My Art News

伊通公園20載藝術抱滿懷

2008-11-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

【聯合報╱記者╱周美惠】

2008.11.24 02:31 am

伊通公園慶祝成立廿周年，現正舉行「小甜心」特展，集結展出152位藝術家作品。
記者周美惠攝影

喧囂的台北鬧區，隱匿在公園旁的一棟老公寓裡，循著奇窄的樓梯往上，來到了「伊通公園」。這裡沒有林木草地、不像一般「公園」，映入來客眼簾的，盡是藝術品。

20年來，這裡如藝術家湯皇珍形容，彷彿「總是安著一枚磁石」，吸引文化人絡繹不絕。

源起藝術家有話說

時光倒轉回1986至1987年，當年的台灣正歷經解嚴前後的激情─報禁解除媒體爭鳴、社會運動如火如荼、股票指數暴衝到1萬2000點…有群藝術家，為了「我有話要說」聚在一起。

從西班牙回國的莊普，在離台8年後返國，深切感受到藝術家的創作不再有顧忌，創見百花齊放。

「早年出國留學的人總是一去不復返，80年代開始，大家都回來了！」和莊普「亦師亦友」的藝術家林壽宇從英國回來，賴純純從日本、美國返台…大家群聚高談藝術、論理想「80年代就該有所不同」。

當時藝術家們常在台北東區的「春之藝廊」辦展覽、聚會，就近約在東區聚餐，結識於「SOCA現代藝術工作室」的莊普、劉慶堂、陳慧嶠、黃文浩等藝術家「迫不及待想探討現代藝術的精神相聯結」，在固定聚餐聊天半年後，決心找個地方定下來。

想開攝影工作室的劉慶堂在伊通街找到了一棟3層樓老公寓，於是2樓成為攝影工作室，3樓的客廳成了大夥兒「清談」聊藝術的論壇。一開始只是小圈圈的同好常來，鮮有藝文圈內的人士走動，也未取名。直到劉慶堂把隔壁也租下來打通、1990年第一次正式對外辦展覽時，才定名為「伊通公園」。

迎新白天聊到黑夜

1988到90年的伊通公園，「空間屬性如客廳一般，主人好客，對藝術既熱忱又謙卑…並以耳語的方式作小眾傳播的經營方式。」黃文浩為文回憶伊通公園時指出。

「莊普那一代的『文藝青年』不論是流行樂壇的李泰祥、詩人管管、羅門或是藝術家林壽宇，不分領域的藝術家都有個崇高的目標，他們承先啟後孜孜不倦的精神教誨，樹立了我對現代藝術的典範取向。」陳慧嶠說。

早期的伊通積極尋找各行各業「對美的看法」，並不侷限在視覺藝術領域，不僅音樂、舞蹈、建築等藝術領域的專業人士曾受邀，就連數學家、物理學家、哲學家甚至政治人物都是座上賓。

「當時一聽說有人剛從國外回來，我們就主動邀請；也有許多剛從國外回來的人主動前來。」劉慶堂回憶，「大家感受新時代已來臨，經常從白天聊到黑夜、再竟夜長談到天明！」

酒吧耗盡原始熱情

進入90年代的伊通，開始定期對外展覽，「任何人有創作，即使不夠成熟、不敢在別的地方展覽、怕被人家笑…都可以來這裡！」莊普說，「實驗藝術的可能性」是伊通的宗旨，百無禁忌、什麼都可一試。

90年代初，觀念藝術、裝置藝術已在國際上風行，但台灣人還不熟悉，一般人進入藝術空間，普遍擔心「看不懂藝術、買不起畫、怕裡面的人瞧不起自己」，為了讓民眾在進入藝術場域時，能先有心理的緩衝，伊通在1990年開始增設咖啡座兼賣咖啡。

「咖啡廳時期」的伊通公園，室內採藍白色調、地中海式風格的裝潢，當時在台灣還很罕見，一時蔚為風尚，吸引不少業界人士慕名而來。而當時的藝術家「多能鄙事」，舉凡水電、木工、水泥…什麼都得會一點，因為伊通常三不五時重新改裝潢，以順應聊天的氣氛。

1994年，伊通多了一座吧台供應酒類，「西班牙人常說，國家的政治、經濟、文化…都可以在吧台解決！」莊普笑說。

做為階段性功能，這種吧台文化拉近了彼此關係，卻也因一些人整夜喝酒「耗盡了藝術家的熱情」。更糟的是，莊普發現有些來客「為了趕時髦而來」，已失去伊通創設時的初衷，為了怕藝術的內容不見了，進入21世紀後，他們毅然決然拆了吧台「回到藝術的原點」。

執著重返過去態度

現在的伊通依舊舉辦常態展覽、個人專展，維持「實驗性展場」的風格。「希望能更純粹、更冷靜！」陳慧嶠說。

經過20年耕耘，這裡已是國際策展人、國際藝術媒體來台灣時必定會造訪的園地，而伊通也開始在網路上和國際著名藝術雜誌打廣告。

展望未來，劉慶堂認為，只要本著對藝術的執著和態度，「順其自然發展，沒有轉型的問題。」陳慧嶠希望的卻是「回到過去的態度」，「我們最關心的仍然是藝術的本質，每一年都要給藝術下個定義。」在這個藝術家曾經「一同佇足、溝通、捉摸不定、爭論不休」的地方，不斷歷經「重返藝術原點」的感動，仍將是伊通賴以繼續前進的動能。

【2008/11/24 聯合報】

Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

2008-05-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Robert Rauschenberg at his home and studio in Captiva, Fla. in 2005. More Photos >

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: May 14, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82.

He died of heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the artist's gallery in Manhattan.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”

Cage meant that people had come to see, through Mr. Rauschenberg’s efforts, not just that anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art (this wasn’t itself new), but that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful — that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut, which Mr. Rauschenberg celebrated. “I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

The remark reflected the optimism and generosity of spirit that Mr. Rauschenberg became known for. His work was likened to a Saint Bernard: uninhibited and mostly good-natured. He could be the same way in person. When he became rich, he gave millions of dollars to charities for women, children, medical research, other artists and Democratic politicians.

A brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner, he had a charm and peculiar Delphic felicity with language that nevertheless masked a complex personality and an equally multilayered emotional approach to art, which evolved as his stature did. Having begun by making quirky small-scale assemblages out of junk he found on the street in downtown Manhattan, he spent increasing time in his later years, after he had become successful and famous, on vast international, ambassadorial-like projects and collaborations.

Conceived in his immense studio on the island of Captiva, Fla., these projects were of enormous size and ambition; for many years he worked on a project that grew literally to exceed the length of its title, “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece.” They generally did not live up to his earlier achievements. Even so, he maintained an equanimity toward the results. Protean productivity went along with risk, he believed, and risk sometimes meant failure.

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

This attitude also inclined him, as the painter Jack Tworkov once said, “to see beyond what others have decided should be the limits of art.”

He “keeps asking the question — and it’s a terrific question philosophically, whether or not the results are great art,” Tworkov said, “and his asking it has influenced a whole generation of artists.”

That generation was the one that broke from Pollock and company. Mr. Rauschenberg maintained a deep but mischievous respect for these Abstract Expressionist heroes like de Kooning and Barnett Newman. Famously, he once painstakingly erased a drawing by de Kooning, an act both of destruction and devotion. Critics regarded the all-black paintings and all-red paintings he made in the early 1950s as spoofs of de Kooning and Pollock. The paintings had roiling, bubbled surfaces made from the torn scraps of newspapers embedded in paint.

But these were just as much homages as they were parodies. De Kooning, himself a parodist, had incorporated bits of newspapers as flotsam in pictures, and Pollock stuck cigarette butts to canvases.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s “Automobile Tire Print,” from the early 50’s — resulting from Cage’s driving an inked tire of a Model A Ford over 20 sheets of white paper — poked fun at Newman’s famous “zip” paintings.

At the same time, Mr. Rauschenberg was expanding on Newman’s art. The tire print transformed Newman’s zip — an abstract line against a monochrome backdrop with spiritual pretensions — into an artifact of everyday culture, which for Mr. Rauschenberg had its own transcendent dimension.

Mr. Rauschenberg frequently alluded to cars and spaceships, even incorporating real tires and bicycles, into his art. This partly reflected his own restless, peripatetic imagination. The idea of movement was logically extended when he took up dance and performance.

There was, beneath this, a darkness to many of his works, notwithstanding their irreverence. “Bed” was gothic. The all-black paintings were solemn and shuttered. The red paintings looked charred, with strips of fabric, akin to bandages, from which paint dripped, like blood. “Interview,” which resembled a cabinet or closet with a door, enclosing photographs of toreros, a pinup, a Michelangelo nude, a fork and a softball, suggested some black-humored encoded erotic message.

There were many other images of downtrodden and lonely people, rapt in thought; pictures of ancient frescoes, out of focus as if half remembered; photographs of forlorn, neglected places; bits and pieces of faraway places conveying a kind of nostalgia or remoteness. In bringing these things together, the art implied consolation.

Mr. Rauschenberg, who knew that not everybody found it easy to grasp the open-endedness of his work, once described to the writer Calvin Tomkins an encounter with a woman who had reacted skeptically to “Monogram” and “Bed” in his 1963 retrospective at the Jewish Museum, one of the events that secured Mr. Rauschenberg’s reputation: “To her, all my decisions seemed absolutely arbitrary — as though I could just as well have selected anything at all — and therefore there was no meaning, and that made it ugly.

“So I told her that if I were to describe the way she was dressed, it might sound very much like what she’d been saying. For instance, she had feathers on her head. And she had this enamel brooch with a picture of ‘The Blue Boy’ on it pinned to her breast. And around her neck she had on what she would call mink but what could also be described as the skin of a dead animal. Well, at first she was a little offended by this, I think, but then later she came back and said she was beginning to understand.”

Milton Ernest Rauschenberg was born on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Tex., a small refinery town where “it was very easy to grow up without ever seeing a painting,” he said. (In adulthood he renamed himself Robert.) His grandfather, a doctor who immigrated from Germany, had settled in Texas and married a full-blooded Cherokee. His father, Ernest, worked for a local utility company. The family lived so frugally that his mother, Dora, made him shirts out of scraps of fabric. Once she made herself a skirt out of the back of the suit that her younger brother was buried in. She didn’t want the material to go to waste.

For his high school graduation present, Mr. Rauschenberg wanted a ready-made shirt, his first. All this shaped his art eventually. A decade or so later he made history with his own assemblages of scraps and ready-mades: sculptures and music boxes made of packing crates, rocks and rope; and paintings like “Yoicks” sewn from fabric strips. He loved making something out of nothing.

He studied pharmacology briefly at the University of Texas in Austin before he was drafted during World War II. He saw his first paintings at the Huntington Gallery in California while stationed in San Diego as a medical technician in the Navy Hospital Corps, and it occurred to him that it was possible to become a painter.

He attended the Kansas City Art Institute on the GI Bill, traveled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he met Susan Weil, a young painter from New York who was to enter Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Having read about and come to admire Josef Albers, then the head of fine arts at Black Mountain, Mr. Rauschenberg saved enough money to join her.

Albers, a disciplinarian and strict modernist who, shocked by his student, later disavowed ever even knowing Mr. Rauschenberg, was on the other hand recalled by Mr. Rauschenberg as “a beautiful teacher and an impossible person.”

“He wasn’t easy to talk to, and I found his criticism so excruciating and so devastating that I never asked for it,” Mr. Rauschenberg added. “Years later, though, I’m still learning what he taught me.”

Among other things, he learned to maintain an open mind toward materials and new media, which Albers endorsed. Mr. Rauschenberg also gained a respect for the grid as an essential compositional organizing tool.

For a while, he moved between New York, where he studied at the Art Students League with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor, and Black Mountain. During the spring of 1950, he and Ms. Weil married. The marriage lasted two years, during which they had a son, Christopher, who survives him along with Mr. Rauschenberg’s companion, Darryl Pottorf.

Mr. Rauschenberg experimented at the time with blueprint paper to produce silhouette negatives. The pictures were published in Life magazine in 1951; after that Mr. Rauschenberg was given his first solo show, at the influential Betty Parsons Gallery. “Everyone was trying to give up European aesthetics,” he recalled, meaning Picasso, the Surrealists and Matisse. “That was the struggle, and it was reflected in the fear of collectors and critics. John Cage said that fear in life is the fear of change. If I may add to that: nothing can avoid changing. It’s the only thing you can count on. Because life doesn’t have any other possibility, everyone can be measured by his adaptability to change.”

Cage acquired a painting from the Betty Parsons show. Aside from that, Mr. Rauschenberg sold absolutely nothing. Grateful, he agreed to host Cage at his loft. As Mr. Rauschenberg liked to tell the story, the only place to sit was on a mattress. Cage started to itch. He called Mr. Rauschenberg afterward to tell him that his mattress must have bedbugs and that, as Cage was going away for a while, Mr. Rauschenberg could stay at his place. Mr. Rauschenberg accepted the offer. In return, he decided he would touch up the painting Cage had acquired, as a kind of thank you, painting it all-black, being in the midst of his new, all-black period. When Cage returned, he was not amused.

“We both thought, ‘Here was somebody crazier than I am,’ ” Mr. Rauschenberg recalled. In 1952 Mr. Rauschenberg switched to all-white paintings, which were, in retrospect, spiritually akin to Cage’s famous silent piece of music, during which a pianist sits for 4 minutes and 33 seconds at the keyboard without making a sound. Mr. Rauschenberg’s paintings, like the music, in a sense became both Rorschachs and backdrops for ambient, random events like passing shadows. “I always thought of the white paintings as being not passive but very — well, hypersensitive,” he told an interviewer in 1963. “So that people could look at them and almost see how many people were in the room by the shadows cast, or what time of day it was.”

