Los Angeles Art News, Art Blog

ART BLOG

ARTICLES FOR THE MONTH OFJANUARY 2012
Contributing Bloggers: John Harbinger Jr.and David Harbrenig
Friend us on .
Artlanow Members & Friends are welcome to post information about their current and upcoming exhibitions and events on our facebook page

January 2012 – Take your pick of the Art shows in L.A.

The L.A. Art Show: Modern & Contemporary is back in town at the L.A. Convention Center. A few blocks away, the Affordable Art Fair at the event deck of L.A. Live is also running through Sunday. If your appetite for art is not satiated by those two venues, there's also Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair at the Barker Hangar in the Santa Monica Airport, featuring many local galleries in addition to others from around the world. It’s raining art in Los Angeles!

Having visited the L.A. Art show several times, I must say, I have the feeling of seeing a lot of the same stuff year after year. About 90 galleries are offering original works, a number large enough to cater for all tastes, yet I found myself wandering through the walkways more quickly than in the past, finding few pieces which attracted my attention.

The main show, as always, is made up by traditionalist dealers, who cater to Californian collectors’ enthusiasm for plein-air landscapes and “romantic,” sentimentalist, paintings. And why not? We love California because of the sunlight, the amazing natural landscapes, the romanticism of movies and theater. Since L.A. is the city of celebrities, the show also offers here and there some quirky renditions of well-known faces. The first time I came here, I thought it a great show. Yesterday, I left somehow the 2012 show feeling disappointed.

The L.A. Art Show presents works that are definitely not affordable for my pocket. I hope the Affordable Art Fair affords me more pleasure.

Does L.A. have someone to compare with Banksy?

I enjoyed reading an article published online at http://moreintelligentlife.com/blog/nicholas-barber/full-banksy-experience (January 12th 2012). The author writes about his pleasure at discovering a new street artwork by the famous and ever-elusive Banksy as he was driving through the streets of London. It made me think about how often I have inadvertently come across freshly painted street art in the streets of L.A. and been enthralled by the experience. Sometimes I get the impression there’s as much good art in the streets as there is in the galleries. Banksy has made his reputation on great visual art accompanied with thought-provoking, written messages such as the one mentioned in the article: “Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock.” Pithy, sure…. and yet it strikes a chord. Despite my enthusiasm for the quality of street art around Los Angeles, I’m not sure we have somebody here in L.A. whose work is as amusing and interesting as his.

My winter of discontent

“Moody? Me?” I barked in reply to my wife’s reprimand of the silent treatment I’d been giving her for the past 24 hours. It had begun when she told me her opinion of my latest work as we stood before the freshly completed canvas. Her brutal criticism of it was un-solicited, un-wanted and unfortunately for me, completely just; Not so, my silent brooding since…..

I will, of course, apologize to her. She was absolutely right. It is a bad piece of art, and the truth is, I knew it before I’d even finished it.

Ah! Being an artist is a mysterious calling. I had a well-paid position in the graphics department of a big advertising firm; but I was not satisfied. Sometimes, I wonder now, if I was so dissatisfied.

I dreamed of being an artist; of creating not posters, wrappings and commercials, but artworks that move people and jolt society. Far from rattling the foundations of society, the only disruptions I’ve caused seem to be within me as I swing from optimism to down-right despair struggling to achieve whatever it is that eludes me. The harsh realities of being an artist have hit my wallet and now, it seems, my nervous system, too. Apparently the artist Robert Henri said: "Art is a terrible way to make a living, but a wonderful way to live..." He is right about the first part; and there are days when I think him right about the second. There are other days however, when the struggle of emotions and finances, the long hours spent at work, the swings between depression and exaltation, all seem to drive me further away from wanting to live the “artist’s life.”

Luckily she is there to support me, to tell me the truth when I need to be told, and luckily she is able to tolerate all my moods. She is right. Moi -very moody lately. Glad I got that out of my system… I’m off to apologize - and start a new canvas!

A Report On The Global Art Industry 2011 -2012

Skate's Art Investment Review (An Open Forum Covering Today’s Global Art Market) has released its “Global Art Industry: Annual Report for 2011 and Outlook for 2012.” It is an interesting read. (See: http://www.skatesartinvestment.com )

The Skate's report puts the total amount of art trading worldwide at close to $80 billion last year, which is about the same as it was in 2006-2007, before the economy went into free fall. It seems the top end of the market is doing well again; more than 2000 lots sold for $1 million or more in the auction houses and private art dealers managed to sell a similar number of million dollar-plus sales during the year in their galleries or at art fairs.

