John Lennon drawings go on show in New York

This photo provided by Yoko Ono shows John Lennon's drawing "Let's Have a Dream" in the new exhibition "The Artwork of John Lennon."

This photo provided by the Yoko Ono shows John Lennon's drawing "Forever Love" in the new exhibition "The Artwork of John Lennon."

This photo provided by the Yoko Ono shows John Lennon's drawing "Happy Life" in the new exhibition "The Artwork of John Lennon."

Beatles fans can see another artistic side of John Lennon in New York this week.

An exhibition will feature 100 drawings and sketches by the late Beatle, called The Artwork of John Lennon, runs Friday to 9 October at 130 Prince St. in SoHo.

It marks what would have been Lennon's 72nd birthday.

The works cover the years 1964 to 1980, the year Lennon was fatally shot outside his Manhattan apartment building.

The exhibition is being presented by his widow, Yoko Ono, as well as Bag One Arts and Legacy Fine Art and Productions.

Donations from visitors will benefit charity Citymeals-on-Wheels.

Lennon's art consists of quick sketches and the Oriental technique of sumi ink drawings.

Modern masters: can contemporary art mix with ancient treasures?

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, it's about time the UK's leading institutions, such as London's National Gallery, presented modern art alongside old masters 

  A Metropolitan approach … detail of painting by Richard Hamilton. Photograph: © Richard 

The first time I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art was like waking up in fairyland. There is no other museum quite like this palace of wonders on the east side of New York's Central Park. It magically brings together an ancient Egyptian temple, 18th-century salons and some of the greatest works of Rembrandt and Vermeer, among other delights, in airy, well-lit galleries with regular views of the tree-filled park.

Yet what truly marks this museum out from European cousins such as the Louvre and – until now – London's National Gallery is that it takes for granted a fact that still causes endless tensions in the UK: the rightful place of modern and contemporary art alongside the treasures of the past.

This season's big exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum is a survey of Andy Warhol's living artistic influence. This is not an unusual project for a museum whose permanent collection includes, as well as El Greco's View of Toledo, such modern American masterpieces as White Flag by Jasper Johns.

When I first visited New York, this easy intimacy of old and new transformed my view of art. In Britain, art fans have a habit of being dogmatic "conservatives" or "modernists". The Metropolitan Museum embodies a much richer way of seeing art: the new grows out of the old, the old is renewed by the visions of today.

But Brits may be about to become Americans, at least in the way we experience art. London's National Gallery is launching a quite new approach to the relation between art and its history. This museum whose permanent collection culminates around 1900 is adopting an approach that may even make the Metropolitan envious. Its director will be speaking at Frieze Masters, the new art fair from the makers of Frieze that claims to bring together old and new. The NG has thrown its weight behind this venture. Meanwhile, it is about to show the last works of Richard Hamilton and put on its first ever photography exhibition.

The problem with new art at the National Gallery used to be that its contemporary exhibitions seemed either tacked-on or critically naive. The new, sophisticated approach can only be good for this gallery, and good for art.

I hope the season of Frieze Masters sees a truly civilised art culture finally arrive in Britain. You might almost say, a Metropolitan way of seeing.

Science and art join forces for exhibition

  

 Dr Megan Dowie with the electron microscope 

 

AN EXHIBITION that combines art and neuroscience is about to open its doors to visitors.

Ten artists are displaying their work as part of A Nervous Encounter from Saturday until October 20 at the Old Fire Station in George Street, Oxford.

Neuroscientists at the Medical Research Council Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit (ANU) at the University of Oxford worked with the artists from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, on the project.

The exhibition includes a combination of media from printmaking and photography to video and sound installations in-spired by the brain research lab.

Dr Megan Dowie, a post-doctoral researcher at ANU and project leader, said: “This has been an amazing opportunity to share our research with different audiences and we are looking forward to seeing and experiencing the artworks created as a result of this evolving relationship.”

Artist Nathan Cohen, course tutor at Central St Martins, said: “It has been inspiring to see the research undertaken and to work with the neuroscientists in the MRC unit in Oxford over the course of the year.
“This has offered a significant opportunity for a group of scientists and artists to collaborate together.”

Jeremy Spafford, director of arts at the Old Fire Station, said: “We are delighted to be welcoming this fascinating exhibition.

“It is a wonderful example of how art can help us reflect on and understand the world around us and, in this instance, within us.

“The public will be able to enjoy great art, learn about the workings of the brain and engage in revealing dialogue.”

