Art & Market

Recently, I got drunk on an after party and talking with a Well Known Artist focused with a horrible insistence on market mechanisms which can be used to become such a known artist. I can only hope he didn't get offended. But what is striking me in that is the question why I did it. Why after a certain amount of wine I got back to the art market. Not to the idea of art, a process of creation, or reception, any of those important things I could ask him but to the market. Does it mean that I still can't place an issue of art being on the market on my matrix? I still didn't position it in relation to the other aspects of art - its value moves up and down. How important it is? How important is to be known? Important for all participants of an art world, and important for an artist. Not in simply term of material value, but in term of intellectual and cultural importance. How the position on a market influences an intellectual and cultural value of a vary piece of art? How the position held by an artist changes a meaning and value of his work?
Heh, it seems to me that finally by accident I found a thesis of my Diploma Essay :)

Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh

It's very strange what happens to the piece of art once it becomes to be percepted as a masterpiece. For all those people asking how much are Sunflowers it is not the art at all. They are excited by an artefact of richness and fame, which is actually very sad, because none of them can get into relation with a real painting. And none of them is interested in it. So what about the passion and terrible sadness which emanate from the Sunflowers?

"1987 - A painting by Vincent Van Gogh has been sold for $49m (£27m) - a world record for a work of art. The final price was more than twice what the painting, called Irises, had been expected to reach. (...)
The previous record for a painting was set in March by another Van Gogh masterpiece, Sunflowers. It was bought in London for just under $40m by a Japanese insurance company."

"In the spring of 1888 he [Reid] presented his father, James Reid, with two paintings by Van Gogh. The first was Still Life, Basket of Apples; the second was a portrait of Reid himself (...)His father later sold them to a French dealer for £10 each.
The (...) Moulin-de Blute-fin (...) was sold by Reid to another Glasgow collector, William McInnes, in July 1921 for £550. By the early 1920s, prices for Van Gogh's work were on the rise; and the first of a flurry of fakes were appearing. In 1923 Sir James Murray, an Aberdeen collector, acquired Still Life with Daisies and Poppies, which turned out to be a forgery.(...)
[Portrait of Alexander Reid] was eventually bought by Glasgow Museums in 1974 for £166,250.(...)
Olive Trees was painted outside the asylum in St-Rémy in 1889. It was first acquired in 1923 for £275. Today, the piece has strong Scottish ties, having been bought by the National Gallery for £1,600 in 1934.

Some recent figures:

1921 Gainsborough Blue Boy £148,000 (equivalent to £4.5 million today)
1970 Velasquez Juan de Pareja £2.3million (equivalent to £21million today)
1987 Van Gogh Sunflowers £22.5 million (equivalent to £39 million today)
1990 Van Gogh Dr Gachet £44 million (equivalent to £61million today)
(...)
Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents sold in 2002 for £49.5 million = £11,000 per square inch
Van Gogh’s Dr Gachet sold in 1990 for £44 million = £66,000 per square inch
Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks sold in 2004 for £35 million = £341,130 per square inch
Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe sold in 2004 for £58 million = £45,312 per square inch

2006 The New York Times said the city's Neue Galerie paid $135m (£73m) for the oil painting [The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by G. Klimt]in a private sale.

The $140m quoted as the price obtained by Sotheby's for Pollock's Number 5, 1948 would make it the highest figure known to have ever been paid for a painting.

I have something to play

Yes! I have something to do! They allowed me to play with their website and are open to my ideas of promotion and e-marketing. I have to say - I feel a bit better. A bit more valuable. Somebody treats me as I would have a brain. That is a real surprise! Am I really able to do something more than show people direction to the toilet and entrance or shout in my broken English - Don't touch the object, pleeeeease!? Sorry. It sounded a bit too bitter. The Somebody took a dig at me yesterday saying that I ALWAYS complain about my work after few months of conducting it. I have to rethink his words. Definitely. I will do it today at work. heh, I learn to postpone thinking/considering important things until I get to work. It is a real example of time management! Trully speaking, invigilating is not so bad as I complain. Sometimes you can even get into discussion about art with a curious visitor. I swear, I happens! Anyway, I have to be back to my new work to finish it until I'll have gone to my old one :)

Birkbeck

I have been to Birkbeck just few minutes ago - I continuously got back emails sent to Arts Management so popped in to their IT dep. to see what is wrong. Findings?
I MUST be back to studying.