The report explains this by proposing that the concept of art as an investment is no longer perceived as being vulgar and inappropriate as it was less than ten years ago. Investment in Art is apparently now deemed not only worthy but seemly. The new aura has helped to drum up demand for works in the midst of economic turmoil and garner the attention of new buyers, thus expanding the addressable market for art dealers and auction houses.

Skate's outlook for the future has dire predictions for museums. The firm predicts that, because of the increased acceptance of art as an investment, and the ensuing development of art investment funds, there will more securitization of art. Funding squeezes in governments will lead them to regard museums as "government-owned treasuries that can contribute towards balancing government deficits by using capital markets and modern finances to unlock the value of their vaults without necessarily selling significant volumes of art treasures (de-accessioning" in museum terminology). Cash from capital markets can be used to finance museum budget deficits."

The report suggests the changes have already been set motion by museums themselves as they are obliged to look for novel ways to fund their operating budget deficits as municipal, state and federal organizations tighten their purse strings in order to reduce heavy deficits.

The report is 10 pages long and while it is, at times, a little too analytical and numerical for my taste, it’s worth a look. If their predictions are true, we might need to expect less from future visits to the museums.

Hockney takes a dig at Hirst and contemporary conceptual art

74 years old artist David Hockney, who left L.A. a while ago to return to his native Yorkshire in England, has provoked some discussion among the art-loving public there this week (Jan 3) by including a small note on the posters for his forthcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy. The note reads: "All the works here were made by the artist himself, personally." It is intended to be, he admits, a dig at British superstar artist, Damien Hirst, who is about to launch a major exhibition at London’s Tate Modern in April.

Just about all the pieces in the Hirst show are pieces made by assistants including the taxidermists who worked on the famous pickled shark – The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – and the cow and calf, Mother and Child Divided. Hirst has always been very open about his own lack of input into his work. He once said he employed assistants to make works such as his scores of spot paintings because "I couldn't be f**king bothered to do it".

In an interview this week Hockney said of Hirst’s work: "It's a little insulting to craftsmen. I used to point out at art school that you can teach the craft, but you can’t teach the poetry. Nowadays art schools try to teach the poetry and not the craft."

Hockney is well versed in art history –he knows perfectly well that some of the greatest masters did not always entirely make their own work. Parts were often conferred to studio assistants and technicians. His dig at Hirst is a dig at contemporary conceptual art. What he is saying is that students used to be taught first and foremost technique; how to draw perfectly, how to use color and form. Only when all this was mastered were they encouraged to express their individuality. Now students graduate from art colleges believing that everything they do or touch or say, can be labeled a work of art, yet if you held a gun to their heads they couldn’t even draw a rabbit. “That, in a nutshell, is the difficulty of teaching art today.” says Hockney.

The platinum and diamond skull, For the Love of God, became the most expensive modern work sold – albeit to a consortium that included the artist and his White Cube gallery. It was made by the London jeweller Bentley & Skinner, and a proud photograph of it can be seen on the wall in the firm's Piccadilly window.

Despite Hockney's reservations, the practice of artists employing production lines is ancient: as the National Gallery exhibition shows, Leonardo da Vinci used many assistants, some of whom became celebrated artists in their own right. And in the 20th century, artists including Andy Warhol embraced the slick, mass-produced look of multiple copies.

When Hirst has picked up his own paintbrush, the results have not been universally admired. An exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London of paintings inspired by Francis Bacon was hammered by the critics, including the Guardian's Adrian Searle, who called his work "amateurish and adolescent". The pieces will not feature in Hirst's Tate show.

What I love about David Hockney is that his public utterances are invariably completely right and totally wrong at one and the same time. Part of the trick is his delivery. Hockney may be our national curmudgeon, but he is such a good natured curmudgeon that it hardly matters whether you agree with him or not. For example, he is entirely correct when he says that smoking is one of the greatest pleasures known to man and that the government should allow anyone who wants to smoke do so at their own risk. But isn’t it equally true that there is some justification in the government’s use of the law to discourage people from taking up (or persisting in) a habit that is, after all, pretty certain to kill them?

In my view, what matters above all is the poetry. If the work has that then does it really matter how it was made? The question then is – how do you define `poetry’. I find the paintings of Jack Vettriano repellent, but they are certainly made by the artist himself. On the other hand I’m a fan of the Thai performance artist Rirkrit Tiravanija who comes into a gallery to cook and serve delicious Thai food. Once the show is over there is nothing to look at, but you’ve had an experience that Jamie Oliver would recognize as important: the use of cooking to bring communities together, the rejection of fast and pre-cooked food as the first step in living a good life. I happen to know that Hockney doesn’t think that what Rirkrit does is art, and maybe it isn’t. Who cares? As I said, Hockney is always right and always wrong. That’s why I love to disagree with him.

