Linke - Artinfo
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AsiA edition > turning toward theater sugimoto changes focus art / architecture / DeSiGN / lifeStyle / travel march / april 2013 Feet First shoes step into the Fashion spotlight Yiqing Yin haute Couture as sCulpture “no CountrY” ContemporarY asian art at the guggenheim liang shaoji the artist and the silkworm
- Page 2: Scope New York Booth C25 | March 6
- Page 8: yousuke takeda AsiA edition 56 the
- Page 14: 12 AsiA edition volume I no. 2 Benj
- Page 18: 16 THEREPORTER Artists Shift Allegi
- Page 22: THROCKMORTON FINE ART HONGSHAN Marc
- Page 26: 24 datebook Fairs&events 4/30-5/3 a
- Page 30: 28 datebook cuRATOR’S c h O ice Y
- Page 34: 32 datebook Clockwise from left: At
- Page 38: The Art of Living 36 luxuryCurated
- Page 42: All in the Details + Although criti
- Page 46: CARTIER arTonThewrisT Painting with
- Page 50: CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: LEE KA-S
AsiA edition<br />
> turning toward theater<br />
sugimoto<br />
changes<br />
focus<br />
art / architecture / DeSiGN / lifeStyle / travel<br />
march / april 2013<br />
Feet First<br />
shoes step<br />
into the Fashion<br />
spotlight<br />
Yiqing Yin<br />
haute Couture<br />
as sCulpture<br />
“no<br />
CountrY”<br />
ContemporarY<br />
asian art at the<br />
guggenheim<br />
liang<br />
shaoji<br />
the artist and the<br />
silkworm
Scope New York<br />
Booth C25 | March 6 - 10<br />
Art Dubai<br />
Booth A46 | March 20 - 23
Wim Delvoye<br />
RonalD ventuRa<br />
3 April - 11 May 2013<br />
Wim Delvoye “Gloria Victis Rorschach” 2012, Nickeled bronze, 44.4 x 21.3 x 29.6 cm / 17 1/2 x 8 1/4 x 11 1/2 inches, © studio Wim Delvoye, Belgium<br />
Farhad Moshiri “BIRD GIRL” 2013, Embroidery on canvas,180 x 123 cm / 70 3/4 x 48 1/2 inches<br />
FARHAD MOSHIRI “PICNIC”<br />
JIN MEYERSON “No Rest foR the WICked”<br />
26 February - 30 March 2013
yousuke takeda<br />
AsiA edition<br />
56 the artist<br />
hiroshi sugimoto<br />
as he prepares for a November<br />
retrospective in seoul, the master<br />
photographer immerses himself in<br />
traditional Japanese theater.<br />
by soNia kolesNikov-Jessop<br />
60 the eVent<br />
rethinking a region<br />
a new show at the Guggenheim Museum<br />
brings contemporary south and southeast<br />
asian art to New york.<br />
by adeliNe chia<br />
64 the collector<br />
when what’s new is<br />
heritage, too<br />
in a New delhi shopping mall, kiran<br />
Nadar’s museum redefines<br />
how contemporary art meets its public.<br />
by rosalyN d’Mello<br />
Departments<br />
12 masthead<br />
14 art on the move<br />
16 the reporter<br />
What led three major artists to<br />
venture out from Gagosian’s aegis?<br />
by Julia halperiN<br />
18 dealer’s notebook<br />
united arab emirates gallerist<br />
asmaa al-shabibi.<br />
21 datebook<br />
“The house is a place for my family’s<br />
74<br />
life, so I wanted to build it with my friends.”<br />
—daisuke miyatsu, whose modest tokyo-area home<br />
incorporates works by many of the artists in his collection.<br />
march/april 2013
AsiA edition<br />
the art of living<br />
35 luxuRy CuRATEd<br />
a show of shoes in new york,<br />
50 fabulous frocks in Bath, u.k.<br />
39 THE COnnOISSEuR<br />
the eminently discoverable<br />
metalwork of marie Zimmermann.<br />
By william l. hamilton<br />
42 THE ART Of<br />
CRAfTSmAnSHIP<br />
chanel’s diamond “shooting star.”<br />
45 ART On THE wRIST<br />
marquetry in miniature.<br />
By sonia kolesnikov-jessop<br />
49 ART On THE CATwAlk<br />
inspired by sculpture, couturier<br />
yiqing yin goes for the flow.<br />
By sonia kolesnikov-jessop<br />
52 ART On THE PAlATE<br />
finding the best Barolos.<br />
By james suckling<br />
54 muST-HAVES<br />
the delicacy of marquetry furniture.<br />
By sarah p. hanson<br />
the<br />
the asian scene<br />
71 THE mECEnE<br />
a brewer cultivates a cutting-edge<br />
art scene.<br />
By adeline chia<br />
72 THE muSEum<br />
a “floating box” in singapore.<br />
By sonia kolesnikov-jessop<br />
74 lIfE And ART<br />
with the help of artist friends, a collector of<br />
modest means builds his dream house.<br />
By madeleine o’dea<br />
82 In THE STudIO<br />
liang shaoji finds inspiration in silkworms.<br />
By madeleine o’dea<br />
86 THE dATAbAnk<br />
taking the pulse of the contemporary<br />
asian market.<br />
By roman kraeussl<br />
88 COnVERSATIOn wITH<br />
leng lin of pace Beijing.<br />
By Benjamin genocchio<br />
march/april 2013<br />
35<br />
COVER: Hiroshi Sugimoto<br />
with a selection of his works<br />
exhibited at Art Stage<br />
Singapore 2013 by Gallery<br />
Koyanagi. Photograph by<br />
Richard Koh.<br />
THIS PAGE: Shoe<br />
from the Prada spring<br />
2012 collection.<br />
top: prada and the museum at fit, new york. cover image: art stage singapore 2013 and gallery koyanagi<br />
www.desarthe.com<br />
Mariko Mori: Flatstone<br />
28th March - 28th April<br />
Tel : 852-21678896 Email : hongkong@desarthe.com<br />
8/F Club Lusitano Building, 16 Ice House Street, Central Hong Kong<br />
Mariko Mori, 1967, Flatstone, 2006, Ceramic stones and acrylic vase, ed 2/2, 488 x 315 x 8.9 cm
12<br />
AsiA edition<br />
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14<br />
Kazuo Shiraga’s<br />
oil on paper<br />
Work II, 1958, at<br />
the Guggenheim<br />
Museum.<br />
ARTonTHEMoVE<br />
new york<br />
Going Gutai<br />
Call it high-action painting. Already known for canvases painted with<br />
his bare feet, Kazuo Shiraga took his subversion of the medium even<br />
further at a 1955 exhibition in Tokyo when he rolled around in a pile of<br />
mud and wet cement and used his entire body as a kind of paintbrush.<br />
The result, Challenging Mud, is a defining work for the postwar<br />
Japanese movement Gutai—and for an exhibition now at the Solomon<br />
R. Guggenheim Museum. Such works “still look fresh, 60 years later,”<br />
says Ming Tiampo, co-curator, with Alexandra Munroe, of “Gutai:<br />
Splendid Playground,” the first U.S. museum retrospective to address<br />
the influential Japanese movement.<br />
Rising out of the physical and cultural voids left in Japan after World<br />
War II, Gutai (“embodiment”) was founded in 1954 by Jiro Yoshihara,<br />
who dared artists to distance themselves from traditional Japanese<br />
painting and “do what has never been done before.” Followers, including<br />
Sadamasa Motonaga, Atsuko Tanaka, and Shiraga, turned to action,<br />
abstraction, and unorthodox materials, foreshadowing Arte Povera,<br />
Fluxus, Conceptualism, and performance art.<br />
“We see its influence very clearly on key artists we represent,<br />
including Allan Kaprow and Eva Hesse,” notes Marc Payot, of Hauser<br />
& Wirth. “For us, interest arose from this connection, and because the<br />
town house we occupy in New York City was the site of the very first<br />
Gutai show in America.” Last year the gallery celebrated that historic<br />
1958 Martha Jackson exhibition with its own, “A Visual Essay on<br />
Gutai at 32 East 69th Street.” The vogue for Gutai has pervaded the<br />
market as well. “There is a lot of renewed interest,” Payot confirms.<br />
“The buyers are very sophisticated, committed private collectors and<br />
museums.”His gallery has placed works at prices from $50,000 to<br />
$1.5 million. — k r i s w i lto n<br />
“Gutai: Splendid Playground” remains on view at the Solomon R.<br />
Guggenheim Museum through May 8.<br />
hong kong<br />
Ritz Fit<br />
Claire Hsu-Vuchot, co-founder of<br />
Asia Art Archive, has become an<br />
ambassador for The Ritz-Carlton,<br />
Hong Kong. The expert on Chinese<br />
art will be working with the hotel<br />
to organize events, talks, and<br />
exhibitions centered on Asian art.<br />
Currently under discussion:<br />
programming during Art Basel<br />
Hong Kong, which will take<br />
place May 23-26, and ways of<br />
engaging with the local community<br />
during the event.<br />
Pierre Perruset, the General<br />
Manager of The Ritz-Carlton,<br />
Hong Kong, says it is more than just<br />
Hsu-Vuchot’s expertise in art<br />
that makes her a good match for<br />
the hotel, but her “embodiment of<br />
elegance and grace.” Hsu-Vuchot<br />
sits on the museum and museum<br />
acquisitions committee for the<br />
West Kowloon Cultural District,<br />
the board of The Foundation for<br />
Arts Initiatives in New York, and<br />
the advisory committee of the<br />
Academy of Visual Art of Hong<br />
Kong Baptist University. She<br />
received one of the first RBS Coutts/<br />
Financial Times Women in Asia<br />
Awards in 2009. —zoe li<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
left, hyogo prefectural museum of art, kobe; right, asia art archive<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: TAIYE IDAHOR AND ART DUBAI; HEMAN CHONG AND SINGAPORE TYLER PRINT INSTITUTE, SINGAPORE; ROSSI & ROSSI, LONDON<br />
DUBAI<br />
West African “Marker”<br />
at Art Dubai<br />
Art from West Africa will take center<br />
stage at Art Dubai 2013, with a set of<br />
curated concept stands dedicated to the<br />
region, presented under the fair’s<br />
Marker program.<br />
This year’s program is curated by Bisi<br />
Silva, Lagos-based independent curator<br />
and founder of the city’s Center for<br />
Contemporary Art. Silva is using the<br />
work of upcoming and established<br />
artists to explore the nature of evolving<br />
cities in West Africa and the way that<br />
changes in these cities impact society.<br />
“The theme allows each contributor<br />
to approach it from a local context. At<br />
the same time, visitors to the fair will<br />
discover several common threads that<br />
link the works — the vibrant dynamics<br />
of the cities as well as the tensions that<br />
arise when the modern collides with<br />
the traditional, the urban displaces the<br />
rural, and the boundaries between<br />
the public and private become blurred,”<br />
Silva stated.<br />
Silva selected five art centers to<br />
present works in their nominated cities’<br />
exhibition spaces at Art Dubai: Espace<br />
Doual’art (Douala, Cameroon); Maison<br />
Carpe Diem (Segou, Mali); Nubuke<br />
Foundation (Accra, Ghana); Raw<br />
Material Company (Dakar, Senegal);<br />
and Centre for Contemporary Art<br />
(Lagos, Nigeria).<br />
Working with the curator and the<br />
fair organizers, each art group is<br />
presenting recent works by such artists<br />
as Soly Cisse (Senegal), Ablade<br />
Glover (Ghana), Abdoulaye Konate<br />
(Mali), and Taiye Idahor (Nigeria).<br />
— SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP<br />
BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
SINGAPORE<br />
STPI to Art Basel 2013<br />
The Singapore Tyler Print Institute<br />
will become the first gallery from<br />
Singapore to participate in Art Basel.<br />
This marks another major<br />
milestone for STPI, which celebrated<br />
its tenth anniversary in 2012. Last<br />
March, STPI became the first Southeast<br />
Asian gallery to present at The<br />
Armory Show, New York.<br />
STPI’s Chairman Ong Yew<br />
Huat notes that presenting at<br />
Art Basel 2013 will be “a defining<br />
moment, a huge step up for STPI and<br />
Singapore as it pushes the envelope<br />
for the arts.”<br />
Art Basel receives an average of<br />
1,200-1,500 applications annually<br />
for 300 coveted spaces. “STPI<br />
acceptance into Art Basel is<br />
validation of its programming and<br />
collaborative work with artists from<br />
HONG KONG<br />
A Contemporary Silk Road<br />
Singapore, the<br />
region, and the rest<br />
of the world. This is<br />
a good opportunity<br />
to introduce art from<br />
Singapore and the<br />
region on this international<br />
platform, which will be attended<br />
by elite collectors, curators and<br />
galleries,” says STPI Director Emi Eu.<br />
Eu, who sits on the selection<br />
committee of Art Basel Hong Kong<br />
and is a global committee member<br />
for Art Basel, adds that STPI’s<br />
acceptance into the prestigious art<br />
event is timely. “The world is looking<br />
at the exponential growth of cultural<br />
developments in Asia, especially in<br />
Singapore, with Gillman Barracks, the<br />
National Art Gallery, and Art Stage<br />
Singapore,” she says. —SKJ<br />
Fabio Rossi of London’s Rossi & Rossi and Chinese<br />
contemporary art dealer Jean Marc Decrop have joined forces<br />
to open Yallay Space, a new gallery in Hong Kong specializing<br />
in Middle Eastern and Asian art.<br />
The 600-square-meter space in Wong Chuk Hang, Hong<br />
Kong’s up-and-coming art neighborhood, opened in January.<br />
Rossi and Decrop chose to set up shop away from the community<br />
of galleries on Hollywood Road in the Central district—where,<br />
says Rossi, “rents are prohibitive. Whereas in Wong Chuk Hang<br />
we were actually able to buy our space.”<br />
Rossi specializes in classical Himalayan art and is<br />
particularly known for his passion for Tibetan art. Decrop has<br />
expertise in contemporary Chinese, Southeast Asian, and<br />
Middle Eastern art. For the year ahead, the two have developed<br />
a program for Yallay Space that draws connections between<br />
these regions in what they call “a contemporary Silk Road.”<br />
Decrop has worked with Chinese artist Xu Qu to curate “Post<br />
Generation,” a show of eight Chinese artists born in the late<br />
1970s to early 1980s, on view in March and April. During May<br />
and June, the new gallery will take advantage of the Art Basel<br />
Hong Kong buzz to showcase the work of Iranian poet, artist,<br />
and filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in a solo exhibition. —Z L<br />
Above, Heman<br />
Chong’s Bloom<br />
(Blob), 2012, one<br />
of the works that<br />
the Singapore<br />
Tyler Print<br />
Institute will<br />
display at<br />
Art Basel;<br />
left, “Head”<br />
Series (No. 6),<br />
2012, by Nigerian<br />
artist Taiye<br />
Idahor; below,<br />
Mutation, 2009,<br />
by Erbossyn<br />
Meldibekov at<br />
Yallay Space.<br />
15
16<br />
THEREPORTER<br />
Artists Shift Allegiance<br />
THE ART WORLD IS ABUZZ AFTER GAGOSIAN GALLERY STARS JUMP SHIP<br />
Larry Gagosian<br />
ON THE FIRST DAY of Art Basel<br />
Miami Beach this past<br />
December, Gagosian Gallery<br />
sold Jeff Koons’s wooden<br />
sculpture Buster Keaton,<br />
1988, for approximately<br />
$5 million. That same day,<br />
word spread that Koons<br />
was planning a major show<br />
of new work—but the<br />
exhibition, which opens in<br />
May, would be with Gagosian<br />
competitor David Zwirner.<br />
Koons did not say he<br />
was splitting with the blue-<br />
chip international gallery<br />
where he has shown for<br />
more than a decade. And<br />
Gagosian Gallery said in a<br />
statement that it continues<br />
to represent Koons in<br />
partnership with Sonnabend<br />
Gallery, the Zwirner show<br />
notwithstanding. Just<br />
over a week later, however,<br />
two of Gagosian’s other<br />
high-profile artists, Damien<br />
Hirst and Yayoi Kusama,<br />
announced they were<br />
leaving the gallery for good.<br />
Neither of them gave a<br />
reason for doing so and<br />
the gallery did not respond<br />
to a request for comment<br />
by press time.<br />
Observers wondered<br />
if these departures suggest<br />
that the dealer’s art world<br />
dominance is waning. Could<br />
it be that his business has<br />
simply grown too big?<br />
“His expansion has been<br />
unprecedented,” says art<br />
adviser Lisa Schiff. Indeed,<br />
Gagosian has opened six<br />
galleries in as many years,<br />
spreading his empire across<br />
three continents. The dealer<br />
recently estimated his gallery<br />
network employs roughly 150<br />
people, 20 to 25 of whom are<br />
devoted to sales. According<br />
to figures published in the Art<br />
Newspaper, rental costs for<br />
11 of Gagosian’s spaces—not<br />
counting his 25,000-squarefoot<br />
property on West<br />
24th Street in New York,<br />
which he owns—may exceed<br />
$11 million per year.<br />
The moves of the three<br />
artists come at a critical<br />
moment for each. The final<br />
exhibition at the Whitney<br />
“Dealers cannot serve buyer,<br />
artist/seller, and themselves without<br />
giving someone short shrift.”<br />
Museum’s Madison Avenue<br />
location (before a 2015<br />
move to the Meatpacking<br />
District) will be a major<br />
Koons retrospective. Hirst<br />
and Kusama are fresh off<br />
career retrospectives<br />
at Tate Modern and the<br />
Whitney, respectively.<br />
Some observers speculated<br />
that a large operation<br />
might find it more difficult<br />
to cater to the needs of<br />
major artists. “Dealers cannot<br />
serve buyer, artist/seller,<br />
and themselves without<br />
giving someone short<br />
shrift,” says London-based<br />
dealer Kenny Schachter.<br />
That question of where a<br />
dealer’s priorities should<br />
ultimately lie—with the buyer,<br />
the artist, or the dealer<br />
himself—has also driven two<br />
recent lawsuits against both<br />
the gallery and Larry Gagosian<br />
personally by claimants<br />
who accuse him of withholding<br />
information to profit<br />
unjustly from a deal. The<br />
first suit, filed by collector<br />
Jan Cowles in January<br />
of last year, concerns Roy<br />
Lichtenstein’s enamel<br />
Girl in a Mirror, 1964, which<br />
Cowles’s son Charles<br />
allegedly consigned to Gagosian<br />
without her knowledge<br />
or consent. Jan Cowles<br />
contends that as part of the<br />
unauthorized sale, Gagosian<br />
wrongfully skewed the<br />
balance of information in<br />
favor of the buyer to achieve<br />
an unusually high commission.<br />
In November, both<br />
sides agreed to mediation.<br />
Another lawsuit was<br />
brought by billionaire<br />
Ronald Perelman, in New<br />
York State Supreme Court<br />
this past September, alleging<br />
that Gagosian’s failure to<br />
disclose “secret contract<br />
provisions” during negotiations<br />
over the sale of a Koons<br />
sculpture cost the collector<br />
millions of dollars. According<br />
to court papers, in May 2010<br />
Perelman agreed to buy a<br />
new granite sculpture by<br />
Koons, titled Popeye, for $4<br />
million and the sculpture was<br />
to be delivered to Perelman<br />
in December 2011. After<br />
fabrication delays, Perelman,<br />
through one of his holdings,<br />
negotiated a group of art<br />
transactions to acquire a different<br />
work from Gagosian,<br />
not identified in court papers,<br />
to be “paid for...with cash<br />
and...certain works of art,<br />
including the sculpture<br />
Popeye, thereby receiving a<br />
credit for the purported value<br />
of the works.” When Gagosian<br />
refused to value Popeye<br />
for over $4 million, the suit<br />
alleges, Perelman learned<br />
of “the existence of a secret<br />
contract with Koons”<br />
whereby the artist is entitled<br />
to 70 percent of any resale<br />
profits above the original<br />
sale price. Perelman claims<br />
Gagosian “was required<br />
to share such information”<br />
at the time of their initial<br />
agreement on Popeye.<br />
On January 18, Gagosian’s<br />
attorneys filed a motion<br />
to dismiss the case.<br />
Such specific artist and<br />
dealer contract details are<br />
rarely leaked to the public,<br />
and sources say the<br />
revelation could have been<br />
a factor in Koons’s decision<br />
to show with another gallery.<br />
Hirst’s motivations for<br />
leaving the gallery, however,<br />
may simply stem from<br />
dissatisfaction with his sales<br />
figures. “There’s no<br />
doubt Hirst has saturated<br />
his market,” says Alberto<br />
Mugrabi, a collector<br />
who owns approximately 300<br />
Hirst pieces. Nonetheless,<br />
he says, “I think Hirst has<br />
been his own dealer for a long<br />
time. I think eventually he’ll<br />
reject the system entirely.”<br />
The reasons for Kusama’s<br />
move—sources say<br />
the artist is planning to join<br />
Zwirner’s stable—are not<br />
clear and Zwirner<br />
representatives declined<br />
to confirm or comment on<br />
Kusama’s reported switch.<br />
That blue-chip artists are<br />
more frequently calling the<br />
shots in their own careers<br />
is a consequence of the very<br />
art world corporatization<br />
Gagosian helped pioneer,<br />
observers say.<br />
“Expansion on this level<br />
is still a novelty,” Schiff says.<br />
“Coming up with the right<br />
recipe for growth is<br />
important, and I don’t think<br />
we’ve figured it out yet.”<br />
—JULIA HALPERIN<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
AMBER DE VOS
18<br />
Dealer’snotebook<br />
Asmaa Al-Shabibi<br />
What is your background? Was there<br />
art around when you were a child?<br />
My mother was an artist and dealer,<br />
and so we had art on our walls and<br />
artists coming through the house quite<br />
regularly. In many ways we take things<br />
like that for granted and often rebel<br />
against it. I studied law in the U.K. and<br />
trained as a solicitor, and I practiced<br />
banking and finance law in London<br />
and Singapore for about nine years.<br />
How did you decide to shift your<br />
focus from law to art?<br />
It was really one of those stories about<br />
being in the right place at the right<br />
time. I decided to quit law but wasn’t<br />
sure what to do, other than needing<br />
to be more creative. In 2007 I came<br />
across an advert for the inaugural<br />
difc Gulf Art Fair, later renamed Art<br />
Dubai, and got so excited. The fair itself<br />
blew me away, and I immediately called<br />
them up and asked to join their team.<br />
The art scene in Dubai was nascent—<br />
the fair was a smaller operation back<br />
then—but the people behind it were<br />
ambitious and had real vision. It was<br />
a steep learning curve for me. One<br />
aspect of my role was fund-raising,<br />
and the pivotal moment was securing<br />
a headline sponsor at the 11th hour.<br />
I was also involved in the initiation of<br />
the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, which<br />
is the largest such prize in the world<br />
at $1 million annually. I left after about<br />
three years because I wanted<br />
to work directly with artists.<br />
When did you open your gallery?<br />
After I left Art Dubai I was thinking<br />
of opening a gallery and approached<br />
William Lawrie, then the Middle East<br />
specialist at Christie’s, as a neutral<br />
person who would be able to give me<br />
some pointers as to what was missing<br />
in the market. In the course of our<br />
meeting we realized we had a lot of the<br />
same ideas. A few weeks later he called<br />
me up, and we opened in March 2011.<br />
For me, the process of putting together<br />
shows is the most interesting part of<br />
the art scene and really what drew me<br />
to the business.<br />
How did you choose your specialty?<br />
Initially, working with artists from the<br />
region made sense given that we are<br />
based in Dubai, which for years has<br />
been a trading port between East<br />
