2007年6月27日 星期三

藝術家╱商人╱鬼才—村上隆(Takashi Murakami)策略 (下)

【文/陳沛岑】
藝術企業:KaiKai KiKi走向全能的藝術公司

2001年,於無數的經驗累積之後,Hiropon工廠已逐漸成為一專業的藝術生產公司,村上隆把其重新命名為「KaiKai KiKi」(有勇敢、強壯之意),並賦予其更多元的任務。公司內部有超過100名的員工,分駐在紐約長島與東京廣尾町(Hiroo),專業細密地分工,主力放在:1、藝術品的生產、行銷;2、旗下六位簽約藝術家的經營管理、良好公共關係的打造;3、藝術策展與活動推廣:公司經理人部門的合作對象偏向選擇國內外知名的畫廊、美術館,企圖把旗下藝術家推上國際舞台,而當他們有機會在藝廊舉辦個展時,每賣出一張作品,公司即會向展出畫廊收取10%的佣金;4、藝術附屬產品的生產設計與行銷,如小到3塊美元的泡泡糖、公仔、鑰匙環,大至100萬美元的雕塑,由低至高的價格,完美地一網打盡各階層的消費族群。

2003年他在東京分公司更成立了一個專業的動畫工廠「Daikanyama」,負責把自己與旗下藝術家的作品轉成動畫,以助推廣與行銷。身為總監,他靈活地以商業頭腦經營公司,使其成為一有制度的企業,例如他向比爾.蓋茲(Bill Gates)學習,把數位資訊流動的觀點帶進工作環境,要求東京與紐約的組織通訊必須經由電子郵件,公司每人每天須以電郵交流工作進度,並利用數位工具創造跨部門的虛擬團隊,分享知識與即時利用彼此的觀念。而虛擬的網路市場建立,也不限定點地向全球顧客叫賣,提供多樣性的藝術商品;公司在每個月更以電子報的方式寄送新產品的資訊、與企業新訊給網路訂戶。

開創市場:Geisai藝術慶典的多重效應

村上隆認為日本藝術家在戰後普遍面臨的困境是:沒有一個可信賴的藝術市場,而日本拍賣市場的階級化、保守化,更無法長久地支持一個藝術家事業的建立與發展。於是,起初他的藝術策略是把精力投注在海外的作品行銷,而在看見成果之時,他選擇於有經濟能力時回到日本,企圖以自己的力量重建新型的市場模式;也呼籲年輕的藝術家須思考一些市場與自我經營的商業概念,才能在這殘酷、現實的藝術體制下生存。

從2001年起,他策劃了每年兩次的Geisai藝術慶典,設定極低的門檻限制,以申請制的模式開放給來自各地的日本藝術工作者,在他所提供的空間展出。雖然這個慶典每次只維持兩天,但在六年內,它的參觀人次逐年攀升,從第一屆的1,800人,至第十屆已暴增至9,809人(並有近1,000人的參展者),Geisai顯然已經在日本建立了自己的品牌與人氣,不少策展人與收藏家皆視此為尋找挖掘藝術新星的必來盛宴—Geisai業已成為年輕藝術家初出茅廬、一展身手的閃亮平台。

除了展覽之外,村上隆也找來國內外重量級的藝術家、策展人,如草間彌生(Yayoi Kusama)、柰良美智(Yoshitomo Nara)、南條史生(Fumio Nanjo)、艾略特(David Elliott)、佳士得當代藝術國際部門主管塞加洛(Philippe Segalot)擔任評委,選出前三名頒予獎項。這樣的評委陣容團隊,除了直接讓藝術世界的掌權者認識日本當代藝術的活力,也間接拓展了參展藝術家們的出線機會。得獎主在賽事之後,被邀請到國外參展的案例比比皆是,例如第五屆金獎得主木下雅雄(Masao Kinoshita)的雕塑作品受邀至佳士得送拍,登上拍賣舞台;第六屆金獎得主Erina Matsui作品深受法國卡地亞藝術基金會主任Herve Chandes喜愛,受邀至法國參與基金會舉辦的聯展。除此之外,村上隆年年幫得獎主的作品發行畫冊、書籍,亦向其他國際性的藝博會主動推薦他們的參與。Geisai在今日除了成功地打開了日本藝術的消費市場,也對年輕藝術家造成一股正向的鼓舞力量,並更加鞏固村上隆在藝術上教父級的地位。

延伸觸角:時尚異業結盟擁抱消費文化

村上隆並不把自己的活動侷限在純藝術領域,對於時尚界的邀請,他一向熱衷參與,例如他與三宅一生(Issey Miyake)在1999年首度結識後,次年便參與了他的服裝設計,發表了許多精彩的共同創作。而從2001至2004年,KaiKai KiKi公司旗下的高野綾(Aya Takano)、青島千穗(Chiho Aoshima)、及化名Mr.的藝術家Masakatsu Iwamoto皆與三宅一生的時尚工業進行緊密的合作,把他們卡漫風格的創作與服飾結合,其作品並於2004年聯展於巴黎頂尖的當代藝術畫廊「艾曼紐.帕洛汀」(Emmanuel Perrotin Galerie),掀起了一股時尚與藝術工藝結合的風潮。

2003年,村上隆接受時尚設計師馬克.雅各(Marc Jacobs)的邀請,重新為老牌LV換上新裝,把他的超扁平藝術理論與可愛的創作角色運用於包包設計上,營造雙贏的結果與可觀的附加價值—除為村上隆的事業再創高峰外,據《紐約時報》(New York Times)指出,他的LV手提包及其他延伸性商品設計,在2003年已為LV創下3億美元的進帳。村上隆在此擁抱、親吻普羅文化的態度也表露無遺,並同時把自己打造成藝術界與時尚界的明星!

擁抱未來:永遠的變色龍

紐約的新當代美術館(New Museum of Contemporary art)董事菲力普(Lisa Phillips) 說:「村上隆的作品混合了幻想、啟示與純真。這些都是當代渴求的元素,而他的公共雕塑、巨型作品編輯計畫、商品化的生產線與共同合作的工作策略是非常有野心與企圖心的計畫。」除了企圖心,我們甚至可以說,村上隆是個近乎全方位的藝術家,他像變色龍般地轉換自己的顏色,恣意地遊走在創作者、策展人、經理人、公司總裁、理論家、藝術導師的多重身分之中,展現令人驚豔的演出與高度的敏銳度。他日前在紐約高古軒畫廊(Gagosian Gallery)舉辦了新作展,其中嶄新地融入了日本的禪學元素,一幅幅村氏達摩圖現身其中,在開慕典禮時更有現場茶道演出,再度掀起一股旋風。其不拘於過往形式、求新求變的精神更是他的致勝關鍵!

【典藏今藝術2007年6月號】

藝術家╱商人╱鬼才—村上隆(Takashi Murakami)策略 (上)

【文/陳沛岑】

提到村上隆,首先映入你腦中的印象會是什麼?是那個跟時尚工業龍頭路易.威登(Louis Vuitton)合作,創作微笑櫻花包、色彩繽紛的LV印花壓字包的設計師?還是外表看起來像流浪漢,蓄著長髮戴著眼鏡的日本藝術家?或是藝術慶典Geisai 的創辦人?不論你以什麼方式來認識村上隆,不可否認的是—他異軍突起地擺脫藝術家之於貧窮的等號,及其掀動新世代藝術浪潮的能耐。

村上隆,1962年生於東京一個平凡的家庭,父親是計程車司機,母親為全職家庭主婦;大學時他進入國立東京當代藝術與音樂大學(Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music)就讀,1993年獲博士畢業於東大,主修日本傳統繪畫。然而,這樣的他,在近年創造了近乎神話般的紀錄,例如在拍賣市場上,芝加哥藏家艾迪斯(Stefan Edis)於2003年的佳士得拍賣會以56萬7,500美元買下他在1996年創作的一個帶有強烈卡漫特質,六呎高的玻璃纖維女侍雕塑《Miss ko2》。同年,佳士得老闆皮諾(Francois Pinault)以150萬美元委託他製作一個30呎高,充滿童趣的《Tongarikun》,以及四個環繞在旁的香菇變形人物玻璃纖維群像,齊展於洛克斐勒中心(Rockefeller Center)。從那時起,村上隆成功地吸引歐美人士的目光,他的名字並羅列在諸多藏家的收藏名單之中,許多的創作甚至在正式開始繪做之前即已售出。除此之外,東、西方的藝評家們也肯定其藝術地位,屢屢稱他是日本的安迪.沃荷(Andy Warhol)。究竟,他是如何能獲致今日的成功?作為一個藝術家,他的生存要訣又是什麼?