Limiting Freedom of Expression in Art

Over the past few years I have attended some very bewildering (for me, at least) art shows. Some time ago I wrote an article titled “what does art say about human nature?” As we go into 2012, I am wondering what a lot of the art I see, says about my personal nature.

Is it that, as I age, I have truly become “set in my ways” and am unable to appreciate new things as I would have done when younger. Am I a now a narrow-minded old codger? Should I blame my increasing graying hair and decreasing grey brain cells for my growing tendency to think of the old days as “the good old days?” As we enter into a new year I feel the need to think about the state of Art today and where it is going.

It is a question that has been posed and answered by many already, nevertheless, he are my thoughts on: “Should freedom of expression through art have limits?”

Freedom of expression is a right which allows each of us to say, to write and act in order to express our feelings. But, it is not a right which comes without limitations; we cannot act to harm others because we feel rage, we cannot libel and slander simply because we feel like it, we cannot incite hatred or racism because we dislike certain people. It is given on the understanding that while it protects one person’s right to express himself it must also protect another person’s right to privacy, peace and security. Having the right to express what we feel doesn’t always mean we have to express whatever we feel. Unlimited freedom of expression will only provoke unlimited responses.

Which brings me to contemporary art? Because I have the right to say whatever I want, it doesn’t make me an orator. Because I have the right to write what I want, it doesn’t make me a poet. Because art can be anything, it doesn’t mean that anything can be art, and it doesn’t mean anyone can be an artist.

I am against official censorship of Art. However, if some people claim an individual piece of artwork oversteps the legal protections which safeguard against abuses of freedom of expression, their voices and opinions –their freedom of expression - must also be heard. I personally will defer to the judgment of the courts to decide whether a work of ‘art’ is art or pornography or an incitement to hatred or merely an act to create public disorder, just as I accept their judgments for other legal matters.

I have decided to create my own form of censorship beginning in 2012. I will simply walk out of exhibitions which show what I consider to be #*@**%# crap and hope I will have the balls to exercise my own freedom of expression by proclaiming as loudly as possible what I think of it as I exit. Am I part of the silent majority or am I just OLD????

Juried Art Competitions – Deadlines January 2012

Linus Art Gallery in Pasadena, CA seeks entries for an exhibition “Nude but not Rude.” All fine art nudes by artists worldwide, from photography, to paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolor and ink, graphite drawings, fabric work (quilts & stitch-work) will be considered. Accepted artists will be asked to be a part of a collective show in future months but this is not a requirement to being a part of this show. $35 for 3 entries, $5 for each additional. Visit www.linusgallery.com for details. For enquiries telephone: (310) 491-0269. DEADLINE: January 10, 2012.

The 1650 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA announces a call to photographers worldwide for an exhibition titled “Snow and Ice; Winter Photography Exhibition” to be held January 28 - February 22, 2012. Juror: Joshua Hess. $25 fee for up to 5 images. Visit website for prospectus. Questions? Please contact Tricia Noble at 1650gallery@gmail.com DEADLINE: January 10, 2012.

Linus Art Gallery in Pasadena, CA seeks entries for an exhibition. “My Loves” is about how we each individually interpret love and desire. It is open to all artists worldwide working in photography, paintings in oil, acrylic, watercolor and ink, graphite drawings and fabric work from quilts to stitch work. Accepted artists will be asked to be a part of a collective show in future months. The artists will be asked if they wish to submit their artwork for the show, which is not a requirement to being a part of this show. There is a $35 fee for 3 entries, $5 for each add'l. For questions, please phone to (310) 491-0269. Visit www.linusgallery.com for details. DEADLINE: January 20, 2012.

Brea Gallery in Brea, CA seeks entries for a juried exhibition called 27^th Annual Made in - to be held from March 24 until May 4, 2012. There is $1,150 in total cash awards. Juror: Rebecca Morse. Artists must reside in California. Each entry is $15. Download prospectus (PDF format). Please email questions to breagallery@cityofbrea.net or call 714-990-7731. DEADLINE: January 25, 2012.

Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona announces a call to artists for the 2nd Annual Scottsdale Salon of Fine Art, April 20 - May 20, 2012. $25,000 of cash prizes, $10,000 Grand Prize. They are looking for representational figurative, portrait, still-life, floral, landscape, and western paintings. (2-dimensional works only.) Three submissions allowed per person. All paintings must be available for purchase and have not been previously for sale at a gallery or another juried competition. $45 fee for 3 submissions. Visit www.scottsdalesalonoffineart.com for prospectus. Questions? Contact salon@legacygallery.com or call 480-945-1113. DEADLINE: January 27, 2012.