and West. However, we deliberately<br />
aimed for a more diverse roster of<br />
artists so as not to concentrate on<br />
any one country from the region.<br />
What is the most challenging part<br />
of running an art gallery today?<br />
What is the most rewarding?<br />
Unlike a city like New York or<br />
London, the population in Dubai<br />
and the proportion of people<br />
interested in art are small. More<br />
important, there are no museum<br />
directors and very few curators<br />
or writers, especially writers for<br />
international art publications. This is<br />
quite frustrating, as it feels sometimes<br />
that our exhibitions take place in a void.<br />
Age: 41<br />
HAils from: London via Baghdad<br />
Presides over: Lawrie Shabibi,<br />
Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai,<br />
United Arab Emirates<br />
gAllery’s sPeciAlty:<br />
Contemporary art from the Middle<br />
East, North Africa, and South Asia<br />
Artists sHown: Hamra Abbas,<br />
Sama Alshaibi, Asad Faulwell, Selma<br />
Gürbüz, Nadia Kaabi-<strong>Linke</strong>, Nabil<br />
Nahas, Driss Ouadahi, Shahpour<br />
Pouyan, Marwan Sahmarani, Gazelle<br />
Samizay, Yasam Sasmazer<br />
first gAllery sHow: “Palms<br />
and Stars,” a solo exhibition by Nabil<br />
Nahas, in March 2011<br />
I am confident this will change over<br />
time as our artists and the gallery gain<br />
more international exposure. The most<br />
rewarding part is seeing the career of an<br />
artist take steps in the right direction<br />
because of the efforts that we make.<br />
What is your local art market like?<br />
How is it changing?<br />
The art market in Dubai saw tremendous<br />
growth over the last seven years,<br />
but I would say that it has reached a<br />
plateau. There are now a large number<br />
of art galleries in relation to the<br />
number of collectors in the city, and<br />
so there is a lot more competition than<br />
there was a few years ago.<br />
What sets your gallery apart?<br />
We have a roster of young artists, all<br />
under 40, but we also put on two shows<br />
a year with established artists such as<br />
Nabil Nahas, Farghali Abdel Hafiz,<br />
and Selma Gürbüz. In a young city like<br />
Dubai I believe that this<br />
is important, as it puts the younger<br />
shows in context. And we’d like to<br />
dispel the myth that Middle Eastern<br />
art is a new thing. Likewise, I’d like<br />
to do away with the notion that art<br />
from this region is only political, about<br />
war or about the sad plight of women.<br />
Although art should certainly provide<br />
a sociopolitical commentary, I look for<br />
artists who convey these messages in<br />
an intelligent and more abstract way,<br />
such as Wafaa Bilal, Sama Alshaibi,<br />
and Nadia Kaabi-<strong>Linke</strong>.<br />
If you were not an art dealer, what<br />
would you be doing?<br />
I would be a full-time collector and art<br />
patron! But if I could really have it<br />
my way, being an Olympic gymnast<br />
was my childhood dream.<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
vital stats<br />
LAWRIE SHABIBI, DUBAI<br />
Audubon and Bachman, The Viviparious Quadrupeds of North America, New York, 1845-48. Estimate $250,000 to $350,000. At auction April 11.<br />
Swann Auction Galleries<br />
Books & Manuscripts • Maps & Atlases • Photographs & Photobooks • Prints & Drawings<br />
Vintage Posters • African-American Fine Art • Fine & Vintage Writing Instruments<br />
104 East 25th Street<br />
New York, NY 10010<br />
tel 212 254 4710<br />
SWANNGALLERIES.COM
THROCKMORTON FINE ART<br />
HONGSHAN<br />
March 7th - April 27th, 2013<br />
Catalogue available: HONGSHAN: $45.00<br />
Image: China, Coiled Zhulong (“Pig Dragon”),<br />
Hongshan Period, Neolithic Era, ca. 4700 - 2920 BCE, Jade, H: 7 1/4 in.<br />
145 EAST 57TH STREET, 3RD FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10022<br />
TEL 212.223.1059 FAX 212.223.1937<br />
info@throckmorton-nyc.com www.throckmorton-nyc.com<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER LEFT: SOTHEBY’S HONG KONG; BASELWORLD; THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES<br />
DATEBOOK<br />
ON THE CALENDAR<br />
watches and wines<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
Baselworld 2012<br />
The elBulli Wine Cellar. In 2011, gastronomic innovator Ferran Adrià closed<br />
his celebrated elBulli restaurant in Spain and started the elBulli Foundation,<br />
a research center devoted to creativity and cooking. International cuisine is<br />
still adjusting to the loss, but there’s an upside: this season’s highly anticipated<br />
auction of wines from the elBulli cellars to benefit the foundation. More than<br />
5,000 bottles will go on the block in Hong Kong and New York, including some<br />
1,400 of red burgundy and 2,000 of Spanish wine. Highlights include five<br />
vintages of Yquem from 1989–2001 and a selection of rare oloroso and solera<br />
sherries dating back to 1830—as well as a series of “lifestyle lots” that include<br />
elBulli memorabilia and a meal with the master chef himself. Sotheby’s,<br />
April 3 – Hong Kong and April 25 – New York.<br />
Important Watches. More than 400 lots go under the<br />
hammer in this sale, including an A. Lange & Söhne “Pour<br />
Le Merite” tourbillon wristwatch—number 8 in an edition<br />
of 15—and a Patek Philippe reference 3974 in a white-gold<br />
case, only the second to come to auction in 20 years.<br />
Also on offer: a selection of custom-built Patek Philippe<br />
clocks, such as the gold “Magpie’s Treasure Nest” clock,<br />
left, embellished with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and<br />
semiprecious stones. Sotheby’s, April 7 – Hong Kong.<br />
Baselworld. For the latest in technological breakthroughs and style trends<br />
in luxury watches, the spotlight shifts to Switzerland, where Baselworld<br />
opens April 25. Though strictly speaking a trade show, Baselworld is the<br />
preeminent global launchpad for new models and editions, and international<br />
media coverage ensures that word filters out quickly. This year’s event<br />
inaugurates a new exhibition complex designed by Herzog and de Meuron;<br />
global brands like Patek Philippe and Chanel have a hall to themselves, and<br />
so do jewelers specializing in diamonds, pearls, and other precious stones.<br />
April 25–May2, Basel. —SUSAN DELSON<br />
LOS ANGELES<br />
Mystery Man<br />
The Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens never<br />
traveled to Asia. Nor were there diplomatic relations<br />
between Korea and Europe during his lifetime. So<br />
how he was able to draw Man in Korean Costume,<br />
circa 1617, below, remains an unsolved art historical<br />
mystery. An exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum,<br />
“Looking East: Rubens’s Encounter with Asia,”<br />
invites experts to examine the possibilities. At the<br />
center is Rubens’s drawing, previously thought to<br />
depict a Siamese ambassador but identified in 1983 by<br />
a Korean newspaper as a man in traditional Korean<br />
garb. Orbiting around it are potential shreds of<br />
evidence such as Rubens’s contemporaneous portraits<br />
of the Jesuit missionary Nicolas Trigault and an<br />
account of the only Korean slave recorded in European<br />
history, Antonio Corea, arriving in Italy. While<br />
many have speculated that the drawing depicts Corea,<br />
the show’s curator, Stephanie Schrader, theorizes<br />
that Rubens accessed the costume via Trigault, who<br />
might have brought it back from China. “Instead of<br />
trying to find the one Korean who was ever in Europe<br />
when Rubens was alive, I think the question is more<br />
‘How could Korean goods have come to Europe?’ ” she<br />
explains. “The focus gets broader instead of narrower.”<br />
On view through June 9. —GEORGINA WELLS<br />
21
22<br />
datebook<br />
TEFAF standouts, counterclockwise<br />
from top: Domenico di Zanobi’s<br />
15th-century panel painting painting Cassone<br />
with Scenes of of a Battle, Battle at Moretti Fine<br />
Art; Otto Jakob’s Corona earrings<br />
with Burmese spinels and diamonds; a<br />
detail of Pieter Brueghel the<br />
Younger’s Proverbs, at De<br />
Jonckheere; and Alberto Giacometti’s<br />
Annette Venice, ca. 1960, at<br />
Dickinson, of London.<br />
MAASTRICHT<br />
fully vetted<br />
Following the pizzazz of the European Fine Art Fair’s silver jubilee last year—<br />
which featured a 1975 Le Mans BMW painted by Alexander Calder—this year’s<br />
edition of TEFAF, running March 15 through 24, looks decidedly more temperate.<br />
Growing steadily since it launched in 1988 with just 97 galleries, the fair is up<br />
to 288 exhibitors. Tom Postma has been retained for another redesign that will<br />
frame each stand with LED lights. The 35,000 visitors, however, come not for fresh<br />
surroundings but for fresh-to-market masterpieces evaluated by an international<br />
team a week before the fair.<br />
This year’s offerings include Jan Brueghel the Elder’s stygian oil-on-copper<br />
Crucifixion, 1594, emerging from four centuries of private ownership by an Italian<br />
noble family at the De Jonckheere booth. London’s Mark Weiss—who parted<br />
with a “pretty unrepeatable” rediscovered portrait of King Henry<br />
VIII for £2.5 million ($3.9 million) on opening day last year—is<br />
putting his chips this year on Louis XIII’s sitting for Frans<br />
Pourbus the Younger, , part of a mini-exhibition of the<br />
Pourbus family. And Otto Naumann, , of New York, unveils<br />
the Florentine painter Giovanni Bilivert’s Venus, Venus, Cupid,<br />
and Pan, long in private hands but sold for £541,250<br />
($850,000) at Sotheby’s London last July, indicating<br />
a lessening of the stigma on recently auctioned works.<br />
TEFAF’s ’s clientele has long been European and American, but<br />
an ever more prominent prominent Asian Asian contingent was a target last year,<br />
as the fair invited a hundred or so collectors from the region. region.<br />
Still, the influx of Chinese interest is both a boon and a<br />
headache, says Brussels dealer Gisèle Croës.<br />
“I’ve devoted my whole life to Chinese art, but I’m<br />
a bit disappointed lately,” she says, suggesting that<br />
cultural differences regarding the oral contract are<br />
an issue. “But of course I also have Chinese clients<br />
who do pay,” she adds. Croës will appeal to them<br />
with a unique Neolithic vessel from 3500 B.C., a stylistic<br />
precursor of an archaic bronze ding on three legs.<br />
Dealers generally do not report tailoring their offerings<br />
to a new wave of buyers, but “we are not blind, and the<br />
Asian clientele is certainly a growing market,” says Antwerp’s<br />
veteran Asian art gallerist Marcel Nies, , citing interest in repatriation from<br />
wealthy Thai and Indian buyers. Nies, who has presented at Maastricht from the<br />
start, is bringing a 40-inch Gandharan bodhisattva on a throne—a rare work in<br />
terra-cotta—as well as a 12th-century Chola bronze of a dancing Krishna. In the<br />
contemporary sector, Gagosian Gallery will bridge the modern and ancient with<br />
Jeff Koons’s take on the theme of Pluto and Proserpina, 2010—nearly 11 feet<br />
tall, in bright yellow chrome, and sure to be arresting. But for historic significance,<br />
it will be hard to beat Carl Fabergé’s imperial seal for Czar Nicholas II,<br />
bearing a pellet of lead from a shot misfired—an assassination attempt?—during<br />
a ceremonial salute at the Winter Palace in 1905. The 2½-inch-tall seal will be at<br />
Russian specialist Wartski, of London. —NICOLAI HARTVIG<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
COUNTERCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MORETTI FINE INE ART, LONDON; OTTO JAKOB; DE JONCKHEERE, PARIS; DICKINSON, LONDON
24<br />
datebook<br />
Fairs&events<br />
4/30–5/3<br />
art beijing<br />
Amassing works by close to 1,000 artists in an exhibit<br />
space of nearly 20,000 square meters, Art Beijing 2013<br />
could never be accused of thinking small. Last year’s<br />
fair drew 52,000 visitors, and the 2013 edition could<br />
easily top that. Combining contemporary and classic art<br />
sections, this year’s fair features approximately 130<br />
galleries and 20 art organizations. Of these, 40 or so can<br />
be found in the classic art section, showing a range of<br />
works from Western-style oil painting and sculpture to<br />
17th-century furniture. Look for exhibition booths<br />
by art tree gallery, galerie cinquini, Jing Xian<br />
room, and other galleries, as well as a special focus<br />
on emerging artists from Korea and elsewhere in Asia.<br />
One highlight for collectors: the VIP Education<br />
Forum, a series of lectures by scholars and experts on<br />
the latest trends in the Chinese art market.<br />
3/13–5/13 l sharJah<br />
sharJah BiEnniaL<br />
The 11th Sharjah<br />
Biennial, titled<br />
“Re:emerge:<br />
Towards a<br />
New Cultural<br />
Cartography”<br />
and curated by<br />
yuko hasegawa,<br />
opens at the<br />
new Sharjah Art Foundation exhibition complex. On<br />
view: works by shahzia sikander, Liu Wei, thomas<br />
Demand, Valia Fetisov, simon Fujiwara, carsten<br />
höller, gabriel Lester, Pedro reyes, and Jananne<br />
al-ani, whose Aerial IV, 2011, a production still from her<br />
video Shadow Sites II, is shown above.<br />
3/20–23 l DuBai<br />
art DuBai<br />
Art Dubai’s seventh outing boasts<br />
500 artists from 29 countries. Local<br />
galleries like grey noise and the<br />
third Line stud the roster, while<br />
well-known European players like<br />
yvon Lambert of Paris try their<br />
luck for the first time. The curated<br />
Marker section of the fair will bring<br />
the focus to West Africa in works like the acrylic Diverses-<br />
Cités, 2011, above, by Gabonese artist Boris nzebo, brought<br />
by Espace Doual’art, of Douala, Cameroon.<br />
3/22–24 l tokyo<br />
art Fair tokyo<br />
Eight years ago, Art Fair<br />
Tokyo changed its name<br />
and cast off its strictly<br />
contemporary focus.<br />
Today it includes genres<br />
ranging from traditional<br />
nihonga to modern art.<br />
This year’s 142 galleries,<br />
mainly local, include scai<br />
the Bathhouse; tomio<br />
koyama; sho contemporary, highlighting photographs by<br />
Helmut Newton and others; and gallery gyokuei, showing<br />
tetsuya noguchi’s tiny samurai figures. The specialprojects<br />
menu includes Discover Asia, which showcases<br />
Southeast Asian talents like Thai filmmaker apichatpong<br />
Weerasethakul; an exhibition of calligraphy and ceramics<br />
by former Japanese prime minister morihiro hosokawa;<br />
and a section devoted to contemporary jewelry.<br />
4/3–5 l hong kong<br />
yoshitomo nara at auction<br />
One of the first private collections<br />
devoted to the art of Yoshitomo<br />
Nara goes up for sale at sotheby’s<br />
hong kong. “you are not<br />
alone: yoshitomo nara Works<br />
from the kurokochi collection”<br />
includes 35 lots, all fresh to<br />
auction. Featuring works acquired<br />
as early as the 1980s, when the artist was in his twenties,<br />
the sale is expected to fetch upwards of $2.4 million.<br />
Among the highlights: White Night, 2006, above, estimated<br />
at $620,000–$830,000. The public exhibition runs April<br />
3–5; the sale takes place on April 5.<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CloCkwise from left: art beijing; adrian warren, jananne al-ani, and abraaj Capital art prize; boris nzebo and espaCe doual’art, douala, Cameroon; galerie gosserez, paris; yoshitomo nara and sotheby’s hong kong<br />
the deLIGHTed eye: Modernist Masterworks<br />
from a Private Collection<br />
New York · april 4<br />
Viewing<br />
March 29–april 3<br />
20 Rockefeller Plaza<br />
new york, ny 10020<br />
Contact<br />
Deborah Bell<br />
dbell@christies.com<br />
+1 212 636 2330<br />
Man Ray<br />
Untitled Rayograph, 1923<br />
unique gelatin silver print photogram<br />
$250,000–350,000<br />
© 2013 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris<br />
christies.com
26<br />
datebook<br />
SYDNEY<br />
P r iDE of thE NatioN<br />
Consisting of some 285 lots<br />
of Australian contemporary<br />
and indigenous art, the sale<br />
of the Laverty Collection at<br />
Bonhams on March 24 presents<br />
a rich trove of paintings by<br />
the country’s chief 20th- and<br />
21st-century practitioners.<br />
Amassed over 40 years by<br />
Sydney-based Dr. Colin Laverty<br />
(the retired founder of a highly<br />
successful private pathology<br />
practice) and his wife, Elizabeth,<br />
the 2,000-piece cache is the<br />
moS cow<br />
A Seat at the Table<br />
product of instinct and inclination<br />
rather than prevailing art trends.<br />
“We collect with our hearts,<br />
not with our heads,” Elizabeth<br />
says. “We want people to<br />
recognize indigenous Australian<br />
art as great contemporary art and<br />
not be pigeonholed as tribal or<br />
ethnographic,” Colin adds.<br />
The works on offer are valued<br />
at $A4 million to $A6 million<br />
($4.2–6.3 million) and include<br />
major canvases from Ken<br />
Whisson, whose eclectic<br />
Talk about a movable feast. The spring<br />
edition of the Russian Antiques Salon,<br />
March 30 through April 7 at the Central<br />
House of Artists, will feature a lavish table<br />
spread modeled on Romanov state dinners<br />
in commemoration of the upcoming 400th<br />
anniversary of that dynasty. “Every year<br />
we have a section that we use for a special<br />
presentation,” explains director Natalia Koren. “This year we<br />
found a private collection of the coronation menus of<br />
several czars. We will have a large table set up the way it used<br />
to be in the 18th and 19th centuries.”<br />
paintings merge figuration<br />
with abstraction; Abstract<br />
Expressionist Peter Upward;<br />
contemporary landscape artist<br />
William Robinson, whose<br />
paintings are in the collection<br />
of New York’s Metropolitan<br />
Museum of Art; and Rosalie<br />
Gascoigne, the first female<br />
artist to represent Australia<br />
at the Venice Biennale. Works<br />
by Aboriginal artists such as<br />
Sunfly Tjampitjin, Emily<br />
Kngwarreye, and Eubena<br />
Filippo Indoni’s undated watercolor<br />
Sweet Melody will be offered by Viardo Gallery<br />
at the 34th Russian Antiques Salon.<br />
Nampitjin are among the most<br />
important in private hands, as<br />
their loan history to institutions<br />
such as London’s Hayward<br />
Gallery attests. Fittingly,<br />
the auction will be held at the<br />
Museum of Contemporary Art<br />
Australia, of which the couple<br />
are longtime benefactors.<br />
Bonhams’s senior consultant<br />
Tim Klingender is banking on<br />
the works’ novelty and quality<br />
to lure a new audience. “In my<br />
experience,” he says, “collectors<br />
are jaded by seeing the same<br />
things over and over.” Exhibiting<br />
30 key pieces in New York and<br />
London “will give international<br />
collectors the opportunity<br />
to respond directly to fresh,<br />
exciting Australian art that<br />
is characterized by a strong<br />
visual language and a universal<br />
aesthetic.” —nicholas forrest<br />
Tommy Watson’sWangkamarl, 2003<br />
(est. $74,000–105,000), left, and Ken<br />
Whisson’s Flag to Replace the Red and<br />
Blue Ensigns (Flag of My Disposition No.<br />
14), 1980 (est. $32–53,000), above, will<br />
be auctioned by Bonhams in Sydney.<br />
Several of the 250 dealers are flaunting<br />
unique items. The Russian Avant-Garde<br />
gallery, for example, has prepared a<br />
photography exhibit—rare at the classically<br />
oriented Salon—including works by<br />
Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky<br />
and ranging in price from $2,000<br />
to $200,000. On a more traditional note,<br />
seven Isaac Levitan works will<br />
hang alongside genre paintings and Asian<br />
watercolors at the Akant and Viardo<br />
galleries’ joint booth. Natalia Marova,<br />
of Shon Gallery, Moscow, will show 19th-century Japanese<br />
ceramic statuettes and notes that with nearly 93,000 square<br />
feet of space, “the Salon lets us show good works in a respected<br />
place and make a real exhibition.” —nastassia astrasheuskaya From Top: Two images, Bonhams; russian anTiques salon, moscow<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA
28<br />
datebook<br />
cuRATOR’S c h O ice<br />
Yuko Hasegawa<br />
cuRATOR Of<br />
ShARjAh BienniAl 11<br />
What works of art would you own, if<br />
space and cost were no object?<br />
A Skyspace by James Turrell or On<br />
Kawara’s book One Million Years.<br />
Which artist, critic, or art world<br />
personality, living or dead, would you<br />
most like to have a spirited<br />
argument with?<br />
I would like to discuss spaces of coexistence<br />
and communication through art with Peter<br />
Sloterdijk, who rejects dualisms and<br />
reconciles a rigorous academic approach<br />
with an antiacademic sensibility in<br />
pursuing a new ontology sometimes referred<br />
to as posthumanism.<br />
What’s the last great book you read?<br />
Maurizio Lazzarato’s La politica dell’evento<br />
[The Politics of the Event], 2004.<br />
And your most recent musical discovery?<br />
Yodeling, a form of singing practiced in<br />
Alpine regions that incorporates rapid and<br />
frequent changes from the natural voice to<br />
the falsetto voice, as well as a method of<br />
communicating vocally across mountains<br />
and valleys. I became interested in it as a<br />
practice that points to the original function<br />
of singing and the human voice.<br />
What’s one artistic trend that continues<br />
to inspire you?<br />
The cross-disciplinary trend. In particular,<br />
I find collaborations and crossovers<br />
between architecture and art the most<br />
inspiring because they seem to incorporate<br />
similar tendencies, including not only a<br />
reconsideration of things like subjectivity<br />
and emotion but also the creation of event,<br />
relativity, and social space. I regard<br />
architects as artists. In Sharjah I intend<br />
for them to be involved at different levels,<br />
from the construction of buildings and<br />
pavilion-like structures on a small scale,<br />
An aerial view of the exhibition spaces<br />
for the 2013 Sharjah Biennial.<br />
to interventions in spaces, collaborations<br />
with artists, and so on.<br />
Which exhibition that you’ve curated<br />
recently are you the most proud of?<br />
“When Lives Become Form: Contemporary<br />
Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present”<br />
[2008–09 at the Museum of Contemporary<br />
Art Tokyo, which traveled to the San<br />
Francisco Yerba Buena Center for the Arts<br />
in 2009]. The exhibition included works<br />
representative of the Tropicália movement<br />
of the 1960s, which involved music,<br />
subculture, architecture, and art,<br />
alongside works by contemporary artists<br />
who have carried on this tradition and<br />
have sought since the 1990s to involve<br />
