有大陸「行為藝術第一人」之稱的李暐，其作品之鮮活大膽，衝擊人們的視覺感官。有人甚至把他的作品，類比為一九六○年代法國最前衛及最神祕的藝術家克萊茵。
現年卅七歲的李暐接受《每日郵報》採訪時說，他的作品的最大特色即在於「獨特性和個人性」，他並以「用鮮活的藝術，衝擊我們的視覺」，為其作畫宗旨。
李暐說，他最喜愛的作品之一係《鏡子二○○○》，這是行為藝術《鏡子》實施一年多的紀錄圖片，以脖子套上鏡子為主題，表現與周圍環境對話的情境。
李暐另有一項作品《它不願這樣逝去》，最為引人側目。那是在一九九九年十月，他在北京東辛店四合院內，裸體躺在床上，狀似死亡，只有生殖器從被單中露出而堅挺。然後，把土埋上，只露出生殖器。該圖片表明「精神的不可散失與延續。」
一位藝術評論者說，第一次看到李暐的作品，就被這些鮮活的圖片所震撼著並吸引。他不像很多人質疑李暐作品的真假，而是帶著很多的不瞭解，去一幅幅仔細地欣賞，彷彿看到作者內心的敏感與平靜，又彷彿看到作者對生命的無奈。據報導，李暐的作品行情已達每幅八千美元，他的獨特風格，被類比為一九六○年代法國最前衛及最神秘的藝術家克萊茵。
Colin Gleadell rounds up the latest developments in the art market
Sotheby's and Christie's sold about $9 billion of art last year. But, according to Arne Glimcher, chairman of Pace Wildenstein in New York, private sales by art dealers amount to "two or three times the auction market". In a survey published this week by the American magazine Art News, it is estimated that current annual private art sales are between $25 billion and $30 billion.
An Old Master painting that had been withdrawn from sale when it was discovered that it had been looted by the Nazis from a Polish art dealer, was re-offered by Christie's last week after the painting was restituted to the dealer's heirs. Pieter de Grebber's A Boy, in Profile was bought by London dealer Johnny van Haeften for £46,100, almost double its estimate. But the star of the sale was a tiny 16th-century, Holbein-style portrait of the French "seigneur" Charles de la Rochefoucauld, by the Dutch artist Corneille de Lyon, which sold to a collector for £558,000, five times its estimate. Another version of the painting is in the Louvre museum, but this one, says London dealer Richard Green, who underbid the painting, is probably the primary version. Born in 1915 and still going strong, Mary Fedden has long been one of Britain's most popular artists. Twenty years ago you could, if you were lucky, pick up one of her joyous, Matisse-inspired still-life paintings at the Royal Academy's summer exhibitions for under £2,000. But no longer. Fedden's auction prices have risen to more than £50,000, and at an exhibition (closing next week) of more than 60 of her paintings and watercolours spanning five decades at the Richard Green gallery, prices range from £8,000 for watercolours up to £95,000 for some of the oils. To that must be added an artist's resale royalty payment. Nonetheless Green has sold half the exhibition. One painting still up for grabs is Denny's Flowers, which is priced at £50,000. Another exhibition incorporating more than 120 paintings by Fedden opens at the Portland Gallery in St James's on May 8, and, judging by the gallery's website, those are selling fast, too. |
A devastating report on Art Cologne, Europe's oldest contemporary art fair, has been published on the Saatchi Gallery website and on Artnet.com. Both are written by the outspoken London and New York dealer Kenny Schachter, who claims the fair, which closed 12 days ago, was extremely poorly attended and that, unusually, he didn't sell one thing. This is refreshingly honest, but does not tally with the fair's official report, which lists numerous sales by other galleries. Art Cologne, once the hottest fair on the continent, has been in decline, suffering from competition from Frieze as well as several local fairs in Berlin, Dusseldorf and Brussels. Its director for the past five years, Gérard Goodrow, was made a scapegoat and unceremoniously sacked earlier this year. But he was instantly snapped up by Phillips de Pury & Co, for whom he will now run an office in Germany. |
Colin Gleadell on New York sales
This week, the warm-up begins for the big Impressionist and contemporary art auctions in New York, in which the auction rooms hope to rack up as much as $1.8 billion (£900million) in sales.
In the past three years, totals for these biannual New York auctions, which form the bellwether of the art market, have risen from $598million to $1.75billion last November, and the question is whether they can continue to rise. As each month goes by, tension mounts in anticipation of a major reaction to the global financial crisis. But, so far, the market has stood firm, and sellers hope to take advantage of this while the moment is still ripe. The series opens with Impressionist and modern art works that go on view on Friday prior to being auctioned next week. Among the sellers that can be identified are the actor Sean Connery and the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who are both selling works by Egon Schiele; the Nahmad family of international art dealers; and the British collector Graham Kirkham, founder of DFS Furniture. At Sotheby's, the focus is very much on modern art of the 20th century, as opposed to 19th-century Impressionist paintings. This is partly because the latter are becoming much rarer, but also because Sotheby's experts have conceived it that way. "We have buyers for certain things and we source them accordingly," says Simon Shaw, Sotheby's head of Impressionist and modern art in New York. "We wanted to be strong on modern art because it has a broader marketplace. We were not looking so aggressively for Impressionists." |
The stars of Shaw's sale are an unusually large and colourful Cubist composition by Fernand Léger that is estimated to fetch a thumping new record at between $35 million and $45million, and Edvard Munch's Girls on a Bridge (1902), painted at the same location as the artist's The Scream, which is also estimated to fetch a record between $24 million and $28million. This painting was last sold in 1996, when it was bought by Graham Kirkham for $7.7 million, and Sotheby's was sufficiently confident to approach him and offer a guaranteed sum for the work.
The Léger, which is owned by the descendants of the German silk manufacturer Hermann Lange, is also guaranteed, as are several works by Alberto Giacometti. A portrait of his young lover, Caroline Tamagno, carries the highest estimate ever placed on a painting by the artist at $10million to $15million.
Prices for works by Giacometti, whose estate has recently come under the management of the powerful Gagosian gallery, have soared in the last year to $11million for a painting and $18million for a sculpture at auction, and some owners are being offered considerably more on the private market, says Shaw, who has six Giacomettis in his sale.
Altogether, Sotheby's has either fully guaranteed or taken part-ownership in works that are expected to fetch at least $126million - roughly half the value of the sale. This could be risky considering the experience of last November when the failure of van Gogh's The Wheat Fields and several other guaranteed works sent its shares plummeting by 30 per cent overnight.