競爭優勢:日本次文化的極致表現

雖然村上隆早年亦嘗試做了些近西方思潮的觀念性作品;然而在博士畢業後赴紐約駐村其間,他體會到倘若要在國際藝術世界佔有一席之地,必定要走出自己的路、找到本身的特殊性。於是一連串的冒險與試驗隨之展開—他改而從日本尋找藝術表現的養分,轉往後現代日本文化分析,提煉出屬於日本的文化獨特性。村上隆在觀察與分析的過程中,他發現了兩個日本世代的特質—對於漫畫、卡通等次文化的著迷及其衍生出的御宅族(Otaku)現象,與可愛(Kawaii)的當代文化。

村上隆說:「動畫在日本是個巨型工業,它廣泛地被傳播,大眾在成長的過程中也一直不斷地閱視它。動漫甚至可以說是部分日本的國族意識。」卡漫無疑是日本共同的世代語言;而御宅族指的則是熱衷於動畫、漫畫及電腦遊戲等次文化的人,通常有收集各式模型的癖好。針對此一特質,村上隆從中汲取部分日本卡漫的特殊性:暴力美學、帶有性隱喻的人物,以及御宅族對模型收藏的狂熱,將它轉化到藝術上。這類的代表作品有1997年驚世駭俗的《Hiropon》,一個有著大眼睛、張嘴露齒微笑,與過大、正噴出乳汁的巨型乳房—集情色誘惑力與美麗於一身的七呎高女孩塑像,宛如御宅族收藏的美少女(Bishojo)模型放大版。針對此作,村上隆自言:「我的靈感來自於一款以巨乳少女為主角的遊戲,在這個畸形少女的身上,我看到了日本文化的深厚歷史,日本人的性自卑以及逐漸變態的性文化。我意識到如果將她做成作品的話,將帶來多麼大的衝擊!」這樣的衝擊,的確撼動了藝術世界,打響了他的知名度。

在接續的創作中,1998年的《我的寂寞牛仔》(My Lonesome Cowboy)也延續了這些元素,只是這次的主角變成男性。而於1999年後期,他開始討論可愛的文化現象,思考著為何Hello Kitty、口袋怪物會受大眾喜愛?它們在市場上的生存祕訣與普遍性為何?這樣的秘訣沿用到藝術上是否也同時有效?村上隆分析著共通的「可愛的原則」,找到了一個決定可愛角色的系統─「在圓形之中兩個像眼睛的圓點,與一個微笑的嘴巴」。無數可愛的角色於是乎被創造出來,如Mr. DOB、Mr. Pointy、微笑花朵、色彩繽紛的磨菇、熊貓;然而,可愛背後的無深度虛空,也透過無數的角色複製呈現於畫面之中。面對這樣的作品,在西方人眼中,它們滿足了其對日本異國文化的想像與刻板印象,與表面繁瑣、無深度的文化特質。而在多數東方人眼中,若不深究作品中隱含的嚴肅議題,可愛的人物外表便毫不費力地擄獲了大眾的心。村上隆的招牌語彙也就此建立起來,對新世代的族群招手微笑。

創作哲學:精緻生產,大量繁衍

村上隆並非單打獨鬥的創作,他在1994、1996年分別在紐約布魯克林與東京設立了工作室,在東京的空間命名為「Hiropon工廠」,招募助手來幫助他實踐其對繪畫與雕塑想法、把觀念轉成藝術品。村上隆早期的作品一向堅持手繪的原則,然不一定皆由他所繪。通常在創作時,他會先在電腦上畫草稿,再請助手修圖,在經過他的確認後,助手會用電腦印出完稿,再一絲不茍地按大小、比例、顏色畫到帆布上。從2003年開始,他每年大概會為100張畫作及為數不少的雕塑、設計作品簽名,而作品在完成後,即會被裝箱運往世界各地。雖然其中不乏相似度極高的作品,但村上隆自言:「不怕重複自己的作品,只要市場有需要,便會生產。」

村上隆的大量生產藝術策略打破了傳統藝術品「獨一無二的哲學」(one-of-a-kind philosophy),企圖創造最大的產值。他認為:「複製作品是其中一個方式,它可讓其他的國家體會、浸凐於日本文化之中。對於世界上相對的少數民族(像日本人)來說,他們需要為更好的生存機會做選擇;就像某些物種一次會產下大量的卵得以爭取延續物種生命的機會一般,我的藝術也是如此!」

【典藏今藝術2007年6月號】

2007年6月25日 星期一

通路行銷人才 品牌國際化

【2007/06/25 經濟日報/鄭秋霜】

「我現在最想找的是能幫我去捷克、去世界各地做通路的人才,因為文化品牌最好是由自
己人去服務,『以夷制夷』很難詮釋品牌的文化精神特色,而且市場也不會掌握在自己手
上。」

法藍瓷(Franz)總裁陳立恆日前應「孫運璿先生管理紀念講座」之邀,以「文化創意」
為題發表演講,一語道出台灣文化創意產業品牌進軍海外,欠缺國際通路行銷服務人才的
問題。

品牌之路 以夷制夷行不通

陳立恆在自創品牌法藍瓷之前,曾經營多元事業,不過在諸多事業體中,特別愛好與專精
禮品藝品,一手創建的海暢集團,所設計製造的藝品廣布世界各地,全球員工6,000人。

海暢集團為歐美名廠加工多年後,陳立恆決定自創品牌,推出造型精緻、色彩豐富的陶瓷
作品,定位為「有功能的藝術品」,「法藍瓷」目前是台灣知名的文創品牌之一。

「成功的品牌植根於文化。」陳立恆觀察,文化其實就是生活,存在於我們的DNA裡,我
們現在推文化創意產業,就是要向全世界展現台灣人能創造出來的更好的生活形態,「但
商品的文化精神,該靠誰來說清楚、講明白?」

文化創意產業要走品牌之路,陳立恆認為,「以夷制夷」行不通。他解釋,「品牌要有文
化精神,才可能成功,但外國人很難詮釋出我們對文化的體會,也不會為我們的精神文化
效勞地那麼徹底。」

文化滲透 精神性潛移默化

陳立恆強調,耕耘國際通路須培養很多國際人才,直接進入那個市場,才能真正建立自己
的通路,「否則通路還是掌握在外國人手裡,哪天外國員工不幹了,可能把你的通路整個
帶走,因為那些通路小店從沒跟你互動過,對你的忠誠度不夠。」

陳立恆指出,品牌若能走向國際通路,就可能變成文化滲透,就像走在布拉格街頭,能看
到法藍瓷的產品,那就是一種文化滲透。不過,他強調「文化必須低調才能滲透,如果大
辣辣的,通常還沒進去人家國家大門,就會先被幹掉。」

品牌國際化,售後服務也是不容忽視的課題。陳立恆解釋,售後服務不只是顧客購買的產
品壞了,去幫他修理,而應涵蓋文宣、店面擺設,甚至電話問候。

談到國際通路行銷服務人才的欠缺,陳立恆形容「國際通路的行銷服務人才,就像是外交
官」,不過,台灣人對這個領域較為生疏。他解釋,事實上,在全球化趨勢下,很多老外
都是處處為家,到哪都能落地生根;相形之下,台灣人很少警覺地球村的趨勢,少有「就
地服務」的觀念,動不動就想回家,無形中失去某一種文化滲透力。