Velázquez Exhibition at the National Gallery

I know that this painting hasn't been included in that exhibition but it's my favourite one :)

Be honest - I really do not know what that rumour is about. All those celebrities visiting it and all this crowd. So many of them that you hardly can see paintings...

"For the first time in Britain, a major exhibition traces the career of one of the very greatest painters - Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660).

From his beginnings in Seville, 'Velázquez' follows the artist's move to Madrid and appointment as court painter to Philip IV, his two trips to Italy, to his final days and his knighthood.(...)

Drawing on the National Gallery's own rich holdings and major loans from the Museo del Prado and other collections, this exhibition includes almost half of the world's surviving works by Velázquez. It demonstrates the artist's extraordinary development through great examples of his religious and mythological paintings, alongside his portraits."

Oh, of course, it is a nice exhibition and Velazquez himself is a great painter but, for example, we can say the same about Holbein and there wasn't so big publicity about his exhibition at the Tate Britain. I would even dare to say that Holbein exhibition seems to me much better that Velazquez one at the National Gallery. Of course the painting and painter choice is beyond the consideration, as de gustibus non disputandum est, but an organisational side (has somebody mention the crowd at the National Gallery despite carefully issued time tickets?), reference material and thothoughtful composition of artefacts is in my opinion much better at the Tate.

Not everything is wrong

There are still good things on the world. Meeting with a long unseen friend, a girly evening with rose and a meditterenian salad, the gold autumn outside, The British Museum is falling down, black coffee and chocolate cheesecake... And even... who knows... but shhhh.... I am not really superstitious ;) but better not to call a bad luck - let's see what happens and keep fingers crossed.

And tomorrow 2 new applications to write. (Must be done).

I am frustrated

I am getting sick of looking for an internship. Why it is so difficult to get to an art organisation? I am ready to commute to London, work 5 days a week for free and people still don't answer. Or want me to be an invigilator... that is what I do for money, actually, not to bad money....

Sometimes I really think to go back home. But logically thinking there would be probably even worse. Here at least I earn a living watching people and paintings, there... nobody knows if I get a job at all.

Just, sometimes, I really would like to be born native English speaker everything would be so easy than - getting an interesting job, socializing with people without feeling like a puppy,a mascot, a foreigner from a strange country... "Oh, don't worry about your English it is so cute. We will not correct you - we like your English as it is". But I do not like it. It create an invisible ceiling anytime I try to do something normal. Get a normal job for example. And I am not even black to be qualified into internships for the black ethnic minority. Like that one at the Tate last year. And I feel so stupid while trying to express myself, no mention about decent conversation about art. And again I am not even an artist to stand me in good stead.

What em I doing here? All my knowledge, all my skills are based on communication skills - even marketing is. And I CANNOT simply learn that language. I am unable to participate in any language course because as a linguist I have always to many strange questions and also (being honest) so many times I enrolled one and did not attend that Somebody protests any time I even mention about a new one, and he is totally right. The best solution would be if everybody I speak to correct me but English people are TOO NICE (too political correct?) to do it.

This way I am going to live in a country without knowing its language and being totally frustrated because doing a job which does not satisfy me. Heh...

London

I have met him in the tube. It was yesterday, on my way back from Elephant & Castle. Few weeks ago on Charing Cross Road I saw a man cast a spell. Seriously. Is it something wrong with me or it is the world?

By the way, when I asked that guy if I could take a picture he said to me (after eternal where are you from?):I am not sure if you know that word, it is... do you know what the word fellow means? ... I didn't faint.

A lovely cursor

Well, I tried to create a lovely cursor with that picture you can see above but it doesn't want to work :(((((

Does anybody know how to make it works????

The Day One

Let's say - it's not really very serious. Actually it's not serious at all. It's just playing about writing and creating. Or, I could say, it exists only to practise my English. Yes. That's it. Just practising English. Why to make it bigger? No, this is nothing so serious that can make me trembling. Because what is the BLOG? The blog, particularly MY BLOG, can be anything. Because I can by anybody or even anything. It can be my story, my fairy tale, my everything and anything. That trembling.... well... let's call it - excitement. That is a good word.