Friday, November 30, 2007
How to learn to be an art financial trader while taking the plane...
0 comments Posted by seiinod at 11:01 PM
What can lead the financial artworld to collapse? Art prices could rise so high that people would not be confident anymore in buying artworks, perceiving a too big difference between intrinsic value (linked with the quality of the artworks) and financial value (The price we are willing to pay to get a artwork). But another investment opportunity offering better appreciation could also arise.In both scenario, prices would obviously fall... This is why having a regular look on the top end of the market is important. I planned to keep you in touch anyway!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Do you see what I see?!? (Cultural differences in the artwork's perception)
0 comments Posted by seiinod at 6:20 PM
So What Did You See - What is above the woman's head? When scientists showed a similar sketch to people from East Africa, nearly all the participants in the experiment said she was balancing a box or metal can on her head. In a culture containing few angular visual cues, the family is seen sitting under a tree. Westerners, on the other hand, are accustomed to the corners and boxlike shapes of architecture. They are more likely to place the family indoors and to interpret the rectangle above the woman's head as a window through which shrubbery can be seen". (http://www.moillusions.com/2007/11/psychological-optical-illusion.html)
The meaning of the basic geometrical shapes are motivated by the properties of the shapes, or rather, from the values given to these properties in specific social and cultural contexts. This means that the interpretation of geometrical shapes can vary across a culture but also within cultures. Contrary to the opinion that colours are only a matter of taste and therefore their perception depends on individuals, researches demonstrated the existence of a collective consciousness within large groups of individuals which show stable consumer preferences. Regarding the tribalisation phenomenon, colours can have new connotations:
Each ‘youth clan’ has its own trends and color codes with a famous example being the two main gangs of Los Angeles which chose colours as distinctive signs of affiliation (CRIPS in blue and BLOOD in red). Another example is given by the Indian culture, with the word “VANA” which means “caste” but also “colours”.Thursday, November 22, 2007
Here is a part of an article found in the "ART NEWSPAPER", written by Anna Somers Cocks 8.11.07 Issue 185 [Full article available on : http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=6432]
Pope suggests Church should have closer relationship with contemporary art
The Vatican's first contemporary art commission under Benedict XVI goes to Claudio Parmiggiani
The telephone rings: "The Vatican City speaking," says the voice. "Boring joke," thinks Claudio Parmiggiani and puts down the receiver. The telephone has to ring another couple of times before he is persuaded that it really is the Vatican. Then he remembers a local priest who, some months previously, had asked in a general sort of way whether he would be prepared to make a work of art for the Church. [...]No subject is specified, but to Parmiggiani's surprise he sees a book on the table, Sculture d'Ombra, about his works made with smoke. "This is the kind of thing we hope you will create," they say. [...]Afterwards the pope said to Parmiggiani, ‘I’m very happy to see this work; the Church has always had a close relationship with modern, but not contemporary art.’ He continued: ‘You must tell me one day how you paint with smoke,’ but Parmiggiani just smiled. That is a secret he keeps even from the pope. The retrospective of Claudio Parmiggiani, ‘Apocalypsis cum Figuris’, is at the Palazzo Fabroni, Pistoia, until 23 March 2008
Now the question is why?... Does the brand new pope wants to give a lifting to the Vatican galleries, or is it a PR strategy? Sorry I hardly believe that the pope is interested the least in contemporary art... but the PR option does not sound bad.
Example: A brand new study shows that cookies are bad for health. 3 options:
- Continue to produce them! Although sick, people will still continue to buy them anyway (bad and not really fashionable in the communication sphere). It means here that the Vatican would stay on its position, denying the contemporary art world critique which would probably get worst and worst. When you talk to someone and that this person does not answer you tend to talk louder and louder, don't you?
- Continue to produce these cookies, but print warning on each packets about high fat... (bad but fashionable in a way...). For the artworld it almost means censorship! Not a good solution indeed as it would advertise the position of the provocateur. The Church would also appear old-fashion, facing 'Left field' edgy art... The Vatican does not need this, do they?
