Melissa Meyer

TITLE: Hartman 35
ARTIST: Melissa Meyer
WORK DATE: 2008
CATEGORY: Prints
MATERIALS: Watercolor monotype
MARKINGS: Signed, titled & dated in pencil
SIZE: h: 27.5 x w: 25 in / h: 69.8 x w: 63.5 cm
REGION: American
STYLE: Contemporary (ca. 1945-present)

Sol Le Witt

Wall Drawing #1136 2004

Saatchi Gallery reopens in new London venue

(above:Never afraid to court controversy, Saatchi has included a work which chronicles police corruption by presenting stories torn from US tabloid newspapers and sprayed with semen)

The gallery, home to Charles Saatchi's collection, was evicted from County Hall on London's Southbank in 2005 after a row with the building's owners.

It has now relocated to the larger Duke of York's HQ building on the Kings Road in Chelsea. Admission to all future shows will be free, thanks to a sponsorship deal with auction house Phillips de Pury. Inaugural exhibition The Revolution Continues: New Art from China will run from 9 October to 18 January 2009. It will feature paintings, sculptures and installations from 30 of China's leading artists.

The new 70,000-sq-ft (6,500-sq-m) gallery will also feature a dedicated space for artists to exhibit and sell their work commission free. The gallery says that a major focus of the Saatchi will be to "establish a ground-breaking education programme to make contemporary art even more accessible to young people".

The gallery left County Hall after the building's owners won a High Court battle to evict it.A judge upheld the claim by Japanese company Shirayama Shokusan that the gallery had shown "deliberate disregard" of the owners' rights.
Breaches included putting works in areas for which they had not paid rent and offering a two-for-one ticket deal.

The Saatchi Gallery opened in a disused paint factory in St John's Wood in 1985 before moving to County Hall in 2003. It has helped launch the careers of artists including Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.

Charles Saatchi's new Art Reality show is a reflection of the low regard we have for genuine talent

Charles Saatchi, the Citizen Kane of the art world, is about to transform himself into the Andrew Lloyd Webber of art.

A new BBC2 series, Saatchi's Best of British, will see him preside over a contemporary art reality show, comparable with Lloyd Webber's I'd Do Anything. Talented hopefuls (I've put that phrase in as blog-fodder ...) will attend his "intensive art school, where they will be tutored by top contemporary artists." The show will "attempt to discover the next Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin." Well, I don't suppose anyone would expect it to discover the next Cy Twombly or Jasper Johns.

And yet... why not? For all his public image as consumer of the new for its own sake, time was that Saatchi had high standards and exuded authority. He did not just buy or exhibit any old thing. In comparison with today's new collectors, who splash out fortunes on hilarious graffiti knock-offs and wander dazed and confused, credit card in hand, through art fairs pulsing with banality, he was a veritable Pope Julius II of courageous taste. There was some sense that in making it into his gallery, a Hirst was achieving something - that it all ... mattered. Back in 1992, you could go to the Saatchi Gallery, see what Saatchi was buying, and the avant garde was right there before your eyes.

Does anything that happens in a reality talent show matter? What are you saying about art by becoming involved in such nonsense?

It's of a piece with the desperate inclusiveness of Saatchi's online activities, and the staggering, yet boring, plurality of British art now. "Everyone an artist", said Joseph Beuys, and in Britain this seems to have come true. Or, as Rupert Pupkin put it in Martin Scorsese's prophetic film The King of Comedy, you can have anything you want, so long as you're prepared to pay the price. We can all be artists so long as we're prepared to forget the idea that art has any worth or meaning. Art is easy if it's rubbish. Britain's Got Talent? No, what we actually believe is "Britain doesn't need talent."

Robert Gumbiner had passion for art...The HMO founder's collection is slated for Museum of Latin American Art

LONG BEACH,CA -- Robert Gumbiner, founder of the Museum of Latin American Art, was an arts advocate and philanthropist who was driven and demanding, colleagues said Wednesday. Gumbiner, a pioneer in the health maintenance organization system of medical care who began MoLAA in 1996, died Tuesday at his Naples home from advanced prostate cancer. He was 85.

"It's not often you get to work with someone so erudite, so experienced, so innovative and, well, so difficult," said Nancy Fox, MoLAA's former chief operating officer and then chief executive officer. "He was very demanding. Once he set his mind on a goal, he wanted to reach that goal as quickly as possible. He pushed and challenged everyone," said Fox, who left MoLAA in 2007 after a seven-year stint, shortly after the museum's $10 million expansion. "If you could manage that, he pushed you to be your best."

Gumbiner also wanted MoLAA to be the best. It was the only museum in the Western U.S. devoted exclusively to Latin American art and has a permanent collection of about 1,000 pieces, from paintings and sculpture to installations and videos.

By the time the museum was remodeled into its present layout, Gumbiner and his foundation had contributed more than $55 million, said Mike Deovlet, executive director of the Robert Gumbiner Foundation. He left large endowments to the foundation, MoLAA, Deovlet said. Gumbiner's entire personal collection of Latin American art will go to the foundation, which will then donate it to the museum.

Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster lauded Gumbiner for using his success in business to fund his passion for the arts."He had not only a successful and fruitful business career, but also gave back," Foster said. "I am saddened by his loss, and I think the city owes him a great debt of gratitude."

Gumbiner, a graduate of Indiana University Medical School, was born in St. Louis and raised in Gary, Ind. He arrived in Long Beach in 1949.

In 1957, three years after Gumbiner opened a Lakewood practice, he started a medical group that offered patients a fixed price for all doctor services.

In 1961, when Gumbiner started Family Health Program, a nonprofit HMO that eventually became FHP International, which delivered health care to over a million patients in 11 states, Gumbiner wrote in a 2003 biography.

In 1990, Gumbiner stepped down from FHP as chief executive officer. Five years later, when FHP merged with health maintenance group TakeCare, Gumbiner was ousted as chairman and then resigned from the board.

A short time later, the company closed its FHP Hippodrome Gallery, which Gumbiner had opened in 1985, at 628 Alamitos Ave.

In July 1996, Gumbiner, who owned the property, had the building renovated to some of its early grandeur -- The Hippodrome was built in 1930 as an art deco skating palace. It re-opened as the 2,000-square-foot Latin American Art Museum, which showcased many works from Gumbiner's 200-piece collection of contemporary Latin American art.

As the museum grew, the exhibits expanded to more than Gumbiner's collection, Fox said. "He knew it was important that the museum's collection be broad and have artistic excellence, even if he didn't like the work."

Gumbiner is survived by three sons, Burke, Lee and Jay; a daughter, Alis; and five grandchildren. His wife, Judy, died in January 2007.

A public memorial service is set for the MoLAA on March 15. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions to MoLAA.
phillip.zonkel@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1258

Art LA and Los Angeles Art Show

Kirsten Stoltmann, Warrior Nation (2008), Showing at sister gallery, Art LA
Sometimes, it’s all about the bathrooms. Or, at least partly about the bathrooms, and those at the L.A. Convention Center, says Kim Martindale, are “real.” Martindale is taking his Los Angeles Art Show downtown this year, a decision he says took two years to make: “I feel like now’s the time. Downtown is a more exciting place. It’s not completely finished and I wanted the L.A. Art Show to be part of that. It’s been a tough year, of course, but the bigger picture is that it made perfect sense to be downtown — at a hall where we can grow an international show.”

Martindale’s decision has allowed L.A.’s contemporary-art fair, Art LA, to take over the Art Show’s former digs, Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport. “We’re ecstatic to be there,” Art LA director Tim Fleming says, adding that while he really liked the old venue, the Santa Monica Civic, “my job is to create a level playing field for all the galleries.” Like his counterpart, Fleming tends to think about the pragmatics; at Art LA, that means providing each of the 60 participating galleries with the same 12-foot walls (which wasn’t possible at the Civic, with its raked roof).

Both shows are trying to broaden their exhibitors, their audience and their programming. “Our goal was to get ourselves on the cultural calendar,” says Fleming, noting that the New York collectors Susan and Michael Hort are flying out for it. He and his team worked with MOCA’s development staff to create the opening-night reception, which will benefit MOCA, and which will be followed by a party at Royal/T (with Dave Muller and Andrew Beradini spinning). They reached out to new galleries, such as Isabella Bortolozzi in Berlin, and got important local galleries like Blum & Poe and L.A. Louver to come back. And they’ve added atypical programming: a private event with Jon Brion and friends at Largo; a tour of the Broad Art Foundation by blogger (and BAF staffer) Ed Schad; a tour of the Watts Towers with artist Edgar Arceneaux; a private tour by the big Mexican collector, Eugenio Lopez. And there is some on-site fun, too, as artist Jorge Pardo re-creates Chinatown’s Mountain Bar in a 50x60-foot tent.

The L.A. Art Show, which has its own gala opening benefiting LACMA and Inner-City Arts, offers an expanded program of discussions and talks, including writer Jori Finkel on how to start and build an art collection, gallerist Peter Fetterman on collecting photography, and critics Mat Gleason and Hunter Drohojowska-Philp on “Art in the New Political Landscape.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is hosting a rather loosely curated film series at USC, and there is something called “The Art of Fashion — where high fashion merges with the art world.” Uh-huh. The most interesting new element to this year’s event is Supersonic, the MFA graduate show, to which Martindale has donated 10,000 square feet of Convention Center floor. It’s kind of perfect, no? What better lesson for graduating artists than to be thrown into a vast hall of commerce!

By Tom Christie Published on January 20, 2009 at 10:25pm

Another Re-Discovered Old Master

LOT 57 at Sotheby's, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO BARBIERI, CALLED IL GUERCINO CENTO, 1591 - 1666 Bologna, Italia. St.John the Baptist in prison visted by Salome.

