Thoughts after a museum visit

What is a Cultural Asset?

"In every community that manages to sustain or revive itself over time, there are cultural factors that contribute to the vitality and robustness of the people living there. These factors are shared and creative, which is to say they are cultural and they are assets that make life valuable, that make life worth living. These cultural assets can be material, immaterial, emotional, or even spiritual. " 

Professor Ross Gibson, Sydney College of the Arts

Foreground - Old Enemy, New Victim, Tony Matelli 2006, latex resin and yak hair

Back L to R - Mercenaries II, Leon Golub 1979, Acrylic on Canvas ; The Start of the Lion Hunt, A. R. Penck 1982, synthetic resin on canvas ; The Throne Room, Queluz National Palace, Sintra , Portugal, Dorian FitzGerald 2009, acrylic paint and caulking on canvas ; Life's Illusions - Horserider, Folkert DeJong 2003, polystyrene, expanded polyurethane foam, synthetic resin, wood

L to R - I Learned the Hard Way, Mickalene Thomas 2010, rhinestones acrylic and enamel on panel ; Eye in Mouth, Paul Rebeyrolle 1988, grog clay and porcelain ; Sculpture - artist date not confirmed ; Sunset Nude, Floral Blanket, Tom Wesselmann 2003, Oil on Canvas ; Seascape, Jean Michel Basquiat 1983, acrylic and oil pastel on paper mounted on canvas ; A Panel of Experts, Jean-Michel Basquiat 1982, acrylic and oil pastel on paper mounted on canvas

L to R - AB Mediation, Gerhard Richter 1986, Oil on Canvas ; Sculpture, Artist and date not confirmed ; Deutschland Cafe XIII, Jorg Immendorff 1982, Oil on canvas ; Getting Ahead, Rachel Harrison 2005, wood, polystyrene, cement, acrylic, rubber, aluminum ladder

Above are images of part of two of the four rooms, within the sprawling Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal, hosting the current exhibition of the permanent collection of contemporary art at the Musee. Also within this complex of four rooms are major works by Albers, Calder, Beuys, Erro, Nevelson, Vasarely, Avery, Schulnik, Arp, Delvoye, Balkenhol, Horn, Currin, Los Carpinteros and Boltanski.  This does not include separate rooms that feature acquisitions from contemporary artists around Canada - Joanne Tod, BGL, Sanchez Brothers, Genevieve Cadieux, Harold Klunder, Angela Grauerholz, Eric Cameron, Kim Dorland, Kent Monkman, Damien Moppett and Pascal Grandmaison. 

The works currently showing in these exhibitions inhabit less than one tenth of the museum area, and are a combination of donations from artists and gifts from private collections and, importantly, acquisitions from artists studios and galleries.  All of the artworks mentioned, and hundreds of others are collected annually through these means and become the cultural property of the people of Montreal and Quebec.  Montreal collectors directly support the museum through donations and collections, frequently bringing the works into collection within a couple of years from the creation date - the wonderful large Mark Tansey canvas below, Action Painting II created in 1984 was entered into the Museum inventory as a gift by Nahum Gelber Q.C. the same year! The Musee is active at getting the work as close to the date of creation as possible.  

Recently, The National Gallery of Canada has closed its exhibition Builders, billed as a Canadian biennial exhibition.  This curated group of works by artists across all of Canada's provinces, Territories and First Nations included more than 100 drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, films, videos and other documents by 40 artists all brought into the Nations collection between April 2010 and March 2012.  Remarkably, the show did NOT include at least 177 other collection entries (including a portfolio of 294 separate Royal Art Lodge drawings collages and other ephemera) ALSO collected by the departments of Contemporary Art, Indigenous Art, and Photography during that period!  While the National Gallery has come under criticism for the money spent on acquiring specific pieces, notably  Voice of Fire by Barnet Newman ($1.8 Million) in1988, Maman by Louise Bourgeois ($3.2 Million) in 2004 and 100 Foot Line by Roxy Paine in 2010 for "under a million", I would argue that their purchases have been prescient and greatly enhance not only the country's visibility and tourism draw, but the coffers as well. 

