2008年3月31日 星期一
英美術館驚現希特勒私家藏畫 由德畫家創作
英國國家美術館日前發現,館藏的一幅油畫竟曾是納粹元首阿道夫·希特勒的私家收藏。它由德國著名宮廷畫家老盧卡斯·克拉納赫創作,美術館正進一步搜集該油畫的相關資料。
這幅名為《丘比特向維納斯訴苦》的油畫名稱用拉丁文標注,是克拉納赫1512年創作的。雖是復制品,但仍然非常珍稀。熱衷收藏希特勒遺物的普林茨·施瓦茨博士在希特勒早年的相冊中首先發現了關于這幅油畫的照片,其中一張能清楚地看到,這幅畫被陳列在希特勒私人藝術館中。這本相冊是希特勒私人圖書館中的藏品,如今已被轉送到美國國會圖書館中收藏。希特勒分別擁有一個館藏1200卷圖書的私人圖書館和一個藝術館。英國國家美術館已著手調查這幅油畫被希特勒收藏的具體時間。據悉,1963年,國家美術館從紐約的希特曼兄弟手中買入該畫,但1909年至1945年間,該畫不知去向。美術館認為,希特勒很可能是在1933年至1945年間通過不合適途徑獲得該畫的。
Angus Fairhurst
Sensitive and inventive artist who helped to set the contemporary cultural agenda for a decade
Artists Angus Fairhurst, Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas at the launch of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Art Exhibition.
Angus Fairhurst was one of the group of young art college students and recent graduates who exhibited in the famous independent group show Freeze, which took place in an empty port authority building in the Docklands of London in 1988.
That exhibition introduced the world to a generation who became known — for better or worse — as the Young British Artists (YBAs). Their approach and their ideas — provocative, controversial, inventive — would set the tone for contemporary art in Britain over the next two decades.
Thanks to the artists’ own determined efforts to generate publicity, the show attracted a surprising degree of interest, not least from the influential collector Charles Saatchi. Many of the artists involved went on to enjoy enormous critical and commercial success.
At the time of Freeze, Fairhurst and his friends had just left or were just leaving the celebrated and uniquely cross-disciplinary fine art course at Goldsmiths College in South London. In choosing not to wait for the approval of the established art dealers and gallerists of the day but to show together on their own account in a series of exhibitions mounted by one of their number, Damien Hirst, they showed an enterprise not then particularly common among young artists.
That spirit of enterprise — indeed of entrepreneurship — would continue to characterise their work. At the same time, and for all their differences in temperament, ideas and approach, they would remain, on the whole, what they had been in their college days: a remarkably close-knit, selfreliant and mutually supportive group.
Angus Fairhurst was born at Pembury, Kent, in 1966 and studied at Canterbury College of Art before proceeding to Goldsmiths. Strikingly good looking, he was for several years the boyfriend of one of the more prominent of the Freeze group, the sculptor Sarah Lucas, with whom he made some collaborative works. He was also a great friend of the showman Hirst.
He himself, however, was a more obviously sensitive and delicate artist, one whose work was always a subtle combination of conceptual rigour and a generous formalism. Since Freeze he had exhibited in most of the subsequent important exhibitions of his artistic “generation”; Brilliant at the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, 1995, Some Went Mad Some Ran Away, at the Serpentine, 1994; Sensation at the Royal Academy in 1997, and then, more recently, in In-a-Gadda-da-Vida, with Lucas and Hirst at Tate Britain in 2004.
He also had a number of significant one-person shows, notably at Sadie Coles HQ London, and at galleries in New York and Amsterdam.
Fairhurst made work of consistent subtlety and wit. Like his contemporaries, he embraced painting, sculpture, drawing, performance, installation, practical jokes; taking whatever he needed and turning it to his own distinctive ends.
Confident across his whole range of chosen media, he worked often in sets or series of ideas, touching on such subjects as the ubiquity and power of advertising and the mass media, the nature of the self, and the emptiness of expression, but doing so with humour, usually revealed in his titles: Over Lapping Paintings (1996), for instance, was a series of delicate paintings which explored to great effect the movement of repeated pattern over the surface. In A Couple of Differences Between Thinking and Feeling (2003) and several other works, he played with the motif of a gorilla, drawing gorillas, sculpting them in bronze, dressing up in a gorilla suit, playing the fool to make serious points about machismo and male grandiosity and to explore the gaps between the artistic subject, the means of representation and the weight of the viewer’s expectations.
Fairhurst’s close attention to form, his careful, often humorous probing of the possibilities of artistic expression, was part and parcel of his delicacy and self-doubt. For all the glib convenience of the YBA label, his work is in reality a world away from the brash theatricality of a Hirst, the cheerful outrageousness of a Lucas, the confident, manipulative self-revelation of a Tracey Emin. A kind and thoughtful man, he was permanently critical of his own work, and never satisfied with what he had achieved.
Recent projects had allowed him to review several layers of his own past, exploring anew many aspects of his earlier work in collage, painting, printmaking, animation and sculpture. Beauty, luxury and sex were among his themes. But art and illusion were his central concerns, along with some serious questions about the nature and value of art itself, and perhaps therefore of the artist, too.
His most recent exhibition, which has just closed at Sadie Coles Gallery, consisted of two very large paintings, executed during and directly after Christmas, a small bronze which seemed to portray the aftermath of some unspecified incident. There was a strong reference to Bernini’s sculpture of Daphne turning into a tree; there was an empty and wrecked prefabricated For Sale sign at eye height, and there were a number of smaller paintings of graphic delicacy and subtle power.
There was, in it all, a strong sense of place — very local, very London — a world of underground walkways, ripped advertising signs from which figures have been removed.
Here as elsewhere, Fairhurst made his works with an awareness of how and where they would appear, in this case alluring and unsettling behind the gallery’s smart facade. Here, as elsewhere, he used his chosen media in a way that worked.
Angus Fairhurst, artist, was born on October 4, 1966. He was found dead in woodland at Bridge of Orchy, Argyll, on March 29, 2008, aged 41
2008年3月30日 星期日
Is the art market heading for a fall?
As contemporary art fetches record prices, artists, dealers and auction houses are quietly tearing each other apart in their fight to control the booming £20 billion business. But now that recession clouds are gathering, is the market heading for a nasty fall?
The Jeff Koons was faltering at £630,000. Simon de Pury, standing at the Phillips de Pury podium and confronting seated ranks of dealers and collectors, was suffused with mock agony. Dressed in a tailored Italian suit, the auctioneer was an expressionist silhouette, his arms out-thrust, fingers stretched, coaxing the music of bidding from the air. A young woman, one of 27 well-groomed individuals sitting on the telephone bank, made a tiny gesture.
“Just in time!” de Pury said breathily. “Six hundred and forty against you, Michael!”
Michael McGinnis, head of contemporary, spoke into his phone. Finally the Koons went for £900,000.
Simon de Pury has been running Phillips de Pury since the 2001 takeover of the venerable, medium-sized London auction house. The house now acts like a feisty pup darting around the grizzled mastiffs, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. This sale was in Phillips de Pury’s new London building, a former post office between Victoria station and Eaton Square.
Immediately behind de Pury, a Damien Hirst “Spin” painting exploded like a round window, giving the auction room the appearance of a chapel. Other trophies hanging in plain view included a “Shadow” painting by Andy Warhol and a “Nurse” canvas by Richard Prince, and a further Koons, a glass sculpture in which the artist is penetrating his former wife, the porn star La Cicciolina, was beside the podium. The artist’s lilac glass buttocks were pointed, doubtless unintentionally, at the art press, who were lined along the left-hand wall.
The contemporary auction at Sotheby’s the night before had been the second most successful in that house’s history. But the auction at Phillips de Pury was more up and down. Indeed, the selling of another Hirst, a huge “Spot” canvas, furnished a classic example of the perils and profits of the auction process. This was one of several pieces put up for sale by the Manhattan developer and collector Aby Rosen. Phillips had secured the consignment by offering fat guarantees, as it had done for much else. Just how fat it isn’t telling, but its low estimate on the
“Spot” piece was £1.5m, its high estimate £2.5m, a risky calculation because Rosen had paid £600,000 for the piece a few years before.
But the bidding sailed merrily up to £1.1m. Then came a lull, like the breeze dropping, until de Pury, whose articulation can put one in mind of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, got things going again. The piece was hammered down to Philippe Ségalot, an art adviser with arena-rock hair, for £1.76m. De Pury later relived the moment the heart of the Hirst bidding seemed to stop. “As the auctioneer you are totally focused, but at the back of your head you think, ‘My God! Why is it halting? What is going on?’ ” he told me. “And then when things continue, and the price continues climbing, you have an inner sigh of relief.” So was this or was it not a success? True, it barely cleared the low estimate. Yet it was an auction record for a Hirst “Spot” painting and the evening was deemed a success. The Richard Prince “Nurse”, sold at the Barbara Gladstone gallery in 2003 for perhaps $60,000, fetched £2,148,500. Sales totalled £21.9m. Clearly, despite the US recession and sub-prime horrors, the art market was still riding high.
Art has become perhaps the biggest legal economy in the world to be almost totally unregulated, so it should come as no surprise that the art world is the scene of a mighty struggle for control. The principal contenders are the auctioneers and the dealers, with a supporting cast of collectors, art advisers, entrepreneurs, curators and an increasingly active group of über-artists.
But it’s not just about the money, huge though that has become. It’s about how the making of art is being affected by its marketing. It’s about the increasingly wide handprint of contemporary art on the whole culture. Tate Modern had 5.2m visitors last year, making it the most popular museum of modern and contemporary art in the world and second only to Blackpool beach as an attraction in the UK.
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In 2000, CNN estimated the value of the global art market at $4 billion a year. It also reported that Christie’s and Sotheby’s controlled 90% of it. Ed Dolman, CEO of Christie’s, pooh-poohs that. He says the Big Two control “about 70% of the market”. And how big is the global art market now? “I would say it’s probably between 20 and 30 billion, the total,” Dolman says breezily. “And that is a complete guess.”
Both auction houses have lengthy histories, and for much of them they have been content to be what Robin Woodhead, Sotheby’s CEO for Europe and Asia, calls “clearing houses”, selling to dealers, while the dealers worked directly with collectors, institutions and living artists.
When things began loosening up, it was Sotheby’s that made the running. Peter Wilson, the longtime boss, had a vision of an international art market. He swallowed up Parke Bernet, a venerable Madison Avenue auction house, in 1964. Christie’s followed some years later; its first auction was in the spring of 1977. “The duopoly works,” says James Stourton, Sotheby’s chairman. “When we bought Parke Bernet, nothing really started happening until Christie’s opened up in New York too.” Then Al Taubman, a Detroit real-estate magnate with a keen retail brain, took over Sotheby’s in 1983 and targeted private collectors directly, squeezing the middlemen, the dealers. Until then auctions had been for the trade, humdrum affairs where few private collectors would deign to lift a paddle. In media-addled Manhattan, night sales at both houses became plum destinations for fancy folk. The world of event art was being born.
In the spring of 1990, Sotheby’s made another tactical move, forming a partnership with William Acquavella, a Manhattan dealer, to acquire the estate of the dealer Pierre Matisse, son of Henri. This giddy $143m deal was to be financed by the auction house while the dealer would, well, deal. Christie’s had been nosing around the estate too.
Many art dealers were livid that the auctioneers were getting yet more closely involved with their retail business. But then came the collapse of the Japanese real-estate boom and the great art bust of 1990. In London and New York, for several years things remained flat as a kipper. They began picking up in the mid-1990s. Then came a curious turn of events.
Dr Bernardo Nadal-Ginard, the first president of the Boston Children’s Heart Foundation, was a cardiologist with a sheaf of published papers to his credit. He and his wife, Dr Vijak Mahdavi, were also avid collectors of work by younger contemporary artists. They were discerning and acquired tough, cutting-edge pieces by, among others, Jeff Koons, Bruce Nauman, Matthew Barney, Rachel Whiteread, Robert Gober and Kiki Smith. And they were generous with their collection, lending out pieces for exhibition.
But the doctor was a thief. The collecting had been in part financed by $6.5m plundered from the foundation. This was like shooting Bambi’s mother and turning the hide into a nifty waistcoat. The foundation offered the collection to Sotheby’s. Tobias Meyer arrived from London to run the contemporary department soon after. “I thought, wow! It’s incredible material. And I saw an opportunity to really shake up the market,” he says.
At the time, Sotheby’s and Christie’s would routinely open their night sales of contemporary art with tried and true pieces of material, such as an early Calder. “The young stuff was always relegated to the end,” Meyer says. He moved the focus onto the freshest, most controversial pieces. Lot 7, for instance, was Kiki Smith’s Pee Body, a crouching female nude in wax, with long coils of yellow glass beads denoting urine.
Installing the show for preview presented challenges. Displaying older work was fairly routine: put it on the wall or on a pedestal. Contemporaries could be more demanding. The Nauman needed to be hung from wires, the Kiki Smith was not exactly pedestal-appropriate, and the Matthew Barney, which used petroleum jelly and silicon gel and needed refrigeration, at Barney’s request, wasn’t installed at all.
“Now, when we have to install a Damien Hirst,” Meyer says, “the Damien Hirst studio actually comes up and installs it. But at the time the dialogue between artists’ studios and auction houses wasn’t as open as it is now. When we had the Jeff Koons Hanging Heart, the Jeff Koons studio was very helpful.”
The Children’s Heart Foundation sale was on the evening of May 6, 1997. Dede Brooks, Sotheby’s queenly CEO, approached Meyer that day. “She told me, ‘Tobias! All this crap is going to BI!’” he says. Meaning Buy In. Fail to sell.
Brooks was far from alone in her misgivings. But actually the sale was a rip-roarer. “It went through the roof,” Meyer says. Smith’s Pee Body, estimated at between $60,000 and $80,000, went for $233,500. The Barney, estimated at between $100,000 and $150,000, fetched $343,500. The entire auction made $15.2m, and only seven works failed to sell.
