Supply and demand

The small guy's class has been doing an economics unit at school, as a consequence of which his teacher has allowed trading with a special classroom currency, in order to teach the kids supply and demand, saving and spending, theories of pricing, and so on. The small guy was regrettably loathe to trade any of the thousands of small pieces of plastic nonsense that litter carpets all over our house. Instead he has drawn a series of pictures which he will offer for sale. A characteristic example of his art-for-sale is reproduced above.

He is also considering offering to write customized stories with his friends' names inserted as heroes, in which they defeat a villain of their choice. (In order to prevent unpleasantness, I have specified that the villains are to be fictional only and bear no resemblance to any mutual acquaintance.)

Meanwhile, from the art of economics to the economics of art: artist and lecturer Roger Boyce has a few thoughts of his own on serious money and art in post-quake Christchurch.

I AM ... disappointed

Colin McCahon, I Am, 1954, image via Art New Zealand.


A little while ago -- following a remarkably irritating encounter with the Christchurch City Council's booking system for children's swimming lessons which still has me gritting my teeth when I think about it; a system based, I assume, on close observation of railway ticket offices in the Indian subcontinent -- I canvassed opinion about starting a new blog solely for complaining purposes, entitled I Am Disappointed.

The more I thought about it, the more the idea seemed to have legs. And as is my way, grand visions rose like coloured smoke before my eyes. After a while when it gained momentum it wouldn't just be me complaining; I could secure complaints for 'I Am Disappointed' from all over New Zealand, maybe from throughout the Anglophone world. Anyone who wanted to complain about anything could have a forum to do so. Ex-boyfriends, bad architecture, swimming lessons, the frequency of school holidays, the selection process for New Zealand's participation in the Venice Biennale: all disappointments would be grist to the blog's mill. It could be funny. It might be useful. It would be enormous.

Via Twitter, at least, there was general approval of the idea, albeit with suggestions for alternative names. 'You are a disappointment to me', suggested one correspondent; 'What, is that it?' proposed another. The inimitable @styler mentioned that she was herself thinking of "starting a blog called 'I fucked up' but I'd be so busy I'd never have time to fail big in future". And @Hamish_Keith chipped in with 'Fresh Disappointments Delivered Daily', which had me fantasising about a masthead designed by Dick Frizzell.

There would be legal issues, undoubtedly, as some of the complaints might be a bit near the knuckle, but the problems could probably be got around. And I'd have to make sure the complaints were interesting, rather than just whinges or insane rants. And the blog would need a brand: it would need to narrow its focus. It couldn't deal with everyone's complaints about everything, that would break the internet. Perhaps it could specialise in art-related complaints? Thus enabling me to shoot for the big McCahon I AM (disappointed) masthead. Although that would mean I couldn't include my feelings about:

1. Christchurch City Council's antiquated booking system for children's swimming lessons which requires you to turn up in person at 8am on a single school day each term and queue for about 45 minutes (have I mentioned that?)

2. The fact that the gigantic house being built down the road has just had a two-storey barrel arch craned into place as an architectural feature, thus making a frigging mockery of the Christchurch City Council's supposed architectural guidelines for its Special Amenity Areas;

3. The fact that toys in Kinder Surprise eggs almost always come readymade these days rather than being the sort you have to put together (actually, this is one of the small guy's peeves, rather than mine, but it's heartfelt).

Then I realised it would actually be quite a lot of work to read through and vet the submissions, and that it would probably be a bit of a downer being a clearing house for other people's complaints (not unlike being a curator at a public gallery again, in fact). Also, aiming to operate in a territory marked out by the intersection of talkback radio, Hamish Keith's 'Cultural Curmudgeon' column, and the admirable New York-based keep-em-honest blog, How's My Dealing, might not necessarily be the recipe for a quiet life. So I've decided not to do it, after all.

But if I had, this week I'd be considering the forthcoming closure of Te Papa's brilliant research library to the general public. I've used it often over the years, and I've always liked how it's literally open to the public; you can walk right into it, sit down and start reading. You run into Te Papa's curators there, when they're working on something: and if you need help with a reference, in my experience the staff are quick and knowledgable. It's been reported that from November you'll still be able to use the research library on certain afternoons, but only if you make a previous appointment. I'm sure it's a necessary matter of cost-cutting, an internal management choice between this and that and so on, and I do note that they're planning to digitise more of their research collection, but I wish they hadn't chosen to cut the open library access: I liked and admired how the set-up of Te Papa's library announced 'We're open for scholarship. Ours, and yours.' It was a good look.

So, I wish the public swimming pools would digitise their booking systems, it's ridiculous to have to turn up in person as if the internet had never been invented: but I loved the fact you could turn up in person as a member of the public to Te Papa's research library. No doubt the swimming bookings will be online at some point, but I'll bet that it will prove considerably more difficult to reopen Te Papa's library to general public access in the future. It's the sort of thing that, once done, is surprisingly hard to undo.