Voice of Fire is an immense (5.4m x 2.4m, 212" x 94") work from 1967.  Characteristic of Newman's work, it has a direct connection to Canadian history, having been created on request from Buckminster Fuller for the US pavillion at Montreal's Expo '67.  A comparison on the open market is very difficult to make, as nothing this size has ever been sold as far as I can find.  Sothebys sold White Fire I from 1954, a 48 x 60" oil on canvas, at a hammer price of $3.3 million US.  Another monstrous work, in size and to some in content, Bourgeois' Maman is the largest example of some of her most well-known works.  One of an edition of 6, this piece has been placed in institutional collections and with important private collectors.  The closest public sale I have found is of a slightly smaller piece, Spider (1996), which is devoid of some of the important details that set Maman apart such as the hanging egg sacs and spinners integral to the metaphoric nature of the piece.  Spider (1996) sold at Christies NY in 2011 for a hammer price of $9.5 million.  Disregarding the incredible draw these works are to the hosting institution, these are significant capital gains that I am certain would dwarf many of the questionable and sometimes grossly negligent "investments" made by all levels of government.

More recently the National Gallery of Canada has become the co-owner of one of only 5 copies of Christian Marclay's The Clock, along with Boston Museum of Fine Arts, through the incredible generosity of Jay Smith, Laura Rapp and Carol and Morton Rapp.  This durational video piece, awarded the Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Bienniale, has had continuous showings at several Canadian institutions to huge crowds and great delight. and is an important driver for gallery visits wherever it has been shown. 

Gallery visits and dollar value are not the only reasons for bringing works into collections, but in a world as subjective and intangible as the world of art, they are a quantifiable measurement for those who would judge.  I prefer to think of the value to my kids, my grandkids, and further on, of being able to look on these assets as part of their world. The cultural inventory of a society is what is left when all else is gone.  The chefs and painters in Pompeii are long forgotten but the frescoes and ceramics remain for us to learn from and reflect on.  Details of the exploits of specific gladiators, or the lives of the architects in Rome would be unlikely to hold our attentions but standing inside or in front of the edifice of the Coliseum will make most think about the passage of time, our insignificance and the achievements of past ages. Cultural assets are the means for the future to learn about the past.

Edmonton's AGA had suspended all acquisitions during the time they were in transitional space and moving locations and have recently re-initiated a collecting process.  The 2011 Annual Report of the Art Gallery of Alberta, the province's only major dedicated art gallery and the 2011/12 Annual Report of Calgary's Glenbow Museum are available online.  Together these documents detail the addition, to their art collections, of a sum of 17 individual works from 5 different artists in Edmonton and 133 works from 17 different donations or purchase events in Calgary.  Of items added to inventory, all of the works in Edmonton were donated by artists or donors.  There were three purchased acquisitions to the Glenbow consisting of 31 artworks totalling just over $90,000. 

The cities of Calgary and Edmonton have both stepped up the programming of public art. Very successful pieces by international artists Jaume Plensa, commissioned by Encana and Cenovus, and Julian Opie (a four sided LED installation commissioned by Calgary Municipal Land Development Corporation) have launched in Calgary recently.  Edmonton Arts Council has been busy adding to Edmonton's public art through the percent for art program.  Craig Leblanc's Henri, a sleeping cat nestled above the running track at Terwilligar Rec Centre and Ingres Idee, a European collective's Running Track outside are quite successful in form and placement.  The much discussed Talus Dome aside the Whitemud Freeway is, to my mind, a nice piece placed suboptimally.  Surrounded by Edmonton's luxurious greenspace, a snow field or water I think the sculpture by Ball Nogues studio could be a lovely reflective and entertaining work.  Other works include those Jesse Sherburne and Vancouver collective Instant Coffee and are welcome additions to our civic collection. 

