ART and book REVIEWS

it doesn't matter how much money he makes or looses -IS it the door that has now opened for all artists and an end to the secrets and manipulations of galleries ???:

A formaldehyde frenzy as buyers snap up Hirst works

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Tuesday, 16 September 2008

GETTY

Damien Hirst's works go under the hammer at Sotheby's

Damien Hirst's audacious plot to take his creations straight to auction paid off last night as he set a new personal record of £10.3m for one artwork in the first part of a two-part sale. The astounding £70.5m total raised at Sotheby's in London exceeded all expectations. The previous auction record for a work by Hirst was £9.7m.

The Bristol-born artist's The Golden Calf, a sculpture of a bullock in formaldehyde, with hooves and horns cast in solid 18-carat gold, went under the hammer for a record £10.3m. Another star lot, a tiger shark in formaldehyde called The Kingdom, made £9.6m – more than £3m above its expected price.

Hirst's decision to take 223 works straight to auction, bypassing the gallery owners and dealers who normally take a hefty commission, was watched closely by the art world and set a precedent for artists seeking to maximise their profits.

On the opening night of the two-day sale, Hirst's creations beat their combined expected sale price of £65m. The auctions, the second of which is tonight, were forecast to rake in £98m but, after last night's performance, experts are predicting a far better overall result.

The profit from most of the works sold will go straight into Hirst's pocket, because buyers' premiums are charged separately and Sotheby's has waived its auction fees. It is the first time an artist of Hirst's stature has bypassed his usual dealer and gallery and sold his works directly to the public.

All of yesterday's 56 lots were sold and 167 more will go under the hammer tonight. A few days ago, Hirst confessed to having jitters about his big gamble, saying: "I imagine it going: 'Lot nine – no bids. Lot 10 – still no bids.'"

He need not have worried. Less than five minutes into the sale, the first lot exceeded its estimated price by £400,000. The first real high point came soon afterwards.

Lot five, a pickled tiger shark, had an estimate of £6m, but after ten minutes of frenzied activity by two determined telephone bidders, the hammer went down at £9.6m. The price was a record for a work in formaldehyde (the previous was £1.8m) that generated a ripple of applause in the auction room.

Within half an hour of the sale starting, the bidders crammed into four rooms had put another £14m into Hirst's bulging bank account – for a mere eight artworks.

The event was strictly all-ticket and limited to 656 clients, arguably making a mockery of Hirst's attempt to "democratise" the sale of his artwork. But this was not just history in the making, it was also theatrical spectacle. The sale room in New Bond Street was filled to capacity, with the auction relayed on video screens and auxiliary auctioneers on standby.

Before the auction, 21,000 visitors turned up to see the show, called "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever", making it the most-viewed pre-sale exhibition in London auction history. Record numbers of auction catalogues were sold as memorabilia for £50 a time, rather than the usual £29.

The excitement in the sale room proved that Hirst's maverick attempt to bring his wares directly to the market had captured the imagination of an audience far bigger than the usual art-collecting crowd, with rock stars, Wall Street traders and the general public keen to share in a moment of history.

On Saturday, a private party to mark the sale was attended by Bono from U2, Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers, the actor-director Kevin Spacey, and Daria Zhukova, the girlfriend of Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich.

Cheyenne Westphal, chairman of contemporary art for Sotheby's in Europe, said the show was the biggest exhibition of the 43-year-old Hirst's work to date. He added: "We wanted to show it as an exhibition because although Damien has had lots of offers he has never agreed to a major retrospective. He doesn't feel old enough."

Hirst was reported to have been nervous about the outcome, not least because Sotheby's saw its share price fall by 8 per cent last Thursday, although it recovered the next day. His anxiety was compounded by fears that the sale might flop because he had saturated his market.

But Hirst has worked hard to establish his commercial might in the auction room. Last year, a 10ft-wide stainless steel medicine chest – filled with coloured tablets and called Lullaby Spring – was sold for £9.7m, making him the world's most expensive living artist at the time.

This was followed by his (RED) charity auction, which broke records and must surely have given Hirst more confidence in the unquenched demand for his work.

Oliver Barker, senior specialist in contemporary art at Sotheby's, said the auction was an "experiment that is breaking new ground", adding that many of the works in the auction were small paintings that were affordable to many.

"From the outset, Damien wanted to democratise this sale so that everybody could be involved," he said yesterday.

THE POSSIBILITY OF AN ISLAND FILM OF THE BOOK - MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

Houellebecq's four novels, notably Atomised and Platform, have enjoyed world-wide critical acclaim and success – more so than those of any other living, French novelist. They present a bitter but comic vision of a Western world sunk into hypocrisy and joyless eroticism.

As a writer, he has been hailed by some literary figures in France as a genius and condemned by others as a fraud. The film critic for Le Temps, Christine Salvadé said that the movie had shrunk Houellebecq's "philosophical vision" to a "simplistic futurism". The only character with any human characteristics, she wrote, was the hero's dog. Houellebecq's sense of humour, which saves his novels, had deserted him on the film set.

Le Figaro said that the movie critics' consensus after the showing in the "experimental section" at Locarno was that the film was "catastrophic, ridiculous, full of cheap, street philosophising."

