IMMA doubly happy / OBG reloading / no laughs in Moscow / was worth $5, now worth $50m?
Substantial funds go IMMA's way
The Irish Museum of Modern Art today issued a press release welcoming yesterday's increased allocation of funds to it; its increase in current-expenditure funding by 9.4% represents 470,000 euro more in 2007. IMMA's directory, Enrique Juncosa, also expressed gratitude for an added 1.7m euro, announced last week, towards IMMA's purchase fund.
OBG advert for new Board
You snooze, you lose, but you probably did notice that last week was the closing date for applications for membership of the board of the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast. The Gallery has been the subject of intense controversy since its sudden closure in February of this year (for more, click here). New board members will be involved in programming future exhibitions and setting new ojectives in the foremost exhibition space for contemporary arts in Northern Ireland. The process is being overseen by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Russia doesn't see the joke
compiled by Cristina Martín de Vidales
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| Blue Noses: Mask Show, 2002, b/w photo, 75 x 100 cm; image held here |
Blue Noses, a Siberian duo consisting of Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov, are well known in Russia for their polemical works and satirical videos. Their energy, black humor, irreverence and sense of the grotesque alledgedly distill the spirit of Russian art and life today.
Matthew Bown, owner of the London-based Mathew Bown Gallery, was arrested in Russia on 20 October while attempting to export some of Blue Noses' works. He was questioned for around nine hours. The Gelman Gallery represents Blue Noses in Russia; on 21 October Marat Gelman was hospitalised with several bruising and swelling to the face and other parts of the body and a suspected fracture; the attack apparently related to his publicising of the confiscation of the artworks at Moscow airport.
On 24 October Bown, back in London, was informed by Gelman that the Russian authorities would need ten days to investigate the works. Customs agents were suspicious of several of the works, but one series disturbed them in particular. It depicted three semi-clad men wearing masks of Osama Ben Laden, Russian president Vladimir Putin and U.S. president George Bush. Customs agents decided that the work violated article 130 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, offense against officials.
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| Blue Noses: The Girl and Death, 2006, colour photo, 140 x 100 cm; image held here |
Shaburov, one Blue Noses member, does not consider Mask Shows insulting to the Russian president. "It's about how the media subsitutes for our private lives," he said, "how in Russia, as in all information societies, figures from television become closer than our real neighbors and acquaintances. It is simply the citation of the fact, of course there is humor and disengaged view, but that can not be equated with insult."
The Blue Noses show has gone on: it is at the Matthew Bown Gallery until 2 December.
Perhaps the best art investment of all time
compiled by Cristina Martín de Vidales
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| Jackson Pollock [?]: the disputed painting; image held here |
For fifteen
years Teri Horton has been fighting with 'arts experts', collectors, forensic
scientists... This adventure started fifteen years ago in a thrift shop on the
California Coast. One day she decided to buy a present for a friend; she
popped in the shop and found a weird abstract canvas, which at that time
she described as "ugly," but nevertheless bought for $5, reduced from $7.
The work seems next to have stayed Horton's
garage.
Her life took a sudden turn when an art teacher observed
that her painting had a certain rensemblance to a Jackson Pollock.
Who the
#$&% is Jackson Pollock? is the documentary film that shows Horton's
conflict with the 'art world', her struggle to defend what the evidence apparently demonstrated. This movie is "a story about class in America," how the art world
in spite of the 'truth', felt forced to dismiss Horton and her Pollock .
Specialists working on the painting have claimed that
the paint on the floor of Pollock's studio matches the paint on Horton's
canvas.
Moreover, Peter Paul Biro, who has worked for New York's Metropolitan Museum
of Art and the National Gallery in London, detected a fingerprint on the
back of Horton's canvas which matched one in Pollock's studio and so seems to be fairly indisputable evidence.
Despite Biro' s work and that of other professionals from within the sector, recognition for the canvas remains elusive.
If Horton's painting is finally declared the real deal, it could be worth to $40m to $50m. Recently she was offered $9m by a buyer. But she is not going to sell her painting for less than she
believes it is worth. Meanwhile, she goes on living in a mobile home in
Costa Mesa and depending on her social security. Her behaviour has made her into a kind of local heroine, low class against high culture. She
resists what she calls " the art-world conglomerate
conspiracy."
Most recent news items:
• Republic's arts budget to increase by 8.65% in 2007 (Thursday 16 November 2006)
• Morgan makes Guardian gallery / Mona Lisa's smile, once again / Picasso hole (Monday 23 October 2006)
• New gallery in Thurles / no takers for Botero's Abu Ghraib paintings (5 October 2006)
• English auction house sells Hitler paintings (29 September 2006)
For a full list of news items, click here.
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I have to say I agree with Circa. I have been working on a projec...
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re. Comment 2 - most people who get turned down for grants have t...
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hang on a minute... surely the feller who won the prize at art st...
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try and make work that doesn't topple over in future!...
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