Friday 31 July 2015

Turin 2015 art prize


Get the chance to exhibit at Photissima Torino 2015 and win a solo exhibition in next year edition

CALL CLOSES SEPTEMBER 30th
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mumxn79odfqacpr/AABxeQIKGJi_HontW7MJ71Tfa

naked Tom Cruise art BY HIMSELF


An upcoming Tom Cruise art installation is as mysterious as it is bizarre.

It was announced Wednesday that a giant Cruise shroud and commemorative medals will be unveiled in tribute to the actor’s 25-year involvement with the Church of Scientology — but the controversial religion claims to have no part in the spectacle.

The 14-foot-by-3-foot shroud — which depicts a very well-endowed nude likeness of the 53-year-old — and medals featuring his profile were created by artist Daniel Edwards and will be displayed next month at a “pop-up Church of Scientology” near the organization’s Clearwater, Florida, headquarters, the artist says.

But a spokesperson for the church denied any involvement in the project, telling Page Six that it’s a “publicity stunt and any claim to the contrary is false.”

artist invitations and 6 best places to sell/buy art online


The first-ever Plein Air Painting invitational in Boothbay Harbor and around the peninsula will be held Sept. 7-13 The event has been added as a Harbor Fest highlight and will feature a week of painting events, public receptions and art sales.

Where it all began: the Boothbay peninsula, one of Maine’s most photographed coastlines and historic artist colonies, has become an outdoor painting studio for world-renowned plein air painters. Over the past five years, a community collaboration among artists, business owners and media, including Corinne McIntyre, Mary Phelps, Carol Hartnett, Lindy Bragg, Win and Lori Mitchell, Roger Milinowski and Lisa Kristoff, has developed into what will now become the first Plein Air invitational event in our region: A Stroke of Art.
Tickets purchased before Aug. 31 will include a $50 voucher toward a painting purchase at the Collectors Brunch. Tickets are limited and early purchase is recommended. Tickets are currently available online at www.boothbayharborfest.com or at COCO VIVO, 129 Commercial Street, Boothbay Harbor, and the Boothbay Farmers Market, Boothbay Common, every Thursday, 9 a.m. to noon.
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Fine Art and Wine Invitational
Three shows coming to Loveland Aug. 7-9; Art in the Park, Sculpture in the Park, Fine Art and Wine Invitational
August Art Weekend

• Art in the Park: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, North Lake Park, 2800 N. Taft Ave., Loveland. Admission is free. Event offers art and food items for purchase. Info: Lincoln Gallery, 970-663-2407, or artintheparkloveland.com.

• Sculpture in the Park: 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, and 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, at Benson Park Sculpture Garden, 2908 Aspen Drive, Loveland. General admission is $7 (children 14-younger free). A private patron party on Friday, Aug. 7, costs $75. Info: Loveland High Plains Arts Council, 970-663-2940, or sculptureinthepark.org.

• Loveland Fine Art and Wine Invitational: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7-Saturday, Aug. 8, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9, at Owens Field southwest of Loveland High School, on the south side of 29th Street. General admission is $7 (children 14-younger free). The event will have on-site ATMs, food, beverages and entertainment. Info: 623-734-6526 or vermillionpromotions.com.

• Artists' Charitable Fund Auction: 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, rain or shine, Norma & Lynn Hammond Amphitheater, Taft Avenue and 29th Street adjacent to the Loveland Fine Art and Wine Invitational. Auctioneer is sculptor George Lundeen. The event will include sub sandwiches, beer and wine. Sculptures and two-dimensional art donated by artists from around the country. Info: 970-577-0509.

• Parking and transportation: Parking areas for people with disabilities available near the entrances to the shows. A valid disabled parking permit is required in this area. Guests are encouraged to use the free shuttle bus service from various locations around Loveland. Buses will be available 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, and 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9.

Shuttles will stop at King of Glory Church, City of Loveland Service Center, Thompson Valley Towne Center, Orchards Shopping Center and Massage Envy at Centerra.

Jessica Benes: 970-669-5050 (ext. 530), jbenes@aespotlight.com, twitter.com/jessicabenes
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The 6 Best Places to Buy Art Online
Captured: This online store is focused on gorgeous large-format photography with a brilliant twist—only one striking image at a time is available, and it's only available for a single week. Once it's gone, it's gone, and it'll never be available again.
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Thursday, July 30, 2015
Art
The 6 Best Places to Buy Art Online
Getting into art is often intimating, but it shouldn't be. Here are a few great places to shop for the good stuff in a way that's easy and fun, not snobby and confusing.
BY Jack Archer

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Captured: This online store is focused on gorgeous large-format photography with a brilliant twist—only one striking image at a time is available, and it's only available for a single week. Once it's gone, it's gone, and it'll never be available again.

• • •

02-fine-art-online-main.jpg

Artsy: Not only is Artsy a beautiful encyclopedia of the world's greatest art, but it's also an outstanding place to find the perfect piece for your pad. The process is a little more involved than hitting "add to cart" and typing in your shipping address, but the personal and white-glove experience via its partnered galleries makes any purchase through the site all the more special.

Gray Malin: The sunny and stunning work of Gray Malin, one of the greatest fine-art photographers living today, has some serious Slim Aarons vibes. His store is loaded with jet-set-focused large-format photography that will make any room feel like a postcard.

Artspace: This site has tasteful art advisers that are standing by to help you find the right art for your home. It's loaded with tons of easy-to-digest information too, so going from novice to enthusiast just by browsing is likely.

1stdibs: Acting as a middleman and curator for the world's most beautiful things, 1stdibs is a great resource and catalog of some of the coolest furniture, jewelry, watches, and fine art money can buy. It's all killer, no killer—it does a great job filtering out the boring.

Saatchi Art: Considered to be the world's largest online gallery, Saatchi Art has a little bit of everything, but most interestingly, has a wide range of prices. So whether your budget is three figures or six, there's art for you.

.Online art mags and Chicago seeks art


Seeking Visual Art for Lit Mag Summer Issue

no pay

Lime Hawk, an independent online journal focusing on culture and environment, seeks visual art - including photography, illustration, mixed-media, drawing, etc. - for its upcoming Summer Issue. Submit original, unpublished artworks via our Submittable page: limehawk.submittable.com/submit.

Visit limehawk.org/journal for more information and to view previous issues.

Thank you for sending us your artwork!

do NOT contact me with unsolicited services or offers

post id: 5148660417

posted: about 20 hours ago

email to friend

♥ best of [?]

No contact info?
if the poster didn't include a phone number, email, or
other contact info, craigslist can notify them via email.
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Graphic Designer Visual Arts Magazine

Scotland's leading visual art magazine

Deadline: 10 August 2015 at 18:00

To start soon. Highly organized print and online ad designer for bi-monthly art magazine. Experienced-fast and creative. Contemporary design flair. Latest equipment. Lap top-InDesign- Photoshop etc. Must have also worked with large printing company. Reside in the Lothian's central to Edinburgh office. Set fee. Personable with good written and verbal skills. Send CV and 3 ad samples with contact info. Love of design, topography and magazines a must !