The message rang clear as a bell: contemporary art was the new playpen for collectors. A welcome message. A worldwide, decade-long fever of museum-building has been vacuuming up work in traditional collecting fields. Putting together a strong impressionist sale was harder and harder, and even great modernism was vanishing from the marketplace. The success of the Children’s Heart Foundation sale created an instant change. “I realised that this was a different market we were talking about,” Meyer says.
Up to and including the Heart Foundation sale, catalogues normally printed artists’ names in the sort of fiddly little typeface used, for instance, for newspaper photo captions. The catalogue for Sotheby’s next contemporary-art sale that November printed the artists’ names in slush-grey letters 1½in high. Meaning important. The art stars of the 1980s and their successors were walking the Earth again. And now they were bigger than before.
Christie’s wasn’t laggardly. Its contemporary sale in London on December 8, 1998, included 130 pieces from the Saatchi Collection, listing them in a hefty spiral-bound catalogue. Ed Dolman is proud of the effort. “But it’s amazing how few of those artists went on to become big names. Damien Hirst, Gonzalez-Torres, Rachel Whiteread were all there. But an awful lot didn’t go anywhere,” he says.
Sotheby’s attempt to penetrate the clandestine world of dealers continued. In 1996, André Emmerich sold his gallery to the auction house and became a senior vice-president there. And in September 1997 it acquired half of Deitch Projects, one of Manhattan’s edgiest galleries. So the auctioneers were again flexing their muscles. But this time the dealers had a weapon. Art fairs.
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At last year’s Art Basel, I was outside in the sun with Samuel Keller, the outgoing director. Shiny-pated, in an open shirt and a chocolate-coloured suit, Keller was speaking about the auctioneers and the dealers. “The art world is an ecosystem,” he said. “It’s not the shark eating up all the fish, because that means they will starve tomorrow. So the galleries are providing the auction houses’ living. Which is the artists who have a career. And only if you have a career and a reputation do you have a secondary market.”
Under Keller, Basel had become the kingpin among fairs, but it was not the earliest. That had been Art Cologne, which was launched in 1967 but which let in middling dealers and indifferent work. It sagged. Ernst Beyeler, the Swiss megadealer and collector who launched Art Basel two years later, saw to it that only the cream of dealers were invited. It was a success from the beginning. Other cities spawned competitive fairs: Paris, Madrid, Berlin. The Chicago Art Fair, America’s first, was launched in 1979. It was a hit, but these were dealers’ fairs. Glamour had touched the auction houses in the 1980s, but the fairs remained as nuts-and-boltsy as any other trade fairs. And they too suffered through the early-1990s doldrums.
In 1994, four Manhattan dealers, Pat Hearn, Colin de Land, Paul Morris and Matthew Marks, came up with a way of gingering up the market by the equivalent of what the rag trade calls a “trunk show”. Avant-garde dealers from around the world were invited to show their wares in rented rooms in New York’s Gramercy Park hotel. Jay Jopling, for instance, brought in the young Tracey Emin. I remember her sitting on the bed, talking and making spidery drawings. There were parties that attracted collectors as well as dealers. “And that made it a little more social,” says Patrick McMullan, Manhattan’s ubiquitous party photographer.
In 1999 the organisers checked out of the Gramercy and transferred to a succession of more spacious venues. It was now The Armory Show, a name borrowed from the exhibition set up in 1913 and best remembered for tossing out the Duchamp urinal. And as Manhattan again sprinkled its media pixie dust, the Armory too became part of the world of event art.
Samuel Keller had been watching. In 2000 Art Basel bought up the Miami Art Fair, a small fair with a corner in Latin American art. Its December 2, 2001 opening was naturally cancelled. But when it opened the following year, it was at once apparent that the Basel fair had acquired a flightier twin.
London was next. Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp launched Frieze the following year, naming it after their magazine, which was itself named for the show Damien Hirst put together after leaving Goldsmiths. Frieze, being set in a city where artists were bold-faced names in the tabloids, was soon clobbering the Berlin fair, as the Armory had deflated Chicago.
Fairs are a mixed blessing. “I think art fairs are actually revolting. It’s like going to Florence and seeing 87 churches. It’s just a blur,” the London-based American dealer Kenny Schachter told me. “But you can’t function in the art world without them.” This has not been lost on the auctioneers. In June 2006, Sotheby’s bought a Dutch dealership, Noortman Master Paintings. Robert Noortman was a founder of the Maastricht Art Fair, and a powerful presence within it, so when Sotheby’s asked that its new subsidiary be allowed to continue to do business there, the committee agreed. Christie’s then let it be known that if it wasn’t allowed entrance to the fair, it would go to Maastricht anyway, even if it meant putting up a marquee in the town square. The committee knuckled under.
Maastricht focuses on old masters but will show anything of tiptop quality, including works of contemporary art. For art dealers it is sacred turf. Most were appalled. Rene Gimpel of Gimpel Fils had been at a Hong Kong fair where Christie’s had a stand some years ago. The stated reason for their presence was that clients buying western art might feel unsure of themselves. “So Christie’s were there to reassure them,” he says. “But that, of course, made one feel that one was in the grips of the goodwill of Christie’s. We joked about it.”
The art economy is information-based. A dealer can be successful with just two or three clients and guards them jealously. A Manhattan dealer, a friend, quivered when I ran into him in an airport bar. He was with such clients. Dealers worry that the auctioneers frequent fairs to fatten up their dossiers. “But we don’t have booths in the auction houses during their big auction weeks,” Gimpel says. “We need to maintain our separate spheres.”
Then Christie’s bought Haunch of Venison in February 2007. Haunch is a leading London gallery with spaces in Berlin and Zurich. Many other dealers hated this, but kept their feelings off the record – François Pinault, the owner of Christie’s, also being an enormous collector.
The selection committees at art fairs are made up of dealers and, in themselves, constitute one of the new powers in the art world. Not all loathed the Haunch sale. “I don’t know how an art gallery can be owned anyway,” says Gavin Brown, a Manhattan-based British dealer who is on the selection committee of Frieze.
“A contemporary art gallery is its artists. It’s only inventory that can be owned. You can’t make an artist stay somewhere if they don’t want to. If they don’t care, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Haunch of Venison failed to make the cut at either Frieze or the Armory, though. And the Basel twins? “Our regulations are very clear. We have never allowed galleries that are owned by auction houses to participate. There is a clear conflict of interest,” Samuel Keller says. “André Emmerich was almost one of the founding members of Art Basel. He was a longtime committee member. And when his gallery was bought, immediately it was not allowed in the fair. We were very strict. We would not allow Jeffrey Deitch as long as he was with Sotheby’s. Art Basel has always had a very clear line. Nothing has changed. Nothing changes for us.”
Things are changing elsewhere, though. Sotheby’s is now working directly with artists. They commissioned artists to create sculpture for Beyond Limits, a selling exhibition of sculpture at Chatsworth last autumn.
“I participated in that exhibition with a piece by Zaha Hadid,” says the dealer Kenny Schachter. “Sotheby’s did one of the most beautiful catalogues I have ever seen.”
The cover showed a marble sculpture of Kate Moss-as-contortionist by Marc Quinn. “It was a piece that I was making already that I consigned to them for that show,” Quinn says.
Clearly the art world is in a state of advanced meltdown, with the players – dealers, collectors, auctioneers, curators and, yes, artists – morphing into each other as in the final passage of Orwell’s Animal Farm. “I’m one of the contrarians. I think that the more they blur things, the more interesting the prospects are to come up with something more innovative,” Schachter says. “But sometimes it gets a little precarious. In terms of conflict-of-interest situations, it gets pretty close to the edge of the envelope.”
Christie’s opened an art gallery, King Street Galleries, at its London building 18 months ago. Could the auction house see itself managing living artists? “We handle living artists’ work through our subsidiary,” Ed Dolman says. “What Sotheby’s have done at Chatsworth we would do at Haunch of Venison.”
Sotheby’s worked directly with Damien Hirst over the auction of material from his defunct restaurant, Pharmacy. Could Robin Woodhead see other such large-scale collaborations with über-artists. What about Takashi Murakami?
“We’re in a changing world,” Woodhead says. “We’re in a new world which requires substantial capital backing. It is a much more global business than it used to be, and the costs of doing that business are much greater. And the auction houses will take advantage of that because of our international distribution networks.
“If you look at the work Pierre Bergé did with Yves Saint Laurent, it’s interesting. Yves Saint Laurent had his own line, his own fashion house and his own financial genius behind him. Then you think of Damien Hirst and his business.”
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The reaction of artists to the increasingly naked whirring of the machinery of the industry for which they supply the essential product is as varied as one would expect. When the 1980s overheated, certain art stars took to consigning their works directly to the auction house from their studio, cutting out their dealers.
This is happening again. “I was having a conversation with an artist last night. And he said, ‘Well, I’m thinking it would be quite interesting to consign a work direct to auction. Wouldn’t it?’” says Nicholas Logsdail of London’s Lisson gallery. “I said, ‘You want to do that? Then you had better leave the gallery. Because otherwise there’s no basis on which the services that you enjoy and the career-building that the gallery has given you will continue.’”
Another effect of the boom has been the shrinkage in the time between a work leaving the studio and popping up at auction. Several pieces at the Heart Foundation auction had been acquired from dealers in 1992 – including the Barney and the Kiki Smith – but a five-year gap was considered okay. “Even five years is not a long time. Because work has to ripen,” says Barbara Gladstone, the Manhattan dealer who represents both Barney and Richard Prince. “But now you see things from 2006. It’s dangerous. Artists who are represented by responsible galleries are placed very carefully when they are young and popular. And obviously not everybody can get a work.
“But if a collector feels that he can’t get the work from the primary gallery, he might feel it’s worth it to pay well over the going price at auction. Just to have it. And of course the artist doesn’t participate in the auction price. So one can understand that an artist would resent this.”
Cecily Brown, a Manhattan-based British artist, has had a fine auction career, but loathes the process. “I was in auctions as early as 2001,” she says. “I had only been showing for two years. Thank God, it didn’t go through the roof, so I didn’t get a lot of attention for being one of the crazy, crazy, crazy people. But of course I was very upset. And I did what a lot of artists say they do. Once somebody puts something at auction, the gallery, Gagosian, knows I don’t want that person to be able to buy my work any more.
“For a younger artist, for a living artist, it involves a total loss of control. You’ve worked out your prices with your dealer. You have done this very carefully. You feel you’re controlling it. And then once things start going mad at auction, you just feel there’s nothing you can do about it.”
So auctions affect the careers of living artists? “I find them really insidious, an unhealthy and rather a gross time in the art world.”
Gavin Turk, a founding YBA, was less heated. “I’m in two minds,” he said. “It’s a very convenient way of getting the market going – moving art and money around. And I think it’s impossible to separate art from the financial element. It’s not really something that artists should dwell upon too much. I think it’s important as an artist that you show your work to the maximum capability you’re able to. And if that involves a certain amount of hype or financial credibility, then so be it.”
Turk also pointed out that the auction concept is now thoroughly embedded in the culture at large. “Everybody talks about eBaying this and eBaying that, which is essentially the same sort of thing. Everybody’s up to speed on it. Somehow there’s a collector for everything now.”
Could Turk imagine working directly with an auction house? “I don’t know.” He paused and added: “I could imagine it. I haven’t done it. But I could imagine it.”
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There were pieces by both Gavin Turk and Cecily Brown at the Phillips de Pury sale.
Both sold, the Brown canvas for over £600,000.
I went on to a party given by the London collector and dealer Ivor Braka. The mood at the party was exuberant, but the signals were mixed. As we had gone into the February auctions, it seemed ever likelier that America was sliding into recession, and things seemed none too rosy in the UK either.
There are two conventional wisdoms about the art market. One is that seven “up” years are followed by three “down” years. Another is that when the broader economy – real estate, in particular – gets into trouble, the art market will go flat between six months and two years later. So it was with the art bust of 1990. Can things be so different now?
Some believe so. “History is not always an indication of what is going to happen in the future,” says Robin Woodhead of Sotheby’s.
Ed Dolman of Christie’s speaks of “30 or 40 individuals” who have come into the market from Russia, Asia, the Middle East. He predicts that in the future, 30-35% of the market will be Asian. And some feel that these cultures have a traditional faith in alternative investments that will also cushion the art economy.
“If you listen to American buyers, they will tell you that they are priced out of the market,” Tobias Meyer says. “They don’t want to buy things at these prices. They will say, ‘Hey! I bought my Rothko in 1980. I paid $8m. I don’t want to spend $60m!’ But we have huge buyers of contemporary art in Asia. Enormous buyers of contemporary art in Russia. All over the world, new buyers are entering the market at any moment. So it’s become global. And that’s very hard to predict. But I know that the great works of this century and the 20th century will be more and more expensive. That’s an unstoppable trend. When we look at the accumulation of capital all over the world, and the decreasing number of great works of art, there’s your equation!”
There are, as always, changes. “There’s a winnowing-out of all these fairs. And there’ll be a handful left. And the ones that really matter will matter even more so,” says Kenny Schachter.
Haunch of Venison will be opening in New York in the autumn in the handsome 20th-floor space where Christie’s put on a museum-quality Donald Judd exhibition in 2006. The gallery will be run by the former Christie’s private-sales team.
At the party Braka was joyously looking ahead to the next round of auctions in New York. “Well, I mean, it’s roll on May. Isn’t it?” he said. “Things are getting better and better.”
A guest, François Chantala, who works with the London dealer Thomas Dane, was less sanguine: “It’s like the Titanic. The orchestra keeps on playing. We are in denial,” he said.
James Stourton remembers that when he joined Sotheby’s, just one staffer, Mr Wilder from the prints department, had been there for the crash of 1929. They asked what it had been like. “Mr Wilder said it was like the man bitten by a tarantula,” Stourton says. “He was in his nineties. We thought he’d lost it. We said, ‘Yes! Yes! But about 1929?’
“He said, ‘Exactly! A spasm of violent activity. Followed by sudden death.’”
Well, the market will not be wholly tarantulaesque. Seasoned art-worlders have internalised another wisdom. Just as what goes up must come down, so what comes down – the best of it anyway – must surely come up again.
