Adam & Annie's Art Finance Company Adventures

In 2003 ex Black Cap Adam Parore established an art finance company, which came “from the fact that when-ever Sally [Ridge] and I bought a painting we didn’t want to pay for it … Mr Parore saw art dealers struggling to make money and thought that if he put the money in, art dealers would get paid immediately.” Hooray!

Circa 2004 Mr Parore was seen skulking out the back door of a very flat Webb’s sale. He was later dished in the media for ‘dismantling’ a Bill Hammond painted umbrella so that it could be hung on the wall and appreciated in two dimensions. Enter the recession and seemingly the end of Adam’s Art Adventure. Sadly no one else in New Zealand has managed to pull off anything similar.

One of the intriguing things about the New Zealand art market is that it’s still relatively young. The better artists of this era will inevitably feature in future art history texts and related media and their artwork must appreciate over time as a result. Any dealer worth a fraction of his or her weight in art can place their better artists’ work with public institutions, secure features for those artists in magazines and so on. This is then a passport for future sales. So someone in New Zealand (with sufficient vulture-like tendencies) should be out there offering to finance clients into decent artwork, and lending against good artwork. Surely there is money to be made!

New York based Art Capital Group offers a product that works in a similar way to transactions (and I use that word loosely) undertaken by the likes of Cash Convertors and the Pawn Shop in New Zealand. Some would say tragically, many high profile artists and collectors have had to pawn their artworks during the last three years as a result of finding themselves financially stretched.

A classic case is the celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz who narrowly avoided bankruptcy recently after she bought back control of her photographs and homes following a renegotiation of a US$24 million loan from Art Capital Group. As well as generating what one would imagine to be a hell of a good profit, Art Capital's chief executive, also acknowledged that his company was pleased to "assist Ms Leibovitz to achieve financial stability and proud to have been of such value to her at this juncture in her life and career".

Bring back Adam.

Pictured: Obama Family Portrait by Annie Leibovitz (October 2009).

JOCKSTRAP BOMBER HARBINGER of FAILED-ARTIST-MASSACRES-TO-COME?

For God’s Sake - and For the Sake of Western Civilization - Buy, Buy, Buy, For All You’re Worth, When the New Art Season Opens.

Why? Hey, I’ll tell you why. Because Failed Artists are an Historically Established Menace of Major Proportions.

Seems this week’s big, too-good-to-be-true, international story - The Jock-Strap Bomber – involved, as usual, the visual arts. When are we going learn people? Support the arts, or suffer the historically established consequences.

Case in point:

al Qaeda Yemen’s claim for the Christmas ‘undie’ attack on Northwest flight 253, was followed by well documented reports that the (now scorch-balled) bomber’s handlers included two ex Guantanamo Bay prisoners - freed in 2007 and sent back to Saudi Arabia. Muhamad Attik al-Harbi (known now by his nom de guerre Muhamad al-Awfi) and Said Ali Shari appear later (2009) in Yemen-based Qaeda propaganda videos.

Now here’s the meat…..after their release, the two former Gitmo prisoners entered an Art Therapy Program underwritten by the Saudi Arabian government. A program wherein jihadists are supposedly weaned away from violence by red yellow and blue.

The two men, having decided to become fulltime artists and unable thereafter to secure dealer representation, exhibitions in alternative mosques, or sales of any significance - reportedly grew despondent at the failure of their newly chosen lifestyle/careers and are believed to have backslid into renewed jihadism. The two failed artists then migrated to Yemen where they joined a growing network of al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations. One insensitive U.S. diplomat said Saudi Arabia's "so-called art-rehabilitation programs are a joke." Considering that sort of critical reception is it any wonder our two nascent artists became disillusioned and returned to their old jobs of fashioning IED’s (improvised explosive devices) instead of artworks?

Here’s the proof-of-life YouTube Video for the Doubters Among You





The two failed al Qaeda lads are just small potatoes, in the bigger scheme of things, when it comes to failed artists wreaking havoc when careers go Phhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht*

Take for example famously failed artist Mr. Adolf Hitler. According to a former friend of mine - failed Austrian conceptualist Ludwig Redl - as soon as Adolf (who’d often idle by the Danube indulging reveries of becoming a famous artist) seized real power he had the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts Professors – academics who’d rejected his application portfolio – summarily shot. Fuggedaboutit!

