Art

Have you seen this advertising campaign for the Art Series Hotels?  As reported in The Australian, it encourages people to come and stay the night in one of the three Art hotels (The Cullen, Olsen and Blackman) all based in Melbourne. 

If you see the piece of art by Banksy, (it’s valued at over $15,000) on the walls you can steal it.  If you manage to get away with it you get to keep it.  If you get caught then back on the wall it goes. The promotions aim is to encourage people to stay at the hotel over summer by offering them the chance to be in their very own art heist, and so far has been extremely popular. 
There are good reasons why, but before I get into that I have to disclose it was our agency that helped develop this scheme.

Offering people the chance to steal, is like offering people the chance to cheat, lie, covet thy neighbours wife, eat a whole tub of ice cream, or a litany of other sins.  These are all things we know we should not indulge in, but for what ever reasons at times, have a strong desire to do.  In forensic psychology there is a well-established saying ‘bad men do what good men dream’. That is, we all have the impulses to act in anti-social ways, however, most of us have learned how to manage such urges, and not act on them.  We have realized that acting on these urges will often lead to hurting someone, or ourselves – hence we suppress that which we know we should not do. 

Continue reading "I don’t know about art, but I might steal this" »

In most social circles being into poetry has about the same social cache as having an STD.

Small children are introduced to poetry early in the guise of nursery rhymes and they can’t get enough of it. The lilt and the quirk of the language in these rhymes pleases them automatically and profoundly. 

But then something happens, and by the time a kid is a teenager they may as well stick a “kick me” sign on their own back if they want to carry around a book of poetry. And adults that are interested in poetry will find that even “top notch” bookstores usually have more titles on cake decoration than of verse. Where and why does poetry lose its fan base?

Continue reading "Poetry is NOT dorky, high school just ruins it" »

It’s a harsh and twisted world if people truly think a young graffiti artist deserved to die. Ryan Smith was 17. He was stupid. He died trying to scale a bridge to spraypaint his tag on it. But he didn’t ‘deserve’ to die.

Radio talkback this morning moved swiftly from tokenistic sympathy for Smith to serious discussions of the ‘war on graffiti’. War? With kids as collateral?

Online, people said his death was ‘natural justice’, that he was an ‘idiot’ who ‘paid the consequences’, that he’s a contender for the Darwin Awards.

Continue reading "Is the writing on the wall for graffiti artists?" »

You can call a controversial comic’s work an ‘artwork’. But this doesn’t change its shocking subject matter.

American cartoonist Robert Crumb has repeatedly depicted scenes of rape, incest, paedophilia and bestiality. Many of his works have racist overtones. We should be discouraging him from publishing, and I was relieved to hear yesterday that he had cancelled his Australian tour.

Robert Crumb is a self confessed “weirdo“, whose work promotes exploitation of women and minors. We should not be celebrating him.

Continue reading "Crummy artist left to pick up the scraps" »

It was not until I recently heard an art historian visiting Australia to talk about Guernica – the iconic anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso – that I connected the dots of why the 9/11 attacks had such a penetrating impact on the global community.

Art historian Professor Timothy J Clark was explaining in a Sydney Ideas lecture why Picasso’s depiction of the world’s first terrorist air-raid continues to have political currency in the post-9/11 era, despite the existence of more “real” forms of media than existed in 1937.

Clark said that in essence Picasso managed to communicate what it is really like to be bombed. He told me after the speech that “Guernica wouldn’t have its continuing political relevance if it didn’t somehow manage to wrench the material reality of suffering out of that black and white virtual world”.

Continue reading "Cool heads are needed when horror is writ large" »

Artists are “appalled” at a suggestions art should get a classification scheme, similar to that used for movies, television and video games. A Senate committee has recommended one be introduced for controversial artwork such as the images of nude children produced by Bill Henson. Here, Tamara Winikoff gives us her perspective.

The question of where the visual arts should sit in a national classification scheme was one of the matters considered by the recent Senate Inquiry into the National Film and Literature Classification Scheme.

Currently, though, artworks are not required to be classified as a matter of course - the Classification Board can call in artworks, especially in response to a complaint or alternatively artists can choose to seek classification themselves if they wish to be clear about their legal status.

Continue reading "Ratings plan a kick in the arts" »

There is a great moment in The Simpsons where, after mounting a successful grassroots crusade against the violent Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, Marge is called upon to lead a group of concerned citizens who feel that Michelangelo’s statue of David is also not suitable for children (due to his exposed genitalia) and should not be displayed in Springfield during a nationwide tour.

