Emily Mason Show

I went to Emily Mason's gallery opening on Saturday at the David Findlay Jr. Gallery in the Fuller Building on 57th St. The most successful works in the artist’s exhibition were her large and intensely saturated canvases. The aptly named Earthly Sun (2007) is a full-on explosion of bubblegum pinks, chrome oranges, and cadmium yellows with a touch of cerulean blue. The colors are washed across the canvas in easeful but controlled sweeps, unexpected at such a large scale. The brushstrokes are strong and daring but seem somewhat incidental to the use of color. The careful application of cerulean is a reprieve from the infinite desert sun; it is a cold glass of water to a long, hot day. At 4½’ by 6’ and brightly colored, the canvas is confrontational while Ms. Mason’s easy style ensures that it remains accessible and relatable. 

The exhibition taken as a whole focuses on Ms. Mason’s use of vibrant and nuanced colors: lime green, vermillion, Indian yellow, hot pink, and deep azure. Yet the artist’s work is not lost in color. Her paintings find their strength in the relationships the artist draws through the unanticipated juxtaposition of various elements in a work.  The colors, though saturated, are laid on the canvas as though the oil paint were as light as watercolor, effortlessly melting into one another in ink spill-like patterns. Each color, individually overwhelming, is tempered and enhanced by the artist’s choice of a color pairing. The structure and use of color in each work suggest both intention and spontaneity, cohesion and chaos, the natural and unnatural. Ms. Mason’s “Recent Paintings” succeeds due to her exploration of these dichotomous relationships. 

On the whole the exhibit was lovely and quite crowded. Most all the attendees I recognized as members of the artists family and friends, so I felt a bit out of place. But I really enjoyed myself all the same and loved getting to know Ms. Mason's work. 

Here's my favorite work, Earthly Sun:

Chelsea Art District

I went around Chelsea this week. Maybe not the best choice in the world - since it was FREEZING - but I had a good time all the same. Chelsea is the major arts district in the world right now. According to their website, there are over 330 galleries in a four block radius. It's pretty incredible. For me though, the concentration of art is very overwhelming - I never know which galleries to go into, which artists to see, which shows to see. It's very exhausting just thinking about it - and trying to plan something. Well, this weekend, I just decided to go for it - I decided that I would walk until something really struck me and then I'd go in. I wouldn't let the overabundance of art overwhelm me.

I saw the Von Lintel Gallery. Right now they have an exhibition of Izima Kaoru, the Japanese artist born in 1954 who takes these disturbingly beautiful photos of young women as corpses. 

It was a really interesting show - not necessarily something that I want to be hanging in my living room, but I appreciate it all the same.

New Season of Auctions

So the latest auction season has officially started. I like to follow the auctions quite closely (or at least those at Sotheby's, Christie's, and Phillips de Pury) to get an idea of the value and valuation of works of art at market right now. It's so difficult to get any price information from galleries unless they think you're a serious buyer, so this is really the most transparent and easily accessible way possible. 

The New York Times, published this story recently on the Old Masters auctions. On the whole, the action didn't do quite as well as "expected" but then again we didn't really think it would. I'm sure the estimates were really just an attempt for the auction house management to appease the consignors. I mean, they have to think they'll get something for the work or they won't bring it to auction. Sometime soon, the auctions will have to rethink their marketing ploys. They can't get works just to fill up their auctions, if none of them are going to sell. It's all about managing expectations of consignors and making them understand that you can't get top dollar at every state of the economy. 

Anyway,  "One of J. M. W. Turner’s classically romantic images brought $13 million at Sotheby’s on Thursday morning, becoming the most expensive work in two days of turbulent old master painting sales." but otherwise there were few notable sales. 

This Hendrick ter Brugghen sold for a record $10.2 million after a bit of a bidding battle between the buyer, Richard Feigen and a phone bidder. 

Campana Brothers

I saw the Campana Brothers for the first time at Design Miami and I’ve since seen there EVERYWHERE I look. 

The elder brother, Humberto, was born in 1953 and graduated from the University of Sao Paulo with a degree in Law while the younger brother, Fernando was born in 1961 and graduated from the University of Sao Paulo with a degree in architecture. I think this surely says something about the role of education in future life choices – it may instruct future choices but by no means should a student be restricted is his or her chosen profession by his or her education.

