the art life

"Three signed watercolours by Adolf Hitler are to be sold at auction next month in Nuremberg in southern Germany, scene of the Nazi war crimes trials, a local paper said on Thursday. The paintings from 1910 and 1911 are entitled "Zerschossene Muehle" ("Bullet-riddled Mill"), "Weissenkirchen in der Wachau" -- the Austrian town depicted -- and "Haus mit Bruecke am Fluss" ("House With A Bridge Over A River"), the Nuernberger Nachrichten said.

According to the catalogue of the Weidler auction house, bidding will start at 3,000 euros (4,270 dollars) when the paintings go under the hammer on September 5. In April, the same auction house sold two watercolours signed by the Nazi dictator to a private collector for 32,000 euros but some works have fetched much higher sums.

In 2006, 21 works sold in Britain for 118,000 pounds (126,000 euros, 171,000 dollars). And earlier this year, a series of Hitler watercolours were sold at a British auction house for over 100,000 euros.

As a young man, Hitler had pretensions as an artist, applying to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. However, he failed to gain a place at the academy and was told his drawings showed a lack of talent. He was advised to study architecture instead but refused to shelve his artistic ambitions, making money in his 20s by copying scenes from postcards and selling the results to tourists.

via Google News

Labels: bad art, painting

Some of the most extraordinary images committed to vinyl at The World's Worst Album Covers?
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Labels: bad art, links

"We made love this morning: how many people can say that? But she can turn from a sweetheart into a Medusa in a nanosecond. In the past, we used to to totally poison our lives. She would say horrendous things about my art, things not even a discourteous critic would say. Even now she does it, and I feel like saying, 'Get lost, you bloody Bavarian peasant. How dare you!' But I don't, because although her criticism is totally subjective, and to a great extent pedestrian, I am an artist of the people. I believe in keeping in touch with the common wisdom, and that's what she articulates..."

Charles Billich, on his relationship with his wife Christa, 2 of Us, Good Weekend, April 14, 2007.

Labels: bad art, old media, personalities

Nature seems to be everywhere. Not the real thing of course, which is always inescapably everywhere, but rather the seemingly sudden and complete saturation of the art world with every other exhibition in Sydney taking nature as its metaphor. Nature is on our minds! We have pondered the meaning of this and wondered if it might have some profound connection to the very basis of the human relationship to the natural world and the expression of that relationship through art, and moreover, an expression of the animistic heart of our culture – but then, it’s probably got more to do with so much nature being on the tele at the moment.

Anne Zahalka’s Wild Life at Roslyn Oxley takes the representation of nature found in the antique dioramas of the Mammal Hall at New York’s American Museum of Natural History and updates them to more accurately represent the status of nature in the world today. Into these immaculately constructed dioramas Zahalka has photographically introduced new elements – in a diorama of deer the artist she has added a guy with a rifle [helpfully called Deer Hunter], an alpine scene of mountain goats now has a helicopter and a discarded water bottle [Alpine Scene] – in others tourists meet a lynx, exotic birds meet a lady in kimono and some tourists hassle a brown bear. The photographs have been mounted on the gallery wall that has been painted green and cream to create a faux museum setting and visitors can pop on a pair of headphones to listen to audio - a soundtrack of natural environmental sounds mixed with tour guide chatter and coach air breaks.

Like much of Zahalka’s work, the series has a certain visual appeal but it seems to have little to do with the hammy interventions of the artist. The American Museum’s dioramas are widely acknowledged as masterpieces of an outdated attitude to nature [killing and mounting as an act of ‘preservation’] but which are nonetheless time capsules of no longer extant environments. In Zahalka’s works, the artist uses these images not for what they are but as stand ins for the idea of the ‘museumification’ of nature, a slightly comic rendition of the world in full Victorian splendour. Perhaps if that is what these dioramas were meant to have been about Zahalka’s critique might have some bite but as it stands, she is appealing to the ignorance of people who don’t know anything of the original intention and then congratulating the viewer for being as cynical as the artist. The ecological message of the works is incredibly obvious and frankly, just not very well done. The most successful work is Rising Tide, a diorama of a tropical island with a flock of flamingos flying overhead as the new sea level swamps the island. The best part about it is that you can’t tell what the artist has done, if anything, to the original, which seems to be a sort of indictment of the rest of the series.