Location: East Lothian, Edinburgh City, Midlothian, Scottish Borders, West Lothian

For further information, please contact christiedessy@gmail.co.uk

The deadline is Monday 10 August 2015 at 18:00.

TAGGED:
Design / Visual Arts / Literature and Publishing
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A lot goes on at Primer.

The monthly event fuses cocktail party, concert and art viewing — plus a segment for projects and businesses in the spirit of Technori pitch events — to promote artists' development in Chicago.

It’s a product of Canvas, a Wicker Park-based event company and community of event producers, entrepreneurs and artists.

The event is one of several the 2-year-old initiative has in place to enable artists to collaborate and share resources.
Glappitnova panel: Chicago needs investment, startups that stay
Glappitnova panel: Chicago needs investment, startups that stay

“We thought, ‘Let’s bring a little more structure that seems to be around the Technori style, as well as an element of what’s at art and creative events,’” said Preston Jones, co-founder and director of operations at Canvas.

The event bridges the gap between enterprise and creativity, Jones said. He said about 70 percent of attendees are creative types, the rest entrepreneurs.

The fifth and most recent event last week included, among other things:

• short pitches from a company that does events for creative types combining art, music, yoga, drinks and a charitable component;
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• an arts and beer activity seeking brewery and artist participation;

• the developer of a live-show ticket-purchasing app in need of bands for testing;

• and a community arts center bringing awareness to its Indiegogo campaign;

Canvas runs an accelerator for creative endeavors including audio, visual and literary projects. It produces experiential events and art installations for brands and gatherings, and it organizes a regular collaborative that pairs visual and musical artists for an evening’s entertainment.
Glappitnova and a founder's vision of storytellers and investors
Glappitnova and a founder's vision of storytellers and investors

Artists Vincent Naples, who goes by DrmBt, and Lefty carry out many of the initiatives.

“We want to shift the way people think about how you buy and experience art,” said Jones, who started Canvas in 2013 with Naples. “Traditionally, bands tour with other bands. Why can’t a visual artist go on tour with a musician?”

Last week's Primer included folks who sported topknots and dreadlocks and carried a skateboard or two. Attendees interacted in the Canvas courtyard with drinks amid displays from a featured visual artist and performances by a local musician and DJs. Along the way, they heard short pitches from those touting programs.

“It’s about putting a roomful of people together, inspiring them and allowing them to connect,” Jones said. “So many networking events, they have a stuffiness about them. We try to ease that into the environment, and organically people will just happen to meet each other because that’s what’s in the air.”

Pugs Atomz, creative director and designer at Chicago-based Iridium clothing company, said he appreciated the opportunity to get in front of creators and ask them for proposals on collaborations. He said he made contact with a couple of DJs whom he booked to play at the store.

“It’s a really good place to say what we need, as opposed to other events where people are offering what they have,” Atomz said.

OXFORD and Amsterdam ART FAIR 2016 - call for artists



PEN CALL EARLY BIRD - EXTENDED OFFER
Submit before 3rd Aug 2015 to receive the early bird OFFER - FREE social media promo to 80,000+ followers (normally £75 GBP)

Use promocode: EARLYOIAF Valid till 3rd Aug 2015.

SUBMIT ONLINE http://www.oxfordinternationalartfair.com/apply/


DIGITAL ART SHOWCASE
Amsterdam International Art Fair 28-29 August 2015

What’s included in the Digital Art Showcase:

Exhibition of 2 or 4 artworks displayed on High Def Plasma at the Fair
Intro shot of your Artist name and website
Credits and Advert in the official Art Fair Catalogue
Mention of Artist in Exhibitor List on the Art Fair Website
Mention of Artist on Art Fair Banner
Possibilities of shipping Business Cards
Shipping of Catalogue to your address at a small extra fee
Extra Promotions available such as Interview, Social Media promo, etc.

Only 5 spaces left - book before 3rd Aug 2015.

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Galleries: let's ditch the artspeak and artybollocks


http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2015/jul/30/galleries-lets-ditch-the-artspeak-and-artybollocks?CMP=new_1194&CMP=


As an art student eager to know about the latest arts discourse and reviews, I thought nothing of spending hours poring over the library’s copy of contemporary art journal Studio International. With dictionary to hand, I would assiduously look up the unfamiliar words and decipher all the specialist concepts and terms. I was there to study. I had time and inclination to understand the theories of fine art practice. I needed to understand, appreciate and critique art and after all, this publication wasn’t aimed at the general public.

Nowadays, surveys such as Taking Part tell of high levels of general public interest in the contemporary visual arts. According to Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, the Plus Tate network of galleries small and large across the UK are pulling in the punters, their programmes “enthusiastically adopted by their local communities”. So have contemporary art galleries adapted their language, in recognition of their now wider (and more culturally diverse) audiences?
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Does knowing that Peter Fraser has always been a “poet of the quotidian” galvanise interest to go along to a recent photographer’s talk at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery? Are Piers Calvert’s paintings made more appealing to visitors because they contain “faces that at the same time are millenary and somehow totally contemporary”? Or is the statement: “Alfred Wallis was an artist and mariner. He painted from the memory of his experiences, depicting ships at sea, wrecked, and at harbour, houses and landscapes” – about a Kettle’s Yard exhibition – easier to understand?

Manchester International Festival’s outgoing artistic director Alex Poots observed that many of the divisions in the arts are human-made. Current art language is one such barrier, overwhelming you with adjectives, superlatives and jargon. For example, there’s a “fascinating and engaging introduction” to Towner Gallery’s collection; “friendly and knowledgeable” gallery staff at the Hepworth Wakefield; and “exciting and ambitious” programming at Edinburgh’s Collective.

Today’s contemporary art … well, it’s got to be hyped up as the best. It’s variously unique, brilliant, cutting-edge or – at the very least – high-quality. Arts institutions (that often reside in “landmark buildings”) claim to be centres of excellence, world-class and inspiring. Exhibitions are ground-breaking, blockbuster and vibrant. Curators are renowned, respected and innovative. The work presented is offered as thought-provoking, experimental, playful and absurd.

Why is it necessary for exhibitions to have such pompous, overblown statements? The 56th (this year’s) Venice biennale intro gets my Twitterati’s gong for one of the best/worst examples of such artspeak: “Rather than one overarching theme that gathers and encapsulates diverse forms and practices into one unified field of vision, All the World’s Futures is informed by a layer of intersecting filters, namely Garden of Disorder, Liveness, On Epic Duration and Reading Capital. These filters in their iterative choreography across the exhibition represent a constellation of parameters that circumscribe multiple ideas, which are touched upon to both imagine and realise a diversity of practices.”

I agree with writer and artist Alistair Gentry: such excessive art jargon seems only to “grant power and prestige to a minority of privileged insiders while trying to withhold access by the rest of us.”

If public galleries really want to make themselves more accessible, do exhibition titles such as The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (an extract from Jeremiah 17:9) and Happiness is a New Idea (a phrase apparently first coined in the French revolution) assist?