The brothers started working together in 1983, sharing a joint studio in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Since that time they have become known as Brazil’s most famous and most innovative designers. They occupy an interesting space between art, design and architecture. When I first saw their work, I was particularly intrigued by a bench woven from the fibers of an invasive Brazilian jungle weed. The woven material was seen “growing” over other organic materials like quartz rock. This isn't the exact piece but it is a bit similar.

The brothers did an extended interview with Design Boom – a design and art magazine – here is my favorite response from the interview:

when you were a child, did you want to become a designer?

Fernando: me? an astronaut.

Humberto: I wanted to be a native indian...

I always wanted to be an Indian, too!

Art v. Design

While I was in Miami, I attended a panel on Mid-Century Modern Design. While I don’t know quite as much about design as I do art, the subject is nonetheless very interesting to me. I have a good friend who has her own design firm and it is always interesting to see the sort of things you can do with a good design background (and how something as simple as a couch or a chair can transform the way someone lives in their home). On this panel were several prominent figures of New York City’s design world including the design director of the Noguchi Museum, head of the Eames Office, owner of a design gallery, and the specialist of Sotheby’s Modern Design department. These men (and yes, they were ALL men) talked at length about what design means to the world around us, how there has been a recent convergence of art and design (mainly due to the fact that so many designers are now issuing design editions – like print editions – wherein they issue only a limited number of the design in question), how the term “mid-century modern” is sort of a conundrum in itself, and other interesting tidbits. This talk reinvigorated me to learn more about design (beyond the countless Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn and West Elm catalogs I read every month). So in addition to writing about art in this blog, I hope to bring in some information about design as I set out to learn more about it every day.

 

To begin my education in Miami, I attended the design fair. It was MUCH smaller than the main Art Basel fair and even much smaller than the other satellite fairs like Pulse or Scope. There were maybe twenty booths with an array of furniture, mirrors, carpets, lamps, tables, chairs, etc. Sometimes the gallery or designer created a cohesive “room” while other times it seemed more like a whole bunch of stuff just crammed into a single space. It is a whole lot more expensive to transport and display furniture than it is art, but I think the general public and the design industry could do with more exposure of the artsy high end stuff. I hope in the future we’ll see more influence of these innovative designers (like the Campana Brothers who I hope to write about in one of my next blogs) on everyday mass produced markets. 

Art Basel Miami Beach

So I have completely forgotten to fill you all in on one of my latest and best adventures. I had the opportunity to go to Miami Art Basel last month in Miami, FL. Art Basel in Switzerland is probably the largest and most well respected art fair in the entire world. People get on these crazy waiting lists to even be up for the chance to participate in the fair and pay some crazy fee to have a tiny booth there. Miami Art Basel is the offshoot of this original art fair. It is a little more party-centric (it is Miami after all) but the quality of art is usually on par. This was the first time I’ve ever been to Miami so I didn’t have much to compare it to. From what I’ve heard this year was much more low key than years past – fewer collectors showed up, gallerists were a bit kinder, and the parties were less extravagant. It’s a bit funny and peculiar that when the economy goes sour, that all those rich folks out there feel like they can’t keeps spending money in the same way they are used to for fear of making the poor people feel bad about themselves.

 

I got the feeling that people were pretty well prepared for poor sales and so when fewer people came to the fair and even fewer people bought at the fair, no one was particularly disappointed. I still got the feeling that people couldn’t quite figure out who I was – is she an art consultant? Is she important enough that we ought to talk to her? Will she buy anything? – and that made it interesting. I saw quite a bit of art that I was unfamiliar with and quite a bit that I liked a lot. There was also an over saturation of Damien Hirst pieces with skulls and butterflies and whatever other else limited pieces he makes. And from what I could tell (and what other, non gallerists told me), prices were pretty steeply discounted and gallerists were offering BIG (20% big) discounts to just about anyone walking in off the street. I think they were really trying to make a sale, whatever it took. It is very expensive, after all, to get all the works down to Miami and they needed to make up their costs somehow.

 

I can’t wait to go to my next art fair and I would always love to go back to Miami next year. 

Is the Art Market Dead?

Everyone has been talking about the demise of the art market since the stock market collapse in October. My opinion of the whole situation probably doesn’t vary too much from other things that you’ve read recently, but I’ll lay it out all the same.

The art market is a market like any other Adam Smith, Invisible Hand-wielding capital structure. It is lodged firmly in the structure of basic free-market economics, governed by the principles of supply and demand. That is, an optimal price is reached when the forces of supply (how many people want a product) and the forces of demand (how many are available for people) collide. People may think that the art market differs from say the market for canned soup because it is not an easily commodifiable good – not every piece of art is exactly the same and so the process of valuation differs per product. Or by the value we derive from art is not just an easier understood Utilitarian value (the more we have of something the better) but is consistent with value as it pertains to ineffable values of cultural capital. While this does make the art market far more complex than other markets it doesn’t make it any different.

