Presentation House Gallery
Vancouver, British Columbia
The Malcolmson Collection
October 1, 2009 to December 20, 2009

Gustave Le Gray, The Great Wave, Sete, 1857. Image: canadianart.ca

Do not miss seeing these extraordinary vintage photographs from the collection of friends-of-VoCA Harry and Ann Malcolmson.

Over the past twenty-five years, the Malcolmsons have assembled a rare collection of vintage and historic photographs that span the history of the medium. Highlights include nineteenth and twentieth-century classics by famous photographers Eugene Atget, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Marville, Tina Modotti, Man Ray, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Margaret Bourke-White, among others.

For more images and information on a number of artist tours and events, please click HERE.

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Apparently, the art market has returned.

Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills. Image: nyt.com

After a year of caution on the part of collectors, recent sales in New York and London have shown a dramatic return.  The other day, Sotheby’s New York sold Andy Warhol’s huge 1962 canvas 200 One Dollar Bills for $43.7 million (U.S.) – more than triple its pre-sale estimate.

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Now that the contemporary art world has reached a point where even Damien Hirst seems tired of his own hype (he recently was quoted as saying “I don’t like conceptual art in the end…I’ve always thought that being a painter was better than being an artist or a sculptor“) and with the recent financial upheaval, we predict a turn away from art that’s all wit and hype and toward the authenticity for which we’ve longed for quite some time.

Nikola Nikola, Containing or Contained. Image: Alisonsmithgallery.ca

VoCA has become less interested in ‘emerging’ art, which can feel limited and underdeveloped, and more interested in work from outside the artschool-gallery-artworld scene.

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…In London:

Sales were up at Frieze art fair in London apparently, but collectors are bargain-hunting. Artists continue apace, and you’ve got to hand it to Swiss artist Christoph Buchel for bravely exhibiting a pair of his old, worn socks on the floor of Hauser & Wirth, for sale at €20,000. Not sure if they sold.

Christoph Büchel Socks, 2009. Image: artfagcity.com

Editions are big news. White cube gallery in London exhibited as White Cube Editions at the Zoo art fair, offering affordable but highly branded prints and multiples by artists.

One of Damien Hirst’s Blue Paintings that are being slammed by critics in London.
Image: slamxhype.com

The latest trend seems to be blatant piss-taking (Hirst on Francis Bacon, Elmgreen Dragsett on Giacometti, the Korean artist Gimhongsok on Jeff Koons, or one of Stephanie Syjuco’s artists who have copied Gimhongsok’s copy of Koons.) This seems to point to a lack of creative inspiration among artists, perhaps a fatigue of having to create new, inspiring artwork. It’s as if they are creating lesser, imitation editions of great work and it’s an interesting trend to keep watching.

In related news, in THIS op-ed in the NYT last week argued that today’s conceptual art will go the way of the dodo bird. It’s craftsmanship and technical skill that will serve art in the long term, not “witty” conceptual ideas. VoCA thinks the writer certainly has a point.

…and in Canada:

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Just found this on Luxist.com:

Louis Vuitton’s new book: Art, Fashion and Architecture. Image: luxist.com

“A seductive anthology of the famed French fashion house’s collaborations with an international group of elite artists, architects, designers, and photographers, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Takashi Murakami (whose updated LV monogram is featured on the cover) Richard Prince and Stephen Sprouse.”

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Alberta is seeing a lot of cultural action these days.

There’s Santiago Calatrava’s controversial bridge, Lethbridge’s own (and VoCA favorite) David Hoffos with a large retrospective coming up this fall at the National Gallery of Canada, and Nigerian artist El Anatsui giving a talk tomorrow at the Glenbow Museum, courtesy of the Canadian Art Foundation, to name just a few things going on.

Burtynsky’s new book. Image: rsvppost.com

Not to mention the Art Gallery of Alberta, which is currently under construction and set to open in early 2010 with Edward Burtynsky: Oil.

From October 9 - December 12, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design launches 2 exhibitions by an American and an Irish artist, that explore the issues associated with the idea of the North and related ideas of the West.

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Superstar art dealer Larry Gagosian is certainly tapped into the zeitgeist, with his high-profile stable of artists, mini-empire (New York, Beverly Hills, London, Rome, Hong Kong, Athens) and recently, with his new shop that sells multiples by big-name artists in New York. The shop is new for a dealer, but not so new for the art world. It began with Claes Oldenburg’s art project The Store from 1961, and more recently, when Takashi Murakami began collaborating on Louis Vuitton-emblazoned merch, (and then opened a shop with his show at the LA MOCA.)

It’s clear that art has met fashion, and fallen in love.

The Gagosian Shop at 988 Madison Avenue. Image: selectism.com

As author Don Thompson makes evident in his observations from inside the international art world in his book The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (a reference to Damien Hirst’s shark preserved in formeldahyde), art has become about brands. And almost no one brands more successfully than Hirst and Gagosian.

It was probably inevitable, but it seems a shame that art has been reduced to branding. When the focus is on the brand, it takes away from the value of the art.

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The Washington Post’s influential art critic, the Canadian Blake Gopnik, offers some thoughts on critical opinion. He is “quite certain that the works of…Canadian Brian Jungen are about as good as it gets in contemporary art,” he says. “I’m sure I must have been right. My memory and instincts tell me I was.”

Brian Jungen, Prototype for New Understanding #1, 1998. Image: curatedobject.us

But then he questions himself: “What if I wasn’t? What if I…(now) reach whole other conclusions?”

He concludes that part of being a critic is being open and strong enough to change your mind.

Interesting.

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“An art gallery is like a single-cell organism: it is the crudest but also the most essential life form in the art-world food chain. It is among the easiest of public forums to start up…

Luanne Martineau, Gobbler, 2005. Image: trepanierbaer.com

…At the same time keeping a gallery going is usually fairly hard, and can seem impossibly daunting when sales slump. As small operations, galleries are…canaries in the coal mine, as they have often been called. So it made sense, as the bottom fell out of the art market last winter, that many people predicted galleries would start closing fast and furiously.”

This is from an article by Roberta Smith from the New York Times. Check it out HERE.

Graham Gillmore, Turns You On, 2005. Image: monteclarkgallery.com

Because Canada’s contemporary art market pales in comparison to that in the U.S., we don’t, perhaps give it much thought. But now’s a good time to set aside a budget to buy some art. $2000 would do nicely, and there’s the Toronto International Art Fair coming up, as well as excellent exhibitions opening this month. Here are some of our picks:

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The article, which you can read HERE, is a highly entertaining read, designed to promote Saatchi’s new book, My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic, out in the UK on Sept 8.

An image from The Revolution Continues at the new Saatchi gallery. Image: guardian.co.uk

Some nice quotes from the article:

“There’s no crime in art being decorative.”

“When a critic knows what she or he is looking at and writes revealingly about it, it’s sublime.”

“Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on.”

You’ll soon be able to order the book HERE.