Museum merch

It's not very widely known, but Canterbury Museum has quite a good art collection. (The bulk of Christchurch's art collection is housed at its public gallery.) Most of the Museum's art holdings are historical, of course, and relate to the early days of the Canterbury settlement; but there are also some great contemporary New Zealand works tucked away, including a silver epergne by Tony de Lautour and a series of Michael Parekowhai's kowhaiwhai lightboxes permanently hung in the research library.

When Canterbury Museum's rebuilding project was put on hold in 2006 after being declined resource consent (the plans involved architectural changes made to the A-listed historic building designed by Benjamin Mountfort), its proposal to take over the old Robert McDougall Art Gallery building next door, which had recently fallen vacant due to the building of the new gallery, also foundered. The plan, as I understand it, was to use the beautiful old neo-classical gallery building for temporary and touring exhibitions, and also to exhibit what the museum until quite recently quaintly referred to as its "Picture Collection". (Can't find any reference to that on its website -- but then there's hardly reference to anything much at all. Time for an upgrade, chaps.)

Anyway, in conjunction with the Ellerslie Flower Show in Hagley Park later in the year, the Museum is using the old gallery building to exhibit the complete set of Banks' Florilegium, the engravings made from the botanical specimens collected by botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on James Cook's voyages of exploration, including from the Endeavour's landfalls in New Zealand. Painter Bill Sutton donated funds to the Macmillan Brown Library at the University of Canterbury to purchase the set of prints, one of only 100 in the world: the university has a short article about the collection here. (The festival publicity about the show suggests that it's the first time they've been publicly exhibited in Christchurch, but that's rot: I saw them in the 80s. Won't stop me going along to see them again, though.)

I very rarely make impulse buys from the supermarket, but when I saw these vegetable chips the other day, I had to have them. In a triumph of the copywriter's art, the manufacturers note: "We have drawn inspiration from Sir Joe and his insatiable appetite for adventure to develop our range of incredible taste experiences." Excellent stuff. Perhaps the Museum could snap up a caseload for the gallery shop.

Christmas list

Yes please.

Richard Prince, Nurse Hat Chair , limited edition


No thank you.

Damien Hirst, X Levi’s X Warhol Factory Collection, a series of limited edition jeans, t-shirts and denim jackets.

Both via Art Observed.

Waiting for the miracle to come

When this popped out of the toaster this morning, I knew today would be a good one.

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 ...

Fox in socks

Grant Wood's American Gothic necktie: a step too far.

Call me tasteless if you will -- I assure you that you wouldn't be the first -- but when I saw the Frida Kahlo socks posted by Best of 3 the other day, I immediately thought it might be fun to own a pair. (Why don't New Zealand's gallery shops bring this sort of thing in? Or get New Zealand versions made -- koru stripes or Grocer with Moko anyone? Asked and answered, perhaps.) As chance would have it, I happened at the time to be wearing my much-loved but now ageing Mona Lisa picture socks, likewise bought at the MoMA store, which some people might also think were in dubious taste.

Since I tend to wear boots in these chilly southern climes, until now my private predeliction for kitsch socks has gone largely unremarked and unchallenged. (Attendance at preschool gym or music classes, with the requirement to remove shoes, has presented some minor aesthetic difficulties, but quite frankly looking around the room at the other harrassed mothers one's lucky even to find another pair that matches -- and I doubt that anyone's consciously channelling Edmund Capon.)

Of course, I have some standards -- controversial SMH art critic and erstwhile National Gallery of Australia curator John McDonald's range of art ties was a very, very long step too far -- but now and again, I'm partial to a bit of art merch. The odd Mondrian tea towel, say. A Louise Bourgeois T shirt, or perhaps one featuring a work by Ronnie van Hout. A Rokeby Venus washbag (actually probably not). A Tony de Lautour mousepad. There's an interesting taste hierarchy of this stuff -- Pierre Bourdieu would have a field day -- whereby T shirts by contemporary artists are highly desirable, and tea towels or tote bags emblazoned with historical or contemporary works might be amusingly kitsch, but silk scarves, umbrellas, earrings and placemats are completely beyond the pale.

Still on the subject of gallery gift-shops, a prominent sidebar under the masthead of yesterday's Press directs readers to "Rita Angus: Salute from Te Papa", a lengthy article in a later section. But when you get there, what's delivered is more in the line of a Bronx cheer.

In a peevish review, Warren Feeney (director of COCA -- the Centre for Contemporary Art, the old CSA -- in Christchurch) was particularly off-put by the Rita-related merch available for purchase from Te Papa's shop, on the occasion of its current "Rita Angus: Life and Vision" exhibition. Feeney wrote:

"In addition to her paintings, the accompanying merchandise also introduces her as a maker of images that have helped create and define our national identity. Visitors can buy art cards, postcards, bookmarks, T-shirts, badges, posters, a DVD, a biography and prints of selected works. Curated on the premise that her paintings were a breakthrough in their depiction of New Zealand's landscape [Feeney argues the opposite: the Lovell-Smiths did it first, he says], the commercial packaging perfectly complements the veneration accorded to her in the exhibition catalogue."

How dreadful, etc. Shocking, and what not. Bookmarks? It's an outrage.

Back in the day, whatever carping or criticisms went on behind the scenes there was an unspoken agreement that people from one art institution didn't publicly review exhibitions put together by people in another. This was variously known as professional courtesy, or otherwise collegiality. The idea was that you were all in it together. Hah! Tell that to the Marines.

Getting all hot under the collar about Angus's illustrations for the Press Junior not being included in the show (the reality was Angus herself hated them and wrote to friends that she was compelled to produce commercial art to support herself after her marriage broke up), and endlessly critiquing the marketing of the exhibition as a landmark event featuring new insights into Angus's practice, Feeney (rhymes with "meanie") has missed the real point: this is the kind of useful show which Te Papa should be pumping out every year, and touring round the provinces. "Rita Angus: Life and Vision" shouldn't be in any way remarkable: rather than a tenth birthday present to the nation it should be business as usual, Te Papa's bread and butter, something which to his great credit Director of Art at Te Papa Jonathan Mane-Wheoki stated firmly at the opening function. Let's have more like this, please.

Rita Angus, A Goddess of Mercy, 1946-7, Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery

But meanwhile, what about a nice pair of Goddess of Mercy socks...