Here’s a YouTube portfolio of der Fuehrer’s artwork. Now, just think what might NOT have happened if dewy young Adolf had had a sold-out show of his landscapes.




O.K., O.K., I can’t blame you for being skeptical ‘bout my thesis, but wait, there’s more. Now, as everyone knows, our boy Hitler is firmly ensconced in history’s Big Three of mass murderers. But he’s only #3. Stalin – bringing it home (30 million victims) at #2 was also an artist. Of sorts.

See image heading this post for an example of Stalin-Readymade

He liked to get his dictatorial mitts on (ready-made) nude prints & drawings, and, get this, add his own sardonic textual marginalia. Talk about ahead of its time! Image and Text works from the 1940’s. And ironic to boot.

Here’s a sample of some of textual addendums that Stalin used to fortify his nudes.

“Ginger bastard Radek, if he hadn’t pissed against the wind, if he hadn’t been angry, he would be alive,” Papa scrawled across the leg of a rotund male nude.

"Don't sit with a bare arse on stones," Stalin pens on a drawing of a man on a pedestal. "Give the boy some pants."

"Stalin and naked guys: what’s Going on Here?" headlined a story in a recent issue of the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Consider if, famously vain, Uncle Joe, had gotten the sort of critical success afforded prominent image-ironists such as Sherrie if-I-had-a-nickle-for-every-word Levine. Would the "Father of Nations," have spent more time reading his reviews than force-collectivizing Georgian and Ukranian farms.

A show of Stalin’s handiwork was recently mounted at the leading Marat Guelman gallery in central Moscow.

The moral sub-text of these stories?

Fuggedaboutit!

The Art Season's Sargasso Sea

WE are heading into the artworld equivalent of mariner doldrums. becalmed in a sargasso sea of cultural disinterest. An orgy of commerce has already commenced in this 'holy' season but the commerce ain't, as a rule, intangible objects.More's the pity.

In order to ready all you art dealers out there, for the new upcoming art season, I present here, for your edification, Alec Baldwin's infamous motivational speaking scene from David Mamet's Glenn Garry Glenn Ross.

What follows is a tough-love tutorial from a well-appointed super-salesman to a group of down-at-the heels and demoralized second-raters of the selling game.

As Alec would say - LISTEN and Learn!



Merry-Effing-Xmas, Y'all.

By the way if you aren't familiar with Ivan Karp (director of Leo Castelli 10 years and the the Pope of Soho for decades afterwards - where he was proprietor of his own art-schlock supermarket(OK Harris) Ivan was an old-school salesman & he had the meritocratic habit of looking at the work of all comers. There'd be a line of young out-of-town hopefuls trailing out the door onto the street ( like some kind of penitent snake ) looking to have Ivan pass or advise on their work. Woe to the artists he took into the gallery ( he had too many ) as his 'taint', thereafter, was always upon them. Ivan had a flamboyant habit of carrying a pistol (complete with a concealed weapon permit) in the waistband of his sans-a-belt slacks...which when in a particularly ebullient or choleric mood he'd pull out and show-off to the assembled. Ivan swept his gallery's own diamond-metal stoop every morning that he was open for trade. Whatever can be badly said (and plenty was) about the man...there was no doubt about his ability to leave a lasting impression and close a sale.

Artists' Brains - An Off-Colour Joke

So, Victor Frankenstein sends his assistant down to Ingolstadt to buy fresh brains for his final procedure.

The assistant, walking into the town’s best abbatoir, inquires about the trays of un-priced brains. The butcher informs him, as they stroll past the displayed merchandise, that the first tray - teachers’ brains are $299.99 a kilo, the second tray at $599.99 are bankers’ brains, lawyers’ brains at 799.99, scientists' brains at $999.99, politicians' brains at $1599.99, and so on.

The two arrive at the final tray of brains where Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant, for thoroughness sake , asks… how much?

$5,999.99 a kilo, replies the butcher.