But Sotheby's is not alone: at Christie's flagship Impressionist sale, an almost identical amount has been risked. The main guaranteed work is Monet's The Railway Bridge at Argenteuil, which was bought by the Nahmad family in 1988 for $12.4million and is now estimated to fetch a record $35 million. Is this, though, a bridge too far?
Christie's has also targeted the burgeoning Giacometti market, offering the almost 9ft bronze Grande femme debout II for $18 million together with four other works by the artist. The number of Giacometti works - 11, in total, are included in Sotheby's and Christie's evening sales - is unprecedented and could bring as much as $73million.
The total value of next week's Impressionist and modern art sales is estimated at up to $809million, not quite a record. But in the following week, the stakes will be higher when nearer $990million of post-war and contemporary art goes on sale, the highest amount in history. The star lots are a $70million Francis Bacon triptych at Sotheby's from the collection of the Moueix family of wine producers in France, and a $40 million abstract painting by Mark Rothko being sold by Californian collector Roger Evans at Christie's.
But the level of guarantees - at least $340million, or more than half the value of the evening sales alone - is gargantuan. A collapse in confidence now would send Sotheby's and Christie's reeling.
Somehow it seems symptomatic of the inconsequential backwater that the ICA has become. More than a year after the relevant date has passed, an exhibition called Nought to Sixty, the major component of its 60th birthday celebrations, is only now about to open.
It was early in 1947 that the Institute of Contemporary Arts was set up, by a group of Modernists who wanted a “new consciousness” of the arts to evolve in exhausted postwar Britain. In June that year the ICA's prime founder, an anarchist poet called Herbert Read, wrote a letter to The Times appealing for funds. That produced a scathing riposte from the 91-year-old George Bernard Shaw. If we wanted to improve the wellbeing of British people, he thundered, the money would be better spent on hygiene, not the arts.
Shaw had a point, with London still full of bomb craters and primitive Victorian housing. And there are those who would argue that the ICA has done little in the 61 years since to prove him wrong.
I wouldn't quite go along with that. It's probably impossible for anyone under 50 to imagine how stuffy the mainstream arts scene in Britain was, even in the 1960s. The counterculture, the beatnik movement, hippies, sex, drugs and rock'n'roll - these were things that happened elsewhere. They had virtually no impact on theatres, concert halls or art galleries. The ICA in those days was a unique melting pot for the avant-gardes of different fields, from Peter Blake's Pop Art to John Cage's aleatoric music.
It was also a thorn in the complacent backside of the Establishment. Shows such as the 1965 happening Oh What A Lovely Whore, which invited the audience to smash up a piano, or the 1957 exhibition Paintings by Chimpanzees (which was exactly that), or Mary Kelly's notorious 1976 display of dirty nappies (to bring home the reality of motherhood), or Einstürzende Neubauten's never-to-be-forgotten 1984 Concerto for Voice and Machinery, which demolished the ICA's stage with a piledriver - all these shook preconceptions about art. One show was shut down amid threats of indecency charges. That was the 1976 exhibition on prostitution, featuring the half-clad charms of a porn model called Cosey Fanni Tutti.
Those were the days! The ICA was always a shambling, incoherent place - but at least in its heady early decades it could was occasionally capable of shocking Tunbridge Wells with a lively piece of gross moral turpitude.
But all that was more than 25 years ago. Since then? Well, there have been odd attempts to recapture the spirit of daring anarchy. Looking back over my reviews in the 1980s and 1990s, I see I wrote about a series of workshops on transvestitism with “New York's foremost cross-dressing impresario”, about a display of catfood balanced on melons, and about “the first international festival of naked poets”. None of which has left the slightest trace on my memory. That was how much impact they made on me, and on the public at large.
Little wonder, then, that the ICA has gone off the radar in the past 20 years. Apart from one incident, that is. Six years ago its chairman, a businessman called Ivan Massow, was forced to resign when he made the observation that most conceptual art was “pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat”. How ironic. The ICA was in the headlines, for the first time in years, because its boss had attacked the very thing that it was supposed to be promoting.
In one way, however, Massow's words were unsurprising, since the ICA had spectacularly failed to jump on the Young British Artists bandwagon that galvanised the London art scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Charles Saatchi and Tate Modern were allowed to set the agendas, garner the headlines and draw the big crowds. Another irony: for the first time in history, Britain was the centre of an avant-garde art movement - yet the very institution set up to champion the avant-garde was nowhere to be seen.
What has the ICA been doing instead, while millions flocked to Nicholas Serota's great brick culture castle by the Thames? Well, it's been offering what its music programmer calls “hot, drink-fuelled nights of music, butt-shaking and smiles”. Admittedly, these club nights have boosted its attendance figures. But should you need a £1.36 million annual subsidy from the Arts Council to do that? London heaves with clubs offering butt-shaking to suit every taste.
The ICA has also made a point of championing the “digital arts” - a subculture of a subculture that already seems as dated as a prawn cocktail. And it is reliving its past. The Concerto for Voice and Machinery was revived recently - though with a fake floor so that the building wouldn't suffer any real damage. How symbolic! The ICA is “not about storming the barricades any more”, says Ekow Eshun, the former style journalist who was appointed its boss three years ago. So what is it about?
Perhaps it is about identifying the artists who are going to be big in the 2020s, rather than those - such as Hirst and Emin - who peaked in the early 1990s. If so, Nought to Sixty looks promising. It presents 60 solo projects by young British and Irish artists. Each show lasts just one week. And the line-up for May looks suitably weird and wacky.
Nina Canell and Robin Watkins, for instance, will be showing a film of a man digging a hole in a bog. Read into that what you will. And there's an exhibition by Alastair MacKinven, a young artist last seen glueing his hand to the floor of the Camden Arts Centre to test how long it would take the attendants to notice. According to the ICA's programme, this prank “plays with notions of institutional critique”.
Perhaps these youthful japes will be enough to revive its wild, iconoclastic spirit. But stuck in its posh home on The Mall, just beneath the Athenaeum Club and the Institute of Directors, the ICA seems marooned both geographically and symbolically. In London today contemporary arts flourish. Even pillars of the cultural establishment, such as the Royal Opera House and National Theatre, offer cutting-edge new work. If the ICA were to become more like the National Theatre of Scotland, to become not a physical venue but a commissioning body, it might still survive with its point intact. Yet in its current form it is almost the last place you would look for brilliant new work.
