New life for blog
After abandoning this blog for quite some time, it will now become the home of research into topics related to my future course "Current Arts Forum." In that class we will investigate the absolute interconnectedness of contemporary culture with periods and ideas of influence from previous periods. The goal of the course is to give students a rough notion of how contemporary art is formed, where the ideas and trends originate, and how their work can be placed in some historical context.
The lecture format of this course will take cue from two sites of inspiration: Surfing the spectacle dot com, and research into Memetics. I feel it would be a bad idea to teach the course in any chronological manner, and would imply that there was a cohesive building up of events in the art world that brings us to the current state of things. More acurately the current state of things moves more like Memes, transmitting bits and pieces of information and ideas from one artist to another artist, to a cultural qualifyer to a school, to a magazine, back to the art world, through culture, back to the magazine, back to the student, up to the teacher, who later shows the work to the next years crop of students who repreat the project, which is seen by the comunity, that has been studying some related field, that apply the idea for it's own useage.
Hopefully this will all make sense to me before I have to deliver it to the students. My hope with placing the collected test data online is that I can invite questions and find connections that were at the time unaware to myself.
This leads us to our first example. The Benefit Art Sale in secret
Where did the idea originate? How has it evolved? Why is it still a strong virile Meme? Why does it polorize the art community in such a strong way? Why are those outside of the "arts" so invested in this idea?
Big Arts of Sanibel, Florida is having a secret art work benifit show and mentions in the desription online that they are taking the idea of a secret show from the London College of Arts and Crafts as well as Cincinnati Artworks Secret Show. The write up at Big Arts mentions that the sales are wonderfully successfull. I assume that the success is measured in sales. Not in keeping the secret a secret, or in providing some interesting critique on authorship, identity, etc. But my guess is that those ideas were never the actual qoal of the success, the benifit sale is designed to raise the most capital possible for that market.
The first mention of this sale involving artworks is listed at happening in 2006.
The New York SUN published an article in May, 2008 about a secret art sale of big name NY artists. In this case the works were of extreme value, or at least enough to charge $1,000 for tickets. This article mentions Susie Allen, a developer of the Royal College with the idea for the original sale that had works by Peter Blake and Chris Ofili.
The BBC News article on the Absolut Secret event is dated in 1998 but mentions a previous auction happening sponsored by Absolut Vodka in 1994. The quote from Susie Allen at the bottom of the article reads "It could be the largest and most prestigious transatlanic show ever, "speaking about this exhibition along with the parallel version happening at Davis McKee Gallery in New York (at bottom of article).
It is obvious from the language used that the event is about de-mystifying the art market in some way, and as the true value of any of the works is unknown or negated people will fork out money in hopes of winning some big prize. When I was on a cruise this summer people seemed extremely excited about "Naming the Price of the Picasso."
I don't have all the dots connected now, but I guess this question all started with a recent visit from the Chair of the University Faculty Senate who was asking our Art school to participate in a "fun, exciting" art auction. Laughingly she spoke about her lack of drawing skills but said she had a real eye for "taking pretty pictures." I obviously have issue with the idea of a university wide art sale. Perhaps this relates to the reasons that Susie Allen decided that the artists would be unknown in her sale. The desire to help is obvious in most artists that I know, however the cheeseball factor of having your work hung salon style with tons of really bad, or untrained, or trying to be good works makes you feel uneasy.
Is it a good idea to have art shows be secret, no, but is it a smart financial move to have a secret art sale, yes. I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceburg.
I will continue the questioning in the next post looking at Art sales of other universities, and galleries to call into question the notion of "Name Power."
The lecture format of this course will take cue from two sites of inspiration: Surfing the spectacle dot com, and research into Memetics. I feel it would be a bad idea to teach the course in any chronological manner, and would imply that there was a cohesive building up of events in the art world that brings us to the current state of things. More acurately the current state of things moves more like Memes, transmitting bits and pieces of information and ideas from one artist to another artist, to a cultural qualifyer to a school, to a magazine, back to the art world, through culture, back to the magazine, back to the student, up to the teacher, who later shows the work to the next years crop of students who repreat the project, which is seen by the comunity, that has been studying some related field, that apply the idea for it's own useage.
Hopefully this will all make sense to me before I have to deliver it to the students. My hope with placing the collected test data online is that I can invite questions and find connections that were at the time unaware to myself.
This leads us to our first example. The Benefit Art Sale in secret
Where did the idea originate? How has it evolved? Why is it still a strong virile Meme? Why does it polorize the art community in such a strong way? Why are those outside of the "arts" so invested in this idea?
Big Arts of Sanibel, Florida is having a secret art work benifit show and mentions in the desription online that they are taking the idea of a secret show from the London College of Arts and Crafts as well as Cincinnati Artworks Secret Show. The write up at Big Arts mentions that the sales are wonderfully successfull. I assume that the success is measured in sales. Not in keeping the secret a secret, or in providing some interesting critique on authorship, identity, etc. But my guess is that those ideas were never the actual qoal of the success, the benifit sale is designed to raise the most capital possible for that market.
The first mention of this sale involving artworks is listed at happening in 2006.
The New York SUN published an article in May, 2008 about a secret art sale of big name NY artists. In this case the works were of extreme value, or at least enough to charge $1,000 for tickets. This article mentions Susie Allen, a developer of the Royal College with the idea for the original sale that had works by Peter Blake and Chris Ofili.
The BBC News article on the Absolut Secret event is dated in 1998 but mentions a previous auction happening sponsored by Absolut Vodka in 1994. The quote from Susie Allen at the bottom of the article reads "It could be the largest and most prestigious transatlanic show ever, "speaking about this exhibition along with the parallel version happening at Davis McKee Gallery in New York (at bottom of article).
It is obvious from the language used that the event is about de-mystifying the art market in some way, and as the true value of any of the works is unknown or negated people will fork out money in hopes of winning some big prize. When I was on a cruise this summer people seemed extremely excited about "Naming the Price of the Picasso."
I don't have all the dots connected now, but I guess this question all started with a recent visit from the Chair of the University Faculty Senate who was asking our Art school to participate in a "fun, exciting" art auction. Laughingly she spoke about her lack of drawing skills but said she had a real eye for "taking pretty pictures." I obviously have issue with the idea of a university wide art sale. Perhaps this relates to the reasons that Susie Allen decided that the artists would be unknown in her sale. The desire to help is obvious in most artists that I know, however the cheeseball factor of having your work hung salon style with tons of really bad, or untrained, or trying to be good works makes you feel uneasy.
Is it a good idea to have art shows be secret, no, but is it a smart financial move to have a secret art sale, yes. I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceburg.
I will continue the questioning in the next post looking at Art sales of other universities, and galleries to call into question the notion of "Name Power."
posted by Mulligan at 7:41 AM
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