Catching his breath, at the dramatic increase in price, the doctor’s assistant whispers “why so much”

The butcher, drawing himself up, declares – Why, those are artists’ brains, do you have any idea how many of those it takes to make up a kilo?”

Badda-bing.

DAN THE MAN

If someone mentions the name Dan to me, four prominent Dan’s immediately spring to mind. Daniel LaRusso; Dan Carter; Back of the Pan Dan; and Dan Brown.
Daniel LaRusso for perfecting the Crane Kick and proving even weedy guys can pull Elisabeth Shue. Dan Carter for securing numerous All Black victories on the brink of defeat and the ridiculous effect he has on the girls in my office when they see a picture of him in his undies. Back of the Pan Dan was the nickname given to my girlfriend of the times flat mate who used to leave a rather unpleasant calling card at the back of the toilet bowl after each visit. Finally Dan Brown, an author, I am lead to believe.

I have never read a Dan Brown novel, nor watched a motion picture staring Tom Hanks based on a Dan Brown novel. Neither do I have any desire to read a Dan Brown novel, nor watch a motion picture staring Tom Hanks based on a Dan Brown novel. I do not know what Dan Brown looks like. I had to google image him and to be honest I would rank him 4th in my list of Dans. Not that I rank guys in order when ever I get the chance. He has an annoying hair cut. It is a similar hair cut to a guy I worked with once, Mark. His nickname was Skid. You would think I associate with a lot of people with secretion related nicknames. These are the only two I can recall from memory. Oh and Snotty.

Anyway I digress. The reason I have not read a Dan Brown novel is a conscious decision. I categorize this type of literature as pop cult. Like Harry Potter and what ever the current teen vampire craze that is hitting the nation of late. Cannot remember it’s name, but Samantha Hayes gets very excited when ever she had to read an article on it on Nightline. Apparently the screen adaptation of the second novel topped the NZ box office record!

Every couple of years a book or series of books come out that the public swoop up. It is the must read. 50% of the population rush out and buy it, making the author instantly a zillionaire. Two years later Hollywood turns it into a Blockbuster, and then 50% of the remaining 50% who don’t own the book rush out and buy it. They become the hot topic of conversation around the water cooler and diner parties. Ironically my place of employment does not have a water cooler, more a tap, over a sink. It is located in the corner of an L shaped bench making any form of gathering around it near impossible. I also cannot remember the last dinner party I was invited to. I have a two year old daughter, so I would hazard a guess at two years ago. But this is not the point.

I quite like not knowing who Flavius Belby is and if he/she/it dies in the next novel. I also don’t wish to discuss who is better looking Edward or Jasper.

An incredibly tall Dutch man tried to describe the plot summary of The Da Vinci Code over dinner once. He was half way through his own personal copy of the novel. We were sitting at an out door table at a restaurant at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. It was a beautiful summers evening. The Gardens were full with people of all ages coming and going. You could hear music. To me, having someone describe the novel he had waiting for him on his bedside table at his hotel room showed he was more enthralled in this Dan Brown created world than everything that was going on around him in the real world. We were at the peak of Dan Brown mania. The other people at our table started talking about it too. I went to the toilet. They were still talking about it when I got back. It was from this point that I decided never to get caught up in Pop Cult again. I was still hurting with a brief dabble into Pop Cult I had invested two years prior with Alex Garlands ‘The Beach’.

I make my commitment to not succumbing to Pop Cult quite public. My mother shakes her head at me. She has a photo of the platform at Kings Cross you catch the train to Hogwarts to. Excuse me isn’t it fiction?

You will believe my dismay when the year before last I unwrapped on Christmas day not one Dan Brown book, but four, in a set!

I looked the bearer of the gift in the eye and said, “Thank-you, I have not read any of these”. I could hear the sigh of relief from my wife across the room thinking I was going to say what I was actually thinking.

Being the man of action that I am, two years later here I am putting them on TradeMe. They are still in the exactly same condition I received them in. I can assure you they have not been read.

Not being perverse to a shameless piece of shelf promotion, I will even provide you the link to my auction here.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Books/Fiction-literature/Mystery-thriller/Author-AC/auction-257882349.htm