Kicking around Europe and North Africa with the artist Cy Twombly for a few months after that, he began to collect and assemble objects — bits of rope, stones, sticks, bones — which he showed to a dealer in Rome who exhibited them under the title “scatole contemplative,” or thought boxes. They were shown in Florence, where an outraged critic suggested that Mr. Rauschenberg toss them in the river. The artist thought that sounded like a good idea. So, saving a few scatole for himself and friends, he found a secluded spot on the Arno. “‘I took your advice,’’ he wrote to the critic.

Yet the scatole were crucial to his development, setting the stage for bigger, more elaborate assemblages like ‘“Monogram.’’ Back in New York, Mr. Rauschenberg showed his all-black and all-white paintings, then his erased de Kooning, which de Kooning had given to him to erase, a gesture that Mr. Rauschenberg found astonishingly generous, all of which enhanced his reputation as the new enfant terrible of the art world.

Around that time he also met Mr. Johns, then unknown, who had a studio in the same building on Pearl Street where Mr. Rauschenberg had a loft. The intimacy of their relationship over the next years, a consuming subject for later biographers and historians, coincided with the production by the two of them of some of the most groundbreaking works of postwar art.

In Mr. Rauschenberg’s famous words, they gave each other “permission to do what we wanted.’’ Living together in a succession of lofts in Lower Manhattan until the 1960’s, they exchanged ideas and supported themselves designing window displays for Tiffany & Company and Bonwit Teller under the collaborative pseudonym Matson Jones.

Along with the combines, Mr. Rauschenberg in that period developed a transfer drawing technique, dissolving printed images from newspapers and magazines with a solvent and then rubbing them onto paper with a pencil. The process, used for works like “34 Drawings for Dante’s ‘Inferno’,” created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secretive. Perhaps there was an autobiographical and sensual aspect to this. It let him combine images on a surface to a kind of surreal effect, which became the basis for works he made throughout his later career, when he adapted the transfer method to canvas.

Instrumental in this technical evolution back then was Tatyana Grossman, who encouraged and guided him as he made prints at her workshop, Universal Limited Art Editions, on Long Island; he also began a long relationship with the Gemini G.E.L. workshop in Los Angeles, producing lithographs like the 1970 “Stoned Moon” series, with its references to the moon landing. His association with theater and dance had already begun by the 1950s, when he began designing sets and costumes for Cunningham, Paul Taylor and Trisha Brown and for his own productions. In 1963, he choreographed “Pelican,’’ in which he performed on roller skates wearing a parachute and helmet of his design to the accompaniment of a taped collage of sound. This fascination both with collaboration and with mixing art with technologies dovetailed with yet another endeavor. With Billy Klüver, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, he started Experiments in Art and Technology, a nonprofit foundation to foster collaborations between artists and scientists.

In 1964, he toured Europe and Asia with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the same year he exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the Venice Biennale as the United States representative. That sealed his international renown. The Sunday Telegraph in London hailed him as “the most important American artist since Jackson Pollock.’’ He walked off with the international grand prize in Venice, the first modern American to win it. Mr. Rauschenberg had, almost despite himself, become an institution.

Major exhibitions followed every decade after that, including one at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 1981, another at the Guggenheim in 1997 and yet another that landed at the Metropolitan Museum in 2005.

When he wasn’t traveling in later years, he was in Captiva, a slender island off Florida’s Gulf coast, living at first in a modest beach house and working out of a small studio. In time he became Captiva’s biggest residential landowner while also maintaining a town house in Greenwich Village back in New York. He acquired the land in Captiva by buying adjacent properties from elderly neighbors whom he let live rent-free in their houses, which he maintained for them. He accumulated 35 acres, 1,000 feet of beach front and nine houses and studios, including a 17,000-square-foot two-story studio overlooking a swimming pool. He owned almost all that remained of tropical jungle on the island.

“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop,” he said in an interview in the giant studio on Captiva in 2000. “At the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably — another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore.”

He added: “Anything you do will be an abuse of somebody else’s aesthetics. I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.”

在地活力》迷你藝術品擺進辦公室

2008-05-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

【經濟日報╱徐碧華】

2008.05.09 03:28 am

活動名稱：藝流台北春拍預展

活期期間：5月16、17日上午10:00至下午5:00

活動地點：台北展演二館（世貿二館，台北市松廉路3號）

主辦人：藝流國際拍賣

藝術本是人人皆可親近，藝流國際這次台北春拍特別規劃一般價位的藝術品，讓年輕的新一代藏家們以較低的門檻進入藝術投資領域。預展中，除了可以看到精品，也可以看到名家較小號、價位較低的作品，這些較小號的作品適合擺掛在辦公室或家裏。

預展中可以看到書畫家溥心畬的墨跡、江兆申的五言對聯、臺靜農行書對聯等；當代藝術名家也有不少小品，包括趙無極的系列版畫、水彩名家馬白水的作品、朱銘的青銅12生肖系列、攝影大師郎靜山作品…。不少作品都是數萬元起標。

還有張大千和黃君璧作品、林玉山的老虎畫作、于右任的草書、國父孫中山先生的墨跡「博愛」、安迪沃荷的普普藝術、朱銘的木雕、周春芽和侯俊明的版畫、李善單國際大獎畫作，起標價也在百萬元以內。

店家傳奇》故宮晶華獨家曝光

2008-05-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

【聯合報╱記者陳靜宜／專題報導】

2008.05.09 02:47 am

「故宮晶華」提供觀光客更完備的用餐環境。
記者蘇健忠／攝影

斥資台幣四億元，歷時兩年半興建的「故宮晶華」，終於要在5月中旬試營運了！這家規畫在故宮展覽大樓西側的宴飲中心，提供八大菜系，將可同時容納近千人用餐。

外觀由建築師姚仁喜設計，以仿宋朝青瓷自然形成的「冰裂紋」為外觀，古意與時尚感交錯，比起故宮更像故宮。

這棟地上三層、地下兩層的建築物，內部由日本空間設計師橋本夕紀夫操刀，他擅長使用燈光來營造氣氛，包廂牆面有「蘭亭序」、「前赤壁賦」的燈影，地板更是變化多端，使用了仿古灰磚等十種材質，讓人猶如身處古畫中，享受杯觥交錯的樂趣。

「冰裂紋」是構成故宮晶華內外連貫的主要符號，概念來自宋朝青瓷的自然裂紋。
記者蘇健忠／攝影

包廂牆面是宋朝「清明上河圖」剪影，經光線透視出當時市井小民的風貌。
記者蘇健忠／攝影

餐廳內部與故宮展品有許多巧妙連結，像柱身是根據新石器時代的玉琮（祭祀的禮器）打造而成。
記者蘇健忠／攝影

【2008/05/09 聯合報】

時尚城市王倫敦打敗巴黎

2008-05-08T15:28:00.000-07:00

【富比世／Nicola Ruiz】

德國柏林。富比世／提供

巴黎有 La Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré。紐約有第五大道和麥迪森大街。對於最新的時裝流行趨勢，購物者只要到義大利米蘭的蒙提拿破崙街 (Via Monte Napoleone) 看看就可以瞭解了。但是這些都不能與人口多元化的倫敦相媲美。這座城市三分之一的人口都不是在英國出生；230萬倫敦人共用著他們的文化風格、時尚與美食。這種融合為這座城市帶來的極大的活力，最近的一項調查將它評為了全球最時尚的城市。

《Place Branding and Public Diplomacy》雜誌編輯兼《2008 City Brands Index》（2008年城市品牌指數）調查（上月公佈的排名就基於該調查）作者 Simon Anholt 表示：「倫敦的唯一不利因素就是它的安全性和消費水準。」Anholt 還與城市及國家政府就提高其國家聲譽的政策、投資和策略進行了諮詢。他說：「但是這兩個因素也幫助提升了其形象：如果太安全，人們就感覺不到刺激，如果消費水準太低，它的受尊重度就會降低。」

名列前10的城市還包括澳洲雪梨、羅馬（義大利）、西班牙巴賽隆納、澳洲墨爾本、柏林（德國）、荷蘭鹿特丹、和西班牙馬德里。

數字背後

Anholt City Brands Index（Anholt 城市品牌指數）對18個國家的18,000人進行了調查。評判城市的標準包括生活方式、口碑、文化多元性、文化生活和吸引力。比如，受訪者會被要求根據氣候和天氣、污染程度以及建築和公園的外表吸引力列出40佳城市。他們被問及他們所預期的每個城市人們的熱情度，以及每個城市在過去30年裏在科技、文化和政治領域對世界的貢獻大小。

Anholt 說：「較精明的政府一直以來都將他們的城市看作是一個需要向外推廣的品牌。但全球化的後果之一就是城市之間對遊客、投資者、企業和重大盛事的競爭變得空前激烈，因此適當注重聲譽現在已經以一種以前所未有的方式加以強制。」

酷都

倫敦位居榜首，這部分歸功於全球近三分之一的人口（包括澳洲、印度和加拿大）與英聯邦有聯繫，並將倫敦視為世界金融、時尚和音樂之都。之前宣佈的2012年奧運會舉辦權又給這座城市貼上了一枚時尚的印章。

其孕育超凡魅力領導人的能力也沒有減弱。在1997年掌權之際，首相東尼‧布萊爾 (Tony Blair) 推出了「酷不列顛」(Cool Britannia) 計畫，旨在將倫敦定位為一個酷而時尚的新銳城市，展現在世人面前。這個推廣口號旨在嘗試為英國重塑一個進取、有遠見且多元化的形象，並同時推廣 Oasis、辣妹 (Spice Girls) 和 Blur 等英倫搖滾品牌。

這似乎起了作用。美國西北大學 (Northwestern University) 國際行銷學教授、40多本區域行銷著作作者 Philip Kotler 表示：「這裏有悠久的歷史和多元文化的人口。這裏是世界金融中心、藝術中心及文物中心，並有著生機勃勃的能量。」

關於巴黎排名第二，Anholt 表示，在贏得這一領先位置方面巴黎所做的努力少於其他城市。自20年前的 Arche de La Defense 至今，巴黎就沒有出現新的著名建築，最近也很少舉辦過受大眾喜愛的盛大活動。Anholt 說，與羅馬和米蘭一樣，巴黎是坐享其成。

他表示：「巴黎是最時尚的城市之一，這幾乎成了一種陳詞濫調。但它卻已發展成為一種全球性的流行文化。尤其是在發展中國家，人們都期望能在法國享受美食、時尚以及精緻的生活方式。多年後它可能會變成一座糟糕的城市，但它卻不會因此失去這種聲譽。」

不管怎樣，如果你希望置身於美景當中，那麼巴黎仍是不二選擇。當被問及哪座城市最美時，50%的受訪者表示巴黎最為迷人，而46%的人認為當屬羅馬，29%的人選擇紐約，只有5%的人認為是北京。

位居最時尚城市排行榜第15名的城市米蘭被選為對全球時裝作出最重要貢獻的城市，而華盛頓、馬德里和東京則分別在政治、文化和科技方面做出了最重要的貢獻。

當然，每座城市都有其自身獨特的榮譽需要保持。有些政府想打造一座安全乾淨的城市，而有些政府卻努力將自己的城市打造得更加酷勁十足。

Anholt 說：「荷蘭給人的印象是穩定、可靠、高效、富有和無趣。而阿姆斯特丹給人的感覺就時尚很多。這一切都是因為色情、毒品和搖滾。該城市政府希望能保持那樣鮮明時尚的吸引力。」Anholt 稱位居最時尚城市排行榜第9名的阿姆斯特丹是少數幾座透過酷T恤測試 (cool T-shirt test) 的城市之一。「如果你將『I heart Amsterdam』印在一件白色T恤衫上，那麼它的售價比沒有這幾個單詞的白色T恤要高。」

雪梨同樣也透過了 Anholt 的酷T恤測試，該城市在最時尚城市排行榜上排在紐約、羅馬和巴賽隆納之前，位居第三位，這令除了那些在雪梨享受生活的人們之外的所有其他人都感到非常驚訝。

Anholt 稱：「每個人都熱愛澳洲。它代表了一種令人嚮往的品牌，這幾乎在《鱷魚先生》(Crocodile Dundee) 裏都有所體現。這部電影為澳洲城市的形象增添了奇跡般的光彩。該電影已風靡全球。如今澳洲被認為是一個完美的國家：熱情、富有、好客和文明。」

全球最時尚城市
排名	城市	簡介
1	英國倫敦 (London, England) （圖）	辣妹 (Spice Girls) 和大衛‧貝克漢 (David Beckham) 可能都受益於東尼‧布萊爾(Tony Blair) 於20世紀90年代末提倡的「酷不列顛」運動，該運動旨在將倫敦打造成一座「酷」勁十足的新潮城市，但該城市之所以能夠位居全球最時尚城市排行榜榜首，還得益於它的悠久歷史、多元文化和富有。唯一對倫敦不利的因素是其安全性和消費水準。
2	法國巴黎 (Paris, France) （圖）	Kotler 表示：「巴黎擁有一種其他城市所沒有的魅力。除了精緻美食之外，它還具有浪漫、經典、流行和時尚的特質。」
3	澳洲雪梨 (Sydney, Australia) （圖）	研究型作家 Simon Anholt 表示：「雪梨已能夠將自身塑造成一座更加成熟的城市形象，給人的印象不再僅僅是袋鼠和澳洲人煙稀少的內地，在這點上，雪梨就顯得特別睿智。雪梨歌劇院有助於使人們聯想到高雅文化、上等美食和夜生活，但真正讓該城市揚名的是2000年雪梨奧運會。」
4	紐約州紐約市 (New York, N.Y.) （圖）	研究型作家 Simon Anholt 表示：「住在美國之外的人們會認為紐約才是美國的首都。這座位於美國東海岸的城市並沒有因為美國的對外政策而遭受非議，而華盛頓特區卻因此而飽受非議。紐約囊括了一切總是與美國相關的美好的事物。」
5	義大利羅馬 (Rome, Italy) （圖）	「羅馬的魅力來自於義大利式的生活方式。在這座城市，高水準的生活方式主要體現在藝術、美食、音樂、美景和歷史上。」
查看所有全球最時尚的城市（圖）包括西班牙馬德里 (Madrid, Spain)、荷蘭阿姆斯特丹 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)、德國柏林 (Berlin, Germany)、澳洲墨爾本 (Melbourne, Australia) 和西班牙巴賽隆納 (Barcelona, Spain)
資料來源：富比世，製表：許惠雯