themselves in the urban landscape<br />
and the people who live there. It became<br />
a kind of fundamental statement for<br />
me of one the reasons why art exists.<br />
What have you discovered while<br />
preparing for the 2013 Sharjah Biennial?<br />
The Islamic courtyards and labyrinths in<br />
Sharjah that have become part of Arab<br />
culture are inspiring. Courtyards<br />
incorporate elements of both public and<br />
private space, with the balance between<br />
the two being different in various parts<br />
of the world that have adopted courtyard<br />
culture. Courtyards spread from the<br />
Islamic world to the Alhambra and other<br />
parts of Spain, Portugal, and the<br />
Mediterranean, to Mexico and South<br />
America. They also became prevalent in<br />
North Africa. They developed eastward<br />
via the Mughal Empire to India, China,<br />
and Japan. These new cultural topologies,<br />
and the new knowledge generated<br />
through negotiation between the interior<br />
and exterior of these courtyards,<br />
presented me with the basis of a theme<br />
for the biennial.<br />
TOkyO<br />
Gallery Talk<br />
In March, the Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe<br />
opened an exhibition space in Tokyo, Japan,<br />
where co-owner Timothy Blum has spent a lot<br />
of time in the past 25 years. Orit Gat talked to<br />
Blum about the new outpost, which will be<br />
directed by art historian Ashley Rawlings.<br />
Tokyo isn’t an obvious choice.<br />
The gallery has had a strong presence there<br />
for 18 years now. But we got more actively involved<br />
with Japan through our major show of the work<br />
of the Mono-ha artists last year. That exhibition was<br />
curated by Mika Yoshitake, who—until she took<br />
a job at the Hirshhorn—was living in Japan and<br />
working for us. So we had someone on the ground<br />
there for years. When she moved on, it became<br />
rapidly apparent that we needed not only to find<br />
a replacement for her but also to ramp up<br />
our presence there.<br />
Why is that?<br />
We now represent nine Japanese artists, and<br />
we are getting more involved with the postwar<br />
material. Mono-ha was one of the most successful<br />
shows—if not the most successful—in our history.<br />
And now we’re doing further study and looking into<br />
individual artists. Couple that with Takashi Murakami,<br />
Yoshitomo Nara, Chino Aoshima, and Lee Ufan,<br />
who were already represented by the gallery—we<br />
simply realized it needed to happen.<br />
Is it your door to the region?<br />
We have been talking about having a large presence<br />
in Asia anyway, and it’s such a vast area that it<br />
almost doesn’t matter where you are; you’re going<br />
to have to travel constantly to keep up with things.<br />
Will other galleries follow?<br />
I don’t think there will be a rush to open galleries<br />
in Tokyo. The market there is really difficult. For us<br />
it’s first and foremost a function to be in Japan<br />
for the artists. It’s a multifold project comprising<br />
an office and, of course, an exhibition program.<br />
Timothy Blum<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
from left: two images, sharjah art foundation; margarete jakschik
30<br />
datebook<br />
new york<br />
asia–nyc<br />
Sopheap Pich, Junk Nutrients, 2009<br />
With dozens of museums, galleries, and auction houses, New<br />
York is rarely lacking in Asian art. But even by New York<br />
standards, the first half of 2013 has brought a rich calendar<br />
of Asian-themed exhibitions and events to the city’s museums,<br />
especially in modern and contemporary art. The Museum<br />
of Modern Art started things off with “Tokyo 1955–1970:<br />
A New Avant-Garde” (now closed), overlapping in topic and<br />
timing with “Gutai: Splendid Playground,” currently<br />
on view at the Guggenheim Museum through May 8. (See<br />
“Art on the Move” in this issue.) There’s more Asian art at the<br />
Guggenheim, too. “No Country: Contemporary Art for<br />
South and Southeast Asia” runs through May 22 (see the<br />
feature story in this issue), and “Zarina: Paper Like Skin,”<br />
a retrospective of the Indian-born New York artist Zarina<br />
Hashmi, is on view through April 21. The Metropolitan<br />
Museum of Art and other museums are also showcasing<br />
contemporary Asian art. Here’s a quick snapshot of Asian<br />
shows at New York museums this season.<br />
Cambodian rattan: The Sculptures of<br />
Sopheap Pich. In years past, the Met might<br />
not have been a prime spot for contemporary<br />
Southeast Asian art. But that was before<br />
Sheena Wagstaff, former chief curator of<br />
Tate Modern, came on board to chair the<br />
Met’s reorganized department of modern and<br />
contemporary art. She and John Guy, the<br />
museum’s curator of South and Southeast<br />
Asia, have organized a show of ten large-scale<br />
works by Pich, a Phnom Penh–based artist<br />
who’d previously lived in the U.S. Among<br />
the sculptures on view: Buddha 2, 2009, an<br />
openwork depiction of a Buddha torso, its loose<br />
rattan strands left to hang freely in space;<br />
and Morning Glory, 2011, a spectacular,<br />
large-scale merging of landscape and memory.<br />
Through June 16.<br />
Season of Cambodia. “Cambodian Rattan”<br />
is the marquee exhibition for Season of<br />
Cambodia, a citywide cultural initiative<br />
featuring exhibitions and installations<br />
as well as music, dance, and theater<br />
performances; film screenings; artist<br />
residencies; and cultural events. Venues<br />
include the Brooklyn Academy of Music,<br />
the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and<br />
Arts at the World Financial Center.<br />
For dates and details, check the website at<br />
seasonofcambodia.org. Through June 16.<br />
Bomb Ponds. Asia Society Museum’s<br />
contribution to Season of Cambodia is a<br />
project by artist Vandy Rattana, shown<br />
this past summer at Documenta 13: a series<br />
of photographs and a video documenting<br />
the massive craters—now filled with toxic<br />
water—left behind by the secret U.S. ><br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
sopheap pich and tyler rollins fine art<br />
Galleries | 10 Chancery Lane | 100 Tonson | 1301PE | 303 Gallery | A | Acquavella | Alisan | Ameringer McEnery Yohe | Andersen’s |<br />
Andréhn-Schiptjenko | Arario | Ark | Arndt | Atlas | Aye | B | Beck & Eggeling | Beijing Art Now | Beijing Commune |<br />
Bernier/Eliades | Peter Blum | Blum & Poe | Boers-Li | Boesky | Breeder | Ben Brown | Buchmann | C | carlier gebauer |<br />
Casa Triângulo | Castelli | Cera | Chemould | Chi-Wen | Cohan | Coles | Contemporary Fine Arts | Continua | Corrias | Cristea |<br />
Crousel | D | De Carlo | de Sarthe | de Torres | Delhi Art Gallery | Dirimart | Drawing Room | E | Eigen + Art | Eslite | Exit |<br />
F | Friedman | G | Gagosian | Gajah | Galerist | Gandhara | Gladstone | Gmurzynska | Marian Goodman | Goodman Gallery |<br />
Richard Gray | Greve | Grimm | Grotto | Guild | Gupta | H | Hakgojae | Hanart TZ | Harris Lieberman | Hauser & Wirth | Hoffman |<br />
I | Ibid | Ihn | Ingleby | Ishii | J | Jacobson | Jensen | Johnen | Juda | K | Kaikai Kiki | Kasmin | Kelly | Keng | Kerlin | Koyama |<br />
Koyanagi | Krinzinger | Kukje | L | Lam | Lambert | Langgeng | Lee | Gebrüder Lehmann | Lehmann Maupin | Lelong | Lévy | Lin & Lin |<br />
Lisson | Lombard Freid | Long March | M | Maggiore | Mara La Ruche | Marlborough | Mayer | Mayoral | McCaffrey | Meile |<br />
Mezzanin | Miro | Mizuma | Modern Art | Müller | N | Nadi | Nanzuka | Nature Morte | Navarro | neugerriemschneider | Ning |<br />
O | Obadia | OMR | One and J. | O’Neill | Osage | Ota | Oxley9 | P | Pace Gallery | Pace Prints | Paragon | Pékin | Peres Projects |<br />
Perrotin | PKM | Platform | Polígrafa | Prats | Presenhuber | Project 88 | R | Rech | Roesler | Ropac | Rossi & Rossi | Rumma |<br />
S | Sakshi | SCAI | Shanghai Gallery | ShanghART | ShugoArts | Sies + Höke | Sikkema Jenkins | Silverlens | Skape | Soka |<br />
Sprüth Magers | Starkwhite | Stigter | STPI | T | Tang | Taylor | Templon | Tornabuoni | V | Vadehra | Van de Weghe | Vitamin | Volte |<br />
W | Wako | Wentrup | Werner | White Cube | White Room | White Space Beijing | Wigram | Wilkinson | X | XL | Y | Yamamoto Gendai |<br />
Z | Zwirner | Discoveries | 2P | Aike-Dellarco | Balice Hertling | BolteLang | Cooley | du Monde | Houldsworth | Jongma | Kalfayan |<br />
Karma International | Mendes Wood | Francesca Minini | Monitor | mother’s tankstation | Mujin-to | Paradise Row | Plan B |<br />
RaebervonStenglin | Rokeby | S.A.L.E.S. | Seven Art | SKE | Take Ninagawa | Utopian Slumps | Weingrüll | Workplace | Xu |<br />
Insights | 313 Art Project | A Thousand Plateaus | Arataniurano | Art:1 | Artcourt | <strong>Artinfo</strong>rmal | Blindspot | CAIS | Canna |<br />
Cda-Projects | Chambers | Chan Hampe | Cheng | Chiba | de Montferrand | Edwin’s | EM | Exhibit320 | Feast | Fine Arts Literature |<br />
ifa | Magician Space | Malingue | Manila Contemporary | Mirchandani + Steinruecke | Neon Parc | Ora-Ora | Park Ryu Sook | Pi |<br />
Renshaw | Schoeni | Semarang | Shin | Side 2 | Sin Sin | Standing Pine | Star | Sullivan+Strumpf | tanzer | Tolarno | Tsuruno |<br />
Wei-Ling | x-ist | XVA | Y++ Wada | Yamaki | Yang<br />
Vernissage | Wednesday, May 22, 2013 | By invitation only<br />
artbasel.com | facebook.com/artbasel | twitter.com/artbasel
32<br />
datebook<br />
Clockwise from left:<br />
At the Met, Sopheap<br />
Pich, Buddha 2,<br />
2009; Emily<br />
Allchurch, Tokyo<br />
Story 1: Lotus Garden<br />
(after Hiroshige),<br />
2011, in “Edo Pop”<br />
at Japan Society;<br />
Zarina Hashmi,<br />
Cage, 1970, relief<br />
print on Indian<br />
handmade paper,<br />
on view in the artist’s<br />
retrospective at the<br />
Guggenheim.<br />
bombing campaign during<br />
the Vietnam War. (On view<br />
through June 2.) Also at Asia<br />
Society Museum (through May<br />
12): Blowin’ in the Wind, Bob<br />
Dylan, 1963, a 2013 work by<br />
Chinese-Canadian artist Tim Lee<br />
that doubles as an impromptu<br />
karaoke pavilion and—on a more<br />
traditional note—“The Artful<br />
Recluse: Painting, Poetry,<br />
and Politics in 17th-Century<br />
China” (through June 2).<br />
Edo Pop. Japanese popular<br />
culture has been inspiring<br />
artists for centuries, and this<br />
exhibition at Japan Society<br />
offers up-to-the-minute proof<br />
of that fact. “Edo Pop: The<br />
Graphic Impact of Japanese<br />
Prints” showcases more than 100 18th-<br />
and 19th-century ukiyo-e prints alongside<br />
approximately 30 contemporary works by<br />
ten international artists. They range from<br />
Brooklyn-based graffiti master Aiko (who<br />
created the mural at the show’s entrance)<br />
to Tokyo artists Hatakeyama Naoya and<br />
Kazama Sachiko, and Masami Teraoka,<br />
the unofficial elder statesman of pop-meetsukiyo-e<br />
mashups. Through June 9.<br />
Projects 99: Meiro Koizumi. At the Museum<br />
of Modern Art, “Projects 99: Meiro Koizumi”<br />
is the video and performance artist’s first solo<br />
museum show in the U.S. Koizumi’s work<br />
inhabits an uncomfortable ground between<br />
cruelty and comedy. His most recent video,<br />
Defect in Vision, 2011, explores the concept<br />
of blindness through the repeated enactment<br />
of a domestic scene set during World War II.<br />
Through May 6. —susan delson<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
clockwise from left: the metropolitan museum of art, new york; minneapolis institute of arts; zarina hashmi and luhring augustine, new york<br />
Zhang Huan, Ash Army No. 2, 2008, ash, steel and wood, 55.9 x 47 x 50.2 cm.<br />
Private Collection. Image courtesy of Zhang Huan Studio and Pace Gallery.
masaya kushino and the museum at fit, new york<br />
The Art of Living<br />
Obsessed<br />
A lavish exhibition brings<br />
everyone’s favorite fashion obsession<br />
out of the closet<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | mArch/April 2013<br />
Manolo Blahnik, Christian louBoutin, roge r V i Vier,<br />
salvatore Ferragamo, and more: exquisite footwear from<br />
the Who’s Who of high-fashion shoe design currently can be<br />
found in the Museum at the Fashion institute of technology<br />
(MFit) in new York City.<br />
“shoe obsession,” running through april 13, features some<br />
150 examples of the imaginative and lavish designs that have<br />
made shoes central to contemporary fashion.<br />
35
The Art of Living<br />
36<br />
luxuryCurated<br />
The style-conscious characters on the popular television<br />
series “Sex and the City” helped make Manolo Blahnik and<br />
Jimmy Choo household names. Along with designers such as<br />
Christian Louboutin, with his signature red soles, they’ve made<br />
fashionable footwear as important to a woman’s look as<br />
anything else she might wear.<br />
In addition to showcasing leading shoe designers, “Shoe<br />
Obsession” features eye-popping styles from major fashion<br />
houses. One design, from the Givenchy spring 2012 couture<br />
collection runway show, is adorned with a metal T-strap and<br />
“piercing” detail that echoes the extreme jewelry worn by the<br />
models. Styles by more avant-garde designers are also<br />
highlighted, including Japanese designer Noritaka Tatehana’s<br />
“Lady Pointe” shoes, worn by Lady Gaga, which measure a<br />
vertiginous 18 inches tall.<br />
Upcoming designers such as Nicholas Kirkwood,<br />
Alexandre Birman, and Charlotte Olympia also claim their<br />
share of the spotlight, giving viewers a glimpse of the<br />
industry’s intriguing future. One highlight: Alessandra<br />
Lanvin’s Cubist-inspired “Geisha” heels, which have made<br />
her Aperlaï brand one to watch.<br />
The exhibition also taps the collections of a select few<br />
who, as the show’s title suggests, have a particular fascination<br />
with this fashion essential. Among them is influential style<br />
icon Daphne Guinness, who is lending a selection of shoes<br />
from her own expansive closet, including designs by Alexander<br />
McQueen and Nina Ricci. –Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop<br />
“Shoe Obsession” runs at the Museum at the Fashion Institute<br />
of Technology in New York through April 13.<br />
BEST FOOT FORWARD Clockwise<br />
from far left: Chanel, 2009; Tom<br />
Ford, 2012; “Eyelash Heel” by<br />
Bruno Frisoni for Roger Vivier,<br />
2012-13; Christian Louboutin<br />
“Pigalle” pump, 2012. Previous<br />
page: Masaya Kushino, “Lung-ta<br />
[The Wind Horse]“ shoe, 2008.<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER LEFT: THREE IMAGES, FASHION MUSEUM, BATH; CHRIS MOORE AND FASHION MUSEUM, BATH.<br />
OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER LEFT: TWO IMAGES, THE MUSEUM AT FIT, NEW YORK; STEPHANE GARRIGUES<br />
AND ROGER VIVIER; CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN.<br />
50 for 50<br />
Clockwise from left:<br />
Champagne-bottle dress<br />
and matching “cork” hat,<br />
worn to a costume party<br />
in 1902; gold latticework<br />
and lace dress by Paul<br />
Poiret, 1925; red and navy<br />
blue lace dress by Erdem,<br />
autumn-winter 2009.<br />
“50 Fabulous Frocks,” now on<br />
view at the Fashion Museum in Bath,<br />
showcases outfits by some of the<br />
most influential designers of the<br />
20th century—Schiaparelli, Poiret,<br />
Vionnet, Chanel, Dior, and Yves<br />
Saint Laurent, to name a few—while<br />
aiming to present key historic<br />
fashion “moments” dating back to<br />
1660. The exhibition celebrates the<br />
museum’s 50th anniversary.<br />
Highlights include a gold<br />
embroidered Georgian court dress<br />
and a delicate 1870s gauze bustle<br />
day dress,reminiscent of the<br />
paintings of Tissot, alongside a<br />
svelte crepe evening dress by Ossie<br />
Clark, a classic Chanel suit, and an<br />
ostrich-feather-and-rhinestone<br />
Yves Saint Laurent ensemble<br />
originally worn by English ballerina<br />
Dame Margot Fonteyn, partying in<br />
New York nightclubs with Rudolf<br />
Nureyev in the 1960s.<br />
The display also includes<br />
curious pieces from the museum’s<br />
collection, such as a Champagnebottle<br />
gown worn at a fancy dress<br />
party in Edwardian times. Men are<br />
not forgotten, with masculine<br />
fashion represented by such<br />
pieces as an ornately embroidered<br />
coat from the early 18th century<br />
and a pair of bondage trousers by<br />
punk doyenne Vivienne<br />
Westwood. —Samantha Tse<br />
“50 Fabulous Frocks” will be on view<br />
through December 31 at the Fashion<br />
Museum, Bath, U.K.<br />
37
Asia Society<br />
Art Gala<br />
MAY 20, 2013 • Hong Kong<br />
Celebrating Visionary Contemporary artists<br />
Lee Ufan<br />
Nyoman Masriadi<br />
Zeng Fanzhi<br />
Coincides with the first edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong<br />
Please contact ArtGala@AsiaSociety.org or visit AsiaSociety.org/ArtGala2013 for more information.<br />
FROM TOP: RAGO, LAMBERTVILLE, NEW JERSEY; DAVID COLE AND AMERICAN DECORATIVE ART 1900 FOUNDATION<br />
American Original<br />
Inventive, independent, and under the radar, 20th-century<br />
designer Marie Zimmermann is ready for a new generation of collectors<br />
By William L. Hamilton<br />
A ONE-WOMAN DECORATIVE<br />
ARTS MOVEMENT<br />
Zimmermann richly deserves it. Her<br />
output, dating from 1902 to 1939,<br />
displays astonishing range: work in<br />
copper, bronze, iron, silver, gold,<br />
and precious stones, in styles fluent<br />
with inspirations from historical<br />
classicism and ancient Asia to the Arts<br />
& Crafts, Art Deco, and modernism<br />
of Zimmermann’s own time. And<br />
her designs—bowls, vases, lidded<br />
vessels, table service, gates, garden<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
furniture, candelabra, jewelry—were<br />
realized with a boldly experimental<br />
approach to patina, coloration,<br />
and applied ornament.<br />
“She marched to the beat of her<br />
own drum,” says Nonie Gadsden,<br />
the senior curator for American<br />
decorative arts and sculpture at the<br />
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, who calls<br />
Zimmermann an “iconoclast,” in part<br />
because she entered and mastered a<br />
field—metalwork—regarded strictly as<br />
men’s work. Reviewing a Zimmermann<br />
theconnoisseur<br />
There aren’t too many names left to discover in 20th-century design, but Marie Zimmermann, a New York metalworker<br />
who created decorative objects and jewelry, might be one of them. Despite inclusion in “High Styles,” a seminal exhibition<br />
of 20th-century 20th-century American design at at the Whitney Museum in 1985, and “The Art that is Life,” an important show of<br />
American Arts & Crafts at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston two years later, Zimmermann is known to only a small<br />
circle of cognoscenti. Among these are Rudy Ciccarello, the American Arts & Crafts collector and patron of the<br />
Two Red Roses Foundation; Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, who set the auction record for Zimmermann with her purchase<br />
of a carved, jeweled chest for $120,000 in 2005, which she donated that year to the Metropolitan Museum<br />
of Art; and Bruce Barnes and and Joseph Cunningham, founder/president and director, respectively, of the American<br />
Decorative Art 1900 Foundation, whose American Arts Arts & Crafts collection is considered one of the finest in the councountry. In 2011 the foundation and Yale University Press published The Jewelry and Metalwork Metalwork of Marie Zimmermann, by<br />
Barnes, Cunningham, and Deborah Dependahl Waters, which should bring Zimmermann (1879–1972) wider notice.<br />
gallery exhibition in 1916, the New<br />
York Evening Sun told readers, “This<br />
being a feminist age, the village smithy<br />
is a studio and the smith is a comely<br />
young woman.” Covering her onewoman<br />
show in Charleston, South<br />
Carolina, in 1935, the local press called<br />
Zimmermann “the female Cellini.”<br />
Born into an affluent Brooklyn<br />
family, Zimmermann lived as an<br />
independent professional at the<br />
National Arts Club in Gramercy Park,<br />
in Manhattan, moved in high society,<br />
Just under a foot<br />
tall, the richly<br />
carved and<br />
jeweled wooden<br />
chest, top, fetched<br />
$120,000—still<br />
the artist record—<br />
at Rago in<br />
Lambertville,<br />
New Jersey, in<br />
2005. Created<br />
prior to 1922,<br />
the handsome<br />
gold ring,<br />
above, features<br />
a baroque pearl,<br />
emeralds, pink<br />
sapphires and<br />
(possibly) rubies.<br />
The Art of Living<br />
39
All in the Details<br />
+ Although critically<br />
acknowledged,<br />
Zimmermann was<br />
never a commercial<br />
success, which led her<br />
to close her workshop<br />
in 1939. In a letter<br />
at the time, she wrote<br />
she was “too tied up<br />
and too discouraged<br />
to carry on.”<br />
+ Her first piece to enter<br />
the Metropolitan<br />
Museum of Art,<br />
a covered jar in gold,<br />
jade, rock crystal, and<br />
rubies, was acquired<br />
in 1922 for the new<br />
department of modern<br />
decorative arts.<br />
+ Zimmermann did not<br />
execute every aspect<br />
of her work herself.<br />
She called in experts<br />
as needed, including<br />
Riccardo Bertelli<br />
of Roman Bronze<br />
Works, in Brooklyn,<br />
and a smithy in Pike<br />
County, Pennsylvania,<br />
for black ironwork.<br />
theconnoisseur<br />
managed a staff of six, sold work<br />
to Edsel B. and Eleanor Clay Ford,<br />
and executed commissions for A.<br />
Montgomery Ward and others. She<br />
also rode, fished, and hunted—<br />
bears included—equipping herself<br />
at Abercrombie & Fitch, then a<br />
leading gunsmith. And she was an<br />
avid motorist, often seen at the wheel<br />
of her late-model McFarlan Roadster<br />
on the back roads of Pike County,<br />
Pennsylvania, where her family<br />
had a farm.<br />
WHERE IS THE MARKET?<br />
“So little by Zimmermann has come<br />
to market that I don’t think collectors<br />
understand her work,” says Jodi<br />
Pollack, senior vice president and<br />
head of the 20th-century design<br />
department at Sotheby’s New York,<br />
which sold a Zimmermann vase in<br />
2010 for $16,250<br />
(est. $15–20,000).<br />
Pollack adds<br />
that much of<br />
the work work remains<br />
in the the possession<br />
of the the family—Jack<br />
family—Jack<br />
Zimmermann, the<br />
artist’s great-nephew,<br />
in particular, who has<br />
sold items items sporadically.<br />
“There’s a great great deal<br />
of inconsistency in what<br />
she produced; a a lot of it is minor,”<br />
says David Rago of Rago Arts and<br />
Auction Center Center in Lambertville, New<br />
Jersey, who says he has has handled<br />
roughly 400 Zimmermann<br />
pieces in 40 years, including<br />
the record-setting carved<br />
chest. “More than any other<br />
artist I’ve seen, when<br />
she chose to make a<br />
masterpiece, she<br />
did.” Rago says that<br />
the better works,<br />