2008年3月29日 星期六
Uptown, Downtown, Fairs Found All Over
If the health of an art capital can be measured by the number of fairs in town, New York is in pretty good shape. Nine satellite fairs are now orbiting the Armory Show, up from seven last year. (For those keeping score, that’s fewer than in Miami but more than in London.) It’s enough to make weary fairgoers hope for a market meltdown, or at least a little consolidation.
This year’s events have gone to great lengths to distinguish themselves from the Armory Show itself, and from one another. A sampling of them shows that there is a fair devoted to solo-artist projects, a fair of video art in trailers scattered throughout Chelsea and — the ultimate novelty — a fair without natural or electric light.
New this year is Volta, on the 11th floor of an office tower across from the Empire State Building. The fair, which has had a presence at Art Basel since 2005, is making its debut here as a collection of solo projects organized by Amanda Coulson and Christian Viveros-Fauné.
Solo-artist displays, a staple of the Miami Basel scene but less common at the Armory Show, promise relief from fair fatigue. Volta also benefits from its central location, and from its familial relationship to the Armory Show: both are owned by the company Merchandise Mart Properties, based in Chicago.
The thriving scenes of London, Berlin and the Lower East Side have numerous representatives at Volta, but most of the booths reflect international festivalism — none more so than the booth of the Stanton Street gallery Fruit and Flower Deli, where the aptly named collective International Festival has set up a functioning bar strewn with rainbow confetti.
Hamish Morrison, a New Zealand-born dealer based in Berlin, is showing eye-catching, talismanic abstraction by Ronald de Bloeme (an artist from the Netherlands). Kenny Schachter, from London by way of Greenwich Village, has a series of mixed-media works by William Pope.L that comment, with the artist’s typical candor, on the African-American experience.
At the Seventeen gallery in London, the artist David Ersser has turned the booth into a living room made entirely of carved balsa wood. At Hales Gallery, also from London, architecture-inspired drawings by Adam Dant seem to express the incongruity of a cutting-edge art fair in the heart of Midtown (one shows a toppled Chrysler building turned into a playground for medieval warriors).
Leaving Midtown for the West Village, Pulse New York fills Pier 40 with booths for 90 galleries, its largest number to date. Smaller Chelsea dealers like Freight & Volume, Magnan Projects and Monya Rowe are here, as well as the photography specialists Yossi Milo and Julie Saul. Exhibitors from out of town tend to be European, but Mexico City, Beijing, Toronto and Tel Aviv are also part of the mix. The stateless (in theory, at least) Saatchi Online gallery also has a booth here.
Japanese prints can be found at Catharine Clark, and a Henry Darger drawing at the Carl Hammer Gallery of Chicago. Graduate students at Parsons the New School for Design have been commissioned to create “Pulse Pause,” a reading room, which includes a revolving bookcase (by the artist Brandon Nastanski) that leads to a speakeasy.
The Pulse fair has also expanded its special programs to rival those of the Armory. In one of several events slated for “Pulse Performance,” members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company will interpret music by Christian Marclay (Saturday at 7 p.m.). Parents, take note: Pulse is the only fair to offer a “V.I.P. Lounge for small collectors.”
Uptown, Scope New York is back for a sixth year, and a second year at Damrosch Park in Lincoln Center. Scope, which has fairs in four other cities, often seems detached from Chelsea trends — not necessarily a bad thing. Only 11 of the 50 or so galleries exhibiting here are from New York.
Art lovers who had hoped for a little more razzle-dazzle at the Whitney Biennial might find it here. Works at Scope tend to be flashy: Noh Sang-Kyoon’s giant, sequined Buddha heads at Bryce Wolkowitz’s booth are typical; so, too, Fawad Khan’s life-size Postal Service truck at 33 Bond; and Johnston Foster’s installation of a flock of seagulls, at the entrance to the Scope tents.
With just 15 galleries (14 from Los Angeles, and a guest from Mexico), the three-year-old LA Art in New York is the most manageable fair in town. It is noticeably smaller than last year’s, possibly because Los Angeles galleries have their strongest presence yet at the main Armory Show.
The emphasis here is on prints, photographs and works on paper, little of which feels new or specific to the West Coast. However, budding collectors looking for, say, a photograph by Martin Parr (at Rose Gallery), a Lee Bontecou drawing (at Daniel Weinberg) or a graphic, neon-hued collage by the emerging artist Eva-Maria Wilde (at Paul Kopekin) may appreciate the unhurried atmosphere.
Wall power is here, too, if you know where to look for it. Louis Stern Fine Arts, one of three galleries tucked away in the basement, has a refreshing selection of midcentury geometric abstractions by Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson and others.
The fair with the most buzz this year is, in one sense, the least visible: the Dark Fair, at the Swiss Institute in SoHo. It was organized by a group of artists that include the brothers Scott and Tyson Reeder and Scott’s wife, Elysia Borowy-Reeder, who in 2006 staged a fair in a Milwaukee bowling alley. This “subversive and experimental miniature art fair,” as they describe it, eliminates most sources of natural and electric light. The diner-style booths, painted black, were inspired by the seating at a favorite artists’ hangout in Milwaukee.
Several participating galleries, including White Columns, Leo Koenig and Marianne Boesky, have booths at the Armory Show but were intrigued by the challenges of exhibiting in the dark. Most are presenting site-specific projects involving oil lamps, glow-in-the-dark paint, manual-powered flashlights and plenty of candles. (Each gallery received a set of instructions, including fire-safety guidelines.)
Collectors who have already emptied their pockets at other fairs may be soothed by the soft glow of Tony Matelli’s unusual candle, at the Koenig booth. It looks exactly like a stack of $100 bills set on fire.
Dark Fair at the Swiss Institute, 495 Broadway, near Spring Street, SoHo (swissinstitute.net); LA Art in NY at the Altman Building, 135 West 18th Street, Manhattan (laartfair.com); Pulse Art Fair New York on Pier 40, 353 West Street, at West Houston Street, West Village (pulse-art.com); Scope New York in Damrosch Park, Lincoln Center (scope-art.com); and Volta NY at 7 West 34th Street, Manhattan (voltashow.com) all continue through Sunday, as does the Armory Show itself, at Pier 94, 12th Avenue at 55th Street, Clinton (thearmoryshow.com).
Microtrends: Geek oil paintings
Young artists are taking inspiration (and customers) from the internet
(playfulpainter.blogspot.com)
Soft-focus Apple icons by Gautam Rao
Budding young artist? Tired of trying to impress Charles Saatchi? Turn your hand to making “geek art”: painting stuff off the internet and selling it to geeks.
Jeremiah Palecek is the Warhol of geek art. He started painting scenes from classic video games in a naive, smudgy style. After blog acclaim, he graduated to characters from popular YouTube clips, such as “dramatic chipmunk” and “Tom Cruise talking about Scientology”. Theyre all for sale, for about £50 each.
Lots of painters are having trouble looking beyond their laptop screens. Gautam Rao paints soft-focus icons from his Apple Mac (which are very easy to sell), while Handré de Jager paints scary, surreal parodies of video-game characters (which may be less so).
At the other end of the taste spectrum is Second Life Art , which employs unspecified “professional artists from around the world” to paint avatars from Second Life in all their pneumatic glory. If you’ve ever wanted a 4ft-wide picture of yourself as a fantasy superhero, you’ll need about £325.
2008年3月27日 星期四
能否經得起時間考驗 "當代藝術"高價不勝寒
近兩年,當代藝術似乎一夜走紅,國內國外天價迭出,無論是拍賣交易金額和成交率都超過了傳統國畫和瓷器,至于單件當代藝術作品,更是受到各路藏家的青睞和追逐。
2006年北京保利推出的劉小東的《三峽新移民》巨幅油畫,上拍時各路藏家你爭我奪,互不相讓,最後被國內一買家以2200萬元收入囊中;同年,老畫家吳冠中的《長江萬裏圖》油畫在翰海以3795萬元成交;2007年在嘉德拍賣會上,陳逸飛的代表作《黃河頌》獲價4200萬元,再創國內油畫新高。在海外市場上,當代藝術更是火爆,一批名望在徐悲鴻和陳逸飛之下的異軍突起,傲視群雄。以 2007年為例,這一年張曉剛的《創世篇——一個共和國的誕生》在紐約蘇富比獲價2372.31萬元;岳敏君的《處決》在倫敦蘇富比以4398.7萬元拍出;曾凡志的《協和醫院三聯畫第2幅》在倫敦菲利浦斯以4116萬元成交;蔡國強的精心之作《景觀焰火表演十四幅草圖》在香港佳士得獲價7350.5萬元,此價創下了當代藝術的最高紀錄,並為其他當代藝術作品的價格上升打開了巨大空間。而被媒體稱為藝術界“四大金剛”、“F4”的張曉剛、方力鈞、王廣義、岳敏君在海外市場上大放異彩,他們的作品動輒數百萬乃至上千萬,成為了藝術市場“天價”藝術家。從市場表現看,新一代的價格遠超過老一輩,比如蔡國強的《焰火草圖》以7424萬元力壓徐悲鴻,對此蔡國強表現出清醒的頭腦,他說:“如果你注意到與這個市場熱度相比,世界上對中國當代藝術的研究很冷淡,你就不會因為高價而得意。在紐約現代藝術博物館的20世紀藝術回顧展上,中國的作品少得與它的市場價格完全不成比例……說明高價並不意味著藝術成就。”
那麼,當代藝術究竟能否經得起時間和歷史的考驗,這是廣大收藏者和投資者所關心的。面對當代藝術價格如此局面,有的媒體認為是炒作,有的專家認為是泡沫。總之不少人對當代藝術的前景表示擔憂。美國波普藝術領袖沃霍爾曾說過:“在今天創作和出售的繪畫和雕塑作品中,只有0.5%在未來30年中能夠保持市場價值。”這意味著絕大多數當代藝術品價值被高估,經不起時間和歷史考驗。有的若幹年後消失得無影無蹤。由此可以看出藝術市場是多麼的殘酷、風險是多麼的大。而對中國當代藝術價格問題,也有專家認為是合理的,比如被英國報紙稱為“藝術女王”的路易斯·布勞恩認為,價格沒有離譜,但問題在于要保證博物館有辦法得到這些作品,而中國藝術家也必須在博物館舉辦更多的展覽,為他們自己打下堅實的基礎。
所以,無論是認為當代藝術有泡沫,還是看多當代藝術投資者,最終要用時間和歷史來檢驗。不過,炒作名家油畫的現象已經有前車之鑒。記得十幾年前,日本經濟崛起,日本人在世界藝術品市場上出手闊綽,梵·高的《向日葵》、《鳶尾花》和《加歇醫生肖像》均被日本人買去。這個時候,很多收藏家以為印象派會有升值空間,于是,大量三四流印象派作品流入日本。上世紀90年代日本經濟的衰退,當初高價買來的畫以斬腰一半的價格都沒人要,但是梵·高的畫價格卻要堅挺得多。由此看來,精選作品並以合適的價格吃進才能立于不敗之地。
文/一俊
德國指揮家來台 詮釋巴赫難度最高合唱曲
2008.03.27 07:37 pm
鑽研「音樂之父」巴赫權威的德國指揮家海慕特‧瑞霖 (HelmuthRilling)應邀來台,將在三月二十九日率領台北愛樂合唱團、長榮交響樂團於國家音樂廳演出巴赫的「B小調彌撒」,此曲華麗而難度甚高的演唱技巧,國內至今尚無演出紀錄,此次台灣首演令人期待。
台北愛樂表示,巴赫的「B小調彌撒」被譽為「音樂領域中最崇高的作品」,這一次由高齡七十五歲,畢生鑽研巴赫音樂的海慕特‧瑞霖指揮,由知名聲樂家廖聰文、鄧吉龍、旅德聲樂家李佩穎以及德籍女低音安亞‧許洛瑟(Anja Schlosser)擔任獨唱。
海慕特‧瑞霖畢生研究巴赫音樂,自1970年起每年七月皆於美國奧瑞岡州舉行巴赫音樂節,並開設大師班研究巴赫音樂作品。1981年瑞霖又創立國際司徒加巴赫音樂學院,並以十四年的時間完成史上第一套完整的巴赫清唱劇錄音。
西元2000年,海慕特‧瑞霖指導完成了巴赫作品全集錄音,共一百七十二張CD,在國際上贏得了最高的評價。這一次是繼2005年與台北愛樂合唱團合作布拉姆斯德文安魂曲後,再次與台灣的聲樂家與合唱團合作。
Alessi故宮家飾 繽紛喧鬧台灣味
2008.03.27 04:26 am
故宮收藏的老祖宗遺產,果然是個挖不完的金礦。Alessi與故宮合作的「清宮家族」系列,在全球廣受歡迎,本季Alessi乘勝追擊再推出「東方傳奇」系列,義大利設計師Stefano Giovannoni以故宮收藏的傳統民俗畫作中擷取元素,如金魚、蓮花、百合鳥、猴子等,創作一系列的家飾品,預計又會在全球熱賣。
Alessi表示,「清宮家族」以清朝乾隆皇帝的畫像,創造造型可愛的清宮家族成員,如今已推出第二季,銷售業績比預期還要高出三倍,不但歐美人士很喜歡,前往故宮參觀的日本、中國大陸觀光客也都會買回家當紀念。
今年Alessi再度與故宮合作,這一次設計師Stefano Giovannoni選擇有台灣本土風味的年畫、民俗畫如金魚、天堂鳥、百合鳥等,而且色彩採用「台灣紅」的牡丹色、鮮綠、豔紅等,色彩繽紛喧鬧,很有台灣味,與前兩季的中國風大不相同。
目前「東方傳奇」系列已在台灣搶先上市,單品售價從1,300元起跳,有胡椒罐、糖罐等餐桌用品。
2008年3月26日 星期三
名指揮家林克昌歡度80歲 NSO以音樂會致敬
2008.03.26 07:30 pm
國家交響樂團(簡稱為NSO)三月二十八日將舉辦第二場「林克昌八十年音樂之旅」音樂會,歡度知名指揮家林克昌八十週歲,林克昌將與NSO及年輕鋼琴家林佳靜,共同演出柴可夫斯基降B小調第一號鋼琴協奏曲與E小調第五號交響曲。
NSO今天下午在國家音樂廳舉行「林克昌八十年音樂之旅」綵排記者會。林克昌受訪指出,他對音樂非常投入,不但白天讀譜,晚上睡覺時也在背譜,曾因為睡覺時「指揮演出」打到另一半,後來只好分床睡。
林克昌對獲NSO邀請演出表示感謝,「很開心NSO沒有忘記我,還記得我的生日並辦慶生會跟音樂會,覺得非常感動。」
對這次音樂會有年輕鋼琴家加入演出,他認為,林佳靜是個很好的鋼琴家,共同合作可互相學習。
至於首次與林克昌合作的林佳靜,曾多次與國外大師合作;她表示,林克昌的指揮很有力量,與其他指揮家不同的地方在於「很尊重獨奏者,會與獨奏者溝通」,她很榮幸與林克昌以及NSO合作。
首場音樂會已於三月二十一日圓滿落幕,獲得全場熱烈迴響。第二場音樂會三月二十八日在國家音樂廳晚間演出。
2008年3月25日 星期二
奧美創意博覽會:小比賽玩出大整合
【文/史書華;攝影/黃建賓】
奧美集團用創意博覽會,要讓員工拼個別創意,也拼內部的整合力。
這天在奧美集團大樓內,有一股說不出來的能量。
電梯中早已貼著「夯」和「劣」兩大字的海報,分別把兩字上下拆解,多了有趣的解釋:用對力是「夯」;用錯力就是「劣」。
隨著電梯上升,屬於會議室空間的樓層更蠢蠢欲動。原先各有主題的會議室,被奧美集團旗下6間子公司重新裝扮,有的擺出專案的大大小小獎盃、有的在地板上貼上指引線,提醒參觀者不要忘了:愈到盡頭,愈藏有精彩。
這是奧美集團一年一度的創意觀摩大賽,6家子公司拿出過去一整年的優秀案子展現,400多位員工手上握著「夯」票,一人一票進行票選,結果就要在當週的尾牙會上公布。
受傷的創意,有機會亮相
去年第一次試辦時,員工卯起來玩,在展覽的前天晚上還留在公司布置會場。
不過,要員工額外花時間的活動,為什麼要舉辦?
