Previous Posts: articles 2018
The cost of those seeds
April 11 2012
Picture: Graham Turner/Guardian
A while ago, the Tate announced it had bought some 8m seeds from Ai Wei Wei, but curiously did not say for how much. Now, a reader writes:
I wondered if you have seen that the price paid by Tate Modern for the Ai Weiwei seeds is now disclosed on the Art Fund website? It is 376,000GBP of which 100,000GBP was given by the Art Fund.
Incidentally, are other people “bothered” ( I’ll put it no more strongly than that!) by the number of contemporary pieces being funded, at least partly, through Art Fund Grants? If you search “2011” on their site, as above it brings up some 160 grants given, no less than 66 ( 41.25%) of which were for contemporary objects ( prints, paintings, craft pieces, photos, video etc ). I have taken contemporary as created from 2000 onwards. I have not calculated the percentage in money terms which these grants represent.
It seems that the Art Fund is becoming the Contemporary Art Fund……
That's an interesting statistic. Are you bothered/relaxed about the funding of contemporary art? Let me know. Incidentally, on an analysis of price per seed, the previous auction price of Wei Wei's seeds suggests the Tate has got a bargain.
Update - a reader writes:
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree about the amount of money the Art Fund is wasting on contemporary art. I don't think this is what the Art Fund is for, or probably what most members expect their money to be spent on. In the latest Art Quarterly magazine there are two 'video installations' which were each given a grant of over £40,000. In a few years time the galleries will probably not have the technology to make them work anyway. Other things that I find baffling are limited edition prints and photographs, which are not, in my opinion, original works of art anyway but seem to command vast sums of money. Of course the Art Fund would argue that contemporary art attracts huge crowds and if they don't buy it now it will be unaffordable in a few years' time. I would say, wait and see what stands the test of time and then decide if it is worth the money. I have been thinking that there should be a completely separate 'Contemporary Art Fund' and leave the rest for the Old masters!
Exclusive - A new Titian at the National Gallery?
April 11 2012
Picture: National Gallery
One of my sharper-eyed readers has alerted me to the new upgrading of a Titian at the National Gallery. For may years thought to be a copy, recent conservation has convinced the National Gallery that this portrait of a man thought to be Girolamo Fracostoro can be displayed as 'Attributed to Titian'.
I'm not a Titian specialist, but I can see that the argument has merits. The composition is of course very Titian-like for a work of the 1520s, and the handling of the cape and elements of the face seems right. However, the main problem with the picture is its condition. In parts, particularly the darks (which are the softest pigments, and are the first to be lost in over-cleaning) there is little left to see but bare canvas. So it's unlikely we can ever really be sure about the attribution.
You can see the picture in room 12. There is no illustration online at the National Gallery, but the above is a photo prior to restoration.
The best John Michael Wright?
April 11 2012
Picture: SNPG
A reader writes:
Thank you for the Hampton Court notice, but isn't Wright's best portrait the wonderfully subtle image of the architect fellow [Sir William Bruce, above] in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery? Hope I don't sound obsessive, but I am a bit about Wright who is undeservedly obscure and sometimes mis-catalogued as 'follower of Lely'.
As a fellow John Michael Wright obsessive, I'm delighted to hear of other Wright fans. And yes, Wrights are very often catalogued as 'follower of Lely', or 'follower of Kneller'. I've been lucky enough to find quite a few over the years. The SNPG portrait is indeed very fine. But personally I don't think many English portraits of the 17th Century can beat Wright's depiction of Charles II for drama and sheer majesty. If you have a favourite Wright, let me know.
Update - a reader writes:
JM Wright is wonderful but don't you feel the foreshortening of the sitter's left arm in that SNPG picture is rather feeble? And the head all out of proportion with the body? [...] My favourite painting, for what it's worth: http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/402803
What Trenton tells us about the Arts Council
April 11 2012
Picture: Independent
It turns out that Trenton Oldfield, the loon who disrupted the Boat Race last weekend, has enjoyed funding from the taxpayer via the Arts Council. In 2009 his organisation This is Not a Gateway was awarded £4,650 by ACE to:
To contribute to the funding matrix of the second annual This Is Not A Gateway Festival. The funding will directly lead to an increase in the quality and breadth of arts activities within the 2009 festival programme. This Is Not a Gateway will facilitate the production of over 40 events to occur over three days for up to 500 audience members.