like the patinated patinated<br />
copper vessels<br />
most familiar familiar<br />
to the the market,<br />
have have sold for<br />
under $10,000, $10,000,<br />
while while much much of the<br />
rest has sold sold for<br />
between between $3,000<br />
and $5,000.<br />
Richard Wright<br />
of Wright<br />
in Chicago has handled four lots,<br />
including a pair of vases on stands<br />
offered in June 2012; estimated at<br />
$7,000 to $9,000, they went unsold.<br />
The jewelry, with only several<br />
hundred examples extant, is scarce<br />
almost to the point of nonexistence.<br />
Zimmermann’s strength as an artist<br />
has been a key factor in the weakness<br />
of her market. “She “She defies<br />
categorization, which which I<br />
suspect would please<br />
her,” says Rosalie<br />
Berberian, Berberian, a a scholar and<br />
appraiser appraiser who has worked<br />
with Jack Jack Zimmermann to<br />
place pieces for sale. The<br />
output resists specialists’<br />
collecting. Zimmermann’s<br />
interest in antiquities, from Celtic<br />
patterns to Tang Dynasty colors,<br />
puts her work literally all over the<br />
map, with a 2,000-year spread.<br />
HOW TO BEGIN AND WHAT AT A<br />
TO LOOK FOR<br />
“She’s so idiosyncratic,”<br />
Barnes tells potential<br />
Zimmermann buyers, that<br />
what you decide to collect<br />
“doesn’t make a difference.<br />
What do you gravitate<br />
toward? It’s It’s what what you respond<br />
to when you look at it.”<br />
Jane Prentiss, director of the<br />
20th-century design department<br />
at Skinner, advises collectors that<br />
“the form, the patina, and whatever<br />
decorative element—these three<br />
things together create the ‘signature’<br />
for her work.” Prentiss says the<br />
Boston auction house was the first<br />
to sell a Zimmermann piece, a bowl<br />
for $300, in 1994.<br />
Zimmermann experimented with<br />
chemicals, heat, paints, waxes,<br />
and lacquer to produce remarkably<br />
layered patinas in rich tones like red<br />
and verdigris. Some colors, like a<br />
midnight blue-black, are more rare than<br />
others. Zimmermann also gilded and<br />
plated objects.<br />
The works are incised with a<br />
distinctive MZ logo on the bottom.<br />
Zimmermann was proud of her career<br />
and promoted herself vigorously,<br />
once sending a letter to the editor of<br />
Vanity Fair signed “A Subscriber” and<br />
recommending a current exhibit by<br />
Marie Zimmermann. Locating a date on<br />
a work is not an issue: She never dated<br />
pieces. Nor are fakes and forgeries<br />
a matter of concern. The techniques<br />
are complicated, and, for the moment,<br />
no one has reason to copy them.<br />
Condition is trickier. Zimmermann liked<br />
distressing and artificially aging her<br />
work to “antique” it. A buyer should be<br />
alert to what is original and what is<br />
wear and tear.<br />
A colorful bracelet in gold, enamel, and<br />
sapphires, top, and three vessels that<br />
exemplify the range of Zimmermann’s forms,<br />
materials, surfaces, and prices: a silver<br />
centerpiece, ca. 1920, above, that sold for<br />
$18,800 at Christie’s in 2000; a spun copper<br />
vase with verdigris patina, 9¾ x 10 inches,<br />
left, that fetched $1,586 at Rago in 2010; and<br />
a patinated bronze vase, “Model No. 77,”<br />
ca. 1920, nearly eight inches tall, center of<br />
page, purchased at Sotheby’s in 2010 by the<br />
Two Red Roses Foundation for $16,250.<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: DAVID COLE AND AMERICAN DECORATIVE ART 1900 FOUNDATION; CHRISTIE’S; RAGO; TWO RED ROSES FOUNDATION AND SOTHEBY’S
The Art of Living<br />
42<br />
theartofcraftsmanship<br />
1<br />
one of many<br />
One of the small diamonds in the Comète<br />
is placed in its setting. A total of 1,424<br />
diamonds are used in the necklace and<br />
brooch ensemble.<br />
Evening Star<br />
2<br />
a tail of baguettes<br />
The artisan works on the chains of<br />
semiclosed-set, baguette-cut diamonds<br />
for the tail of the shooting star,<br />
which is fully articulated to follow the<br />
body movements of the wearer.<br />
The Étoile Filante (Shooting Star)<br />
necklace recreates Chanel’s 1932<br />
Comète (Comet) sautoir design, with<br />
an enormous 8.8-carat diamond in<br />
a star that can be positioned on the<br />
shoulder or bust, or removed and<br />
worn as a brooch. Made from 18-karat<br />
white gold and an arrangement of<br />
five cascading chains of various cut<br />
diamonds, from baguette and fancy-<br />
cut to briolette and princess-cut,<br />
this exquisite necklace is a testament<br />
to the diamond-cutting know-how<br />
of Chanel’s jewelry atelier.<br />
3<br />
the finishing touch<br />
The center stone is carefully mounted:<br />
an 8.8-carat diamond, enhanced<br />
by an openwork-on-prong setting.<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
all images: chanel fine jewelry<br />
Yuki<br />
Katsura - A FABLE<br />
6 April – 9 June 2013<br />
Yuki Katsura, Resistance, 1952, Oil on canvas,<br />
Collection of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo<br />
Francis Alÿs, Tornado , 2000-10, Milpa Alta<br />
Video documentation of an action photo: Jorge Golem<br />
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo<br />
4-1-1, Miyoshi, Koto-ku, Tokyo,<br />
JAPAN 135-0022<br />
TEL:+81-(0)3-5245-4111<br />
www.mot-art-museum.jp<br />
Francis Alÿs<br />
Part 1 MEXICO SURVEY 6 April – 9 June 2013<br />
Part 2 GIBRALTAR FOCUS 29 June – 8 September 2013<br />
Francis Alÿs, Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River, 2008, The Straits<br />
of Gibraltar, Video and photographic documentation of an action photo: Jorge Golem
CARTIER<br />
arTonThewrisT<br />
Painting with Wood—<br />
The Art of Marquetry<br />
This venerable technique is best known for its use in decorative furniture of the<br />
17th and 18th centuries. But contemporary artisans are finding new ways of using the<br />
craft—including miniature artworks for some of the world’s top watch brands.<br />
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop<br />
BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
The Art of Living<br />
45
46<br />
Dating back to the 16th century, marquetry is<br />
a technique in which different shades of a natural<br />
material—wood veneers, ivory, mother-of-pearl,<br />
marble, or semi-precious stones—are carefully<br />
cut to fit precisely together to create a single<br />
design. The effect produced from this elaborate<br />
technique is similar to inlay, but in the latter, a<br />
solid body of one material is cut out to receive<br />
pre-cut pieces of another to form the pattern.<br />
“Marquetry is a very old technique, which<br />
was first used by cabinetmakers on wood<br />
paneling—playing with different types of<br />
woods, different colors, and different veneers,”<br />
explains Pierre Rainero, Style, Image and<br />
Heritage Director at Cartier.<br />
“It can really be considered a classic métier<br />
d’art, which reached its apex in the 18th century.<br />
The ways to play with the technique are endless.<br />
You can create abstract or figurative patterns. It<br />
can be done very colorfully, playing with different<br />
woods, or more subtly using only tone-on-tone<br />
contrasts.” He adds that one renowned<br />
cabinetmaker during the reign of Louis XIV,<br />
André-Charles Boulle, combined marquetry and<br />
inlay techniques to develop the famed Boulle<br />
marquetry, which uses different types of wood<br />
along with brass and tortoiseshell.<br />
Over the centuries, marquetry has been<br />
principally used for the decoration of large<br />
wooden furniture. Though this has long included<br />
clock dials, its use in a miniaturized form for<br />
wristwatches is fairly recent.<br />
“It is a new development. So far, watchmakers<br />
have done a lot of enamelling—a tradition that, by<br />
the way, comes from pocket watches. But marquetry<br />
is really new,” Rainero says.<br />
In 2010, Cartier unveiled the Rotonde de<br />
Cartier jumping hours watch, with a marquetry<br />
bear on the dial. It was created by award-winning<br />
marqueter Jérôme Boutteçon, who had previously<br />
worked on clocks for Jaeger-LeCoultre and on a<br />
series of extremely intricate wood marquetry<br />
watch faces, featuring a leopard, for Chopard.<br />
Using 280 tiny pieces of wood for the Chopard<br />
design, Boutteçon created a wood-veneer mosaic<br />
that had an almost photographic quality.<br />
By comparison, the Cartier bear dial is<br />
composed of 38 small wood veneers that were<br />
meticulously cut and pieced together to create the<br />
head of a brown bear. Boutteçon used ten<br />
different species of wood, ranging from holly,<br />
chestnut, and poplar to walnut and pink<br />
maple—playing on their colors and contrasting<br />
wood grains to suggest the texture of fur.<br />
Above: selecting,<br />
cutting, and assembling<br />
the precise,<br />
tiny elements of<br />
Cartier’s marquetry<br />
koala watch, right.<br />
Below: one of the<br />
four Calatrava<br />
Rabbit marquetry<br />
designs introduced<br />
last year by Patek<br />
Philippe.<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: FIVE IMAGES, CARTIER; PATEK PHILIPPE. OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: HERMÈS AND CLAUDE JORAY; SIX IMAGES, HERMÈS AND JÉRÔME GALLAND<br />
Marquetry is a technique that requires intense<br />
planning and precision. Based on a drawing<br />
supplied by Cartier, Boutteçon first created a<br />
simplified line drawing that would allow him to<br />
outline each piece of the puzzle and then saw the<br />
veneer in stacked layers. He then reassembled<br />
the tiny pieces on the dial before polishing it to<br />
achieve the final finish.<br />
In 2011 Patek Philippe introduced the Patek<br />
Philippe Tiger Marquetry limited edition (ref.<br />
5077P), a set of four timepieces depicting wood<br />
marquetry tigers in different poses. Between six<br />
and eight types of wood were used for each dial,<br />
which required from 120 to 137 pieces. Last year<br />
the watchmaker followed up with another set<br />
of four timepieces, the Calatrava Rabbit (also<br />
ref. 5077P), this time decorated, as the name<br />
suggests, with rabbits. Each dial required 60<br />
hours of work, and from 141 to 188 pieces cut<br />
from 18 species of wood.<br />
More recently, the straw marquetry technique<br />
has also been used on watch faces, updating a<br />
decorative technique used on royal furniture in<br />
the 18th century and revived in France in the<br />
1920s and ’30s by André Groult and Jean-Michel<br />
Frank. “There is a whole idea of richness and<br />
refinement linked to straw marquetry in<br />
furniture,” Rainero says.<br />
Last year Hermès launched its Arceau<br />
Marqueterie de Paille watch. The dial features an<br />
overlay with a high-quality rye straw, selected for<br />
its sturdiness and luster.<br />
The straw is hand reaped, colored, and dried<br />
before being carefully split into strips. Each strip is<br />
then manually ironed flat, using a bone burnishing<br />
tool. The straw strips are cut with a fret saw and<br />
assembled and glued, jigsaw-puzzle-like, onto the<br />
brass dial in a chevron or small-square pattern—<br />
both well-known Hermès tie motifs.<br />
Agnès Paul-Depasse, the artisan who created<br />
the Arceau Straw Marquetry watch, explains that<br />
straw can be more difficult to handle than wood.<br />
“The straw is thinner, and because of that, it’s not<br />
cut with the same tools and not glued the same<br />
way,” she says, adding it takes almost 40 hours to<br />
complete one dial.<br />
Cartier’s Rainero adds that, being much<br />
thinner than wood, straw is a more delicate<br />
material to handle, “but at the same time, its<br />
lightness makes it more appropriate for a dial.”<br />
Finding artisans who can use marquetry<br />
techniques on the small surface of a watch face is<br />
quite difficult nowadays. But the appeal of these<br />
watches is extremely strong because, like all those<br />
created using métiers d’art techniques, they are<br />
one-of-a-kind pieces.<br />
“That definitely appeals to customers<br />
who appreciate the fine quality of work,”<br />
Rainero notes.<br />
BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
Right: Hermès<br />
Arceau Marqueterie<br />
de Paille timepieces<br />
with<br />
distinctive<br />
marquetry patterns<br />
that recall the<br />
brand’s neckties.<br />
Below: steps in the<br />
straw marquetry<br />
process include<br />
dyeing, flattening,<br />
cutting, and<br />
weaving.<br />
arTonThewrisT<br />
The Art of Living<br />
47
CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: LEE KA-SING AND KAI CHAN; TWO IMAGES, SHOJI FUJII AND YIQING YIN.<br />
The Sculptural Couture<br />
of Yiqing Yin<br />
A French designer shapes fabrics on<br />
the body body to create soft feminine armor<br />
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop<br />
YOUNG FRENCH COUTURIER Yiqing Yin<br />
has found rapid success since she<br />
launched her first collection in 2010. That<br />
year, she presented her creations at the<br />
prestigious Hyères International ternational<br />
Festival, won the Grand Prix of Creation<br />
awarded by the City ty of of Paris, and and saw<br />
her her designs designs displayed in in the the windows of of<br />
the Culture Ministry and at the Théâtre<br />
National de Chaillot. The e following year,<br />
her her second second collection, collection, the Dreamer, Dreamer, was<br />
exhibited at the Hôtel de Crillon illon during the March 2011 Women’s Women’s<br />
Fashion week curated by Vogue Paris. A A few months later, she<br />
was awarded the Andam Prize for First Collections. Then en in<br />
2012, she debuted as an invited guest during Haute Couture uture<br />
Fashion Week in Paris and successfully launched a readyreadyto-wear collection internationally. I recently recently sat down with the<br />
27-year-old 27-year-old designer for a discussion about her practice.<br />
A lot of your designs are very sculptural.<br />
Have you studied art?<br />
I studied arts and crafts at the École Nationale tionale Supérieure des<br />
Arts Décoratifs for five years. We did many things, from<br />
sculpture and stage design to graphic design and photography.<br />
We studied space, objects, and images all together through<br />
different forms of expression. I always loved the sculptural<br />
element. Sculpture is very important when you put it in situ; it<br />
comes with the space surrounding it. That’s at’s very important. important.<br />
And I see fashion as a way of sculpting on a living body as a<br />
support, using fabric as a medium. But it is something that is<br />
always moving, so it ’s ’s movement within a space and it needs to<br />
relate to its environment. It’s ’s a moving sculpture, and the<br />
movement and the imprint that the body body leaves leaves behind as it<br />
moves—the grace, the the body body language—is all part of of the final<br />
result. In a way, I have the original idea but it ’s actually the<br />
person who wears the garment who finishes it.<br />
What was the starting point for your Spring-Summer<br />
2013 collection?<br />
The e thread, the line, and the unweaving motion of matter were were<br />
the starting point. My mood mood board was dark, muted, and austere,<br />
with pictures of sculptures by the Russian artist Naum um Gabo,<br />
who sculpted ethereal, hyperbolic volumes out of thread<br />
without ever invading the space. I was also influenced by thread thread<br />
sculptures by the artist Kai Chan. There ere were also bondage<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
artonthecatwalk<br />
Above, two designs<br />
from the Spring-<br />
Summer 2013<br />
couture collection<br />
by Yiqing Yin, who<br />
cites the influence<br />
of Russian sculptor<br />
Naum Gabo<br />
(1890–1977) and<br />
contemporary<br />
Canadian artist Kai<br />
Chan, whose 2012<br />
silk thread installation,<br />
Scent of Roses,<br />
is at upper left .<br />
The Art of Living
The Art of Living<br />
50<br />
Above, Yiqing Yin<br />
backstage at the<br />
Paris show for her<br />
Fall-Winter 2012<br />
collection.<br />
Opposite, clockwise<br />
from left: a<br />
sketch for one of<br />
the designs in the<br />
Spring-Summer<br />
2013 collection;<br />
four runway looks<br />
from the Spring-<br />
Summer 2013<br />
collection; an<br />
ensemble from the<br />
Fall-Winter 2012<br />
collection, edged<br />
in white feathers.<br />
ARToNThecATwAlk<br />
pictures with details of intricate knots and beautiful tensions<br />
with the skin, as well as rays of light decomposing into stardust,<br />
and spiderwebs with galactic compositions of water drops.<br />
How different was this collection from previous ones?<br />
The earlier collections were about the human body and<br />
animals. The last collection was more about the vegetal and<br />
the mineral. This time, it was about finding knots, tensions, and<br />
the tangling of shapes upon the body, as well as the unweaving<br />
movement of networks of matter around the body. The thread<br />
theme was a beautiful way to treat the contrast between its<br />
violence and sharpness on one hand and its complete fragility<br />
on the other. I liked this paradox, so I pushed the study of<br />
“lines,” from thread to fabric, fiber to ropes, chains, Swarovski<br />
line patterns, velvet devorés, metal rope sculpture, etc.<br />
This collection had a few sculptural pieces, but was<br />
overall a much sleeker silhouette.<br />
Indeed, the overall silhouette is a stretched-out vertical one,<br />
quite strict in a sense, and close to the body. Semi-structured<br />
tailoring, with details of draping in luxury Escorial fabric [the<br />
world’s finest naturally grown wool], which is traditionally used<br />
for menswear tailoring for outerwear, along with a lot of<br />
jerseys for dresses and skirts. I wanted the garments to be<br />
comfortable, flattering, and easy to relate to. All the sculptural<br />
and draping vocabulary is injected more subtly in fine details,<br />
but follows the landscape of the body without damaging its<br />
proportions, for a very wearable result. The piping on the front<br />
of the legs is one of the many small details found throughout<br />
the collection. Apart from the interesting variations in tone it<br />
provides, it helps highlight the verticality of the slim silhouette.<br />
Some of the dresses seem to have applied thread<br />
embroidery on top.<br />
Yes, the dresses are in silk organza with three different sizes<br />
of thread applied as embroidery, along with dustings of<br />
crystal pearls spread along some areas. In one dress, the<br />
embroideries hold the draping details and pleats close to the<br />
body, as if circulating in and out of it. In another, the very<br />
fragile embroidery is composed so as to give an almost liquid<br />
feel to the threads, as if dripping from the inside of the<br />
second-skin dress.<br />
In your previous collection, the key focus was the<br />
back. What about this time?<br />
Backs are still a very important and sensual element of the<br />
silhouette. Back details such as décolletés, slits, cutouts, and<br />
fountain drapes are the counterbalance to the otherwise<br />
austere and strict front lines.<br />
What does this most recent collection say about you<br />
as a designer?<br />
I think it is important as a designer to be in coherence with a<br />
generation. Clothes are meant to be worn, so I tried to make<br />
real clothes for real women to live in, without sacrificing any of<br />
the creativity and poetry of my garments. It is harder to work<br />
the codes with subtlety, and my maturing as a designer is all<br />
about the balance between offering people dreams and<br />
creating a realistic product to be made their own, but with a<br />
strong identity value. There are multiple layers of reading in<br />
complexity. Sometimes less is more, and the true value of<br />
luxury is found in control, precision, and balance, rather than<br />
dramatic decoration.<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: YIQING YIN; FIVE IMAGES, SHOJI FUJII AND YIQING YIN.<br />
OPPOSITE: JONATHAN P. LEVY AND YIQING YIN.<br />
You sketch but also use swatches of fabrics to build the<br />
garment on your mannequin. It’s a very sculptural approach.<br />
It is. It’s a very instinctive and sensitive approach. I draw a<br />
rough-proportion sketch to note the idea, but most of the<br />
design I find while sculpting directly on the mannequin. So the<br />
creative process happens directly, with the draping action.<br />
Is draping part of your signature design?<br />
I think so. Draping is a way to construct garments; it’s a very<br />
traditional construction method, as opposed to flat<br />
patterning. I do most of my designs by draping, in volume, in<br />
three dimensions. But I also think that by de-structuring and<br />
changing the traditional method of draping, I’ve found<br />
interesting new elements, shapes, and volumes. Pleating is<br />
also recurrent in my work, because I think it’s quite an<br />
interesting technique, with a lot of potential to develop<br />
from a flat surface into a multifaceted, three-dimensional<br />
garment. Pleating gives dynamics to a flat surface.<br />
By contorting the fabric you can create something complex<br />
to the eye, which is also quite mathematical in a way.<br />
You launched a ready-to-wear collection in 2012. How do<br />
you approach that differently from couture?<br />
Ready-to-wear is about working the product—starting from an<br />
ideal but making it accessible for the customer. Couture does<br />
not have a meaning if, in the end, the ideal is not worn by a<br />
woman. I don’t want to be elitist. The couture pieces on the<br />
runway are more experimental, which allows me complete<br />
creative freedom with no restrictions. Couture is like a<br />
laboratory, and from those experiments we pick the strongest<br />
influences and translate them for ready-to-wear.<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
85
The Art of Living<br />
52<br />
arTonThepalaTe<br />
Provenance can<br />
add a premium to<br />
wine prices. A<br />
six-bottle lot of<br />
1978 Barolo<br />
Monfortino<br />
Riserva Speciale<br />
Giacomo Conterno<br />
sold for $14,400<br />
at Zachys’s<br />
November 2009<br />
sale of vintages<br />
from the storied<br />
Big Guy Collection.<br />
King of Italian Reds<br />
In many ways comparable to Burgundy, the complex wines made around the Piedmontese<br />
hamlet of Barolo are finding a growing fan base among collectors<br />
Italy’s magnificent red, Barolo, is coming of age—not that it wasn’t well known in<br />
the past. The earliest Barolo dates back to the end of the 18th century. However, a<br />
string of excellent vintages and a vast improvement in viticulture and winemaking in<br />
the last two decades have created more great wine producers and more great wines.<br />