The Economist goes into detail on this re-discovered Barbiere work from Sotheby’s upcoming Old Master painting sale in New York. Estimate at between $750,000 and $950,000, the painting is not going to get the level of attention devoted to the sale’s marquee works: the two Hals paintings, the Turner or even the Titian that also depicts a scene with Salome and St. John, though in a decidedly different state.

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri was born in Cento, near Bologna, in 1591. Precociously talented, he taught himself to paint. A pronounced squint inspired the nickname by which he is better known, Guercino (the word means “squinter” in Italian). Before he grew old, conventional and rich, Guercino was one of the most interesting painters of the Italian Baroque. His work is characterised by psychologically profound facial expressions and gestures; rich, strong colours and atmospheric handling of paint. His figures of men were often controversial. “Saint Sebastian Tended by Two Angels” (now at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire) shows pain and rapture combined; “Christ Crowned with Thorns” (Szépmüvészeti Museum in Budapest) offers an androgynous representation of the ecstasy of martyrdom, and “Samson Captured by the Philistines” (Metropolitan Museum of Art) has tremendous sexual energy.

(More detail on the importance of Barbieri’s St. John after the jump.)

In his 20s Guercino was taken up by two important patrons, Cardinal Scipione Borghese and his great art-collecting rival, Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, Archbishop of Bologna, who called Guercino to Rome shortly after he was elected pope in February 1621, assuming the name Gregory XV.

Just before he left for Rome, Guercino painted “St John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Salome”, a work to which he would often return. The prime version of Guercino’s St John is in a private collection in New York. Sir Denis Mahon, a 98-year-old British art historian and collector, has another, which he has given on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. A third version appeared at auction in Venice in 2004, and a fourth is now discreetly being offered for sale by a London dealer, Simon Dickinson.

Schemers and Squinters (Economist.com)

Anthony D'Offay's £125 million art collection tours Great Britain

Andy Warhol Hamburger 1985-6
Damien Hirst Away from the Flock 1995
It could be described as the biggest touring art show in the world: the freaks and eccentics photographed by Diane Arbus will be taken to Cardiff, Wolverhampton and Walsall will get a taste of Andy Warhol, Bill Viola's experimental videos will be unveiled in Orkney, and what audiences in Teeside will make of Gerhard Richter's 'abstract minimalism' is anyone's guess.

The travelling exhibition, announced at Tate Modern yesterday, (thurs) will include many of the 725 cutting-edge artworks given by the art dealer and philanthropist, Anthony D'Offay, to Tate and National Galleries of Scotland last year, on proviso that his extraordinary collection be displayed across the nation rather than hidden away in the vaults of the two galleries and occasionally wheeled out for an urbane London audience.

Thoughout 2009, 18 museums and galleries will be showing over 30 artists in the tour, which is called "Artist Rooms". This is the first time a national collection has been "shared" and shown simultaneously in this way, and nine million viewers are expected to turn out over the course of the year.

The first leg of the tour, to begin in March ('09) will include two thirds of the entire collection given by D'Offay including works by Arbus, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Sol LeWitt, Ron Mueck, Bruce Nauman as well as a host of other artists whose contemporary creations have, in some cases, never been seen outside the biggest galleries and museums in London.

Nicholas Serota, director of Tate galleries, said his ambition was to see the D'Offay collection travel indefinitely around galleries in the UK and that he hoped to attract corporate sponsorship to enable this "permanent" tour.

"It will be dramatic and transform the way contemporary art can be seen. It's an extraordinary exercise and unprecedented in the world that a collection that has come into national ownership be seen across the country," he said.

D'Offay said he was "delighted" that the works would rove in ths way while John Leighton, director of the National Galleries of Scotland, said he would one day like to see these works displayed in non-arts venues too, in order to broaden audiences for contemporary art.

The Art Fund, an arts charity, has pledged a donation of £250,000 a year for the next three years to enable the tour to take place.

Damien Hirst, Vija Celmins and Alex Katz are among artists whose work will be shown in some inaugural displays at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art with highlights including Hirst's Away from the Flock 1994, which is an early example of his animals in formaldehyde, and Celmins' images of seas and deserts. Warhol's posters and paintings will travel to Wolverhampton including his Skulls series as well as iconic images of Muhammad Ali and Jacqueline Kennedy, while the neon work and video work of American artist, Bruce Nauman, will be offered up to a Glaswegian audience at Tramway Gallery.

The work of Sol LeWitt, considered by many a pioneer of conceptual art and minimalism, will go to Liverpool, and the anti-establishment ideas in Joseph Beuys sculptures, drawings and photographs will go to Bexhill on Sea. All the shows except for one in Tate St Ives will be free of charge for the public.

D'Offay, 68, one of the most powerful figures in the world of elite art dealers, became the most significant art philanthropist in modern British history when he donated virtually all his collection - including personal gifts made to him by Warhol and Beuys - worth £125m in a charitable gesture that inspired praise from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The collection was sold at the cost price of £26.5m, amounting to just one fifth of its market value, £20m of which was paid by the governments in Edinburgh and London.