原文：Forbes.com The World's Most Stylish Cities

【2008-04-24 富比世】

法國》第一夫人賣包包？為乳癌義賣

2008-05-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

【聯合報╱記者袁青／巴黎報導】

2008.05.07 08:22 am

掛著法國第一夫人卡拉布妮玉照的Tommy Hilfiger公益包，現在是巴黎最「吸睛」的櫥窗景致。
記者袁青／攝影

哪些人事物現在紅不讓？地球很小，今天東京的發燒貨，明天你可以拿到手；世界很大，哪裡又有人賣怪東西，或用很怪的方式賣東西嗎？天羅地網，記者幫你包打聽！

此刻，巴黎街頭最吸引人的櫥窗，恐怕非貴為法國第一夫人的卡拉布妮(Carla Bruni)，輕擁一只Tommy Hilfiger皮包的廣告畫面莫屬了。

以紅絲帶繫著現為法國總統夫人的卡拉布妮玉照吊牌（如右圖），這款Tommy Hilfiger包，是設計師和布妮合作的作品，'06年第一次在米蘭上市100枚，立即被搶購一空。這款為專門研究及治療乳癌的非營利事業機構 Breast Health Institute (BHI)募款的公益包款，因如今搖身一變成為法國第一夫人的布妮掛保證，人氣更旺。

為讓更多人參與，Tommy Hilfiger再追加1千枚限量包作義賣。但該計畫目前只限Tommy Hilfiger米蘭、巴黎、倫敦等歐洲重要旗艦店販賣，所有包款60%收入都將提供捐助。

現為法國第一夫人的布妮，當時是以藝人身分參與Tommy Hilfiger的公益活動。由名攝影師Raymond Depardon操刀, 選在她巴黎的寓所拍攝，當時布妮才從歐洲巡迴演唱回來，鏡頭前，她側著頭，輕擁包包，完美地呈現出優雅、美麗和聰明的氣質。

這款包'06年首次上市時，每枚2千歐元。今年4月21日，由布妮親自簽名的義賣包，在巴黎Tommy Hilfiger旗艦店，舉行公開慈善募款競標，以1萬歐元（約台幣47萬元）拍出，算是第一夫人上任後的第一樁善舉。

The collected utterances of Charles Saatchi, 1994-2003

2008-05-04T15:38:00.000-07:00

Charles Saatchi Biography : British art collector and founder of Saatchi and Saatchi
Famous for : founding the popular Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency and for supporting contemporary British artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

I don't buy art in order to leave a mark or to be remembered; clutching at immortality is of zero interest to anyone sane.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting

The art critics on some of Britain's newspapers could as easily have been assigned gardening or travel, and been cheerfully employed for life.
Charles Saatchi - Criticism - Employee

There are no rules about investment. Sharks can be good. Artist's dung can be good. Oil on canvas can be good.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Investing

I liked working in advertising, but don't believe my taste in art, such as it is, was entirely formed by TV commercials. And I don't feel especially conflicted enjoying a Mantegna one day, a Carl Andre the next day and a brash student work the next.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Advertising

If you can't take a good kicking, you shouldn't parade how much luckier you are than other people.
Charles Saatchi - Criticism - Luck - People

Lots of ambitious work by young artists ends up in a dumpster after its warehouse debut. So an unknown artist's big glass vitrine holding a rotting cow's head covered by maggots and swarms of buzzing flies may be pretty unsellable. Until the artist becomes a star. Then he can sell anything he touches.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Ambition - Selling

I don't have a romantic attachment to what could have been. If I had kept all the work I had ever bought it would feel like Kane sitting in Xanadu surrounded by his loot. It's enough to know that I have owned and shown so many masterpieces of modern times.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting

Nobody can give you advice after you've been collecting for a while. If you don't enjoy making your own decisions, you're never going to be much of a collector anyway.
Charles Saatchi - Art Collecting - Investing - Decisions

On his reclusive nature:
If I continued to turn up, people would realise how ordinary I am.

On his hidden depths:
There's nothing complicated about me. There are no hidden depths. As Frank Stella said about minimalism, what you see is what you see.

On the charge that he is thin-skinned:
True.

On claims that he was the most powerful force in the rise of British art:
False.

On artistic judgment:
I don't have any ground rules for judging art. Sometimes you look and don't feel very comfortable with it - but that doesn't tell you very much. It doesn't necessarily reveal much about the quality of the work.

On art as an investment:
If I were interested in art as investment, I would just show Picasso and Matisse. But that's not what I do. I buy new art, and 90% of the art I buy will probably be worthless in 10 years' time to anyone except me.

On changing tastes:
I don't know how much of the art I like is significant. Who knows what will last? I try to keep my collection fresh. I don't want to end up like William Randolph Hearst in Xanadu, who just squirrelled art away. I do it for the pleasure of putting on shows. It's for my personal gratification.

On buying his first piece of art at the age of 16:
I thought I could afford it.

On claims that he is a dealer rather than a collector:
It would be entirely inappropriate for me to continue to endlessly buy and not try to keep the collection on some kind of cutting edge. I very much want it to be a living collection.

On selling his early collection:
I loved minimalism passionately, but when you realise there are other things in life besides Carl Andre and Robert Ryman, it is difficult to look at them and have the same love affair.

On the mother of Britart:
Margaret Thatcher created an environment in Britain in which people felt they could escape the roles they had been pushed into. They no longer had to be dropouts and failures. Students such as Damien Hirst felt they could do absolutely anything.

On the US:
I grew up in the cinema. I was in love with anything American. When I was 19, I went to New York City and saw a Jackson Pollock at the Museum of Modern Art: it was life-changing.

On Tracey Emin:
I was very slow to get the loopiness of Tracey's work. I'm a helpless fan now.

On Jake and Dinos Chapman:
That is what great art should be. Something that gives visual pleasure and makes you sit up and think, not the pseudo-controversial claptrap that Turner judges believe is cutting-edge.

On buying his first piece by Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years:
I thought of it as punked-over minimalism - Donald Judd gone mad.

On his new gallery:
Tate Modern is astonishing and I love the Hayward and the Serpentine. But I think that new British art is the most exciting and needs a dedicated showcase. I don't want the artists who I believe in having to wait until they are pensioners before the public sees their works in large-scale shows.

On Tate Modern:
It is daft to imagine that we are moving to County Hall to compete with the Tate... We are a small pimple showing off new bits of art. The Tate is the most fabulously successful museum in the world, thanks to Nick Serota.

On why he gave art worth £100,000 to the Tate:
Because they asked me.

On why he gave £1.25m worth of modern art to NHS hospitals:
Having paintings around creates a friendlier atmosphere. If the paintings are fun, so much the better.

On his success in advertising:
A fairy tale.

On advertising today:
I'm too old for advertising. I show my stuff to people and they laugh at me.

On his brother:
Maurice is the interesting one.

On tobacco advertising:
Silk Cut advertising was memorably striking. The tobacco industry provided a breath of fresh air.

On smoking:
I'll never quit.

On the gossip he heard about Charles Saatchi:
He'd been shot dead in Miami. But it turned out that was Versace.

Sources Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, New York Times, Observer.

For Sale: Art and Optimism

2008-05-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Christie’s Images Ltd.

Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies for Self-Portrait” (1976) is expected to sell for between $25 million and $35 million at Christie’s New York. More Photos >

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: May 4, 2008

YOU can’t help but wonder just how many of the smartly dressed people sitting night after night at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury over the next two weeks will be serious bidders and how many will be voyeurs hoping to witness an implosion of the multibillion dollar art market.

For years collectors and the news media have been speculating about when prices would finally top out. Spring sales estimates don’t suggest pessimism. The auction houses clearly hope that things will play out as they did three months ago in London, when, despite global economic queasiness, a Francis Bacon triptych sold for $51.6 million. Now two Bacon triptychs, whose owners no doubt want to capitalize on that high, are going on the block, at estimates of $25 million to $35 million (Christie’s, shown above) and a whopping $70 million (Sotheby’s).

But despite the bullish prices, this auction season feels different. Economic anxiety has deepened in recent months, with the proposed bailout of Bear Stearns in March, continuing stock-market gyrations and increasing signs that we either are in or about to be in a recession.

And the art market has its own problems. Sotheby’s stock price is roughly half what it was last October, and its latest annual report shows that the amount of money owed to the house more than doubled to $835 million last year. Hoping to keep the bubble afloat, Sotheby’s has been giving buyers more time to hand over the money for their purchases. (It is the only publicly traded company of the three houses.)

But despite it all, sales estimates at the auction houses are more robust than ever.

Aside from the Bacon triptychs (to be auctioned at Christie’s on May 13 and at Sotheby’s on May 14), Sotheby’s is selling a coveted Cubist painting by Fernand Léger at its Impressionist and modern art sale on Wednesday. It is estimated to fetch $35 million to $45 million.

Christie’s boasts some splashy offerings too. A rare Monet will be auctioned on Tuesday, and next week’s sale includes a strong sampling of Pop Art by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann. Sotheby’s and Christie’s are also selling 1950s red-and-yellow Rothkos that they predict will bring $35 million to $45 million each.

This season’s sellers include the television producer Douglas S. Cramer; the newsprint magnate Peter Brant; and Helga Lauffs of Germany, who is selling pieces by Robert Rauschenberg, Mr. Wesselmann and Donald Judd after terminating a long-term loan to the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld.

To land consignments like these, auction houses have given most of these collectors guarantees, an undisclosed sum promised to the seller regardless of the outcome of a sale. Obviously this poses a considerable risk for the houses. Whether the gamble will pay off is anyone’s guess.

Seasoned dealers and collectors are guessing that market cracks will emerge first in sales of less expensive works, that this is the season of the great divide between the Best and the Rest.

Auction house executives are busy talking up the soaring numbers of Asian, Russian and Middle Eastern collectors, trophy hunting with cash to burn. They also cite the recent $600 million private sale of art from the estate of the dealer Ileana Sonnabend — proof, they say, that there is still enough money out there and that no price is too high.

Yet the creative business maneuvers adopted by the auction houses to land big consignments and encourage buyers speak of desperation. Sotheby’s and Christie’s are at the point where they are often willing to forgo profits just to win commissions and beat out the other on sales totals. In addition to the guarantees granted to sellers, which in some cases this season are said to be even higher than the works’ sales estimates, the two companies are buying works of art outright, advancing sellers money ahead of the sales and in rare cases even becoming involved in sellers’ real estate transactions.

These confidential deals are so abundant that it is difficult to judge whether a strong evening sales result is a smoke screen. But if profits dry up, such face-saving strategies can’t last forever.

For now auction houses are playing up the suspense. “We really won’t know till the night,” said Tobias Meyer, director of Sotheby’s contemporary art department worldwide. “Even in this market collectors are tortured by the idea that they could miss an opportunity.”

Risky Play?

ARTIST Monet
TITLE “Le Pont du Cheminde Fer à Argenteuil,” 1873
AUCTION HOUSE Christie’s
ESTIMATE $35 million

SOME dealers must have gulped when they saw that the most expensive painting in Christie’s May 6 Impressionist and modern art auction is a Monet, not a modern work. In a sense Christie’s seems to be swimming against the tide. (The most expensive work in Sotheby’s sale of Impressionist and modern art is a 1912-13 Léger, “Étude Pour ‘La Femme en Bleu,’” which carries a $35 million to $45 million estimate.) Yet the Monet, “Le Pont du Chemin de Fer à Argenteuil,” depicting two puffing locomotives, was considered unabashedly modern in its time. In 1988 Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping magnate, sold it for $12.6 million at Christie’s in London to the Nahmads, dealers with galleries in New York and London.

Defending the house’s decision to give this painting a starring role, Guy Bennett, co-head of Impressionist and modern art at Christie’s worldwide, said the work was a seminal one for Monet. He said Monet produced only three other comparable paintings of the subject. One is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, another in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the third in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. “I still believe there are buyers for top Impressionist paintings,” he added.

If Mr. Bennett is wrong, it could be an expensive mistake. He declined to disclose what guarantee Christie’s promised the Nahmads, but experts in the field say it was around $34 million. (Sotheby’s is taking a parallel gamble on its Léger. Experts familiar with the terms said the auction house guaranteed it for $38 million. “It’s one of those last-chance pictures,” said Simon Shaw of Sotheby’s. “We wouldn’t have put our money in it if we’d believed otherwise.”)

Undervalued?

ARTIST Alberto Giacometti
TITLE “Grande Femme Debout II,” 1959-60
AUCTION HOUSE Christie’s
ESTIMATE $18 million

CATALOGS are brimming with interesting sculptures this spring. The medium has been a particularly popular market choice lately, and experts are betting the trend has far from peaked. “Getting great pictures is expensive, but sculptures are less so,” said Simon Shaw of Sotheby’s, whose Impressionist and Modern sale on May 14 includes sculptures by Julio González and Giacometti as well as a rare painted Picasso bronze. “These sculptures make an instant impact,” he said.