A blog on the Swiss TV website said: "The writer never turned up for his press conference. He apparently got lost in his car... As lost presumably as his film. Both he and the movie come from another planet."

None of this is likely to disturb Houellebecq, who thrives on controversy and loves to consider himself an artistic martyr. In the leaflet presenting the film, he describes himself as "sincerely detested by everyone who is anything in French culture".

shocking list of destroyed arts because of inadequate storage at IMMA

I missed this one first time but it's still worth mentioning, The Irish Times reports on damage to IMMA permanent collection due to inadequate storage which included a shipping container in the car park italics mine. Apparently IMMA officials have been trying to get proper storage facilities for ten years which to me just adds insult to injury. Surely one of the most important tasks of museum curators is to preserve the collection and letting a situation like this drag on for a decade is inexcusable and begs the question are these people really fit to take care of this part of the state's art collection?

Harry McGee blogs the full list of the damaged works (from a 2003 report) and the nature of the damage.
* 1. Queen of Proofs and Queen of Torments buckling caused by humidity and heat fluctuation
2. Slat Greaser Trough III a three-dimensional work incorporating grease by Terry Atkinson laminate buckling not fit to show, due to extreme fluctuations in environment
3. Slat Greaser V grease element leaching oil - that has been exacerbated by heat in the store
4. Large Head - a large polychromed wood carving by Stephan Balkenhol wood splitting due to lack of climate control stored in studio ‘temporarily’.
5. Anna on a Sofa oil on canvas by Basil Blackshaw paint surface badly cracked fluctuations
6. L’Oiseau de Feu lithography by Georges Braque print surface has adhered to the glass due to severe buckling caused by humidity and temperature fluctuations.
7. Saddle a sculpture incorporating a horse saddle and a cow’s udder by Dorothy Cross Leather drying more quickly that if stored in climate controlled store
8. Fragmens Sur Les Institutiones Republicanines IV 96 styrofoam panels inscribed with the messages smuggled out of the H-Blocks during the Hunger Strike in 1981, by Shane Cullen damaged by flooding
9. Cricketer massive metal sculpture by English sculptor Barry Flanagan was stored in outdoor shipping container and is displaying bloom on the metal
10. (unknown work) Oil leeching from work to support exacerabed by humidity and fluctuating environment
11. The Tain and Travellers tapestries by Louis le Brocquy no hanging system for textiles and no possibility of this in current store
12. Sphere Trame by Francois Morellet chrome lifting and metal rusting due to humidity levels.
13. Untitled 12 Lightboxes moisture damage due to humidity level
14. Untitled wax medium lifting off the support heat damage
15. Untilted painted hardboard surface has buckled and come away from its support as a result of temperature change
16. Figure with Owls by Colin Midleton buckled and broke the frame, as a result of temperature change
17. Fair Head by Colin Midleton Surface attachment fallen away a result of overdry conditions
18. (Unknown) recently conserved conservator stressed the need for ‘museum storage conditions’ to prevent recurrence of problem caused by humidity.
19. Permutations mould on prints caused by temperature change
20 - Partypiece a mechanical sculpture by John White rust damage caused by flooding A further concern arises in relation to the following list of artworks that cannot be taken in to the existing stores
2 1. Strange Fruit- a huge multi-media construction by American artist Lee Jaffe,- cannot be stored in any of the existing stores because of its size and weight.
* 2. (Unknown work) currently stored in a shipping container.

The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel

by Stephen J. Sniegoski
Edition: Hardcover
     
 My Review on Amazon.com:

BRAVE WRITER AND AN IMPORTANT BOOK!, August 27, 2008
By  Michael Santomauro (New York, NY USA) -


Sniegoski's achievement in writing this book is to show how the neocons left the Democratic Party, which of course was mother's milk to all Zionists, and joined the Republicans over the issue of an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East!

I like how straightforward Sniegoski is about the neocons' Jewishness and Israel-centric agenda. Most non-Jews won't be able to stretch their ego to accept the power Jewish groups have over their lives and who calls the shots in the United States in the political arena.

The fact is that 40% of the billionaires in the United States are Jewish or come from interfaith backgrounds where one side of the family is Jewish. This in a nation that represents 25-30% of the global economy.

According to J. J. Goldberg (the former editor of the Forward) in his book Jewish Power he boasts that 45% of the fundraising for the Democratic party and 25% of the funding for the Republican party come from Jewish funded Political Action Committees. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has recently updated this data to read 60% for democrats and 35% for republicans fundraising come from Jewish funded Political Action Committees.

Since the 1930s according to Forbes business magazine, 25%-30% of the
wealthiest families in America have been Jewish.

In Canada the sixth biggest economy in the world, Jewish-Canadian billionaires represent 49% of the Canadian stock market. And Jewish-Canadians of wealth are notorious heavyweights for political donations in U.S. politics, in effect helping the cause for the Zionist entity, through the military might of the U.S.

The U.S. Jewish population is only 1.8%, less than 2%. BUT who REALLY knows? The Jewish lobby is so powerful, that they are the only group to have successfully petitioned the U.S. Census Bureau not to be counted in their compilation!

Historically, Jews wherever they have resided have always wanted and have been officially undercounted for political purposes.

It is my contention they are one of the most powerful groups in the world. And should be studied and understood by books such as this one.