「這樣的創意競賽活動,有對外、對內兩個用意,」奧美整合行銷傳播集團執行長黃復華說。以某個層面而言,這讓員工有了發洩的管道。他觀察,提創意給客戶,總有幾個受傷的創意進醫院,被冰起來、不能玩,「但這裡完全是自己的空間,就自己玩吧。」當邀請客戶來參觀博覽時,那些沒有正式出場的創意,等於也有了發聲的機會。
互相觀摩創意,才能做到員工整合
這次創意觀摩大會,更是內部溝通的好時機。
奧美旗下有4個事業體(廣告、公關、數位、互動),彼此好像都懂對方領域一點,「但要往同、還是往異的地方想?很tricky(兩難),」黃復華點出,「做傳播的原理是一樣的。如果有機會能看到別人跟你核心一致、但切入角度和方法不同,可能思維會很不一樣。」
而這樣的觀摩刺激,正好呼應消費者現在的媒體消費習慣。
消費者並不在乎企業做的是廣告還是公關活動,不管是從報紙、電視、數位平台上看到,這些都是他生活中的一部份。「面對消費者,所有東西都要被串連和整合,」黃復華分析。就像這次拿到集團最大獎的「NIKE 5K RUN跑吧!」案例,奧美廣告將廣告策略與路跑活動整合,把「跑」的概念從單純的廣告延伸到實體活動,讓消費者從各媒介接收完整概念。
「各部門要做到整合,第一步就是了解彼此、尊重彼此,」黃復華解釋。不過,要學會從別人身上挖寶,卻需要點磨練。
「很多人鑽進自己的領域後,會有commitment(使命感),」他觀察,「難就難在,當你進去後,還要能夠出來,欣賞其他領域。」
這也是創意博覽會的最大用意。「當大家看到各部門整合的結果,才能創造更大效益,」黃復華說。在傳播環境走向整合發展的同時,一場創意博覽會,「用對力」聚集員工創意,對奧美集團來說,也預告自己新一年的挑戰。
個人篇:整合你的創意力
奧美整合行銷傳播集團執行長黃復華
在這一行,on跟off之間沒有界線。我們工作有很大的特質是要和消費者、社會趨勢產生連結,在上班時能透過客戶、工作團隊取得連結,但那只能提供50%的資訊。事實上我們就是消費者,生活和工作不要切得太清楚,如果不把思維打開,會讓自己躲在一個自認為不受打擾的空間,從另外角度來看,你失去和社會連結的機會。
我的方法是有空就到外面走走。走是「看」跟「吸收」,所以要先有一套消化和整理的邏輯,若沒有抓到軸心,看到更多資訊會愈慌、愈亂。
我建議不妨從3大脈絡為軸心來整合資訊:1.商業環境:你的通路、競爭者是誰?自己產品創新能力如何?2.消費者:現在的消費者是 king,當消費者產生反轉效應時,你把消費者這端當成軸線,在這軸線之下去觀察和消費者相關的資訊。3.文化:所有傳播都在文化脈絡下。在文化相同的基礎上來進行傳播,溝通品質才有深度。雖然這層表面看不出來,但它實際上會影響你的溝通語調,也會影響人們透過語言和圖像所勾起的感受。
【2008年3月Cheers雜誌 單身,最夯】
拍賣場上 百花齊放
【撰文/SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP】
當時林壁興才三十八歲,在貿易公司上班。那天他陪着公司總經理前往新加坡手工藝中心,來到陳文希的畫廊,準備買幾幅畫裝飾新辦公室。早在三十年前,陳文希就是夙負盛名的傳統水墨畫大師,以高超手法融合了西方繪畫觀念與中國水墨技巧。
林壁興的上司選了幾幅傳統風格的水墨畫,林壁興自己挑了一幀較具現代感的小幅作品,主題是水墨蓑羽鶴,以立體主義風格呈現。
「這幅畫在陳文希的作品中還算便宜,所以選了它。」林壁興回憶往事,呵呵笑道:「不過還是花了我五百元新加坡幣(約美金三百三十元),在當時可是相當大的數目。」雖然林壁興只因「喜歡」而買畫,但這筆投資相當值得──最近的一場拍賣會上,陳文希一幅水墨畫的成交價高達一萬二千五百美元。
林壁興也萬萬料想不到,過去三年來,亞洲藝術家的作品竟然炙手可熱。蘇富比公司在二○○六年拍賣的亞洲藝術家作品,總金額高達七千零三十萬美元,比起二 ○○五年增加將近四倍,且為二○○四年熱潮興起前的二十五倍。中國大陸藝術家的作品尤其水漲船高,讓其他地區望塵莫及;他們過去只能為宣傳服務,談不上什麼報酬,如今的行情卻在亞洲市場名列前茅,在全球當代藝術市場也令人刮目相看。
著名中國藝術家徐冰說:「我這一代原本對藝術品市場沒什麼認識。我們從小就深信,藝術只是宣傳工具。」徐冰現年五十二歲,長居紐約。當年他初出茅廬,畫的是毛澤東肖像版畫。
一直到一九九○年代末期,像徐冰這樣的版畫家,同一件作品通常都只印兩幅,一幅參加畫展,一幅自己保留。他們創作完全是為了展出,並不在意展覽結束後作品的去處。
這位觀念藝術家要歷經十年光陰才體認到他的創作身價。徐冰第一場大型個展「天書」於一九八八年登場。他花了一年時間,用梨木雕刻四千多個自創的方塊字,印在幾百冊大書和古代經卷式卷軸上。一位美國收藏家買了一卷四冊,只花了一百三十美元。但在二○○五年的一場拍賣會上,其中一冊《天書》以十四萬八千二百美元拍出。
裝置藝術家林天苗說:「實在想不到中國藝術品發生這麼快速的變化,這麼地欣欣向榮。」幾年前,她根本想不到自己的作品可以賣到今天的價格。
這股風潮從一九八○年代開始興起。當時正逢理想主義風行全中國,文化大革命黑暗年代已逝,新生代藝術家期待為復興中華文化盡一分心力。
上海香格納畫廊創辦人何浦林憶述:「那時候的藝術家滿懷熱忱,勇於實驗創新,這些特質在『中國現代藝術大展』表現得淋漓盡致。」
一九八九年,「中國現代藝術大展」於北京中國美術館舉行,是第一場以中國當代藝術為主題的大型展覽,展出流派風格各異。其中有幾項表演藝術甚至被人視為離經叛道(例如用槍射擊一具裝置藝術作品),導致展覽屢次被公安局強迫關閉。
就在同一年,天安門事件爆發。中國新世代藝術家的精神也銷聲匿跡。
天安門事件落幕後,藝壇蕭瑟。藝術家以北京為中心,倚賴外交官、企業家夫人、新聞記者支持贊助。何浦林說:「不少藝術家遷居海外,在紐約與巴黎落腳。」
二○○六年,曾梵志的《面具1999 No. 3》在一場拍賣會中創下八十一萬六千四百美元的天價。他年輕時也曾上北京闖蕩,結果連展出作品都有困難。
曾梵志追憶當時情形:「展覽還沒開始,就有人上門說是有問題,不准辦展覽。他們不明講哪一幅畫出事,只拿消防安全法規之類的理由當幌子,而且往往開展前一個小時才通知。」曾梵志早期畫作經常描繪醫院與肉品市場的血腥場景,那是他家附近常見的景象;但官員質疑這些血淋淋的畫面是影射政治。他回想當時心情:「我嚇壞了。」
當年藝術家的日子確實很不好過,林天苗也難以忘懷:「展覽只能在自己住處舉行,時間不過幾個小時。當天開幕,當天閉幕,偷偷摸摸。」
天安門事件陰影籠罩一九九○年代,藝術家惴惴不安,而且找不到買家,只有香港幾家畫廊還舉辦大型展覽。何浦林說:「對於大部分國家而言,尤其美國,一九八九年後的中國是化外之地;中國當代藝術也乏人問津。」
突然間,情勢丕變。由於經濟突飛猛進,國民所得節節高升,中國成為全球傳播媒體焦點,形象轉為正面,世人對中國的人事物無不好奇,中國藝術品市場從此一飛沖天。
二○○四年,蘇富比在香港舉辦第一場當代中國藝術品拍賣會,買家反應非常踴躍。
蘇富比亞洲及澳洲地區副主席司徒河偉說:「情況之熱烈出乎我們意料,顯然這是一個潛力無窮的市場。不只香港,許多地方的買家都躍躍欲試。」蔡國強的《為龍年所作的計劃No. 3》運用古代中國人發明的火藥創造出一幅「畫作」,以十一萬五千六百八十六美元成交;岳敏君的《向日葵》以他最具代表性的笑臉圖像為主題,也賣出七萬七千一百二十四美元的好價錢。
二○○七年四月,蘇富比復於香港舉行亞洲當代藝術拍賣會,司徒河偉親自主鎚。當天會場人滿為患,主辦單位臨時加了好幾張座椅。那天的成交總值是五千二百八十萬美元,創下新高。眾所矚目的徐悲鴻油畫《放下你的鞭子》以九百二十萬美元拍出, 更打破中國繪畫以往的紀錄。
中國藝術家作品數量與價格步步高升,買家背景也不同以往。蘇富比中國當代藝術部主管林家如說:「二○○四年我們在香港舉行第一次拍賣會,只提供五十件作品;買家有七成來自歐美國家,亞洲買家只占了三成。第二年,歐美和亞洲的買家平分秋色。到了二○○七年,亞洲買家占了四分之三。」
買家背景的轉變,反映了中國與亞洲其他地區經濟的快速發展;年輕一代的企業家快速累積財富,有閒錢大手筆購買名車、房地產、藝術品。司徒河偉說:「這類收藏家往往選購與他們同一個年代且能產生共鳴的作品,而非緬懷過去。」
歐美買家偏愛政治意味濃厚、普普藝術風格的作品,但中國買家青睞新寫實主義,陳丹青(以描繪西藏的鄉村、山水與牧民而知名)與王沂東、陳逸飛都是這個流派的佼佼者。
林家如說:「這一代中國買家在文革中成長,因此特別喜愛新寫實主義藝術家。他們的作品容易理解,主題環繞中國風情,例如鄉野美景或傳統的內地生活。」
買家爭相收購亞洲作品蔚然成風,藝術家與經紀人多樂見其成。但也有人擔心炒作風氣太盛,未來恐怕引發危機。林天苗說:「買家有兩種:一是投資型,收購之後很快就脫手;另一種則是真正的藝術愛好者。很不幸,許多買家收購藝術品憑的是人云亦云,而不是眼光獨到。」
此外,今天的市場雖是欣欣向榮,為中國藝術家帶來可觀財富,許多藝壇人士卻另有所見。曾梵志說:「我很擔心,因為大家關注的是拍賣價格,而不是藝術家或作品本身。有些藝術家為了金錢而創作,這一點我不敢苟同;我的許多同行也是這個看法。藝術家不能以賺錢為終極目標,應該努力創造有靈性、有理念的作品。創作時如果只想到金錢,作品一定有問題。」
目前不僅中國藝術家作品價格屢創新高,其他亞洲國家,如印度、日本、韓國的藝術市場也交易熱絡。司徒河偉說:「我個人覺得,在技巧上,有些韓國、日本的藝術家比中國藝術家更有意思,讓人眼睛一亮,只不過他們沒有『中國』這個因素推波助瀾。」
頂尖藝術家的行情持續發燒,但許多後起之秀的作品價格平易近人,說不定就是明日的徐冰或曾梵志。林壁興身為藝術愛好者的經驗之談是:「長江後浪推前浪,永遠會有精彩絕倫的新一代藝術家出現,而且作品價格不會太昂貴。收藏家不必迷信藝術家的名氣,要買,就買真正能夠感動你的作品。」
他強調:「作品價格不貴並不代表價值不高;說不定這位藝術家不鳴則已,一鳴驚人。」
【讀者文摘2008年3月號】
2008年3月23日 星期日
Tracey Emin fights to save Brick Lane from developers
Tracey Emin is leading the battle to save the ‘cultural heart’ of East London from developers
For Tracey Emin, it’s less a case of “not in my back yard”, more “not in my Brick Lane”. This month, she joined many of Britain’s leading artists in sending an open letter to the capital’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, deploring the redevelopment of what they call the “cultural heart” of east London.