陳立恆有感而發地說,台灣產業發展這麼多年來,「培養了貿易人才,但沒有國際通路的
行銷服務人才。」後者是台灣自創文化品牌走向國際化時,最需借重的人才。

國際通路 先要布廣再布深

法藍瓷的國際通路布建策略是「先布廣、再布深」,以目前全球6,000個通路點,一年
1,800萬美元的銷售金額來看,平均一個點的銷售額約3,000美元。

陳立恆坦言,這樣的金額,「看起來好像很少,但其實也很有機會。」因為法藍瓷要打國
際戰,不求眼前獲利,而是強化全球布局、人才培育,只要人才跟得上,他相信未來就可
期待銷售額呈兩倍、四倍等倍數成長。

將心比心 商品能打動人心

散布世界各地的銷售點,也是法藍瓷掌握全球市場第一手訊息的前哨站,隨時回報當地市
場的銷售排行榜,回饋最新的市場機會,讓法藍瓷設計團隊的策略及計畫,可以更貼近市
場需求。

陳立恆表示,商品要感動人,必須先「Mind to Mind」(將心比心),去體會目標消費者
的生活,設計出他們想要的產品,才能得到「Money to Money」的回報。

他深信,人文藝術最能感動人心、激發想像及豐富生活,這正是文化創意產業的機會,不
過必須靠更多人才投入國際通路行銷服務的行列,才能讓我國文化,隨著商品深植各地人
心,「如果沒有國際通路,做國際品牌會很艱苦。」

2007年6月24日 星期日

Saatchi stages 'art idol' competition to corner market in new young British artists

By Andrew Johnson
Sunday, 24 June 2007

In the week when Damien Hirst became the world's most expensive living artist and Tracey Emin returned triumphant from representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, Charles Saatchi, the man who discovered them, was poring over the work of hundreds of art students, hoping his patronage can bring another generation to prominence.

This time, with the help of Channel 4 and some of the biggest names in British contemporary art, he has launched an "art-idol" competition to find the new Young British Artists.

Hundreds of final-year art students have submitted entries to the 4 New Sensation competition, named after the Sensation exhibition of 1997. This week they were whittled down to a shortlist of 20, made available exclusively to The Independent on Sunday.

From those a final four will be chosen by a panel of the country's leading names in contemporary art - sculptor Antony Gormley, artist Sadie Coles, Tim Marlow, who runs the White Cube Gallery in Hoxton, Anita Zabludowicz, who is one of the UK's biggest collectors of contemporary art, and Kevin Lygo, Channel 4's director of television.

The shortlist includes a wide range of media from sculpture and photography to painting and video.

Ms Coles said she would be looking for artists to "develop a language that is theirs alone". "I will be looking for something that surprises me, that indicates potential for development and makes me think," she added. "Homage to other artists is OK. Pastiche or plagiarism is not. There is so much more good contemporary and old art to see in London that it should have a positive effect."

Sarah Maple, 22, one of the shortlisted artists, from Brighton, said her work is inspired by her upbringing by a father with a Christian background and a Muslim mother. "Identity and self image are my big influences," she said. "The integration of Muslims in Western society - it's hard for them to combine their culture and religion with a Western upbringing."

The final four will each have a short film about them broadcast on Channel 4. All 20 will also have their work exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in October.

Charles Saatchi added: "Many of the students are just great, and I think the public will enjoy this strong new generation of artists."

2007年6月21日 星期四

安藤忠雄:要有挑戰 才會感動不斷 吸引一萬兩千聽眾的傳奇建築師

一個木匠之子為了圓建築夢,每天少吃一餐,存錢買書;數十年如一日的鬥志,讓他成為
榮獲國際四大建築獎第一人。他為什麼在台灣與國際都擁有高人氣?他有什麼執著?

文/鄭呈皇 口述/李清志 整理/鄭呈皇

「安藤、安藤、安藤!」六月九日晚上六點,台北小巨蛋人聲鼎沸,擠進一萬兩千人。在
電影洛基(Rocky)的背景音樂下,出現的不是當紅偶像藝人,更不是選舉造勢的政治人
物,而是全球知名的日本建築大師——安藤忠雄。

今年六十六歲的安藤忠雄,是建築界傳奇人物。二十歲立志當建築師,經由自學而無師自
通,為此還做過拳擊手和卡車司機。「他的人生,跟電影一樣精彩。」交通大學建築研究
所教授劉育東說。

多數人只看到安藤的成功,卻不知道他成功的背後,是四十六年如一日的「戰鬥」和屢敗
屢戰的毅力。

「建築就是戰鬥。」「只要我活著一天,我就像十八歲剛開始的時候一樣,每天認真的工
作。」安藤忠雄自認不同於其他認真的建築師:「我是不間斷的努力,跟自己戰鬥!」

每天都與第一天相同、不打折的奮鬥,使沒錢、沒背景的他,在講究正統流派的國際建築
界中,依舊出類拔萃,衝出一片天。

對抗家世:買書自學 為出國看建築,當拳擊手而最初的戰鬥,是跟自己家世對戰。

安藤出生於大阪市,小時候跟著當木工的父親到處做工,耳濡目染下使他立志成為建築師
。因為家中經濟因素,他高職畢業就無法繼續升學,必須到傢俱店做學徒。

然而,建築大夢始終盤繞。一有時間,他就搭公車到東京、大阪看房子,整天去傢俱行打
零工,卻仍無法得到建築的正統知識。有一天,他心情沮喪得跑去大阪海邊看海,回來正
好遇到祖母,祖母看他一臉愁容,拉著他的手說:「不要輕易放棄自己的理想,只要努力
就會成功。」這句話,他在演講會上說了兩次「永遠記在心中」。

因此只要有空,他就會跑到附近的書局去看書直到晚上。怕尚未看完的建築書被買走,他
會偷偷將書放在其他書底下,不讓別人輕易發現,下次來就能繼續看。

他還規定自己每天少吃一餐,存錢買書,「我對書可是從來沒有吝嗇花錢!」安藤為了學
「正統」建築知識,趕上東京大學建築系的四年課程,買了許多建築書,「每天早上八點
起床唸書,不眠不休到凌晨三點才休息。」劉育東說,就這樣念了一年,追上別人四年課
程。

「我一定要對自己非常嚴格,才能保有戰鬥力。」安藤說。

但他又發現,每天畫圖、看書,還是無法更上層樓,除非和西方建築師一樣透過旅行去觀
察其他文化的建築,才能進步、開眼界。

不過,他沒錢可出國。一次,當拳擊手的弟弟告訴他,只要拳擊打得好就能出國比賽,安
藤當下就決定跟隨弟弟去打拳擊,而且立志要打成冠軍,如此一來有錢,二來又能名正言
順藉機出國。

一九六一年,安藤開始拳擊生涯。

為了出國看建築,他反而必須將建築的書全收起來,房間除了拳擊手套外,空無一物。一
起床就做兩百個伏地挺身與重量訓練,完畢再到住家附近跑步,開始一天的訓練,絲毫不
分心。

一年後,他不過二十歲出頭,已成為職業拳擊手並出國比賽,往往,他一比完脫下拳擊手
套,立刻換上衣服,拿起筆到附近的景點去欣賞建築,隔天再繼續比賽。

一九六九年,他終於如願在家裡開建築事務所,但一切陽春。「十坪大,一個人,而且沒
有空調。」他在書上形容。

從拳擊手變成事務所建築師,安藤進入第二場戰鬥,與工法技藝作戰。

安藤沒名氣又非正統,當時他拿著建議的設計圖到處找生意,都被「你又不是大學畢業的
建築師」為由拒絕。

但他卻不放棄:「我開始一人的奮鬥。」他不斷假設自己要蓋不同房子,這時如何設計?
然後畫出設計圖,做出模型後,再自己評價,並開始參加競圖比賽。然而競圖失敗率達一
○○%,全石沉大海。