Christie’s will serve up an exceptional group of Giacomettis from various periods on May 13, including a plaster from his Surrealist period.

The $100 Million Man

ARTIST Roy Lichtenstein
TITLE “Ball of Twine,” 1963
AUCTION HOUSE Christie’s

PETER Brant, the Greenwich, Conn., newsprint magnate, is emerging as the season’s craftiest seller. Seeking to raise money to buy another paper mill, he hit up both Sotheby’s and Christie’s for substantial guarantees. Experts familiar with the deals say Sotheby’s came through with between $70 million and $80 million in exchange for various paintings and sculptures. Christie’s got a share of art too, providing Mr. Brant with a reported $35 million.

Mr. Brant’s collection boasts hundreds of works by artists like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Chamberlain, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons. It may appear that he is unloading the bulk of what he owns, but the art being sold now amounts to only a fraction of his holdings. Among the best for sale is Lichtenstein’s “Ball of Twine,” a 1963 painting. Mr. Brant bought it in 2001 at Sotheby’s for $4 million, the highest price paid for a work in that sale. Now it is estimated at $14 million to $18 million.

Mr. Brant is also selling Warhols, including two self-portraits (one at each auction house) and works by Basquiat, Mr. Koons andMr. Prince.

Topping Out?

ARTIST Richard Prince
TITLE “Millionaire Nurse,” 2002
AUCTION HOUSE Sotheby's

RICHARD PRINCE, whose retrospective last year at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York won critical acclaim, is still considered a hot commodity. Yet it seems surprising that so many Princes have surfaced on the market recently, privately as well as at auction. Sotheby’s and Christie’s are both selling paintings from Mr. Prince’s popular nurse series, images inspired by the covers of erotic pulp fiction of the 1940s.

Some experts say the private sellers are hedge-fund managers who have supported Mr. Prince but are now facing tough times and need cash. Other collectors received overtures from auction houses they simply couldn’t refuse. One of the nurse canvases belongs to Peter Brant, who has a large collection of Prince works, including other nurse paintings.

Sotheby’s is selling his “Millionaire Nurse,” depicting a blonde wearing a surgical mask. It is estimated to fetch $3.5 million to $4.5 million. At Christie’s the television producer Douglas S. Cramer is offering “Man-Crazy Nurse #2.” He bought this image of a buttoned-up blonde literally dripping paint, from the dealer Barbara Gladstone for less than $100,000 shortly after it was painted in 2002. Christie’s has estimated it will bring $6 million to $8 million. “Eight months ago I was privately offered $10 million for it,”Mr. Cramer said in a telephone interview. “And I said no.” He said Christie’s had offered him a “gratifying’’ guarantee but that he might one day regret the deal, not least because he is fond of the picture. “Five years from now I may think ‘I’ve been taken,’” he joked.

Higher, Higher!

ARTIST Edvard Munch
TITLE ”Girls on a Bridge,” 1902
AUCTION HOUSE Sotheby’s
ESTIMATE $24 million to $28 million

YOU might presume that Graham Kirkham, the London collector and founder of the retail chain DFS Furniture, decided to sell Munch’s “Girls on a Bridge” because he thinks he can get a good return. But some wonder how high collectors will be willing to go. Consider this: In 1980 Wendell Cherry, a founder of the Humana healthcare corporation, bought the painting at Christie’s for $2.8 million. In 1996 Mr. Cherry’s widow put it on the block at Sotheby’s, where Mr. Kirkham bought it for $7.2 million. Now Sotheby’s predicts this boldly colorful canvas, depicting a group of young women huddled together, will fetch $24 million to $28 million.

“Munch is one of those artists that people are finally recognizing for his position in the development of modern art,” said Simon Shaw, head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department in New York.

Foreign Enticements

ARTIST Erik Bulatov
TITLE “New York,” 1989
AUCTION HOUSE Sotheby's
ESTIMATE $700,000 to $900,000

IN an overture to Russia’s new rich, Sotheby’s sent highlights of its big spring sale of contemporary art from New York to Moscow this year for the first time. Sotheby’s also has works that should appeal to new collectors in other emerging markets. Curiously, fewer examples of today’s hot Chinese contemporary artists are on offer than a year ago, but Sotheby’s contemporary sale on May 14 includes examples by two of today’s most sought-after artists from Russia and India. Erik Bulatov, a Russian born in 1933, is being represented for the first time with his painting “New York.” And the auction also includes a 2003 painting by the Indian artist Subodh Gupta, “Across the Seven Seas,” which depicts a bustling airport. Its $500,000 to $700,000 estimate isn’t cheap, but Mr. Gupta, 44, is considered one of the hottest artists of his generation in India. His work has been exhibited in high-profile shows like the 2005 Venice Biennale.

New York Photo Festival: the big picture show

2008-05-03T16:09:00.000-07:00

BST 03/05/2008 Telegraph

More on the New York Photo Festival

This month New York City is hosting its first major photo festival. Drusilla Beyfus introduces this celebration of contemporary talent and looks at the work of the featured photographer Thomas Bangsted

With its galleries, photo agencies, studios, history of magazine publishing and reputation for breeding leading photographers, New York is commonly hailed as the home of photography. Yet until this spring the city has lacked a major festival of photography to call its own. This position is set to change with the inaugural New York Photo Festival that opens this month, with the Telegraph Media Group as the British media sponsor.

Anchor Bay (2006)

More a showcase than a market place, it aims to present what the contemporary camera is up to when artistry and creativity come first. To this end, four photo people with outstanding reputations will curate the show. Their range of experience varies but they are united in having a strong personal take on photography. The festival is to be held in historic industrial property on the waterfront between Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge and each of the arbiters has their own show in a dedicated building. The source of the exhibits is nothing if not global.

The Telegraph Media Group's interest feeds directly into the Telegraph Magazine. It strengthens the tie between the editorial and outstanding photography, confirms the international character of much of the photographic skill that appears on our pages, and at the same time, widens the opportunity for readers to catch up with the story and sample the pictures that might otherwise be limited to gallery-goers and buffs on the spot.

Magnum's Martin Parr is the only Brit among the curatorial team. He is globally exhibited and was the featured curator at the influential Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival in 2004. He says that the New York festival will be 'a welcome escape from the norms of museums and established galleries. It is great to have the space to show young photographers.'


	Moc'kinbird Hill (2004)

His show, called New Typologies, develops a well-known theory about photographic series. An example might be his selection of two full-length portraits of a man and a woman shown in a similar pose, each holding a revolver pointed downward. The repetition of the image with its visual affinities is thought to enlarge the viewer's understanding of the subject. Among his choices for the festival is Wassink Lundgren's sequence of Chinese city dwellers salvaging bottles lying in the street, and work from a fellow Briton and Magnum colleague, Donovan Wylie.

Kathy Ryan, one of the other curators, is the award-winning picture editor of the New York Times Magazine. She says, 'It's going to be this wonderfully contained, focused, intimate gathering.' Mulling over a theme, she realised that the pictures that most intrigued her were those in which the photographer's mindset was more attuned to painters and sculptors than to photography.

Citing Roger Ballen, a senior figure among her selection, whose black-and-white pictures are composed of real-life images, symbols, idea associations and elements of pure painting, it struck her that he was engaged with what Picasso and Braque were grappling with early in the 20th century. Comparing the camera with the fine arts, she says, 'Photography is to some extent rooted in the real world. Whatever is pictured has some kind of inherent history.'

Another artist in Ryan's show, titled Chisel, is Horacio Salinas, who 'collected shredded rubber tyres across the States and turned them into beautiful abstract forms for photography.' It suggested to Ryan that he was working in the way a sculptor would. 'Photography adds another layer of meaning. Knowing that that piece of rubber tyre was on a road at a certain moment in the past, I love that.'


Nordland (2006)

Simon Norfolk, who shot the rocket base at Cape Canaveral and is one of the Telegraph Magazine's regular contributors, is also on her list. 'In the two-minute exposure a streak of light flashes across a magnificent roll of blue sky. You can appreciate these pictures as an abstraction, much as you love seeing a blue shade into red in a Rothko painting.'

The remaining two curators are Lesley A Martin, the head of the book publishing programme at the Aperture Foundation (a not-for-profit organisation that advances the cause of photography through its magazines, books and an educational programme), who has been studying the way photographers use disseminated images to create new work, and Tim Barber, a photographer and the former photo editor for Vice magazine who runs the online gallery tinyvices.com.

The hope that the lesser-known would not be overlooked has substance in the pictures reproduced here. They are from a small portfolio by a 31-year-old Dane, Thomas Bangsted. A Yale University School of Art graduate, who last year was awarded a Tierney Fellowship (which support emerging artists studying in the field of photography, principally in the States), Bangsted's work will feature in the Fellowship's satellite exhibition on show at Brooklyn's Tobacco Warehouse.

Bangsted does landscapes and seascapes and although at a glance his pictures appear straightforward, he says, 'They are not about documenting a certain place or situation, but are more like pictorial puzzles.' He likes a subtle element of humour in his composition. 'Some of the images are constructed and some are found, it's not clear to the viewer and I'm not interested in making it clear.'


	Watering Place (2005). These Bangsted images will feature in the Tierney Fellowship satellite exhibition at the Tobacco Warehouse

The cool, silvery light in which many of his pictures are bathed is a result of his northern background. Wherever he works, this quality of light seems a constant. 'I want to make work that feels familiar to me. I like light that is flat, without shadows. It helps me paint a more neutral picture. In some of my photographs there is a certain oppressive, slightly depressive quality.'

At the moment his eye is on maritime themes in Florida. 'In some ways the ships are substitutes for people in the pictures,' he says. 'They have a very distinct character. I find it hard to incorporate people without the picture becoming something else.' He is also attracted to animals as subjects, but not in the sense of being a naturalist photographer. 'I like the pictures to have a George Orwell quality, where the people have gone and only the animals remain.' He uses an 8x10 or 4x5 camera and shoots subjects on a one-by-one basis as they occur to him.

The two co-founders of the festival are Frank Evers, the managing director of VII Photo Agency and a former entrepreneur in the video game world, and David Power, the founder and publisher of PowerHouse Books, which publishes progressive and classic art, photography, advertising and pop culture books. His company is located in Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), the off-beat Brooklyn neighbourhood which has become home to the festival.

But why did it take so long for New York to instigate its own photography festival? Ryan suggests it might be related to the intense pressure on New York real estate; but Power has a more romantic interpretation. 'New Yorkers have long relished the opportunities to reconnect with what is going on abroad at picturesque locales for photography in Madrid, Arles and Perpignan. But when we [PowerHouse] moved to a wonderful venue right in the middle of New York City that few know very well, we couldn't help but start our own tradition here in the heart of the world.'

The New York Photo Festival runs from May 14-18 (nyphotofestival.com).

李暐大陸行為藝術家第一人

2008-04-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

中國時報 2008.04.30　
大陸新聞中心／綜合報導

　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。

Market news: private art sales

2008-04-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

BST 29/04/2008 Telegraph

Colin Gleadell rounds up the latest developments in the art market

Art sales: New York sales

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.


	Denny's Flowers: still up for grabs at £50,000

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.

Art sales: nerves still holding

2008-04-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

BST 29/04/2008 Telegraph

Colin Gleadell on New York sales

Market news: private art 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.


	Edvard Munch's Girls on a Bridge was last sold in 1996

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.

Six decades on, who needs the ICA?

2008-04-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

From The Times

April 29, 2008

The once scandalous home of the avant-garde is now an irrelevant backwater that can barely run its own birthday party

Richard Morrison

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

Damien Hirst

2008-04-27T02:36:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Times

April 27, 2008

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

歐亞鐵絲路倫敦─孟加拉年底開通

2008-04-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

【聯合報╱編譯王麗娟／報導】

圖／聯合報提供

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】

Acquisitions take Saatchi back to Iraqi roots

2008-04-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
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.

挪威歌劇院嗆雪梨閃邊去

2008-04-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

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。

招兵買馬　台北藝穗節8月底開跑

2008-04-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

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。

[華爾街見聞] 金融危機會沾染藝術品市場嗎？

2008-04-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

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。

蘇富比去年的應收帳款中有超過5.2億美元發生在第四季度，那也正是金融危機剛剛發端之時。這些應收帳款還不包括600萬美元的“可疑帳款”，蘇富比將那些很可能支付無望的拍款歸入這類款項。

　　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

企業社會責任營收成長保證

2008-04-12T18:11:00.000-07:00

【經濟日報╱記者宋健生／台中報導】

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。

印度、中東當代藝術熱延燒杜拜

2008-04-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

【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！

Chinese Art Continues to Soar at Sotheby’s

2008-04-10T13:41:00.000-07:00

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: April 10, 2008

BEIJING — Sotheby’s sold $51.77 million worth of Chinese contemporary art in three auctions in Hong Kong on Wednesday, allaying concerns that the global economic slowdown would depress the prices.

The highlight of the day was the highly anticipated afternoon sale of more than 100 works from the Estella Collection, which Sotheby’s has called the largest and most important collection of Chinese contemporary art ever to come to auction.

That sale brought in nearly $18 million from aggressive bidders who crowded into a Hong Kong convention center and from others who called in bids.

The star of that auction was a 1995 painting by Zhang Xiaogang, one of China’s most prominent artists, which sold for just over $6 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting by a Chinese contemporary artist.

That oil on canvas, “Bloodline: Big Family No. 3,” depicts a family of three during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in China, when children were sometimes led to denounce their parents. Three collectors bid feverishly for the piece, which sold for far above its high estimate, about $3.4 million.