Much to the frustration of Helen Lovejoy – the gossipy, ultra-conservative Reverend’s wife famous for the phrase “won’t somebody think of the children!?” – Marge does not want to participate in this campaign, because she thinks the statue is a renaissance masterpiece that all children should be encouraged to see.

It is a clever plot twist that highlights how slippery the slope of censorship really is, and how inconsistent we as a society tend to be when assessing the relative merits of art and popular culture: that one person’s art is very often another’s filth.

Continue reading "PUNCH: Kanye’s twisted fantasy is art, not filth" »

I have just returned from three days in Hobart, attending the opening of MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. It is a $200 million, quixotic project of Tasmanian businessman David Walsh. Walsh commissioned the museum from architect Nonda Katsalidis, filled it with his own art and made admission free.

Walsh has a scientific mind but an artistic temperament. In his interview with Andrew Frost he says that if he could make art, he would. He has an intellectual fascination with Darwinian evolution, time, ancient cultures and the dark areas of our humanity.

The inaugural exhibition is called Monanism, a play on the word onanism (masturbation). MONA and Monanism were exciting and I want to put down a few thoughts now, while the experience is fresh in my mind.

Continue reading "Visionary millionaire puts the “art” into Hobart" »

In the tonnes of coverage on the Brisbane floods, nobody seems to have filmed or photographed this rather ironic sculpture. The “Flood” sculpture, by artist Richard Tipping, is on the river’s edge at the Brisbane Powerhouse in New Farm. Perhaps because it’s already underwater? Do you know?

Update: 3:10 PM

Well thanks to social media now we do know. The Flood sculpture now neatly marks the flood water line on the Brisbane River.

Going

Gone.

I’m glad that the rejection of a photograph donated to a charity auction for the Sydney Children’s Hospital raises the spectre of morality in our society. Because it’s the perfect instance of why we need to take a serious look at ourselves and the values we want to promote.

Del Katherine Barton, one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists and someone well known both for her love of family and her charitable work for childrens’ causes, submitted a photograph of her shirtless six year-old son to be auctioned for the hospital’s benefit.

The board of the hospital has rejected the work on the basis that it doesn’t comply with their “strict rules on images of children”. 

Continue reading "More hysteria over the ‘sexualisation’ of children" »

She’s shot the Queen, Obama, Nelson Mandela, George W. Bush’s cabinet and countless celebrities, not to mention a famously intimate portrait of John Lennon, curled up naked against Yoko Ono, just hours before the singer was shot.

But even though her best known work features the kind of faces likely to grace the covers of Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, Annie Leibovitz has long resisted the label of celebrity photographer.

Still, there are some things she can’t ignore.

Continue reading "Annie Leibovitz: Still life" »

Celebrated American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was born today in 1946.

And it’s Thursday at The Punch. What’s on your mind? Share it here.

The National Gallery is one of those buildings people like to beat up on.

Since its open in 1967the building has been subject to hurtful and unfair sledges such as “pile of concrete poo” and “High Court off-cuts”.

Besides the fact the Colin Madigan building is one of the world’s best examples of brutalist architecture, it is also safely Australia’s coolest public building. In a city dotted with real piles of bureaucratic concrete the NGA is an oasis of unique design.

Continue reading "A look at our new and possibly improved NGA" »

Albert Namatjira is an indigenous Australian who died almost half a century ago but his life has recently become the subject of a play at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre and “Namatjira” should be required watching for anyone ready to hold a mirror up to their own face and take a equanimous approach to our cultural divide.

Quite aside from the extraordinary skill, energy and physicality of the two main actors’ brilliant performances - they carry ten characters and about five accents between them- the narrative tells us as much about Namatjira’s ultimately tragic life as it does about Australian history in the early 20th century and it’s an awesome journey.

Continue reading "Namatjira’s story, a lesson for everyone" »

Earlier this year a mate and I drove 300km across North Carolina to have a pork sandwich. The town of Lexington is the capital of what our American friends call “barbecue” –slow-cooked, shredded pork shoulder served with a vinegary chilli sauce and coleslaw. You can feel your heart slowing down as you eat it and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Heading west from Lexington, towards the hillbilly heartland of the Appalachian Mountains, we saw a huge billboard on the side of one of the backroads.

It said: “You are now entering Klan Country” and bore the swastika-inspired logo of the Ku Klux Klan and a huge Confederate Flag.

Continue reading "Freedom of speech extends to the vulgar, vacuous and vile" »

I probably know as much as anyone reading these words about the life of William Shakespeare.