Rohan Wealleans, Head, 2004.
Paint, plastic, polystyrene on board, 160x120x150.
Courtesy Roslyn Oxley Gallery.

Rohan Wealleans has the big gallery space at the Ox and although the nature metaphor is somewhat tangential compared to Zahalka, the anthropological aspect is just as strong. Visually reminiscent of Hany Armanious and some of the older works of Karl Weibke, Wealleans is like a grunge lite hippy with maybe too much of a liking for Dances with Wolves - entitled Tatunka the show is a series of huge Native American ‘dream catchers’ painted with startling reds, shocking blues and other inappropriate colours glooped on. From an aesthetic point of view, the works are fantastic, but there’s something so inescapably naff about a non Native American making Native American objects, not to mention that dream catchers are the trinket shop equivalent of rainbow stickers and shaky snows with dolphins inside. Yikes. Wealleans’s Head, a huge head made of paint and polystyrene has an amazing psychedelic intensity and the marbling of the surfaces is vertiginous drop into the whirl of the unconscious, an effect deftly repeated in Disciple of The Pearl, a pear shaped monster that hangs from a purpose built stand a la Dr. Seuss. We’re not sure if Wealleans is actually seeking some equivalence of the unconscious between cultures and if he is, that probably makes it all alright. If he’s not, it’s time to stop taking acid.

Paul Adair, Crate, 2005.
Giclee print, 80x80cms. Courtesy Stills Gallery.

Stills Gallery is usually a pretty straight, old school photography gallery. Occasionally they do something a little different – sculpture, video – and the current show of Paul Adair, Daniel Kojta and Pete Volich is very much in this latter category with photography only acting as part – rather than the whole – of the artist’s practice. Volich’s series of works were seen in last year’s Helen Lempriere Scholarship show and we didn’t like them much on first viewing. Second time around we’ve warmed to them considerably, especially since one is about having your polo shirt chewed by a moose. Mounting shirts like commemorative guernseys, Volich’s pieces record events that are far more ordinary. Oh dear… You Won’t Do That Again is the moose-chewed shirt with the unsightly stain, on the torn shirt and a photograph of the moose attached to the bottom of the special frame. The stories behind the other works are a little more obscure, each element adding a clue but with titles like A panel beaten life and love for the sweets, the chain of command had shifted and jnr’s voice was up for it and Reach with you right hand, live with your left. Chin up and bear it for a big life and only piss in a pocket that us reinforced, the works cast Volich as an art world cross between Sufjan Stephens and Dave Eggers.

Kotja’s video installation Alien Presence H – [hand made echo] is a rectangular screen made up of 11 joined frames, each frame a shot of a different location around the world made by the artist and 10 collaborators. The shoot was synchronised and then, in Kotja’s set up, threaded together by lining up the horizon lines of each shot. What you get in effect is a single continuous landscape made up of sectioned landscapes. According to the room sheet “we are bombarded with high velocity information daily. As a result, the possibility of experiencing the present is removed, through the consistent effect of the ‘update’. Knowledge is obsolete before it can be comprehended.” We’re not quite sure how this methodology is meant to reflect this idea, but reading further the artist says that the desert environment is free of ‘updates’ and therefore apparently allowing magic to take place. It’s a hopeful formulation at best since we have always thought that we only ever experience the present, time being a condition of an eternal ‘now’, we must ask how a shot of a desert can alleviate the continual input of living in the present – with or without updates [and precisely what does he mean by that since every second is an update?]. One can at least luxuriate in the slight fuzziness of the logic and the image itself.

Returning to our nature trek, Adair’s works explore “the portrayal of reality in contemporary photography. More specifically, he is interested in exposing a reality that is quite sinister and, in a sense, radically incomplete.” In his Crate, for example, a photograph of a Ring-tailed Possum [not the more common Brush-tailed variety] encounters a milk crate. Poor possie, not only is the milk crate a poor substitute for its preferred environment of the Australian bush, he’s stuffed – literally. Indeed, the whole thing is an artificial set up created by Adair, then shot against a white backdrop, and printed as a huge giclee print. Adair has wandered into similar conceptual territory as Zahalka, but he’s taken it another step by creating more obviously artificial environments that are free of the sentimental obviousness that so badly mars Zahalka’s work. In fact, Adair’s large scale photographs share something of the sensibility of Hayden Fowler, deploying attractive Fahler-esque constructions, as if put together from a kit, with the colour saturation of a Miffy book. Not really sinister, but still creepy as hell.