Surely more user-friendly are descriptions such as those for John Virtue: The Sea (“large paintings and works on paper, studies of the North Norfolk coast”); American Dream (“a response to capitalism and our consumption-driven society”) and Real painting (“an exhibition of new and existing work by ten artists working nationally and internationally”).

If you’re working in the contemporary visual arts and want to attract wider and more diverse audiences, the verbosity and artybollocks will just have to go. Instead, try plain English, “written with the reader in mind and with the right tone of voice” – or take some tips from George Orwell:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Join our community of arts, culture and creative professionals by signing up free to the Guardian Culture Pros Network.
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Artspeak alert: what not to write or say
From 'radical unreality' to 'leggy plasticity', we collate the most baffling examples of art lingo going, as submitted by you

Matthew Caines
@mattcaines

Friday 3 May 2013 12.43 BST
Last modified on Wednesday 31 December 2014 10.45 GMT

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Share on Goog Artspeak alert: what not to write or say
From 'radical unreality' to 'leggy plasticity', we collate the most baffling examples of art lingo going, as submitted by you

Matthew Caines
@mattcaines

Friday 3 May 2013 12.43 BST
Last modified on Wednesday 31 December 2014 10.45 GMT



Visual by Tagul, which only works on the desktop version of this page – hover your cursor over the words to read in full

"There are so many beautiful flowers in my garden, I took some pictures of them." So starts Jörg Colberg in his self-imposed mission to write an artistic statement for his own work. It's not until several minutes and rewrites later that we hear the final iteration, describing his work as "timelessly sublime and superbly majestic" relating to "humanity's ever-evolving disconnect from its innermost self".

While this might be parody, there are artist statements and performance programmes out there littered with posture and pretence. And how we communicate our work is an important issue, as the recently-launched website Interpretation Matters shows – artspeak can have a profound impact on audience experience, visitor rates, artist reputations and more.

So in a call to cull more tortured descriptions, we asked you to send us the most offending words, sentences or paragraphs of artspeak you've read. From press releases to portrait labels, you submitted in your droves to help us collect some of the most confusing and complex material going, and we've visualised some of the best (or is that worst?) examples above.

Enjoy, and let us know if there's anything we've missed by adding them in the comments section below.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Culture Professionals Network.


Visual by Tagul, which only works on the desktop version of this page – hover your cursor over the words to read in full

"There are so many beautiful flowers in my garden, I took some pictures of them." So starts Jörg Colberg in his self-imposed mission to write an artistic statement for his own work. It's not until several minutes and rewrites later that we hear the final iteration, describing his work as "timelessly sublime and superbly majestic" relating to "humanity's ever-evolving disconnect from its innermost self".

While this might be parody, there are artist statements and performance programmes out there littered with posture and pretence. And how we communicate our work is an important issue, as the recently-launched website Interpretation Matters shows – artspeak can have a profound impact on audience experience, visitor rates, artist reputations and more.

So in a call to cull more tortured descriptions, we asked you to send us the most offending words, sentences or paragraphs of artspeak you've read. From press releases to portrait labels, you submitted in your droves to help us collect some of the most confusing and complex material going, and we've visualised some of the best (or is that worst?) examples above.

Enjoy, and let us know if there's anything we've missed by adding them in the comments section below.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Culture Professionals Network.

few of my latest 31 JULY 2015

In my will it states that: no museum, gallery, curator, collector,etc who is in possession of any work from the Koons or Hirst 'art' factories, or an Ono, Emin or Danh Vo will be allowed to purchase or hang any of my work, as I do not wish to be associated with what is passed off as 'art' by those or similar individuals, who live OFF art and not FOR it.

Thursday 30 July 2015

Art Journeys; golden ratio aesthetic myth


An Art-to-Art Journey to Switzerland's Masterpieces
Bob Preston, a resident of Geneva and the founder of the leading travel companies Swiss Panache and Panache.Voyage, has created a tour that highlights both Swiss craftsmanship—its famous watches and knives—as well as its contributions to the worlds of art, architecture and design. You'll see important works by Paul Klee, Le Corbusier, and others. Between all the cultural highlights (some described in more detail in this guide), Bob will make sure you experience the best of Switzerland's hotels and restaurants.
http://www.afar.com/journeys/an-art-to-art-journey-to-switzerland-s-masterpieces?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=journeys

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The Golden Ratio: Design's Biggest Myth
The golden ratio is total nonsense in design. Here's why.
In the world of art, architecture, and design, the golden ratio has earned a tremendous reputation. Greats like Le Corbusier and Salvador Dalí have used the number in their work. The Parthenon, the Pyramids at Giza, the paintings of Michelangelo, the Mona Lisa, even the Apple logo are all said to incorporate it.

It's bullshit. The golden ratio's aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn. Many designers don't use it, and if they do, they vastly discount its importance. There's also no science to really back it up. Those who believe the golden ratio is the hidden math behind beauty are falling for a 150-year-old scam.What Is The Golden Ratio?

First described in Euclid's Elements 2,300 years ago, the established definition is this: two objects are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. The value this works out to is usually written as 1.6180. The most famous application of the golden ratio is the so-called golden rectangle, which can be split into a perfect square, and a smaller rectangle that has the same aspect ratio as the rectangle it was cut away from. You can apply this theory to a larger number of objects by similarly splitting them down.
"The golden ratio is always going to be a little off."

In plain English: if you have two objects (or a single object that can be split into two objects, like the golden rectangle), and if, after you do the math above, you get the number 1.6180, it's usually accepted that those two objects fall within the golden ratio. Except there's a problem. When you do the math, the golden ratio doesn't come out to 1.6180. It comes out to 1.6180339887... And the decimal points go on forever.

"Strictly speaking, it's impossible for anything in the real-world to fall into the golden ratio, because it's an irrational number," says Keith Devlin, a professor of mathematics at Stanford University. You can get close with more standard aspect ratios. The iPad's 3:2 display, or the 16:9 display on your HDTV all "float around it," Devlin says. But the golden ratio is like pi. Just as it's impossible to find a perfect circle in the real world, the golden ratio cannot strictly be applied to any real world object. It's always going to be a little off.
The Golden Ratio as Mozart Effect

It's pedantic, sure. Isn't 1.6180 close enough? Yes, it probably would be, if there were anything to scientifically support the notion that the golden ratio had any bearing on why we find certain objects like the Parthenon or the Mona Lisa aesthetically pleasing.

But there isn't. Devlin says the idea that the golden ratio has any relationship to aesthetics at all comes primarily from two people, one of whom was misquoted, and the other of whom was just making shit up.

The first guy was Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar who wrote a book called De Divina Proportione back in 1509, which was named after the golden ratio. Weirdly, in his book, Pacioli didn't argue for a golden ratio-based theory of aesthetics as it should be applied to art, architecture, and design: he instead espoused the Vitruvian system of rational proportions, after the first-century Roman architect, Vitruvius. The golden ratio view was misattributed to Pacioli in 1799, according to Mario Livio, the guy who literally wrote the book on the golden ratio. But Pacioli was close friends with Leonardo da Vinci, whose works enjoyed a huge resurgence in popularity in the 19th century. Since Da Vinci illustrated De Divina Proportione, it was soon being said that Da Vinci himself used the golden ratio as the secret math behind his exquisitely beautiful paintings.