- Get rid of this recipe and develop a brand new one that will bring happiness in "your" body through the use of Omega B27 revolutionary 0% fat oil created in your own laboratory(Really hype and really good)... Hmmm, very trendy!!!!!
Although none of them are proactive strategies, these all give an answer to your customers. In the case of the Christian industry, it seems a bit late to be proactive as you saw previously. But who will shoot someone that commission Claudio Parmiggiani to produce its artworks? The Vatican chose the 3rd of our 3 options!
What a powerful message... How cool the Vatican is! But remember:
Matthew 5:39
39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Pictures:
First artwork by Sarah Lucas: Made entirely from Marlboro Light cigarettes and is titled "Christ You Know It Ain't Easy".
Second one, Maurizio Cattelan "La Nona Ora", sculpture of the pope John Paul II, crushed by a meteorite...
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The Koons work was bought by the Gagosian Gallery, "Hanging Heart," nearly 9 feet tall and weighing more than 3,500 pounds, is from Koons' "Celebration" series, inspired by celebratory milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries.Sunday, November 18, 2007
Art is the best tool we have when it comes to shattering our environments into an infinite number of imaginary tales, forms and space-times. For example, each human societies draft its own masterscript: Most of the time, we blindly play out its scenarios, which proscribe our behaviour, define our work and play and define our institutions and imaginary models: nine-to-five jobs, marriage, mortgage, retirement. The way art acts on these scenarios, or scraps of code, is to reorganise them, by treating them as if they were not givens; art is an alternative editing board, the post-production of the huge film we call "reality".
But before acting in this way, it is necessary to learn how to look and read between the lines; as such, art is also a reading aid. It provides the instruments and optical equipment that allow us to interpret the world. To take a simple example, it could be said that our relationship with reality is that like of a Cabbalist, trying to decipher sacred texts by inventing multiple meanings. I shall not list all of the art functions here; suffice it to say that an artist seems to me to be more useful socially than a financial trader. But what does seem clear is that art occupies a specific position in the city, and that this position is thus political. It incites its subjects to become active; to refuse the passive position the world of entertainment try to foist on them. Entertainment places us in front of images to be looked at; while social formatting provides us with frameworks in which we must live.
If artistic activities consists of putting these instruments and products back into play, then the observer's task is, as in tennis, to knock the ball back into the other court. Nicolas Bourriaud
Translation from the French by Ian Monk
ArtNews Power 100 Issue 16 / November 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I forget to mention something interesting... Do you know Kanye West? Probably yes...
Did you buy his last album?
Then you may probably know about it:
Yes Ma'am this is another Murakami painting!!! Undoubtly successful!!! ;-)))
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The modernism...
Reviewing the advances of modern art history for example, it is easy to dress a parallel between the evolution of art and societal phenomena: The progress of science was accompanied by the development of electronic or multimedia art, bioart and optart.
The theorical concepts used by the major artists of the twentieth century can be found “in Marxist intellectual tradition, in Freudian Psychoanalysis, and in various forms of transaction between the two”. Therefore, marxism theorisation has been developed to analyse colonialism processes; Freudian advances in psychoanalysis have been reappropriated by feminists artists. Regarding the variety of societal influences and the speed of social changes influencing the art world, artists were seeking for a new definition of contemporary art that incorporated the diversity of new media, the progress in sciences and technologies. An intention of progression, experimentation... That is modernism!
On the basis of such theorical background, the culture from which the artworld emerged and the process of idea developement is defined as typical “Western in its orientation, capitalist in its determining economic tendency, bourgeois in its class-character, white in its racial complexion, and masculine in its dominant gender” (Harrison and Wood 1992:1015).
The next step for the art world was to criticise this hegemonic power of western culture in the modernist art world and to introduce the post-modernist concepts.