People who work in institutes are, by definition, insitutionalised. And that's the last thing the avant-garde should be. When the Edinburgh Festival reached its 50th birthday, the great George Steiner declared that the best way of celebrating the anniversary would be for it to abolish itself - before what was spontaneous and exhilarating became routine.
I am tempted to offer the ICA the same advice. If the ICA blew itself up tomorrow, what an anarchic statement that would be! Except that I don't think many people would even notice that it had gone.
Nought to Sixty, May 5 to November 2, www.ica.org.uk/noughttosixty
Shock or shlock? Milestones at the ICA
Peter Blake: Objects, 1960
One of the British artist's first solo shows, this exhibition is credited with launching Pop Art to the wider public. In the early 1960s the ICA mounted exhibitions by several of Britain's top artists, including Howard Hodgkin, David Hockney and Richard Smith.
The Clash, 1976
One of the band's earliest gigs, it inaugurated punk. The NME reported that a woman at the front of the crowd bit her boyfriend's earlobe off in front of an astonished Joe Strummer, and tried to slash her own wrists with a broken bottle before being bundled away by security.
Prostitution, 1976
Threatened with indecency charges, the ICA was forced to take down the syringes, chains, used tampons and pornographic images, as well as the star exhibit, a semi-naked woman.
Concerto for Voice and Machinery, 1984
The German band Einstürzende Neubauten, wearing heavy-duty goggles to protect themselves (no such help for the audience), noisily destroyed the ICA stage, among other things, with a road drill.
Manga! Manga! Manga!, 1992
This film season, one of the first showings of anime in the UK, introduced Japanese animation to London, and showed the first overseas releases of many classics of the genre. It still carries a huge following at the ICA's Comica festival.
NANCY DURRANT
RESULTS FOR 2008
Ranking: 397=
Worth: £200m
Source of wealth: Art
Last summer the artist Damien Hirst, 42, sold a world-beating £180m-worth of his work at a London exhibition, including a £50m diamond-encrusted skull, pictured. In all, he owns more than 1,000 works valued at £100m. Born in Bristol and raised in Leeds, Hirst is a graduate of Goldsmiths College, London. He was discovered by Charles Saatchi (qv) and today his reputation as an artist is matched by his wealth. Hirst opened the Pharmacy restaurant in Notting Hill, which closed in 2003. A year later, he sold its art contents at Sotheby’s for £11m. The Pharmacy deal followed an exhibition, Romance in the Age of Uncertainty, at the White Cube gallery, where he made a further £11m. He used the money to buy back his work from Saatchi, including his pickled shark, sheep and cows. Hirst has a vast Gloucestershire studio and a £3m country pile there. He also has four buildings in Lambeth to turn into studios and exhibition space. He is reckoned to be the first artist to play dealers and curators at their own game, buying back much of his own work and investing in whole collections by the likes of his friend Sarah Lucas. Hirst now takes a 70% cut of all new work he sells, rather than the usual 50-50. But while there is little money in his main company, Murderme, with £12.4m assets in 2004-05, Hirst reckons his wealth is more substantial, saying: “I'm richer than any artist has ever been at my age.” Last July’s London show should have raised £135m after commission. With his property, other sale proceeds and the insurance value of his art, we put Hirst at £200m, allowing for tax and a £10m gift last Christmas of four works to the Tate, including the seminal dissected cow.
RESULTS FOR 2007
Ranking: 532=
Worth: £130m
Source of wealth: Art
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在聯合國鼓勵下，一條從倫敦到孟加拉首都達卡，全長1萬1265公里的亞洲大鐵路（Trans-Asia Railroad）預定年底開通。火車旅行的熱愛者可花23天，完成行經土耳其伊斯坦堡、伊朗德黑蘭、巴基斯坦拉合爾、印度德里的這趟「鐵」絲路之旅。
星期泰晤士報報導，已有火車迷形容上述鐵路是「全球鐵路旅行之最」，它比從莫斯科到海參崴，全長9290公里，俄羅斯最長鐵路的西伯利亞大鐵路（Trans-Siberian Railway）旅程還要長得多。
根據聯合國的贊助計畫，未來數月，巴基斯坦、伊朗會將他們的鐵路與這條次大陸鐵路接軌，也首次與歐洲搭上線。
聯合國表示，亞洲大鐵路通車，將在亞洲開啟新貿易道路，同時讓前蘇聯在中亞的加盟共和國可透過鐵路，抵達伊朗在波斯灣的戰略海港阿巴斯港。
1965年印巴戰爭發生後，印度加爾各答到達卡的鐵路其後關閉逾40年，本月初重新通車後，亞洲大鐵路才得以順利延伸。
消息人士說，亞洲大鐵路的唯一障礙為，從倫敦到中國大陸雲南省再銜接新加坡時，由於緬甸人權紀錄差，可能找不到外國資金，協助重建緬甸境內距離約350公里的鐵路。
英國鐵路迷史密斯已興奮地在自己的網站Seat61.com規畫行程，先搭歐洲高速鐵路「歐洲之星」（Eurostar）啟程前往布魯塞爾，在維也納用完 早餐後，再登上火車前往伊斯坦堡換搭渡輪穿越連接歐亞的博斯普魯斯海峽。渡輪未來將被地下隧道取代，但目前，乘客有機會欣賞到聖索非亞大教堂與托普卡比宮 殿的迷人景觀。
史密斯接著打算換搭土耳其的快車，前往伊拉克與伊朗邊界的凡湖，再換渡輪，接終點為德黑蘭，車廂極其現代化的快車。伊朗已將鐵路展延到巴斯斯坦邊界，旅客可換搭巴國火車前往奎達（Quetta），再到拉合爾、印度德里、加爾各答和孟加拉達卡。
走趟鐵絲路 北路要32500元
【記者吳學銘 編譯王麗娟／綜合報導】
亞洲大鐵路計畫又名「鐵絲路」（Iron Silk Road），橫越28國，東南起自印尼，穿越北亞、中亞、南亞，進入土耳其，再連結歐洲。2006年，鐵路確定分成北路、南路、東南亞、南北路四條路線， 四條路線總距離為81,000公里。未來數月將如火如荼進行的巴基斯坦與伊朗路段，為南路的一部分。
亞洲大鐵路北路與莫斯科到海參崴的西伯利亞大鐵路大部分重疊，台灣遊客若想坐火車到英國倫敦，可取道北路進行，先搭機到香港，再從九龍搭京 九鐵路到北京，轉西伯利亞大鐵路經莫斯科到倫敦。整個行程最快需九天，不計至香港的機票，單程鐵路票價約台幣三萬兩千五百元，比坐飛機還貴，但坐臥舖，可 省下住宿費。
至於南路，連接土耳其、伊朗、巴基斯坦、印度、孟加拉、緬甸、泰國，中國雲南、馬來西亞和新加坡，至今尚未完成的路段包括伊朗東部、印度與 緬甸之間、緬甸與泰國之間 、泰國至雲南之間。未來台灣遊客想搭南路到歐洲，碰到最大的難題還是簽證，以中亞為例，幾乎都要一國一國地簽，且作業時間很長，如果中間卡住一個國家不給 簽證，就無法成行。
早在2004年，世界旅遊組織在新疆烏魯木齊集會時，就呼籲絲路經過的沿線國家，包括中國、吉爾吉斯、土庫曼、哈薩克、巴基斯坦、伊朗、土耳其，共推「絲路旅遊護照」一證通各國，但因政經條件有別，中亞又經常有戰亂，到今天還無法付諸實施。
【2008/04/21 聯合報】
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Charles Saatchi is the art collector who creates trends. When he started amassing British art, the world flocked to buy works by the YBAs. He then turned his attention to American paintings and the Royal Academy showcased his collection with a sell-out exhibition. Saatchi moved on to Chinese contemporary artists and the market rocketed.