開張一年多後,門可羅雀,京都一位朋友才請他幫忙蓋一間三個人住的小房子。

對抗主流:鑽研基本功 完美清水混凝土,闖出名號 安藤思索,在預算不高的狀況下,
如何蓋出好房子?這時最省錢、基本的「清水混凝土」(無表面裝飾的混凝土)躍進腦中


當時清水混凝土在日本已經相當普遍,實踐大學建築設計系副教授李清志說,一般建築師
都認為這只是最基本的「入門」技藝,如何以混凝土做好外牆,再點綴磚瓦、油漆或其他
輔助材質,才是建築師顯示「品味」的重點。

但安藤卻執意鑽研這項技能,原因是他在歐洲旅行時看到瑞士建築大師科比意(Le
Corbusier)的廊香教堂,就是清水混凝土,因此他決定要走和主流不同的路,往「基本
功」鑽研。

實際上,清水混凝土並不好做。劉育東舉例,因為清水混凝土只要有一點點瑕疵,外觀就
非常明顯。接縫沒接好、水與石頭的比例不對、灌漿的力道沒掌握,都會使模板出現變形
,外面甚至會有裂縫。而即便這些做好,多數人也沒辦法做到一拆開模板,牆壁沒有一丁
點氣泡空隙、不粗糙。「這難度更高,但安藤忠雄就能夠做到如此境界。」

而做到超越極致的努力,可是花了安藤超過二十年的光陰研究。曾在安藤忠雄事務所工作
的十月設計事務所負責人陳瑞憲說:「他是那種願意以一生來煮出一道完美的湯的專注工
作態度。」回憶那時在安藤事務所裡工作時,剛開始幾個月,安藤都會要他一早來先花幾
個小時徒手畫直線,安藤重視基本功的程度可見一斑。

安藤會獨自去日本找最好的建築石頭,而且不斷研究水與石頭的比例。再者,他還會考慮
氣候不同下,要用不同比例去調配。對細節的重視,甚至連一根攪拌的竹竿都要研究。李
清志說安藤捨棄一般常用的金屬攪拌器,採用竹竿,原因是金屬攪拌水泥會產生離子,但
竹竿不會。

在事務所開張七年後,安藤終於以清水混凝土的「住吉的長屋」初試啼聲,獲得日本建築
學會獎。但得獎還是無法獲得日本建築界認同,甚至遭排擠,認為他「血統不純正」。

這時,他不理會外界雜音,一方面繼續競圖,退件率卻還是達九五%。但他不氣餒,反而
針對每次退件作品,重新思考究竟哪裡能更好,再花時間重做一個,「我們事務所的人都
會說:『受不了,安藤又要競圖了!』」安藤打趣的表示。

他永不放棄,從他花二十年勸說大阪市政府改善環境,可看出他的堅持。

三十歲出頭時,還沒名氣,但他覺得大阪市缺少綠樹,因此擬了一個綠化大阪的計畫給市
政府,卻遲遲未獲回應,他不死心,每年都呈上新計畫。十年過去,市政府總以「無法令
依據」拒絕他。

安藤還不死心,認為既然綠化不行,那在建築物頂端蓋博物館、美術館總可以吧?因此又
擬計畫給市政府,十年過去,五十歲的安藤已在建築界闖出名氣,但依舊被市政府拒絕。
「最後他們受不了就跟我講,以後都不要再去市政府。」安藤笑著說。

憑著屢敗屢戰的精神,安藤終於在一九九五年獲得國際肯定,拿到建築界的諾貝爾獎「普
立茲克獎」(Pritzker)。這年他五十四歲。

對抗名利:保有單純衝勁 成名後做更慢,更要求突破

大受歡迎後,隨之而來的名與利並未讓安藤沖昏了頭。至今,他還是與第一天開事務所一
樣,保有單純的衝勁。

許多人攀上頂峰後就找不到挑戰而開始下坡,但安藤卻始終保有戰鬥意志。這時的他必須
與成功的自己作戰。這是他能至今不墜的關鍵。

縱使聲名大譟,安藤至今依舊不用電腦、沒有助理、沒有電子郵件、沒電視,更不穿名牌
。李清志說,建築師成名後,多會到處接案子、快速致富;但安藤卻相反,反而做更慢、
更要求突破。

這兩年,除了混凝土外,他開始嘗試不同建築素材,例如金屬鋼板與玻璃素材。對此,他
的好友、京都工藝纖維大學教授古山正雄就說:「安藤這個人認為,人要有挑戰才會感動
不斷。」六十六歲,開始跨入新的建築風格,安藤像個鬥士,不滿足現有成功。

「每個人的一生,都要有一段渾然忘我的時間……這樣才能全力衝刺完成任何事情,所以
六十歲的我,還是認為自己可以全力以赴。」安藤說。

二十歲,可以精力充沛,擁有華麗夢想;但四十歲、五十歲還能保有夢想與體力者,寥寥
可數。安藤忠雄六十六歲,爬上世界的頂峰,但他依舊充滿戰鬥意志。他說:「我,身心
頑強!」

李清志看安藤》影響力不止於建築界

安藤忠雄來台掀起超人氣,《商業週刊》邀請本刊「發現酷建築」專欄作家李清志,解讀
緣由,以下為其觀點:

台灣的建築可以說是亂七八糟,在這樣的情況下,一看到安藤的清水混凝土,那種簡單又
安靜的空間,一看就能讓心靈沉澱下來,與台灣的建築有很大的反差,這是他受歡迎最主
要因素。

但安藤忠雄的超人氣,在於他不只是一個建築師。

他近幾年積極參與環境保護,甚至成立基金會鼓勵人們種樹。這樣對環境保護的觀點,超
乎了建築師本身。而這些理念透過他的書籍大量在台灣上市,也引起共鳴。

他對於環境保護、文化、政策,都能夠侃侃而談,所以他的影響力不止於建築界,更包含
社會大眾。而他具有傳奇性的非科班背景、經過不斷努力而成功的故事,更使一般年輕人
有傚法的對象。

聽他的演講就知道,他不像一般建築師一味講解建築理論,而是去省視建築與人的關係,
加上他幽默的個性,都可以讓他更加親民、更有群眾魅力。

2007年6月19日 星期二

The art of success: Saatchi buys student’s entire show

From
June 19, 2007

James Howard

Most contemporary artists dream of having a work bought by Charles Saatchi. James Howard, a student at the Royal Academy Schools, was shocked to discover yesterday that Britain’s most influential collector of contemporary art wanted 46 of his – an entire graduation show. Howard, 26, one of 19 students who have just completed the RA Schools’ postgraduate course, was fast asleep when Mr Saatchi popped into the academy last week.

The young artist found out later that his digital prints – each one a collage of photographic images made up to look like a typical internet advertisement – had caught the collector’s eye.

Mr Saatchi, who made his multimillion fortune in advertising, particularly related to images bearing logos for Visa and other brands.

When he was overheard asking a member of staff for the artist’s telephone number, there was a flurry of excitement.

Receiving such a call was the “last thing I was expecting”, the artist told The Times yesterday. “I was completely shocked. It’s a great encouragement for a young artist starting out.”

Such is Mr Saatchi’s standing as a collector that he can make or break an artist, raising profiles and prices. Having made the names of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and other young British artists whose works now command six and seven figures, his activities are viewed as a barometer of the market.

He paid £4,500 for Howard’s 46 works, but their value will have risen instantly. He likes to buy whole collections at a price that is relatively insignificant for him, allowing him to control an artist’s market – and pushing prices beyond the reach of most public institutions. If a “product” is unsuccessful, his loss is negligible. Mr Saatchi also unnerves the market by selling in bulk. Critics dismiss him as a glorified dealer.

Three years ago he sold almost his entire collection of Hirst’s work back to the artist and his dealer. Relations between them had soured after Hirst described his patron as a “childish” businessman who “only recognises art with his wallet”. But both made a considerable profit from the deal.

Hirst’s rotting cow’s head was said to be worth up to £1.4 million. It would have cost a few hundred pounds to make.