We went to see two new shows at Chalkhorse, the gallery put together by the ½ Doz. team. Fergus Binns is in the big space with an untitled show and They Guard It So Carefully You’d Think It Was Gold by Kate Mitchell is out the back in the smaller space.


Fregus Binns, Colour and Pattern, 2005.

Binns was in Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art last year and he does paintings of icons of Australiana, Steve Irwin, Ayers Rock, cans of VB, barbeque aprons. For this show he has resuscitated some of the Primavera paintings and added some new ones - a painting of a tropical island with a Qantas jet crashed into the ocean,another with the tail of a Qantas jet on fire and burning airliner wreckage littered around Uluru. The one of Steve Irwin holding a snake with stripes of paint on it called Colouration and Pattern from 2005 makes another appearance. The painting ‘quality’ is as bad as we have ever seen and even though some big claims are made in the catalogue for the relevance of making these images, we are profoundly unconvinced. For example:

“…[A] work entitled Diggers (2003), […] presents two faceless Australian men in khaki tropical attire digging a hole, seemingly without purpose. The myth of the Anzac Digger, perhaps our pre-eminent image, is totally undermined. What is left though is not the image of the two diggers, but a question. Why are the Diggers so important to me? This approach is also seen in the number of men dressed in animal suits, koalas and kangaroos etc, who can be found at the pub or just hanging about. What do these animal totems mean? How does a koala come to represent our nation?”

How exactly does this "totally undermine" the Anzac Digger? Brave men and women gave their lives to create the wonderful country that is Australia today and moreover, to guarantee the freedom of someone like Binns to make shit paintings. Like those troublesome Muslim youths, Binns should get down to his local RSL and learn a thing or two about the Anzac tradition. Hell, they might even offer some rudimentary painting classes.

Kate Mitchell’s show is performance art documentation of the artist digging a hole to China, she has compressed it down to 1½ minutes on a video shown on a tiny screen so small you can’t quite make out what she’s doing. In Danger Is My Daily Bread she climbs out on a rope bridge over a river and then cuts through the rope with a knife, and then falls into the water when the bridge collapses. Repeat. A sculpture called You should listen to rocks; they can tell you things (Rocky 8) is a fiberglass rock that you’re supposed to put your ear against and hear something. Unfortunately, it wasn’t turned on or it was broken. A pity.

Labels: artist run galleries, bad art, photography, reviews

How do I know a work of art is good?

This is the most difficult question to answer because the various factors that go into considering the worth of a work of art cannot help but be subjective. Like Bad Art, Good Art has a number of individual factors that should be considered or rejected when making a judgment. But where do you start? What should you consider? It all seems so hard… Luckily, The Art Life has formulated a 10 point rating system that can be used to score a work of art. When each score for each of the 10 categories is tabulated and compared to our completely objective measure of your subjective responses, you will finally, once-and-for-all be able to confidently say “this is a good work of art.”

1. I know I like it…

Just because you like something doesn’t mean its any good – yet you know you like it. Somewhere in the back of your mind, however, you know the art work is probably crap, it may not be very well done, or be visually appealing, it might be on sale for $2 and they might be everywhere - and no one else is likely to appreciate it on your level - but despite all this, you still like it… [See also #10]
[Score __/10]

2. Other People Say It’s Good

For reasons that seem obscure to you, there are a lot of people going around saying the work of art is good. There are people in newspapers, the web, on TV and radio all agreeing. Although, to you, the work seems weightless, pointless and disposable, the conviction of other people’s opinions appears rock solid – maybe these people see something you cannot see… and maybe they’re right! [See also #4]
[Score __/10]


3. It’s Historically Relevant
The work of art was already considered good long before you were born. You grew up looking at the work of art in books and on TV and hearing a lot of very clever people explaining why the work of art is historically relevant because [etc]. Does the work actually embody some particular idea or time that has now passed? Does the work still have some relevance now? If so, score accordingly [See also #2]
[Score __/10]

4. The Work Is Relevant to Contemporary Debates

Just because something is fashionable doesn’t mean it’s therefore bad – it just means a lot of people agree about something at the same time. In this context, a work of art may be superbly illustrative of a particular view, idea, philosophy, emotion or sentiment that is a la mode. If a work of art successfully engages with debates surrounding Post Colonialism, Post Modernism, Commodity Fetishism or [fill in today’s debate] it may achieve a high score in this category. [See also #3]
[Score __/10]