The history of modernism's reception in New Zealand

Lurking on Twitter, I came across this great image the other day to fuel my found note obsession, directed to Twitpic by @MOCAlosangeles. It's a third-grader's response to viewing Dan Graham's "Public Space/Two Audiences" at LAMoca. (Click to enlarge.)



It reminded me a lot of this, a photocopy I've kept from a public art gallery I worked in -- a seven year old's description of New Zealand artist Julian Dashper's project.


You can tell the student was listening very hard.

Milestone, millstone

Maths has never been my strong point, but I think yesterday's entry about the vast gulf between the superior photographic image of public sculpture and its tawdry real life was my 150th post.* Which is time to take stock.

I've been blogging for just over eight months. I started in June last year at the behest of Best-of-3, who said come on, I think it would suit you, you should do it. I didn't do anything about it for a while. I'd read something somewhere (probably in a doctor's waiting room, which is where I read gossipy women's mags now I don't work in an art gallery, in whose tea rooms they are rife) about 99% of blogs being abandoned shortly after birth, and I didn't fancy adding another orphan to that statistic.

And at some point I'd looked at Paris Hilton's blog, or was it Ginger Spice's, with its wildly enthusiastic initial entries, then a few hasty posts followed by apologies for not writing and promises to be more regular in future, then radio silence; much like the scenario that always played out with magazine pen-pals in the 1970s. Having been through that experience I would hate to start something with a whizz-bang that I couldn't finish, and just dribble on for a bit until I ran out of puff. (Post-grad studies have honed this rather numbing sense of commitment all too keenly; one gigantic sword of Damocles hanging over my head at once is quite enough, thank you.)

Yet over these months, I've found that I quite like blogging: the inconsequentiality, the politics, the anecdotes, the humour, the virtual community, the online acquaintanceships; the chance to develop ideas into a little something that stops short of an essay but has more juice than than just a passing remark. Blogging four or five times a week feels less a millstone than a kind of mild and pleasant vice (now, if only I could advance to the same sort of state with my studies...). My sense of it is a rolling conversation with like-minded friends, albeit invisible ones. I've written various posts that I haven't published, largely because on reflection they were fundamentally ill-natured (albeit perhaps amusing); that's my personal line in the sand, in matters for public consumption at least. Likewise, I've appreciated advice from bloggers I admire: no matter what the temptation, don't blog when inebriated, don't bang on about the kids or post their art online. I've almost always followed these words of wisdom.

One of the things about blogging that I quite enjoy is having a look now and again at the site stats; being a complete ignoramus about technical stuff, I've just followed other bloggers' leads on this (particularly Best-of-3, who remains a daily inspiration) and gradually worked out over the time I've been on the air not only how to analyse who's been visiting Art, Life, TV, Etc. and where they've come from, but more to the point why they've come. When you write for print publication, there's a big gulf in time and emotional distance between what you put out there and its eventual reader. The immediacy of blogging's reader response -- seeing who's reading, and commenting, on what, almost as it happens -- is vastly appealing. It can also be quite astounding.

Over the short life of Art, Life, TV, Etc., I have been frequently taken aback at the bizarre nature of some of the Google keyword searches which send people to my blog. A while back I posted about the supposed censorship of a local artist's work at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, thus unwittingly sending dozens of nude dwarf fanciers from around the world to my site. (Vastly disappointing when they get here, no doubt. Off you go, please.)

There's a sense of community that arises from blogging, no matter how dubious or intangible its basis. Sometimes I wonder about the advisability of blogging about one's personal obsessions: a creeping horror that Pareidoliac's notion of blogging-as-therapy might be on the mark. (No! No! Please, no...) But overall, I'm glad to reveal that blogging has proved it's not just me: I must be quite normal as literally hundreds of people round the world (albeit mostly concentrated in the southern continental US and frequently logging in from military bases) are likewise obsessed with the painting of the two dogs in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. I repeat, it must be quite normal, and it's cheered me no end. I've had millions of hits on countless misremembered variations of 'One dog going this way and one going that way', 'One goes East and one goes West', etc etc. And then dozens more wondering who painted it? Where is it now? Which National Geographic photo inspired it? What does Joe Pesci say about it? And finally one asking where can I buy Tommy's mother's painting? (Rather hopeful, the latter, I would have thought. But you never know.)

Occasionally I feel a little guilty at the trusting nature of some of the queries which have come my way. People wanting extermination solutions for bathroom insects are bound to go away disappointed. Likewise the surprisingly large number of readers in the Indian subcontinent wanting access to the "thoughts of great men" have met only with unbridled smart-arsery of an art-historical nature. (Sorry about that.)