One guy who believed this was Adolf Zeising. "He's the guy you really want to burn at the stake for the reputation of the golden ratio," Devlin laughs. Zeising was a German psychologist who argued that the golden ratio was a universal law that described "beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art... which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical."

He was a long-winded guy. The only problem with Zeising was he saw patterns where none exist. For example, Zeising argued that the golden ratio could be applied to the human body by taking the height from a person's navel to his toes, then dividing it by the person's total height. These are just arbitrary body parts, crammed into a formula, Devlin says: "When measuring anything as complex as the human body, it's easy to come up with examples of ratios that are very near to 1.6."
"In my own work, I can't ever recall using the golden ratio."

But it didn't matter if it was made up or not. Zeising's theories became extremely popular, "the 19th-century equivalent of the Mozart Effect," according to Devlin, referring to the belief that listening to classical music improves your intelligence. And it never really went away. In the 20th century, the famous Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier based his Modulor system of anthropometric proportions on the golden ratio. Dalí painted his masterpiece The Sacrament of the Last Supper on a canvas shaped like a golden rectangle. Meanwhile, art historians started combing back through the great designs of history, trying to retroactively apply the golden ratio to Stonehenge, Rembrandt, the Chatres Cathedral, and Seurat. The link between the golden ratio and beauty has been a canard of the world of art, architecture, and design ever since.
Ian Yen via Yanko Design
You Don't Really Prefer The Golden Ratio

In the real world, people don't necessarily prefer the golden ratio.

Devlin tells me that, as part of an ongoing, unpublished exercise at Stanford, he has worked with the university's psychology department to ask hundreds of students over the years what their favorite rectangle is. He shows the students collections of rectangles, then asks them pick out their favorite one. If there were any truth behind the idea that the golden ratio is key to beautiful aesthetics, the students would pick out the rectangle closest to a golden rectangle. But they don't. They pick seemingly at random. And if you ask them to repeat the exercise, they pick different rectangles. "It's a very useful way to show new psychology students the complexity of human perception," Devlin says. And it doesn't show that the golden ratio is more aesthetically pleasing to people at all.

Devlin's experiments aren't the only ones to show people don't prefer the golden ratio. A study from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley found that, on average, consumers prefer rectangles that are in the range of 1.414 and 1.732. The range contains the golden rectangle, but its exact dimensions are not the clear favorite.
Many Of Today's Designers Don't Think It's Useful

The designers we spoke to about the golden ratio don't actually find it to be very useful, anyway.

Richard Meier, the legendary architect behind the Getty Center and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, admits that when he first started his career, he had an architect's triangle made that matched the golden ratio, but he had never once designed his buildings keeping the golden ratio in mind. "There are so many other numbers and formulas that are more important when designing a building," he tells me by phone, referring to formulas that can calculate the maximum size certain spaces can be, or ones that can determine structural load.
"There are so many other numbers and formulas that are more important when designing a building."

Alisa Andrasek, the designer behind Biothing, an online repository of computational designs, agrees. "In my own work, I can't ever recall using the golden ratio," Andrasek writes in an email. "I can imagine embedding the golden ratio into different systems as additional 'spice,' but I can hardly imagine it driving the whole design as it did historically... it is way too simplistic."

Giorgia Lupi of Accurat, the Italian design and innovation firm, says that, at best, the golden ratio is as important to designers as any other compositional rule, such as the rule of thirds: maybe a fine rule-of-thumb, but one that good designers will feel free to reject. "I don't really know, in practice, how many designers deliberately employ the golden ratio," she writes. "I personally have never worked with it our used it in my projects."

Of the designers we spoke to, industrial designer Yves Béhar of Fuseproject is perhaps kindest to the golden ratio. "I sometimes look at the golden ratio as I observe proportions of the products and graphics we create, but it's more informational than dogmatic," he tells me. Even then, he never sets out to design something with the golden ratio in mind. "It's important as a tool, but not a rule."

Even designers who are also mathematicians are skeptical of the golden ratio's use in design. Edmund Harriss is a clinical assistant professor in the University of Arkansas' mathematics department who uses many formulas to help generate new works of art. But Harriss says that the golden ratio is, at best, just one of many tools at a mathematically inclined designer's fingertips. "It is a simple number in many ways, and as a result it does turn up in a wide variety of places..." Harriss tells me by email. "[But] it is certainly not the universal formula behind aesthetic beauty."
The Sacrament of the Last Supper, 1955, Salvador Dali
Why Does The Myth Persist?

If the golden ratio's aesthetic merit is so flimsy, then why does the myth persist?

Devlin says it's simple. "We're creatures who are genetically programmed to see patterns and to seek meaning," he says. It's not in our DNA to be comfortable with arbitrary things like aesthetics, so we try to back them up with our often limited grasp of math. But most people don't really understand math, or how even a simple formula like the golden ratio applies to complex system, so we can't error-check ourselves. "People think they see the golden ratio around them, in the natural world and the objects they love, but they can't actually substantiate it," Devlin tells me. "They are victims to their natural desire to find meaning in the pattern of the universe, without the math skills to tell them that the patterns they think they see are illusory." If you see the golden ratio in your favorite designs, you're probably seeing th

Art & maths, publish your own art book, Bauhaus artists


Bridges 2015: a meeting of maths and art - in pictures

The Bridges Conference is an annual event that explores the connections between art and mathematics. Here is a selection of the work being exhibited this year, from a Pi pie which vibrates the number pi onto your hand to delicate paper structures demonstrating number sequences. This year’s conference runs until Sunday in Baltimore.http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/gallery/2015/jul/30/bridges-2015-a-meeting-of-maths-and-art-in-pictures
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http://www.gaapublishing.com/your-personal-book/


You can now have your very own book about yourself as an artist, with fabulous images of your artworks, your exhibitions and all your major achievements to show the world, and hand out to important contacts, galleries, dealers, agents, collectors, media. We also offer Amazon selling, and worldwide distribution services, so your art book could be in the bookshops shortly!

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All greatest artists have one! A book published about their work and achievements. Having your own art book is a great promotion & advertising source of a professional standard making you as an experienced artist coming across proficient, professional and well-established.

Giving you the opportunity to make important and meaningful contacts. Stand out with a classy and sophisticated book containing serious information with the exceptional artworks that you have created.