You can judge for yourself whether 500 people really did turn up here. ACE is also supporting this year's This is Not a Gateway Festival. According to ACE's website:
This Is Not A Gateway, an independent organisation that brings together critically engaged people, is seeking submissions for its 4th festival. Proposals are welcome from anybody whose point of reference is ‘the city’.
The festival is independent, rigorous and productive - an open platform; an arena for criticality as well as propositions. As a result of the continuing actuate social, economic, democratic and spatial deficits/crisis’s and revolutions, we are seeking submissions from individuals, groups from across the globe that are addressing urgent urban questions.
Full list of thematics can be found here: http://thisisnotagateway.squarespace.com/2012-open-call/
Submissions are sought from a lived knowledge/experience perspective, as well as from the widest range of disciplines. Previous formats have included exhibitions, roundtable discussions, soapboxes, films, walks, presentations, book and project launches.
This Is Not A Gateway’s role is that of a facilitator. It provides the infrastructure to enable participants to hold their own activities. Support includes securing venues, equipment, publicity, audiences and installation assistance.
If anyone can tell me what any of this means, or even better, what it has to do with art, I'd be most grateful.
Update - a reader writes:
At the end of your piece on Trenton Oldfield, you ask: "If anyone can tell me ...what it has to do with art, I'd be most grateful". I can't help wondering if you're asking us whether your blog post has anything to do with art (it doesn't). There is a big difference between art and Arts, it would be a pity if you expanded into the latter category.
Of course, in the context of discussing the Arts Council I mean art as in 'the arts'. And as a former policy wonk on the arts, I'm afraid readers will have to put up with the occassional rant from me on the subject.
Yes - it's a porn warning at Hampton Court
April 10 2012
Picture: BG
Seems a touch Puritanical to me...
New exhibition at Hampton Court
April 10 2012
Picture: BG (taken surreptitiously, so apologies for the poor quality)
Most visitors to Hampton Court will have heard about Henry VIII and his six wives. Few, however, will know about Charles II and his more numerous mistresses. This is a shame, for the stories of the Stuart court can be just as interesting as those of the Tudor world, and even come close to being as politically important. For had Charles II had spent less time chasing actresses, and concentrated instead on producing a legitimate heir, we might not have had the calamitous reign of James II, and thus the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights, and the consitutional monarchy we live under today.
So all praise to Historic Royal Palaces for shifting their focus onto the Stuarts at Hampton Court. Their new exhibition, The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned, looks at the love life Britain's most priapic king, Charles II. I can highly recommend it. Brett Dolman, the curator, has put together a show which is both pleasingly entertaining and informative - rare these days - and has selected some of the finest examples of British portraiture from the seventeenth Century. These include: probably the finest miniature of the period, Samuel Cooper's unfinished portrait of the Dule of Monmouth; a selection of Lely's best 'Windsor Beauties', including Pepys' 'prettiest girl in the world', Frances Stuart; my favourite Van Dyck, Cupid and Pysche (though sadly hung too high, and poorly lit); and John Michael Wright's best painting, his portrait of Charles II (glimpsed above).
I was also pleased to see that Lely's full-length of a naked Nell Gwynn has been displayed properly identified as her, and without the late Sir Oliver Millar's curious suggestion that the sitter is Barbara Villiers. The Lely (above) is hung next to a contemporary copy of the same subject, which, while of inferior quality, confirms to me in its more detailed background that Lely's original, which is strangely muted in that area, has suffered a degree of loss over the years.