Scientists at ANU study the properties of individual brain cells (neurons) and groups of neurons to understand more about how the brain works.

Jude Eades, Medical Research Council communications manager, said: “Talking about science with the general public can be challenging, so we support and embrace new methods and opportunities to open that dialogue.

“The MRC is proud to support this exhibition and bring the work of the ANU to a new audience.”

Fitzwilliam Museum Chinese art: 'Substantial reward' offered

The advert offers a "substantial reward" for the stolen artefacts

A "substantial reward" is being offered for information about "valuable and culturally significant" Chinese art stolen from a Cambridge museum.

The 18 mainly jade items were taken from the Fitzwilliam Museum in April.

Three men and a 16-year-old boy were sentenced on Thursday, but police still do not know where the stolen items are.

Loss adjusters Clement Doherty Adjusters Ltd has placed the full-page advert in Antiques Trade Gazette on behalf of the museum.

The advertisement does not state how much the reward is.
The items, dating from the Ming and Qing dynasties, have been valued at between £5m and £15m.

'Open negotiations' They include a jade 16th Century carved buffalo, a carved horse from the 17th Century and a green and brown jade carved elephant.

Roger Keverne, a London-based dealer who specialises in Chinese ceramics and works of art who advised the museum following the theft, said he was hopeful the reward would lead to the return of some or all of the items.

"Although the advertisement does not say how much the reward is, I expect if someone rings up with information, they will try to open up negotiations," he said.

"The more people are made aware of this, the better.

"It will make it even more difficult to sell the haul and I hope someone will do the right thing, return the art for the reward and then it can be taken back to the Fitzwilliam."

A 17th Century jade horse from the Ming dynasty was one of 18 items taken by the thieves

 

A spokesman from the Fitzwilliam Museum said: "We see the advertisement as part of the second stage of the investigation, entailing the return of all 18 stolen jades to the museum."

On Thursday, Steven Coughlan, 25, of Gypsies Residential Site, in Eleanor Street, Bow, east London, Robert Smith, 24, of Rosedale Stables, Swanley, Kent, and a 29-year-old man from London, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were each jailed for six years for conspiracy to burgle.

Marvin Simos, 16, of Hanameel Street, Victoria Dock, London, was sentenced to a four-month detention and training order after admitting burglary.

Two books on modern art: review

Books by Will Gompertz and Susie Hodge show that demystifying modern art is far from child’s play

At last, I thought, when Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That appeared – someone addressing the glib riposte most commonly levelled at conceptual art. It’s a tricky topic. There is no single, convenient comeback to what distinguishes art from hot air. Modern art was and is a game-changer, and like all games, you need to know how to play.

But Susie Hodge’s book is not the only primer at large. Earlier this month came Will Gompertz’s What Are You Looking At?, an essay on where we are and how we got here. Here being: at best confused, at worst in an almighty sulk.

Obstacle number one: Modern art is elitist. It’s hard not to feel there’s a cognoscenti who deem behind closed doors what is and isn’t “significant”. It’s also hard not to think they may be laughing while they do it. As Gompertz says: “Abstract art puts us all at risk of looking like suckers, believing in something that isn’t there.”

He says “us” a lot, including himself in the bewildered camp, even though he is ostensibly from the other, members-only one. He doesn’t hide his former role as media director at Tate, using it instead to win us over. “I started by knowing nothing and… there is plenty more for me to learn.” He even snitches on Sir Nicholas Serota, his former boss. When Serota sees a new work, Gompertz confides, he admits to feeling a little “daunted… I often don’t know what to think”.

Obstacle number two: people who write about art often drift into “artspeak”, the verbose, clotted kind of sentences that would thwart even the best-intentioned reader.

Obstacle number three: conceptual art has wildly different aims to its forebears. We had 600 years of artists making their work as lifelike as possible, and then 100 years of the opposite. Unsurprisingly, our brains haven’t quite adapted. Even when an artist removes every reference to the known world, our brain still searches for it, “like a satnav searching for a signal” (Gompertz).

This, agrees Hodge, is how we come to mistake “an apparent lack of technique for a lack of artistic sophistication”. I liked her introduction very much. It’s a clearly written abstract explaining how technology, atrocity and consumerism incited a succession of rebellious artists. From here she goes downhill.

