Getting lucky in the auction room

Charlotte Higgins reported in yesterday's Guardian on the sale of an 18th-century painting in an auction in Market Harborough, Leicestershire:

The estimate on the picture was £300-£500. When its turn came last Tuesday at Gilding's - a small, family-run auction house that holds about 45 sales per year - something truly extraordinary happened. "The atmosphere in the room became very tense - the bidding just went on and on," said the auctioneer, Mark Gilding. The final hammer price was £205,000.

Described in the auctioneer's catalogue as "18th-century continental school, half-length portrait of an aesthete", it depicted a black-clad, bearded man, his face half turned to the right, a rather distant, soulful expression in his eyes.

Speculation is now abuzz that the work is actually an early Titian, dating between 1510 and 1520, and possibly worth something in the region of £5 million. The buyer has not come forward - the vendor picked the work up in an estate sale in 1974.

Stories like this make me happy - I like that there's still room for surprises and discoveries 9and, I guess, false attributions) in today's art market. I do wonder though if the vendor will be pleased that the work sold for 400 times its top reserve, or pissed that they unknowingly let a £5 million Titian slip through their fingers?

I heart Helvetica

Continuing in this vein ...

In yesterday's Guardian, AndrewDickinson interviewed Helvetica documentary maker Gary Hustwit. Some interesting facts:

• A huge H made out of Swiss cheese was created for a showing of the film in Philadelphia
• Helvetica is the font of the United Nations
• A Cyrillic variant of the font has been created.

My favourite quote so far, from Massimo Vignelli, the designer who used Helvetica to create the American airlines logo in 1966:

The life of a designer is a life of fight, fight against ugliness, just like a doctor fights against disease.

Helvetica screens in Wellington on 27 and 29 July , as part of the International Film Festival.

Image: still from Helvetica, directed by Gary Hustwit.

Two views of creativity

Innovation is a big topic of conversation at my workplace at the moment. The consensus seems to be that innovation = creativity + action + reflection + further creativity + further action + (you get the idea).

I recently subscribed to Colin Stewart's Arts of Innovation blog. In this blog, Stewart uses David Galenson's work on conceptual and experimental innovators to look at creativity. So, for example, the latest post I got was about Malcolm Gladwell's current project, a book on the American healthcare system, which he describes as being in need of a Cezanne (experimental innovator - building on an idea step by step) rather than a Picasso (conceptual innovator - pushing development forward with massive, unpredictable breakthroughs). [All of which, by the by, seems like a good basis for a 'What kind of modernist master painter are you?' quiz in the next copy of Idealog].

Meanwhile, on the UX magazine site, I've just come across a Nov 2006 article about Creativity 2.E (which goes to show that the current trend for putting '2.0' after everything can be successfully merged with the past trend of adding 'e-' in front of everything) which looks at the evolution of creativity for web workers, and includes gems like this:

[Traditional] skills, talents and abilities are needed – no doubt about it. But what’s also needed is the evolution of them – the next iteration. But what does this look like? An Information Architect who completely grasps Human Computer Interaction but can also think fluidly – can do things like rapidly create prototypes, facilitate user testing, understand visual design and occasionally write copy.

You might well ask at this point, why on earth am I brining these two things together? Well, in one part of my life, I work in web development, which is where I've learnt about the iterative process, granularity and rapid prototyping. In another part of my life I do art things, where Paul and Pablo fit in. So for me, it's grist for some kind of mind-mill, which you get to share.

Irresistable

I noticed the above on the Guardian's homepage this morning. It's a work by Florentijn Hofman, and it's part of Estuaire 2007, a mostly open-air exhibition on and in the Loire at Nantes, the brainchild of local curator Jean Blaise. As Joanna Moorhead writes in the Times:

It’s big (30 exhibits), it’s brave (most of the art is out of doors) and – in parts at least – it’s bonkers (think giant plastic ducks, and life-sized half-sunken houses).

While Anish Kapoor's work in the exhibition is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, most of the commissioned works are in or near the Loire, and can be viewed from the twice daily, two and a half hour boat trip that is part of the Festival.

