'A stripe painter may not wear stripes'

When criticising a mutual acquaintance's art practice, an artist friend of mine once said in all seriousness: 'I always knew his work wouldn't be up to much when I called round once and saw how he'd decorated his house. No decent artist could have lived with those kitchen cupboards, let alone painted them that colour. I won't even begin to describe the lounge suite.'

I've thought about this a lot over the years when visiting artists of all stripes at home; and actually, it's proved infallible.

I think it's a point of view of which Roger White, author of the best thing I've read for some time, a treatise on 'How Artists Must Dress', would approve.

Here's some of White's utterly indispensable advice:

'The relationship between an artist's work and attire should not take the form of a direct visual analogy. A stripe painter may not wear stripes.'

'Whereas a dealer must signal, in wardrobe, a sympathy to the tastes and tendencies of the collector class, an artist is under no obligation to endorse these.'

'An artist compensates for a limited wardrobe budget by making creative and entertaining clothing choices, much in the way that a dog compensates for a lack of speech through vigorous barking.'

'An artist may dress like a member of the proletariat, but shouldn't imagine he's fooling anyone.'

I am very very tempted indeed to align these sartorial homilies with various members of the New Zealand art world by means of the judicious placement of photographs, but unusually I have restrained myself and you must just imagine to whom they could be applied. However, I very much like White's idea that an artist's 'sartorial choices are subject to the same hermeneutic operations as are his work', and his recommendation that artists should bear in mind while dressing the possibility of a five-paragraph review of his or her outfit 'written by a critic he detests'.

As chance would have it, I once canvassed the idea of writing quite cutting reviews of art critics' clothes which could be published alongside their own reviews, thus enabling everyone else to see whether or not their aesthetic opinions were worth listening to, but it would have been a lot of work and I didn't get round to it.

Click through for White's article: it's completely brilliant.

Dragnet

'Sometimes there's a good feed of whitebait coming through, sometimes nothing comes through for a couple of months -- it doesn't prevent you from going down with your whitebait net and trying to catch a few whitebait.'

Venerable Wellington art dealer Peter McLeavey -- who's seen a few seasons come and go from his Cuba Street stand -- on the vagaries of the art market. Quoted in The Press, 25-6 April 2009.

Recession? What recession?

The guts might have dropped out of the art market in London and New York, but here in Christchurch New Zealand, things are just fine, thanks.

Photographed this afternoon outside the Centre of Contemporary Art, Gloucester Street.

A horse goes into a bar

I've had a complaint from a regular reader that for a blog called Art, Life, TV, Etc., although we've had a lot of art and some sneaky bits of life now and again, there's been precious little TV content thus far. That's very true. Regrettably there's none today either.

But here are five etceteras that have been on my mind this week.

1. Quite a lot of thinking about Richard Prince's paintings has reminded me of the only joke I've ever been told by an art dealer.

"A horse goes into a bar. The bartender says, 'Why the long face?'"

(The old ones are definitely the goodies.)

Richard Prince, Nuts, 2000, acrylic on canvas, 112 x 203.5 inches


2. Who would have thought the august British Museum was such a treasure-trove of tat? Following my recent post about Rita Angus's socks, a reader has pointed me to the cultural glories currently available in the British Museum's gift shop: Rosetta Stone tea towel anyone? Tutankhamen's Aroma of Intrigue perfume for men (more must than musk...)? Sacred Egyptian Book of the Dead coffee mug? Nice.

(Thanks B.)


3. A dream about a tidal wave sweeping down K Road. Odd. Art-related in some indefinable way.


4. As well as knock-knock jokes, whoopee cushions are big in our house this winter. Beware anyone who idly sits down on the couch without first checking: an enormous raspberry is likely to issue forth from under the cushions, followed by indignant accusations and hysterical giggling from the small person. Again, doesn't matter how often you hear 'em, the old ones are the good ones, etc., something which is reflected in the classic whoopee cushion's graphic design, which doesn't appear to have changed since it was invented in 1930. (Something for New Zealand's graphic design journal, The National Grid, to look into perhaps?)


When the whoopee cushion's inventor tried to sell his prototype to a practical joke firm, its owner, Soren Sorensen Adams, who had made his fortune in the Sneezing Powder craze which swept America in the first years of the last century, and was the marketer of such gems as the Exploding Cigarette Box, Itching Powder, the Stink Bomb, and the Bar Bug in Ice Cube, passed over the opportunity as he deemed it too vulgar to sell. The mail order company Johnson Smith picked it up instead, and successfully sold it along with their other novelties -- x-ray specs, joy buzzers, and fake vomit -- on the back covers of comics. Which explains why the style of the cartoon on the whoopee cushion (source material for Dick Frizzell if ever I saw it) reminds me so strongly of the adverts for sea monkeys I used to see in comics and lust after in vain as a child ...

5. Thinking about scale of sculptural works after this invitation from the Hamish McKay Gallery popped up in my in-box.
Wouldn't it be great if someone gave Tony de Lautour a whole heap of money to make a really massive version of this work ...

0800-How's-my-dealing?

Courtesy of the fabulous Edward Winkleman, I came across this site today. How's my dealing? is a blog which encourages artists to comment -- anonymously if they want to, and unsurprisingly mainly they do -- on their experiences with critics, curators, and galleries. Some are glowing, even effusive; others are not. It's a great idea, and makes entertaining reading.

"He's predatory and he's known for that among young male artists. I'm a woman and he's been polite to me when I'm with male artists he knows. I went in once to ask a question about a show and he was so viciously rude to me his assistant was embarrassed. He has a problem with women. It's not something he's working on like some other places. It's his personality. It's not an accident and he deserves his reputation."

"Question, what does she stand up for other than the latest trend?"

"once gave me a really really bad review, it was even vindictive in a very non professional way, a bad "collage" artist too, only seems to like work that is like his. very conservative, should not be writing because he cant separate his own work and career from his criticism if you want to call it that."

"This guy is Slick! He's making his way up the ladder pretty fast, and I guess having Saltz on his side doesn't hurt either. He owns 2 bars which are nice for after parties, and he seems to be quite the ladies man, what else could you want from a dealer. My only critique is that he's got a long way to go when it comes to understanding contemporary art, but he seems to have enough money to pay Bard kids to make those decisions for him."

"looks straight through you like you're transparent if you're a woman"

Hmm, know a few people who'd fit the latter description.

Someone should start a New Zealand version of this blog. Maybe. Trouble is, the scene's so small really that being anonymous would offer no guarantee of anonymity.