“We make much more friendly wines than we did 20 or 30 years ago,” admits<br />
Paolo Damilano, whose family—the biggest producer from the area’s top vineyard,<br />
Cannubi—makes excellent Barolos under their name. “Our Barolos are much more<br />
approachable and drinkable when young. They are more like Burgundy.”<br />
“Piedmont is one of Europe’s greatest wine regions,” says John Kapon, CEO of<br />
Acker Merrall & Condit, the oldest wine merchant in the U.S., “and great Barolos are<br />
unique and special wines, on par with the top French wines.” Yet the market is only<br />
beginning to reflect this, and so the wines remain affordable—for now. “Burgundy<br />
is the second largest wine market after Bordeaux but growing quite significantly,”<br />
notes Jeff Zacharia, president of wine auctioneer Zachys, in Scarsdale, New<br />
York. Given that Barolo is “growing but is starting from a much lower point than<br />
Burgundy,” there has never been a better time to buy, drink, and collect it.<br />
VILLAGES AND VINEYARDS<br />
“Barolo can be complicated to know and<br />
understand,” Kapon says. “There are so<br />
many great vineyards and winemakers.<br />
They are unique and special, and collectors<br />
worldwide recognize this.” There are many<br />
parallels between Barolo and Burgundy.<br />
One of the most obvious is the importance<br />
of villages and single vineyards. Besides<br />
Barolo itself, the wine’s top towns include<br />
La Morra, Serralunga, and Monforte d’Alba.<br />
Furthermore, each village, whether in Barolo<br />
or Burgundy, has particular vineyard sites<br />
that grow the highest quality grapes and<br />
produce the best wines. Most top Barolos<br />
AUCTIONS<br />
carry single-vineyard designations on their<br />
labels, such as Brunate or Cannubi. The<br />
WINE<br />
French have codified this into an appellation<br />
system. Barolo has no official vineyard ZACHY’S<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: ACKER MERRALL & CONDIT; BARTOLO MASCARELLO; GAJA; BRUNO GIACOSA<br />
ranking, but such vineyards as Brunate near<br />
La Morra and Cannubi in Barolo have long<br />
been considered the region’s finest. “There<br />
are many excellent small vineyards for Barolo<br />
but the very best are well known,” says<br />
Bruno Ceretto, whose family is a top producer<br />
of Barolo and other wines of the region.<br />
“We are lucky enough to own parts of many<br />
of them including Cannubi and Rocche.”<br />
TOP WINERIES<br />
A number of wineries and growers may<br />
share ownership of a vineyard. The vineyard<br />
of Cannubi, for instance, has almost twodozen<br />
individual grape growers and almost<br />
as many different wine producers using the<br />
name. Granted, nothing is as complicated<br />
as Burgundy, with such appellations as Clos<br />
Vougeot, which includes almost 70 different<br />
owners, but Barolo has similar complexity<br />
that takes some time to understand. For<br />
those new to collecting, it is easier to focus<br />
on the best producers with long reputations<br />
for making top wines. Some excellent<br />
wineries to consider that are readily available<br />
are Ceretto, Pio Cesare, Aldo Conterno,<br />
Giacomo Conterno, Bruno Giacosa, Luciano<br />
Sandrone, Paolo Scavino, and Roberto<br />
Voerzio. Angelo Gaja is also a great producer<br />
of reds from the Barolo area, but the winery<br />
labels its best wines under the appellation<br />
Langhe Doc. His two top wines from the<br />
area are Conteisa and Sperss.<br />
VINTAGES TO WATCH FOR<br />
Choosing the best vintages in Barolo is less<br />
difficult. Every year after 1995 is outstanding.<br />
In fact, Barolo hasn’t had a poor vintage<br />
overall since 2002. “Barolo has had so many<br />
excellent vintages in the last 15 years that<br />
it’s almost a problem,” admits Matteo Einaudi<br />
of Luigi Einaudi, whose Cannubi Barolo<br />
BLOUIN<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | MARCH/APRIL 2013<br />
is top-tier. I am a fan of warmer, sunnier<br />
vintages that produce rounder textured and<br />
richer Barolos. These years include 1997,<br />
2000, and 2007. I also like sunny, fresh, and<br />
late grape-growing seasons that make more<br />
balanced wines. These vintages include 1996,<br />
1998, and 2008. Colder years produce more<br />
tannic wines, as in 1999 and 2006, which<br />
need more bottle age to soften and become<br />
drinkable. Older vintages to keep an eye out<br />
for are: 1978, 1982, 1985, 1989, and 1990.<br />
These show how Barolo ages wonderfully and<br />
approaches great Burgundy as it matures.<br />
A GROWING AUDIENCE<br />
“Italy has done a great job marketing<br />
itself as a brand throughout Asia for style,<br />
fashion, wine, and food,” Kapon says.<br />
“Italian wines, and Barolo specifically, are<br />
among the beneficiaries. Our collectors<br />
in Hong Kong want to add the top Barolo<br />
producers to their collections, older and<br />
more recent vintages alike.” Both Kapon<br />
and Zacharia, however, note that the<br />
U.S. market has been growing consistently<br />
for more than five years and that South<br />
American collectors have also been laying<br />
in Barolos recently. “Demand for Barolo is<br />
becoming increasingly global,” says Kapon.<br />
THE ALLURE OF PROVENANCE<br />
The top names for collectors and<br />
investors in Barolos (not including Gaja<br />
because technically it doesn’t make one)<br />
are: Aldo Conterno, Giacomo Conterno,<br />
Bruno Giacosa, Bartolo Mascarello, and<br />
Roberto Voerzio. When buying at auction,<br />
provenance—as well as winery and vintage—<br />
can be a factor. “Owing to Barolo’s not being<br />
widely collected in the U.S. before the late<br />
1990s,” Zacharia says, “Barolo rarities tend<br />
to appear as part of truly great cellars that<br />
were amassed over decades, rather than<br />
a case here, a case there showing up at<br />
auction.” Bottles from such collections are<br />
likely to fetch higher prices than ones with<br />
lesser-known backgrounds. For example, the<br />
highest price Zachys has ever realized for a<br />
single bottle of Barolo Monfortino Riserva<br />
Speciale Giacomo Conterno 1961 was $1,680<br />
in November 2009. It was auctioned as part<br />
of the Big Guy Collection, an extraordinarily<br />
strong group that spanned several auctions.<br />
Since that time, bottles of the same wine<br />
have earned from as low as around $650 to<br />
as high as $1,220, but have never achieved<br />
quite the same price. — JAMES SUCKLING<br />
All in the Details<br />
+ The Accademia del Barolo, comprising<br />
14 producers who work together to promote<br />
Barolo appreciation worldwide, holds<br />
events and auctions at least twice yearly, in<br />
Europe, Asia, and North America.<br />
+ Be careful when purchasing older vintages.<br />
Many ancient bottles of Barolo have not<br />
been stored properly, particularly those<br />
under the Gaja and Giacomo Conterno<br />
From left:<br />
An enormous<br />
bottle of a great<br />
Barolo, the 1952<br />
Giacomo Conterno<br />
Monfortino,<br />
fetched $24,200<br />
in April 2008, the<br />
highest price paid<br />
for a bottle of<br />
Barolo at an Acker<br />
Merrall & Condit<br />
auction. That price<br />
was an anomaly<br />
because it was<br />
such an unusually<br />
large bottle—13.5<br />
liters, more than<br />
an entire case<br />
of wine in a single<br />
bottle—a size<br />
rarely made these<br />
days. Among<br />
the best regarded<br />
winemakers and<br />
most sought after<br />
estates of the<br />
region are Bruno<br />
Giacosa, Angelo<br />
Gaja, and Bartolo<br />
Mascarello.<br />
labels. Nonetheless, I have recently<br />
drunk amazing old bottles of Giacomo<br />
Conterno Monfortino Riserva from the<br />
1960s and 1950s.<br />
+ Older vintages, whose age brings out<br />
similarities to Burgundy, include 1978, 1982,<br />
1985, 1989, and 1990.<br />
+ For more information go to jamessuckling.com<br />
53
The Art of Living<br />
54<br />
1<br />
must-haves<br />
5<br />
2<br />
Marvelous Marquetry<br />
Must-Haves<br />
by Sarah P. Hanson<br />
1. RARE ART NOUVEAU WORKTABLE in fine-grain fruitwoods, France, ca. 1905; $34,500 at M.S. Rau Antiques, New Orleans. 2. BAROQUE-PERIOD CABINET<br />
in walnut and fruitwood, Germany, 18th century; $45,000 at Foster-Gwin, San Francisco. 3. ART DECO DROP-FRONT DESK in elm and birch with exotic wood inlays<br />
by Ferdinand Lundquist, Sweden, 1930s; $6,400 at Svenska Möbler, Los Angeles. 4. PIETRA DURA CHEST WITH MARQUETRY, late 17th to early 18th century,<br />
Florence; price on request at Galerie Steinitz, Paris. 5. PARQUETRY WRITING DESK in exotic woods with mother-of-pearl, Syria, 1920s; $11,800 at Red Modern<br />
Furniture, Phoenix. 6. SPANISH COLONIAL ESCRIBANIA in fruitwood with mahogany, cedar, and bone inlays, 17th century; $27,500 at Colonial Arts, San Francisco.<br />
6<br />
4<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
3
64<br />
Hiroshi Sugimoto at<br />
the unveiling of<br />
“Couleurs de l’Ombre,”<br />
his collaboration with<br />
Hermès presented at<br />
the Museum der<br />
Kulturen in Basel last<br />
June. Opposite page:<br />
a scene from<br />
Sugimoto bunraku:<br />
Sonezaki shinju, the<br />
artist’s re-envisioning<br />
of a classic of<br />
traditional Japanese<br />
puppet theater.<br />
Sotheby’S<br />
hiroShi Sugimoto and odawara art foundation. oppoSite page: tadzio and hermÈS<br />
Japan’s Master Photographer<br />
Turns His<br />
Focus to Theater<br />
on january 1, hiroshi sugimoto headed two hours southwest<br />
of Tokyo and set up his camera equipment at the oceanfront<br />
of the town of Atami. The 64-year-old artist worked for only a few<br />
hours early in the morning, “before the sun comes up too high.”<br />
He took about twenty rolls of film, using an old-fashioned largeformat<br />
camera.<br />
“New Year’s Day is the best time to take these photos, because<br />
you have less chance of traffic on the sea. Fishermen are resting and<br />
there are very few boats for a few days,” he quips.<br />
The new photographs are part of “Seascapes,” the artist’s<br />
ongoing series of black-and-white images of the sea and its horizon,<br />
which he started in 1980. But they will not be shown in public<br />
for many months: Sugimoto takes his time, giving painstaking<br />
attention to each one in order to fully render a rich palette of blacks,<br />
whites, and grays. “First I have to send the film to New York for<br />
processing. Then I have to choose the most successful photographs<br />
and print them, and then there is the final mounting and framing.<br />
So this takes a very long time,” he explains.<br />
While photography remains the artistic medium for which<br />
Sugimoto is best known internationally, in the last 12 years<br />
he has stretched his creativity in a new direction: the performing<br />
arts. This year, most of his energy will be focused on the<br />
production, staging, and directing of Noh and bunraku (puppet)<br />
theater performances.<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
By Sonia KoleSniKov-JeSSop<br />
theartist<br />
Hiroshi Sugimoto<br />
At the end of March, Sugimoto is collaborating with renowned<br />
kyogen actor Mansai Nomura to present “Sanbaso: Divine Dance”<br />
at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In the museum’s Frank<br />
Lloyd Wright rotunda, Nomura will perform Japan’s oldest<br />
celebratory dance of thanks to the gods, in costume and setting<br />
designed by Sugimoto. In Paris in October, Sugimoto will present<br />
his vision of another traditional Japanese performing-art form<br />
with an adaptation of the famed bunraku play The Love Suicides<br />
at Sonezaki (Sonezaki shinju). The artist collaborated in adapting the<br />
classic play and first presented his production, which he<br />
also directed, in 2011 at Yokohama’s Kanagawa Arts Theater.<br />
Written in 1703 by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, The Love<br />
Suicides at Sonezaki revolves around a young clerk and his<br />
courtesan lover, who, after realizing that they cannot stay<br />
together, commit double suicide. Based on an actual event, the<br />
play in turn inspired so many copycat suicides that in 1723 its<br />
performance was banned by the Tokugawa Shogunate. By the<br />
time it was revived more than 200 years later in 1955, many of the<br />
original lines and directions for puppet handling had been lost.<br />
Sugimoto stresses that, while he is keen to preserve tradition,<br />
he also wants to draw on his own 21st-century sensibility and<br />
tinker a bit with conventions. In his production, all puppeteers<br />
are masked so the audience can focus on the puppets, and he<br />
reinstated a shortened version of the traditional prologue, which<br />
57
10 Questions for<br />
Hiroshi Sugimoto<br />
The “Couleurs de l’Ombre”<br />
scarves that you recently<br />
designed for Hermès were<br />
your first collaboration with<br />
a fashion brand. Why did you<br />
decide to do them?<br />
It’s really not like Murakami’s or<br />
Kusama’s collaborations<br />
[with Louis Vuitton]. It’s not a<br />
commercial production. It’s<br />
more a case of serious art sold<br />
at art prices. The scarves are<br />
not selling in the stores; they’re<br />
presented in museums or<br />
galleries. But art has become<br />
very commercialized anyway.<br />
Given the subtlety of color<br />
gradations in your work and<br />
the technical difficulties of<br />
creating this effect on silk,<br />
how happy are you with the<br />
final results?<br />
I think technically it’s very<br />
successful and I’m very happy.<br />
What I like about Hermès is<br />
their very high standard of<br />
quality control. That’s why I<br />
agreed to this project.<br />
Craftsmanship is something<br />
I’ve always paid very strong<br />
attention to in my own work;<br />
that’s my quality control.<br />
What’s the most<br />
indispensable item in<br />
your studio?<br />
My negatives, and my negative<br />
attitude.<br />
Where are you finding ideas<br />
for your work these days?<br />
In my mind.<br />
What’s the last show you saw<br />
that surprised you?<br />
Makoto Aida at the Mori Art<br />
Museum. I found the show<br />
interesting for its sexual and<br />
moral codes.<br />
What’s your favorite place<br />
to see art?<br />
In my living room.<br />
What’s your favorite<br />
post-gallery watering hole<br />
or restaurant?<br />
A Japanese hot-spring bath.<br />
What international art<br />
destination do you most<br />
want to visit?<br />
The yet-undiscovered pyramid<br />
chambers of Egypt.<br />
Who’s your favorite<br />
living artist?<br />
All the nearly dead artists.<br />
Do you collect anything?<br />
Ideas.<br />
he felt was needed to give the story a religious dimension.<br />
Sugimoto got involved in theater in 2001, when he integrated<br />
his design for a Noh theater stage set into a presentation of his<br />
photographs at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria. In his set design,<br />
photographs from his “Pine Trees” and “Seascapes” series replaced<br />
the traditional painted stage set, becoming an integral part of the<br />
performance by the Naohiko Umewaka Noh Theater.<br />
The artist says he has always been attracted to Japan’s medieval<br />
era, the 15th century in particular, because at the time Japan<br />
was “so separate from the influence of Chinese culture. It really had<br />
a very unique culture, which I found fascinating.”<br />
Noh theater dates from the late 14th century. A stylized stage art<br />
that follows an extremely codified system, it is acted solely<br />
by male performers, who often wear masks. Rhythmic recitation<br />
of a text and symbolic, standardized gestures and dance<br />
movements are performed to classical Japanese music. “I have<br />
learned to train myself in reading those old texts. It’s a bit like CLOCKWISE FROM LOWER LEFT: TADZIO AND HERMÈS; TWO IMAGES, HIROSHI SUGIMOTO AND GALLERY KOYANAGI, TOKYO<br />
clockwiSe froM lower left: tadzio and herMÈS; two iMageS, hiroShi SugiMoto and gallery koyanagi, tokyo<br />
odawara art foundation and Shinji MaSakawa<br />
Shakespeare, maybe a little harder,” Sugimoto laughs.<br />
The Guggenheim Museum in New York is currently presenting<br />
“Gutai: Splendid Playground,” a retrospective exhibition of the<br />
Gutai Art Association (1954–72), a radically inventive, influential<br />
Japanese art collective and movement. As part of this retrospective<br />
and as a tribute to the spirit of Gutai, “Sanbaso: Divine Dance”<br />
will be performed on March 28 and 29.<br />
Sugimoto explains that the presentation will be traditional<br />
with a contemporary twist. He is replacing the pine-tree landscape<br />
associated with Noh theater with two panoramic banners from<br />
his “Lightning Field” photographic series, representing the chaotic<br />
era of the play. The dance will be performed once more this spring,<br />
on April 26 at the Shibuya Cultural Center in Owada, Japan.<br />
Sugimoto’s support for the traditional performing arts runs<br />
deep. In 2009, he set up the Odawara Art Foundation to produce<br />
and support classic theater forms. The artist is keen to bring Noh<br />
theater back into its traditional performance setting—outdoors—<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
Clockwise from<br />
opposite page, far<br />
left: Couleurs<br />
de l’Ombre scarf<br />
107, designed by<br />
Sugimoto for<br />
Hermès; Lightning<br />
Fields 222, 2009,<br />
from one of<br />
the artist’s<br />
ongoing<br />
photographic<br />
series; star<br />
kyogen actor<br />
Mansai Nomura,<br />
wearing a<br />
lightning-inspired<br />
costume by<br />
Sugimoto in a<br />
performance of<br />
“Sanbaso: Divine<br />
Dance”; Five<br />
Elements:<br />
Tyrrherian Sea,<br />
Positano, 2011,<br />
composed of<br />
clear optical glass<br />
and inlaid<br />
seascape film<br />
taken by<br />
Sugimoto in 1990.<br />
and the foundation is currently building a theater in Odawara<br />
that Sugimoto hopes will be finished in 2016.<br />
“It has been designed to show traditional Noh theater, but it<br />
could be used for any performance, including contemporary ones.<br />
It’s more in the 15th-century style: outside and open, for people<br />
to gather around a very small stage, only five meters square. It will<br />
be quite intimate, with real pine trees everywhere,” he explains.<br />
While in Paris for the October performances of The Love<br />
Suicides at Sonezaki, Sugimoto will also present a video at<br />
the Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent Foundation: Accelerated<br />
Buddha, a version of his 1995 video, Sea of Buddhas, re-edited<br />
using the latest digital technologies. In November, he opens a<br />
retrospective at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul.<br />
Sugimoto points out that beyond Noh and bunraku, there’s still<br />
one more traditional form of Japanese theater for him to tackle:<br />
kabuki. “I’m just conquering them one by one,” he said, admitting that<br />
he’s already thinking about how he will approach this next challenge.<br />
59
60<br />
theevent<br />
Rethinking a Region<br />
By Adeline ChiA<br />
f<br />
rom the broad swath of the Indian subcontinent to the thousands<br />
of islands in the Indonesian archipelago, South and Southeast<br />
Asia are home to some 20 nations. Yet despite a rich culture and<br />
diverse contemporary art practices, the region has been woefully<br />
underrepresented on the international art scene.<br />
Now, a landmark exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim<br />
Museum in New York is taking steps to address this imbalance. “No<br />
Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia,” on view<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
poklong anading<br />
through late May, is a broad-ranging exhibition that highlights<br />
the richness and diversity of the contemporary-art scene in<br />
South and Southeast Asia, showcasing top artists who are welltraveled<br />
on the international biennial and exhibition circuit. They<br />
include prominent Indian multidisciplinary artist Shilpa Gupta,<br />
Filipino multidisciplinary artist Poklong Anading, Malaysian video<br />
and photography artist Wong Hoy Cheong, and London-based<br />
collective and Turner Prize nominee the Otolith Group.<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
A wide-rAnging exhibition<br />
brings contemporAry south<br />
And southeAst AsiAn Art to<br />
A top new york city museum<br />
But how does one organize an exhibition with such a broad<br />
geographical reach? June Yap, the Singaporean curator of “No<br />
Country,” spent an intense three months of travel researching artists<br />
in the region. A truly comprehensive survey, she says, is impossible.<br />
All the same, she resisted the urge to stage a show where each<br />
artwork was tasked with saying something representative about its<br />
respective country; instead, she chose to subvert the idea of national<br />
borders and boundaries.<br />
A production<br />
detail of poklong<br />
Anading’s<br />
Counter Acts,<br />
2004, a light-box<br />
mounted photo<br />
transparency in<br />
four parts.<br />
61
Above, a frame<br />
from Ho Tzu<br />
Nyen’s 2011 video,<br />
The Cloud of<br />
Unknowing. Set in<br />
a low-income<br />
district in<br />
Singapore, the<br />
video takes its<br />
title from a<br />
14th-century<br />
treatise on<br />
monastic<br />
contemplation.<br />
True to its title—itself a denial of discrete nationalities—“No<br />
Country” reveals the region as a complex web of historical and<br />
cultural relationships, with interwoven histories and shared<br />
traditions as well as conflicts. As such, the show is not organized<br />
by nationality; instead, Yap looks to complicate the notion of<br />
origins. For example, in Places of Rebirth, 2009, the Chiang Mai,<br />
Thailand–born artist Navin Rawanchaikul explores his Indian<br />
roots—his parents left Punjab during the 1947 India-Pakistan<br />
partition—in a vividly colored, Bollywood-style poster.<br />
Another diasporic work is the Otolith Group’s Communists<br />
Like Us, 2006–2010, a photo-essay film featuring images from the<br />
family archive of Anjalika Sagar, one of the collective’s cofounders.<br />
The artist’s grandmother was an Indian diplomat who traveled to<br />
Mao’s China, and her photos of exchanges between Indian and<br />
Chinese politicians provide the backdrop for an unfolding dialogue<br />
between two fictional characters.<br />
Many of the show’s artists have been critically well-received<br />
but are not necessarily commercial successes—yet. Their stars<br />
will undoubtedly rise through participation in the show: all of<br />
the works in “No Country” will enter the Guggenheim collection,<br />
along with selected pieces not on view. (The Guggenheim declined<br />
to comment on the precise number of works.) The acquisitions<br />
couldn’t be more timely: according to a Guggenheim spokesperson,<br />
the museum has more than 7,000 works in its collection, but of<br />
