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Saturday 21 Nov 09
The residents of Bourbourg in northern France have evidently taken Sir Anthony Caro to their hearts. This week, a street in the town was named after the grand old man of British sculpture, marking the first anniversary of Caro's dramatic sculptural renovation of the local Norman church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Bourbourg. The impressive-sounding Avenue Anthony Caro certainly beats the thoroughfare's former name: Rue de Gravelines.....
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Art-mad magician's shopping spree Art Basel Miami Beach goes jungle-punk | Waxing lyrical about Kate, Barack and Bernard Koons's pricey pooch needs trimming Boltanski: And the Beat Goes On |
Spotted in the bookshop of London's National Gallery—the headline-hitting illusionist Derren Brown snapping up numerous weighty tomes. Brown is also a prolific portrait painter, depicting many famous faces from Woody Allen to Madonna (the mind-bender even has his own dealer: Rebecca Hossack in London). He once persuaded four members of the public to take part in a staged armed robbery: let's hope an art heist isn't on the cards...
Looking like a Murakami cartoon character come to life, British self-taught singer and actress Ebony Bones (née Thomas) is set to be this year’s performer for Art Basel Miami Beach’s annual Art Loves Music concert on the beach. The colourfully costumed “jungle-punk” rocker, who has the concert posted on the tour schedule of her MySpace page, seems a perfect fit for the arty crowd—not only are her hand-made stage costumes and sets outrageously creative, Bones displays a deep love of Frida Kahlo, going so far as to draw unibrows on her female band members in homage to the Mexican artist.
After this weekend, you’d never have guessed that only a year ago, Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art was struggling to stay open. Celebrating it’s 30th anniversary, the institution pulled out all the stops for its gala party, drawing red carpet royalty to the event and raising $4 million for the museum. While Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt took a private tour of the permanent collection display, fellow celebrities including Gavin Rossdale, Gwen Stefani, Kate Beckinsale, James Franco, Christina Ricci and Pierce Brosnan lined up to hear pop singer Lady Gaga play as part of artist Francesco Vezzoli’s one-off musical piece produced just for the night. Wearing a hat designed by architect Frank Gehry, the chanteuse played her new song “Speechless” on a pink piano painted with butterflies (courtesy of British artist Damien Hirst and sold for $450,000 during the night’s benefit auction) while members of the Bolshoi Ballet twirled in the background and a masked Vezzoli accompanied her with needlepoint. And for those who couldn’t make it to LA for the bash, the costumes by Miuccia Prada are being sold online to raise funds for the museum, so you could (for a few thousand dollars) recreate the night at home.
There are lots of sheep in Wales so artist Steve Messam's idea of wrapping a timber-framed building in Newtown, Powys, in 300 Kerry Hill and Black Welsh Mountain sheep fleeces is inspired (the black-and-white markings of the woolly coverings should go down a storm in the valleys). "The artist hopes to encourage visitors to consider the role of local agriculture, architecture and aesthetics on the familiar environment," said a project spokesman. The work Clad forms part of the exhibition "Beyond Pattern" at Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown (21 November-27 January 2010).
As if it’s not risky enough to be an artist, now they have to keep an eye out for muggers too. San Francisco’s local newspaper, The Examiner, reports that an artist was stabbed while working on a mural on Market Street as part of a series of art projects to beautify the city’s more seedy neighbourhoods. Graffiti artist Jason Hailey, also known as “Chor Boogie”, was jumped by three assailants and stabbed twice while another attacker stole his spray paint. In a statement to the paper, Luis Cancel of the Arts Commission said he was “shocked” about the stabbing. Hailey was released from hospital after being treated for the stab wounds overnight, and despite the attack, says he intends to finish his mural.
It’s so easy to allow yourself to go soft this winter, what with holiday feasts and big woolly sweaters to hide the bulge. Fortunately, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver is offering classes to keep art enthusiasts in fighting shape this season with their http://www.mcadenver.org/index.php/programs/Art_Fitness_Training">Art Fitness Training programme. “Feel more confident at Art Museums!” and “Don’t be bullied by Art Critics anymore!” asserts the promotional flyer, offering visitors a chance to “appreciate even the most difficult contemporary art” through a three-part, participatory workshop. “Learn the basics … then flex your contemporary art muscles at museums and private collections throughout the city.” Is that “Eye of the Tiger” we hear in the background?