Emin and fellow resident artists - among them Dinos Chapman, Rachel Whiteread and Gary Hume - claim plans to build a cluster of towers around Brick Lane, Bethnal Green and Shoreditch are “a latterday gold rush” that represents “corporate plunder of the most cynical kind”.
So it is with trepidation that I point out to Emin - who has lived in the East End since 1982 - the whiff of nimbyism surrounding the Save Shoreditch campaign. Thankfully, her famous temper is directed at Livingstone. “I’m sure he wouldn’t like it if it was happening where he lives,” she fumes. “These plans have been developed with no regard for the community whatsoever. I’ve tried to discuss [our complaints] with him and he was totally dismissive. He said that people like me, snobby people, are stopping progress.”
Emin, 44, first moved to the East End to study at the Sir John Cass school of art, media and design in Whitechapel. The area was still, quite literally, a bomb site. “Most of Brick Lane was derelict. There were still a lot of Jewish fabric shops, with only 10 Bangladeshi restaurants,” she recalls. In the early 1990s, when the original Spitalfields market closed to move to new premises further east in Leyton, empty market buildings could be rented for next to nothing.
The Young British Artists (YBAs) - painters, sculptors and conceptual artists, named after a series of exhibitions of their works staged at the Saatchi Gallery in the early 1990s - were quick to seize their opportunity. Abigail Lane lived on Curtain Road; Sarah Lucas and Gary Hume had studios just round the corner. A few years later, Emin recalls, “we all had studios in Wentworth Street and Brick Lane: me, Mat Collishaw, Sam Taylor-Wood, Jake and Dinos Chapman”.
As rents started to rise, less fortunate artists were forced to move further east, to cheaper Hackney Wick or Stratford. Thanks to Charles Saatchi’s patronage of the YBAs, however, their reputation soared, and in 1993 Emin and Lucas rented a shop on Redchurch Street, at the top of Brick Lane, to showcase their wares. Everything for sale had been made in the studios upstairs, from T-shirts and badges to posters and tiny sculptures.
Since then, Emin - who achieved notoriety with her tent entitled Everyone I Have Ever Slept with 1963-1995 and My Bed, which was shortlisted for the Turner prize in 1999 - has amassed her own property portfolio in Spitalfields. In 2001, she bought a five-storey Huguenot townhouse for £900,000 - a house on her street recently sold for £2.4m. She has also acquired a former weaving works, Tenter Ground, for just under £4m. Those who bought at the start of the influx of artists have fared even better: the artist duo Gilbert and George, who live around the corner, bought their weavers’ townhouse for £22,000 in the 1970s.
Emin is justifiably proud of her Grade II-listed house. It is, she claims, one of the oldest townhouses in Britain, built in 1729. “You’re living inside an antique - it has all the original floorboards and staircases - so you have a responsibility to keep it functioning and running properly,” she says. “I’m constantly repairing the wood-panelled rooms, clearing the guttering, mending the slate roof.” She has tried to reflect the Huguenots’ sense of style in the house, using a Farrow & Ball palette of “murky off-whites, greeney-greys and a couple of wilder colours, such as blue-black”.
The Huguenots - French Protestants who coined the term refugiés when they were driven out of France by the Catholic king Louis XIV in the 1680s - were silk-weavers and artisans. Theirs were some of the first brick townhouses, after the destruction of wooden houses by the Great Fire of London in 1666. According to Emin, they also invented wall paint, replacing dour English plaster with muted whites and greens.
“The Huguenots understood about building and about terraced houses,” she says. “They are much bigger than they look from the outside, but they’re on a good human scale, so you don’t feel like you’re rattling around. Mine has 10 rooms - some people could have 15, depending on the layout - and they’re proportioned well, with beautiful light that goes through both sides of the house.”
Emin vows never to sell the house or the weaving works, but intends instead to preserve them as a piece of history. Tenter Ground (named after the tenterhooks the weavers used to hang their fabrics out to dry) will be renovated in the same style as her house, keeping all the original fittings and floors. And it will be used as a studio, in the tradition of the weavers who first inhabited it.
“It’s brilliant, the last building of its kind,” she enthuses. “It needed to be bought by someone like me.” It went on sale at £1.5m, but Emin is believed to have paid more than that again to buy out the leases of the current tenants. It will be 8,000 sq ft when she has completed her extension.
Emin says that her problem with the developers is not about regeneration, but about the local residents’ right to daylight. “I am pro-commerce, I welcome regeneration of all areas and I really like new architecture. What I’m against is blocking people’s light in residential areas.”
The proposals are for a group of buildings providing commercial and residential units, ranging from four to 25 storeys, on Bethnal Green Road, in the low-rise heart of the Brick Lane area. The local authority, Tower Hamlets, has approved the plans, which Emin says will mean that many of the East End’s historic streets will be shrouded in perpetual shade.
The developer, Telford Homes, says: “This regeneration, creating new homes, new jobs and positive mixed-use redevelopment, is designed to revitalise the area close to the cultural quarter of Brick Lane.”
Local campaigners argue that the approval of these buildings will open the floodgates for developments at Bishopsgate Goodsyard, in Shoreditch. They believe plans are soon to be submitted by the developer Hammerson for a group of towers up to 50 storeys high, covering an area of 13 acres.
Emin claims developers wouldn’t get away with it in urban hot spots such as Soho or Clerkenwell, but says the East End is still thought of as “slummy”: “They think there aren’t people there who care. That’s why it’s important that we artists sign this letter. We care about the way things look.”
While admitting she is using her celebrity to speak up for the area, Emin insists she is not singling out her coterie for special treatment. “I’m not saying artists should have a welfare state,” she says. “I’m saying it would be good if some of the original infrastructure could stay. That’s what makes the area special. Commerce should come in and have an understanding or sympathy for the area, not bulldoze and destroy what was beautiful about it.”
For Emin, the East End is of almost mythical importance. The Romans used the area east of the city walls as a burial ground; in medieval times, a hospital, St Mary Spital, was built on the site. “In the ground just near my house, there is apparently a runic circle,” she says.
“The whole area is supposed to have a healing quality, which is why the hospital was built here.”
It is, Emin acknowledges fate to discover cheap, spacious areas with interesting history and good aesthetics, only to see the developers move in. Shivering away in their freezing cold shop in the early 1990s, she and Lucas had always known they were on to something. “We used to say, ‘In 20 years’ time, this place will have bijoux cafes with umbrellas outside, and the secondhand car lot will be long gone’,” Emin recalls. “We were absolutely right.”
2008年3月22日 星期六
藝言堂》初準備‧淺準備‧深準備
2008.03.22 04:15 am
文化創意無所不在,有時更像打撲克牌時的鬼牌(Joker)無所不能。文化創意可以發揮在各行各業,大家也無不希望藉助文化創意讓自己的商品能討客戶喜愛,賣更高的價錢。
1月初,師大公布「2006-2007全國文化消費調查」,台灣過去一年一人約花470元看電影,平均一人一年進電影院不到兩次;花在表演藝術的金額平均才百元上下,花費在音樂類型活動的金額最高,年平均消費金額為169元。報告中也說經濟不景氣,物價飛漲,消費者自然不敢亂花錢在文化事物上。
對於分布在食衣住行育樂的文創市場,消費者對文化消費其實需要文化的學習準備,而這準備約略可分為「初準備」、「淺準備」與「深準備」。
「文化初準備」:老街上的臭豆腐、蚵仔煎、炒米粉、擔仔麵、烤蕃薯;書展中以動漫畫、同人誌為主打;或娛樂方面的布袋戲、台客文化等,稍加簡單的文化包裝、視覺設計,消費者不需要太多文化上的學習積累,就可以消費、享受,並且很容易獲得滿足。目前在台灣各地以仿古老街、活動市集等招攬觀光的模式,大致屬於此類。
「文化淺準備」:一些利用秦皇漢武、唐宗宋祖、康熙乾隆等人物時代背景的故事,或利用三國演義、水滸西遊等來發展內容,或像明華園歌仔戲的《白蛇傳》、《媽祖》等,可屬文化淺準備,因為這些文化商品的提供者,並不用花大力氣去介紹這些故事裡的人物,一般消費者對他們早已經耳熟能詳。
「文化深準備」:交響樂演奏《柴科夫斯基系列》或其他舞蹈、戲劇表演藝術,有時少了公關票、政府或企業包票,要讓觀眾自掏腰包的話,恐怕也有好多場子坐不滿人;或美術館的展覽,那怕門票再便宜,也很難在參觀人數上有所突破。因為除了金錢考量外,更重要的是文化消費者必須有長時間的美學訓練與文化學習的「深準備」。
在社會的金字塔結構裡,當然是文化初準備的人數最多,淺準備其次,深準備的最少。但沒有深度文化準備的消費者,則文創業者無法銷售高文化附加價值的商品。若要長期健康地發展文創產業,就必須提升消費者的文化準備來支撐,而不是政府與企業的資源贊助。
台灣的科技創新力在世界經濟論壇(WEF)的排名為世界第七,那是因為台灣在過去30年有很深的科技準備;在目前台灣重科技、經濟而不重社會人文的大氛圍裡,台灣文化消費者的文化準備可說是「一丈差九尺」,那又遑論文化創意產業的發展?
(作者是前台灣愛普生公司幕僚長;目前是政大EMBA班文化創意特邀講座主講人,部落格:http://www.wretch.cc/blog/metroshack)
2008年3月20日 星期四
溫馨懷舊的文化生活紀錄
新加坡國家博物館在經過數年的翻新與擴建後,已全面重新開放。舊翼的殖民地式新古典建築,和新翼的簡約現代建築完美融和,堪稱典雅精美的歷史文化中心。
館中的常設展覽項目中,除了展現新加坡所走過的 700 年的「歷史展覽館」,最令人耳目一新的,就是「文化生活館」。它分別從傳統美食、時尚潮流、攝影藝術和電影戲劇的角度,呈現 20 世紀初到 70 年代期間大眾生活文化的演變歷史。對於學習或從事藝術或設計的人,這裏儼然成了溫故知新啟發靈感的教室。
美食藝廊 Food Gallery
呈現的是 1950-70 年代生氣勃勃的街頭美食文化。這裏展示了小販在街頭討生活的設備,各式「設計」樸實的烹煮器具,杯盤食具以及豐富的食材與香料。多媒體的效果讓訪者更能感受當年現場的氣氛。
服裝藝廊 Fashion Gallery
展示新加坡婦女的服裝演變史。展出的服飾與配件,除了見證審美觀因文化交流,時尚潮流的更替而改變,也反映出女性在所扮演的多重社會、經濟、政治身份與角色的演化。另外還展示各式布料及縫紉器具。
攝影藝廊 Photography Gallery
借助現代影像的科技,展出珍貴的歷史圖片和影像資料。並藉此介紹了 20 世紀初新加坡社會的人口和家庭結構。
電影戲劇藝廊 Film & Wayang* Gallery
介紹新加坡電影業的發展歷史,並探討了華族的傳統戲劇在新加坡的承傳與變遷。(* Wayang 是印尼語和馬來語中「戲劇」的意思,在此意指常以野台戲為表現媒體的傳統戲劇。"Wayang" is an Indonesian and Malay word for theatre.)
