ARTOCRACY

National Endowment for the Arts and Propaganda

Recently the NEA has come under fire for a conference call between the White House, the NEA, and people in the arts to communicate and promote the issues in the White House.  It is outrageous that the NEA would even ask artists to makes works about an agenda, especially artists that have received money from their agency.  Here is a link to one of the stories in the Wall Street Journal.

Artists are Servants of Power in the Wall Street Jounal

Damien Hirst and Cartrain

This is actually funny and weird.....it seems odd that Hirst is even upset, it seems like he would laugh it off. 
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Damien Hirst loses face over Cartrain's portrait

Could Damien Hirst's feud with teenage street artist Cartrain simply be down to his outrage at being so well caricatured?

Posted by Jonathan Jones Tuesday 15 September 2009 15.07 BST guardian.co.uk

Damien Hirst's feud with teenage street artist Cartrain could yet become the most controversial story of Hirst's career. It really is vile for a rich man to use his power to bully someone who, after all, is just trying to emulate him by making art with found materials.

Presumably, what irks Hirst is that Cartrain used Hirst's diamond skull in a series of collaged portraits of the skull's creator. Hirst successfully demanded that all the young artist's works incorporating the diamond skull should be handed over, presumably to be destroyed.

Click Here for full story in The Guardian.

Exhibition: Freedom

Malcolm Banthorpe:  We Kill For The Bill

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide. 
~Napoleon Bonaparte

This month’s exhibition is a selection of prints that examine freedom.  The month of July is a time that American’s reflect on our freedom, history, and the sacrifices our country has made in its name.  Each print suggests freedom through the artist’s use of restraint and choice, both different aspects of freedom. From the cool blue of a night plane ride by Christopher Schneider to the simple compositions of Veronica de Jesus that suggest how to find help.  Although all of the prints are not directly associated with freedom, for example a study of overlapping spools Todd Bourret, the prints suggests the beauty of freedom found through opposites, simplicity, and composition.   Freedom, being one of the most complex concepts that artists have examined, as many find that true freedom is not in doing whatever one wants, true freedom can be found through restraint.  Each artist in this exhibition has found this type of freedom through his or her work.

Artocracy will donate 10% of all sales this month to the Disabled American Veterans non-profit organization to thank the people who risk their lives for freedom. DAV is “made up exclusively of men and women disabled in our nation’s defense, the Disabled American Veterans is dedicated to one, single purpose — building better lives for all of our nation’s disabled veterans and their families.”  You can learn more about this organization at there website: http://www.dav.org/about/Mission.aspx

How Art Can Help People Heal

Here is an article on how art's creative process help  people  heal.  There have been a number of groups trying to prove this so that hospital's will put creative programming on the schedule.  This article is interesting from a research standpoint.

By RON WINSLOW for the Wall Street Journal

Julia Strecher was 9 years old when she had her second heart transplant. Her body had rejected the first heart she received with particular vehemence: She went into cardiac arrest six times in two hours. As doctors struggled to revive her, she recalls, she could hear them debating whether to give up.

“I was trapped in my body,” says Ms. Strecher, now 18. “I was trying to tell people I was alive and not to pull the plug.” A few months after she went home with her second new heart, she began having nightmares in which she watched herself suffering cardiac arrest.

But then, she began writing down her thoughts about being helpless. Eventually she turned the details into poems and stories. “It was extremely emotionally healing and freeing,” she said. “It helped me relieve a lot of stress and provided a distraction from pain and depression.” The nightmares went away.

Wall Street Journal Article Here:

The Art Newspaper: Robbing Peter to Pay Who.....

By Donn Zaretsky | From issue 204, July/August 2009
Published online 24.6.09 (opinion)

As Lindsay Pollock reports in the July/August issue and on theartnewspaper.com, about a third of the works included in Christie’s 20 May sale in New York were from US museums. One of those museums was the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, which, in March of this year, issued a very strange announcement. It revealed that, having “been deeply affected by the current financial crisis”, it was putting into place a “Financial Security Plan”, one part of which was the sale of more than 50 works from the collection, including an important 1951 drawing by Jackson Pollock.