His latest artistic love affair, it has now emerged, is with contemporary paintings by emerging artists from Iran and Iraq. Mr Saatchi, who has never before bought a work of art by an artist from the region, has just acquired three paintings – one by the Iranian painter Rokni Haerizadeh and two works by the Iraqi Ahmed Alsoudani, who now lives in America.
There is now avid speculation that he is planning to put together an exhibition dedicated to the latest works emerging from the region when he opens his new gallery in central London.
Mr Saatchi admits that he had not been drawn to the region to search for talent but was drawn to these works as soon as dealers in Dubai suggested them. "One of the more unlikely places you expect to find a thrilling new artist would be Iran, but I was struck by this compelling picture of an Iranian wedding.
"I don't know if this will eventually lead to a full-blown survey of contemporary Arab art, though I am also rather interested by a young Iraqi artist, and if we find a few others over the next year or so who knows?"
Mr Saatchi, who was born in Baghdad but left as a child, denied that his interest in Iraqi art was sparked by his own personal history.
Haerizadeh, whose diptych, Typical Iranian Wedding, is now part of Saatchi's collection, is often said to reveal what lies beneath the façade of Iranian social customs. This work shows the segregated gathering of men and women in a wedding congregation on divided canvases. The banquet table is mysteriously empty on the women's side while the men indulge in culinary debauchery amid platters piled high with food.
Born in Tehran in 1978, the artist currently lives there but has shown work in China, Europe and America. Other works by him are inspired from the Persian book of the kings, Persian fables and tales of the celebrated poet Rumi.
Alsoudani, whose works We Die Out of Hand and You No Longer Have Hands have been bought by Saatchi, has alluded to Goya's Disasters of War in previous works, just as the Chapman Brothers have in their work which was subsequently bought by Saatchi in the 1990s. Alsoudani, 32, fled Baghdad for America after the 1990-91 Gulf War, and his large-scale semi-figurative drawings and paintings are said to bear some visions of the war-torn city he left behind. These works were discovered by Saatchi through a dealer in Abu Dhabi who sent him an image of the paintings.
Sotheby's first sale dedicated to contemporary works from the region in October last year made £1.6m in sales – double its estimated total.
2008/04/14 09:30編譯廖玉玲綜合奧斯陸十三日電
位於奧斯陸峽灣旁的挪威國家歌劇院12日正式開幕，這是挪威七個世紀來最大的文化建築，不僅一圓當地樂迷100多年的夢，也展現出挪威身為全球第五大石油出口國的經濟實力。
挪威國王和皇后、丹麥皇后和德國總理梅克爾等約1,350位各國政要和貴賓，12日齊聚挪威國家歌劇院，欣賞兩個半小時的開幕表演。挪威國王哈拉爾在致詞時表示，歌劇院位於奧斯陸峽灣的最深處，為極具紀念價值的新地標，未來此地將滿溢音樂、舞蹈和歌聲。
挪威國家歌劇院總監畢昂（Bjorn Siemens）更是意氣風發地說：「 雪梨歌劇院閃到一邊去吧！」
這棟新劇院花五年時間完成，造價高達42億克羅諾（8.4億美元）。光是劇院內部擺設的藝術品，價值就高達6,000萬克羅諾。由於歌劇院就在奧斯陸峽灣旁，因此整棟建築物看起來彷彿從水中緩緩升起。
歌劇院的屋頂用3.6萬塊高級義大利大理石舖成斜坡，參觀者可以走上屋頂，俯瞰整座城市和峽灣。劇院占地3.85 萬平方公尺，內部有1,000個廳，號稱是挪威700年來最大的文化建築物。
挪威是全球第五大石油出口國、第三大天然氣出口國，近40年來光是靠出口天然資源就獲得相當可觀的收益，油元更讓該國的主權財富基金擴增到1.97兆克羅諾（3,920億美元），在全球規模僅次於阿布達比投資局。去年挪威經濟成長率為1971年來最快。