Sotheby’s identified the buyer, who bid by telephone, as a Taiwanese-born collector now living in the United States.

The price was a bit above the record set at Sotheby’s auction house last October, when a Yue Minjun painting called “Execution,” inspired by the 1989 crackdown on student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, sold for about $5.9 million.

Collectors also offered high bids on works by other well-known Chinese artists like Zeng Fanzhi, Cai Guo-Qiang, Ai Weiwei and Sui Jianguo.

The most sought-after artists are mostly in their 40s and 50s and came of age in the 1980s and early 1990s, when contemporary art was just beginning to blossom in China after broad economic and political changes. An installation and sketches based on Chinese characters by the artist Xu Bing sold for nearly $1 million. And “Two Wandering Tigers,” a gunpowder-on-paper work by Mr. Cai, sold for over $973,000.

In an equally ebullient evening session, a set of nine paintings by the realist painter Liu Xiaodong sold for $7.9 million.

The works, “Battlefield Realism: The 18 Arhats,” portray soldiers from Taiwan and China.

A colorful painting by Yue Minjun, known as a cynical realist artist for his toothy, delirious self-portraits, sold for $2.6 million.

The soaring prices of Chinese contemporary artists over the past few years has jolted the global auction market, setting off a building boom in arts districts in Beijing and Shanghai and turning many Chinese artists into multimillionaires.

Just a few years ago works by Mr. Zhang sold for less than $50,000. But last year Mr. Zhang, 50, was one of the hottest living artists in the global auction market, just behind Damien Hirst and Gerhard Richter and ahead of Jeff Koons, according to the Artprice publication Art Market Trends 2007.

That report also said China surpassed France last year as the world’s third-biggest auction market, behind only the United States and Britain.

Among the biggest winners on Wednesday was Sotheby’s, which along with William Acquavella, the Manhattan dealer, had recently acquired the Estella Collection. It originally belonged to a small group of investors and collectors, including Sacha Lainovic, a director of Weight Watchers International, and Ray Debbane, the chief executive of the private-equity firm the Invus Group. The Manhattan art dealer Michael Goedhuis helped them amass the collection.

A few years ago Sotheby’s did not even hold auctions of Chinese contemporary art. But last year it sold nearly $200 million worth of Asian contemporary art, the bulk of it by Chinese artists.

Christie’s auction house has also benefited with record-breaking sales of Chinese contemporary art in recent years.

In September Sotheby’s plans to sell more works from the Estella Collection at a New York auction.

The $51.7 million raised over all on Wednesday was far above the auction house’s high estimate of $46 million, and about 90 percent of the works sold. The $18 million from the sale of the Estella Collection was far above a high estimate of $12 million.

Estimates did not include Sotheby’s commission and buyer’s premium, which are incorporated into the final prices.

Saatchi to unleash fresh band of Young British Artists at his new London gallery

2008-04-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

Francesca Martin
Wednesday April 9, 2008
The Guardian

More than 20 years after he unleashed the first wave of Young British Artists on an unsuspecting public, Charles Saatchi is to present a new exhibition of work by the next generation of YBAs. New Britannia is due to open in summer 2009 at Saatchi's new London gallery, and will feature works by more than 42 artists, many of them from Saatchi's own collection.

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."

Damien Hirst's earliest painting goes on sale

2008-04-06T02:46:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Times

April 6, 2008

Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

DAMIEN HIRST’S most recent work, a bejewelled skull called For The Love Of God, sold last year for £50m. So how much will his acrylic painting of a dying crow fetch at auction?

The little-known work is possibly the oldest surviving piece by Hirst. He produced it when he was 18.

Its owner - a Yorkshire woman who was a schoolfriend of Hirst - is now putting the picture on sale. Given by Hirst as a present 25 years ago, it could now be worth a small fortune, possibly into six figures.

The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, used to hang the painting on her living room wall but for the past decade it has been stored in a bank vault because of its presumed worth.

The untitled picture, which measures 2ft by 18in, is thought to be the earliest known extant work of Hirst unless, that is, his mother still has some of her son’s earlier teenage or childhood dabblings. The canvas bears Hirst’s signature and was painted on the kitchen table of a house in Leeds where Hugh Allan, his long-time professional partner, lived a quarter of a century ago.

At the time, Allan was sharing the home with the woman who now owns the picture. She and Allan were both just 20, and had left Allerton Grange Comprehensive in Leeds two years earlier.

Next door was a young artist from the same school: Marcus Harvey, whose painting of the Moors murderer Myra Hindley caused a storm when it was shown at the 1997 Sensation exhibition.

Hirst - yet another product of Allerton Grange - lived around the corner with his mother. The four hung out together “doing art and going to gigs”.

Last week the woman said: “Damien did the painting at the house I was living at in Leeds, just around the corner where he was living with his mum. He did it on the kitchen table, and simply said ‘here you are, have it as a pressie’.

“We then went off to a local jumble shop to get a frame. It was like quite a few of the other paintings he had done at school – full of blood, gore and horror.

“I could never bring myself to throw it away even though for years Damien himself was never famous. In fact I thought that of the two that Marcus was going to be more famous, but I may be a bit biased as I went out with Marcus for five years.

“Damien certainly always had this get-up-and-go, and was always even as a teenager very good at selling himself. It obviously stayed with him.”

The “blood, gore and horror” captured in the dying bird picture are features that have continued to fascinate Hirst throughout his art career.

Death has been a central theme, and in the 1990s he became famous for a series in which dead animals, including sheep, cows and sharks, were dissected and then preserved in formaldehyde. More recently he appears to have developed an obsession with skulls and the macabre.

Hirst’s friends from school speak of him with affection. He was awarded only a grade E in A-level art, but persuaded Leeds art college to accept him for its foundation course.

“Of course I remember Damien very well,” said David Wood, his former school art teacher, this weekend. “He was a naughty boy and pretty disruptive. His style then in both drawing and painting was very free, but I liked him. I also directed him in the school play in his last year. He was, appropriately, Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

It seems as if Hirst liked Wood too. As he was about to leave for Leeds college (he later went to Goldsmiths art college in southeast London), Hirst handed his teacher a book on the sculptor Rodin inscribed “Thanks for everything, Mr Wood”.

Wood always thought that Harvey, who did A-level art the year before Hirst, was going to be the bigger star.

Harvey, whose work, like Hirst’s, was also bought by the collector Charles Saatchi, has done well in his career. But the real winner from Allerton Grange has been Hirst.

老夫子蘇富比全球首拍漫畫原稿

2008-04-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

【中央社╱台北三日電】

老夫子漫畫將登上蘇富比拍賣會，這是蘇富比公司（Sotheby's）全球首次拍賣漫畫原稿！老夫子漫畫不但是四、五年級生的回憶，如今更成為有價的藝術品；老夫子第二代作者王澤表示，自他父親出版第一本漫畫至今四十五週年，登上蘇富比藝術拍賣會是肯定他藝術上的成就。

蘇富比當代中國藝術春拍四月九日將於香港舉行，被選中的標的物為六十至七十年代兩套「老夫子」早期極珍貴的手稿。其中一套四張的黑白原稿，全為王澤六十年代的代表作，起標價港幣六至八萬元；另外四張七十年代單行本與合訂本的封面彩稿，都以老夫子中三名主角─老夫子、大番薯、秦先生為中心人物，構圖新鮮，極為罕見，起標價為港幣八至十萬元。

王澤的父親當年畫漫畫，用了很多筆名，但用他的名字當筆名時大發，便延用至今；因其父親年紀漸長，王澤才於十二年前接手漫畫事業，成立「老夫子哈媒體公司」。

王澤以極為開闊的態度與眼光來經營「老夫子」。曾經拍過卡通、拍成3D真人動畫電影、和周杰倫合作潮流T-Shirt、製作各式創意公仔上市等。這一回和「飛躍羚羊」紀政的希望基金會合作，推動「行‧為藝術」，將號召老夫子百萬漫迷響應，將「行」動力運用到每個想達成的目標上，讓「行」提升到更深層的境界。

未來「老夫子哈媒體公司」將藉由實際的行動，尋找國內優秀的創作人，協助他們的作品與「老夫子」一同走向國際。

王澤今天在記者會中表示，紀政女士致力推廣「行」的運動家精神，與老夫子成功的精神符合，事實上老夫子也是愛運動的，所以捐出部分蘇富比畫作拍賣所得，拋磚引玉，來推動「行‧為藝術」。

8幅老夫子蘇富比32萬起標

2008-04-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

【聯合報╱記者何定照／台北報導】

華人漫畫史上第一樁，由王家禧（筆名王澤）所繪的「老夫子」漫畫原稿登上香港蘇富比春拍，八幅原稿以港幣八到十萬元（約台幣三十二至四十萬元）起標，讓老夫子與曾現身香港蘇富比的張大千、顏水龍、蔡國強等大師作品並列。

王家禧兒子王澤表示，半年前他接到蘇富比邀約電話時，第一個反應是「莫名其妙」，楞了十秒才回過神，從不可置信漸漸變得驚喜。「爸爸以前畫畫只想著養家，從沒想過原稿竟能拿來拍賣，很多稿都發黃撕裂了，沒想到也能有拍賣價值。」

王澤說，他詢問過爸爸意見後，大家看在「以前的通俗作品也能登上拍賣殿堂」對大眾的啟發意義上，雖然捨不得，仍決定將堪賣的原稿都拿出來，至於手邊僅存一本的一九六四年老夫子首賣本，「絕對不能賣！」

這些手稿包括四張六十年代的黑白漫畫原稿，及四張七十年代單行本、合訂本封面彩稿，畫面均包括老夫子、大蕃薯、秦先生三名主角，四月九日拍賣。

昨天王澤並捐出一幅畫的預估拍賣所得給紀政的希望基金會，紀政直呼「我超感動」。王澤說，紀政的希望基金會從二○○二年推動國人「日行萬步」運動，其中往前行、尋找台灣靈性的精神，和老夫子不斷前進的意義不謀而合。

OBITUARIES; Angus Fairhurst, 41, of Young British Artists

2008-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

By KEN JOHNSON

Published: April 3, 2008

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.

中國當代藝術被狂炒某些"當代藝術"是惡搞

2008-04-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

來源：文匯報

當下某些繪畫作品的畫面中充斥呆滯、媚俗、色情、變態、暴力或血腥，並且被冠以“中國當代藝術”的名義，被人狂炒。一些收藏者開始疑惑了，懷疑起自己的審美取向和藝術理解能力。在被忽悠了一段時期後，更多的人清醒：這是一場對藝術進行惡搞的遊戲。

“醜惡”和“媚俗”已成為某些中國當代繪畫的時尚和潮流

某些中國當代油畫作品中的醜態圖像表現為：形態醜陋或呆板、色彩媚艷或蒼白、趣味怪異或庸俗，以及運用圖式化的政治符號。這些作品採用醜化人物、反諷政治的方式來不適當地表現中國的社會與文化。這樣的作品根本不能真正反映中國的社會文化現實狀況，也沒有任何文化方面的反思意義，而只呈現出一種模式化、片面化、庸俗化的藝術形態，是一種文化無知和思想淺薄的表現。“醜惡”和“媚俗”已成為某些中國當代繪畫的時尚和潮流，並假扮成一種前衛的姿態，影響著中國當代繪畫的主流審美思潮，以所謂“當代”的名義對藝術進行著惡搞。

五分之四以上的“中國當代藝術”作品在海外藏家手中

有數據統計，目前五分之四以上的“中國當代藝術”作品是被海外少數收藏者所購買的，他們成為擁有大量“中國當代藝術品”的大莊家。海外投機者拉動這些作品的價格，使這些作品在短時期內升值巨大，並將他們的價值標準強加給國內的收藏者。國內的資本不得不被動跟隨成為跟風者，最後，真正獲益的是少數海外投機者。由于這一收藏鏈條中，缺少真正終端的專業藏家參與，所以，被惡搞了的“中國當代藝術”根本就沒有真形成國際藝術收藏的板塊。

　　前蘇聯也曾經出現過所謂的當代藝術熱現象

早在二十多年前國內“85美術新潮”時期，海外某些所謂的藝術品投資者(或叫投機者)已經在一些受西方文化影響較深的東南亞和港臺地區，設下了一個文化價值觀的圈套。那些被市場所吹捧的“當代藝術”，在相當程度上折射出西方的價值觀念，之後也在中國當代藝術界產生了一定的“戰略效應”。

現在中國“當代藝術”的這些所謂的現象，過去曾經在前蘇聯和東歐等地區出現過。上世紀80年代末90年代初，當時的前蘇聯也曾經涌現出一批所謂的“前衛藝術家”，並被西方媒體大肆炒作，他們的作品價格被某些西方炒家一手操縱，一路飆升。然而好景不長，如今，這些“前衛藝術”作品身價早已一落千丈，無人問津，那些原來被西方捧紅了的前蘇聯藝術家也沒人理了。

Watch Out, Warhol, Here’s Japanese Shock Pop

2008-04-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Reassembling a Murakami sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum. More Photos >

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: April 2, 2008

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.”

Mat Collishaw: a shock-jock's deliverance

2008-04-02T02:39:00.000-07:00

From The Times

April 2, 2008

The artist Mat Collishaw has always used extreme tactics but in his latest show he's found tenderness in cruelty

Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Mat Collishaw should be a familiar name. He grew up as a card-carrying member of the Goldsmiths gang. He passed all the milestones that put the rest of them on the map. He took part in Freeze, cropped up again for Sensation, was collected by Charles Saatchi and still collaborates with Damien Hirst. For heaven's sake, he even went out with Tracey Emin for five years. And didn't another old boyfriend pretty much start an entire art movement on the strength of that?