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Bauhaus Artists

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Caption: New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently acquired 20 postcards created by Bauhaus teachers and students, to promote their first exhibit in 1923. This one is by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack. John Wronn
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Caption: By Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack. John Wronn
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Caption: By Lyonel Feininger. John Wronn
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Caption: By Lyonel Feininger. John Wronn
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Caption: Famous artists and unknown students alike contributed designs. This one is by Vasily Kandinsky. John Wronn
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Caption: Likewise, this one is by Paul Klee. John Wronn
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Caption: By Paul Klee. John Wronn
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Caption: By Gerhard Marcks. John Wronn
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Caption: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. John Wronn
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Caption: By Oskar Schlemmer. John Wronn
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Caption: By Rudolf Baschant. John Wronn
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Caption: By Rudolf Baschant. John Wronn
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Caption: By Herbert Bayer. John Wronn
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Caption: By Herbert Bayer. John Wronn
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Caption: By Paul Haberer. John Wronn
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Caption: By Dorte Helm. John Wronn
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Caption: By Farkas Molnar. John Wronn
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Caption: By Kurt Schmidt. John Wronn
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Caption: By Kurt Schmidt. John Wronn
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Caption: By Georg Teltscher. John Wronn
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Caption: New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently acquired 20 postcards created by Bauhaus teachers and students, to promote their first exhibit in 1923. This one is by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack. John Wronn

In 1923, the Bauhaus was preparing for its first exhibition, where Walter Gropius, the school’s founder, would extol the benefits of industrial mass production. To publicize the events, the Bauhaus mailed out beautiful postcards.

Sixteen Bauhaus teachers and students designed postcards illustrating the German school’s ideas about art and technology. The downsized posters are full of sharp geometric drawings in black, red, yellow, and blue. Some look like rough sketches of architectural renderings, others like Cubist faces. New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently acquired 20 of these mini adverts, from a Weimar family who inherited the unsent cards from a relative who attended the original show. Juliet Kinchin, curator of MoMA’s Architecture and Design department, says the set of Postkarte fur die Bauhaus Ausstellung Weimar 1923 neatly encapsulate the ideas from the Bauhaus movement.

For one thing, postcards are essentially industrialized pieces of art. They were cheap to produce, could made in bulk, and didn’t require envelopes. “The medium was an important part of the message,” Kinchin says. “Modern design at the Bauhaus was not about creating one-off monumental or exclusive creations.” Gropius was shifting the Bauhaus’s emphasis from arts and craft to industry, partly because the earlier curriculum of cabinetmaking, woodworking, and weaving proved prohibitively costly and inefficient. The production of the humble postcards also eschewed elitism and traditional hierarchy. Students designed the cards along with famous artists like Vasily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.

At the time of the exhibit, the very existence of the Bauhaus was under siege. The years between the world wars were economically chaotic, and right-wing authorities in Weimar were already putting pressure on the progressive design institution. (The Nazis eventually forced the Bauhaus to shutter in 1933.) So in 1923, “Gropius and his staff were aware of the need to advertise the event as widely as possible,” Kinchin says. Their only means of doing so was through inexpensive items, such as small ceramics, toys, and, of course, these postcards.
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/perfect-medium-bauhaus-artists-postcards/

series of calls for artists; Laurel Arts District


The Des Plaines Arts Council (DPAC) announced the first in a series of calls for artists to submit applications for temporary display of public art in Des Plaines.

Artworks will be displayed in a storefront located in downtown Des Plaines’ Metropolitan Square.


A reception is planned for October, after the artwork has been installed, in coordination with the Des Plaines Arts Council’s annual Des Arts event.

Artists are responsible for the transportation and installation of their work. Artwork will be accompanied by labels identifying the artist, artwork, and directing interested patrons to the Des Plaines Arts Council website (dpartscouncil.org). A page will be posted on the arts council’s website with more information about the artist, purchase price for works on display, and a link to the artist’s website (if available). Proposals will be reviewed and juried by a committee of arts council members and community representatives.

If an exhibited work is sold during the Art Moves Des Plaines pop-up show, a 25% commission of the sales price will be paid to the Des Plaines Arts Council. These funds will be used to sustain future public art programs in Des Plaines. Preference may be given to work that has already been completed. Conceptual proposals will be considered if the artwork can be completed within the presented timeline, and applications are submitted with clear and detailed specifications and renderings.

A signed contract and license agreement approved by the Des Plaines Arts Council will be required before artwork can be displayed.

General liability insurance is not required from the artist. However, the arts council does recommend that all artists obtain property insurance to cover their work.

Artists interested in submitting proposals for consideration must submit a completed application with required attachments at: dpartscouncil.org. Applications are due Aug. 15. Jurying and selection of works will be announced by Aug. 31.

For more information go to dpartscouncil.org.

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In the shade of the downtown Laurel Arts District, nestled alongside the Patuxent River, a silk road for artists is winding its way through new businesses on Main Street.

Laurel Artist District Committee president Ada Ghuman, a driving force behind the concept, credits local artists and the Laurel proprietors who are displaying their work around town with creating a "chain reaction."

Fine art is selling in Old Town. And the eateries providing exhibit space are fostering a dynamic ambience for their businesses — the works on display refresh monthly to attract new and returning patrons.

According to its website, the Laurel Arts District Committee is an organization that aims to "promote wide-ranging community growth via the arts" while preserving the "unique historical town" of Laurel.
Fields, who recently left her job with the city, connected Ghuman with Nadol Hishmeh, owner of Olive on Main, a Mediterranean restaurant that opened in 2014 in the 500 block of Main Street, a space previously occupied by Salute Ristorante Italiano.

The Arts District Committee holds monthly Meet the Artist happy hours at Olive on Main. The events have attracted an increasing number of art enthusiasts to discuss the works on display with the artists who created them.

This month, the committee and Olive on Main celebrated a full year of partnership at their happy hour, drawing more than 70 attendees, double the number of the first reception. The work of Laurel resident L. Anjanine Kvale was featured, and the artist who sold eight of her paintings.

A member of the Laurel Arts Guild and a 13-year Old Town resident, Ghuman said she's known neighbors to meet and socialize at Main Street establishments in the past, but that discovering modern art on the walls to discuss, and perhaps purchase, is new.
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As an artist, Ghuman said she believes such collaborations between the Laurel arts community and business owners are reenergizing the city's culture and shifting the focus from traditional to contemporary art.

Olive on Main's Meet the Artist happy hours and rotating monthly exhibits have been so well received that the committee has artists lined up to show work there through the third quarter of 2016.

"I think there is a natural progression for something like this," Ghuman said. "And I am finally at the point where I found four other people [to help]."

Those four — Laurel residents Kvale, Zinoosh Farbod, Clayton Cooper and Amy Knox— round out the Laurel Arts District Committee.

The committee's annual Laurel Arts Festival has expanded from visual arts to include performances by musicians, theater troupes and poets.

Last October's festival at the Laurel Armory was co-sponsored by the city; Klingbeil Capital Management, developers of C Street Flats across from Venus Theatre; and Main Street's Cork and Bottle Liquors and featured a performance by Farbod's band, Channel Volatile.

Coffee and art

Works by local artists are also displayed at More than Java Cafe, a new Main Street coffee shop that opened this summer a few blocks away from Olive on Main.

Business has been brisk since the cafe opened and two of Elkridge resident Linda Wicksell's abstracts, "Down the Rabbit Hole" and "Forever Garden," have already sold.