these, only 12 are South and Southeast Asian works dating from<br />
the 1970s to the present.<br />
Yap explains that the title “No Country” references “Sailing to<br />
Byzantium,” a poem by William Butler Yeats that inspired the novel<br />
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy, which in turn was<br />
made into a film of the same title by the Coen brothers. “This<br />
passage from poem to novel, film to exhibition in a way represents<br />
the translation of culture, knowledge, and even histories in the<br />
region,” Yap says. “The themes of cultural achievement, time,<br />
morality, and mortality that are present in all these media—the poem,<br />
the novel, and the film—are also in the artworks in the exhibition.”<br />
Prior to coming to the Guggenheim, Yap worked with<br />
such institutions as the Singapore Art Museum and the Institute<br />
of Contemporary Arts Singapore. She most recently curated<br />
a show by artist Ho Tzu Nyen for the Singapore Pavilion in the<br />
2011 Venice Biennale; his Biennale film, The Cloud of Unknowing,<br />
2011, is included in the Guggenheim show.<br />
After closing in New York, “No Country” is slated to tour<br />
to venues in Hong Kong and Singapore. The exhibition is the first<br />
of three supported by the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art<br />
Initiative, a program designed to highlight global regions that are<br />
underrepresented in the international art scene. The second and<br />
third parts of the project will focus on Latin America and the<br />
Middle East and North Africa, respectively.<br />
Asked if she felt pressure in making her selections for the show,<br />
given the difficulties of representing such a culturally diverse area,<br />
Yap reflects for a moment, then says: “I don’t feel the pressure,<br />
personally. I have tried to look for a spread of countries and a crossgeneration<br />
of artists. This project is not a comprehensive exhibition.<br />
And that’s the nature of exhibitions, really.”<br />
“No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia”<br />
remains on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New<br />
York through May 22.<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
From top: the otolith group and project 88, mumbai; reza aFisina; navin rawanchaikul. opposite page: russell morton and ho tzu nyen.<br />
cuRATOR’S INSIGHT<br />
June Yap on 5 Artworks<br />
Poklong Anading (Philippines),<br />
Counter Acts, 2004<br />
In 2004, Anading began a significant<br />
series, “Anonymity,” with this work. In<br />
the series, he persuaded people on the<br />
street to be photographed while<br />
holding circular mirrors in front of<br />
their faces. The photographic gesture<br />
of seizing a moment in time, in which<br />
the act of seeing and the nature of<br />
light dictate the visual result, is<br />
doubled and foiled here. The light from<br />
the sun—reflected in the mirror—<br />
obscures the views of both artist and<br />
subject. In the context of the<br />
exhibition, this visual paradox of sight<br />
and obscurity could be a cue for us to<br />
consider how one views Southeast<br />
Asia both from within and outside the<br />
region (from the United States, for<br />
example) and what we think we might<br />
be observing.<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore),<br />
The Cloud of Unknowing, 2011<br />
The Cloud of Unknowing is named after<br />
a 14th-century mystical treatise<br />
intended as a primer for aspiring<br />
monastics on the art of contemplative<br />
prayer. Thoughtful and enigmatic, Ho’s<br />
film—set in a low-income estate in<br />
Taman Jurong (a residential district in<br />
Singapore)—is a visual and aural<br />
interpretation of the representation of<br />
the cloud across Eastern and Western<br />
cultures. In this work, the lines between<br />
the two cultures are blurred, in the<br />
same way that one cannot quite lay<br />
claim to clouds. While “No Country”<br />
presents artworks relating to a region<br />
of Asia, the distinction between East<br />
and West is deliberately left vague.<br />
Hopefully, this enables us to become<br />
more conscious of how we make such<br />
observations and divisions.<br />
The Otolith Group (London),<br />
Communists Like Us, 2006–2010<br />
The Otolith Group is the duo Anjalika<br />
Sagar and Kodwo Eshun. Their work<br />
Communists Like Us contrasts a<br />
dialogue about political action taken<br />
from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 film La<br />
Chinoise with images belonging to<br />
the photographic archive of Anasuya<br />
Gyan-Chand, Sagar’s grandmother.<br />
These documentary images depict<br />
encounters between Indian<br />
politicians and activists, and their<br />
counterparts from the Soviet Union,<br />
China, Japan, and other countries in<br />
Asia in the 1950s and ’60s. The<br />
images from the archive are<br />
significant in showing the extensive<br />
nature of diplomatic relations in<br />
postwar Asia, and what such a history<br />
might mean for us in contemplating<br />
the future of the region.<br />
Navin Rawanchaikul (Thailand),<br />
Places of Rebirth, 2009<br />
Rawanchaikul is a truly cross-cultural<br />
example in Asia. In this artwork, he<br />
traces his ancestry from South Asia’s<br />
1947 partition of India and Pakistan<br />
all the way through to his Thai and<br />
Japanese family in East and<br />
Southeast Asia today. Painted in the<br />
style of a Bollywood movie poster, the<br />
diasporic nature of his family’s story is<br />
depicted in images of the artist’s family<br />
and strangers he encountered in<br />
Pakistan, as well as pictures of India<br />
and Pakistan’s historic split. The title<br />
Places of Rebirth suggests the<br />
possibility of multiple origins and<br />
challenges how identity is constituted.<br />
Reza Afisina (Indonesia),<br />
What..., 2011<br />
This video performance shows the<br />
artist reciting the biblical verses Luke<br />
12:3–11, in which Luke relates Jesus’<br />
warnings against hypocrisy and<br />
stresses the importance of truth and<br />
confession. While reciting, the artist<br />
repeatedly slaps himself, emphasizing<br />
the biblical injunction further through<br />
violence upon his own body. The<br />
artist, who comes from a moderate<br />
Muslim family, here examines the idea<br />
of punishment and violence, and the<br />
physical severity of the performance<br />
provokes feelings of empathy in the<br />
viewer. As Indonesia is a secularly<br />
administered but dominantly Muslim<br />
country, the artist’s work presents<br />
an inclusive picture, where the values<br />
of different religions converge in<br />
human empathy.<br />
Left, a frame<br />
from the<br />
Otolith<br />
Group’s video<br />
Communists<br />
Like Us, 2006-<br />
2010; center,<br />
What . . ., a<br />
2001 video by<br />
Reza Afisina.<br />
In Places of<br />
Rebirth, 2009,<br />
below, Thai<br />
artist Navin<br />
Rawanchaikul<br />
depicts<br />
his personal<br />
history in a<br />
Bollywoodstyle<br />
movie<br />
poster.<br />
63
64<br />
When<br />
What’s What’s<br />
neW is<br />
heritage,<br />
too<br />
Progressive<br />
and contemporary<br />
Indian art are<br />
Kiran Nadar’s passions<br />
BY ROSALYN D’MELLO<br />
in april 2012 more than a few visitors to the dlf<br />
Place mall in Saket, New Delhi, believed they had come<br />
upon an unconventional retail display of stainless<br />
steel pots and pans in the form of a soaring mushroom<br />
cloud, nearly 33 feet tall. The installation was, in fact, the<br />
monumental sculpture Line of Control, a 2008 work by<br />
Subodh Gupta, the reigning star of contemporary Indian<br />
art. The baffled visitors had unknowingly left the mall<br />
proper and entered the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (knma),<br />
an 18,000-square-foot exhibition space that opened<br />
in 2011 and bears the name of the collector, patron, and<br />
philanthropist who founded it.<br />
Line of Control debuted in London in the 2009<br />
Tate Triennial, which is where Nadar first encountered the<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
KNMA, New Delhi; OppOsite: RAM RAhMAN<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
thecollector<br />
Subodh Gupta’s Line<br />
of Control, 2008,<br />
a 32¾-foot-tall<br />
mushroom cloud of<br />
stainless-steel<br />
kitchen utensils, was<br />
installed last spring<br />
at the Kiran Nadar<br />
Museum of Art in<br />
Saket, New Delhi.<br />
Opposite: Kiran<br />
Nadar at her New<br />
Delhi home. Behind<br />
her hangs Raja Ravi<br />
Varma’s Shakuntala<br />
Patralekhan, 1894.
66<br />
Below: knma’s 2012<br />
exhibition “Crossings:<br />
Time Unfolded II”<br />
included Ravinder<br />
Reddy’s Woman<br />
Braiding Her Hair,<br />
2008, a nude figure in<br />
gilded and painted<br />
polyester resin fiberglass,<br />
left foreground,<br />
and Rina Banerjee’s<br />
The World as Burnt<br />
Fruit, 2009, right<br />
foreground, a monumental<br />
mixed-<br />
media floor piece.<br />
Opposite: Ranbir<br />
kaleka’s Crossings,<br />
2005, top, a video<br />
projection on painting<br />
with audio, and<br />
Syed Haider Raza’s<br />
Saurashtra, 1983,<br />
the acrylic on canvas<br />
painting for which<br />
nadar paid a record<br />
$3.5 million, confirming<br />
her commitment<br />
to bring important<br />
art back to India.<br />
piece. “Overwhelmed,” as she describes it, by the work’s<br />
“awe-inspiring” nature, she decided on the spot to acquire<br />
it for knma, India’s first private museum for modern and<br />
contemporary art. “It is one of the most phenomenal<br />
works any artist could have done. I had to have it,” Nadar<br />
said with conviction when asked if she had considered<br />
the logistical challenge that transporting and installing<br />
such a gargantuan work would present. Shipped to India<br />
in four containers, the 15-section sculpture was assembled<br />
over seven days by the team that had set it up at Tate<br />
Britain. The ceiling of the mall’s basement was reinforced<br />
to bear the colossal load, and a nearby shop front had<br />
to be dismantled to make way for the three cranes required<br />
for the sculpture’s assembly. Nadar remains mum about<br />
the amount she paid Hauser & Wirth, the gallery that<br />
represents Gupta internationally. “It wasn’t cheap,” is<br />
all she has been willing to share.<br />
One outcome of this spectacular purchase is the<br />
emergence of Line of Control as a visual magnet to lure<br />
mall-goers who might otherwise not visit the museum,<br />
where admission is free. “We hope that the viewership of<br />
Subodh’s piece will bring more traction for the museum,”<br />
Nadar explained at the press conference marking the<br />
unveiling of Line of Control. Although Gupta’s work<br />
has won critical accolades and collector support on the<br />
international art circuit, his intricate assemblages had never<br />
been presented to a popular audience in India. For Gupta,<br />
who was present at the press conference, the thrill lay in<br />
having the work—whose shape alludes to the potentially<br />
deadly tension along the India-Pakistan border—displayed<br />
in his native country. “An artist couldn’t be prouder to<br />
have his work come home,” he said.<br />
A comparable commitment to home and heritage<br />
motivates Nadar, and a key mission of knma is to bring<br />
significant art by Indian modernists back to India so the<br />
full range of the country’s art history can be viewed and<br />
appreciated. In 2010, for example, she paid a recordbreaking<br />
$3.5 million at Christie’s London for Saurashtra,<br />
a 1983 painting by Syed Haider Raza. The artist was a<br />
central figure in the Bombay-based Progressive Artists<br />
Group, which was established in 1947 and included<br />
Maqbool Fida Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee,<br />
and Francis Newton Souza. Discouraged by the lack of a<br />
thriving art scene and the dearth of indigenous collectors,<br />
Raza, like many of his contemporaries, moved abroad.<br />
He lived in Paris for six decades before returning to New<br />
Delhi in 2011. Saurashtra came from the French collector<br />
who had bought the work directly from Raza. A large,<br />
square canvas featuring geometrically arranged blocks<br />
of reds and oranges and the bindu motif, symbolizing<br />
spiritual consciousness, Saurashtra was Nadar’s most<br />
famous acquisition prior to Line of Control and was<br />
displayed prominently on one of the four red walls that<br />
framed a section of knma’s 2012 show “Crossings: Time<br />
Unfolded II.” That show also included Souza’s electrifying<br />
The Red Road, a 1962 landscape whose palette and<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
this page and opposite: KnMa<br />
coarse texture are influenced by laterite, the rust-red soil<br />
of his birthplace, Goa, a coastal state south of Mumbai.<br />
Nadar’s pursuit of art isn’t limited to acquiring<br />
high-priced, high-profile works abroad, though several<br />
Indian art critics have grumbled, especially after she paid<br />
£993,250 ($1.5 million) at Sotheby’s London in 2010 for<br />
Bharti Kher’s The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own,<br />
2006, a life-size fiberglass elephant with Kher’s trademark<br />
bindis affixed across its surface. Her collecting is part of<br />
a larger philanthropic vision she shares with her husband,<br />
Shiv Nadar, who founded a technology start-up in 1976<br />
that has grown into the global behemoth HCL Enterprises.<br />
She began to acquire art in the late 1980s with the simple<br />
aim of decorating her walls. “I started collecting for our<br />
home, which we were building at the time. There was no<br />
thought of a museum,” she explains. “I commissioned<br />
art from Husain and bought works by Manjit Bawa and<br />
Rameshwar Broota; all three pieces are still in the house.”<br />
Nadar’s acquisitions budget—and her vision—grew<br />
with her husband’s success. The two met when Nadar<br />
was working for an advertising agency, and they soon<br />
became bridge partners. (She continues to play competitive<br />
bridge and has represented India in international<br />
tournaments.) HCL was flourishing, and Nadar, not<br />
content with being the idle wife of an entrepreneur,<br />
became instrumental in the company’s philanthropic<br />
and educational initiatives, which include the Shiv Nadar<br />
Foundation, established in 1996, and Shiv Nadar<br />
University, which had its first graduating class in 2011. She<br />
was on Forbes Asia magazine’s 48 Heroes of Philanthropy<br />
list in 2010; her husband followed one year later.<br />
By 2005 the Nadar home could no longer accommodate<br />
the collection, which had steadily grown, its focus no<br />
longer confined to Indian Progressive artists but expanded<br />
to embrace contemporary Indian lights like Atul Dodiya,<br />
Rina Banerjee, Ranbir Kaleka, and Anish Kapoor. “At<br />
some point I had a lot more art than I had wall space,<br />
and I had to decide whether to stop collecting or to keep<br />
putting works in storage,” Nadar says. “Keeping them<br />
in storage didn’t seem like a very wise thing, so I decided<br />
to do something more meaningful and set up a museum.<br />
And after I first had the thought, in 2006, it took me two<br />
or three years to plan it and get down to it.”<br />
“In late 2009 Mrs. Nadar and I started looking at<br />
all she had acquired since the late 1980s, so that the<br />
first step—to put the inventory in place—could begin,”<br />
recalls Roobina Karode, director and chief curator of the<br />
museum. knma opened in 2010, first in a location on<br />
the vast HCL campus in Noida. The inaugural exhibition,<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
“building an<br />
iconic structure<br />
is as important<br />
for a museum<br />
as the art<br />
it houses.”<br />
67
68<br />
Above:<br />
Gulammohammed<br />
Sheikh’s Speechless<br />
City, 1975, a 42-inchsquare<br />
oil on canvas.<br />
Opposite: The 2011<br />
inaugural exhibition<br />
at knmA in Saket,<br />
“Time Unfolded,”<br />
top, with Bharti kher’s<br />
The Skin Speaks a<br />
Language Not Its<br />
Own, 2006, a life-<br />
size fiberglass<br />
elephant covered<br />
in bindis, prominently<br />
displayed. Yatra,<br />
1955, below, is one<br />
of several works by<br />
m.F. Husain in the<br />
nadar collection.<br />
“Open Doors,” was curated by Karode. “The title had<br />
both a literal and a metaphoric sense, as knma opened its<br />
doors to the larger public to share Mrs. Nadar’s<br />
art collection, which was now placed in the public<br />
realm,” Karode explains. “Some rare works by Souza,<br />
Husain’s Mothers, 1990; Broota’s Runners, 1982; Bikash<br />
Bhattacharjee’s “Doll” series, 1971; A. Ramachandran’s<br />
Towards the Sun, 2004; N.S. Harsha’s Nations, 2007;<br />
and Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Speechless City, 1975,<br />
were all part of this exhibition, which introduced the<br />
collection to the art community and the general public.”<br />
But Noida proved an inconvenient location; Nadar’s<br />
mission of creating visual literacy through art and<br />
encouraging art appreciation among the general populace<br />
was difficult to achieve there. In January 2011 knma<br />
opened its second space at the mall in Saket with “Time<br />
Unfolded,” an expansive show curated by Karode that<br />
covered a range of modern and contemporary Indian<br />
expression, with special focus on the Bengal region as<br />
a hub of modernism in pre-independence India. The show<br />
highlighted work by the Progressives and included art<br />
by diaspora artists like Kapoor and Raqib Shaw. Among<br />
the more emblematic pieces was Gupta’s life-size fiberglass<br />
sculpture of an Indian family of four riding a Bajaj<br />
scooter, 2006, which has come to epitomize the country’s<br />
middle class in the 1970s and ’80s. The lavish opening<br />
coincided with the India Art Summit (now the India Art<br />
Fair) and brought together the biggest names from the<br />
country’s art world as well as figures from the inter-<br />
national circuit. The museum was hailed as India’s first<br />
philanthropic institution for modern and contemporary<br />
Indian art. “It’s a vision that India needs,” says Nadar.<br />
Meanwhile, programming continues at the Noida space,<br />
which hosted two exhibitions in 2012: “Cynical Love:<br />
Life in the Everyday,” a group show with a technological<br />
theme curated by Gayatri Sinha, and “Of Bodies, Armour<br />
and Cages,” a solo show of Shakuntala Kulkarni’s installations<br />
and photographs that address the relationship of<br />
the body to the dual notions of protection and entrapment,<br />
curated by Karode. “Zones of Contact,” organized by in-<br />
house curator Akansha Rastogi and guest curators Vidya<br />
Shivadas and Deeksha Nath, is the latest show to open<br />
in the Noida space and remains on view through September.<br />
The 2013 program at Saket promises to be a more<br />
ambitious affair, according to Karode. “At knma, we<br />
are showcasing the first comprehensive retrospective of<br />
Nasreen Mohamedi in India,” she says. The Karachi-born<br />
artist, who died in 1990, was known for her Mondrianinspired<br />
minimalism. The museum is simultaneously hosting<br />
(through November) two additional new shows, “Amrita<br />
Sher-Gil: Self in the Making,” co-curated by Karode<br />
and Vivan Sundaram, the artist’s nephew, and a third show<br />
curated by Karode, which features work by several artists.<br />
“The galleries are divided so that all three exhibitions<br />
coexist, and the entire 18,000 square feet is not used for just<br />
one exhibition as before,” says Karode.<br />
For all the intensive programming at both venues,<br />
Nadar isn’t satisfied. “The aim is to eventually build a<br />
museum,” she says. “I think the building of an iconic<br />
structure is as important for a museum as the art it houses.<br />
That’s the legacy that I’d like to leave.” Aside from tax<br />
exemptions, Nadar has received no governmental support<br />
for her initiatives. “Trying to get land or trying to get<br />
the government to see the importance of a museum is an<br />
uphill task,” she says. “All across the world, private<br />
museums are funded through a public-private partnership<br />
where land is normally granted. That is the kind of<br />
model we’d like to get into.”<br />
Nadar is currently seeking a 100,000-square-foot site<br />
for a new building that can house her growing collection,<br />
which she currently estimates at more than 500 works.<br />
As ambitious plans for expansion and longevity evolve,<br />
Nadar’s focus remains squarely on collecting works<br />
by India’s modern and contemporary artists. The sole<br />
exception is her recent acquisition of a Marina Abramović<br />
print, Artist Portrait with a Candle, 2012, which features<br />
the artist seated solemnly, garbed in black, candle in hand,<br />
its light shining on the backdrop like a halo.<br />
knma has set many precedents in India, with its state-<br />
of-the-art conservation practices and clarity of mission,<br />
particularly impressive as the National Gallery of<br />
Modern Art (the only state-run institution for modern<br />
and contemporary art) founders without a coherent<br />
acquisitions policy. Another precedent is its vision of the<br />
museum as a hub for conversation between artists in<br />
the presence of artworks and for interventions by artists<br />
such as Sonia Khurana and Zuleikha Chaudhari, who<br />
have reimagined the museum space through performance<br />
and interactive installations. In just three years Nadar has<br />
established an institution recognized for the quality of its<br />
holdings and respected as the place where works that have<br />
been in exile, like Saurashtra, will find a permanent home.<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
this page and opposite: knma<br />
“a public-private<br />
partnership<br />
is the kind<br />
of model<br />
we’d like<br />
to get into.”<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
67
AsiA PAcific Breweries limited<br />
Street Beat<br />
an arts-savvy asian brewer connects<br />
with young audiences through<br />
an edgy international arts festival<br />
By Adeline Chia<br />
The firsT 2013 ediTion of Tiger TrAnslATe, the streetwise,<br />
not-quite-underground arts festival, took place in Dubai in<br />
January. It was held in a typically offbeat, slightly grungy<br />
location: the car park of the Media One Hotel. The headliner<br />
was Pat Mahoney, best known as the drummer in the awardwinning,<br />
now-defunct electronic band LCD Soundsystem.<br />
Also laying on the grooves was DJ Paul “Seiji” Dolby, a<br />
founding member of the broken beat collective Bugz in<br />
the Attic. Meanwhile, New Zealand street artist Enforce<br />
One (also known as Gary Yong), along with Mongolian artists<br />