早在1890年代，就有人提議在奧斯陸打造國家級的歌劇院，但直到1999年挪威國會才同意，而條件是，如果新歌劇院能建造在市區東邊人跡罕至的濱水區，就能以都市更新計畫的名義提撥經費。而此區也從原來只有汙染專家才會造訪的地方。
目前歌劇院周遭看起來還像是個建築工地，被貨櫃、鐵軌和馬路團團圍住。奧斯陸當局從2000年開始重新開發此區，濱海的土地從2003年開始銷售，整個更新計畫預定2018年完成。
奧斯陸市區計畫和建築物服務部門發言人表示，歌劇院目前是整個開發案的中心，未來必定是奧斯陸最熱門的觀光景點。
2008/04/14 16:39韓啟賢
為 了鼓勵另類、非主流與獨立藝術的發展，讓台灣的青年藝術家能有更多、曝光度更高的表演空間，台北市政府引進英國愛丁堡藝穗節的概念，預定在今年秋天於台北 舉辦2008「台北藝穗節」(TaipeiFringeFestival)；並自即日起到5月底，接受海內外新興、小眾與前衛性的表演團體或個人報名演 出。
在城市文化堙A除了大眾文化的主流表演與劇場藝術外，還有一種藝術是屬於另類、非主流、地下文化與獨立藝術；它們可能在畫廊、公園、咖啡廳，或是戶外廣場演出。這一類的演出在英國愛丁堡被稱為「藝穗」(Fringe)，在法國亞維儂被稱為「外」(off)，象徵自由開放以及成熟主動的演出精神。
像是在今年秋天就要邁入第61個年頭的2008英國愛丁堡藝穗節，預計會有來自40個國家的小眾藝術工作者與團體，在當地的250個場地進行約2000場的演出。此外，澳洲的阿德雷德，韓國的首爾，香港與中國的上海也有舉辦藝穗節活動。
而為了鼓勵年輕的表演藝術工作者，讓他們的藝術表演以及原汁原味的創意能在台灣發光發熱，台北市政府文化局與台北市文化基金會等單位，預定從8月30日到9月14日在台北舉辦第一屆台北藝穗節。藝穗節總監王文儀說：『前所未有，台北第一次，當然我們希望大家都可以快速加入台北藝穗節；我們希望台北藝穗節會是台灣表演藝術團隊，最佳的曝光活動平台。』
主辦單位指出，今年的台北藝穗節是從本月7日起接受網路(www.taipeifringe.org)報名，報名截止日期是到5月29日為止。可表演的項目包括歌唱，戲劇，舞蹈與即興表演等等；根據統計，到本月14日為止，已有22個團體或個人完成報名。
| 2008-04-14 03:01:20 | |||
| 蘇富比(Sotheby)的富豪客戶們似乎開始拖欠付款了，對這家拍賣公司及藝術品市場而言，這或許是個不祥之兆。 蘇富比的年報顯示，該公司2007年的應收帳款達到8.35億美元，較上年增長了一倍多。這個指標也就是買家拖欠它的藝術品拍款。去年的應收帳 款之高在蘇富比的歷史上是絕無僅有的，在當今這樣一個沃霍爾(Warhol)和羅斯科(Rothko)等藝術家的名字已成奢侈品牌中的新貴、新富們對藝術 品的出價屢創新高的藝術品市場上，這可能意味著一段較為黯淡的日子將要來臨。
蘇富比去年也向更多的藝術品賣家作出承諾，無論他們的拍品在拍賣會上被多低的價格買下，蘇富比都會向他們提供一個保底賣價。該公司此舉實際上是 在賭經濟疲軟不會阻止藝術品價格繼續上揚。蘇富比的年報顯示，它去年給出的保底價合計達9.02億美元，是2006年的兩倍，遠高于2005年的1.31 億美元。藝術品代理商們說，在5月份舉行的藝術品拍賣會上，蘇富比將繼續向賣家提供保底價。 目前正值藝術品市場的關鍵時期。近年來隨著一批新富涉足藝術品收藏，藝術品的市場價格也大幅飆升，這些新富有許多來自華爾街和房地產行業，他們 購買藝術品既可裝點自己的豪宅，也可豐富自己的投資組合。蘇富比及其競爭對手佳士得拍賣公司(Christie's International PLC)每年春秋兩季的拍賣會已經成為富人們炫耀財富的舞台，競拍者中充斥著名人大腕、對衝基金經理和來自俄羅斯和中國等地的億萬富翁。自從蘇富比去年減 少了拍賣會的嘉賓數量以來，其5月份春季拍賣會的門票已成了紐約最令人垂涎的寶貝之一。 Artprice.com的數據顯示，全球的藝術品價格2007年躍升了18%，而蘇富比一直是藝術品身價暴增的主要受益者之一。它去年的藝術 品拍賣收入達到創紀錄的8.33億美元，高于2006年的6.31億美元。該公司股價去年10月升至57.64美元的52周高點。上周五該股在紐約証交所 收于24.52美元，下跌1.32美元，跌幅5.1%，與去年10月時相比下跌了57%。 蘇富比的股價去年11月遭遇重挫，此前該公司一幅昂貴的梵高(Van Gogh)畫作未能賣出，人們曾估計這幅作品會賣到2,800萬美元以上。自那以來蘇富比的股票持續下跌。 該公司首席財務長比爾•謝里丹(Bill Sheridan)說，蘇富比的應收帳款和開出的保底價都沒什麼可擔心的。他說，應收帳款上升主要是因為該公司的銷售額增加了。包括拍賣銷售、私下交易和 委托代理商銷售在內，蘇富比的合並銷售額2007年增長了51%，其中拍賣銷售額增長了44%。 他說，新增應收帳款中的2.432億美元應歸因于該公司藝術品拍賣和私下出售所選擇的時間。蘇富比的主要拍賣會都在11月初舉行，由于客戶有 30天以上的付款寬限期，因此他們很有可能要到2008年的某個時候才會付款。蘇富比還說，它給2007年11月拍賣會上所拍出藝術品定下的最後付款期限 比往年又有延長，這種做法也並非什麼稀罕事。 謝里丹說，延長一些主要拍賣會上所拍出物品的付款期是為了鼓勵人們踊躍競拍，並說蘇富比通常在從買主處獲得拍款前是不會向賣主付款的。 他說，實話說，收款和壞帳不是什麼問題。 但藝術品代理商們私下里表示，蘇富比目前允許買主拖上三到四個月再付款，這較正常付款期要長得多。一位代理商說，這意味著你能把一幅畫免費在自己家里挂四個月，這種事以前可從來沒有過。 藝術品代理商們說，藝術品市場的表現依然相對強勁，他們還未發現有富人收藏家們付不起拍款的跡象。蘇富比稱，今年一季度的拍賣收入增長了3%。 但也有人仍然持謹慎態度。紐約理查德•格雷畫廊(Richard Gray Gallery)的部門負責人安德魯•法布里康特(Andrew Fabricant)說，人們似乎有種感覺，現實世界里發生的事情總會影響到藝術品市場，雖然目前看來這種影響好像不會發生。他說，將會發生些事情，不過 還沒有發生。 蘇富比給拍品提供保底價的做法也給自身帶來了風險。由于可在市場上出售的名作數量稀少而藝術品收藏家的數量又不斷增加，因此拍賣機構一直苦于自 己的大型拍賣會上拍品不足。為了確保拍品供應，蘇富比和佳士得都在提高拍品的保底價。如果蘇富比為某件拍品開出的保底價是2,000萬美元，而實際只賣了 1,500萬美元，那公司就要賠錢。如果作品沒能拍出，蘇富比也會把它留在手中，希望日後能賣個更高的價錢。 謝里丹說，蘇富比並不願意冒險，公司提供保底價的做法已持續了多年，每年總的來說在這方面都沒賠過。他說，即使拍品的賣出價低于保底價蘇富比也能獲得佣金，這能降低甚至抹平其因價格倒挂而蒙受的損失。 代理商們說，令人擔心的是，如果蘇富比許下高達數億美元的保底價，但最後卻賣不掉拍品或從買家那里收不到錢，那許下的保底價只能用自己的錢兌現了。 紐約藝術品代理商理查德•L•費根(Richard L. Feigen)說，危險之處在于，如果市場需求突然減弱，那麼資產負債狀況不佳的公司將出現問題；鑒于蘇富比開出的保底價如此不菲，如果真出現這種情況，它可就要吃不了兜著走了。 Robert Frank 本文涉及股票或公司蘇富比拍賣公司 英文名稱：Sotheby's 總部地點：美國 上市地點：紐約証交所 | |||