Previous picks

Damien Hirst Saatchi began collecting Hirst long before anyone else, buying up most of the artist’s oeuvre. In 2003, Saatchi sold most of his Hirsts back to the artist and his dealer amid a feud between the two over how the works were displayed

Jenny Saville one of Saatchi’s early protégées: he bought her entire degree show in 1992: her work has subsequently sold for more than £2 million.

Tracey Emin Saatchi bought My Bed, which featured soiled sheets, for a reported £150,000. Within six years, it was valued at £1 million. This year she is representing Britain at the Venice Biennale

Natasha Kissell Saatchi bought two of her huge landscape paintings at her degree show in 2003. The interest kickstarted interest in her and her prices rose way beyond the “student” rate paid by Saatchi


2007年6月16日 星期六

兵馬俑原創商品 大陸驚艷

【聯合晚報╱記者黃玉芳/台北報導】
2007.06.16 02:01 pm

號稱世界第八大奇蹟的兵馬俑,也是走在流行尖端的酷哥?因為當今走紅的混搭風,兩千
多年前已經看得到,這些流行元素也應用在這次紀念品開發,讓陝西文物局大為驚艷,也
有意與台灣合作,將這一系列創意商品帶到其他國家的展場販售。

文化創意商品的商機無限,根據估計,每一位參觀博物館的民眾,平均會購買一百元的商
品。因此搭配展覽的紀念品也越來越受重視。這次兵馬俑的相關紀念品,除了少數由大陸
進口,多數都是由台灣原創,從小小的20元胸章到180公分高的原尺寸兵馬俑複製品,琳
瑯滿目,其中也有不少巧思。

祥瀧公司總經理鄭瑤婷說,除了單純的將圖案轉印到馬克杯、T恤等商品上,採用了不少
兵馬俑身上的元素。很難想像,兵馬俑雖然是男性戰士的服裝,但是不管是鎧甲、縐褶上
衣、雲紋片裙、垮褲等相互搭配,和現在青少年流行的多層次混搭穿法很類似。

而且不僅領巾的打法有圍繞整個脖子,也有打成蝴蝶結,頭髮上各式編髮或是梳成的髮髻
,也成因俑而異,這些都可化身為時尚元素,以領巾、髮髻為造型的項鍊、手環、戒指、
胸針等,將陽剛味十足的兵馬俑轉化為精緻的飾品。

還有以一片片石甲片連綴而成的厚重石鎧甲,也是難得出借的展品,開發紀念品時也相中
了它的特殊性,作成背心,整件背心釘了上百顆卯釘,不過是以絨及厚棉製成,所以材質
較輕,不像原來的鎧甲一般笨重,但遠看跟原來的石鎧甲很相似,吸引不少人購買。

不僅有用品,這次還有將兵馬俑製成棒棒糖,以及瓦當與米格紋磚形狀的手工巧克力,也
都是詢問度很高的商品。鄭瑤婷說,為了拉近與年輕人的距離,還將兵馬俑設計成Q版公
仔,並且有這次展覽「招牌」的綠面跪射俑布偶娃娃。

多元的設計,連西安當地都看不到。由於兵馬俑是外國向大陸借展率很高的熱門文物,因
此陝西文物局也有意與台灣合作,在國外其他大型博物館,作為長銷商品,或是在借展到
其他國家時,販售這一系列台灣研發的紀念品。

【2007/06/16 聯合晚報】

2007年6月15日 星期五

Collectors declare RCA's class of 2007 its 'best degree show in years'

By Arifa Akbar
Friday, 15 June 2007

The graduates of the RCA have much to live up to. Tracey Emin graduated there; David Hockney and Peter Blake met there in the 1960s, and James Dyson found fame and fortune after studying at the Royal College of Art.

But according to art collectors who turned up in strength at yesterday's annual degree show, the class of 2007 have every chance of following in their footsteps. The exhibition displayed the work of 66 MA art students. Charles Saatchi, the gallery owner and collector, said it was the best RCA annual show he had seen for years.

Works included a giant inflatable balloon, a device that calculates a person's carbon footprint, a Google Earth carpet, and a set of photographs of teddy bears and toys borrowed from children's graves.

Nigel Rolfe, the show's curator and RCA tutor whose previous students include Gavin Turk and the Chapman brothers, said the work this year reflected a growing intellectual preoccupation and a move away from the attention-grabbing conceptual work of the Young British Artists. "As a peer group, they are aware of the art world and how to put their own work forward. Significant collectors have visited the show and many of the pieces are already sold."The exhibition opens today and ends on 28 June.

THE CLASS OF 2007

Simon Ward, 28, London

Takes photographs of inanimate objects using a flatbed scanner. Other work has included hand-written signs made by homeless people. Degree show includes photographs of toys, teddy bears and dolls found on children's graves. Pieces have been featured in the Swedish art magazine, Bon.

Anna Genger, 29, Germany

Large-scale paintings are very colourful and can look quite abstract, but often refers to flowers and organic matter. The pieces for Genger's degree show will be taken to the Upstairs gallery in Berlin for a first solo show. Work was also shown as part of the Frieze art fair last year. It has been bought by private collectors and is in Bank of America's art collection. Before coming to the RCA, Genger studied sculpture at the Slade.

Duncan Fitzsimmons, 25, Portsmouth

Designed a collapsible wheel for the degree show. Previously worked with Renault in France and with Nokia, on a project where a text message is sent using a finger writing letters in the air. Major manufacturers may pick up his folding wheel design.

Gemma Anderson, 25, Belfast

Creates life-size portraits of her friends and family drawn on copper etchings and hand-coloured, using traditional printmaking techniques. Work was printed on the same press, the John Haddon Press, used in the Great Exhibition.

Ryan Mosley, 26, Middlesex

Four figurative works proved so popular that all were sold within hours to collectors. All the works are informed by portraiture and derived from a mixture of art history, mythology and folk culture, united by a carnival theme. The degree show work has been selected for the Celeste Art Prize. Last year, Mosely won the Jerwood Prize in the travel scholarship show.

Jordi Canudas, 31, Spain

Specialises in furniture in the show, notably the Wallfa, a hybrid wall and sofa with a malleable border. Another work, Less Lamp, resembles a large eggshell which viewer has to break in order to let the light out. Exhibited at British Council's Milan Fair HQ show, Great Eastern Hotel, Aram gallery and in Barcelona.

2007年6月13日 星期三

Alas, Poor Art Market: A Multimillion-Dollar Head Case

Suzanne Plunkett/Bloomberg News

Damien Hirst, whose “For the Love of God” cost $23.6 million to make.

Published: June 13, 2007

LONDON, June 7 — Presumably it was pure coincidence.

Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd., via Getty Images

Damien Hirst’s “For the Love of God,” covered in 8,601 diamonds.

On June 4 the former Liberian gangster and strongman Charles G. Taylor went on trial in The Hague for war crimes in which diamond trafficking played a major role. Just days earlier the British artist Damien Hirst unveiled a platinum human skull covered in 8,601 diamonds and offered it for sale for £50 million, or close to $100 million.

But if coincidence, is it fair to make the link? Should every starry-eyed young couple looking for an engagement ring have to worry about how diamonds are mined in Africa? Need Mr. Hirst feel guilty that Mr. Taylor is charged with supplying weapons to gangs terrorizing Sierra Leone in the 1990s in exchange for diamonds?

Mr. Hirst’s London gallery, White Cube, thought it wise to address the issue, noting that the skull’s diamonds “are all ethically sourced, each with written guarantees in compliance with United Nations resolutions.” Bentley & Skinner, the Mayfair jewelers that made the skull, added the assurance that the diamonds were “conflict-free.”

So that’s fine.

The concept of ethically sourced diamonds — or oil or weapons or even imported T-shirts — may be a bit far-fetched, but it sufficed to turn news media attention here away from human rights to the far more respectable subject of money: if sold, Mr. Hirst’s skull will be the most expensive new work of art ever made.

Now that’s the stuff of headlines.