5. Technically, The Work of Art Is Very Well Made

For many people, this is the beginning and end of the question of whether a work of art is any good– but taken alone this category only proves that the artist has craft skills and little else. A subjective value judgment of whether something is well made usually also leads to the presumption that it looks good too – but that isn’t always the case. Asking if something is well made will perhaps also suggest that it will last through the ages [See #3] but might mean the work in question is a painting or a sculpture. But what if the work is an example of Land Art, or an ‘action’, or some other fast fading, temporary installation? The question then is about the appropriateness of a particular technique… [See also #6]
[Score __/10]

6. The Work Is Visually Appealing

When a work of art is visually appealing it is because you like its deployment of individual characteristics – but that doesn’t mean the work is pretty. In fact, it might be downright fugly, yet the artist made deliberate choices that the work should look the way it does. And it looks good! [See also #4]
[Score __/10]

7. The Work is Now an Icon

Like it or loathe it, the work of art has now reached complete ubiquity. Whether it has been around for yonks [See #3] or just arrived [See #4] makes little difference to the fact that you cannot escape it – in fact, the work of art’s ubiquity will now also mean it is historically relevant and will encourage contemporary debate. On the other hand, the work’s ubiquity might also be a pleasurable experience – make you laugh, make you cry, make you kiss $10 museum entry goodbye! [See also #8]
[Score __/10]

8. It Is Extremely Rare

There was only one. They found one in a very remote place. The person who made it is now dead. It is extremely expensive and/or hard to make. It is made from unusual materials that won’t last [except under special lighting]. Although once common, it is now kept in a safe and people are only allowed to look at it on special occasions. It was made a very long time ago. It was made for a different purpose but people now appreciate it on aesthetic grounds. [See also #7 #5 and #3]
[Score __/10]

9. The Work Of Art Is Worth A Lot of Money

There are people in the world who are prepared to pay extraordinary amounts of money for a work of art. All of the other categories come into play here and inevitably add more weight to other considerations when cold hard cash is on the table… I like it, but does anyone else? [#1]. If I pay big bucks, is it going to last? [#5] Is it beautiful to me? [#6] Is the work backed up by opinion and scholarly learning? [#2, #3, #4] You say no one else owns it - and it’s the only one of its kind?!! [#7, #8] Do you accept MasterCard, Diners or American Express? Kaaaa-chhing!
[Score __/10]

10. You Feel Something When You Look at It

Of all the imponderables of good art, this is the most perplexing, allusive and troubling – the work of art provokes an actual emotive response when you look at it – and strangest of all – it may not be the same response twice… What’s going on here? Why am I feeling this way? And how could this thing make me feel anything?!!
[Score __/10]

Just How Good Is It?

0-15 – Not Good - The work is actually quite bad but it has qualities you like. Just don’t fork out a lot of money for it and if you do, don’t expect to ever get it back.

15-30 – Just Ok - A lot of people like it and it seems ok – so it probably is ok. Most likely you will find this work in ok galleries done by ok artists and maybe in ok biennales. There is a lot of ok art.

30-60 – Average – it probably won’t last [in any sense] but it’ll do for now. It adequately fulfills a lot of requirements and is often mistaken for the next level of excellence, but it also has a level of durability and is probably aesthetically pleasing [in this year’s colours]. Enjoy while you can.

60-75 – Above Average – Not very much of this art actually exists and, in a rush of excitement, can get confused for art in the 75-100 range. Above Average art is usually made by mid to late career artists with a handle on what they are doing and, crucially, what they mean to do.

75-97 – Very Good Indeed – Any half decent public museum or [more likely] private or corporate collection will have a lot of very good art since they are the ones with the money to afford it. Since an inverse ratio applies here, very good art is often disliked for many spurious reasons. However, it is still very good indeed.

97-100 – A Masterpiece – Rarely if ever encountered, the “masterpiece” may be an illusion, but like heaven and the afterlife, a nice idea to cling to if most art scores in the 15 to 50 range. Rarely, consensus agrees that a work of art truly is a masterpiece and then we may all bask in its warmly glowing warm glow.

Labels: article, bad art, faqs