2008.04.13 03:56 am |
企業社會責任（CSR）成為全球企業界的最夯的話題，台灣IBM總經理童至祥昨（12）日表示，最新調查發現，有68%的企業認為CSR可以為企業帶來營收成長，超過半數認同CSR是企業的競爭優勢。
台達電副董事長海英俊也指出，受到地球暖化、氣候變遷的衝擊，CSR已成為全球趨勢，影響所及，包括產業鏈產生重要變化，像電子業的產品回收、綠色設計及電子業共同規範（EICC）等，未來所有產業也都無法回避。
上銀科技董事長卓永財則說，台灣中小企業可藉由公民責任意識的內化，轉化為企業的新競爭力，包括節省能源消耗、植樹綠化等，再者透過提案改善製程中的原材損耗、工時浪費等，都是不難做到的。
天下雜誌昨天在台中舉辦2008天下企業公民論壇，以「企業公民v.s.企業競爭力」為題，邀請童至祥、海英俊及卓永財，暢談各自的見解與企業相關作法。儘管昨天為周末假期，這項論壇仍吸引500餘人參與，座無虛席。
海英俊首先指出，台達電身為全球最大電源供應器製造商，去年生產1.8億顆各式電源供應器，但早在20年前就提出「要提供環保節能產品」的使命宣言，善盡企業社會責任。
海英俊說，如果伺服器使用的電源供應器，電源效益能由90%提升至92%，一年就可省下350百萬瓦的用電量，相當於0.7座發電廠的發電量。對台達電而言，把核心競爭力提高，或許比種樹的效果來得更大。
童至祥指出，現在是資訊爆炸的時代，企業所有資訊都變得透明化，如果企業的產品在某個地區發生問題，可能在另一個地區或市場，這家企業就會被認為不夠誠實。
IBM對於CSR的定義，在於企業能否與個人（員工）連結，進一步擴大與社會連結。IBM鼓勵員工參與社會有意義的活動，公司內部甚至建立網站，提供200多個案例作為參考，員工擔任義工超過100個小時，還可獲頒獎狀。
上銀全體員工每月有一個星期六要接受教育訓練，這項名為「知識成長日」的制度已進入第七年，內容從專業領域到親子教育都有。卓永財強調，台灣人工已不再便宜，企業必須朝知識密集的產品走，這是經營基礎環境的一部分。
【文．攝影／陳沛岑】
這個月全球藝術新聞媒體關注的焦點是什麼？答案不外乎是現正舉辦的杜拜藝術博覽會（Art Dubai）。博覽會VIP之夜現場，大批的人潮湧入，來自世界各地收藏家、投資客、策展人、記者、特地前來觀望市場熱度與藝博會品質的畫廊業者塞滿博覽 會的舉辦地——一座看似阿拉伯古城、實為七星級豪華度假村的朱美拉（Madinate Jumeirah）運河酒店內外，親臨到場的阿拉伯聯合大公國皇室家族更是引爆現場的熱度，整個會場燃起莫名的興奮感，現場媒體也瘋狂陷入跟拍皇室參觀的 過程。
而今年的參展畫廊推出的是什麼作品？賣的最好的又是什麼？據本刊實際走訪策展人、現場畫廊業後得知英國收藏家沙奇（Charles Saatchi）雖然未到場，卻在開幕前就已買下「巴基斯坦國家館」（Pakistan Pavilion）中的巨大的箱裝駱駝裝置作品《阿拉伯之樂》（Arabian Delight），而至截稿日前整個國家館中的作品已賣掉60%；展覽會場中最受人關注的還是要屬印度與中東的當代藝術作品，如代理中東當代的The Third Line、展出印度當代的Walsh Gallery現場總是人潮滿滿，兩者均表示售出80%以上的作品，後者甚聲稱當中幾件作品要買的人太多，他們還在考慮到底要賣給誰！此外，許多畫廊業者 表示：從國際拍賣行開始開闢專拍後，大家對印度與中東當代藝術瞬間產生極大的興趣，而雖有為數趨增的海外藏家入場，但中東的金融業者、藏家、印度人、印裔 的海外工作者仍是展場中最大的買家；就連展場中唯一一件台灣藝術家陳奕竹的作品，買下它的也是在杜拜工作的印度新貴！One of the earliest collectors of artists such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, Saatchi has a keen eye for new UK talent, and lent 110 of his works for the infamous 1997 show Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts. Among the works on display in New Britannia will be miniature animal sculptures by Tessa Farmer, sketches in black ink by Scotland's Donald Urquhart, paintings by Toby Ziegler, and Happiness, an installation by Barry Reigate.
Saatchi's previous gallery, in London's County Hall, closed in 2005. The opening of his new premises in Chelsea, originally expected earlier this year, is now planned for the summer. Its 70,000 sq ft will make it the largest independent contemporary art space in the capital. The gallery will house the permanent installation 20:50, Richard Wilson's pool of recycled engine oil; there will also be a series of temporary displays. As well as New Britannia, these will include exhibitions of art from India and China, according to the gallery's Annabel Fallon. "Our inaugural exhibition will be The Revolution Continues: New Art from China," Fallon says. "We expect to follow this exhibition with our sculpture show The Shape of Things to Come and other exhibitions, such as New Britannia."
Angus Fairhurst, one of the group known as Young British Artists, or Y.B.A.'s, who stirred up the art scene in London and beyond in the 1990s, died on Saturday in Scotland. He was 41 and lived in London.