Edmonton has a thriving creative community, an arts friendly administration, a quiet but significant base of wealth, philanthropy and patronage, and a provincial government  that speaks of recognizing the importance of diversifying industry and revenues.  All levels of government seem to, at least in part, understand the value of culture in enhancing the livability of our communities and the viability of other business types.  Are collections being formed in Edmonton and slated for donation to the public trust?  Are our artists being nurtured and supported, presented for collection by individuals and institutions elsewhere?  Are our institutions provided with the resources necessary to collect assets that will fuel future growth in creativity and social discourse?  Where is evidence that backs Edmonton's commitment to a healthy creative community and to a global conversation about art and it's role in our present and future world?

I've been asking these questions for a while, to myself and others. I have found answers offered by other cities. I'm waiting for answers at home. 

Chronicles of a Disappearance - Good art that hurts

Grief and loss and difference are contemporary realities shared across societies and cultures worldwide. “Chronicles of a Disappearance”, a new exhibition at DHC/ART in Montreal, explores these difficult issues through the work of international artists Phillipe Parreno, Taryn Simon, Teresa Margolles, Omer Fast and Jose Toirac as each provides a view into abscence and disappearance as subject. All five of these acclaimed artists, in making the gaps in existence tangible, challenge the viewer to engage with their own state of being as reflected by a lack of something else.

Taryn Simon, a New York photo-based artist, in her An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, presents a series of stunningly shot photographs of worlds hidden and marginalized within American society. Enigmatic stills of deformed show animals, nuclear waste storage sites, CIA art collections and death row exercise yards are paired with dense and detailed text panels illuminating the images. The small print text requires an intimate closeness for most viewers, implicating us in the content and forcing an identification with either the marginalized or the power base. These hidden places and stories, integral to the function and dysfunction of American society, are unknown and unseeable but through the artist’s lens.

 Nuclear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility

Cherenkov Radiation, Hanford Site, U.S. Department of Energy

Southeastern Washington State

Submerged in a pool of water at Hanford Site are 1,936 stainless-steel nuclear-waste 

capsules containing cesium and strontium. Combined, they contain over 120 million 

curies of radioactivity. It is estimated to be the most curies under one 

roof in the United States. The blue glow is created by the Cherenkov Effect 

which describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, 

giving off energy, moves faster than light through a transparent medium. 

The temperatures of the capsules are as high as 330 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The pool of water serves as a shield against radiation; a human standing one foot 

from an unshielded capsule would receive a lethal dose of radiation in less than 10 seconds. 

Hanford is among the most contaminated sites in the United States.

Chromogenic print, 37-1/4 x 44-1/2 inches framed (94.6 x 113 cm), Edition of 7

                                       

Fidel Castro, long-lived and long-winded orator and leader of Cuba’s recent history is known for speeches lasting up to 9 hours. In Opus, Havana-based Jose Toirac has taken his fiery and impassioned tracts, edited out all content but a litany of numbers and compressed the audio recording to a cryptic speech and video list of numerals about what? Perhaps these represent the cuban refugees who make up part of the American population, or the number of foes, or the successes of the state, or the deaths of valiant heroes of revolution – there are no clues to the hidden content about which this leader is so passionate.