Florentijn Hofman (b. 1977) is a Dutch artist who works across a range of media, from open-air installations to ink on paper. His work - from a brief Google trawl - is summoning up some funny Michael Parekowhai and Rick Killeen flashbacks for me:

Oh - and if you're inspired - the Guardian has opened up a wisequacks thread for punny comments on the big duck....

Images:

Florentijn Hofman, Canard de bain, 2007. Currently on show at Estuaire 2007, Nantes, France.

Florentijn Hofman, work produced for the social art project De Strip in Vlaardingen. From the Galerie West website.

Florentijn Hofman, En vacance (installation), 2005. From the Galerie West website.

Florentijn Hofman, Haan, 2005. 102 cm x 72.4 cm. Eeding ink on mc paper. From the Galerie West website.

BYO white gloves

I was quite excited when I first saw the Tate's 'Your Collection' feature. From the blurb:

Tate Britain displays British art from 1500 to today. Yes, it's a museum, but it's also like a big living room. All those works of art are yours.

Tate has devised a new way of looking at the Displays with a range of themed 'Collections'. These suggest a number of personal journeys you could take, reflecting different moods and enthusiasms and revealing the extraordinary breadth of work on show.

The general idea of Your Collection is that you can use it to virtually curate your own selection of works from the Tate's collection. This is a feature many galleries, museums and online image databases are interested in.

The Tate's sample Your Collection collections include like 'The I'm in a Hurry' collection, and 'The Rainy Day' collection. At first I thought these were 'user-generated content' (i.e. made by visitors to the site) which had been created, submitted and posted.

Then when I had a play at forming my own selection, I discovered a few things:

1. You can only pick from about 40 images - not from the Tate's online collection
2. Your 'exhibition' must have 6 images - any less and you're sent back to the storeroom
3. You can't submit your collection, although the site will auto-generate a (heavily branded) leaflet in PDF format, and allow you to email this
4. You can only submit a generic blurb, not a comment on each work you've selected
5. The details of each work (artist, date, title) are not available.

So - despite a very slick interface, and that lovable Tate branding - the Your Collection feature is a disappointing outcome of an interesting and useful idea.

Landscape + irish setter + pheasant = Dollars

A recent post on Free Exchange, one of The Economist's blogs, highlighted Tyler Cowen's discussion of the factors that determine the price of art, featured in his recent book Discover Your Inner Economist. These include:

1. Landscapes can triple in value when there are horses or figures in the foreground. Evidence of industry usually lowers a picture’s value.
2. A still life with flowers is worth more than one with fruit. Roses stand at the top of the flower hierarchy. Chrysanthemums and lupines (seen as working class) stand at the bottom.
3. There is a price hierarchy for animals. Purebred dogs help a picture more than mongrels do. Spaniels are worth more than collies. Racehorses are worth more than carthorses. When it comes to game birds the following rule of thumb holds: the more expensive it is to shoot the bird, the more the bird adds to the value of the painting. A grouse is worth more than a mallard, and the painter should show the animal from the front, not the back.
4. Water adds value to a picture, but only if it is calm. Shipwrecks are a no-no.

Read the full post

Meanwhile, in the Art Newspaper, Richard Feigen looks at the overheated art market, and points out that several areas - including 16th and 17th century Italian, French and Flemings and the 18th and 19th-century British - seem to have remained immune to crazy price hikes.

Never start a land war in Asia

Like many other women of a certain age (and the occasional man of varied age), I can recite The Princess Bride line for line. That's why I'm pretty excited about the above t-shirt design.

Image: Inigo Montoya t-shirt, Lucky Threadz website.

Christchurch Art Gallery's podcasts

I'm a web editor in a cultural institution. One of my jobs is to drum up new content for our website. And one of the easiest ways of doing that is to take things that are already happening, or already exist, and re-purpose them for online delivery.

Christchurch Art Gallery have just done a really nice job of this by putting their audioguide online. They recently commissioned a new audioguide, which covers 21 works from their permanent collection hang, and is narrated by actor Sam Neill.