He committed suicide while walking in a remote area, according to an announcement by Bolton & Quinn, a public relations agency in London; no further details were given.
The Young British Artists were internationally famous in the 1990s for their brash, irreverent and sometimes deliberately vulgar works. Mr. Fairhurst did not achieve the degree of notoriety of some members, notably Damien Hirst. He avoided a signature style but was known for mordantly absurdist humor. Working in collage, sculpture, painting, installation and performance, he repeatedly returned to themes relating to popular culture, processes of creation and destruction, and tension between abstraction and representation.
He created collages by excising words and images of people from advertisements appropriated from bus shelters and subways and layering the results into semiabstract compositions. He also produced comical bronze sculptures representing gorillas in existential dilemmas, like ''The Birth of Consistency,'' in which a great ape gazes at himself in a reflective pool.
A bronze sculpture from 2004 titled ''Undone'' is a realistic, nine-foot-long representation of a peeled banana. One of his most famous works was a 1991 prank in which he networked together the phone lines of leading London art galleries so that they could speak only to each other.
Born in Penbury, Kent, England, in 1966, Mr. Fairhurst earned a fine arts degree from Goldsmiths College in London in 1989. Among his classmates were Mr. Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas, who would go on to become some of the best known of the Y.B.A.'s, along with Tracey Emin, Dinos and Jake Chapman.
In 1988, with Mr. Hirst as chief organizer, Mr. Fairhurst helped mount a show of works by himself and 14 fellow Goldsmiths students in an empty London Port Authority building. The show, called ''Freeze,'' received much media attention, was visited by both Charles Saatchi, the British art collector, and Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate in London, and started the careers of many of its participants.
Since the early '90s Mr. Fairhurst's art has been exhibited in solo shows and major group shows in England and Europe. In 1995 he was included in '' 'Brilliant!' New Art From London'' at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 2004, Mr. Fairhurst united with Ms. Lucas and Mr. Hirst to create a collaborative exhibition at Tate Britain called ''In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.'' In New York in the late '90s he had two solo exhibitions at the Anton Kern Gallery and, in 2006, one at the Paul Kasmin Gallery. His last solo show, at Sadie Coles HQ in London, closed on Saturday.
Mr. Fairhurst is survived by his mother, Sally, and a brother, Charles.
Reassembling a Murakami sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum. More Photos >
The fifth-floor rotunda of the Brooklyn Museum on a recent afternoon was strewn with a curious array of body parts. Resting on a mover’s blanket was most of “Miss ko2,” a busty blond waitress whose jellyfish eyes stared up at the ceiling (and whose white-painted fiberglass bosom pointed skyward too). Nearby, her counterpart from “Second Mission Project ko2” (pronounced ko-ko) balanced on one leg.
Overseeing the scene was Paul Schimmel, chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles but in recent weeks a fixture in Brooklyn as he mounts a major retrospective of the creator of these works, the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. The show closed on Feb. 11 at the Los Angeles museum’s Geffen Contemporary space and will open on Saturday in Brooklyn.
“It took 11 trucks driving across country to get everything here,” Mr. Schimmel said as he surveyed the pieces of Mr. Murakami’s art in the rotunda and the battalion of installers at work.
“The Geffen Contemporary is a large, theatrical space,” said Mr. Schimmel, who organized the retrospective. “Brooklyn has more traditional galleries, so the layout here is more chronological, more classical.”
The show includes some 90 works, sampling Mr. Murakami’s entire whimsical world in paintings, wallpapers, colorful sculptures, drawings and a 20-minute animated video. It will consume 18,500 square feet of exhibition space spread over two floors.
This show is the Brooklyn Museum’s largest after “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection,” which opened in 1999 to considerable furor over Chris Ofili’s depiction of the Virgin Mary in a painting that included elephant dung. Mr. Murakami’s retrospective is expected to generate talk of a different sort.
Popularly known as the Warhol of Japan, Mr. Murakami, 46, has earned an international reputation for merging fine art with popular Japanese anime films and manga cartoons. Intent on exploring how mass-produced entertainment and consumerism are part of art, he teamed up with the fashion house Louis Vuitton in 2003 to create brightly colored versions of the classic LV monogram on Vuitton handbags.
The show — its title, appropriately, is “©Murakami” — includes a fully operational Louis Vuitton shop selling some of Mr. Murakami’s designs for that luxury brand. A leather strap for a cellphone carries a $220 price tag; handbags range from $1,310 to $2,210. He has designed three new patterned-canvas wall hangings just for this exhibition; printed in editions of 100 each, the first 50 will be offered at the shop for $6,000 apiece, and the rest at $10,000 apiece. Other leather goods designed for the show will be for sale too.
The shop was also part of the retrospective when it appeared in Los Angeles, and some criticized the marriage of art and commerce as crass and inappropriate in a museum setting. But Mr. Murakami says his product designs are simply an extension of his art.
“It is the heart of the exhibition,” he said of the Vuitton shop.
Arnold L. Lehman, the Brooklyn Museum’s director, does not object to Vuitton’s presence. “I think it’s absolutely fine,” he said in a telephone interview. “It would be very different if it was after the fact or a curatorial add-on. But it was part of Takashi’s original idea.”
The Vuitton boutique isn’t the only shopping experience museum visitors will encounter, of course, as the museum will have its own Murakami gift shop right outside the exhibition, with postcards, T-shirts, mugs and stuffed animals of Mr. Murakami’s characters. Most of the merchandise, however, is produced by Mr. Murakami’s company, Kaikai Kiki (from the Japanese words for bizarre and elegant ), and it will share in the proceeds.
Mr. Murakami first became famous in the 1990s for a theory he called Superflat. Derived from traditional Japanese painting, it was adopted by the contemporary art world to indicate a mix of high and low art. The retrospective begins with his fantastical and sometimes dark universe from that period. Creatures like Mr. DOB, a Mickey Mouse-type character, and Mr. Pointy, another cartoonlike creature, inhabit this space alongside smiley-faced flowers and colorful mushrooms.
The artist’s latest, largest and most colorful version of his Mr. Pointy character greets visitors just inside the museum’s front door. Known as Tongari-kun in Japanese, this character is represented by a 23-foot-tall edition flanked by smaller pointy guards that wear different expressions — smiling, yawning, sleepy, etc.
“In order to get Mr. Pointy into the museum we had to take out half the glass in the front of the pavilion,” Mr. Lehman said. The piece is on loan from the New York collector Richard B. Sachs.