Hodge’s approach is founded on the assumption that our woolgatherer brains can only digest information in lightweight portions. She writes about 100 artworks, the necessary pieces for a join-the-dots timeline of modern art – Dalí’s telephone, Warhol’s soup, Emin’s bed. To make the timeline fit the theory, however, most every work has been chosen for being deliberately infantile – a collage of toys, a pile of sweets – and is divided into “toys, scribbles, tantrums, monsters”.

Each entry includes a box explaining why “no child could have created this…”, which made me want to throw the book at the wall. Example, in reference to Tracey Emin: “Children may often leave their beds unmade…but a close look at this installation reveals that the bed and strewn items belong to an adult”. In labouring this one point, over and over, 100 times, she wrings the life out of every piece. Actually, she’s treating her readers like five year-olds.

Gompertz, on the other hand, is full of useful explanations. I’ve had difficulty with conceptual works. Mostly this is a time issue. Many works repay a thorough read around and a think. But when it comes to art, we’re conditioned for the instant hit.

Gompertz is good on this. Back in 1917, he tells us, the painter Kazimir Malevich upset “Tsar Nicholas and his aristocratic chums” by painting a black square on a white canvas. Gompertz explains that the scepticism surrounding Malevich’s black square (and every abstract work since), comes from Malevich turning the traditional relationship between artist and audience on its head. Historically the artist was subservient. It was up to him to please us, and we decided if he had succeeded. But Malevich turned art into “a mind game in which the artist sets all the rules”.

For Gompertz, there is no one “modern art”, rather a series of modern arts. The experiments of artists since the Impressionists meant the destruction of the one true way, the linear progression.

He is brilliant at puncturing our avid acceptance, too. I used the word experiments just now, and much of modern art was just that. Artists aren’t always right, says Gompertz. Rodchenko once declared painting to be over. It wasn’t.

Gompertz isn’t always to my taste. His “flights of fancy” as he calls them, where he imagines the Impressionists tub-thumping in a café, or Duchamp strolling the streets of New York, can veer into schmaltz. It’s as if he’s using that television presenter’s fallback – historical reconstruction.

I was minded of television more than a few times while reading this. It’s conversational and brilliantly irreverent. True, he can be a bit too informal at times, and his slang is akin to hearing your dad say something’s “wicked”. But his prose is clear as glass.

Some have bemoaned the small number of illustrations. But as he keeps saying: go and see the real thing. Just remember two things: one, you aren’t compelled to agree, and two, you don’t have to like everything. Move on.

Calligraphic art goes on display

An exhibition of calligraphic paintings by Azeem Iqbal, an artist who has been associated with Islamic art for the last 15 years and whose present collection has brought ‘Ehd-e-Nabvi’ on canvas, opens at the Nomad Art Gallery today (Tuesday).

“Azeem is pursuing new ideas and dimensions, and aspires to share a special narrative relating to ‘calligraphy and peace,’ fused with a fine level of skill and creativity,” the gallery’s director, Nageen Hyat, said while analysing his work at a press preview.

Titled ‘Calligraphic Perspective on Peace,’ the collection is akin to Dostoevsky’s works for its profundity of thought, Japanese Noh Theatre’s soul-searching for a concrete epiphany of the divine, and a uniqueness in style that is reminiscent of Pablo Picasso.

The panels dare even the most casual onlooker to skip over. The moment one glances at the pieces of crafty art, one is bewitched by the succession of grandly conceived and masterly executed calligraphic lines. The sculptural innovations are beautifully intertwined, while antiquity is symbolised by charred wood and sanctity imbued with ‘Aab-e-Zam Zam.’

Rather than being a stylistic exercise divorced from feeling, the paintings portray the artist’s vision. The intensity of his feelings about a given Quranic verse is not satiated with simple linear description; it erupts in different modes to present a holistic view for interpretation of the artist’s own emotive response.

Azeem’s art is not calligraphic pieces in its puritan sense; it is his own creation in which the written word is used to express feelings, thoughts, desires and commands. The artist has used numerous traditional arts to embellish his work. These decorative arts have not only been used to beautify the work but also to capture the spirit of the written word. He has used limestone and lapis lazuli, gold, copper and lead, and period coins and seals on handmade paper prepared from the pulp of date trees, leather from animal skin and hand-woven silk. The written verses have been decorated with floral and geometrical patterns in the oriental tradition. The technique of collage is used in the broader sense to complete a panel.

The exhibition will continue till October 9.

Films and funny puppets vie for Turner art prize

Performers present a puppet show as part of the work 'Odd Man Out 2011' by artist Spartacus Chetwynd at Tate Britain in London yesterday. Chetwynd is one of four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2012. The prize is awarded to a British artist under the age of 50 for work in the previous year.