So why isn't Collishaw more famous? Why am I visiting him in a rented flat when his mates are buying up rural mansions?

The Emin tag didn't help. The first time that she stayed at his house, Collishaw tells me, was after the Turner Prize ceremony in 1997. They were having a party, and she couldn't stop moaning that she had lost out on the £500 she would have got if she had turned up on some television show. “Everyone kept telling her to shut up,” Collishaw says, “and then the next morning Gillian Wearing phoned and said: ‘Oh, my God! Have you seen the papers?'” It turns out that Emin had stumbled by the television studio after all. She had been so spectacularly drunk that she couldn't remember it, but the rest of the country certainly could.

“It was that drunken appearance that kick-started her career,” Collishaw says. And he got caught up in its cogs. He became known - though he wasn't aware of it at the time - as the boyfriend of Britain's most self-obsessed artist. “She was a bit of an egomaniac,” he admits laconically, and he tells me a story to make his point.

When he heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre, he texted Emin, who was in a salon having some beauty treatment. They had an SMS conversation that went something like this:

Collishaw: “The face of the world as we know it has changed.”

Emin: “I know. It's so tragic.”

Emin (20 minutes later): “The second one's gone now.”

Emin (three minutes later): “It makes me sick. I f***ing hate them.”

In the afternoon, when Collishaw met Emin, he was surprised that she seemed unperturbed. And then it emerged that she hadn't been talking about the terrorist attack. She had been mourning the pair of eyebrows that a reckless beautician had drastically overplucked.

But all that was over a long time ago. Collishaw has been through an entire marriage and its failure since. And he is making new work. Next week he launches a piece called Deliverance with the Spring Projects gallery. In June it will be on show again as part of a much bigger show with Haunch of Venison, the major London gallery that has just signed him up. The artist, it seems, is being given another chance at success.

Deliverance takes its inspiration from the Beslan school siege in which gunmen took children hostage. He shows pictures of people, dirty, half-naked, crying and holding each other as they walk away from the barrel of a gun and into the barrel of a camera. These pictures are so individual, tender and human and yet they are timelessly haunting. They echo such universal classics as the Pietà or the little girl burnt by napalm.

Collishaw projects them on to a phosphorescent surface that retains the fading after-image long after the projector has swivelled its robotic head onwards to focus on a new site. A world of ghostly memory mingles with a startlingly vivid present.

These pictures, Collishaw says, are about the moral questionability of the media that offer viewers the adrenaline fix that we want from a scene of disaster, exploiting the sufferers so that we can feed our addiction to spectacular visuals. In the forthcoming Haunch of Venison show there will also be images from Victorian child pornography. They are as luridly fascinating as they are heart-rending.

Collishaw definitely knows how to create an impact. He did it quite literally with the work Bullet Hole, which became his signature piece: a gory picture of a gun-wound in the head which, originally shown at the 1988 Freeze exhibition, is now part of the Saatchi collection. Collishaw has a flare for the shock that can be a short-cut to fame. Pornography and the Crucifixion (and sometimes both together) have both served as visual fodder. He has a taste for perversion and vice.

It comes from his childhood, he says. Born in 1966, the second of four boys, he was brought up in Nottingham, but he was hardly a typical council-estate kid. After scraping through his day at school, he may have hung out on the wastelands with his mates, playing with air-guns and ogling porn mags; but at home he and his parents were ardent Christadelphians. Every Wednesday and twice on Sunday, Collishaw was attending the Bible study sessions of a sect that seemed to disapprove of pretty much everything, from female education (his mother had to study in secret) through religious imagery to television.

Collishaw, perhaps inevitably, became fascinated by the forbidden. Even Bruce Forsyth, when seen by a little boy with his nose pressed to the window, could accrue an aura. “I would peep through neighbours' curtains and watch him dancing on the TV in the corner and it would feel like his spirit was trapped in that little glowing box. I would spend hours making my own TV sets out of Weetabix boxes.”

Collishaw eventually got into Goldsmiths on the strength of “a pile of scrappy life drawings”. “It changed my life” he says. It offered him chances - including that of hanging out in the pool room and drinking with such ambitious contemporaries as Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas and Marc Quinn.

But he had got off to a false start. He was only 23 when his girlfriend gave birth to a son. While his Goldsmiths mates were all out making their mark, he was back home with bottles and nappies. Maybe he missed the boat. But it probably didn't help that he started making fairy pictures. The artistic climate in the 1990s, he suggests, was all “blood and guts or steel and glass; it was either gory shock or that impersonal sculpture that you don't have to relate to”. But he started making images inspired by the faked Cottingham fairies. However disturbing his little flowerbed scenarios of winged teenaged glue-sniffers, the Victorian aesthetic was hardly fashionable.

And yet Collishaw's work crops up again and again in group shows. It has an immediacy that seizes the attention. His pieces don't need a complicated conceptual support. They speak for themselves. “I've always put him at the very top,” Damien Hirst tells me. “He understands how to connect to your soul and your heart... His work won't allow us to take anything for granted; he shines light into the darkness and finds beauty in the abyss.”

Certainly, his video works - his butterflies fluttering in imprisoning jars; a projection of his own body, breathing and blinking, on to a cross; a picture of Ganymede being snatched by an eagle projected on to the smoke that emanates from a church font (the pagan imagery of abduction puffing up from a Christian instrument of induction) - stir disturbingly mismatched emotions.

Collishaw admits to making the most of attention-seeking tactics. “Enticing little bits of eye-candy or pieces of hardcore pornography - they both work in much the same way,” he suggests. He might create a picture inside a kitsch little snow dome or exploit blatant images of bondage or bestiality. Whichever, the impact is instant. And there's always a twist.

“Images that are purely offensive give you an instant fix,” Collishaw says, “but I want to make pictures that last longer than that. On the surface they shock or seduce you, but I want there to be undercurrents that make you wonder about other implications.”

The cruel and the caring, the poetic and the morbid, the alluring and the repulsive all meet in Collishaw's work. No wonder our responses get all tangled up. But let's hope that this time his path will remain clear.

Mat Collishaw's Deliverance will be on show at Spring Projects, NW5 (020-7428 7159), from April 11

WMF 廣告創意

2008-04-01T22:28:00.000-07:00

全球拍賣前十藝術家 07世界藝術品市場盤點

2008-04-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

來源：《收藏投資導刊》

每一年，Artprice都會制作一個根據每個藝術家作品公眾銷售總額得出的一個排行榜，而巴勃羅?畢加索在市場中總是排行第一。但是在2007年情況有所不同：經過差不多十年的奮鬥，現代藝術家的桂冠被流行藝術之王安迪·沃霍爾摘取。沃霍爾在2006年排行第二，而在2007年，他成為了全球市場的領頭人。

這不僅僅是一個名字取代了另一個名字的問題，這一“事件”其實反映了拍賣世界中名副其實的劇變。在上世紀90年代，藝術市場的王座屬于印象派畫家，尤其是奧古斯特?雷諾阿還有克勞德?莫奈；然後到2000年以後，輪到了現代藝術的畢加索和古斯塔夫·克裏姆特；今天，很有可能會持續一段時間，市場把當代藝術推到了金字塔的塔尖。

在2006年，排名前十的藝術家中只有沃霍爾、裏奇特斯坦和威廉姆·德·庫寧是屬于當代藝術的，他們分別代表了流行藝術以及美國抽象表現主義。在2007年，隨著弗蘭西斯·培根、馬克·羅斯科和吉恩·米切爾·巴斯奎特的進入，當代藝術提高了相當大的份額。而因為在這一年沒有主要的名作出現在拍賣場上，古斯塔夫·克裏姆特和埃貢·席勒都意外地滑出了前十名之外。

在2007年，前十位的藝術家的收益加起來超過了18億美元，這一數據與前一年相比上升了50%！這種暴漲的局勢絕對是由安迪·沃霍爾和弗蘭西斯·培根推動的，他們的作品比2006年多賣出4億美元！價格急劇上漲，隨之而來的是進入前十名的入場券與2006年相比上升了44.8%。確切地說，這意味著在2007年每個藝術家必須賣出至少8699萬美元才能進入前十，而在之前的一年，這個標準只是5900萬美元。

　　安迪·沃霍爾：4.2億美元

2007年，安迪·沃霍爾從排行榜第二躍升到第一，鞏固了其藝術市場明星的地位。與前一年相比，他畫作的銷售額增加了2200萬美元，而他的基本價格指數在十年間上升了450%。在2006年，沃霍爾就已經有43幅畫作銷售超過百萬美元，也就是比市場巨匠畢加索還要多出四幅。但是與2007年相比，這完全算不上什麼。在2007年，他有多達74副售價數百萬乃至數千萬的作品賣出，這些是他從上世紀60到80年代的作品。之前的8年，他作品的最高紀錄是《橙色瑪麗蓮》，價格是1575萬美元。但是在2007年5月，他的《綠色車禍（綠色著火的車I）》在紐約佳士得的拍槌下拍出6400萬美元，而此前這幅作品的估價是2500- 3200萬美元！這一類的通貨膨脹正在加速市場的轉手率，而有一些很幸運的作品所有者在很短的時間之內就獲得了豐厚的收益。比如說，2007年11月，演員休·格蘭特在佳士得以2100萬美元的價格賣出了一張沃霍爾的《莉斯》（1963年拍的伊麗莎白·泰勒的肖像），而他在六年前購買這幅作品的時候只花了 325萬美元，而且同一係列的一張《莉斯》在2005年的蘇富比拍賣中只賣出1125萬美元。

巴勃羅·畢加索：3.19億美元

2007年，畢加索畫作賣出的最高價格是2750萬美元——《蹲著的穿土耳其服裝的女人（傑奎琳）》。雖然這個數額很巨大，但是相對于他在2004年憑借《拿煙鬥的小孩》拍出的9300萬美元的價格，這個價格真的差得太遠了。《拿煙鬥的小孩》是畢加索粉色時期（1905年）的一幅難得的佳作。然而，2007年畢加索賣出的作品中，最引人注目的不是他的畫作，而是一座青銅雕塑，名字是《女人的頭像：朵拉·馬爾》。該作品在去年11月蘇富比紐約的拍賣中以2600萬美元拍出，佔據了全球藝術市場雕塑價格最高的地位。《女人的頭像》是畢加索第一件超過1000萬美元的雕塑作品，並且這一價格把雕塑銷售的總數從2007年的八位數推到了九位數（2006年是6位數），這反映了現代雕塑的強大勢頭——現在顯現出比同期繪畫作品更大的價格上漲——價格指數在十年間上升了100%以上。雖然售出了45件高于百萬美元的作品，就是說比2006年多出 10件，畢加索的年度銷售額在2007年下降了2000萬美元。而這並不代表他已經不流行了：要記住，他2006年的年度銷售額飆升了116%，這明顯是由《朵拉·馬爾與貓》8500萬美元的天價帶起來的。所以，這個前十名中第二的位置並不代表他的市場價值有所縮減。畢加索作品售出數百萬價格的比之前更加常見，但是他的年度銷售額只是因為市場上他的主要作品越來越少而變得有限。

弗蘭西斯·培根：2.45億美元

培根作品中那些痛苦的軀體並沒有把買家嚇跑！恰恰相反的是，藏家們非常喜歡他作品強烈的感情，以至于他的價格指數在十年間翻了三倍。從2006年的19位，他憑借著2007年的年度銷售額提高了2億美元躍升到了前十名的第三位。7場銷售描畫了這一引人矚目的進程：有七幅畫在2007年2月到11月之間每張售出超過1000萬美元。這一係列的作品中包含了弗蘭西斯?培根作品的新價格紀錄：《無辜的X之研究》在 2007年5月15日蘇富比紐約的拍賣中售出4700萬美元。在這次銷售六個月以後，他的《鬥牛研究一號第二版》（1969）再次在蘇富比紐約的拍槌下以4100萬美元拍出，鞏固了其價格急速上升的地位。對培根作品的追捧促使很多藏家售出他們手中培根的作品。這使市場上有了豐富的供給，在2007年，總共有13張他的油畫進入拍場，相比之下，在1997年到2006年期間，年度平均水平是2到7張。

　　馬克·羅斯科：2.07億美元

馬克?羅斯科躍升至前十位更加促進了現在正慢慢顯現出來的美國對這個排名的掌控地位，而且也表明了戰後藝術價格上漲的勢頭。事實上，他在1950年創作的《白色中心》在一次拍槌的敲定下，成為了拍賣市場上最昂貴的戰後藝術作品，同時也是那一年的銷售冠軍，《白色中心》在蘇富比5月的拍賣中售出6500萬美元，高出沃霍爾的價格紀錄100萬美元。羅斯克此前的價格紀錄是2005年11月在佳士得賣得2000萬美元的《彩色場，向馬蒂斯致敬》（1954），而《白色中心》的售價比這一紀錄翻了三倍還多。在2007年，我們看到了比以前更多的羅斯克的作品售出數百萬美元的價格：在一年以內，6件羅斯克的作品每一件售價都超過1000萬美元（在2007年5月到11月之間），相比之下， 2000年到2005年只有四件。他最受歡迎也是最昂貴的作品是他在上世紀50年代創作的大版的繪畫：色彩繽紛的冥想空間。然而，上升至七八位數的售價使得之前很少人問津的作品走進市場，比如他畫在紙上的作品，或者是他1969年的黑色和灰色的《無題》。另外，在2007年，還有一張他在更加灰暗的時期的《無題》,第一次越過了1000萬美元的門檻（11月14日，蘇富比）。