A.N. Unaran and Batbayar Purew, attacked the walls of the<br />
car park, covering them with their style of street art.<br />
Tiger Translate is a multi-genre arts mashup that<br />
showcases the work of young, emerging Asian “creatives”—<br />
street dancers, deejays, graphic designers, and graffiti<br />
artists—pairing them with more established international<br />
artists. From staging a dance battle in Bangkok’s famous<br />
Suan Lum night bazaar to throwing a party in an abandoned<br />
prison in Hanoi, Tiger Translate has been making waves<br />
in the Asian underground creative circuit where music,<br />
design, and art intersect.<br />
The festival is an initiative of Asia Pacific Breweries (APB),<br />
a regional powerhouse with breweries in 14 countries and more<br />
than 40 brands of beer. Named for APB’s dominant label, Tiger<br />
Beer, the festival showcases the work of young, emerging Asian<br />
creatives. Launched in 2005 in Auckland, New Zealand, as a<br />
music-themed platform merging East and West influences,<br />
over the years Tiger Translate has grown to encompass a broad<br />
range of creative expression. Last year alone, it travelled to<br />
nine cities, including Ulaanbaatar, Phnom Penh, and Singapore.<br />
While the APB initiative aims to connect the Tiger brand<br />
with a younger audience, senior brand manager Kenny Tang<br />
notes that its more important objective is to uncover emerging<br />
artistic talents before they hit the big time, and to highlight<br />
the work of young Asian creatives while enabling them to<br />
experience and explore different cultures. “Tiger Translate<br />
doesn’t reach out to a mass audience like the football fans;<br />
it has a niche, cult following,” he points out. Creatives such as<br />
Singapore’s Phunk Studio, which took part in the 2006 Dublin<br />
edition, and the New York street-art collective Faile, which<br />
participated in the 2006 Shanghai edition, are among the<br />
more distinguished festival alumni.<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
theMecene<br />
Tiger Translate typically starts as a week-long camp in<br />
each city. The artists immerse themselves in the locale and<br />
are encouraged to brainstorm, collaborate, and create works<br />
together based on a common theme. The intensive retreat<br />
culminates in a bash where these collaborations are exhibited<br />
and the artists demonstrate their skills “live” in the form of,<br />
say, a DJ set, an on-the-spot graffiti art piece, or a<br />
breakdance performance.<br />
Enforce One, aka Gary Yong, calls his participation in this<br />
year’s Dubai edition an “eye-opener.” The Kiwi illustrator and<br />
stencil-and-aerosol artist says that he has been inspired by<br />
the city and the band of artists he’s been travelling with. “With<br />
the artists I meet, I find we share a passion and a great energy for<br />
the arts. Moreover, I’ve also had the chance to meet creatives<br />
in various media, including film and music. Interacting with them<br />
and seeing their works has allowed me to think further and<br />
move out of my comfort zone in exploring other approaches.”<br />
Looking ahead, Tang says that he wants to expand the focus<br />
of Tiger Translate to embrace such disciplines as light art<br />
and other music genres such as dubstep. “The important thing<br />
is to keep one’s finger on the pulse of the times,” he says,<br />
“and to be always on trend.”<br />
The Phare<br />
Ponleu selpak<br />
dance crew,<br />
from Battambang<br />
province in<br />
Cambodia,<br />
performing<br />
in Tiger<br />
Translate 2012.<br />
Anish Kapoor<br />
The Asian Scene<br />
71
The Asian Scene<br />
72<br />
above, a rendering<br />
of the titanum-clad<br />
addition to the<br />
asian Civilisations<br />
Museum designed<br />
by singaporean<br />
architecture firm<br />
GreenhilLi. right,<br />
a 17th-century<br />
work from the<br />
museum’s collection<br />
of blanc de<br />
Chine porcelain,<br />
depicting the<br />
goddess of mercy<br />
Guanyin seated in<br />
an ornate grotto.<br />
themuseum<br />
AsiAn CivilisAtions MuseuM<br />
Blanc de Chine in a Floating Box<br />
The Singapore museum’s new wing will display its rarely seen Dehua porcelain,<br />
museum director Alan Chong tells Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop<br />
Thanks To a privaTe donaTion, the Asian Civilisations<br />
Museum (ACM) in Singapore will incorporate a new wing to<br />
its landmark colonial-era buildings by 2015.<br />
Designed by the Singaporean architecture firm GreenhilLi,<br />
the new wing will be a distinctive architectural departure from<br />
the 19th-century Neoclassicism of the original structure. Clad<br />
in titanium, the extension will look like a solid box floating in<br />
an enclosed space, a metallic cuboid “weightlessly” elevated<br />
one level above the ground. A three-level glass atrium<br />
between the existing building and the new exhibition space<br />
will provide plenty of daylight and ventilation to part of the<br />
first-level gallery space, while providing a visual contrast<br />
between the old and the new that also reflects the vibrant<br />
city-state in the 21st century.<br />
“We wanted something that would be visually separate<br />
from the original museum,” explains Alan Chong, director<br />
of the museum.<br />
The S$5 million extension is made possible through<br />
a donation by the Hong Leong Foundation. About<br />
S$500,000 of the donation will be used to acquire<br />
artifacts related to Fujian culture, both to<br />
expand the collection of Chinese objects and<br />
to allow audiences to make connections with<br />
this province and its place in Chinese trade<br />
and immigration.<br />
This is the second time the Hong<br />
Leong Foundation has provided major<br />
support to the ACM. In 2001, it donated<br />
S$2.8 million for the establishment of<br />
the museum’s China gallery, which is<br />
named after the Hong Leong Group’s founder, the late Kwek<br />
Hong Png. The latest donation is part of the philanthropic<br />
foundation’s ongoing efforts to promote the understanding<br />
and appreciation of Chinese art and culture.<br />
Announcing the donation, Kwek Leng Beng, governor<br />
of the Hong Leong Foundation and son of the company’s<br />
founder, said, “By working with the Asian Civilisations<br />
Museum, we hope to be able to inform and educate future<br />
generations about the roots of our forefathers. The Fujian<br />
culture is especially meaningful to me as my late father<br />
was born in that region. He came to Singapore at the age<br />
of 16 but never forgot his roots.”<br />
Chong says the new wing will display Singapore’s historical<br />
connections with China, “not just the ancestral roots in Fujian<br />
of many immigrants to Southeast Asia, but also the many<br />
trading connections between China and the world.”<br />
Chong points out that the ACM has a beautiful collection<br />
of Dehua blanc de Chine porcelain, of which very little can<br />
now be displayed. “The natural light of the new galleries<br />
will be ideal for the subtle variations of tone found<br />
in the white Dehua wares,” he says.<br />
Chinese culture from Fujian province is closely<br />
connected with mainstream Chinese culture but<br />
has special characteristics. “In many ways, it<br />
was an outwardly looking part of China, with<br />
strong links to trade and exchange, as well<br />
as to Taiwan and the rest of Asia,” he says,<br />
adding that the ports of Quanzhou and<br />
Xiamen were vibrant centers that can be<br />
regarded as precursors to Singapore.<br />
MArCh/April 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
two images: asian civilisations museum, singapore<br />
Turon Travel, Inc.<br />
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with the proliferation of art fairs, biennials, and auction houses all around the globe.”<br />
by ARTINFO Published: June 5, 2012<br />
“Collectors, dealers and creative people have very high standards of taste.<br />
We want their travel experience to meet their criteria for service and for surroundings.”<br />
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64<br />
Daisuke Miyatsu in<br />
his book-lined living<br />
room. Conceptual<br />
artist Taro Shinoda<br />
designed the shelves,<br />
whose color and lines<br />
were inspired by<br />
the packing crates<br />
used to ship art. The<br />
standing lamp is<br />
by Choi Jeong Hwa.<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
lifeandart<br />
Daisuke<br />
Miyatsu:<br />
The<br />
Salaryman<br />
Collects<br />
With limited means, unlimited<br />
passion, and a little help from his<br />
artist friends, a Japanese collector<br />
builds a home like no other<br />
By MADeleINe O’DeA<br />
photographs by yousuke takeda<br />
ichikawa is a modest town outside<br />
Tokyo, close enough to the capital to be<br />
convenient for commuters but far enough<br />
away to feel like a village. On a Sunday<br />
afternoon I arrived at Ichikawa railway<br />
station and made my way up through<br />
narrow streets in search of the home of one<br />
of Japan’s most notable collectors, Daisuke<br />
Miyatsu. I found the house not far from the<br />
pride of Ichikawa, the Buddhist temple of<br />
Nakayama Hokekyo - -ji, which on this sunny<br />
day was crowded with visitors drawn to the<br />
perfection of the blossoms on the temple’s<br />
cherry trees. After so traditional a setting,<br />
the last thing I expect to encounter is the<br />
joyous pink and blue façade of the simple,<br />
angular residence that Miyatsu calls his<br />
“dream house.”<br />
Begun in 1999 and still a work in progress,<br />
the house was created in collaboration<br />
with French installation and video artist<br />
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, whom<br />
Miyatsu cajoled into taking on the role of<br />
architect for the first time. Together they<br />
conceived the house as “one big artwork,”<br />
and every corner bears the stamp of an artist<br />
whom Miyatsu knows and collects. On a<br />
sliding screen in a traditional Japanese-style<br />
The Asian Scene<br />
75
76<br />
room, Yoshitomo Nara has painted one of<br />
his trademark feisty girls, eschewing his usual<br />
acrylics and oils for traditional ink and<br />
wash in this commission for his old friend<br />
and longtime collector. The bathroom is<br />
wallpapered with sketches by the conceptual<br />
artist Shimabuku, each referring to one<br />
of his whimsical works. In the main bedroom<br />
there is a trompe l’oeil ceiling by the young<br />
Japanese artist Teppei Kaneuji in which<br />
strange creatures created from hand-dyed<br />
and collaged papers peek out from the knots<br />
in the wood. And on the landing stands a<br />
mirror whose frame was created especially<br />
for Miyatsu by Yayoi Kusama.<br />
This is art made domestic and intimate.<br />
“The house is a place for my family’s life, so<br />
I wanted to build it with my friends,” Miyatsu<br />
explains. His formal holdings of more than<br />
300 works are miles away, in a temperaturecontrolled,<br />
earthquake-proof Tokyo<br />
warehouse. In summer 2011 the collection<br />
was celebrated in the well-received<br />
exhibition “Invisibleness Is Visibleness” at<br />
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei,<br />
which featured 61 works by an international<br />
roster of artists (Vito Acconci, Jan Fabre,<br />
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kusama, and<br />
Apichatpong Weerasethakul among them).<br />
Miyatsu happily calls collecting an<br />
addiction, and he has fed his habit for the past<br />
18 years, even though he has nothing that<br />
approaches the wealth that many of today’s<br />
global collectors bring to the table. In fact,<br />
he is widely known in Asia as the Salaryman<br />
Collector for having financed his impressive<br />
array of international contemporary art<br />
with just the earnings from his job as a Tokyo<br />
office worker. He has devoted every spare<br />
yen to art, and at times he has even taken a<br />
second job to fund his collecting.<br />
Miyatsu’s passion for contemporary<br />
art was first sparked when he was still<br />
a teenager by an encounter with the art of<br />
Andy Warhol. “Before I saw his works,<br />
I was familiar only with traditional Japanese<br />
art, where the subject might be a beautiful<br />
woman or a flower or a landscape, all<br />
rendered in a refined style. And suddenly<br />
there were these pictures showing a car crash<br />
or an electric chair. Looking at these, I<br />
experienced a really strong shock. It was<br />
totally different from the art I knew.”<br />
But it was an artist closer to home who<br />
transformed Miyatsu into a collector. While<br />
at university he fell in love with the work<br />
of Kusama, Japan’s eccentric genius. “Do you<br />
know the film 2001: A Space Odyssey?” he<br />
asks. “Do you know how the astronaut<br />
feels when he encounters space? That’s how<br />
I felt when I first stood in front of a work by<br />
Kusama. I could never forget her.” A few<br />
years later, in 1994, when he had a steady<br />
job, Miyatsu found the gallery that represented<br />
the artist. “They had a very small<br />
drawing,” he recalls. “It was very reasonable<br />
in comparison with now but still not cheap.<br />
It was very beautiful. I started my career<br />
toKYo<br />
as a collector with that small drawing by<br />
Kusama from 1953.”<br />
GallerY,<br />
In the years that followed, Miyatsu’s<br />
KoYama<br />
holdings of Kusama grew to 10 pieces that<br />
ranged from the 1950s to the ’70s. For a<br />
tomio<br />
while he took a second job as a night porter<br />
aNd<br />
so he could afford her works. But in 1996<br />
Nara<br />
his taste leapt far beyond his budget: He<br />
fell—hard—for a large 1965 painting from<br />
Kusama’s “Infinity Net” series. Priced at<br />
Yoshitomo<br />
$65,000, it was worth more than he earned<br />
in a year. Miyatsu’s family was aghast to<br />
bottom:<br />
learn that he had put a deposit on the work.<br />
Japan’s magazines were full of ads for opposite,<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013<br />
The interior of the<br />
Miyatsu home, where art<br />
is not so much installed<br />
as incorporated. From<br />
top: silkscreened<br />
wallpaper in the bathroom<br />
by Shimabuku, 2001;<br />
a trompe l’oeil collage,<br />
Muddy Stream from<br />
a Mug, 2009, by Teppei<br />
Kaneuji, on the bedroom<br />
ceiling, which also features<br />
a light fixture by the<br />
mid-century Danish<br />
designer Verner Panton;<br />
and Fusuma of HEY HO<br />
LET’S GO !, 2011, rendered<br />
in ink and wash on a<br />
sliding screen by Yoshitomo<br />
Nara. Opposite: The<br />
exterior of the Miyatsu<br />
home, designed by<br />
Dominique Gonzalez-<br />
Foerster. Construction<br />
of the house began<br />
in 1999, and is ongoing.
Three videos from the<br />
Miyatsu collection,<br />
installed in a 2011<br />
exhibition at the Museum<br />
of Contemporary Art,<br />
Taipei: Honey, 2003,<br />
by Yang Fudong, above;<br />
Ham & Cheesomelet,<br />
2001, by Ming Wong,<br />
at the end of the<br />
hallway; and, on the<br />
floor, Documentary IV-<br />
Little Mince Cloth,<br />
2010, by Wu Chang-Jung.<br />
Opposite: Infinity Net,<br />
1965, a 52-by-60-inch<br />
oil on canvas by<br />
Yayoi Kusama. Miyatsu<br />
owns 10 pieces by<br />
Kusama, one of which<br />
is the first artwork<br />
he ever purchased.<br />
YaYoi Kusama studio inc. and ota Fine arts, toKYo. opposite, From top: Yang Fudong, shanghart gallerY, shanghai, and moca,<br />
taipei; ming Wong, Vitamin creatiVe space, guangzhou, Wu chang-jung, project FulFill art space, taipei, and moca, taipei<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | mARch/ApRil JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013<br />
2013<br />
companies offering financing to all comers,<br />
and his wife knew he was just mad enough<br />
about art to go into debt. One day she called<br />
him and asked that he hurry to the family<br />
home, where she was waiting with his mother<br />
and grandmother. To keep him out of the<br />
clutches of loan sharks, they had pooled their<br />
funds to advance him the money he needed.<br />
In 1998 Miyatsu had the pleasure of lending<br />
the painting to the first major Kusama<br />
retrospective, which opened at the Los<br />
Angeles County Museum of Art, subsequently<br />
traveled to New York’s Museum of<br />
Modern Art and the Walker Art Center, in<br />
Minneapolis, and finally arrived at the<br />
Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.<br />
Seeing the painting hanging in a museum in<br />
the capital, his family finally conceded<br />
that perhaps he wasn’t so crazy after all.<br />
“I am very lucky,” Miyatsu reflects.<br />
“I started my career with Kusama. And then I<br />
began to meet artists of my generation, like<br />
Olafur Eliasson and Nara. Now they are very<br />
established, but 15 years ago they weren’t.<br />
They were just emerging—cheap but very<br />
interesting. It is a very special generation.”<br />
With these artists he established a pattern<br />
of building a network of relationships through<br />
his collecting. “For me it’s very important to<br />
communicate with artists as well as to collect<br />
them,” he explains. “One of the very big<br />
charms of contemporary art is that I can<br />
communicate with each of the artists I’ve<br />
collected, from Kusama to the youngest ones.<br />
If I wanted to talk to Vermeer, for example,<br />
I couldn’t do it. So every art work I own is<br />
attached to a memory and a communication.”<br />
Miyatsu has never sold a work, and<br />
he continues to finance his collecting with<br />
his salary. In recent years he has become<br />
interested in the younger generation<br />
of Taiwanese artists, and in video and new<br />
media in particular. His collection of the<br />
latter is particularly strong and includes<br />
work by Cao Fei, Takagi Masakatsu,<br />
Weerasethakul, and Yang Fudong. During<br />
Art Show Busan 2012, the Asia-Pacific<br />
contemporary fair that debuted last June<br />
at the Korean city’s just-opened convention<br />
center, Miyatsu presented a focused<br />
exhibition of 20 new-media works by<br />
Asian artists from his collection.<br />
We talk about all this in the welcoming<br />
living room of his house, facing walls<br />
of books and catalogues from which<br />
he constantly selects volumes to point out<br />
the works of artists he admires. Even in this<br />
casual setting, almost every object<br />
possesses an artistic pedigree, including the<br />
bookshelves, which were designed by<br />
conceptual artist Taro Shinoda and inspired<br />
by the shape and color of the packing crates<br />
that have delivered many artworks to<br />
Miyatsu’s door. The curtain that hangs across<br />
the room’s window tells a more intimate<br />
story. It was created by Nakagawa Sochi,<br />
a group of Japanese fashion designers who<br />
are inspired by the possibilities of recycling<br />
old clothes, in collaboration with Hong<br />
Kong artist Lee Kit. The materials they<br />
worked with were gathered from members<br />
of Miyatsu’s family, all of whom were asked<br />
to donate something old and well-worn.<br />
An ongoing project, the curtain is like<br />
a portrait of the collector’s extended family<br />
rendered in vibrant Japanese fabrics.<br />
Miyatsu tells me this is not the only part of<br />
his home to incorporate traces of his family.<br />
In the simple garden created by his friend<br />
Shimabuku are a weathered stone lantern<br />
and some stones salvaged from the garden of<br />
his grandparents’ old home. The idea was<br />
Shimabuku’s: He went with Miyatsu to<br />
search for what remained of the old house,<br />
and although the original was long gone, they<br />
found some fragments for the new garden.<br />
“You know, there is something egotistical<br />
about being a collector,” he tells me at<br />
the end of the day. “And that is why it is my<br />
responsibility to keep the collection safe<br />
in storage, so that one day it can be passed<br />
on.” But for Miyatsu the “dream house”<br />
is a different matter. He is happy to see signs<br />
of wear appearing around the place, even<br />
as it remains unfinished, because although the<br />
house is undoubtedly a work of art in itself,<br />
it is all the better for being lived in and loved.<br />
79
Modern + ConteMporary art + design 10 Chancery Lane Gallery (Hong Kong) | 16th Line Gallery (Rostov on Don)* | 313 Art<br />
Project (Seoul) | A2Z Art Gallery (Ivry-sur-Seine) | Acabas (Paris)* | AD Galerie (Béziers/Montpellier) | Louise Alexander Gallery (Porto Cervo) |<br />
Galerie Alexis Lartigue (Neuilly-sur-Seine)* | ALFA Galerie (Paris) | Analix Forever (Geneva) | Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris)* | Arka Gallery<br />
(Vladivostok)* | Arte Estampa (Madrid)* | Galerie Arts d’Australie • Stéphane Jacob (Paris) | Backslash Gallery (Paris)* | Galerie Hélène Bailly (Paris)*<br />
| Baudoin Lebon (Paris) | Galerie Renate Bender (Munich)* | Galerie Christian Berst (Paris)* | Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès (Paris) | Galerie Blue Square<br />
(Washington, DC)* | Bodson-Emelinckx Gallery (Brussels)* | Galerie Jean Brolly (Paris) | Cat-Berro Galerie (Paris)* | Galerie Bernard Ceysson (Saint-<br />
Etienne/Luxembourg/Paris/Geneva) | Galerie Pierre-Alain Challier (Paris) | °Clair Galerie (Munich/Saint-Paul de Vence) | Galerie Claude Bernard<br />
(Paris) | Galerie Claude Lemand (Paris)* | Galerie Coullaud & Koulinsky (Paris)* | Galerie Da-End (Paris)* | De Primi Fine Art (Lugano) | Galerie De<br />
Roussan (Paris)* | Domeau & Pérès (La Garenne Colombes) | Galerie Dukan (Paris) | Duplex 10m2 (Sarajevo)* | Edward Cutler Gallery (Milan)* |<br />
Eidos Immagini Contemporanee (Asti) | Erarta Galleries (London)* | Esther Woerdehoff (Paris) | Galerie Les Filles Du Calvaire (Paris) | Flatland<br />
Gallery (Utrecht/Amsterdam) | Galerie Fleury (Paris)* | Gagliardi Art System (Turin) | Galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris)* | Galerija Fotografija<br />
(Lljubljana)* | Galerie Claire Gastaud (Clermont-Ferrand) | Gimpel & Müller (Paris/London) | Glaz Gallery (Moscow)* | Gallery Grinberg (Moscow)*<br />
| Galerie Guillaume (Paris) | H.A.N. Gallery (Seoul) | Galerie Mark Hachem (Beirut/Paris)* | Galleria Heino (Helsinki)* | Heritage International Art<br />
Gallery (Moscow)* | Galerie Thessa Herold (Paris)* | Galerie Ernst Hilger (Vienna) | Galerie Catherine Houard (Paris) | IFA Gallery (Shanghai) | Ilan<br />
Engel Gallery (Paris) | Galerie Imane Farès (Paris) | Inda Galeria (Budapest) | Galerie Iragui (Moscow)* | Galerie Catherine Issert (Saint-Paul de<br />
Vence) | J. Bastien Art (Brussels) | Galerie Pascal Janssens (Gand) | Galerie Jean Fournier (Paris) | JGM. Galerie (Paris) | Galerie Bernard Jordan<br />
(Paris)* | Galerie L’aléatoire (Paris)* | La Galerie Particulière (Paris) | Galerie La Ligne (Zurich)* | Galerie Lahumière (Paris) | Laurent Delaye Gallery<br />