由於新加坡邁向現代化的歷程相當迅速,對老一輩,甚至中青輩都還歷歷如昨的生活方式與事物,感覺既熟悉,又似久遠。參觀這樣的生活紀錄,不禁讓人感念前人為生活奮鬥的精神,溫馨的懷舊情懷油然而生。
【DFUN 設計風尚誌 2008. Mar. No.18】
2008年3月19日 星期三
「藝」股熱談 (下)
另一市場的「中國現象」
在作進一步申論之前,幾個落在中國當代藝術之外的參考點,尚須一提。首先,另一市場裡也有「中國現象」。「埃雪富時新華25基金」(iShares: FTSE/Xinhua 25),這一支追踪中國股指數的基金(紐約證券交易所股票代號:FXT),2006年3月31日的收盤價為74.28美元,而蘇富比在紐約首度舉行亞太當代藝術拍賣,就在這同一天。至於2007年10月5日,最近一次香港秋拍前一天的禮拜五,FXI收盤在191. 61美元。因此,這一支中國指數同樣在這18個月內上漲了約158%──未若蘇富比紐約亞太當代藝術拍賣的總額可觀,但以股票指數言,怎麼看都是很顯著的漲幅。不止FXI股票以蘇富比拍賣平均價的一小部分就可以買到,而且流動性極強;雖然成交量(交易的股份數量)每天有別,但是,2006年3月31日的成交量是267,100,2007年10月5日則是5,824,300──增加了20倍。這裡的重點,不在於把中國當代藝術當投資,拿來和股票指數基金比較,二者各有其利益,也有其風險。這裡要說的是,同一期的這18個月內,股市指數飆漲加上畫作成交量暴增,顯示在這期間熱門的不僅只是中國當代藝術而已。凡是和中國沾得上邊的──尤其是和中國大陸沾得上邊的,只要不是最近屢登頭條的瑕疵消費品就好──幾乎全都很「火」。
驚人的增值幅度
現在再回頭談「藝術」。2004年11月9日晚上,我就正在蘇富比的夜拍現場,那時羅斯科(Mark Rothko)1954年的漂亮大畫《No.6(Yellow, White, Blue over Yellow on Gray)》,以1,736.8萬美元賣出(內含蘇富比佣金),遠遠超過預估的900至1,200萬美元。這樣的金額,看來應該是要咋舌才對;賣主當然很是高興(賣主是慕欽(Robert Mnuchin),由高盛(Goldman Sachs)高層退下來轉任藝術經理人)。這一幅作品上一次在蘇富比公開拍賣,是1987年5月,售價是92.4萬美元,由此可知這17年的年報酬率是眾所豔羨的18.2%──若真要把這樣一件空靈脫俗的畫作用粗俗的金錢價值來玷污的話。那一晚的拍賣成交總額,達9,350萬美元,創下15年來的新高。先前的拍賣紀錄,是1989年11月創下的──時間正好在藝術市場出現世人難忘的倒栽蔥,直墜而下久久無法翻身的前夕。
當然,2004年11月羅斯科的買主一樣可以好好高興一下:由於買得起的人愈來愈多,羅斯科的重要作品一幅現在就算賣1,740萬美元,還根本像是撿到了便宜!大衛和佩姬.洛克斐勒(David and Peggy Rockefeller)夫婦收藏的羅斯科1950年略小一點的《白色中心(在紅色上的黃色、粉紅和紫色)》(White Center(Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose)),在2007年5月的蘇富比拍賣,以7,284萬美元落槌。這一幅畫是洛克斐勒家族於1960年向席德尼簡尼斯藝廊(Sidney Janis Gallery)購入的,此後便一直在該家族手中。雖然《白色中心》絕對是兩幅作品裡面比較重要也比較好的,但兩幅畫的售價,依然可以拿來約略大概算一下羅斯科的重要作品從2004到2007年增值的幅度:約319%。
全球當代藝術市場普遍旺盛
5月15日蘇富比的拍賣所得,高達2億5,490萬美元的巨量,較諸2004年11月破紀錄的成交額,增加達172.6%──雖然其間有很多紀錄都已經破過了。我記不清楚5月15日的成交金額是否創下新的紀錄,但從數字一直往上飆的情況來看,作記錄就顯得沒有多少意義了。第二天晚上,佳士得緊跟著舉行拍賣會,一別苗頭,賣出74件作品,金額高達3億8,470萬美元。那一場拍賣會最搶眼的作品,是沃荷(Andy Warhol)1963年的《綠色車禍──火燒車》一號(Green Car Crash—Burning Car I),90x80英吋的經典之作,以7,172萬美元賣出,預估價是2,500萬至3,500萬美元。那一場拍賣會也拍出了沃荷1962年的《檸檬黃夢露》(Lemon Marilyn),20x16英吋的帆布畫作,以2,804萬美元賣出(預估價未公布)。等到了5月16日晚上落幕,拍賣會上出手的十幅沃荷作品,已經進帳高達嚇死人的13,670.4萬美元,羅斯科1961年的兩幅精緻作品,進帳436萬美元,一幅德庫寧(Williem de Kooning)賣出1,910萬美元,一幅瓊斯(Jasper Johns)賣出1,740萬美元……總共有26位藝術家的作品,創下新的拍賣紀錄,有65件作品的售價超過100萬美元,74%的售價都高出高預估價……事情就這樣。
這倒不是在拿羅斯科、德庫寧、沃荷或是瓊斯作品售出的天價,來和中國當代畫家的售價作比較,中國當代畫家的售價雖然已經狂飆,但還是比較低。這樣的比較,以藝術史的角度來看,在我只覺得荒謬之至;這比較我稍後會再回來略談一下。反之,這裡東一串000、西一串000,為的是要指出現今旺的不僅只是中國當代藝術,現代和當代藝術市場,有很大部分全都跟著很旺。前幾百年裡,當代藝術從來未曾在同一時間,吸引到這麼多人注意,而且,還是在錢潮好像取之不盡、用之不竭的時候。「這年頭不值錢的東西就只剩錢」先前我有一位德高望重的同儕,就跟我說過這一句話。
總之,迷「中國東西」的人變多,對當代藝術的興趣變廣,市場的錢坑像是無底洞,價值低估的新興風險性資產大爆炸隨之冒出投機客──這些加總起來,就創造出絕對完全的環境,供中國當代藝術發展。而中國當代藝術由此會再往哪裡去,每個人都像掐指神算,只是,有的人算得準,有的人算不準──其他人則是用推論的吧。不過,過去這三年我們目擊的發展速度,無疑是無法持續下去的。沒有哪一資產類別可以用每六個月擴張30%以上的速度發展下去,漫無止境。這樣的動能──到目前為止跑得還真是快──終究有耗盡的一天。這不是說價格一定會往下跌,或不再往上爬;只不過,價格終有一天是沒辦法跟最近一樣攀升得這麼快。只是在飆得暈頭轉向的市場裡,只要一有平盤的走勢,在有些人,可能就覺得像是天塌下來了。
未知的歷史定位,無法比較的價格
所以,若是羅斯科或沃荷的一幅作品都可以賣到7,200萬美元,另外還有很多畫家也都可以輕易就賣到500萬美元或1,000萬美元以上,那麼,有誰看到張曉剛或是岳敏君的作品標價為幾百萬美元之後,就該瞠目結舌的呢?若分開來個別看,當然不必。只不過,拿沃荷去和岳敏君或是王廣義──舉例罷了── 作比較之所以禁不起推敲,不僅在於沃荷是沃荷,而別人都不是沃荷;光這樣子看,幫助不大。這樣子作比較很笨,是因為蘋果和橘子雖然是在同一區域市場用同一類貨幣在作買賣,但用二者的相對訂價來判斷蘋果或是橘子的本然質素,未必特別有用。沃荷在1960年代以降的藝術發展太過重要,影響也太長久──而且遍及全球,王廣義的作品即為明證(艾未未的創作手法也是)──20世紀少有藝術家可以與之相提並論者,尤以20世紀後半葉為然。沃荷之所以重要,是因為大家在後世藝術家的造型策略和創作手法上面,一直都看得到沃荷的遺緒,而且是遍及全球。而這一點,是否就可以證明7,200萬美元的標價合理呢?我不知道。不過,管你喜不喜歡他,沃荷的作品和生平,確實是後世發展的基石,而且,現今看起來,這一層關係還要更切近。沃荷自己就說過,「我喜歡把鈔票掛在牆上。你若要花20萬買畫,那我看你還不如把這些鈔票捆好直接掛在牆上就好。這樣,有人到你家去,最先看到的就是牆上的鈔票。」
沃荷於1987年過世,得年58。中國當代藝術市場的超級巨星──大部分都生於1950年代末至1960年代初──看來都還有好幾年餘裕可以追趕,再讓我們拿他們的作品去和沃荷終身的創作作評比。不過,我們也該記得,沃荷的市場本身在1980年代和1990年代早期也是很低迷的。所以,或許還要過個 20年,我們才有辦法真的來比較個別的中國當代藝術家在市場上該有的地位,及其於國際藝壇引發的迴響和有何重要的影響──也就是:他們於同輩和後世有多大的衝擊。就是因為這樣,我才說拿羅斯科、沃荷或瓊斯來比較價位會顯得似是而非:這連說拿中國蘋果和西方橘子在比也不算,這簡直就是拿不同世代摘下來的果子在比,產出國是哪裡就根本別提了。荷於1987年過世,得年58。中國當代藝術市場的超級巨星──大部分都生於1950年代末至1960年代初──看來都還有好幾年餘裕可以追趕,再讓我們拿他們的作品去和沃荷終身的創作作評比。不過,我們也該記得,沃荷的市場本身在1980年代和1990年代早期也是很低迷的。所以,或許還要過個20年,我們才有辦法真的來比較個別的中國當代藝術家在市場上該有的地位,及其於國際藝壇引發的迴響和有何重要的影響──也就是:他們於同輩和後世有多大的衝擊。就是因為這樣,我才說拿羅斯科、沃荷或瓊斯來比較價位會顯得似是而非:這連說拿中國蘋果和西方橘子在比也不算,這簡直就是拿不同世代摘下來的果子在比,產出國是哪裡就根本別提了。
生於1950年之後的藝術家比較
不過,一旦把焦點調整到比較可以作比對的事情上,結果還真的頗有可觀。在此不妨改看一看世代相近的藝術家──像是把全世界生於1950年後的藝術家拿出來比的──而且作品經大型拍賣公司落槌價達七位數者來作比較吧──這所謂的大型拍賣公司,就姑且以倫敦和紐約的佳士得、蘇富比為準吧。這樣劃出來的範圍,無疑是可以貼上「全球當代藝術」的標籤;而且,這範圍裡面,就有蔡國強(生於1957年)、岳敏君(生於1962年)、和張曉剛(生於1958年)等人的作品,在拍賣會上售價超過百萬美元。
在此,我可能會掛一漏萬,而且,到了下禮拜名單可能就又不一樣了。不過,在我寫這一篇文章的時候,我數得出來的這一類藝術家,連中國藝術家在內,約莫只有30位──相較於現今動輒要從荷包裡掏出來的天文數字,是少得很奇怪。這「百萬俱樂部」的會員有巴斯奇亞(Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1960~1988)、哈林(Keith Haring, 1958~1990)、孔斯(Jeff Koons, 1955)、村上隆(Takashi Murakami, 1963)、赫斯特(Damien Hirst, 1965)──全都算是沃荷的嫡傳或是門人,只是層面不一──外加美國人稱「不良少女」的畫家優絲卡瓦潔(Lisa Yuskavage, 1963)和她的英國同輩薩維爾(Jenny Saville, 1970)、希絲莉.布朗(Cecily Brown, 1969),這幾位算是俱樂部裡最年輕的。德國攝影家安德瑞斯.高斯基(Andreas Gursky, 1955)也有此架勢;他在美國著名的同儕雪曼(Cindy Sherman, 1954)亦然。比利時畫家圖伊曼(Luc Tuymans, 1957)和生於南非的瑪琳.杜瑪絲(Marlene Dumas, 1953)、蘇格蘭的多依格(Peter Doig, 1959),也都躋身其間。
至於中國這一邊,我寫這篇文章時,有九位生於1950年後的藝術家躋身這一「百萬俱樂部」──這幾人是蔡國強(1957)、陳丹青(1953)、方力鈞(1963)、冷軍(1963)、劉野(1964)、嚴培明(1960)、岳敏君(1962)、曾梵志(1964)、張曉剛(1957)。另外還有幾位,不出幾個禮拜或幾個月,也應該可以跟他們平起平坐。但這裡最特出的一點,還是這俱樂部那麼快就從歐美獨擅勝場變成有近1/3都是中國人了。至於這市場比較晚才打進來的人裡面,有幾顆最亮的新星,已經數度締造耀眼的成績:我在寫這一篇文章時,張曉剛已經有20件作品於2006和2007年售價衝破百萬,岳敏君有十件(全都在2007年),劉野有五件(全在2007年),曾梵志有六件(一樣全都是在2007年)。我相信再過幾個禮拜這數字會再攀升,「百萬俱樂部」的會員很可能會再多好幾人,不管是不是中國人。
依這樣的數據,我看有三種可能的解釋。第一,我們應該可以說,現在有一些非中國籍的藝術家,其作品相較於中國的同輩,售價算是打了折扣;這就使得中國當代藝術家於枱面上的價格,變成了國際同儕團體比較分析的基準點,也由此可以推論,應該還有「別的」同級甚或略勝一籌的藝術家的「價值」,未獲認同。另一方面,我們可能也可以說,中國當代藝術最閃亮的明星(或者至少有幾位),目前的價值是高估的,這就又使得當代國際藝術家於枱面上的價格,成為同世代同儕團體裡的基準點了。最後,可能有人要說,如今,國際上生於1950年後最重要的藝術家裡,有整整1/3都是中國人──雖然不過幾年前,根本沒人想得到會有這狀況;而這樣一看,就等於是把市場價值當成「重要意義」的替代詞,而「百萬俱樂部」的人口統計資料,也就只剩表面價值了。上述這些說法或許各有千秋,有的切中真實面的部分遠大於其他;只是,這些說法無一算得上充分。
由於市場上琳瑯滿目的各色飛靶還在繼續演進,讀者可以自行就數據資料來選擇自認為可信的解釋──若真還有可信的解釋的話。從今而後的發展,任誰都可以作解讀。只是,現在最清楚可見的僅只是:我們現在的處境,18個月後絕對不會一樣──這一點,有些人的解釋可能就比較好了。(本文譯自〈Taking Stock〉,《Yishu》,2007.12,頁44-50)
Dubai fair reaps reward of focus on Indian contemporary art
British collectors Charles Saatchi and Frank Cohen were among those who bought
Georgina Adam and James Knox | 19.3.08 |Going to London in a suitcase: Huma Mulji’s Arabian Delight sold to Charles Saatchi for $8,000
DUBAI. Arabian Delight, a stuffed camel squashed into a large blue suitcase, on show at the Art Dubai fair, has been acquired by Charles Saatchi. The 2008 piece by the Pakistani artist Huma Mulji, was the talking point of the fair, which opened to VIPs yesterday (Tuesday).
The sale, for $8,000 (£4,000), was brokered in advance by an art advisor; Mr Saatchi did not attend the fair, however he also acquired a large pop-style group portrait (Untitled Eclipse 3, 2007) by Jitish Kallat from Chemould Prescott Road Gallery (Mumbai), for about $200,000 (£100,000). Manchester collector Frank Cohen snapped up Jagannath Panda’s figurative study of trees, Absence in Cite, 2007, for about €60,000 (£47,000) at the same gallery.
The second edition of the fair, which continues until Sunday (23 March), brings together 70 dealers, compared to 40 last year, ranging from dealers from Dubai, Iran, Lebanon and Bahrein, to Australian, Korean, American and European exhibitors.
The fair has grown not only in size but in complexity, with a programme of talks and events and this year boasts an “art park” for video along with a special section devoted to Pakistan.
The event is supported by Dubai’s ruler, HH Sheikh Mohammed Al-Maktoum, who swept into the exhibition hall on the first day surrounded by a phalanx of photographers, courtiers and press. This highly visible patronage was reinforced by a visit from his son HH Sheikh Majid Al Maktoum, who is culture minister in the statelet.
At last year’s fair, sales were driven by the market for contemporary Indian art, with many showing Western art reporting disappointing results. As a result, this year there was more Indian and Middle Eastern art on display.
Sales in this category proved the strongest element on the opening day of the fair. In addition to the sales at Chemould Prescott, Aicon Gallery sold India Shining 2007 by Debanjin Roy for $20,000 (£10,000), a cast (3/5) showing a red-painted Ghandi sitting in front of a laptop.
While the mood was upbeat among the Indian gallerists, Western dealers noted that sales were slower. However Rossi and Rossi, with a solo show of Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso, had virtually sold out the God series of calligraphies, collages of glittery stickers (£16,500) per image, while Buddha in our Time, 2008, a large image of the deity, sold to the Australian White Rabbit Foundation for £45,000.