What do a nudist, an inflatable slide, an oracle and Barabbas have in common? They’re all part of just one finalist’s exhibition in the running for Britain’s most controversial annual art prize. Turner Prize finalist Spartacus Chetwynd’s Odd Man Out show comprises two theatrical performances using poorly constructed homemade costumes and puppets with paper backdrops in a deliberate effort to shy away from “professional” art.

Chetwynd, who lives in a nudist colony and wore a false beard during her interview with the press, is one of four finalists given an exhibition at the Tate Britain museum in London and the chance to win the $40 600 Turner Prize live on Britain’s Channel 4 television network on December 3.

Her installations will vie with film from Elizabeth Price, Paul Noble’s painstaking graphite on paper drawings of the imaginary metropolis of Nobson Newtown and Luke Fowler’s combination of mundane photographs and a 93-minute film on the life of a maverick Scottish psychiatrist.

Chetwynd’s carnivalesque performances and sculptural installations are said to create an “atmosphere of joyful improvisation” in the notes describing the installation.

One show is in a makeshift room covered in giant sheets of paper decorated with pictures of parrots, snakes and people, where audience members are invited to individually prostrate themselves before a rag puppet “oracle” in the shape of a mandrake root held reverentially by men dressed in green.

Once prostrate, the oracle delivers its message saying things like “84% of people have more sense than you” or “you will lose your mobile phone” or “watch out for Dave”.

“The show is meant to be celebrating political ineptitude, so it’s not complaining about misrepresentation or the two-party voting system,” Chetwynd told reporters after performing. “It’s just saying ‘Oh my God look at this, have a laugh at this or what about how about having a deity for a while.’”

Audience members move from that past an inflatable slide lying on its side to another installation of theatre, where hooded puppeteers dressed in childish clown-like costumes perform a play from a passage in the Bible where the Jews decide to have Barabbas released instead of Jesus.

Scottish psychiatrist
Fowler’s exhibit consists of photographs of people in everyday poses and a long film which follows the life and work of maverick Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing (1927-1989), who believed that psychosis did not have anything to do with chemical imbalances in the brain and is caused by and fuelled by the social environment where one lives.

“He (Fowler) is confronting the viewer with this material and asks or encourages us to create our own interpretation or meaning of the subject,” said curator Sofia Karamani.

Karamani, on a tour of the show, said Noble’s creation of the painstakingly detailed Nobson Newtown began by accident with the creation of a font.

Drawings of graphite on paper in small and incredibly intimate details are built around one word at the centre of a piece, which fan out from infinitesimally small drawings, into bigger, more intricate figures, creating vast, dramatic almost lunar landscapes or precise architectural pictures.

“He (Noble) was saying the other day, when he started making constellations it was time to stop,” Karamani told reporters.

Finally, Price presents her video installation THE WOOLWORTHS CHOIR OF 1979 2012. Comprising three parts, the video brings together photographs of church architecture, internet clips of pop performances, and news footage of a notorious fire in a Woolworths furniture department in Manchester in 1979.

The film rises to a crescendo of images and sound climaxing with repeated images of girl pop bands and those of people who can only be witnesses of the fire, whose words are displayed in text while 1960s girl band music plays ever louder.

Members of the Turner Prize 2012 jury are Andrew Hunt, the director of the Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea, Heike Munder, the director of Migros Museum fr Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, Mark Sladen, the director of Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen and Penelope Curtis, the director of Tate Britain and the chair of the jury. The fifth member of the jury, Michael Stanley, the director of Modern Art Oxford in Oxford, has died.

The Turner Prize awards British artists aged under 50 for an “outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding”.

Established in 1984, it has thrived on public debate about what constitutes art, with critics in the past accusing winners of creating works designed purely to shock.

Favourite Martin Boyce won the Turner Prize last year with his distinctive sculptural installations, topping a shortlist of works that some critics said was one of the best in the Turner’s then 27-year history.

Damien Hirst was presented with the prize in 1995 for a pickled cow, and in 2001 an empty room with a light that switched on and off clinched the prize for Martin Creed.

The art of buying at ManilART 2012

ManilART 2012 runs until Oct. 6 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. As some people like to say, art is everywhere. This is especially true at festivals like ManilART 2012, which promises to be a one-stop showcase of the latest in the Philippine contemporary visual arts scene.