Occasional queries are quite specific. Someone in Campbell, California, wanted to know artist Coosje van Bruggen's maiden name. (Couldn't help.) Someone in Wellington wanted to know how old the new director of Auckland Museum, Vanda Vitali, is. (Sorry, don't know. Can't imagine why you'd want to.) Someone in China is very interested in artist Marie Shannon. Someone in Kuala Lumpur wants to know more about writer Edward Hanfling.

Then there are the school (or perhaps undergraduate) projects; diverse, yet overall art-historically comprehensive. "Where are sculptures with Viking helmets that are currently in a museum?" "Pine martens fur were used in art for what?" "Why is Pak 'n' Save's logo yellow and black?" "How to enter a paranoiac-critical state?" "Is there a press release for artist Doris Lusk?"

The long and the short of it is that after 150 posts I haven't run out of puff yet: there are more personal obsessions, art historical anecdotes of dubious scholarly merit, and tangential art-world digressions still to work through. Thanks for your company so far. See you next week.


*D'oh! I just looked again and it's actually 160. Told you maths wasn't a strength. Oh well.

The politics of empathy

In the art blogging world today, the politics of empathy seem to be getting a particular workover.

First up is Will Gompertz's full-throttle tell-all review of the Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Tate Modern for The Guardian, which begins ominously: "I have been married for 15 years and I think things have gone pretty well." He didn't expect to be emotionally overwrought after a gentle hour tootling round the gallery, but after viewing works that were "so filled with rage, fear and frustration that, for the first time in my life, I began to understand what it must be like to be a woman," he was. Crikey. He's nailed it. That's me to a T: just filled with rage, fear and frustration.

Coming up in December, professional empathy has its own art history talkfest: art historians and other academics will congregate at the University of Exeter to discuss the iconology and iconography of one of the most stereotyped groups of modern society, whose members have been "depicted as dangerous criminals, lazy loafers, prey for political demagogues, completely apathetic, happy scroungers or demoralized and desperate individuals" - the unemployed. (Next year I understand they're doing stay-at-home mothers.)

Over at eyeCONTACT, John Hurrell visits te tuhi and weighs up the evidence of Polish video artist Artur Żmijewski's work as to whether or not the artist is a complete asshole (although John spells it the English way). John poses some questions about the artist's seeming complete lack of empathy with his subjects:

What sort of guy would badger a frail 91 year old Auschwitz survivor into having a Nazi identification number that's tattooed on his arm ‘renovated’ with new ink – just to make some obscure point about victim mentality and Jewish passivity? What sort of prick would encourage different Polish communities of opposing ideologies to lovingly create symbolic banners promoting their respective viewpoints, then put them in one space and gradually encourage such mutual interference that civilities break down and they start smashing up each other’s handiwork?

He wonders how on earth Żmijewski persuaded his subjects to participate: "He must be incredibly charming, with a steely but subtle mind that knows all about the intricacies of emotional blackmail and the strategies of maintaining power relationships." (Sounds more like an art curator than an artist, IMO.)

I have no problem at all stating this is the kind of art which I really hate (it's that female rage and frustration thing surfacing again). Manipulating or exploiting the vulnerable for one's own gratuitous ends is one of the kinds of behaviour I most dislike in real life: in the second life of the artworld, it's pathetically unforgiveable. I'm not suggesting that there are no-go areas for art, just areas into which I don't care to follow. (I also really, really hated the idea of Santiago Sierra tattooing a line across the backs of Brazilian junkies in exchange for the drug of their choice, as well as the sex video he made with street people for $20 a head, about which he had the temerity to say: "Nobody said no and for me that was very tough. When I made this piece I would go to bed crying.") Although I wouldn't normally think it at all relevant, I think John's initial question about the character of the artist is, in this instance -- given the relational nature of his work -- an entirely valid one; and one which is probably well answered by John's review.

And finally in today's roundup of empathetic art moments: I note the excoriating critique meted out to the City Gallery's Fiona Hall show by Pundit's new culture critic, Keith Ovenden, the beetle-browed biographer of Dan Davin, in which he considers that Hall "fritters her considerable talents on market-driven conceptual art" and suggests how curator Gregory O'Brien will "surely" feel. Emotionally overwrought? Sure reads that way.

First move: get the rubbish bin

What was it about the teaching style of the Ilam art school faculty in the 60s and 70s? Something transmitted by osmosis from the neo-brutalist architecture of the new university campus, perhaps? They certainly believed in breeding 'em tough back then: if you were a painting student, you had lecturer Rudi Gopas famously advising you to make your works smaller (so they would fit in the bin) or to add more turps (so they would burn better). If you were doing sculpture, you developed a second sense for ducking the large lumps of clay thrown by lecturer Tom Taylor which came cannoning across the studios towards you.