Wicksell, a former Howard County Arts Guild member and current Laurel Arts Guild member, said she feels inspired by the quick sale of her paintings. She foresees historic Laurel becoming "another Ellicott City as a venue for artists to promote their work."

On Friday, July 31, More Than Java Cafe will host an evening reception entitled "13 Artists Exhibit." In contrast to the displays at Olive on Main, which showcase the multiple works of a single artist each month, cafe owners Ronnie and Tabitha Clark prefer a more eclectic art vibe for their Internet cafe.

Tabitha Clark said she plans to make the event "special for everyone" with wine and cheese tastings and samples from More Than Java Cafe recipes.

Currently working on pairing a new wine ice cream with homemade desserts for the reception, Clark said she appreciates the art work coming to her cafe and feels tempted to buy some of the art herself.

She particularly favors a digital composition by Joanna Yoder, "Mr. Rogers Three Hats, Claxton GA," hanging near the storefront window. Clark said it seems to belong there.

"It just fits so well," she said. "I would be sad if it left."
The More Than Java Cafe exhibit is catching attention from regular patrons. Whiskey Bottom resident Alex Watts, who plans to frequent the cafe every Saturday, said he appreciates the art he's discovered hanging on the walls as much as the "great coffee."

"I think I've been waiting for more art to come to the city," he said. "Laurel is finally blossoming."

Other artists showcasing their work at More Than Java include Ghuman, Kvale, Diane Shipley, Errol McKinson, Barbara Talbott, Steve Williams, John Cholod, Jon Shields, Paul Gush, Diego Sifuente and Patricia Steck.

Ghuman, Kvale and Sifuente also have their work on display through Aug. 15 at "Power of Words," an exhibit at the Empower 2 Move U Studio near City Hall on Sandy Spring Road.
lRelated
More than Java set to open on Main Street in June

Laurel
More than Java set to open on Main Street in June

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On Aug. 20, the Olive on Main Meet the Artist happy hour will feature works by West Laurel resident Agnes Conaty. "Memories of Home" is a nostalgic collection of watercolor and acrylic paintings inspired by her life in the Philippines and Maryland.

Ghuman said the Laurel Arts District Committee looks forward to organizing more regular exhibits and lots of special events — hopefully every other month — in the coming year.

As the network continues to spread, Ghuman said the committee plans to grow its organization as a nonprofit. The members are currently working on developing an advisory board to focus on legal and financial issues and applying for grants.
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"I feel this sleepy town is waking up with all sorts of creative endeavors and I support our kindred spirits," Ghuman said.

Inside A Japanese Billionaire's Art Archipelago;3 art destinations


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This story appears in the August 17, 2015 issue of Forbes.

For Japanese billionaire Soichiro Fukutake, the best place to view contemporary art is not a white-walled museum in New York, Paris or even Tokyo. Rather it’s an archipelago in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, where he has transformed what were dying industrial waste dumps into a glamorous destination for adventurous art lovers and high-profile collectors like French luxury-goods titan François Pinault, Greek industrial magnate Dakis Joannou and Los Angeles arts patron Eli Broad. “Most urban museums are just places for hanging beautiful art,” says the 69-year-old Fukutake. “The art, the building and the environment should work together to wake up the viewer.”
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Benesse House with “Peristyle,” a sculpture by George Richey. Photo: Osamu Watanabe

Even if you wake up at 7 a.m. at Benesse House—the $400-a-night hotel where many of Fukutake’s treasures are housed—you can indulge in an experience unique among the world’s finest resorts. With no guards or velvet ropes to block access, there is a museumful of blue-chip works to be explored, including a 1962 Giacometti bronze, a David Hockney swimming pool painting, a whitewashed Jasper Johns alphabet work and, surrounded by a sloping walkway, a 10-foot-tall neon-light sculpture by Venice Biennale winner Bruce Nauman, flashing provocative aphorisms in red, pink, blue and yellow: “Feel and Die,” “Fear and Live … .”

One of Fukutake’s goals for the islands is to see that his collection lives beyond his lifetime. “Through the project I’m searching for eternity,” he explains. “I want the art to be significant in any age.” To build his legacy, he has collaborated with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, known for his minimalist sensibility, improbable angles and liberal use of smooth, unpainted concrete. Together they have created a complex of elegantly designed structures, three of them carved into the hills of Naoshima Island, a 5-square-mile outpost of rolling terrain, small villages and stunning views of the sea.

“Afrum, Pale Blue” by James Turrell. Photo: FUJITSUKA Mitsumasa

Ando’s most striking structure, the Chichu Art Museum ( chichu means “underground” in Japanese), is almost entirely below the earth but doesn’t feel that way, with its two courtyards open to the sky and the elements, surrounded by slanted walkways, and skylights in three of the larger rooms. The Chichu houses work by just three artists, including five late paintings from Claude Monet’s water lily series. Before entering the space, visitors must don soft white slippers to avoid soiling the luminous white floor tiles made from Carrara marble. “Many people say that Naoshima is better than l’Orangerie,” says Fukutake. “In Naoshima it’s a spiritual experience.”

Fukutake made his estimated $1.02 billion fortune through his share in Benesse Holdings, a company his late father founded in 1955 as Fukutake Publishing. After his father died of a heart attack in 1986, he changed the name to Benesse, from the Latin words for “well-being.” Today Benesse owns the Berlitz language schools, correspondence courses and 275 nursing homes throughout Japan. Under Fukutake’s direction, first as chairman and now as executive advisor, Benesse funnels 5% of company shares into the Fukutake Foundation, which supports the art site. He has also invested $240 million of his family fortune into the project.

While Tokyo would be the obvious location for such a museum, Fukutake had come to see the city as a destructive center of money and stress. “Tokyo is chaos and madness, like New York,” he says. “There is too much–too much entertainment, too many products, too many people.” Better to appreciate art surrounded by the natural world.

In addition to three Ando-designed museums and the museum-cum-hotel, Fukutake has commissioned 20 site-specific works. In 1995 Benesse also established a prize at the Venice Biennale for an artist it would fund to produce a piece for the islands. The first one, by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, consists of a series of more than 20 rocks placed according to principles of feng shui on a grassy area surrounded by trees just off the beach. The artist set a hot tub in the middle of the work, and hotel guests can make arrangements to soak there while gazing out at the sea.
0727_life-naoshima-yayoi-kusama-pumpkin_1200x675

Yayoi Kusama, “Pumpkin,” 1994. Photo: Shigeo Anzai

To determine the best spots for the outdoor pieces and museums, Fukutake flies his private helicopter over Naoshima and two nearby islands, Teshima and Inujima. Finding the works of art scattered between the hotel and the Chichu museum a half-mile up the hill can feel like a scavenger hunt. One piece, by Japanese artist Tsuyoshi Ozawa, is a series of 88 Buddhas in bas-relief on bits of industrial slag. It lies across a pond in an easily missed curve in the road.