Showing concurrently at DHC/ART and Ottawa’s National Gallery is Berlin-based Omer Fast’s 50,000 Feet is the Best, a looping Groundhog Day of film edits from real and re-enacted interviews in and around a Las Vegas hotel room. The viewer is led through a series of vignettes via the questioning of an unseen interviewer as a man explains his experiences operating a Predator Drone against targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan from his base in the desert of America’s west. Clearly affected by the remote game-like attacks that have difficulty differentiating military from civilian targets, the pilot stutters and stumbles from one horror to the next alternating between anger, detachment, and palpable remorse. His nerves uncalmed by the contents of an unknowable pill bottle, the viewer is repeatedly shaken by

Another video based work, Phillipe Parreno’s engaging reenactment of the final journey of Robert Kennedy’s corpse from New York to Washinton in June 8, 1968, shows the Senator’s view of a country in grieving not only for him but for the hope he represented. Long sweeping shots of mourners in urban and country settings pit the gallery viewer’s gaze with those who experiencing loss and pain. The massive projection of 70mm film leaves us humbled by the emotion portrayed, the gravity of the journey, and the import of the event.

June 8, 1968  Phillip Parreno
Installation View from DHC/ART

Plancha is a startling work by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles that lulls the viewer with its form reminiscent of minimalist sculpture in iron and stone. Within the large gallery, a long line of oxidizing steel is heated by hidden elements and rests underneath a trough slowly dripping water along the slab’s length. The water measures time in this space as it does when slowly leaking from an old faucet, but in DHC/ART the ‘bloop’ echoing in our insomniac brain has become a sharp audible hiss as the droplet immediately evaporates into the room on hitting the hot metal, a whitish residue forming on te plate surface. When one learns, via the whispers of other visitors and the nearby text panel, that Margolles has collected this water from her previous workplace, a morgue, where the liquid had been used to wash bodies, the sounds and heat and smells in the room become far more sinister. The viewer becomes complicit in the processing of death in a country, far away, where the usually young and often anonymous corpses pay silent witnesses to a society rife with drugs, violence and social inequity.

Plancha - Installation and detail views from DHC/ART

In an alcove, next to Plancha, Taryn Simon has a final work, isolated and dead-ended by an astute and fearless curatorial team. Zarah/Farah is a devastating staged photograph based on recent real events staining American military history. This image, created for the final frame of Brian DePalma’s film Redacted, shows the actress Zahra Zubaidi playing the role of Farah, a character based on the 14 year old Iraqi girl Abeer Qasim Hamza. Four American soldiers of the 502nd Infantry Regiment have been convicted of gang rape of the child Hamza outside Mahmudiya, during which time her parents and six year old sister were being murdered. After the rape, Hamza was shot in the head and her body set on fire. The Iraqi actress Zubaidi has, since the film, sought and attained political asylum due to death threats from family and criticism from friends and neighbors for her portrayal of the 14 year old victim, a role they consider to be pornography. No matter how one is affected by this horrifying fiction of a more horrific reality, once seen the viewer has no choice but to re-enter the overly warm and cloying mortuary, and breathe molecules of the departed before being released into the everyday, undoubtedly changed.

I left the exhibition “Chronicles of a Disappearance” battered and shaken. Face to face with reminders of the disappeared, the forgotten, and the lost we are forced to reconcile our horror with realization that this is the reality that we live in. This is not easy art, and that is high praise indeed. The greatest role of art, in my opinion, is to reflect society back on itself for processing and consideration; to evoke emotion and thought and discussion; to be incapable of being ignored. This exhibition hits on all counts.

It has been my great pleasure to visit DHC/ART for several amazing shows over the past few years and I stand in awe of this institution and her curatorial staff who are seemingly fearless. Jenny Holzer, Guido Van der Werve, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Sophie Calle, John Currin, Tehching Hsieh, Eija-Liisa Ahtila have all shown in recent years. Amazing artists, many exploding onto the international stage after being programmed here, these are not household names but ‘artist’s artists’. These are the controversial and influential leaders in contemporary visual culture.  I am adamant that, while Montreal is always worth visiting, DHC/Art  is reason alone to make the journey and is in itself a national treasure.

Montreal Collects!

Montreal is a city alive with art and artists. Montreal sustains a culture that embraces art in many forms. Entering into the art world of Montreal, one will uncover Canadian artists from all over who have relocated for education, opportunity, and the supportive community present there.