It is no secret that the art market has become drunk with money lately, with major auctions routinely raising record prices for artists old and new. Never before have contemporary artists, from London to Leipzig, New York to Shanghai, been at the center of such speculative fever.

But $100 million for a diamond skull that cost $23.6 million (£12 million) to make? Even Russian oligarchs and hedge-fund billionaires might think twice. The work, by the way, is called “For the Love of God.” Indeed.

Still, along with chutzpah, it shows that Mr. Hirst is a shining symbol of our times, a man who perhaps more than any artist since Andy Warhol has used marketing to turn his fertile imagination into an extraordinary business. And as the natural leader of a group that came to be known as the Young British Artists, or Y.B.A.’s, who emerged here in the 1990s, he has paved the way for many others.

He made his name by pickling sharks, cows, sheep and the like, but his real achievement was to break the power of London’s traditional galleries. Initially sponsored by the dealer and collector Charles Saatchi, himself a former advertising magnate, Mr. Hirst soon became an art entrepreneur in his own right. And having created his brand, he found he could sell almost anything.

Now 42, he still pickles animals in formaldehyde, but he also sells spin paintings, enlarged anatomical figures, pharmaceutical products displayed in cupboards, butterfly collages and, in White Cube’s current “Beyond Belief” show, which includes the diamond skull, paintings of the birth of his son through Caesarean section and large oils of malignant tumors.

Apart from their salability and the fact that many of these works are made by Mr. Hirst’s studio assistants (or his jewelers), what they have in common, White Cube tells us, is his exploration of “the fundamental themes of human existence — life, death, truth, love, immortality and art itself.”

Thus “For the Love of God” is presented in the tradition of memento mori — those skulls placed in classical paintings to remind us of what lies ahead — and as a homage to the Aztecs (Mr. Hirst now spends part of every year in Mexico), who attached precious stones to skulls and even made entire skulls with crystal.

In other words, Mr. Hirst’s piece is packaged as a concept.

It is also an object. Seen under a single spotlight in a darkened room of White Cube’s Mayfair gallery, the skull is entirely covered with small diamonds, including the nostrils, while one mega-diamond, weighing 52.40 carats, sits on its forehead.

We are told that the skull belonged to a European who died at about 35, sometime between 1720 and 1810. His cranium — or rather its platinum cast — now sparkles like a strobe ball in a disco.

Is it beautiful? Compared with what? Like the crown jewels, it is what it is: a highly skilled exercise in extravagance. Knowing its asking price adds to its wow factor: imagine opening a suitcase with a $100 million worth of bills. Wow!

And talking (again) of money, White Cube says that three or four collectors have shown interest in acquiring the skull. And one, according to British news media reports, is the pop singer George Michael.

But those who lack resources or security guards have not been forgotten: Mr. Hirst is offering limited editions of silkscreen prints of it, costing from $2,000 to $20,000. (The most expensive 250 prints are sprinkled with diamond dust.)

Well, clearly museums that are reduced to selling postcards, T-shirts and coffee mugs of Renaissance masterpieces have something to learn.

But in fairness, Mr. Hirst is just playing the game. It is a game played by collectors and dealers at art fairs throughout the year; it is a game finessed as never before by Sotheby’s and Christie’s; it is a game in which, in the words of Nick Cohen, a rare British journalist to trash Mr. Hirst’s publicity coup, “the price tag is the art.”

Will the bubble burst? If it does, it will be no fault of the artists; it will be because stock markets take a dive, and collectors retrench. But it may do art itself no harm. Mr. Cohen, for one, is looking forward to the day Mr. Hirst takes a fall.

Mr. Hirst “isn’t criticizing the excess, not even ironically,” Mr. Cohen wrote in The Evening Standard here, “but rolling in it and loving it. The sooner he goes out of fashion, the better.”

2007年6月10日 星期日

The paint stripper

From
June 10, 2007

Stella Vine used to disrobe for money. Now she strips her subjects bare on canvas. Diana and her demons, Kate and cocaine, Jose Mourinho and his dog. Is any subject too raw for this notorious artist?

Stella Vine doesn’t look like any of the things she’s been. She doesn’t look like a stripper. She doesn’t look like an escort girl. And she certainly doesn’t look like one of Britain’s most notorious artists. Dammit, Stella Vine doesn’t even look like a Stella Vine. With her sensibly cropped hair and blushing country cheeks, she looks exactly like the name she was born with, Melissa Robson, a big-boned English lass from Northumberland, who would have made a fine wife for some sheep farmer up in Alnwick had the gods of art not tracked her down to the stage at the Windmill and forced her to swap her G-string for a paintbrush.

You surely remember the occasion. It was so noisy. Three years ago, Charles Saatchi, the most successful collector of modern art in Britain, put together a show of recent discoveries that he called, very Saatchily, New Blood. According to Saatchi, those chaps who had been turning light switches on and off in order to win the Turner prize were now passé. Here, he said, were the voices of the future, unveiling a motley crew of action sculptors and hasty painters, most of whom were from Germany. So unimpressive was this messy, artistic cast that nobody took any notice of the show. Until they discovered Stella Vine in it. And the gates of hell flew open.

Saatchi himself hadn’t heard of Vine either until a few weeks before the opening. Desperate for artists to pad out the huge new space he had lumbered himself with at County Hall – the ill-fated Saatchi Gallery, a giant wood-lined coffin, now kaput, thank God – he happened to wander into somewhere tiny in the East End that was showing paintings by Vine. I’ve been with Saatchi when he buys art. It’s an instinctive thing. Yeah, I’ll have two of those, he’ll wave, and that must have been how he came to own Vine’s portrait of a tearful Lady Diana confessing to Paul Burrell that she feared for her life, and a second picture of a crazily grinning Rachel Whitear, the heroin addict whose photo had been splashed across the papers, crouched on the floor with a syringe in her hand, betrayed by her boyfriend, and dead. These new buys were added to New Blood, and as soon as a few journalists saw them, the fuss exploded. “It’s self-evidently obvious Stella Vine can’t paint for toffee,” spat the cantankerous critic David Lee. Rachel Whitear’s parents were contacted and declared themselves appalled that their daughter’s plight was being trivialised by this ex-stripper who had painted a grinning Rachel with blood trickling from her lip. They wanted it removed. The Diana controversy was even fiercer. How dare this Windmill dancer paint the nation’s princess as a wild-eyed Essex girl who had been at her mother’s make-up box, and who appeared to have scrawled a message in bright-red lipstick across her picture: “Hi Paul, can you come over. I’m really frightened.” This wasn’t merely bad art. This was treason.

George Orwell got advertising exactly right when he described this trade as the “rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket”. Producing an ex-stripper who painted demented Lady Di’s was one of the most effective bits of stick-rattling Saatchi has come up with. Vine went from someone nobody had heard of to someone the whole of Britain disapproved of quicker than a leftover Chinese disappearing down a pig’s throat. The only critic who said anything nice about her work was me. I pointed out that it had something. Which is presumably why I am now sitting on a stool in her tiny new studio in Clerkenwell, while she is perched opposite me on an upturned plastic box, describing in detail the unusually awful life she’s had. In the corner, there’s a small bed. A few books. A few paintings. And that’s it. The fruits of Stella Vine’s success.

She admits the Diana picture was raw and naive. Her ambition was to “melt” into Diana’s character: not just to paint her, but to be her. She imagined the princess, too scared to use the phone at the palace because she knew it was bugged. So she decides to go out, still wearing her best princess dress, and with her make-up smudged because she’d put it on in a hurry. “And I thought she’d have gone to the shops and used a public phone. There’s a whole string of Asian newsagents at that particular place. It’s all very vivid… ‘Hi Paul, can you come over.’ ”

How did Vine learn to think like this? It’s what I’m here to find out. This summer, the thoroughly prestigious Museum of Modern Art in Oxford is putting on a retrospective of her paintings, which is perhaps the equivalent of Barbara Windsor starring as Rosalind in a new As You Like It at Stratford. One of the pictures she’s sending to Oxford was done yesterday. It shows a dark-haired man with huge eyes and a dog whom I recognise, but can’t think from where. It’s Jose, she explains. Jose? Ah, yes, Jose Mourinho, cup-final winning manager of Chelsea. Stella had never heard of him before but there was something in the paper about a man who loved his dog so much that he smuggled it out of the house. She admired him for that, and painted him the next morning with his brown eyes rhyming in sweetness with his terrier’s.