What would have happened if Elvis Presley’s still-born twin, Jesse, had survived? Would the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s brother (the Duke of Rock ‘n’ Roll?) have become a pale copy of the real thing? Tonight, “Songs for Jesse Presley”, a performance at the Music Gallery in Toronto, raises just such questions as three musicians “unveil their artistic zygotes” by playing covers of the songs that have influenced their own work. Curated by journalist Carl Wilson, the event is tied to an exhibition on twins at the The Power Plant contemporary art gallery by new media artist Candice Breitz (“Same Same”, until 15 November). We’re seeing double already.
In another instance of cross-disciplinary exchange, this week, Lincoln Center premieres a new collaboration between South African-born artist Robin Rhode and Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes based on a piano suite by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Entitled “Pictures Reframed", the project features a new video project by Rhodes that will be projected onto a specially-designed set on which Andsnes will perform Mussorgsky “Pictures at an Exhibition”, which is meant to evoke the experience of a gallery visitor walking through an art show. Andsnes says some of the first work he saw by Rhode were his animations of children and “and the inventive playfulness impressed me”. But it’s more than just kid’s stuff—starting with two performances in New York on 13 and 14 November, the show is set to go on a world tour throughout the US and Europe.
Perhaps the biggest recent online phenomenon is cats playing on pianos, most notably the famous Keyboard Cat who performs a little ditty when someone fails miserably at something. Leave it to new media maestro Cory Arcangel to take this trend and turn it to art, with a new video of different kitties tickling the ivories, all spliced together to recreate Arnold Schoenberg’s modernist arrangement Drei Klavierstucke, Op.11. The work is on display in his solo show at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam (until 14 November), but the video can also be viewed online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF6IBWTDgnI”>YouTube. Bravissimo!
José-María Cano's "wax" works roll into London today when an exhibition of the Madrid-born artist's arresting effigies opens at the Riflemaker Dairy (9 November-5 December). Cano's reproductions of newspaper cuttings painted in heated wax have hit the headlines in Moscow, Madrid and Prague. "'The Wall Street 100', one hundred large paraffin wax portraits feature Kate Moss, Barack Obama, Rupert Murdoch, Bernard Madoff and others...[with] each selected for their perceived level of global economic power," says the pr blurb. So all hail supermodel Ms Moss who, in the eyes of Cano, is evidently on a par with the most powerful man in the world.
If you think buying a Koons is a drain on the pocket, then bear in mind the upkeep costs for some of the superstar US artist's works. US newsprint magnate Peter Brant is divorcing his wife of 16 years, former Victoria's Secret model Stephanie Seymour, with details of the split spilling out in court. According to the Connecticut Post, prolific contemporary collector Brant pays maintenance costs for Koons's topiary terrier Puppy (1993) of between $75,000 and $100,000 a year. The mammoth mutt is on show at Brant's White Birch Farm in Greenwich (talk about very expensive grooming).
As part of Monumenta 2010 at Paris's Grand Palais (13 January-21 February), the French equivalent of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall commission, artist Christian Boltanski will continue his project to create the "Archives du Coeur", a collection of recorded human heartbeats. "Visitors are invited to record their own heartbeat and offer it to the artist," said a spokeswoman. This cardiac collection will apparently be housed on its very own island belonging to the Benesse Art Site Naoshima in Japan.
UK interior designer and man-about-town Nicky Haslam may well have missed a trick when he worked at US Vogue in the 1960s under Diana Vreeland where he befriended a young accessories illustrator by the name of Andy Warhol. An interview in last weekend's Sunday Times describes how the young Haslam "unfortunately destroyed all Warhol's drawings as soon as he statted them". If Nicky had snapped up the sketches, instead of inadvertently dumping the drawings, would he now be sitting on a Warhol wunderkammer?
If you remember the 1960s you weren’t there, the saying goes. It seemed rather apt in the conservation lab of Tate Britain last week when The Art Newspaper learnt about a three-year research project (Tate Axa Modern Paints Project) into how best to conserve acrylic-based paints. Acrylic was the next big thing in the 1960s: synthetic, super fast drying, and cheaper than oils. But 50 years on, they are showing their age and are a magnet for dust with collectors and curators now finding their colour-fields covered in grey fuzz. Among the works analysed and painstakingly cleaned by the Tate’s conservators is John Hoyland’s 25.4.69 (1969). A virtuoso work, he married impasto with the thinnest washes of paint. Unfortunately, the septuagenarian British abstract artist doesn’t remember much about actually painting it, quite unlike Bernard Cohen who happily spent three hours waxing lyrical to conservators about his 1970 tour-de-force, Painting with Three Spots, One Blue and Two Yellow.
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Turning a museum into a vanity space
Art Basel Miami Beach ever hopeful
Umberto Eco: master of the list
Spanish queen duped Pope with dud Murillo
Controversy over New Museum's plans to show trustee’s collection
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