prosthetic knowledge
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Day in London
Took a day off to see the great city (so no research today).
Met Joanne McNeil (the editor for Rhizome, who is giving a couple of talks in the UK) for lunch - very pleasant person to meet (and the first person I have met in offline world from being in contact through the online world …)
Then off to the Tate Modern to see the Damien Hirst show before it closes. It was OK - I was very familiar with the works. The only truly standout moment, though, was seeing for yourself how his famous shark has really aged and wrinkled - certainly not the shark I saw well over a decade ago, yet somehow fitting.
Then later, I visited the Saatchi Gallery to see the Korean Eye. I have an interest in contemporary Korean art but wasn’t expecting too much - in fact, there was a lot more to enjoy. Would certainly recommend - above are a few photos taken with my mobile phone.
From that exhibition, the GIFs above are paintings by Joonsung Bae, whose works are generally set in the gallery space, and have lenticular prints which alter elements within the composition.
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The 15 Richest Living Artists
Complex Magazine has compiled a list of the richest artists living today. The full list is:
- Damien Hirst – 1 Billion USD
- Jeff Koons – 500 Million USD
- Jasper Johns – 300 Million USD
- David Choe – 200 Million USD
- Andre Vicari – 142 Million USD
- Takashi Murakami – 100 Million USD
- Anish Kapoor – 85 Million USD
- Antony Gormley – 50 Million USD
- Gerhard Richter – 40 Million USD
- David Hockney – 40 Million USD
- Cindy Sherman – 35 Million USD
- Richard Prince – 30 Million USD
- Andreas Gursky – 30 Million USD
- Chuck Close – 25 Million USD
- Georg Baselitz – 25 Million USD
You can read the background about the values of each artist at Complex here
Number one probably isn’t a surprise (more later), but number 4 on the list, David Choe [bottom picture], is an interesting (and very recent) addition. Why? Facebook.
From The Washington Post:
One of the most interesting stories to come out of the Facebook IPO windfall is that of David Choe, the scrappy street artist who was given the choice of cash or stock for the murals he created in the company’s first headquarters.
He wisely chose stock — despite believing that Facebook was “ridiculous,” according to the New York Times — and now, when public trading begins later this year, his stock will be valued at about $200 million.
Damien Hirst, on the other hand, is no surprise to be at the top in my opinion, becoming a Master in the Business of Art and Art of Business (I heard a rumour about his famous diamond clad piece For The Love Of God [top picture with artist] was a clever tax avoidance scheme as artist’s materials, all £50 millions worth of diamonds, can be claimed back). That isn’t to dismiss Hirst’s intelligence (I genuinely think he has a great mind for ideas), although flooding the art market with manufactured Spot Paintings is taking Brand Hirst a little too far …
While on the subject of Hirst, it’s worth seeing (if you haven’t already) Hennessy Youngman’s Art Thoughtz on him in the video embedded below (and yes, it points out the importance of money, in the artist’s own words):
Related: Damien Hirst talks about Spot Paintings in a video interview for Nowness Magazine.
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Art Conservation - The Problems With Contemporary Art
Neatorama has a piece looking at the difficulties of famous artworks which were created with untraditional materials, some which may only have a lifespan of a few decades.
On Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living:
The shark was, well, rotting. Despite its portentous title, Damien Hirst’s 1991 masterwork was pretty straightforward: a dead tiger shark suspended in an acrylic glass tank filled with 224 gallons of water. The problem was that the huge fish began to decompose almost immediately -Hirst had failed to preserve it properly. To stem the stench, London’s Saatchi Gallery pumped bleach into the water, but that only made the shark decompose faster …
… To Nam June Paik’s Video Flag:
Even back when cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions were the norm, repairing one was a headache. It meant hauling the heavy box to a cluttered shop, where a guy named Murray in a stained shirt would place it on a shelf, and then call you two weeks later with a Kansas-sized bill. Now imagine having to fix 70 of them, with the added problem that CRTs are obsolete and Murray is retired or dead.
Worth reading the whole piece, which includes a video of a conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum, dealing with a problem concerning a piece made of latex …
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‘beautiful sunflower’ panerai painting by damien hirst via Design Boom
watch dials and household gloss on canvas, diameter 213,4 cm image © designboom
Part of an exhibition related to Design and Time
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Damien Hirst has designed the record cover for Red Hot Chilli Peppers next album