The contemporary art world shaped by post-modernist ideologies:
Harrison and Wood (1992) recognise that post-modernism has been introduced by three major theorists: Daniel Bell (1978) as a first author argues that the hope of modernism “lays in a return to consensus based on the shared need for moral and economic order”. Following this definition, Post-modernism would then come as a disruptive approach to modernism.
Habermas’ (1984) as the second major postmodernism theorists is reported to argue (Harrison and Wood, 1992) that “a strong ressource of aesthetic resistance remains necessary as a counter to the increasing power and autonomy of economic and administrative systems”, and therefore explains that the power to resist hegemony on the artworld lays in the hands of those who produce the artworks.
Finally, Harrison and Wood, report Lyotard’s (1984) view on postmodernism as an opposition to Bell’s view in which he “equates the postmodern, with a continuing scepticism regarding a possible consensus [...] with a form of nostalgia for the experience of an unattainable wholeness of presence” (1992:1016). In his view, postmodernism should therefore “wage a war on totality”(1992:1016).
Each of these three views remain influencial in the ‘high art’ sphere and the debate on post-modernism becomes deeper and more subtle. Due to the limitations imposed by the focus of this blog, I will not explore the post-modernism discourse in depth. However, what might be interesting at this point would be to note that each of these authors present a different view on postmodernism, which might have its origin in the three different origins of the writers (U.S.A. for Bell and respectively France and Germany for Lyotard and Habermas). Their views have been shaped by a set of specific social, historical and political conditions associated with each of these three different countries. Although they are different, they remain ‘western views’ and this fact has to be taken into account when debating on the evolution of art history.
The post-modernist critique on art history that claims for the originality of an idea, must therefore also analyse in which position the critique has been written.
Pictures:
Mike Kelley - Craft Morphology Flow Chart
Jeff Koons- Balloon Dog
Read more...
- Bell, D., ‘Modernism and Capitalism’, in Bell, 1978
- Habermas, J (1984) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity
- Harrison C. And Wood P. (1992) Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford
- Lyotard, J-F (1984) The Postmodern Condition, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Why artwork of the month? First because I know most of the potential first readers of this modest blog... and I know that a lot of them may like it as well. This artwork may ring a bell to a full generation of people born in the 80's, grew up showered by the animes, in fact the next generation of contemporary art collectors. Do you want to be part of it?...
Second argument the name of the artwork: Francis Bacon Study of Isabel Rawsthorne If you become a regular reader of this blog, you will soon see that I am a fan of Francis Bacon work... For memory, here is the original "Study of Isabel Rawsthorne" painted in 1966:
Takeshi Murakami, the artist, is born in 1962 in Tokyo (Japan) and is the head of an artistic tendency called "superflat" led with Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon. Murakami defines “Superflat” in broad terms, so the subject matter is very diverse. Often the works take a critical look at the consumerism and sexual fetishism that is prevalent in post-war Japanese culture. Murakami's work is POP, as it recalls clearly other artworks produced by Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol a couple of decades ago. It is clearly a re-appropriation of the global culture idols such as Mickey Mouse who is suggested through a lot of his artworks for example (see Tantan Bo below). It is also surrealist... Look closer at this other artwork:
For anybody familiar with Yves Tanguy artworks, it may ring a bell... unspecified entities whose height cannot really be evaluated, the parallel with Yves Tanguy landscapes is easy to do...
Yves Tanguy - Indefinite Divisibility 1942
The artwork of the month reaches potentially a wide audience, recycling elements of the art and the "global contemporary culture" to reintroduce them from another angle... It points at social patterns culturally taken for granted and re-introduce them, allowing the questionment of a social environment in which the 1980's generation grew-up. And it seems to work: Murakami was ranked the 98th most powerful personality of the ArtReview 2006 Power 100, but climbed to the 89th position this year; probably due to his partnership for the design of the last Louis Vuitton collection or for the success of his "superflat" artists who all had solo exhibitions this year in France!