Christchurch Art Gallery audioguide download page

When you visit the Gallery, you can hire an iPod loaded up with the audioguide to take with you - so far, so traditional. But by putting the audio online (with an easy interface), the Gallery has made it possible for people to listen to the guide on their computer, or download it to their own iPod (etc).

It's a small but effective thing. Each track is only a few minutes long, and you can see the work being discussed as you listen. I could see these being really useful in a classroom, where students could listen and discuss - or make their own for other works. And in a nice touch, they've also made the transcripts available for download as PDFs.

As far as I know the Christchurch Art Gallery is the first to make podcasts available for collection works, so good on them. Apparently, there's more still to come.

Image: Rita Angus, Cass, c.1936. Collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery. One of the works featured on the audioguide.

Declaration: I was commissioned by the Gallery to produce the script for the audioguide.

A showbiz accountant

An oxymoron? No! Frank Dunphy, 69-year-old accountant and Damien Hirst's manager.

The Guardian posted a fascinating interview with Dunphy by Sean O'Hagan yesterday.

Dunphy, who started out looking after variety acts, now also represents Tracey Emin, Jake and Dino Chapman and Ray Winstone. Both he and Hirst have a story about how they met (pick the one you like the most). However it happened, I see material for a solid Tuesday night movie here: how the been-around-the-block Irishman took the young and reckless artist in hand and made him the (financial) man he is today.

So, what can a show biz accountant do for you?

"Depending on who you believe, Hirst now takes either a 70 or an 80 per cent cut of gallery sales at White Cube and Gagosian. Before Frank Dunphy came on board, the split was the usual 50/50. 'Sometimes,' he says, 'it's even 90/10 in Damien's favour.'"

Which is interesting in view of last week's post, on Ed Winkleman's dissection of the 50/50 rule.

Attention Wellington readers II

Not to be missed: Julian Dashper talking about his work in 'Four Times Painting' at the Adam Art Gallery, Wednesday 18 July 2007 at 12.30 pm.

The work shown here is Untitled (Van Gogh in Auckland), which is part of 'Four Times Painting'. Read a story that may lie behind the title on the Sue Crockford website.

Image: Julian Dashper, Untitled (Van Gogh in Auckland), 2006. Digitalprint on rag paper. Image from the Sue Crockford Gallery website.

Sharing the love, 50-50

I've written before about New York dealer Edward Winkleman, and his honest and insightful posts about the nuts and bolts of the dealer scene.

This week, Ed takes on the 50-50 split of sales between artists and the dealers (or gallerists) who sell their work. He notes that while the split might seem crazy at first - the artist does all the work and the dealer gets half just for hanging something on the wall for a while - when you factor what a good dealer does for their artists, and what it takes to actually run a business, the numbers start to stack up:

"Because emerging artists are most likely (and understandably) the least likely to understand the business, I took a small survey of youngish) galleries with bare bone staffs and predominantly emerging artists in their stable in New York. They reported that it costs between $6,000 to $12,000 per exhibition for the overhead/rent alone (these are all galleries with relatively modest spaces). This is before the gallerist takes a salary, let alone sees any profit for the business. That means, that with the 50/50 split, those galleries must sell between $12,000 and $24,000 of artwork per exhibition before they even break even. Before they can pay themselves anything. Before they can expand the business and reinvest in more resources to promote their artists."

Full post

In the comments (43 of them when I last looked) there wasn't the outrage that I expected, but there were some thoughtful questions. What if an artists introduces a collector to a gallery? How do splits work when an artist has more than one dealer? How do you ask a dealer to do more for their cut without sounding like a high-maintenance problem?

Taradise

I'm not ashamed to own up to coming from New Plymouth. My parochial funny bone has been getting quite a tickle this week, with the news that Pukekura Park has not only landed the Mayfair spot on the NZ version of Monopoly, but also been named in the world's top 6 cricket grounds by Wisden (would you believe the Taranaki Daily News has removed this news item from their site?) .

Peter Peryer has honoured the park this week by photographing a palm tree seed he found there. He describes it as 'vivid'. I'd go with 'lady who got 3rd degree burns while inadvisedly sunbathing naked', but that's just me.



Peter's original post