Now it seems the photography students weren't exempt from the school-of-hard knocks style of art education, either: in an outstanding biographical essay included in his new monograph, Peter Peryer recounts his experience with Larence Shustak, a New Yorker who'd worked for Time and Life magazines, whom Peryer encountered as a lecturer on a summer workshop:

"After glancing at [my prints] briefly his first move was to walk over to the other side of the room and pick up a rubbish bin.

Methodically, he examined each photo in turn. 'This is boring, let's get rid of it,' he would say as he tore a print in half and placed it in the bin. Or, 'this has been done before', as he gave it the same treatment. In the end there were just a couple of prints left, still there because in each one he had pointed out small portions in which he thought something interesting was happening. 'Go back and have another look, but this time move in closer,' he instructed.

It was teaching of the highest order and exactly what I needed, although not of a style that would be permitted today."

Boredom is very important

Francesco Clemente, Map of What Is Effortless, 1978, gouache on paper, Private collection

"Boredom is very important. Boredom is the origin of any good idea. Growing up in Naples in the 50s, I had many, many empty afternoons.

In painting, waiting is a big part of the effort... waiting for both the mind and the material to develop their narrative. Painting is not so much about decision, it's more about acceptance... of the fact that certain structures and orders and narratives, they really have their own saying, and all you have to do is listen."

Francesco Clemente, interviewed by Charlie Rose

Supply and demand

Charles Giuliano, Maverick Arts blogger, isn't impressed with the way the art world has burgeoned in recent years beyond all comprehension. It seems that any parvenu can now be a player:

"A decade or more ago when it came to art the super rich had no taste. But now their kids have gone to art school or earned degrees in arts administration. In the past bored socialites became interior decorators but now they are private dealers or art consultants."

Giuliano reminisces about a simpler (yet somehow more glamorous) time when the weekly list of dealer gallery openings in New York City was brief enough to be published in the Sunday paper. Back in the day, the New York art scene was a community:

"On any given evening you could see most of the "serious" New York artists at Max's Kansas City. During Happy Hour Mickey Ruskin would put out the free chicken wings. That, and a seventy five cent glass of wine, made an evening meal. If you hung around long enough you got to enjoy the midnight parade of Andy's factory gang into the back room under Dan Flavin's light sculpture."

Giuliano suggests that there may be up to 100,000 artists resident in the NY area today, although only a fraction of them can now afford to live in Manhattan. He blames the rampant growth of the artworld on two main factors: firstly "the unquenchable hunger [of] the rich to fill their luxury condos, villas, and warehouses with art"; and secondly the "cranking out" of studio degrees by colleges and universities. "Bottom line, there are just too many artists".

Although our domestic art market could probably do with an injection of super-rich (though tasteless) collectors, there's a similar issue of artist oversupply in New Zealand. I feel for all those public gallery curators and art dealers confronted by yet another hopeful just out of art school popping their head round the door and sheepishly clutching a CD of their work, desperately angling for a studio visit. (Of course I also feel deeply sorry for all the hopeful, but ultimately sadly disillusioned, fledgling artists.)

Amazingly, there are now a whopping 22 New Zealand tertiary organisations accredited to dispense fine arts qualifications, many of them at a degree level. There must be literally hundreds of artists graduating every year from organisations as diverse as the University of Auckland and the Hungry Creek School of Art and Craft, not insignificant in a country of New Zealand's puny size. The percentage of graduates who actually pick up a good dealer, or ever show in a public gallery, or an artists' run space, or for that matter manage to even sell their work in a cafe, must be absolutely miniscule.

And most of the graduates will carry significant debt as a result of their studies, but will be unable to use their "qualification" to make any money to repay their student loan. The irony in all this is that's still the fine arts graduates of the "proper" universities (Auckland, Canterbury, at a squeak Massey) who are most likely to be able make a viable career as artists, although universities are traditionally places to learn rather than to train. On the other hand, fine arts graduates of what used to be the polytechnics (which once ran entirely industry-orientated vocational courses) are much less likely to show in the big public galleries or with the major dealers, and hence to come to the attention of the big collectors. (The only real exception to this extremely snobbish -- but pretty accurate -- rule of academic thumb is AUT, which is producing some significant players in the New Zealand art scene, largely due to its faculty of practising artists of the calibre of Stella Brennan, Liyen Chong, Paul Cullen, Saskia Leek, Fiona Amundsen etc.)

The relatively recent expansion of the NZ art world is a great thing for its most prominent artists (the ones Hamish Keith reckons will benefit almost solely from the Labour Government's resale royalties programme), as it has increased demand for their works to a point where you no longer need to be dead to make a decent living. But for every market success story, there must be 50 would-be artists pumping coffee or waiting tables -- and at the rate our tertiary institutions are churning them out, that number's only going to increase.