Francis Bacon’s £40million painting

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Newsflash: Francis Bacon’s work is about to be auctioned for £40 million 

Francis Outred, of Christie’s Europe, said: “This tour-de-force portrait of George Dyer presents a powerful portrait of arguably one of Bacon’s greatest loves.”

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I love Bacon’s work. The way he distorts the human form and suspends it in an unbelievable geometric space makes you remember glimpses of people and their gestures. His paintings are far from static; his figures squirm and fidget. I try to imagine George Dyer shifting as he posed for this portrait in his studio. Maybe they’re speaking to each other. Maybe he’s just looking back in admiration. 

£40 million pounds seems like a ridiculous amount to pay (someone will) but I’d rather someone pay for this than a Damien Hirst. 

SOVA Essay on Nam June Paik and Bill Viola

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Hey guys!

This is an essay sample on the SOVA long essay question we had to answer during the holidays. Enjoy, and jiayous for SOVA!

Discuss how Nam June Paik and Bill Viola’s use of video in their artworks changed the way people look at video and art.

Nam June Paik and Bill Viola are famous video artists who use video as a medium for creating their artworks. By using video, they have changed the way people viewed art, and opened new boundaries as to how artworks can be presented. Video is a combination of visual and auditory components, hence enhancing the sensory experience when viewers look at them. This introduces whole new concepts and ideas hat the artists can convey, and also changes the way the public view such artworks.

Nam June Paik is a Korean- American artist who is considered the pioneer of video art. By using video, Nam June Paik introduces the element of time into his works, which conventional mediums of art like paintings and drawings are not able to convey. He explores this idea of time, and also uses sounds frequently in his works —a concept which was greatly influenced by his friend, musician John Cage. One such artwork that explores the idea of time is TV Buddha. In TV Buddha, Nam June Paik places a mini bronze statue of a Buddha sitting cross-legged on a pedestal. A television is placed in front of it, and it is connected to a closed circuit television (CCTV) that is trained on the Buddha statue. The result is the Buddha statue looking at a recording of itself on the television screen.

This artwork explores concepts such as the infinite loop of time — the past (the recording of the Buddha) and the present (the actual Buddha that is sitting on the pedestal) collide and are presented face to face as the Buddha looks at a past version of itself. The past and the present can now coexist with the help of the CCTV and the television. Hence through this video artwork, Nam June Paik is able to look at the idea of time in his artworks. This also changes the public’s view towards art, which was previously thought to only exist in the present and portraying a fixed timeframe. However, with video art, this is not always the case anymore.

Nam June Paik also uses sound in his video artworks. This brings about a heightened sensory experience for the viewers, enabling them to be even more immersed into the artwork by creating an environment that engages more than the sense of sight, which is usually utilized in conventional art. Hence, sound has become an elemental part of Nam June Paik’s work, and plays a major role in conveying his message.

One example is “TV Piano”. In this video installation, Nam June Paik stacks fifteen cathode ray television sets on top of a piano. These television sets screen a live-feed of the piano keys, or videos of John Cage, the artist’s good friend. Cables connect the television sets to the cameras trained on the piano keys. The piano keys are also lit with a spotlight. Nam June Paik has programmed the piano to play on its own. This art installation relies more on the auditory senses from the piano and the television sets, than it being visually appealing. It has literally changed the way people ‘view’ art by including sound, making them ‘hear’ art too. With such video installations, art can now not merely be seen, but heard too, as it becomes inter-disciplinary by integrating music.

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Creative blocks

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Facing a creative block this holiday? (Yes, I am still deciding what to paint) Maria Popova of Brain Pickings compiled some ideas that include getting enough sleep, pretending to be someone else, doing housework, watching reruns of Law and Order SVU.

I particularly like this one:

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I’m in the middle of a massive spring clean, looking for a certificate (that I still haven’t found). I have rummaged through all the essays I wrote in college, notes and desperate pleas, drawings, old ticket stubs from riding the train in Spain and postcards of some of my favourite Nabi paintings (by Pierre Bonnard) and Dutch masters from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam… I also found 50 dollars in a red packet I forgot about! I could mash them up. I also found a quote by Hanif Kureishi from “Something Given”, quoted in an essay I wrote for an art therapy class, about the pains of art-making:

To begin to write — to attempt anything creative, for that matter — is to ask many other questions, not only about the craft itself, but of oneself, and of life. The blank empty page is a representation of this helplessness. Who am I? it asks. How should I live? Who do I want to be?… You fear finishing a piece of work because then, if you hand it over, judgement starts. There will be criticism and denigration. It will be like being young again, when you were subject to the criticism of others, and seemed unable to defend yourself, though most of the denigration people have to face has been internalised, and comes from within. Sometimes you feel like saying: Nobody dislikes my work quite as much as I do.

It is difficult to silence that critiquing voice in your head. Sometimes it better to just make ugly art for a start. My friend Ronald likes to say that we need to spend some years making bad work (getting it out of your system) before we peak and start making good work. Chuck Close would tell you to “just show up and get to work”. Do that.

Bill Viola

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“And I realized, all of a sudden that, my life, my family, going to the zoo, playing football with my kids, going to the beach, is equal to making a piece for the Guggenheim. You know, it was like, why the hell did I not see that if you’re gonna make true art, you have to make it. It’s gotta be one thing. You gotta be one thing. You cannot be like, Mr Famous Artist here and something else over there and you can’t keep those things apart if you wanna live your life to the fullest.”

The charismatic Bill Viola discusses his childhood, thoughts on his work and how they originated and video (“this medium holds lives”). He also tells us how his first installation “He Weeps for You” (1976) came about (11″49′) on a rainy day in New York.

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Damien Hirst x Alexander McQueen

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An article on the possible cooling of luxury brands collaborating with the big names of the Art World (published Dec 2012 here ) suggested that sales of luxury goods were shrinking due to the decline of demand in China. That has not stopped Damien Hirst and Alexander McQueen from coming up with the series of 30 scarves, counting on the super-rich clientele of luxury brands who also collect Hirst’s art (Hirst’s work routinely sell for millions a piece at Sotheby’s auctions). I wonder how sales of those scarves would be like and if I might chance on one at a vintage store in 20 years’ time.

McQueen-Hirst scarf

A McQueen-Hirst scarf with images of skulls, bugs and butterflies arranged in a kaleidoscopic design from his Entomology series: US$515 to $1,175

‘Three Studies of Lucian Freud’ by Francis Bacon

The scarves look like cheap alternatives for aspiring art collectors when compared to the most recent sale of Bacon’s triptych of Lucian Freud: US$142,400,000

Why is art so highly valued? Is it falsely inflated? Are prices so high because of good marketing and institutional support rather than it being “good art”?