The biggest painting in the studio is not finished, but I recognise the royal family alright, skulking under a tree. That picture needed a dog too, so Stella put in the only one she could think of: Lassie. The royal family and Lassie are going into a special Diana room at Oxford, where Stella is showing a picture of Diana as a baby in her pram with the words of her favourite hymn – “I vow to thee my country” – echoing in the air around her as a look of raw terror disfigures her sweet little face. Stella Vine, it turns out, or Melissa Robson, as she was then, knows a thing or two about terror on the face of a little girl. The first seven years of her life in Alnwick were idyllic enough, but then her father began an affair and everything went off the rails. Her mother found a new boyfriend in Norwich, where they quickly moved and where the abuse began.

“He’d sit me on the toilet. Stand in front of me, staring, with absolute hatred. I had my knickers around my ankles. Terrified. Stiff. Then I’d go to bed. After half an hour he’d come upstairs, and touch me. He’d say, ‘Have you got your knickers on? Have you got your knickers off?’ Either one, it was wrong. If you’ve got them on, you should have them off. If you had them off, you should have them on. Because it’s the nice thing to do.”

Her mother, meanwhile, was ill, a lifelong sufferer from Crohn’s disease. She didn’t know what was going on. Nobody did. Even Melissa wasn’t sure. “I don’t feel anger towards him. I feel bad to say these things about him. And I feel sorry for him, but I do think what he did was wrong. I just wanted an apology, really.”

When she was 13, she was taken away by social workers and fostered. But the new foster parents couldn’t cope with her wilfulness.

First she left school, then she left the foster home, and moved into a row of derelict bedsits where the caretaker had his turn at her. “He just came knocking on my door one day and said, ‘Do you want a bear hug?’ ”

At 17, she gave birth to the caretaker’s boy and began facing up to the need to look after someone else. Pretending to be 19, and calling herself Jane Blackford, she tried the dole office and explained that she’d lost her birth certificate.

Her first proper ambition was to be an actress. She went to drama school. Played in Aladdin up and down the country. Got bloody good at it. And to me, it’s as clear as crystal that the paintings she now specialises in of betrayed and shaken women – the Lady Di’s, the Rachel Whitears, the portraits of her mother, a new one she’s working on of Isabella Blow – are examples of what we might call method painting: painted projections of herself in the Stanislavski manner.

One day, on a whim, she dropped the acting and became a Mayfair hostess. Seeing my greedy little face light up at the mention of “hostess”, Stella Vine or Melissa Robson or Jane Blackford makes sure I visualise the place she worked in. Like all of her clubs, it was a strangely respectable and old-fashioned establishment. “You sat there in a nice dress and talked to people. Often old men. About anything. And when they went to the toilet you poured the champagne into a bucket, and got them to order another one.”

Most of it was just talking. “Any negotiation for sexual favours, or your time, or conversation, was very old-fashioned. Very English. You know – ‘I’d very much like to buy you a dress.’ ” One man, whom she’s still in touch with, looked after her for six years. He’s the one who took her to New York and showed her the Frick Collection, where she discovered Gainsborough and realised how much prettiness was possible in art.

Then lap dancing arrived in London. Melissa Robson’s wages went up. And she began calling herself Stella Vine. “It was difficult. I used to drink a lot of vodka to be able to say hello to people. But once I was up on stage, I was fine. Sometimes I found myself on a roll, and I would make a fortune. Sometimes I behaved incredibly erotically. Doing things with ice cubes, sitting in a chair. Really enjoying my sexuality.”

The stripping continued for the best part of a decade as she moved from bedsit to bedsit with her son, and from Miranda’s to the Windmill to pay the rent. She tried to make life as much fun for him as she could, and enrolled him in some art classes at the Hampstead School of Art, but he didn’t like going, so Stella went instead. However, before Charles Saatchi walked into that East End Gallery and changed everything, there was still the exceedingly weird business of her involvement with the Stuckists to survive.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Stuckists? In the art world, they are the possessors of a shrill and tiny reputation as a bunch of schoolboy activists who make a point of complaining noisily about conceptual art. Taking their name from an insult apparently hurled at one of their founders, the aptly named Billy Childish, by his ex-girlfriend Tracey Emin – “Billy, you’re stuck, stuck, stuck” – the Stuckists turn up at Turner prize time to complain about Tracey and Damien and the others, and to insist that painting is the only real art. Nobody in the art world takes them too seriously, not even, I suspect, the Stuckists themselves. But they can be noisy. And hurtful. And it was very bad luck indeed for Vine to fall among them.

Like Tracey Emin before her, Vine had the misfortune to develop a crush on Billy Childish. She would turn up at his musical events. Follow him around. Until one day she was introduced to Stuckism’s other founder, Charles Thomson, which was where her problems really began. As Vine begins remembering the unfolding horror of her relationship with Thomson, to whom she was briefly and bizarrely married, I find myself tempted by a powerful urge to hide behind a sofa. Shame she doesn’t own one.

Thomson was fascinated by her exploits as a Windmill dancer. “He started talking about painting me naked and how it had to be very erotic. It was like talking to someone in a strip club, to be honest. There was something dark in him that I felt some kind of understanding of.”

The Stuckists offered her a showing immediately, and early in 2001 she found herself exhibiting alongside them at the Fridge in Brixton with a portrait of her stepfather and some stripping pictures. Thomson was 20 years older than her. He was interested in astrology and the cabbala. In his teens, she enlarges, he had been a member of a mysterious cult, and as Vine got closer to him, he began practising Past Life therapy on her in which he “killed” all her former selves. It was particularly frightening at night. She would wake up to find him talking to her in her sleep, she says.

Thomson believed it was his destiny to marry her. She insists she wasn’t keen, but during a trip to New York it just happened. There was no ring, no proper ceremony, and she was in too much of a daze to understand what was going on until the papers were signed. He liked documenting things, she says, and describes going into his office one day and finding a diary in which he had noted the ages of every prostitute he had been with, the dates of the assignations, what they did and where they did it. The wedding night was a disaster. As the Evening Standard noted in its Diary, she was married on Wednesday, divorced him on Thursday, “on Friday she trashed the hotel room and on Saturday she disappeared”. They had a stand-up fight in which she bit his arm and he burst one of her implants. She spent the night walking about New York and slept through the next day at Grand Central Station. Back in England, the marriage was consummated a few weeks later.

“I owed him that.” He paid off her debts, which amounted to £20,000, and that was married life done with. “I’ve never seen him again.”

Tracking down Thomson for his side of the story turns out to be easy. He’s a peripheral but noisy presence in the art world. Of course he remembers meeting Stella. How could he forget? “The first thing she said to me was, ‘I used to be a stripper and I’ve had a boob job.’ I felt like saying, ‘Can I feel them?’ But I didn’t.”

When I put it to Thomson that he’s been accused of hocus-pocus and tricking her into marriage, he bursts into theatrical, and slightly spooky, laughter.

Yes, he has a mystical bent, and yes, he did once go through some Past Lives stuff with Stella, but to accuse him of possessing mystical powers is ludicrous. And no, he’s never been a scientologist. Besides, getting married was Stella’s idea. She was the one who suggested he take his birth certificate to New York. And although they did have a bust-up on their wedding night, he denies bursting one of her implants. Stella, he shudders, was the one with the vicious temper.

“She’s a damaged person. She’s suffered abuse. But she’s also an abusive person. As a lot of damaged people are.” Whatever she’s saying about him now, his only real crime, he sighs, was falling hopelessly in love with her. “You meet someone and there’s a massive instant chemistry. It’s like a forest fire. And when it burns out, there’s nothing’s left except some burnt wood.”