Lee Ufan Museum, Designed by Tadao Ando. Photo: Tadasu Yamamoto

While building the museums on Naoshima, including one devoted to the work of Korean-born minimalist Lee Ufan, Fukutake came up with the idea of transforming abandoned homes into works of art. Visitors can take a shuttle bus five minutes from the hotel into the charming village of Honmura, where there are seven so-called “art house projects.” The most striking is a collaboration between Ando, who designed the structure, and James Turrell, the 72-year-old American artist who creates works using light and optical illusions to startling effect.

On Teshima, a beautiful, hilly expanse where Fukutake restored the rice paddies that cover the hillsides, there is another extraordinary museum, unlike anything I have seen. Shaped like a giant teardrop and made out of white cement, it’s nestled in a shallow valley. Two ovals cut into the ceiling let rain fall inside. Visitors must remove their shoes, and attendants admonish them not to get their feet wet. But what appear to be naturally occurring puddles turn out to be the result of tiny underground holes spouting water that then flows down the highly polished floor, looking like glowing pools of mercury. Standing under the sloping roof, I felt like I was in an open-air spaceship moving through a beautiful galaxy of abundant water.

Though the Benesse Art Site Naoshima is remote–more than six hours from Tokyo, including three and a half hours on the wonderful Shinkansen bullet train, two different local trains and a 20-minute ferry ride from the sleepy town of Uno–the hotel, which consists of the 10-room museum and three annexes with an additional 55 rooms, was almost fully booked in early June.

While both Benesse Holdings and the Fukutake Foundation administer and fund aspects of the project, all major decisions flow through Fukutake. Since 2010 the foundation has collaborated with the local government to produce the Setouchi Triennale, where temporary exhibits are scattered around a dozen islands. The next festival will start in March 2016.

But these islands are not a home for Fukutake. Because of his love of nature, he moved from Japan to New Zealand five and a half years ago. He keeps two houses there, in Auckland and on the south island, and flies his two-seater plane between the two. But he spends a quarter of the year in Japan, as much of it as possible in his artful archipelago. “I want people from the big city to envy this place,” he says. “I want to create a new country in Japan.”

ARTFUL TRAVELING

Three prime destinations for adventurous art lovers.

ZABLUDOWICZ COLLECTION
SARVISALO, FINLAND
Naoshima inspired London collectors Anita and Poju Zabludowicz to convert their island property into a retreat where artists create site-specific works.

INHOTIM
BRUMANDINHO, BRAZIL
More than 200 works of contemporary art are displayed on 345 acres of a botanical garden owned by mining magnate Bernardo Paz.

CHINATI FOUNDATION
MARFA, TEX.
The late minimalist Donald Judd worked on this former Army base in the high desert that now displays pieces by a dozen artists in a series of indoor and outdoor spaces.

Poly Group;HK's burgeoning art consulting industry


Article by Skate’s Art on China’s Poly Culture Group

Beijing | 30 July 2015 | AMA | |

In an article on the general state of the art market, Skate’s makes a note on the Chinese market, focusing particularly on the state group Poly Culture Group.

Poly Culture Group is the third largest auction house on a global scale in terms of transaction volume. It operates in three sectors; art sales being its primary domain. Nevertheless, the deceleration of the Chinese economy and speculation against the Chinese art market has resulted in diminished performance of the group in this segment. In 2014, while Poly Culture has recorded an overall growth in its revenues of 12%, revenues generated by sales only increased by 4%. To counter this trend, Xu Niansha was nominated as Chairman of the group, bringing important experience gained through the management of tourism and entertainment. Additionall, Poly Culture has conducted a massive political investment: in 2014, the group invested nearly $500 million in the Chinese art market, exclusively purchasing Chinese art.

Poly Culture is a company affiliated with the Chinese government. It oversees three sectors: art sales, theatre, and the cinema. The two latter sectors have seen important growth over the course of 2014 (37 and 17%, respectively).
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Amanda Sheppard speaks to the city's art consultants, old and new, about the burgeoning consulting industry and its future. Additional reporting by Jasmine Chan

To those outside the field, art consultancy looks to be relatively straightforward. The consultant meets with a client (either private or corporate), they are given a brief and then select artworks to meet the needs of the patron. Yet to reduce the field to such a conceptualisation would not only be reductive, but also wrong. Art consultancy as an industry is one that is inherently fluid. It’s not uncommon for consultants to leave their positions to become art dealers, and vice versa. Consequently, it’s a profession difficult to define. With this in mind, it’s no wonder the term is often confused with associated fields. So we ask the industry insiders themselves: what is art consultancy?

“An art consultant looks after the art, whatever form it takes – a painting, sculpture, video installation, photographic study. All of those things involving an artist,” says Sarah Gordon, director of Canvas Art Consultants. As well as Hong Kong, the international consultancy firm also maintains offices in the United States, Singapore and Australia, servicing private and corporate clients, including five-star hotels. Gordon tells us that it is precisely the adaptability we spoke of earlier that defines an art consultant. “You need to be able to cross over. You need to be able to talk to an artist about their work. You need to know your way around a spreadsheet. You need to have some creative flair, have seen a lot of art, and you need to understand how to discuss art.”


Residential project by Canvas Art Consultants
Image: Zammy Miqdal & Tony Lai

Gordon’s musings are echoed by Ka Kee Pyne, a consultant turned gallerist. For Pyne, the position of consultant requires ‘across-the-board knowledge of the art market, the art mediums, and the nature of a piece in its potential environment, framing, installation and conservation’. Pyne was a consultant with Sandra Walters Consultancy and is now preparing to open her own gallery in Sai Ying Pun, Ka Kee Gallery of Objects, which hosts its inaugural exhibition in September.

Art consultancy is often conflated with interior design, but we are told that this should not be the case. Pennie Leung of the newly founded Cat Street Consultancy explains that consultants do not furnish a space. Rather, they should be seen to ‘provide a service for interior and exterior spaces by uplifting the environment with complimentary art pieces’. Explaining the relationship between the two, Gordon quotes Michael Bedner, founder of interior design firm Hirsch Bedner Associates: “interior design is like the dress; artwork is like the jewellery,” he says.

The task of outlining and iterating your tastes and commissioning a consultant may be daunting to a first-time buyer. As such, the line between creating and defining taste can be a thin one, but it is most certainly one that is tread carefully. Is it possible to overstep the mark? According to Pyne, “Taste has to be acquired, learned or informed. It is very personal and subjective. I don’t see how one can create taste if there is an essential lacking of artistic instinct.” Rather than fashioning a style out of thin air, Gordon tells us, the role of a consultant is to bridge the gap between collectors and creators.


Sculpture by Nathalie Decoster - project by Sandra Walters Art Consultancy

The art market is thriving in Hong Kong. Not only is it one that is financially viable and profitable, but it is also one that harbours a strong creative output. Gordon cites an impressive balance in the presence of big named international galleries and local galleries. She further alludes to the collaborative nature of the galleries through the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association, and the continued development of the M+ museum, which is scheduled for completion in 2019.