克勞德·莫奈：1.65億美元

作為法國印象派最耀眼的明星之一，克勞德·莫奈並不是第一次出現在這份名單之中。 2004年，他的作品銷售額為8000萬美元，佔據了第二位，排在了畢加索之後。但是，在2007年，這個分數在蘇富比和佳士得在倫敦短短兩天（7月 18、19日）的銷售中就被擊敗了，在這兩天，他一係列的主要作品售出接近4500萬英鎊（8400萬美元）。這個夏季拍賣的焦點是《雲霧中的滑鐵盧橋》，在假釋的拍賣會的第一天就以1600萬英鎊（3170萬美元）賣給了一位美國藏家，這個價格是前擁有者17年前購買價格的10倍。作為回擊，第二天蘇富比以1650英鎊賣出與《雲霧中的滑鐵盧橋》同年創作的《睡蓮》。克勞德·莫奈因此保持著作為安全投資的地位。他的作品在穩健的藝術品市場中很明顯是有利可圖的，2007年，他的27件作品售價超百萬，而此前的一年這個數目是16件。更樂觀的是，相對于1990年的投機泡沫的高峰（23場銷售超過百萬），他的作品在2007年售出了更多上7、8位數的價格。

亨利·馬蒂斯：1.14億美元

2007年，亨利·馬蒂斯的三件主要作品打破了此前他創下的紀錄：兩幅宮女繪畫和《椅子上的舞女》。在之前的那年，馬蒂斯憑借《露背的裸女》在蘇富比紐約拍出1650萬美元創下了新高。一年以後，還是同一個拍賣行，對《宮女，灰色調》（1925）寄予更高的期望，估價高達2000萬美元。該作品最終以1310萬美元售出，甚至沒有達到最低估價。但是在2007年10月的佳士得拍賣中，《宮女，藍色調》的叫價一直攀升到令人眩目的3000萬美元，比估價高出1000萬美元。這樣，這兩張宮女以及舞女售價就比2006年12張油畫、4個雕塑還有差不多60張素描的總銷售（5970萬美元）還要多。事實上，2007年的銷售使馬蒂斯在我們的前十名排名中上升了三位，同時創下了他自己年度收益的新紀錄。

　　吉恩·米切爾·巴斯奎特：1.02億美元

這位前十名中最年輕的藝術家同樣有著讓人印象深刻的增長：2007年，他的價格指數在十年間上升了480%。巴斯奎特並不是第一次出現在名的排名中，在2005年他就出現在第九的位置，當年他的總銷售額超過了3500萬美元，包括11 件作品售出100萬美元以上。但尤其出色的是2007年的成績更加引人注目：他的作品兩次超過百萬美元以上的銷售額，而這一年的銷售總額比2006年的三倍還多。這一急速上漲的價格趨于加速市場上藝術品的轉手。比如說《武士》，在2005年11月蘇富比的拍賣中賣出160萬美元，而在同一拍賣行，這件作品再次在拍槌下成交，售價高于500萬美元（250萬英鎊）。2007年百萬美元的作品中排名第一的作品是一幅1981年的多技巧的作品，以超過1000萬美元的價格大大的打破了該藝術家此前的紀錄。這件作品估價在600至800萬美元之間，而在蘇富比紐約5月15日的拍賣中賣出了1300萬美元。在秋拍中，巴斯奎特鞏固了其前所未有的上升勢頭，他的大幅畫作《電椅》（Electric Chair）售得1050萬美元，這一次，還是在蘇富比紐約的拍賣。

費爾南德·雷捷：9200萬美元

費爾南德·雷捷在2006年跌出了前十名，但是在2007年他爬回到第八位，這是他在2005年佔據的位置。他的作品在5月還有11月在紐約的成功拍賣為這位藝術家創下新的紀錄。五月份的奠基石是《工廠》（1918）。這幅作品描述了雷捷最喜歡的主題，基本的色調還有自然的互補排列得色彩繽紛。這幅作品在蘇富比的拍賣中，叫價從估價500到700美元一直飆升到1275美元。六個月以後，佳士得以1050萬美元的高價售出其佳作 (1950)。同一天，佳士得推出《外形對比繪畫（第二部分）》，這是一張立體派時代的佳作，畫在一張米色的紙上的黑白水粉畫。該作品創作于1913年，最終以驚人的4200萬美元成交。這標志著雷捷作品的最高紀錄。

馬克·夏卡爾：8900萬美元

雖然馬克·夏卡爾相對于2006年滑出了前三名的位置，但是雖然他的作品供給減少了，他的繪畫銷售額依舊穩固。2007年，有62幅油畫被拍出，比2006年差不多100幅的數量有所下降。然而夏卡爾是一個極其高產的藝術家，而且，由于他的大量知名的平版畫和蝕刻版畫，他是排在巴勃羅·畢加索後面，第二位被拍作品最多的藝術家。他其他作品的銷售佔到了他本人總交易額的85%；差不多 400件作品在2007年被拍賣。一件售價超過1000萬美元的佳作使他依然能夠留在今年前十名的位子上。這是一幅三米多寬的馬戲團表演的畫，在5月蘇富比紐約的拍賣中售得1225萬美元。但是這個高價並沒有能打破保持了17年的紀錄，這幅《生日》 (1923)同樣是在蘇富比拍賣，在1990年投機泡沫的頂峰時期拍得1350萬美元。盡管他標志性的作品越來越少，這位藝術家作品的市場還遠未達到沉寂的時候：他的作品的價格指數在2006年1月到2007年底之間幾乎上升了80%。

　　保羅·塞尚：8700萬美元

2006年是塞尚逝世100周年，而去年他作品的年度銷售額上升了50%以上。塞尚被畢加索譽為現代藝術之父，但是在近年他一直無緣于這個排行榜的前十位，這主要是由于缺乏他能夠售出上百萬的主要作品。在2002到2006年期間，他的年度銷售額都沒有超過4300萬美元（2007年水平的一半），而事實上他也只有一幅繪畫作品售價超過了這一水平。這件作品在蘇富比1999年被拍賣，惠特尼的藏品《簾子、罐子、盤子》是一幅1893到1894年的靜物作品，以5500萬美元在拍槌下成交。雖然最近有很多他其他的靜物作品賣出數百萬美元的價格，但是這件作品創下的塞尚作品的紀錄至今未被打破。比如說在2006年的拍賣中，蘇富比拍賣了他的巨作《靜物：水果與姜壺》，這是一幅他的成熟畫作，創作于大約1895年，售得3500萬美元。在2007年，塞尚沒有其他比這個質量更好的作品出現在拍賣會。這一年最貴的作品依然是一幅靜物畫，但這幅畫創作時期較早（1877年）且並不是很受重視，不過《水果盤與小碟餅幹》依然在11月6日紐約佳士得的拍賣中賣出1125萬美元的價格。

作者：禤光毅　

布妮時尚外交 Dior大贏家

2008-04-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

【聯合晚報╱編譯朱小明/綜合報導】

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。

Death of 'shock tactic' artist Angus Fairhurst is thought to have been suicide

2008-04-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

From The Times

April 1, 2008

(Fiona Hanson/PA)

Angus Fairhurst, right, with Damien Hirst, left, and Sarah Lucas

Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent

The Times Obituary

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.”

英美術館驚現希特勒私家藏畫由德畫家創作

2008-03-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

來源：新聞午報

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

2008-03-31T02:47:00.000-07:00

From The Times

March 31, 2008

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

Is the art market heading for a fall?

2008-03-30T02:49:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Times

March 30, 2008

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.

) ) ) ) )

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.

) ) ) ) )

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.”

) ) ) ) )

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.”

) ) ) ) )

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.

Uptown, Downtown, Fairs Found All Over

2008-03-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

Much anticipated, least visible: the Dark Fair, at the Swiss Institute in SoHo, includes Sue de Beer’s spinning zoetropes. More Photos >

By KAREN ROSENBERG

Published: March 29, 2008

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

2008-03-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

From The Times

March 29, 2008

Young artists are taking inspiration (and customers) from the internet

(playfulpainter.blogspot.com)

Soft-focus Apple icons by Gautam Rao

Tom Whitwell

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.

能否經得起時間考驗 "當代藝術"高價不勝寒

2008-03-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

來源：市場報

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

2008-03-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

【中央社╱台北二十七日電】

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

2008-03-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

【聯合報╱記者陶福媛／台北報導】

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。

名指揮家林克昌歡度80歲 NSO以音樂會致敬

2008-03-26T14:11:00.000-07:00

【中央社╱台北二十六日電】

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。

奧美創意博覽會：小比賽玩出大整合

2008-03-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

‧Cheers 2008/03/25

【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

2008-03-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

‧讀者文摘 2008/03/25

【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】

Tracey Emin fights to save Brick Lane from developers

2008-03-23T02:41:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Times

March 23, 2008

Tracey Emin is leading the battle to save the ‘cultural heart’ of East London from developers

Vanessa Jolly

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.”

藝言堂》初準備‧淺準備‧深準備

2008-03-22T14:06:00.000-07:00

【經濟日報╱邱天元】

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）

溫馨懷舊的文化生活紀錄

2008-03-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

【TEXT／Jacques；PHOTO／Jacques】

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】

「藝」股熱談 (下)

2008-03-19T15:05:00.000-07:00

【文／喬．希爾（Joe Martin Hill）；翻譯／宋偉航；圖／本刊資料室】

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

2008-03-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-03-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

【文／喬．希爾（Joe Martin Hill）；翻譯／宋偉航；圖／本刊資料室】

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

2008-03-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

【文／陳沛岑；圖／本刊資料室】

《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？

2008-03-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

【文／郭冠英；圖／本刊資料室】

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

2008-03-19T02:51:00.000-07:00

From The Times

March 19, 2008

The subcontinent is the rising star of contemporary art as collectors embrace a new generation of Indian artists

Gareth Harris

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

Hirst's fish in a chip shop may sell for £150,000

2008-03-18T15:00:00.000-07:00

Maev Kennedy
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."

台灣嘸設計？

2008-03-14T14:32:00.000-07:00

【text／馬修；photo／曾敬福】

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】

當時尚遇上藝術：When Fashion encounters Art

2008-03-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

【文／陳沛岑】

時尚產業與藝術的結盟從來就不是一件新鮮事，某些時尚工業在早期甚至是藝術的贊助者，例如香奈兒的創辦人嘉比愛．香奈兒（Gabrielle Chanel）生前即結交不少藝術圈好友，她曾贊助俄國芭蕾改革派大師迪亞吉雷夫（Serge Diaghilev）的《春之祭》（Le Sacre du Printemps）芭蕾舞劇製作費用（註1）；而於1948年以製造精品珠寶、鐘錶聞名的卡地亞（Cartier）在巴黎創辦「卡地亞當代藝術基金會」（Foundation Cartier pour l'art contemporain），其宗旨在於「鼓勵當代藝術的創造與藝術知識的流通」；而2003年路易．威登（Louis Vuitton）與日本當代藝術家村上隆（Takashi Murakami）合作的成果除了掀起了十足的話題性、為企業注入些年輕、普普可愛化的形象，更拉寬原本消費群的年齡層，帶來實質的營業額成長……在此，時尚以不同的方式介入藝術世界，扮演各不相同的角色；這些合作的目的也許是真心喜愛藝術，也許是為了回饋社會、或藉此重塑自我的品牌形象，再創商業新高點……背後的意圖其實是相當複雜的。

藝術與消費文化

然而在近幾年來，我們可以觀察到一個有趣的現象：在國際藝術雜誌《ArtReview》、《ArtForum》及《Frieze》裡，除了畫廊、美術館所刊登的展覽廣告外，我們亦不乏見到時尚品牌的新品廣告，而這些廣告與刊登在《Vogue》、《GQ》雜誌上的並沒有什麼不同；並且，從2007年下半年以來，《ArtReview》甚至在雜誌中另闢了一個名為「消費」（CONSUMED）的新單元，像評選當月最佳展覽般地選介該月份由商店、美術館、畫廊推出的藝術商品，例如在其中可見以攝影聞名的美國當代藝術家普林斯（Richard Prince）與設計師賈各柏（Marc Jacob）合作為LV設計的一春夏新款「笑話包」（Jokes），以及赫斯特（Damien Hirst）跨足為Levis設計的一款新型501丹寧牛仔褲，上頭有著他前一陣子引起軒然大波，號稱史上最貴的當代藝術作品《獻給上帝之愛》（For the Love of God）的經典骷髏頭圖案，只是在牛仔褲上的骷髏頭鑲嵌的不是鑽石，而是一顆顆的施華洛世奇（Swarovski）水晶，在這單元中，除了商品簡介外，產品的售價（就連是否含稅）、幣值、可查閱的延伸網站、藝術家的最新動態都標註於其上（註2）；這些現象傳遞的訊息是——藝術與時尚／商業的消費文化之間的藩籬已越趨模糊，在新時代中，兩者以更輕鬆的姿態貼近彼此，藝術在今日甚至可能已被某些人視為一種「時髦的新潮流」；而辯論這兩者之間產出的結果是high art或low art？或談論藝術與商業間的共謀彷彿顯得是那麼地天真，或許就如1966年沃荷（Andy Warhol）曾告訴我們的：「Art is commerce」，試問當代藝術家又有誰能向流行時尚產業的合作邀請說不？然而，將藝術與消費文化之間區隔開來的最後一道防線又會是什麼？

一場流行的神話

而在這一波時尚與藝術互相擁抱的趨勢中，最受人矚目的，要屬香奈兒在其創意總監拉格斐爾德（Karl Lagerfeld）的帶領下，宣布與藝術圈進行的合作案—— 一個富有野心與企圖心的大計畫「Mobile Art」（流動的藝術）。它產出的結果，不像是LV與村上隆的合作，只催生出幾款具甜美感的LV提包這般單純，而是一個「展覽」！