A number of pictures have been cleaned for the exhibition, including Lely's fine portrait of Lady Byron, which has languished in the Royal Collection's store for many years. And in a way, what this exhibition really revealed to me was that the previously rather empty and sparsely hung Wren rooms at Hampton Court come to life when full of pictures. Kneller's 'Hampton Court Beauties', for example, are usually crammed into a small and dimly lit ground floor room used by William III at Hampton Court, where it is impossible to stand back from them, or even see some them in the gloaming. This may well be a historically relevant place to hang the pictures, but as Kneller once said when he found someone looking too closely at his portraits; 'my pictures are not made for smelling of'. They need space to be appreciated. So hopefully, the exhibition will usher in a rehang of the later Stuart rooms at Hampton Court. But in the meantime, do go along to this excellent new show - and let me know what you think.
Searching the Google Art Project
April 10 2012
Picture: Google/Gemaldegalerie
While we all love the Google Art Project's high-resolution images, there's no doubting the site could do with the input of a few art historians. A reader writes:
What is disconcerting about GoogleArtProject is that they list artists alphabetically under their first name. So if one cannot immediately recall Le Brun's first name as he is not listed under L or B but under C for Charles, one is left guessing and sorely searching...
Update:
While it is indeed odd that artists are listed under their first name in the main index, 3PP points out that the search box works fine:
The one thing we should return?
April 10 2012
Picture: Adrian Pingstone
There was news this weekend that the Turkish government has formally requested the return of a 1st century BC stone relief, the Samsat Stele, which is held in the British Museum. The Stele thus joins the Elgin Marbles as an artefact of international dispute.
I'm generally not one for repatriating items such as the Marbles. But I've always thought that 'Cleopatra's Needle' in London probably should be returned to Egypt. Unlike objects in the British Museum, it is not preserved for study by scholars, or a destination for the world's tourists. Instead, it is largely forgotten, hidden by trees, and eaten by pollution to such an extent that its hieroglyphics have become unreadable. I doubt many would notice if it was replaced by a replica. Would you miss it?
Lost Rossetti to be sold
April 10 2012
Picture: Telegraph/Christie's
From Colin Gleadell at The Telegraph:
A portrait redolent of one of the most famous romances of the Victorian era has surfaced for sale from a private collection in Scotland where it has been, unrecorded and unknown to scholars, for over a hundred years.
Painted in 1869 by the pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, it represents his muse, Jane Morris, who was married to Rossetti’s business partner, the artist and designer William Morris.
Artist and sitter first met and were attracted to each other in 1857, but as Rossetti was already engaged to Elizabeth Siddall, she married Morris instead. However, after Siddall tragically took her life in 1862, and the Morris marriage appeared to flounder, the relationship was rekindled.
The year 1869 is generally thought to be when Rossetti reconciled his grief for Siddall with his love for Jane Morris. Though gossip levels ran high, lack of documentary evidence has left historians guessing at the degree of intimacy achieved between them.
Each destroyed the correspondence with the other during those crucial years. The title of the painting, ‘The Salutation of Beatrice’, associates Jane with Dante’s Beatrice, the incarnation of beatific love and the object of Dante’s courtly love. A sonnet by Dante pinned to the wall extols the virtues of courtly love: ‘My lady looks so gentle and so pure…’
The highest price for Rossetti is the £2.6 million paid by Australian collector, John Schaeffer, in 2000 for a pastel drawing of Jane Morris entitled ‘Pandora’, also dated 1869. He subsequently re-sold it in 2004 for £1.7 million. The rediscovery, which is a rare oil painting, is estimated to fetch between £1 million and £1.5 million at Christie’s next month.
The catalogue is not online yet - I'll link to it when it is, and put up a better photo.
Happy Easter everyone
April 8 2012
Archive throw out - questions for Tate
April 5 2012
Picture: Guardian
And the bad news is, it seems Tate doesn't want to answer them. To recap, in February it was alleged in The Guardian that Tate was about to throw out a valuable photographic archive. It was only rescued after the director of the Paul Mellon Centre, Professor Brian Allen, hurriedly sent round a van.
In response to the furore, Tate said that it had always planned to give the archive to the Paul Mellon Centre.