I have been lucky enough to visit several times over the past 12 months and am always thrilled to see what is going on in Montreal’s institutions, galleries and artist run centres as well as the private foundations working to build a thriving contemporary discussion in the visual arts.

I have visited the Musee de Beaux Artes on two occasions this year. The first visit was to see the fantastic Rouge Cabaret The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix exhibition, drawing from the Musee’s own collection, the Neue Gallery in New York, and private European and American collections. A couple of years ago the same institution hosted a survey exhibition of Kees Van Dongen which similarly shed new light on an artist sometimes dismissed as trite and of little relevance. Both these shows were remarkable to me for their potent and wrenching discussion of ongoing issues of social responsibility, government censorship of artistic expression in times of conflict, relationships between the patron class and artists, and the importance of unrestricted support in the production of the most powerful work. Both exhibitions allowed for a view of the progression of the artists skills and career through world events and life stages - a great learning experience.

While visiting the Beaux Artes I stumbled upon a fabulous exhibition of recently acquired and borrowed works put together by Stephane Aquin and his curatorial team. “The Earth is Blue Like an Orange” is an examination of the importance of the imagination and the surreal in contemporary art practice. Aquin has been able to bring together work by young Quebecois, Canadian, and International artists in a tour de force of charming and arresting, even disturbing pieces that have held my imagination for many hours after each visit. Many of the works involve the anthropomorphization of animal forms as witnessed in the darkly humorous work of Karen Gibolous who fashions condensed tableaux harshly mimicking our own consumerist society and commenting on the ethics of food production, overpopulation, gluttony and ethnocentricism. Martin Beauregard's “Wake up Teddy” is a cuddly and disturbing “life-size” teddy bear made from – a life size bear – and is a piece I could look at over and over forever even while it gives me a feeling of deep sadness. Simen Johan, a photo-based artist based in New York produces twisted and confusing images of the museum dioramas that those of us of a certain age were bombarded with on numerous trips to the museums of our youth. The familiar animals and surroundings are muddled with features incongruous to natural worlds but familiar to dreams and perhaps the altered environments of our future. Recent Sobey Award finalists Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby are included with a taxidermied installation and hallucinogenic video inducing laughter and squirming discomfort in equal measure. The brilliant Valerie Blass (more of her work later) is represented by the glamorous and ominous She Was a Big Success (2009), a presciently wise acquisition by an institution with eyes fixed on past present and future.

On going through the feature shows, the recent contemporary acquisitions and the historical exhibitions it is amazing to me the activity that must go on within the committees and curatorial departments of the Musee des Beaux Artes. The inventory numbers readable on each label tell a story of acquisition either through purchase or donation of vast numbers of important works of today and yesterday. The support given by this institution, the Musee Art Contemporain, the National Museum of Quebec in Quebec City, and Canada’s National Gallery to the artists in all parts of Canada and especially in Quebec is exemplary. Are western institutions able to illustrate this kind of support for our Canadian and western contemporary artists? Is there a track record of RECENT acquisition, by any means, of important work going on in our relatively well-off province? Are our artists being held up as important cogs within our society on a national and international stage? Are the patrons of our province stepping up in support of artists and creation as suggested in the review of MAC’s recent gala ball by Mr. Alexandre Taillefer who was both host of that ball and lender of several important pieces to the “Blue as an Orange” exhibition?