Elsewhere, there was a range of Western art on offer, from a large, $850,000 Sam Francis at Max Lang to Jawlenski’s House with Palmtree, 1914, priced at $1.78m at Galerie Thomas. Albion had parked Wim Delvoye’s lacy metallic sculpture Cement Truck, 2008, outside the fair (€600,000, £473,000).
“There is a tremendous feeling of optimism about the Dubai fair,” said Mona Hauser, founder of the satellite Creek art fair. This consisted of dealer shows and artist installations scattered around 22 traditional houses and outdoor spaces in the historic Bastakiya district.
This event has also gathered momentum, compared to last year when there were only eight houses available. This year there are also films, talks and concerts. The opening night (which took place Saturday, before the fair itself opened) attracted over 1,000 visitors and saw the start of very strong buying, particularly of Iranian art, much to UAE nationals.
Malekeh Nayiny sold examples from her Demon series of coloured photographic prints for €9,000 (£7,000) at XVA gallery. This series has also been on display at the Vuitton centre in Paris. Watercolours of childlike fantasy landscapes by Farah Abolghasemi were selling strongly at 14,000 Dirhams (£200) at Total Arts.
Ms Hauser confirmed that it is important for dealers not to overprice in this still nascent market. The Creek art fair runs to 31 March.
Like Dubai itself, the fair is still being built, and can be expected to evolve as dealers and clients alike deepen their knowledge of the field. “We had better questions this year and more serious people, and I feel the fair has greater momentum,” said gallerist Max Lang of New York.
「藝」股熱談 (上)
中國藝術市場於近年之發展,一如蔡國強完美的爆破藝術,轟動演出──完全無視於天候之惡劣、技術的難題,連小鼻子、小眼睛的藝評對著看得眼花瞭亂的觀眾苦口婆心、諄諄告誡,也動搖不了半分。岳敏君的無數分身,也隨中國當代藝術逐月屢創新高,笑得嘴愈咧愈寬。幾十名張曉剛大家族裡盤桓不去的無名氏,像花蝴蝶般到處飛,以特別來賓的身份逐宴而居。
中國當代:從香港走入紐約
這一塊市場擴張之快,以蘇富比在香港的中國當代藝術拍賣,和紐約的亞太(且也以中國為主)當代藝術品拍賣,表現得最為昭著。蘇富比2004年10月在香港首度舉行中國當代藝術拍賣,此後至一年後的第三度拍賣,成交總額躍增三倍,從295.0712萬美元上揚到901.9398萬美元,比前一年秋拍上漲了88%。蘇富比於香港的成交總額持續大幅上揚,2007年10月7日的最近一次秋拍,總額高達巨量之3,424.0517萬美元,為2005年同期的三倍。繼2006年4月的香港春拍之後,一年兩次的盛會再細分成兩場,一場以高價但跟風較小的現代藝術為主,另一場以當代藝術為主。為了和2005年作持平比較,當年現代藝術拍賣放在現在不覺得有多高的金額:831.4034萬美元,在這裡就要加進去才對。這時,中國當代藝術就從2004年10月尚處未開發時期的295萬美元,大幅成長,締造出迄今數十年藝術市場前所未見的蓬勃躍進,三年後,同類成交的總額,還成長為4,255.4551萬美元──增加了 14倍。
然而,香港的現況若證明這一塊公開市場已從嬰兒長成為大人,那麼,紐約的成交狀況,代表的就是新人的亮相派對。蘇富比先於2005年在紐約新設中國當代藝術部門,後於2006年3月31日舉行首度亞太當代藝術拍賣──等於是在西方藝術市場的重要據點,為引進亞洲藝術立下了里程碑。成交總額達1,322.8960萬美元,比香港前一年的秋拍要多,對於緊接著一禮拜後要在東方大港舉行的春拍,無疑是一大激勵。紐約拍賣的245件作品,賣出了89.1%,作品的平均成交價是6.0132萬美元。紐約的這一次首拍雖然耗了十年來推動,但遲至2006年才剛舉行;紐約這一次的拍賣,和香港一樣,都是未來發展的重要基準點。2007年9月30日,紐約的成交總額達3,844.6975萬美元,275件作品裡賣出 81.8%,平均成交價攀升到17.0875萬美元,較諸2006年3月,上升了184%。此次9月秋拍的成交總額,較諸2006年3月紐約的春拍,上漲了百分之191%。
由市場決定受矚目的作品
「充份揭露」在藝術市場,跟米開朗基羅的素描一樣,都是珍品,有其優點,只要不變成狗咬呂洞賓就好。或許就是這緣故,藝界身負多重角色的人一講起藝術市場,無不套用他們講起「全球化」或是「後現代」這一類概念的那同一套含糊、油滑的招數──現下的歷史變化無人不受影響,只是其間的動勢太複雜,沒辦法作簡單明瞭、定於一尊的說明。連瞧不起市場的藝術史教授,只偶爾為展覽目錄提筆撰文,也避不開市場動勢的影響,免不了要在這市場的動勢裡面扮演小之又小的角色。這絕對是想避也避不了的,尤其是在現在這樣的年頭,決定當代藝術何者值得矚目,是由市場本身在領軍的。人人都想在市場的蘋果派裡分到一塊,但又不想打翻往餅舖裡送的蘋果推車。只是,在討論到「市場」時,我老覺得這「市場」像是房間裡的寵物象,參與討論的每一個人和這一頭大象,都有見不得人的關係,最好藏著別讓人知道──除非講話的人的職業,明白就寫著是藝廊業者、拍賣業者,或是收藏家的代表。至於我自己跑的是什麼龍套呢?我的公司2005年開始,就為蘇富比的中國當代藝術部門做過一些顧問諮詢的案子。而眼見亞洲當代藝術在全球當代藝術市場裡面打下了更穩固的據點,對此自然是既快慰、又讚歎。
亞洲當代藝術市場的四大特性
我在2006年春天的蘇富比《Preview》雜誌上面,曾經撰文指出,亞洲當代藝術市場因有四大特性,以致有別於歐美的當代藝術市場;當時我寫道,「由此四者,可見此一市場的前景樂觀可期。」這四大特性,在我看來簡單明瞭,一如蘇富比於紐約舉行的首場亞太當代藝術拍賣,一定會衝破原先審慎、矜持的預估一般。這四大特性及其含意,略述如後:
(1)「少數幾位名人攘奪了絕大部分的鋒頭,尤以中國當代藝術為然……其他諸多重要藝術家……尚待藝術史或市場給予他們應得的表彰和垂青。……目前之功成名就,尚屬寥寥數人專屬,但於未來,可見將會由愈來愈多的藝術家分享。」
(2)「現今藝術史雖然已經開始糾正過往的偏見,比較能夠確實反映現代和當代藝術實作有其地域多樣性,唯拍賣市場還須努力,才能趕上腳步。」我還舉了幾名藝術家,指他們「有卓越的貢獻,不只在地區的藝術實作,也在更廣的藝術史面,」也說「這些藝術家的創作價值,理當獲得表彰,重作評價,但卻遲遲未見。」
(3)一放進更大的當代市場裡面檢視,「明確展現當代形式的藝術家,其風格與尚於傳統血脈之中挖寶但當代特性未減的藝術家,有所分歧」,就看得出來是導致其定值過低的一大盲點。我這說的便是當代的水墨畫,「對水墨畫有興趣的策展人和收藏家,迄至目前為止,都還集中在亞洲地區;不過,這樣的情況勢必即將有變。」
(4)「最後,」我寫道,「日、韓大師未獲持平鑑賞,當代水墨畫在這一區也未獲持平鑑賞,這樣的情況,就算套在那些在拍賣會上大放異彩的中國藝術家身上,一樣成立:這些中國藝術家以同一比較基準來看,比起歐美同儕,依然算是定值過低。這可能是新興的亞洲市場最重要的一大特點。」
不過,區區18個月後,修正顯然已經應運而生。我寫的第一點,已經證明為真;除了那幾位品牌已經很響的名家之外,另有許多藝術家在公開市場也已經打下了扎實的價格基礎。不過,這情況和承認二者等價的關係比較小,而和整體市場行情上漲的關係比較大。售價(這是公開的紀錄,因此是相當客觀的數據)和價值(這依我的理解,在有些人的看法是純屬主觀)的差距依然很大。北京的大收藏家管藝在最近一次的蘇富比拍賣前,在香港接受訪問時曾說,「不是好的藝術品就一定貴,也不是貴的藝術品就一定好。」我自己現在則對未來是否真有「愈來愈多的藝術家」可以分享「目前尚屬寥寥數人專屬的功成名就」,不敢盡信──因為,換算成金額來看,「成功」的基準點在過去18個月裡,已經往上翻了多達十倍。
至於我先前寫的第二點,我現在的感覺就比較複雜了。去年嶄露頭角的藝術家,如今「地位」和「價值」真的已經水漲船高,而且,現今還輕易就看得到許多藝術家紛紛冒出頭來──但這也要市場的增值和藝術史的認可真的有必然的關連。雖然我還是相信歷史評價的恆久價值,在於禁得起歷史記載長久的淬煉,但是,目前大面市場歡欣鼓舞的氣氛是要看作過眼雲煙,抑或是一場典範轉移──贏家市場正在寫它自己的藝術史,而且寫得愈來愈有說服力──則尚未完全明朗。這問題不在泡沫或崩盤,市場到後來一定會作修正。這問題,毋寧應該說是那些不算貴、但也因此算是「價值低估」的作品,一旦號令衝刺會發揮何等排山倒海的威力的問題。傳統類型的收藏家買得或許是「歷史」吧;但今天有眼光的市場投資客,抱著大筆流動現金買的則是品牌,還有品牌的形象──同時心中暗忖要以這品牌為商品,轉換獲利。這狀況在以前一直就是如此,而我看呢,目前尤甚。
至於第三點,我就覺得沒有必要作修訂了:我還是覺得水墨畫不論是在市場還是在策展圈子裡,都一定會掙得更多的認同。而別的傳統創作,只要還有創新的發展,這一點一樣可以引申沿用。不論市場和藝術史評價有沒有關連,有幾百年歷史的傳統若到今天依然生龍活虎,那就沒有理由會下沉到湮沒無聞而非上揚到更受重視。
最後一點,同時也是我18個月前指出之新興亞洲當代市場「最重要的一大特點」,就需要作最多的修正;這方面的數據點有那麼劇烈的變動,以致去年的分析,於今皆成老古董的歷史陳跡。我在我說的那些「比起歐美同儕依然算是定值過低的」諸多藝術家,加進了「就算在拍賣會上大放異彩的中國藝術家」。而這大放之異彩,於今更是壯觀,而且,也有幾則事例證明雙方的差距已然完全彌合。
美經濟學家預測中國將成為第三大藝術市場
《藝術經濟:給投資人的藝術市場指南》(The Art Economy: An Investor's Guide to the Art Market)一書的作者暨美國「藝術經濟學」(Art Economics)研究公司的主持人——麥克安祖(Clare McAndrew)於日前接受荷蘭馬斯垂克(Maastricht)「歐洲藝術博覽會」(The European Fine Art Fair)的研究委託,針對2006年以前的拍賣紀錄、博覽會成績、畫廊的銷售量等數據來評估全球的藝術市場發展。如今研究結果出爐,麥克安祖指出:中國已占全球藝術總消費額的5%,位居第四大,位居全球第一的藝術消費國仍是美國(占總消費額的46%),第二是英國(占27%),弟三則是法國(占6%)。但她表示這個研究採取的數據資料僅止於2006年,未加入2007、2008年的數據,事實上就過往的data來看,中國的實力不容小覷,例如與2005 年相比,中國在2006年全球藝術市場的占有率已從3.7%提升至5%,並且,在當代藝術的部份,中國的市場占有率於2006年時已超越法國,與英國各占此類型的藝術市場總消費額的20%。她推測並相信:在2007年時,中國已躍昇於法國之前,成為全球第三大的藝術市場,而北京國際畫廊數量的逐年趨增,以及去年於上海舉辦的「上海藝術博覽會」(ShContemporary Art Fair)都是促成這個現象的影響因素。
蘇富比國際執行長胡凱(Robin Woodhead)則表示:「藝術世界的中心往往與世界的經濟中心不謀而合。」中國在經濟面大爆發與快速成長的腳步,在在影響了它在全球經濟與藝術世界的地位。
ArtForum:如何懷舊?如何面對現實?
在一本以當代藝術為主要議題的雜誌中,無可避免的是如何觸及「歷史」?以何種角度呈現「歷史」?藝評人傑姆斯.梅爾(James Meyer)建議《ArtForum》刊登1973年數位藝評人討論藝術家艾娃.海斯(Eva Hesse)的對話。然而,如何以「當代」態度面對歷史?這是2月號《ArtForum》編輯手記中提出的討論。當年的氛圍對應今日當代藝壇,使得這段文字就像編者所形容的「時空膠囊」一樣,既懷舊又必須冒著被批評為「過氣」之險。但是《ArtForum》仍將此文披露,以不過度修飾、編輯重組的手法,盡量原汁原味地重現,因為當年對於「不讓生活負擔壓倒藝術創作熱情」及「不讓藝術否定生活」的探討,35年後的今天對這些問題仍然沒有答案。
本期《ArtForum》推出媒體票選具影響力的十大事件/人物(不限藝術界),入圍這個單元第一名的是藝術家陳箴(1955-2000),他以腳踏車、玻璃人體器官、巨椅、紅金雀花……呈現出有別西方當代藝術對機械的幻想;另一位入圍者是匈牙利籍、猶太藝術學家保羅.艾爾多斯(Paul Erdős),他相信透過數學及數字可以解釋世界的奧祕,此理論在他的自傳作品《只愛數字的人》(The Man Who Loved Only Numbers)表露無遺;其他有趣的上榜者包括全球以最高的紅磚房子改建的另類美術館、義大利杜林的安托內利尖塔(La Mole Antonelliana)、1977年成立的藝術替代空間「床墊工廠」(Mattress Factory),和一本闡述宗教末世論的漫畫《不可見》(The Invisible),書中主角都是無政府主義者,彼此以性、魔術、隱形超能力互相戰鬥。
此外,本期的重點還包括美國重量級現代藝術家賈斯培.瓊斯(Jasper Johns)的作品《灰色》(Gray),和以色列裔、現居紐約及柏林的歐莫.法斯特(Omer Fast)之藝術家人物特寫;法斯特使用影像,記錄美國士兵於伊拉克戰爭的實際生活,具體呈現暴力、絕望、不信任、恐懼之凝結。他拍攝美國對伊拉克的戰爭場景,畫面有著面無表情、背負重型武裝的軍人,或是斷手斷臂的殘酷景象……他的作品不只是歷史文件,更多的是人格、認同和對世界現實的再現。
A package from India, the art world's newest Eastern star
The subcontinent is the rising star of contemporary art as collectors embrace a new generation of Indian artists
For the past few years the art world has gone China crazy, with record prices at auction, but now another Eastern star is in the ascendant. Indian art's time is coming.