One work that was on view in Los Angeles but is not in Brooklyn is “Oval Buddha,” a platinum-clad sculpture made by Mr. Murakami in 2007. Standing 18 ½ feet tall and weighing 6,613 pounds, it is a comical self-portrait of the artist sitting in a lotus position, perched on a lotus pad. Too large to fit into the museum, it is instead being installed this week (and on view starting on Saturday) in the sculpture garden of 590 Madison Avenue, the former I.B.M. building, between 56th and 57th Streets.
Mr. Murakami, clad in a green down jacket, navy blue down vest and blue jeans, was on hand in Brooklyn the other day as the show was being installed in the rotunda. The skylight had been blacked out — the only lighting in the space will come from three spotlights — and wallpaper with a lightning pattern was about to be hung on the walls and ceiling.
“It’s been very busy in my studio,” Mr. Murakami said, explaining that he has been working on new designs of wallpaper and vinyl floor coverings to be shown for the first time in Brooklyn’s version of the retrospective.
In Los Angeles, he said, “people kept saying that they hoped I would make some new things. So I have. It helps keep my attention.”
As Mr. Murakami spoke, he kept an eye on a small room off the rotunda where the rapper Kanye West’s hit song “Good Morning” could be heard wafting through the space. An installation team was testing a new, longer version of his animated video, the story of his fictional Kaikai and Kiki characters. (When the 20-minute animation isn’t playing, an MTV-style video of “Good Morning” will be shown there.)
The room is a small, cozy nook with black-and-silver carpeting depicting the Kaikai and Kiki characters. “This room was so popular in Los Angeles,” Mr. Schimmel said, “we had to have security guards posted the entire time because kids tried to record the videos on their cellphones and post them on YouTube.”
The Los Angeles show attracted young people who had never been to the museum. “Many of the kids were first-time visitors, who came because they heard about the show through various kinds of cross-branding,” Mr. Schimmel said. “Names like Louis Vuitton, Kanye West and eBay.”
法國總統沙克吉訪問英國，最出鋒頭的是第一夫人布妮，另一大贏家則是法國時尚品牌Chiristian Dior，有第一夫人做模特兒，從希斯洛機場到溫莎宮、倫敦市政府到格林威治，都成了布妮展示Dior服飾的伸展台。據英國「泰晤士報」報導，Dior公 司把布妮訪英的照片發布全球，帶來了高達一百萬英鎊（約台幣6054萬元）的廣告收益。
Dior母公司LVMH集團主席阿爾諾是沙克吉的好友，這次布妮的所有行頭都由Dior提供，估計價值3萬英鎊（約台幣182萬元）。英國 媒體稱布妮為「法國時尚業的秘密武器」，她對訪英行頭拿捏之精準有如將軍策劃軍事行動。早在數周前她就和Dior的英籍設計師約翰‧加利亞諾頻頻會商，一 起挑定加利亞諾設計的「bridge」系列的款式。
果然她在希斯洛機場一出場就轟動，身著Dior灰色高腰毛呢風衣，手拎Dior最新一季的黑色皮包，頭戴小貝雷帽。稍後在赴國會訪問時她換上灰色套裝配海軍藍外套、到藍色雪紡晚宴服，都大獲好評。
布妮可說替加利亞諾大大出了一口氣，一個月前加利亞諾推出新設計時，曾被「紐約時報」深具影響力的時尚名家凱西霍恩批評為「活像午餐套裝、鋼盔頭髮、手套的年代」。但布妮穿上Dior套裝卻掀起一陣旋風，媒體爭相稱贊她高貴大方，有年輕戴妃的風範。
布妮已成各方爭相邀約訪問的對象，英國每日電訊報專欄作家莎拉莫沃說，所有時尚品牌都會哀求布妮為他們伐言，這位法國時尚的超級推銷員，將讓所有超級模特兒妒嫉到臉色鐵青。
(Fiona Hanson/PA)
Angus Fairhurst, right, with Damien Hirst, left, and Sarah Lucas
A founder member of the Young British Artists group has sent shockwaves through the art world by committing suicide.
Angus Fairhurst, 41, is believed to have taken his life on Saturday while on a remote walk in Scotland. His body was found in woodland near Inveroran cottage in Bridge of Orchy.
He was thought to have been depressed, although friends did not detect anything was wrong at a recent dinner to celebrate his latest show of new work.
A spokesperson for Strathclyde police said: “A post-mortem will be carried out to establish the cause of death. However, at this time, there appear to be no suspicious circumstances.”
Damien Hirst, the animal pickler and the most notorious of the YBAs, paid tribute to him yesterday, describing him as “a great artist and a great friend”.
He added: “He always supported me, in fair weather and foul, he shone like the moon and as an artist he had just the right amount of slightly round the bend. I loved him.”
Another YBA, Sarah Lucas, whose works have included placing a giant penis made of cigarettes next to an image of girl’s legs, said: “Angus was a lovely man. Funny and kind. Very much loved by all his friends. Very much loved by me.”
It was in studying art in the 1980s at Goldsmiths College that Fairhurst formed a lasting friendship with other students, including Hirst and Lucas.
He was instrumental in organising the seminal Freeze exhibition in 1988 in which the work of this key generation of British artists was first launched. Patronage by Charles Saatchi and intense media attention brought riches and fame to several of the group, notably Hirst and Tracey Emin.
Fairhurst had a lower profile, but his works were exhibited around the world.
Four years ago, he created One Year of the News in which the front pages of The Times and other newspapers were copied and superimposed to become unreadable. The images, through which words such as “Iraqi” emerged, were spread across a wall at Tate Britain in an exhibition titled “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.
His Mnemonic Table involved him doing no more than lay out a few pots of ivy and honeysuckle in no apparent order, while Pieta depicted a nude figure in the arms of a gorilla, aping the pose of the dead Christ in the arms of Mary in Michelangelo’s sculpture. In another work, he recorded bank employees answering the phone.
Further tributes came from Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate, who said: “Angus Fairhurst was always deprecating about his own talent, but he made some of the most engaging, witty and perceptive works of his generation and was an enormously influential friend of other British artists who came to prominence in the early nineties. We shall all miss him greatly.”
Stephen Deuchar, Director of Tate Britain, said: “Angus’s death is tragic loss to British art. He was a brilliantly inventive, witty and provocative artist, always modest about his fundamentally important contribution to the soaring international reputation of British art since the 1990s.”
