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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 />
volume I no. 2<br />
Benjamin Genocchio<br />
editorial director<br />
Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop<br />
editor iN chieF<br />
Susan Delson<br />
executive editor<br />
Penny Blatt<br />
creative director<br />
Katharine van Itallie<br />
art director<br />
Anne Donnelly Andres<br />
ProductioN director<br />
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ProductioN maNager<br />
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© Marie Clérin Galerie Downtown François Laffanour<br />
Charlotte Perriand<br />
Jean Prouvé<br />
Le Corbusier<br />
Ron Arad<br />
Ettore Sottsass<br />
Pierre Jeanneret<br />
Georges Jouve<br />
George Nakashima<br />
Choï Byung Hoon<br />
Jean Royère<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 />
“This art travel agency's extreme degree of specialization has only made it more essential<br />
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 />
Nicholas Christopher, Leslie Rankow Fine Arts Blog, 12/11/11<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”