From Charles Saatchi to the Serpentine Gallery, major collectors and galleries across Britain are embracing a new generation of Indian artists - Bharti Kher and her husband Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Sudarshan Shetty and Chitra Ganesh - and their daring take on topics such as Hindu myths, consumer society and immigration. Britain's first Asian Art Triennial is launched at the Cornerhouse in Manchester next month with provocative work by five emerging female artists based on the subcontinent. And the collector Frank Cohen has just opened the Passage to India show at his Wolverhampton gallery, Initial Access.
But what's the appeal? Prajit Dutta, from the Aicon Gallery in London, thinks that “what is distinctive about Gupta and T. V. Santosh is that the imagery is of terrorism, immigration, cultural alienation - global issues that we all brush past every day in the media.”
It's an in-your-face view of today's world that the Serpentine Gallery is keen to tap into. In December the gallery will present India Calling. “The architect Balkrishna Doshi is constructing a series of levels within the gallery space, some of which visitors will have to squeeze themselves into. This will reflect the superdensity of living conditions in India,” says Julia Peyton-Jones, the gallery's director. Developments in contemporary art, fashion, design and film will be explored in the show.
A rival Indian art extravaganza, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, is also planned for next year at Saatchi's new 70,000sqft gallery in Chelsea, which is scheduled to open shortly. It's likely to feature the work of the 33-year-old Bombay-based Kallat (Saatchi owns his 2007 installation Public Notice-2, 4,500 individual sculptures that spell out a speech by Mahatma Gandhi, and Eruda (2006), a 14ft sculpture of a boy selling books at a Bombay traffic light).
Kallat's work has also been bought by the Scottish property investor David Roberts and the Bombay-born London-based millionaire Adu Advaney, the managing director of a European private-equity fund. He is looking for a space in Mayfair to house part of his 250-work contemporary collection, which includes 24 Indian pieces.
Prices are rocketing. The private-equity investor Deepak Shahdadpuri was quietly amassing Indian art well before the market heated up - but even he is now struggling to afford it. “Price is now a constraint. I have four works by Thukral and Tagra, the first of which I bought for around $4,500 [£2,250]. Last summer, one of their pieces went for over $450,000 at Christie's in Hong Kong,” he says.
Leading auction houses are also feeding the frenzy. Christie's, for instance, has gone global, with auctions of Indian art in Hong Kong, Dubai and New York. Speculators who made a quick buck on the Chinese art market are now eyeing up the Indian scene. This is one art- market bubble that's set to get bigger and bigger.
Passage to India is at Initial Access, Wolverhampton (01902 798999; www.initialaccess.co.uk), until August 2
2008年3月18日 星期二
Hirst's fish in a chip shop may sell for £150,000
Tuesday March 18, 2008
The Guardian
Fishy business ... the Damien Hirst artwork that has been hanging in a fish and chip shop. Photograph: Bonham's
A fish that escaped being battered, despite spending almost a decade inches from the deep fat fryer in a Leeds chippie, is to be sold - for up to £150,000.
A handful of customers at the Town Street fish and chip shop joked that the fish swimming in formaldehyde, sealed into a small glass tank, looked like a Damien Hirst. Fortunately art thieves never spotted that it really was a Damien Hirst - Darren Walker and his father couldn't afford to insure it.
"People just got used to seeing it there, nobody paid it much attention," Darren Walker, who has now graduated from the chip pan to working as a maintenance engineer, said. "It was pretty securely attached to the wall, so we reckoned you'd have to know what you were doing to get it off in a condition you could sell it." He added: "Besides, we knew that if it was stolen Damien would give us another one, he's that kind of guy."
Walker and his brother and sister were school friends of Hirst's younger brother Bradley, at Allerton Grange in Leeds. When they left Walker was working in his father's chippie, and his mate was at a loose end so he put in a good word and got him a job there too.
The artist's pickled animals were just beginning to make a big splash in cultural circles: the Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, aka the shark, was first shown at the Saatchi gallery in 1992.
In Leeds, when they saw publicity about another piece, Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purposes of Understanding - a whole shoal of fish each in its own small tank - they joked that their apprentice should get his brother to make something for the chip shop walls.
"Two weeks later our fish in formaldehyde arrived," Walker recalled. "At the time I remember thinking that must be at least £5,000 there."
That was in 1994: the scales shone even more brightly the following year when Hirst won the Turner Prize, and the Walkers boasted that theirs was the only Damien Hirst on public display north of London. As the artist's market price soared - passing £1m for his giant anatomical figure eight years ago and hitting £50m last year for his diamond encrusted skull - the chip shop closed after a new landlord's rent hike.
The fish swam on to the wall of Walker's lounge, until the day when, desperate to move with his wife and children, he realised it was now worth most of the price of a new house in Leeds. "I'll be sorry to see it go," he said, "but it wasn't really appropriate for me to have it at home. I hope it can go to somewhere where more people can see it and enjoy it."
The fish will be auctioned - with the original crate with the stamp of Hirst's White Cube gallery - by Bonham's this autumn. Simon Mitchell, Bonham's regional director in Leeds, said: "the provenance is personal and impeccable. It's an amazing story about artistic generosity."
2008年3月14日 星期五
台灣嘸設計?
蔣友柏嗆外國設計師是「塞」? DFUN 還原專訪第一手報導!
橙果設計執行長蔣友柏接受 2 月號 DFUN 專訪,在我們出刊後引起各界熱烈的關注,與電視、平面和網路媒體的轉述報導。身為當天的採訪者,我想我有必要藉此機會回應一下各界諸多反應。為免蔣友柏的言論在本刊變成一言堂的觀點,我們也嘗試訪問一些設計師,針對他的觀點呈現出一些外界的意見。
從事媒體工作十多年,我深信一篇報導文章其實很難呈現原貌。從傳播哲學的觀點,「真相」只在時間的當下產生意義,「還原真相」變成一種不可能的遺憾。所以,這篇回應也只算是一種「勉力嘗試的企圖心」。
說實在的,可以約訪蔣友柏、甚至是說服他進棚拍照,一開始是超出我們期待的。因為蔣友柏特殊的背景,我了解許許多多媒體都有極大的意願邀訪;很多媒體界的朋友也知道,蔣友柏極少進棚拍照。所以,無論他的專訪引起怎樣的效應,我們還是非常感謝他願意破例為 DFUN 的改版「犧牲」。
直率的蔣友柏其實非常不喜歡拍照,更遑論進棚!在專訪前的溝通過程,我與橙果的公關主管約定好:不化妝、不做造型、拍照時間不超過半小時。蔣友柏冷峻的形象,加上這「三不」,其實讓我在專訪前就感受到「這次專訪是一次不輕鬆的任務」。
我的壓力著實也感染了當天的名攝影師曾敬福。經過與阿福的溝通,拍照當天的氣氛其實也是少有的緊繃。只見與無數大明星交手過的阿福,在過程中頻頻跟友柏說謝謝。令人意外的,蔣友柏覺得渾身不自在、打恭作揖,也三番兩次回以:「你別一直跟我說謝謝,是我該謝謝你才對吧!」
我跟阿福是多年好友,事後我糗他「你怎麼一直跟友柏說謝謝啊,很不像你喔!」阿福說「因為不知要跟他說什麼?」一個上午統計下來,可能是友柏說謝謝的次數還比我們多呢!
這是我感受到,與螢光幕上不同的蔣友柏。他的謙恭。
設計圈是他自己的舞台。在開放的言論市場上,蔣友柏以設計圈從業者的角色談他的設計觀點,絕對有其正當性。媒體如果算是發言機器,我們都不否認,蔣友柏的家世光環確實讓他先天上就佔據了有利的發言位置,成為媒體競逐的所謂「媒體寵兒」。
公眾人物當然應該謹言慎行,但,觀點卻是可受公評之事。蔣友柏的直言不悔,這點,至少是我、與幾位我熟識的設計人都感到激賞。
就我從事媒體相關工作十餘年的經驗,絕大部分的公眾人物選擇與鄉愿同行。我時常在採訪過程中聽到的 off record(不能報導)的字眼,我願意這樣說,大部分讀者看到的報導文章,都是一種採訪與受訪的妥協關係。
這點,至少蔣友柏的坦白是一種氣魄,沒有任何 off record 的扭捏作態。
如剛剛所言,這篇小短文,只試圖從記者的角度讓讀者接近一點現場氣氛。我們在後面的文章中摘錄一些設計人的看法(還是無法完整呈現每個人的意見),做為一點點平衡。裡面有好有壞。從媒體的角度,也只能很謙卑地讓可受公評的觀點呈現多方意見。至於我擔任 DFUN 雜誌的總編輯,我的觀點還是回到「總編的話」裡發表個人意見比較好!
教授、設計師、記者、網友各界反應
DFUN 2 月號蔣友柏專訪摘要
柏語錄之 1:很多朋友說蔣友柏是個「塞」。
柏語錄之 2:外國設計師對我來說都是塞!因為他們一直覺得台灣的設計都很爛。
柏語錄之 3:台灣設計界有個問題,當他們的利益受到威脅的時候,他們就會擺「我是個設計師,你不了解我」的悲劇姿態。
柏語錄之 4:台灣設計界最大的問題是「老師」。
嶺東科技大學 數位媒體設計系(所)教授兼設計學院院長 賴淑玲
我覺得他有病,再跟他耗下去,是浪費我自己的生命。懶得理他!
阿信(DFUN 創意設計家俱樂部,西肯設計公司資深設計師)
我覺得說外國設計師都是「塞」這應該不是他的本意,而是一種反諷!外國人可以批評我們是塞,我們何時可以理直氣壯的反嗆回去?
我瞭解台灣設計師總是會委屈自己去配合廠商的要求,所以蔣友柏這樣說也反映了許多設計師的心情,設計出的東西往往被客戶一改再改,即使很不情願也沒辦法。
其實一開始對於蔣友柏有點反感,但從商業的角度來看,他的這些作法與說法其實也沒有什麼不對。或許能透過蔣友柏這個在社會上比較有影響力的角色來教育民眾,一同檢視台灣設計界的問題。國外得獎的產品其實很多也是台灣設計師設計、或是台灣製造的,台灣一定有能力可以做設計!
蔡漢翔(DFUN 創意設計家俱樂部,成大工業設計系二年級)
因為還在學校就讀,對於設計界實際的狀況還沒有太全面的瞭解。但目前在學校學習的內容有些的確不太清楚對未來的發展有什麼幫助。
黃少韋(DFUN 創意設計家俱樂部,Vizio 瑞軒科技高級設計師)
對於蔣友柏的說法我沒有什麼特別的看法。不過我覺得台灣近期已經開始對「設計」這件事情有比較多的關注,也比較積極的在發展這個領域。不過還有很大一段空間需要努力,台灣企業對產品設計的著墨程度和國外相比,還是太薄弱了!
羅立德(台灣藝術大學)
只能說他是個很厲害的商人,這篇文章的標題下的也很好,因為蔣友柏在設計界真的很「塞」!
Morson(創河設計總監)
國內設計師 Morson 進一步闡述,設計 → Design → 滴塞(豬屎)!他認為設計本身就是種能量,就像點燃一根火柴,光和熱但也只是瞬間,要能遇上企業這桶汽油,才具有驚人的爆發力,而企業要是沒有設計來點燃,汽油是跟水沒兩樣,這之間缺一不可,端看怎麼讓「滴塞」變黃金!
台灣人向來跟「寒吉(蕃薯)」一樣具有強韌的生命力,隨處可開花結果,同樣也造就台灣設計師逆來順受的特質,台灣設計師懂得學習多方的能力,包容多樣的文化,因為台灣設計師必須設計符合歐、美、日的市場,台灣跟設計師一樣為這個世界貢獻很多,很多東西大家都知道「Made in Taiwan」但台灣卻始終都沒有身分地位,甚至連「Design in Taiwan」都不敢講,台灣設計師缺乏的並不是能力是自信還有發揮的舞台。
蔣友柏在訪問中批評台灣的設計教育出了問題!這部份與其說是老師的問題,不如說是教育制度的僵化。台灣師資制度還拘泥於老八股的「學位制」,工業設計系裡有多少老師具備了機械背景?擁有豐富的實務經驗?還可以兼具國際化與在地化的觀點?學校教育跟企業市場脫節是現代教育制度下各個領域都面臨到的問題。設計講求的是一分的天份 + 九十九分的努力,要找到屬於自己的那一分天份,才能成為真正的設計師,當然要是有九十九分的努力,也是不錯的所謂「工程師」(很多設計師在職場上都是掛名工程師)。在這部份蔣友柏也的確道中了台灣設計界後起之秀養成的問題。
師傅也只是領進門,修行還是要靠個人,老師並不是萬能的上帝,大學也只是提供個學習的舞台,一切都還是要靠自己 。就算王羲之般的奇才也要寫完一缸墨水,試問現在的設計師有沒有這樣的學習精神?還是半桶水就響叮噹?
angelosu(網友)
「利用部落格來做行銷」這一點我覺得沒有什麼錯耶,如果你有產品、你有理念,而且剛好也有部落格,你想推銷產品、想推廣理念,難道不會想用部落格來行銷嗎?這個時代如果不用部落格來行銷那肯定是落伍的。
【DFUN 設計風尚誌 2008. Mar. No.18】