 

In any market there have been booms and busts. Booms come about when consumer confidence is especially high and people are willing to wage more money on the fact that the product is going to increase in value. Often times these are built up artificially high by speculators – or those who are not really involved on a personal level in a product but are merely trying to “flip” the good and reap the benefits of the spread. It is a bit like arbitrage in the general market. Once consumer confidence falls apart (it could be anything from a 9/11-like attack, withdrawal of “free-money” in the form of credit, etc.) all these speculators pull out of the market and thus the prices tumble very rapidly. This leads to a bust. We’ve seen it most recently in the credit market and the house market (indirectly) in the US, but also during the dot com era, and in any number of other consumer goods. 

 

I will go into more detail on this later, but essentially, I believe that the art market was highly inflated. And the art market is particularly susceptible to inflation because the means of valuation rests solely on the shoulders of public opinion and consumer confidence – it is little to no intrinsic value. People had been so confident in their artworks as to push the prices waaay high up until they could no longer sustain themselves. I see a major reorganization of the whole market in the coming future and a return to 1990s level. 

New York, New York

Being back in the city that never sleeps never fails to elate me. I am going to be starting up with school again, new classes, new reading, new year, new president, new everything! So I thought I should go with the spirit of the new year and get out there and see some new art and galleries. I've been to Chelsea several times before but it doesn't fail to intimidate me. The "gallerinas" are as intimidating as ever with their designer clothes and scowls (do they hire them because they have such nasty looks on their faces?). I wondered if things would get a bit more friendly as the economic downturn pulls into its third, fourth...fifth (when will this even be over?) month. 

Art sales are noticeably down but either these girls can't seem to understand what it means to welcome someone into a space or their faces really are just stuck like that. Last month at Art Basel, dozens (if not hundreds) of galleries felt the sting of diminished pocketbooks and shocked stock portfolios. Fortunately, few people's hopes were high enough to warrant any real shock at the result. 

What will happen, I think, is that the galleries that have gotten lackluster results even in high times will be whittled away until only the strongest and most innovative survive. They don't call it Survival of the Fittest for nothing.  We are going to see some major changes in the coming months and years. The question stands as to what sort of changes and innovation will save the gallery (and what form it will take in the coming future). 

Finally Home

After a long and much needed break from school, I am finally back in the city that never sleeps - New York! I must say, this is quite some weather to be returning to. Right now there is about an inch of snow on the ground and it's FREEZING! 

I had such a good time in California. We did Christmas in Los Angeles and my brother-in-law took me around to all the Santa Monica galleries. They're all located in a place called Bergamot Station. It's an old warehouse-like place which used to be a train depot in the 19th century. There weren't too many people there on the day we went, I guess between the holidays the galleries all slow down a bit. My absolute favorite one was called the Frank Lloyd Gallery. They were showing an artist called Ralph Baccera. If you haven't heard of this man you HAVE to look him up. He's absolutely brilliant. He creates these wild and whimsical ceramics pieces. I found this quote by a NY Times Art Critic that describes my feelings perfectly, "To look at Ralph Bacerra's gorgeous ceramic vessels is to wallow in visual hedonism."

Then we went down to San Diego for a little fun in the sun. There is this great little art museum in Oceanside (which is in Northern San Diego) called the Oceanside Museum of Art. It's right in the middle of town and just a short walk from the beach (basically it was perfect for my purposes). There was this interesting show on while we were there called Quilt Visions. It was a juried show of fabric arts from around Southern California, mostly. I've never really seen textile arts displayed in this way, so that was quite interesting.

We also went downtown to Balboa Park to see this great Kimono exhibit. It was absolutely amazing. The man responsible for the work, Itchiku Kubota, is a Japanese master. He revived an ancient technique of Kimono dying/painting (which, to be perfectly honest I don't understand in the least) and made these intricate pictorial designs. The show we saw was called the Four Seasons and depicted a single continuous seasonal scene across maybe 40 separate Kimonos. The exhibit has since moved to Canton, Ohio so if you are in the area, I would highly suggest you scope it out. 

All in all, a great trip with some seriously great art. But I am glad to be back and excited to catch up on the NYC art scene.