(London)* | Lehr Zeitgenössische Kunst (Cologne)* | Galerie Leonardo Agosti (Sete)* | Gallery Lilja Zakirova (Heusden)* | Galerie Maeght (Paris)*<br />
| Magnin-A (Paris)* | Kálmán Makláry Fine Arts (Budapest) | Mam Galerie (Rouen)* | Marina Gisich Gallery (Saint-Petersburg) - Ural Vision Gallery<br />
(Ekaterinburg)* | Mazel Galerie (Brussels) | Galerie melanieRio (Nantes)* | Galerie MiniMasterpiece (Paris)* | Galerie Alice Mogabgab (Beirut) |<br />
Galerie Frédéric Moisan (Paris)* | Galerie Lélia Mordoch (Paris) | Mitterrand+Cramer (Geneva)* | Nadja Brykina Gallery AG (Zurich)* | NK Gallery<br />
(Antwerp)* | Nuovo Gallery (Daegu)* | Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels) | Oniris - Galerie d’Art Contemporain (Rennes) | Galerie Paris-Beijing<br />
(Paris/Brussels) | Galerie Priska Pasquer (Cologne) | Pechersky Gallery (Moscow) | Hervé Perdriolle Inde(s) (Paris)* | Perimeter Art & Design<br />
(London)* | Galleria Giuseppe Pero (Milan)* | Pièce Unique (Paris)* | Galerie Placido (Paris)* | Galerie Polad Hardouin (Paris)* | Pop/Off/Art Gallery<br />
(Moscow/Berlin)* | Galerie Catherine Putman (Paris) | Galerie Rabouan Moussion (Paris) | RCM Galerie (Paris)* | Revue Noire (Paris) | Galerie Richard<br />
(Paris/New York) | J.P. Ritsch-Fisch Galerie (Strasbourg) | Rue Française By Miss China (Paris)* | Sarah Myerscough Fine Art (London)* | Galerie<br />
Sator (Paris)* | Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea (Milan)* | SEM ART Gallery (Monaco)* | Semiose Galerie (Paris) | André Simoens Gallery<br />
(Knokke) | Galerie Slott (Paris) | Galerie Véronique Smagghe (Paris) | Michel Soskine Inc (Madrid/New York)* | Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève (Paris)*<br />
| Galerie Taïss (Paris) | Galerie Taménaga (Paris/Tokyo/Osaka) | Galerie Tanit (Munich/Beirut)* | Galerie Daniel Templon (Paris) | The Empty Quarter<br />
(Dubai)* | Galerie Patrice Trigano (Paris) | Trinity Contemporary (London)* | Galerie Tristan (Issy les Moulineaux)* | GVQ - Galerie Vanessa Quang<br />
(Paris) | Várfok Gallery (Budapest)* | Venice Projects (Venice) | Galerie Vieille Du Temple (Paris) | Galerie Vu’ (Paris) | Galerie Wolkonsky (Munich)*<br />
| XPO Gallery (Paris)* | Galerie Zürcher (Paris/New York)<br />
List of galleries by 1 st February 2013 | * new participant
64<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
inthestudio<br />
Silk ROaD<br />
Liang Shaoji<br />
collaborates with nature<br />
By Madeleine O’Dea<br />
The Asian Scene<br />
83
84<br />
Installation<br />
view of Chains:<br />
The Unbearable<br />
Lightness of<br />
Being/Nature<br />
Series No. 79,<br />
2003. Silk,<br />
iron chains.<br />
It is not often<br />
that a visit to an<br />
artist’s studio<br />
requires you to go<br />
on a pilgrimage,<br />
but on a spring day I set out for Tiantai<br />
Mountain, a place sacred to both<br />
Buddhists and Taoists, in pursuit of the<br />
artist Liang Shaoji.<br />
Liang went to live near Tiantai Mountain<br />
at the turn of the millennium, but it was 11<br />
years earlier, in 1989, that he began the<br />
journey that would lead him there. That year<br />
he was included in the pathbreaking “China/<br />
Avant-Garde” exhibition at the National<br />
Museum of Art in Beijing. His installation for<br />
the show provided him the twin ideas that<br />
have animated his work ever since: The theme<br />
of his art would be life, and his medium would<br />
be a humble living creature, the silkworm.<br />
At 44, Liang was already much older than<br />
most of the artists who were then beginning<br />
to put Chinese contemporary art on the map.<br />
He had graduated from the middle school<br />
attached to the Zhejiang Fine Art School in<br />
Hangzhou in 1965, on the cusp of the<br />
catastrophic Cultural Revolution (1966–<br />
76). In those years intellectuals were reviled<br />
and the universities were closed, and Liang<br />
found himself working in a textile factory<br />
where he was involved in the manufacture of<br />
carpets, fabrics, lampshades, handicrafts,<br />
and tapestry, while in his spare time he<br />
painted and made prints and sculptures.<br />
Later he became the director of the Institute<br />
of Arts and Crafts in Taizhou.<br />
In the early 1980s he found himself<br />
on a Chinese trade delegation visit to Europe<br />
and the United States, during which he<br />
explored the contemporary artworks in<br />
museums such as the Centre Pompidou, in<br />
Paris. Finally, at age 40, he decided to go<br />
back to school. The Bulgarian artist Maryn<br />
Varbanov had recently set up an atelier at the<br />
Zhejiang Fine Art School, and in 1986 Liang<br />
was accepted as a student. Varbanov, who<br />
had arrived in the country as a student<br />
in the 1950s and became a pioneer of the use<br />
of textiles in installation art and sculpture,<br />
was a profoundly influential figure on the<br />
Chinese art scene. He made his name as one<br />
of the first artists to take weaving off the wall<br />
and present it in open space. Liang was<br />
inspired by Varbanov’s radical approach to<br />
materials and the way in which he merged<br />
Western and Eastern techniques and<br />
philosophies in his art.<br />
In 1988, for the “China/Avant-Garde”<br />
show, Liang created an installation called Yi<br />
Series–Magic Cube, incorporating silk<br />
fabric, dry silkworm cocoons, metal, and rice<br />
paper—just the sort of experiment with space<br />
and materials that Varbanov would have<br />
relished. Later, when Liang was installing the<br />
piece for a show in Hangzhou, a chance<br />
breeze set the dead cocoons swaying in the<br />
light. Looking at them, Liang found himself<br />
wondering for the first time: What would it be<br />
like to work with living silkworms?<br />
The first thing I notice when I walk into<br />
Liang’s studio is the stones. Dozens of them<br />
cover the floor, and they seem to be dusted<br />
with snow. But when I touch one, I find that it<br />
isn’t cold but soft. Silken, sparkling-white<br />
thread covers each stone. In a corner are<br />
stacked dozens of large white disks. These<br />
also turn out to be covered in silk. Liang<br />
explains that when a silkworm isn’t in a<br />
confined space, it won’t form a normal<br />
cocoon but instead will just spin thread and<br />
cover whatever surface it finds itself on.<br />
He likes to quote a line from a poem by the<br />
Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin: “Only at<br />
death does the silkworm’s thread reach an<br />
end.” To Liang, this line embodies the<br />
silkworm’s devotion to creation, its<br />
generosity, and its tenacity in life. He says<br />
that in working with them he aims to capture<br />
something of this spirit and to allow a<br />
meditation on the passing of life and time.<br />
The first major work in his “Nature<br />
Series,” which he commenced in 1989 and<br />
still continues today, was called Bed/Nature<br />
Series No. 10, 1993. Liang raised silkworms<br />
to live within tiny bedsteads that he had<br />
fashioned from copper wire salvaged from<br />
old generators. From these fragments of the<br />
waste and ugliness of the man-made world,<br />
Liang had created comfortable refuges that<br />
the silkworms made their own, forming<br />
cocoons, metamorphosing into moths,<br />
laying eggs, and continuing their life cycle<br />
over and over again. The work, which took<br />
seven years to complete, was exhibited at the<br />
Venice Biennale in 1999. Later Liang created<br />
a piece in which silkworms covered<br />
suspended heavy metal chains with silken<br />
threads. He called it Chains: The<br />
Unbearable Lightness of Being/ Nature<br />
Series No. 79, 2003.<br />
In an essay on the “Nature Series” that he<br />
wrote last year, Liang says: “Every life is in<br />
search for its own space for existence amid<br />
March/april 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
tiger cai and Shanghart gallery, Shanghai; previouS S pread, ling bingliang<br />
Liang Shaoji and Shanghart ga LLery, S hanghai<br />
absurd and implacable contradictions. The<br />
strong silk threads, symbol of life, as if to<br />
break but resistant, show a strong will to life,<br />
an unremitting life pursuit, a force to beat<br />
the strong with softness, and life<br />
associations with endless extension.”<br />
By the time Bed/Nature Series No. 10 was<br />
complete, Liang had decided to move near<br />
Tiantai Mountain. It is home to the Tiantai<br />
sect of Buddhism, which Liang describes as<br />
the “most indigenous and most pristine” of<br />
all the Buddhist sects in China, and a place<br />
where over the centuries many “crazy<br />
monks” have gone to seek enlightenment.<br />
On Tiantai Mountain there is a platform<br />
where the founder of the sect, Zhiyi, is<br />
believed to have meditated. In 2007 Liang<br />
went there to make the film Cloud Mirror/<br />
Nature Series No. 101. Since moving to<br />
Tiantai he has become committed to the<br />
concept of the interconnectedness of living<br />
beings. Liang thinks this is embodied in the<br />
connection between silkworms and<br />
humankind, and between both of them and<br />
the rest of the natural world. In Cloud<br />
Mirror he illustrated this connection by<br />
holding up a mirror to the sky.<br />
On the mirrors Liang laid out on Tiantai<br />
Mountain, silkworms had already spun<br />
their silk in patterns that evoked the shapes<br />
of clouds. As real clouds passed overhead,<br />
they and the sky itself were reflected in<br />
Liang’s mirrors. In the video of the event,<br />
spun silk and clouds merge in the reflected<br />
sky until it is impossible to see where one<br />
ends and the other begins. The video is a<br />
poetic evocation of the passage of time, life,<br />
and the natural world.<br />
Liang likes to point out that in Chinese the<br />
words for poetry and for silk are homonyms,<br />
perhaps suggesting some deep cultural<br />
connection. He tells me that sericulture has<br />
existed in his country as long as the Chinese<br />
have claimed to have had a civilization,<br />
around 5,000 years. Taking the word<br />
associations further, he points out that the<br />
word for silkworm and the word for Zen also<br />
sound alike; in a 2006 work called Listening<br />
to the Silkworms, which he restaged at<br />
London’s Hayward Gallery last fall, he aims<br />
to induce a Zen-like state by inviting his<br />
audience to do exactly what the title suggests.<br />
The sound of silkworms eating mulberry<br />
leaves is remarkably like the bubbling of a<br />
running stream. In Listening to the<br />
Silkworms Liang asks visitors to sit in<br />
a darkened room and attend to the sounds of<br />
the silkworms’ life. What you hear is not a<br />
recording but silkworms living in an<br />
adjacent room in real time. And as you listen,<br />
you do begin to feel something of what Liang<br />
himself feels deeply, the profound<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
connections that exist between everything<br />
in the natural world.<br />
In a catalogue essay for his exhibition “An<br />
Infinitely Fine Line” at Shanghai’s Zendai<br />
Museum of Modern Art, Liang wrote that<br />
“the entire ‘Nature Series’ is a sculpture of<br />
time, life, and nature, a recording of the<br />
fourth dimension.” Looking at the works,<br />
especially amid the ancient surroundings of<br />
Tiantai Mountain, you see what he is getting<br />
at. By working with silkworms he has<br />
consciously slowed his artistic practice to the<br />
pace of his tiny co-creators and connected<br />
his art to natural forces beyond his control.<br />
Liang calculates that he has raised around<br />
90,000 silkworms in the 23 years he has<br />
worked on the “Nature Series,” and estimates<br />
that the silk thread they have produced<br />
would wind around the world 10 times. One<br />
imagines he might try that someday.<br />
Detail of Bed/<br />
Nature Series<br />
No. 10, 1993–99.<br />
Charred copper<br />
wire, silk.
The Asian Scene<br />
86<br />
thE databank<br />
Eastern Expansion<br />
Coming off the implosion in the early 1990s of the real estate bubble in Japan and the resulting years of<br />
stagnation, few could have predicted the explosive economic growth that would spread across Asia, especially in China and India,<br />
over the past dozen years. As a newly wealthy consumer class has emerged in those two countries since the turn of the millennium,<br />
demand for works made by their artists has likewise taken off. The paintings auction data that was used for this analysis—culled<br />
from the Blouin Art Sales Index—indicate growth in all four countries highlighted. However, the most dramatic changes took place in<br />
China, which today boasts the most sales and the most liquid art market. Moreover, while equities indices have shown average<br />
annual returns in the single digits since 2000, some Indian and Chinese artists—both contemporary and traditional—have generated<br />
returns of more than 1,000 percent, outperforming any other investment class. by roman kraeussl<br />
indices by nation, 2000 through 2011<br />
The Indian art index had an average annual return of more than 25 percent, but it also displayed the most volatility and, despite modest gains in 2010<br />
and 2011, remains well off its 2007 high. In contrast, the Chinese market grew significantly from 2003 through 2007 and was less affected by the slump of<br />
2008 and 2009, resulting in an average annual return of more than 30 percent. By 2010 its gains had overtaken those of the Indian market for the first<br />
time. No longer “emerging,” China can now be considered the region’s dominant art market, heavily backed by national collectors. The index to Japanese<br />
paintings behaves like a blue-chip investment, offering lower returns in exchange for lower risk, and reflecting that country’s established art market.<br />
1600<br />
1400<br />
1200<br />
1000<br />
800<br />
600<br />
400<br />
200<br />
0<br />
market share by nation, 2000 vs. 2011<br />
The small market for Korean art has grown roughly fourfold in recent years, yet its share of the region’s overall art market shrank between 2000 and 2011. Japan<br />
likewise lost nearly half of its market share, with all of the differential from both countries accruing to China, which now accounts for nearly half of all lots auctioned<br />
in the region. Despite the price volatility within its market, India maintained its share of the Asian sector during the period under consideration.<br />
2000<br />
market share by volume<br />
31.2%<br />
27%<br />
31.9%<br />
9.8%<br />
China India Japan korea<br />
2000 2003 2006 2009 2011<br />
2011<br />
18.3%<br />
market share by volume<br />
28.5%<br />
48.8%<br />
4.3%<br />
China<br />
India<br />
Japan<br />
Korea<br />
marCh/aprIl 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
CloCkwise FRoM leFT: Two iMages, soTheby’s; Two iMages, ChRisTie’s<br />
top asian artists by total value of sales, 2000 through 2011<br />
While growth in the region’s art markets has been broad-based, occurring in all countries and across all art segments, the years from 2003 to 2007 saw the<br />
emergence of a particularly dynamic and speculative contemporary category. Nowadays paintings by several Asian artists regularly fetch upwards of $1 million at<br />
auction. Indeed, in the top-10 lists of artists with the greatest dollar turnover, those from the contemporary segment dominate all other styles in all four countries.<br />
>> China<br />
rank name # sales usD turnover<br />
1 Zao Wou-Ki 344 $192,485,598<br />
2 Zhang Xiaogang 206 $158,175,869<br />
3 Zeng Fanzhi 160 $112,869,350<br />
4 Yue Minjun 151 $101,864,573<br />
5 Sanyu 59 $78,215,575<br />
6 Chu Teh-Chun 300 $66,285,041<br />
7 Wu Guanzhong 111 $51,208,285<br />
8 Wang Guangyi 218 $45,379,428<br />
9 Liu Ye 78 $42,004,442<br />
10 Yan Pei-Ming 141 $37,842,265<br />
>> Japan<br />
rank name # sales usD turnover<br />
1 Takashi Murakami 152 $55,949,713<br />
2 Yayoi Kusama 356 $38,221,795<br />
3 Yoshitomo Nara 189 $34,496,786<br />
4 Tsuguharu Foujita 167 $17,097,531<br />
5 On Kawara 29 $12,703,354<br />
6 Kazuo Shiraga 63 $12,629,753<br />
7 Takanori Oguiss 131 $8,263,429<br />
8 Tetsuya Ishida 19 $5,116,326<br />
9 Aya Takano 52 $4,706,970<br />
10 Hiroyuki Matsuura 33 $3,153,307<br />
Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA | march/april 2013<br />
Clockwise from left: Zhang<br />
Xiaogang’s Bloodline: Big<br />
Family No. 1, 1994, sold for<br />
$8.4 million at Sotheby’s Hong<br />
Kong in October 2011; Lee Ufan’s<br />
From Line, 790294, 1979,<br />
earned $1.4 million at Sotheby’s<br />
New York this past May; S. H.<br />
Raza’s Clocher du village, 1958,<br />
realized $750,000 at Christie’s<br />
London this past June; and<br />
Yoshitomo Nara’s Missing<br />
in Action, 1999, fetched $1.5<br />
milion at the house in June 2011.<br />
>> inDia<br />
rank name # sales usD turnover<br />
1 F.N. Souza 520 $73,718,847<br />
2 S.H. Raza 513 $67,934,257<br />
3 M.F. Husain 485 $66,429,540<br />
4 Tyeb Mehta 67 $37,892,754<br />
5 Subodh Gupta 88 $35,439,663<br />
6 Ram Kumar 229 $28,934,745<br />
7 Akbar Padamsee 131 $23,249,992<br />
8 Vasudeo Gaitonde 38 $17,047,786<br />
9 Jagdish Swaminathan 83 $14,146,983<br />
10 T.V. Santhosh 76 $9,581,115<br />
>> korea<br />
rank name # sales usD turnover<br />
1 Lee Ufan 50 $15,590,707<br />
2 Kim Dong-Yoo 24 $8,453,725<br />
3 Park Soo-Keun 11 $7,275,000<br />
4 Kim Whanki 22 $6,104,209<br />
5 Kang Hyung Koo 19 $5,892,013<br />
6 Hong Kyung Tack 22 $5,408,542<br />
7 Kim Tschang-Yeul 39 $4,045,680<br />
8 Choi So-Young 20 $3,353,269<br />
9 Oh Chi Gyun 7 $2,825,694<br />
10 Kim Sou 6 $1,519,708<br />
87
The Asian Scene<br />
88<br />
conversationwith<br />
Leng Lin<br />
The president of<br />
Pace Beijing reflects<br />
on the evolving Asian<br />
art market with<br />
Benjamin Gennochio<br />
What does having a Pace<br />
gallery in Beijing bring to<br />
the Pace network?<br />
Asia has been an essential<br />
part of Pace’s development,<br />
and Asia is also a very<br />
important part of globalization<br />
as a whole. China has<br />
gradually reshaped itself as<br />
the cultural center of the<br />
future, and brings with it<br />
the increasing influence<br />
of Asia at the same time.<br />
What role to do you see<br />
the gallery playing in the<br />
Chinese art scene?<br />
Although China is the main<br />
cultural hub in Asia, Pace<br />
Beijing has tried to maintain<br />
deep roots in China while<br />
not limiting itself to Chinese<br />
art only. Pace Beijing acts<br />
as the window toward Asia—<br />
showing artists like Hiroshi<br />
Sugimoto, for instance—<br />
and is committed to the<br />
development of the broader<br />
Asian art market.<br />
Tell us about your<br />
collector base. How has<br />
it has evolved?<br />
The vast majority of our<br />
collectors are still<br />
international, but local<br />
collectors are gradually<br />
extending and expanding.<br />
Pace Beijing has built<br />
connections with<br />
influential and powerful<br />
collectors throughout Asia.<br />
What kind of changes have<br />
you seen in the Chinese<br />
art market since you<br />
opened in summer 2008?<br />
In the past, the art market<br />
has been very volatile<br />
with the ups and downs<br />
of the economy. Although<br />
the economy has not<br />
yet recovered, it has had<br />
a positive impact on the<br />
Chinese art market’s<br />
long-term development.<br />
The market has<br />
gradually shifted from<br />
a non-rational frenzy<br />
to an appreciation<br />
of the art itself.<br />
Based on your<br />
experience<br />
with clients,<br />
what market<br />
trends are you<br />
seeing right now? How<br />
about broader trends in<br />
Chinese art?<br />
The diversity of collectors’<br />
tastes has expanded,<br />
and market trends have<br />
begun to diverge as well.<br />
Currently everyone is looking<br />
for a new direction, and that<br />
impacts not only collectors<br />
and galleries but artists.<br />
It means that there are more<br />
opportunities for emerging<br />
artists. However, even<br />
though these broader tastes<br />
have appeared, it is still<br />
difficult for new media,<br />
such as installation art and<br />
even photography, to gain<br />
recognition.<br />
Which show on your 2013<br />
exhibition schedule are you<br />
most excited about?<br />
The Hong Hao retrospective,<br />
which just opened. Hong Hao<br />
is best known for his prints<br />
and photographs, with many<br />
of the works featuring<br />
assembled scanned images<br />
of various found objects,<br />
including maps, books, tickets,<br />
receipts, banknotes, food,<br />
and containers. In his 2009<br />
solo exhibition at Beijing<br />
Commune, he exhibited<br />
a series that featured the<br />
bottom half of everyday<br />
objects. By arranging the<br />
scanned images according<br />
to their forms and colors,<br />
he deconstructed the<br />
functional property of the<br />
materials and reproduces<br />
an undifferentiated,<br />
flattened, deliberately<br />
superficial world of aesthetics.<br />
While Hong Hao<br />
Hong Hao's<br />
Deja vu II, 2012,<br />
pen, pencil,<br />
acrylic, and<br />
digital print on<br />
canvas, on view<br />
through April 27<br />
at Pace Beijing.<br />
continues to work with<br />
found objects, his most<br />
recent solo exhibition dealt<br />
with physical forms in a<br />
more straightforward manner,<br />
creating an interesting<br />
dialectic development of<br />
both the vocabulary and<br />
concept of his art.<br />
Is there a substantial<br />
secondary market trade<br />
at the gallery?<br />
The primary market is<br />
still the main trading body.<br />
The secondary market<br />
has not gone very far<br />
yet, though we’re always<br />
making preparations<br />
for it in the near future.<br />
Any final thoughts?<br />
Chinese contemporary<br />
art is still a relatively young<br />
market compared to<br />
Western art. The public<br />
acceptance of contemporary<br />
art is still weak, especially<br />
without the assistance of<br />
museums. The exchange<br />
among galleries has basically<br />
existed only since 2000,<br />
and the art market was<br />
initiated by the auction<br />
houses, so there was a very<br />
speculative atmosphere.<br />
But after the economic<br />
crisis in 2008, the<br />
speculators failed hugely.<br />
And that has actually had<br />
quite a positive impact<br />
on the Chinese art market.<br />
Collectors have now<br />
started to research relevant<br />
aspects of art collecting<br />
more deeply, instead of<br />
being oriented towards<br />
speculative investing.<br />
MARCH/APRIL 2013 | Blouin<strong>Artinfo</strong>.comAsiA<br />
FROM LEFT: PACE BEIJING; HONG HAO AND PACE BEIJING<br />
141 Prince St NY 10012 . 37 West 57 St NY 10019<br />
212.677.1340 gallery @ meiselgallery.com . meiselgallery.com<br />
Peter Maier<br />
New PaiNtiNgs<br />
11 aPril - 4 May<br />
HolsteiN, 2012, duPoNt croMax-at oN fabricated black aluMiNuM PaNel, 60 x 60”