In 2008, Tate decided that it would be more useful to scholars if this photographic research material on British Art, which had not been augmented since the 1980s and much of which is available online, were to be located with equivalent material at the Paul Mellon Centre.
I can tell you that Tate had not planned to give the material to the PMC, and that the story in The Guardian of the PMC needing to rescue the archive is true. I therefore asked Tate the following question:
Can you please confirm how the PMC was told about the decision in 2008, and when.
Answer comes there none...
Furthermore, I suggested at the time that Tate may have broken some quite strict rules on archive policy, as well as its own guidelines on archive handling. (Regular readers will know that I sit on the government's advisory council for archives.) In response, Tate contacted me thus:
We would like to make the clarification that the material which went to the Paul Mellon Centre was NOT from Tate Archive.
The key thing here is the capital letter. The Tate Archive is an official public record, for which there are rules about making disposals. Not all archives at the Tate are part of the Tate Archive - and this is a perfectly sensible policy. At the time of the disposal, Tate says, the photographic archive was not part of the Tate Archive.
The central question, of course, is should it have been? Following discussions with various people involved, I therefore asked Tate:
Could you please let me know what material, if any, was subsequently returned from PMC to Tate, and where that material is stored now.
Again, answer comes there none. Why is this last question so important? Because if it transpires that material which was previously part of the disposed photographic archive is now part of Tate Archive, then it follows that the disposal was not only incorrectly handled, but that it should not have occurred in the first place.
There is more to come on this. And it may yet involve the words 'cover-up' and 'scandal'.
'It's a very, very serious painting'
April 5 2012
Picture: Sotheby's
So say Sotheby's of this Bacon, Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror, to be sold at auction in May with a very serious estimate of $30-40m.
That early Titian
April 5 2012
Picture: Hermitage
A reader writes:
It's a pity you (and The Guardian) displayed the photo of the painting before cleaning.
Above is the cleaned picture, via ArtDaily.
Until further notice...
April 4 2012
Picture: Newsweek
...this site is a Hirst-free zone.
Update: Brian Sewell's review is well worth a click. His conclusion:
I can sum it up as shiny shit.
Rembrandt goes to New York
April 4 2012
Picture: English Heritage
How kind of us - English Heritage has leant Rembrandt's epic Kenwood House Self Portrait to the Met. It's the first time the picture has left Europe. On display till May 20th. Enjoy!
Optimism
April 4 2012
Picture: Mail/SWNS.com
We've had a few cases lately where the press have picked up on 'discovery' stories, only for there to be absolutely no evidence to support the claims. For example, the stolen 'Van Dyck seized by police in Rome, which wasn't a Van Dyck. And now here's another example, a coloured in drawing bought for £3 in a junk sale from a drug addict, which is claimed as a £1.3m work by the ten year old Warhol. Despite there being nothing to back up the claim, the story has gone global.
The one that got away
April 4 2012
Picture: Christie's
Remember this? Last year, it was in a minor sale as 'follower of Saenredam' with an estimate of £3-5,000. At the last minute the picture was withdrawn. Then, Saenredam scholar Gary Schwartz saw the picture on this blog, and published a fascinating analysis showing how the picture was not only by Saenredam, but showed his house in Assendelft. And now it is to appear at Christie's in the summer, fully catalogued, and with an estimate of £400,000-£600,000. I wonder if AHN will get a credit!
Van Dyck discovery on show at Ashmolean
April 3 2012
Picture: Philip Mould
Shameless boast alert: a Van Dyck discovered here at Philip Mould has gone on display at the Ashmolean Museum.
Google Art Project expands
April 3 2012
Picture: Gemaldegalerie Berlin
When Google first launched its Art Project, I expressed the hope that other UK galleries would quickly join up. Today, ten have done just that, including Dulwich, the Royal Collection, the V&A, and the National Galleries of Scotland. Splendid. More here.
Connoisseurs will note that the attributions are a little off in some cases. It seems that there is no room for riders such as 'Circle of' or 'After', and so everything gets a full attribution. Like this 'Van Dyck'.