The professionals respond almost as if in unison on one point – art is big business in Hong Kong. Despite attendance at this year’s Art Basel having been lower than the last, Pyne says sales were strong. The fairs promote the awareness of art and living in the city, she says. “The fairs [Art Basel and Art Central] saw more new collectors and young people buying art. This is a positive trend.” Hong Kong is no longer seen as a growing art scene – it’s well and truly alive and kicking. But while art buying is on the up, we can’t help but question whether this is a trend impacting wider society or existent collectors. When the question is posed to Gordon, she responds that, simply put, everybody buys art. “It’s right across the spectrum, from Joe Schmo looking to brighten up his apartment to serious collectors.”

This is not to say that the success of a gallery is guaranteed. Frankly speaking, you’ve got to offer what people want. As a well-established gallery in Hong Kong, Leung and the Cat Street Gallery are looking to do that. The gallery focuses on international contemporary art, and showcases a wide range of emerging and established artists. This includes the likes of social media artist Murad Osmann, who became an internet sensation with his #FollowMeTo series, featuring girlfriend Natalia Zakharova leading Osmann and his camera around the world.


Residential project by Cat Street Consultancy
Image via Architecture Limited

Galleries going in-house and establishing their own consultancy firms is a growing, though by no means new, trend. The most recent example of this is the Cat Street Gallery and the newly affiliated Cat Street Consultancy. Director Pennie Leung explains, “Having the expertise and existing relationships with artists and clients seemed like the perfect addition to the gallery.” The newly established consultancy will service corporate clients both in Hong Kong and abroad, as well as private clients and those in the hospitality industry. When asked about the consultancy’s key tenets, Leung explains that they ‘aspire to offer a fresh perspective for each and every project to create truly inspirational spaces and environments with art’.

Are all galleries diversifying as a result of choice, or are some acting out of financial necessity? Is the power of the gallery becoming less obvious? Having served as a consultant and now a gallerist, Pyne is in a unique position to comment. “[Many galleries] are moving vertically inside the buildings in Central or out to Wong Chuk Hang. The diminishing visibility of galleries on the traditional strip along Hollywood Road and Wyndham Street may affect operators, but they are combating this by relocating together.” Pyne cites Soho 189 and South Island Art Hub as successful initiatives.

Ultimately, the role of the consultant is to translate the vision of the patron into a physical, artistic presence, whether they bea corporation or a private client. As a reputable art hub in its own right, the industry in Hong Kong is likely to continue to grow and thrive, and to appear on the radar of many a Hongkonger, Joe Schmo or otherwise.

Contemporary Art of Excellence Book 2016 be included


http://www.gaapublishing.com/get-featured

Do you have it what it takes?

The “Contemporary Art of Excellence" Book 2016 hardcover coffee table book is an ideal opportunity to get your art seen in many countries reaching a substantial, and sophisticated audience. Among other the book will be distributed at museums, international art fairs, galleries, also through Amazon, and book shops around the world.

Register for the 2016 Book - find application form below. (Prices start from only £ 250 GBP / € 350 EUR / $ 395 USD)

Please note that the reviewing and selection process which takes time. Allow 2-3 days for a response. Please note that we handle a cancellation policy.

Submission of your application does not automatically confer the right of publish to Contemporary Art of Excellence 2016.

Decisions on admission are made exclusively by Global Art Agency Selection Committee. Selecting participants in accordance with the criteria of quality and suitability for the CAE Book 2016 concept.

Please note that the number of published artists is limited. Being rejected does not always mean that your art is not good enough, but that spaces are limited, and the current demand is high.

BOOK DESCRIPTION
· Large Coffee-Table book
· Hard Cover
· Museum quality printing
· Language: English
· Full Colour Waterless Offset
· Contains inner pages of high quality 130gsm silk
· Size: Square 11” X 8.5” / H 280mm x W 216mm
· Page size: H 11” X W 8.5” / H 280mm x W 216mm per page.
· Selected participants get one book for free
· ISBN
· First print run by Naturally Responsible produced by World's Leading Environmental Printer Seacourt Ltd.
· Double Queen's Award Winning Printing Company.

DISTRIBUTION
· Worldwide distribution including Book Shops in UK, US, Canada, Europe and Australia.
· Printed books also available to order through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Foyles, Bertram, Blackwell - around 30 well-known distributors in the US and Canada, UK and Europe, and Australia.
· Distribution ebook through Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google, Kobo, and Blio across many territories.
· Distribution for the Kindle, Nook, iBookstore, and other ebook stores.
· Distributed to Art Museums and Art Galleries (New York, LA, London, Paris, Barcelona, Moscow, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Madrid, ...)
· Art Fairs (OIAF, RIAF, BCN ART, Amsterdam ART, Vienna, Tokyo Art Fair, Miami, ...)
· For sale at £ 20 GBP each plus shipping costs.

Each included artist in “Contemporary Art of Excellence 2016” has the right to one free copy of the book. The shipping and handling charges are based on the delivery option you choose (the postage costs for the first book is included, extra book orders will be charged extra for postage and will be invoiced before shipping).

Please read the Terms & Conditions before applying.
APPLY

Take Me To The Application Form →https://secure.jotformpro.com/form/50052110952946

Contemporary Art of Excellence Book 2016

Please note that the reviewing and selection process takes time. Allow 2-3 days for a response. Note that we handle a cancellation policy. 24hrs free cancellation from application date, thereafter a 25% cancellation fee of your booking will be invoiced to cover administration costs, in the case that you have to cancel before making the first payment. Unsuccessful applicants will not be charged.

Once approved a first payment of 50% is required within 7 days of approval email date. The full payment need to be made before 1st November 2015. Please note that there is a £ 25 Booking Fee for every order to cover transaction and admin costs.

UK VAT 20% might be applicable.

Publishing date of the book will be Feb/March 2016.
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Select an Option: (Single-Page is for the Beginning Emerging Artist Only, displayed in a separate section of the book.) *
1 x Single-Page (w:210 mm x h:280mm) Max 2 images : 250 GBP * 1 x Double-Page (w:420 mm x h:280 mm) Max 4 images : 500 GBP 2 x Double-Page (x2: w:420 mm x h:280 mm) Max 8 images : 900 GBP

Each included artist featured in the "Contemporary Art of Excellence 2016" will receive one free copy of the book (postage cost is included) and to be shipped to the address given in this application form.

Extra Books: at the shipping and handling charges based on the delivery option you choose.

* Single Page option is for the beginning Emerging Artist only, which is a separate section in the book.

Booking Fee of £ 25 GBP are added to each booking to cover transactions and admin costs.

Read full Terms and Conditions here.
Partner Code
Extra Books
1 x Book : 20 GBP (plus shipping £10 in EU or £20 rest of the world) 2 x Book : 40 GBP (plus shipping £10 in EU or £20 rest of the world) 3 x Book : 60 GBP (plus shipping £15 in EU or £30 rest of the world) 4 x Book : 80 GBP (plus shipping £15 in EU or £30 rest of the world)
Please confirm agreement: *
I have READ and hereby AGREE to the T&C of the Contemporary Art of Excellence 2016 Book published by the Global Art Agency