What was strange about the announcement was how the proposed deaccessioning was supposed to fit into the “Financial Security Plan”. Under professional standards promulgated by the American Association of Museum Directors (AAMD) and the Association of American Museums (AAM), US museums can deaccession only to buy more work—and Montclair was quick to point out at every turn that they fully intended to comply with that rule. But if the sales proceeds were to be used to buy more work—simply replacing one set of objects with another—how could that possibly help make the museum more financially secure?

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, critic James Panero seemed to have solved the mystery: the works were being sold to satisfy the requirements of the museum’s bonds. The museum’s director confessed to Panero that “we took out tax exempt bonds…[and] whenever you do that…you agree to have a certain amount on hand in an endowment fund. At times when our endowment is flagging, we go below that line. So this is a creative way to keep the endowment full and to stay above the water line…just so we are in the good graces with the bond covenants.”

Art and the Recession

Marilyn K. Yee/The New York Times

Roland Augustine, Tracy Williams and Chuck Close comment on how the economy is affecting the art world.  It is an interesting take on how the art market will change.

NY Times Discussion

Here is the related article:

This Summer Some Gallieries are Sweating

By DOROTHY SPEARS

Published: June 19, 2009

IT’S hard to believe that only nine months ago art dealers everywhere were still dreaming up plans for vast multinational expansions. Since September, however, the contemporary art market has careened from boom to bust. Nowhere has that reversal of fortune been more sharply felt than in New York, whose galleries represent the full spectrum of the art world’s pecking order.

Full Article Here

The Best of Art Basel

by Paul Laster for The Daily Beast.

 
photo by Marc Eggimann

Brad Pitt dropped $1 million at the world’s most prestigious art fair this week. The Daily Beast’s Paul Laster surveys the galleries, paintings, and sculpture worth seeing.

As Venice settles down to a calmer flow of visitors to the Biennale throughout the summer, the art-world caravan has journeyed to Switzerland for the 40th edition of the world’s most prestigious fair, Art Basel. Collectors stormed the booths of their favorite galleries at the preview, making quick acquisitions of high quality modern and contemporary art.

More than 300 international galleries are showing work in a variety of media by more than 2,500 artists. With the exception of the sections of the fair offering emerging art and experimental projects, most dealers have been cautious to bring the best work by known artists—a strategy that is already paying off.

Venice Biennale

My Biennale Favorites

by Anthony Haden-Guest

Anthony Haden-Guest surveys the best art from the world’s pavilions, the Pinault collection, and a naughty guerrilla art exhibit.

Cities are very differently affected by the major art events that take place within them. New Yorkers with no particular interest in the arts are likely to be as little aware of the Armory Show as are Londoners—except those who live near Regents Park—of Frieze. Art Basel Miami certainly makes its presence known in that town, but the events are mostly for rich folk, and largely held out of sight.

The Venice Biennale is different. Venice has been art-saturated for centuries and during the Biennale the whole place explodes with visual information. Gondolas and commercial craft tote artworks and banners—like the one reading "I WILL NOT MAKE ANYMORE BORING ART—JOHN BALDESSARI" alongside the Hotel Monaco—are strung on buildings and bridges.

My Biennale Favorites - Page 4 - The Daily Beast

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Jason Belmonti: Bird Flight.

Jason Belmonti, Bird Flight, digital print for Artocracy.

Obama's New Arts Czar: His Wife - The Daily Beast

Judith H. Dobrzynski  for The Daily Beast
May 19, 2009


Disappointed that the president hasn’t appointed a point person on arts policy? His wife—who’s surprised the art world with her involvement at events like the Met’s American Wing reopening Monday—fills the bill nicely.

Far more excitement than usual pulsed through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Monday afternoon, and it was only partially sparked by the formal opening of its renovated American Wing. The cause of the real buzz was Michelle Obama.

Escorted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the elegant, light-filled Engelhard Courtyard, Michelle wowed a crowd of about 250, mainly big donors, trustees, curators, and others involved with the renovation. There the first lady, in a stunning purple V-neck dress—with sleeves, by the way, and a bow—designed by Isaac Mizrahi, gleefully wielded a pair of gigantic scissors to cut an equally gargantuan dark-red ribbon held by a group of schoolchildren. Then she hugged the kids, and many others in the room.

Obama's New Arts Czar: His Wife - Page 1 - The Daily Beast

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