Despite the perception that art is expensive, organizers say the event can be exciting not just for seasoned collectors and art aficionados, but even for students on allowance. The sheer size of the event is overwhelming: 46 galleries, over 400 artists, and 1,400 works of art. Organizers said there will be something for everyone, from affordable pieces from young artists, to auction-worthy pieces from internationally recognized names.

National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Committee on Art Galleries head Amy Loste said one of ManilART's objectives is to dispel the notion that art is only for those who are already established. "In fact, if you can buy a Starbucks coffee a day, you can buy art. Art should really be for everyone, especially the young. Kasi diyan yung fresh blood na tinatawag. Diyan nakukuha yung inspiration na tuloy-tuloy pinayayaman yung visual arts," she said in a press conference on September 26.

Even for those with no intention of buying anything, the event offers activities such as an art workshop and a walking tour. Visitors may also explore the fair and simply enjoy looking at the various exhibits. According to Galleria Duemila owner Silvana Diaz, what's important is cultural preparation.

"The most important is that you read, you learn, you see and your eyes get used to a certain aesthetic... you start from the ground," she said during the press conference, in a discussion of how art can be for everyone, despite certain pieces costing hundreds of thousands.

Self-taught visual artist Valeria Chua is among over 400 artists whose work will be featured in ManilART 2012

Aurora Representative Sonny Angara, a supporter of the event, said art appreciation is not an elite endeavor, but ownership is another thing. "I don't believe that art is an elite activity. Enjoyment of art—you can read about it, you can buy pictures for very affordable prices, you can go to museums, mura lang po yun," said Angara, who began buying art as a college student.

According to Angara, art fairs in other countries show very few artists who are homegrown, but at ManilART, "Ninety-nine percent of what we show is produced locally.”

"It's truly heartening that there should be a small but active minority of young and old people who are still aggressively promoting the idea of the originality of Filipino artists, and the uniqueness of Filipino art. I hope this goes on on a larger and larger scale," said National Artist for Architecture Ildefonso P. Santos at the press conference.

Apart from allowing visitors to purchase artworks on-site, ManilART 2012 seeks to expose Filipinos to local artists and their work, which renowned sculptor Ramon Orlina said is a cut above the rest.

"We are quite ahead. Hindi naman sa yabang, because as you know si Ronald Ventura, he is one of the highest paid ngayon sa auction. And hindi madaling tumaas ang pagpresyo mo sa auction because sa auction ang mga buyers, international," Orlina said during the press conference.

Ventura is this year's featured artist, with his 2001 painting Crack in the Hull as the banner piece. Loste explained that they chose Ventura’s piece, a modern reinterpretation of the Manunggul Jar, because it symbolizes bridging the old and the new. "Sa art naman laging, we have to dig from our very rich past, and translate it to the contemporary aesthetic, that is our bridge to the future," she said.

During the fair, The Mendez Big and Small art gallery will feature recent works from Ventura along with thirty other young figurative artists. It was in the late 1990s that Ventura got his first big break at Mendez Big and Small, which "encourages and displays every daring concept and contemporary challenge created by the mind of the young artist, and is the home of every artist who believes that freedom in art should not be merely stated, but must be practiced and presented to perfection," according to a press release.

Angara shared that when he was a college student, he was able to buy a piece by Ronald Ventura for 5,000 pesos. Today, Ventura holds the auction record for contemporary Southeast Asian art, having sold one of his large graphite, acrylic and oil on canvas works, “Grayground,” for HK$8.42 million, or US$1.1 million, at Sotheby’s Hong Kong.

“These are the kinds of young Filipino visual artists that we can really be proud of, and the reason we initiated Manila Art in the first place is because we want to tell them, ‘You patronize Filipino art abroad, why not here in our home front?’” said Loste.

For those who wish to buy art, Diaz warns that it is not a question of appreciation and depreciation. "There are great artists who unfortunately because they are ahead of their time, they will not even be appreciated in our generation. Van Gogh for example, not even his brother who was a dealer was able to sell his work," she said.

For Diaz, buying art is about what pleases you. "Buy because you love it. if you buy for an investment it's like you play with the stock market. But art gives a satisfaction, gives a pleasure, gives happiness that no money can buy," she said. — BM, GMA News

ManilART 2012 opens with an invitation-only Gala Night on October 2, and will have its regular run from October 3 to 6, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. Tickets are P200 for adults, P150 for students. For more information, visit the website at http://www.manilart.com/