LONDON — It is 2015 and so once again it is almost time to head to Venice for the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale. A welcome piece of pre-Biennale news was the announcement that the Ghanaian contemporary artist El Anatsui is to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award. This is good news for El Anatsui, but it is also welcome news for London’s October Gallery, which has represented El in London for many years.
The October Gallery is known for its support of what one might loosely call “World Art,” or what the gallery terms the “Transvangarde,” the trans-cultural avant garde. El Anatsui’s creations are a fine example of work in this category. Okwui Enwezor, the curator of this year’s Venice Biennale (the 56th), said of the award: “El Anatsui is perhaps the most significant living African artist working on the continent today. The award for which I am recommending him is an important honor to an artist who has contributed immensely to the recognition of contemporary African artists in the global arena.” Few would disagree with that. What makes El Anatsui’s work so extraordinary is his ability to repurpose the detritus of the urban world into beautiful objects. The art market, through its own immutable logic, has repurposed them again, by turning them luxury commodities. His gorgeous, lustrous wall hangings are actually made from discarded aluminum bottle tops flattened out.
When shown at swanky art fairs they tend to stop people in their tracks and are in huge demand when they appear at high-end auctions. One example, titled Path to the Okra Farm, sold at Sotheby’s in New York this time last year for $1.4 million (£860,580).
And so to more mundane matters. With the UK general election just days away (May 7), the British public is currently suspended between weary indifference toward the political classes and genuine concern as to how long the recession will continue. Nightly news bulletins and opinion polls confirm the deep disillusionment felt by many UK nationals about the state of the economy and the prospect of further cuts ahead.
Into this feverish climate and with impeccable timing, the Sunday Times chose to publish its annual “Rich List,” which revealed the extent to which the country’s wealthiest individuals have grown even wealthier, despite the recession. The report confirmed that the rich more than doubled their wealth over the last decade.
While this may generate even more resentment and envy among those who struggle to make ends meet, it will be greeted with open arms by the artists, dealers, auctioneers and advisers whose job it is to supply luxury goods to the super-rich. One of the most celebrated of these suppliers, and now a fabulously wealthy individual in his own right, is the American artist Jeff Koons, a survey of whose work opens this coming month at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery as part of the touring “Artist Room” series.
Quite what the gentlefolk of Norfolk will make of Koons’s various creations remains to be seen. For example, vacuum cleaners are only too familiar to the thousands of men and women who push them around on a daily basis in return for the minimum wage, but it’s doubtful they’ll ever have encountered three Hoovers in a glass case in an art gallery. However, these aren’t just Hoovers, they’re works of art that would have an eye-watering price tag were they to appear under an auctioneer’s gavel.
One example fetched $11.8 million (£6 million) at Christie’s New York in 2008. However, that price information is unlikely to be made public in the Norwich show, which aims to present Koons not as a manufacturer of expensive luxury goods for the world’s super-rich, but as an artist and innovator.
As William Galinsky, artistic director of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, explains: “This will be the biggest Jeff Koons exhibition in Britain for a decade and an unmissable opportunity for visitors to see the work of such an important, influential and fun artist.”
We look forward to the local Norwich press reviews. By way of sharp contrast, moviegoers may remember a few of the wonderful locations used in Mike Leigh’s recent film, Mr. Turner, about the great 19th century English landscape painter J.M.W. Turner. One of the film’s most memorable locations was Petworth House in West Sussex. Still occupied by the current Lord and Lady Egremont, whose family has owned the property since the time of Henry I (1068-1135), Petworth House and Park are now administered by the National Trust and are a popular destination for tourists with a hunger for classic British heritage.
Given all this background, it is not surprising that the park has been selected as the location for a new fine art and antiques fair opening on May 10. It will be held in a marquee in the 700-acre deer park, which surrounds the late 17th century Grade 1 listed mansion in the quaint Sussex town of Petworth. Unsurprisingly, given the venue, the event has attracted some of the most prestigious dealers and so visitors will be treated to a mouth-watering array across all categories.
Among the things that caught our eye was Edward Seago’s atmospheric, summery oil entitled On the Dunes, on show with Haynes Fine Art of Broadway, priced at £100,000-£150,000 ($152,000-$228,000).
A smart Regency brass-inlaid sofa table marked £9,500 ($14,450) is among Freshfords Fine Antiques’ offerings.
A piece of contemporary garden sculpture titled Joie de Vivre, by Penny Hardy, is to be shown by local pioneering contemporary art and sculpture dealers Moncrieff Bray Gallery and is priced at £1,500 ($2,275).
If the weather stays fine, this could turn out to be one of the most popular fairs of the summer, although it will have some way to go to compete with this year’s Masterpiece Fair in London at the end of June. Watch this space for news of that. And finally, a brief note about an interesting event opening at Bowman Sculpture in Mayfair this month. This is an exhibition of work by the current doyenne of traditional British sculpture, Helaine Blumenfeld, which will be shown alongside selected works by the late, great Henry Moore.
The show celebrates and restages an innovative exhibition held at the Alex Rosenberg Gallery in New York in 1985 where the two artists’ works entered into a silent “dialogue.” American-born Blumenfeld has arguably become the most significant British sculptor working in the time-honored techniques of marble carving, which she practices in her studios in Pietrasanta, Tuscany (a set of skills entirely alien to the Koons generation). However, her smaller-scale bronzes are also in many public and private collections around the world. It will be fascinating to see the extent to which her sculptural “voice” has developed in the 30 years since the New York dialogue.
The exhibition, which coincides with a new large-scale work by Blumenfeld being installed in London’s Berkeley Square, runs at Bowman Sculpture May 22 to June 30.