I believe him about the love. Vine definitely knows how to press a bloke’s buzzer. When she was talking to me, the adjusting of her bra seemed to take place in a delightful slow motion. I knew it and she knew it. It’s clear also that Saatchi discovered her at a life-saving moment. She was 37 when New Blood opened, with too many burst implants behind her to go back to stripping, but being a painter was all she had. But she wouldn’t be Stella Vine if everything or, indeed, anything, ran smoothly for her. After the Saatchi opening she fell into a steep depression and became, briefly, a cocaine addict, living in a room in Bloomsbury, painting in her car. The cocaine was, she claims, a deliberate decision designed to free up more painting time by removing the need to sleep. The trouble was, she spent all her waking hours thinking about dying.

As for the sensibly short hair she now sports, where the flowing stripper’s locks used to be, it’s not, as I’d assumed, a practical coiffure for the summer. At Christmas, she did a Britney and attacked her head with a razor. It felt liberating, she remembers. And her dear old granny in Alnwick, where she was staying, said never mind dear, you can always wear a hat.

That’s her story. Now you’ve heard it, here’s a question: was there ever a painter better qualified to portray Lady Di or Rachel Whitear, or Kate Moss or Isabella Blow, than Stella Vine?

Stella Vine will be at Modern Art Oxford from July 17 to September 23. Tel: 01865 722733. Visit: www.modernartoxford.org.uk


2007年6月3日 星期日

London's modern art

From
June 3, 2007

A new tour around the galleries of London’s cooler-than-thou East End takes the fear out of modern-art appreciation

It’s hard to tell if Hilary Koob-Sassen is taking the mickey. He’s standing in the middle of his “narrative formations” (sculptures) in an east London gallery talking ... well, judge for yourself.

“I’m trying to evoke a chunky syntactical octopus,” he says. He speaks very fast, agitated but amiable. “I’m constructing a trellis of armaturalism. This is the vernacular of errorism. See?”

Of course I don’t, but I don’t care. This all sounds five-star bonkers, and despite (or perhaps because of) this torrent of verbiage, Koob-Sassen is vastly entertaining. And today, he’s the highlight of a very different sort of art tour: an insider’s prowl around the East End avant garde.

Some critics, including The Sunday Times’s own Waldemar Januszczak, argue the scene is already past its peak, but the dozens of galleries and hundreds of artists working in the area disagree. Now, Exhibit-K allows you to judge for yourself. The tour company is the brainchild of two enterprising former RCA students, and artists in their own right, Sarah Douglas and Mimei Thompson. Two years ago, seeing the vast interest in the East End scene that nurtured the likes of Tracey Emin, they started taking corporate clients on tours of their contacts, to obscure galleries and studios. Now, they’ve hooked up with a City hotel to offer the tours to the general public.

“People have heard about the East End art scene, but don’t know where to start,” says Sarah. “These galleries can be very elitist. We guide people through to ensure they get an explanation of the work from the curator or the artists themselves.”

OFF WE go then on our two-hour whizz around five galleries. First stop, Museum 52, a couple of tiny rooms off a side street in Shoreditch, and some full-on conceptual work – Valerie Hegarty’s “found objects and mixed media” show, View from Thanatopsis. “She’s exploring the American obsession with their own lack of history,” we’re told.

It’s classical paintings and furniture riddled with what look like bullet holes, or chewed at the edges; best is a painting of Niagara Falls that has been treated to look as if it’s been over the falls itself: torn, bowed, water-damaged and rusted at one end. I love it.

“Sorry, not for sale,” I’m told. “Saatchi’s bought it already, for $25,000.”

Then it’s on to Dalston and V22, housed in an old factory, for a Peter Jones painting show. To me, the work looks dull, amateurish and gloomy. I whisper as much to Sarah.

“Don’t worry, there’ll be another exhibition along in a minute,” she smiles. And she’s right, we’re on to The Drawing Room: here, 200 artists, from unknowns to the likes of Antony Gormley and the Chapman brothers, were sent blank A4 pieces of paper and asked to return them with whatever they liked. Dalston My favourite is a delicate wood veneer cutout by Ray Cooke that reads “Some C*** from Hendon”. I can’t say why: it just makes me smile.

Mimei catches me staring.

“I like this, but it’s probably a bit sixth form,” I say.

“So what’s wrong with sixth form?” she replies.

And there’s the liberating thing about these tours. In the company of people who really know their artistic onions, you’re given licence to say exactly what you think. Normally I wouldn’t open my mouth in galleries for fear of ridicule, but with East End heavyweights like Sarah and Mimei in our gang, nobody’s going to push us around. They’re conceptual minders.

Two more galleries – including Koob-Sassen’s tour de force at T1+2 in Bethnal Green – and then it’s back for brunch and a heated discussion at the Great Eastern Hotel, by Liverpool Street station. It’s like a slightly boozy version of Newsnight Review. Maybe it’s all pretentious drivel, but so what? A two-hour crash course and a good belt of vodka has turned us from tremulous ignoramuses to Pseuds Corner candidates, and we’ve loved every second.

My favourite “piece” remains Hegarty’s Niagara Falls, the one Saatchi just beat me to. Others, though, thought Koob-Sassen himself (rather than his work) was the best exhibit we saw. I turn to our guide for an explanation.

What was he on about?

“Search me,” says Sarah happily. “But whatever he’s doing, he’s pretty good at it.”

Travel details: art tours from the Great Eastern Hotel (www.london.greateastern.hyatt.com ), plus a three-course brunch with unlimited wine, cost £80pp. An overnight package, including the above plus a double room at the hotel, is £276 for two; book on 020 7618 5010.


2007年6月1日 星期五

史博館 - 藝術家的書—從馬諦斯到當代藝術

日期: 2007/06/01~2007/07/08
地點: 史博館二樓201 203


「藝術家創作書」雖然是一種西方的創作;不過,從現代人的眼光,也就是稍帶點距離
來看,中國古代串起來的竹簡都可以視為創作書;其實,中國人對於書籍形制的講究與發展
歷史由來已久;而此次展覽內容是西方於十九世紀開始盛行,並且逐漸演變至一九六○、
七○年代開始獨立成為一種新的藝術範疇,這些作品是各種知識的匯聚,以「書」為載體
,透過創作者自由的想法與表現,藉由不同的媒材來呈現。「藝術家創作書」不再如傳統
的書籍僅供閱讀,他更用來觀賞、把玩,且像藝術品般地被收藏。

從八○年代到現在,當這些六○、七○年代的先鋒繼續他們的創作時,也興起了許多
以新媒材來作嘗試的藝術家。這些藝術家忠於傳統,即使有時以批評或玩笑的眼光看待他
們的前輩,但是其中許多作者的創意來自於對社會的觀察,特別是關於社會與歷史的變動
對人類行為的影響。

此次展覽網羅了約二百多件作品,在法方的努力與奔走之下,為豐富展品內容,使面
向更多元化,特別向里姆日法語多媒體圖書館及頤希.勒.慕利諾資訊傳媒圖書館商借多
位大師級的作品,例如:馬諦斯、畢卡索、波爾那、布拉克、夏卡爾、阿勒欽斯基、妮基
、趙無極等等。在馬諦斯那個時期,「藝術家創作書」結合了詩人與藝術家的創作,文字
的可閱讀性被視為重要的創作考量;但到了當代,有些較前衛的藝術家在創作上較重視視
覺上的效果呈現,且作品不見得尊重書本的樣式與結構。

國立歷史博物館除了保存歷代文物精粹之外,更積極擔負起將國際創作精華介紹予大
眾的任務,「藝術家創作書」於世界各地展出,均深獲好評與熱烈迴響,此次於本館展出
可說是難得的機緣,相信藉由此次展出的機會,不但可激盪國內藝術工作者的創作思維,
進一步與國際交流互動,也能擴大民眾視野,讓國人可對此獨樹一格的藝術範疇有更深入
的了解。