Tantan BO 2001
It addresses our generation (The future collectors...), the art world (post-modern concerns and homage to great artists...), it has every ingredients to make it a great success! And it already is!!!
Murakami: Already a hit... A future legend...
Monday, November 12, 2007
It Might have been a hell gate for all of those who had to enter in the army (Do you remember that it was compulsory?), Metz is now a multi-awarded city of flowers, of history and now it is getting in trouble with contemporary art.
© CA2M / Shigeru Ban Architects Europe & Jean de Gastines / Artefactory
© CA2M / Shigeru Ban Architects Europe & Jean de Gastines / Artefactory
Historically/Architecturally designed as a fortress, Metz is getting experience in developing massive military infrastructures of all kind and this last one is loaded by the Centre Beaubourg (Paris) war machine itself. But let's have a look onto the technical features:
- The Magazine: A virtual capacity of 58,000 artworks that compose the biggest European contemporary art collection (Just for you to remember that France still get the first place on the podium concerning worldwide transactions weighted by countries with an astonishing 18,8% of the volume for the year 2006!!! (source artprice report http://img1.artprice.com/pdf/trends2006.pdf))
- A Barrel made of cultural decentralisation initiated in 1997 by Jean-Jacques Aillagon who wanted to fight cultural prejudices or something like that...
- Hammer: Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres head from the ministry of culture. Hmmm... Is this whole project only a strategy to knock over the dinosaur Jean-Marie Rausch at the head of the city since 1971!!!
- The design: Shigeru Ban... The best is simply to have a look on the result... A world class architect! "profiled by Time Magazine in their projection of 21st century innovators in the field of architecture and design".
The Target? You... Paris, the French reputation for cultural matters (which is rather bad especially since François Pinault the most influential figure of the contemporary art world, abandoned in Paris a full bag of amazing projects for purchasing the Palazzo Grassi on the Grand Canal in Venice... Ok fair enough...) This is not Tate Modern, nor beaubourg but it does not have any pretension... I believe this Chinese hat will have a lot to say to the people of Metz. Let's hope that the audience will be responsive! Good Luck!
OPENING IN 2009
The bullets? well let' s dream:
Francis Bacon, Three Figures in a Room, 1964, oil on canvas, 198 x 441 cm, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris.
Dream on.............
Sunday, November 11, 2007
"L'art c'est ce qui rends la vie plus interessante que l'art"(Art is what makes life more interesting than art)Robert Filiou, (1926-1987)
Within the same year, Andy Warhol is going to ‘paint’ a Marilyn Diptych, presenting on each panel of a grid 25 impressions of one of the most famous pictures of Marilyn Monroe, taken from an advertisement for the movie ‘Niagara’.
With the repetition of the 50 pictures, each of them altered singularly by the process of silk-screen printing, the artist suggests the viewer the power of the mass media. The canvas depicts a society which faces the rise of advertisement and mass consumption so efficiently that the world will give it an iconic status. However, Warhol does not only comment on the stars iconic status as a glamour figure, but also on “the role of the star as a mass media commodity, as a product of the entertainment industry that could be indefinitely reproduced for mass consumption” (Schroeder 2005). Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’still stands out from the crowd and remains one of the greatest criticisms of the 1960’s society. It entered popular culture better than any other texts produced at this time probably due to his intelligent choice of the communication channel used to transmit his message: a work of art.Similarly, Francis Bacon has been reported to justify why he used paintings rather than other communication channels to express his ideas on human condition by the following statement: “If you can say it, why paint it?”
Interested??? You will be glad to know that this amazing Marilyn Monroe Diptych painted in 1962 is currently hanged on TATE Liverpool walls, part of an amazing collection of contemporary artworks (Go to see Cindy Sherman or Sarah Lucas for me please...)http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/the-twentieth-century/figuration.shtm