    "Encouraging the MAC means supporting a place where today's artists can share the fruits of their artistic labours. Thanks to the acquisitions the Musee makes every year, this support also provides them with precious revenue that will allow them to grow, nurture their vision and push back the boundaries of their art further still.
     The Musee is a place where visitors can be enriched by artists' vision and life experience - be shocked, bowled over or carried away, and nurtured by that very vision.
     It isn't always easy to champion arts related causes at times like the one we are going through. But it is my deep conviction that art is just as important as education and health - that it nurtures the soul!
     More than all those artists who have passed on and left us an enduring legacy with their works, the artists who are our contemporaries need our encouragement. Your support this evening is a sterling example.
     Like many of you, Debbie and I are passionate about contemporary art and collect work that moves us. Think about visiting your local galleries, keeping in mind that every acquisition helps build an even stronger Quebec visual arts scene."     Alexandre Taillefer

The amount of haggling and horse trading, pleading, and begging that must go on in these institutions to amass the collections of work shown and stored is astounding. Arguments about budgets and time are likely even more valid in Quebec and yet the Beaux Artes is able to boast new entries in 2008 of at least 100 pieces of art. The MAC has recently acquired a major piece by Valerie Blass as has the National Museum of Canada and Quebec City’s National Museum. Can our local temples of culture come close to this level of advocacy? Are our community leaders and economic giants able to see the benefit to our world of a thriving artistic scene and step up in a fashion deserved by our artists and cultural creators? Or perhaps, as has been the norm, shall we see the ongoing exodus of the best of our musicians, painters, writers, sculptors, dancers, performers, and filmmakers. These integral members of our world are moving to a climate that recognizes a thriving arts community as a reflection of a healthy and balanced society comfortable with discussions of importance beyond the price of oil and the rise or fall of the real estate market? They move to Montreal.

An Artjunkie’s Views

Hiya!

Being a man of a certain middle age, and a luddite by nature, I am a very late arrival in the land of blog. In general I haven't felt like I had much of value to inflict on you. In all likelihood, I still don't but I do have increasingly strong opinions about the state of contemporary art, and it's importance, in my world.

I had little to no exposure to visual art in my education and growing up. I was, and still am, avidly connected to music in many forms. I played in concert band, sang in church choir and yelled in a band covering post-punk and new wave tunes.

As I went through school and university, studying science and then medicine, there was little time nor room in my brain for anything more. After writing my last exams in medical school I went on a trip to Mexico - to an area off radar for most - to the southern state of Oaxaca. The state capital, Oaxaca City,  has long been a centre of art production in Mexico and has a number of influential schools for training artists along with a strong network of galleries. I visited the museum of pre-columbian art and artifacts left by Rufino Tamayo, saw murals created by the great muralists of early 20th century Mexico including Tamayo, David Siqueros, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Diego Rivera. I spent a day in Mexico City and visited the amazing collection of the Rufino Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art and saw, for the first time, the wonders of some of the mid-century greats - european, american and latin. These were formative exposures. I had a brain open to new information and a heart desperate for new experience; it was an epiphany.

While visiting a few of Oaxaca's small galleries I was stunned to see so many different ways of representing thought, idea, and emotion. I bought my first two pieces of original work (or convinced my parents that it would be a great graduation present) in Oaxaca, and have continued to collect work that made me feel and think and sometimes to hurt. I have managed to become steward for works by Edmonton, Canadian and international artists and learned of the great privilege that comes with patronage. I now know that by committing my resources to acquiring original art I am able to support artists to continue the important work they do. The works I get to live with could become the cultural treasures of the future, or perhaps they are the means that allow that artist to create the next watershed cultural work that can change our world.

I volunteer at a local non-profit gallery and support the major collecting institution in Edmonton. I attend as many events as I can in my area to support local artists at all stages, and I have worked with local artists to produce major works that have shown locally and are slated to travel internationally. I travel several times a year to major art centres and events including art fairs in New York, London, Miami, and I look at a vast array of art. I read art journals, blogs and critical writing. I visit museums and galleries frequently. I have very strong opinions about the important role artists play in our communities and the need for their work to be supported, shown, collected and documented by collectors and institutions.

In this blog I will be commenting on work I see, on developments in the international art world, on art that inflames me, and on the practices of artists I love. I hope to infect others with the collecting bug, and to inspire a culture of patronage in readers as well as dialogue and learning about art theory and practice. Posts will happen when I have something new to talk about. Conversations are encouraged.