香奈兒聘請巴黎《Beaux Arts》藝術雜誌主編暨藝評家布思托（Fabrice Bousteau）擔任策展人，其邀請20位來自不同地域的藝術家以香奈兒經典的「2.55」菱格紋手袋為發想起點，各別創作一件作品。不少參與這項計畫的藝術家皆具高度的國際知名度，例如，有以魔幻動態建築風格著稱，曾於2004年獲得建築界最高榮譽「普立茲獎」（Pritzker Architecture Prize）的哈蒂（Zaha Hadid）、作品蘊含高度觀念性與社會批判性，甫於法國卡地亞當代藝術基金會舉辦個展的韓國藝術家李部（Lee Bul）、印度當代藝術紅星古普塔（Subodh Gupta）、在去年以作品《好好照顧自己》（Prenez soin de vous）代表法國館參加「威尼斯雙年展」（La Biennale di Venezia）的藝術家卡爾（Sophie Calle）、曾獲第47屆威尼斯雙年展金獅獎的法國藝術家貝赫（Fabrice Hyber）、日本當代攝影師荒木經惟（Nobuyoshi Araki）、小野洋子（Yoko Ono）、及以運用台灣傳統花布於創作，個人特色鮮明的林明弘、與作品屢現於國際大展的楊福東等人。

事實上，這個計畫十足地令人玩味，首先它要求藝術家創作的是一件「作品」，而非一件「商品」，據悉主辦單位強調，這是一個「純粹的藝術展覽，當中不會有任何的商業行為，香奈兒也將不會在那展示該品牌的包包或衣服，展館裡將只展示藝術家的作品」（註3）；第二，雖說「賦予藝術家高度的自主性」，但唯一的條件卻又須如香奈兒時尚總監帕洛夫斯基（Bruno Pavlovsky）所言：以香奈兒菱格紋手袋為題，「各自發揮創意，以不同的形式給予手袋新的生命——可以是詩意的、不拘小節的，又或是具啟發性的，呈現這手袋的傳奇面貌。」請注意，在這兒他用了「傳奇」兩個字，藝術家的作品在此除了擴充觀者對於香奈兒手提袋的想像與詮釋外，展覽還不著痕跡地為香奈兒打造新時代的傳奇與神話，把時尚自我與藝術連結起來，帶來一種具創造力、創意無限的表徵。法國文學家巴特（Roland Barthes）曾說：「神話是一種言談，一種傳播的體系，一種訊息。」（註4）而在此展中，香奈兒的包包雖是不現於展場內，但一件件的作品卻又不斷地回溯指向它，並使其鮮活化；就如拉格斐爾德所言：「我們可以用廣告淹沒這個世界，但是，這是更為高貴的做法。」試問，還有什麼能比藉著Mobile Art建構屬於它的神話的方式更技高一籌、更為「高貴」？但策展人在這計畫中所扮演的角色又是什麼？這或許是值得深思的。

移動的展覽館

過去都是我們去博物館看藝術，這一次，我們要讓博物館向我們走來。
——拉格斐爾德

Mobile Art將從2008年2月27日起，以香港為展覽的起跑點，在兩年的時間內，此展將陸續在東京、紐約、倫敦、莫斯科與巴黎巡迴展出；事實上，巡迴展的形式在藝術世界裡並不稀奇，但若整個展覽場是一個可以拆卸、摺疊、帶著走的移動空間，便十分地別出心裁！

這回在Mobile Art展前即吸引眾人目光的，便是由哈蒂運用數位成像軟體所設計面積達29×45平方公尺，高六公尺，充滿未來感的行動藝術館，哈蒂在論及其創作藍本時曾說：「我希望透過設計，讓人置身另一個世界，令人們躍動鼓舞，並對各種意念興奮不已。我們的建築非常富直覺感……著重帶來不同的體驗，提供一種既陌生又新鮮的感覺，彷彿來到新的國度。」在此處雖然無法辨認究竟香奈兒的菱格紋包給了她什麼樣的創作啟示？或許是精密細緻感也好、是未來感也罷，但就是這藝術家自主的轉化能力，以及在藝術家與香奈兒溝通的過程中，可能經過一連串的妥協或不能妥協後產生出的成果，它是使這個展覽之所以有趣的地方。

哈蒂設計的展館，強調流動與自然的建築風格，建築物的外型像是個浮出海面的白色鸚鵡螺，整棟建築似沒有尖銳的菱角，而由流線、飽滿的弧線雕塑而成一螺旋形結構的場館，此經精密的演算，每一個組構、銜接建築的結構元件都不超過2.25公尺，在展期結束後都可以拆卸下來，運輸到下一個城市再重組、裝嵌、重新開館；而其追求自然的建築風格除了展現在建物的外型上，也呈現在素材的挑選與設計上，例如中心展場的天花板上有八片像風扇般聚合在一起的玻璃纖維片，當中位在中央的那片設有一可自行調節開閤的機關，其目的除了能為展場引進自然的光線外，也可突破展館內外疆界的分野，並且，建築的外牆採反光物料，將能映射出周邊環境的風貌。

哈蒂把這棟建物稱為「容器」（container），此得以在其中容納其他參展藝術家的作品，在設計的過程中，她並未遵循一般的展場設計把空間區隔成一個個規矩的方塊體隔間，而是以流動的幾何定律，建構成流暢並充滿動力相連的空間，當中結合了不同的對比效果，如室外與室內、光與暗，以及自然與人為的景觀。展館內不同的力量為每個空間重新詮釋，同時帶領著參觀者的流向。（註5）

電影中說話的演員

Mobile Art的法籍策展人布斯托在記者會上說：這個展覽「是為Chanel而開拍的影片，藝術協辦人（策展人）是導演，參與的藝術家是編劇，參展的作品則充當演員」，其以電影的概念來看待這場展覽，而參與的觀者則訴諸大眾，因此，為了要讓這部電影容易被閱讀與理解，他特別找來紐約「Soundwalk」團隊（註6）來與參展藝術家合作，根據展出的作品，共同構思與作品搭配的音樂、聲音、音響效果、以及導覽的內容（可選擇不同語言的作品介紹、導讀），觀展者只要在展覽入口領取一mp3，即可隨著樂音的帶領，開放自己的知覺、視覺與聽覺感官，融入這場電影之中。

此展將於2月27日於香港中環舊天星停車場開幕，而就真宛如電影工業的操作一般，香奈兒對於作品在上映前十分保密，除哈蒂的巨型展館外，其他參展藝術家將進行的計畫（也就是電影中演員們的實際演出情節）公開的甚少，但目前確知的是：日本攝影師荒木經惟延續他以拍攝女人、花朵而聞名的主題，在其中探討人生，特別是生與死的內容，將帶來《Kaori與花》（Kaori and Flowers），在花朵交疊的影像中，呈現一身上被Chanel手提包的金屬鍊綑綁下赤裸的年輕女子，與她正躍動、掙脫的景象；李部將為此展創作《Light Years》，此為一件具有象徵意義的多媒材裝置作品，據悉藝術家將於作品上鑲嵌數百片的皮袋與鏈帶碎片，而在主體的內部裝有一閃光燈，藉此「向創造了 2.55包的Chanel女士致敬」；小野洋子則帶來一件祈願的互動裝置，她將在展覽現場邀請每位蒞臨展場的觀者以米紙寫下自己的願望後，把紙卡懸掛於樹枝上。

而當中有數位藝術家的作品則對消費性的香奈兒精品手袋提出反思，例如在印度藝術家古普塔展出的《所有東西都在裡面》（All the things are inside）錄像裝置裡，他回溯手袋對印度文化的意念，現場並列放映兩部電影，一為一位印度男人收拾行囊，離開家鄉到杜拜工作的過程；另一則為其剪輯印度寶萊塢電影中關於手袋的精華片段；此作品表達藝術家對全球化時代下，印度整體在追求現代化過程中，社會型態改變的關注，例如，對外移的勞工來說，香奈兒的手袋是派不上用場，或是他們所無法負擔的，他們需要的，只是一個可以把將到外地去工作所使用的日常用品全收納進去的大塑膠布袋，而綑綁這行囊的是簡易、唾手可得的塑膠繩，兩則電影顯示出強烈的反差，像是呈現兩個不同的對比世界。而俄羅斯當代藝術雙人組合「Blue Noses」則以作品《西元50年之後／手提包的反叛》（Fifty Years After Our Common Era or Handbags’ Revolt）用歡樂可愛的塗鴉，提出對香奈兒手提包的嘲諷與脫序的有趣想像；而這些多元的反向思考豐富了展覽的可觀性，並表現了藝術的獨立自主。（註7）

註1：迪亞吉雷夫（Serge Diaghilev）生於1872年，其於1908年創立俄國芭
蕾舞團（Ballet Russes），致力於「以芭蕾為全世界再創一個屬於俄國
的傳說」，香奈兒與他為摯友，在其劇團經濟困難時曾贊助他30萬法郎
使《春之祭》順利演出。參考《可可香奈兒：時尚就是我》（Le style
c’est moi-Coco Chanel），卡塔莉娜．茲爾可夫斯基（Katharina
Zilkowski）著，張育如譯，高寶國際，2001，頁110-119。
註2：參見2008年1月號《ArtReview》，頁32-33。
註3：香奈兒發布資料。
註4：《神話學》，羅蘭．巴特（Roland Barthes）著，許薔薔、許綺玲譯，
1997，桂冠圖書，頁169。
註5：參考香奈兒發佈資料。
註6：「Soundwalk」為一成立於紐約的公司，從事製作與設計規畫錄音導
覽內容來提供觀者／聽者在徒步之中，邊走、邊看、邊聽來認識一新文
化、新事物；該公司曾廣泛的與產業界如Adidas、Sony合作，並曾為法
國羅浮宮規畫錄音導覽。參見◎www.soundwalk.com。
註7：更多資訊請見◎www.chanel-mobileart.com

My Art News

伊通公園20載 藝術抱滿懷

Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

在地活力》迷你藝術品 擺進辦公室

店家傳奇》故宮晶華獨家曝光

時尚城市王 倫敦打敗巴黎

法國》第一夫人賣包包？ 為乳癌義賣

The collected utterances of Charles Saatchi, 1994-2003

For Sale: Art and Optimism

New York Photo Festival: the big picture show

李暐 大陸行為藝術家第一人

Market news: private art sales

Art sales: nerves still holding

Six decades on, who needs the ICA?

The once scandalous home of the avant-garde is now an irrelevant backwater that can barely run its own birthday party

Damien Hirst

歐亞鐵絲路 倫敦─孟加拉年底開通

Acquisitions take Saatchi back to Iraqi roots

挪威歌劇院 嗆雪梨閃邊去

招兵買馬 台北藝穗節8月底開跑

[華爾街見聞] 金融危機會沾染藝術品市場嗎？

企業社會責任 營收成長保證

印度、中東當代藝術熱延燒杜拜

Chinese Art Continues to Soar at Sotheby’s

Saatchi to unleash fresh band of Young British Artists at his new London gallery

Damien Hirst's earliest painting goes on sale

老夫子 蘇富比全球首拍漫畫原稿

8幅老夫子 蘇富比32萬起標

OBITUARIES; Angus Fairhurst, 41, of Young British Artists

中國當代藝術被狂炒 某些"當代藝術"是惡搞

Watch Out, Warhol, Here’s Japanese Shock Pop

Mat Collishaw: a shock-jock's deliverance

The artist Mat Collishaw has always used extreme tactics but in his latest show he's found tenderness in cruelty

WMF 廣告創意

全球拍賣前十藝術家 07世界藝術品市場盤點

布妮時尚外交 Dior大贏家

Death of 'shock tactic' artist Angus Fairhurst is thought to have been suicide

英美術館驚現希特勒私家藏畫 由德畫家創作

Angus Fairhurst

Sensitive and inventive artist who helped to set the contemporary cultural agenda for a decade

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?

Uptown, Downtown, Fairs Found All Over

Microtrends: Geek oil paintings

Young artists are taking inspiration (and customers) from the internet

能否經得起時間考驗 "當代藝術"高價不勝寒

德國指揮家來台 詮釋巴赫難度最高合唱曲

Alessi故宮家飾 繽紛喧鬧台灣味

名指揮家林克昌歡度80歲 NSO以音樂會致敬

奧美創意博覽會：小比賽玩出大整合

拍賣場上 百花齊放

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

藝言堂》初準備‧淺準備‧深準備

溫馨懷舊的文化生活紀錄

「藝」股熱談 (下)

Dubai fair reaps reward of focus on Indian contemporary art

「藝」股熱談 (上)

美經濟學家預測中國將成為第三大藝術市場

ArtForum：如何懷舊？如何面對現實？

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

Hirst's fish in a chip shop may sell for £150,000

台灣嘸設計？

當時尚遇上藝術：When Fashion encounters Art

伊通公園20載藝術抱滿懷

在地活力》迷你藝術品擺進辦公室

時尚城市王倫敦打敗巴黎

法國》第一夫人賣包包？為乳癌義賣

李暐大陸行為藝術家第一人

歐亞鐵絲路倫敦─孟加拉年底開通

挪威歌劇院嗆雪梨閃邊去

招兵買馬　台北藝穗節8月底開跑

企業社會責任營收成長保證

老夫子蘇富比全球首拍漫畫原稿

8幅老夫子蘇富比32萬起標

中國當代藝術被狂炒某些"當代藝術"是惡搞

英美術館驚現希特勒私家藏畫由德畫家創作

德國指揮家來台詮釋巴赫難度最高合唱曲

Alessi故宮家飾繽紛喧鬧台灣味

拍賣場上百花齊放