That’s not the boast it sounds like – it’s a statement about how little there is to know about the biographical details of the greatest writer in the language.

He died nearly four hundred years ago, and he’s been celebrated for at least three hundred, but the documentary discoveries about Shakespeare have been few and far between.

Continue reading "Disproving the porky that Shakespeare was Bacon" »

The Mona Lisa is valued at over $500 million. I don’t pretend to understand why. To me, she’s an arch, witchy old man-lady with lanky hair. I find her smarmy. Uptight. I bought an Etsy print of an Edwardian couple to hang in my kitchen that I think is personality-plus compared to her. And they have artichokes instead of heads.

That said, I defer without hesitation to art experts who tell me Leonardo da Vinci knows more about form and composition and painting little smug secret-smiles than some hipster poster artist from Williamsburg. My artichoke people aren’t even smiling (in their defense, they’re artichokes).

And that’s why they set me back about thirty bucks where the Mona Lisa costs roughly the same as it does to plan then abandon a Sydney public transport initiative.

Continue reading "Just because you like a song doesn’t make it good" »

This piece was co-authored by Carrie Miller and fellow Punch contributor Catharine Lumby.

If only Australians could bring the same level of focus and nuance to debates about art that we bring to debates about what the ref did in last weekend’s match.

Not that art trumps sport. They both matter. It’s just that – if you happen to know anything about the history of art – it’s really boring to hear the same debate repeated endlessly in the media. It’s a lot like watching Barry Hall punch the same guy in the head again and again. Quite rightly, fans want to see him punch different people in the head to keep things interesting.

The recent debate about Sam Leach’s Wynne prize-winning landscape- which involves a landscape that quotes from another landscape- is a great example of this banal and reductive debate.

Continue reading "Australians’ reaction to art can be very immature" »

The NSW government have released a set of recommendations that would place responsibility for the work of a grubby network of international paedophiles and child exploiters on a handful of innocent visual artists.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday the Attorney-General John Hatzistergos said the NSW government would support new legislation that makes a “clear legal distinction between pornography and art” in order to protect victims and make it easier for police to prosecute cases of child pornography and exploitation

With plans to scrap the defence of “artistic merit” while asking artists to fork out up to $500 per image for Commonwealth classification, Hatzistergos’ recommendations are taking a stab at a group, who up until 2008 had stayed fairly shy of scrutiny in Australia.

Continue reading "Art is the not the enemy in the fight against child porn" »

It’s Friday @ The Punch.

Edvard Munch’s iconic artwork ‘The Scream’ was stolen from the National Art Museum of Oslo. After the painting was recovered, one of the two thieves, Paal Enger, went on to become a legitimate art dealer.

If Green Day sang that the Jesus of American suburbia is a lie, Chris O’Doherty (aka Reg Mombassa) offers a surreal Aussie equivalent: the Jesus of our suburbia is a regular guy, eating a pie, wearing a tie, with a third eye.

Mombassa was a member of iconic Australian rock band Mental As Anything before becoming one of Australia’s most recognisable visual artists and helping to establish the fame and fortune of the Mambo surfwear brand.

The release of Murray Waldren’s beautifully-produced biography of Mombassa, The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa, highlights just how prominent Christian, or ‘neo-Christian’, themes are in his artwork.

Lauded as a pop culture artist, Mombassa self-identifies in a more religious fashion: “It’s like being a priest. To some extent, it’s a calling”, he tells Waldren. His “Self portrait with beard and plastic ring”, painted last year, is an obvious Christ-figure, with the ring as a halo.

Continue reading "The Australian Jesus of Reg Mombassa" »

The proposal this year to remove the artistic defence from the NSW proposed legislation on child abuse, which includes child pornography and exploitation, is not particularly about censoring artists. 

In fact, the Australia Council for the Arts believes that the proposal, which will harmonise NSW laws with the Commonwealth laws on the definitions of child pornography, has the potential to be advantageous to genuine artistic expression. 

Mention art and pornography together, and people immediately position themselves at opposite ends of the room.

Continue reading "Why artists should not fear child protection reforms" »

One of the strongest arguments against the exploitation of children by photographers is the potential for long term damage to the child.

What a child may “consent” to when they’re 10-years-old, might make them feel incredibly uncomfortable when they’re 17. Most of the time we don’t get to ask them.

But the Tate Modern in London has just been forced to withdraw a picture of Hollywood star Brooke Shields, taken when she was 10. It’s a rare case where we can see how the subject’s life has turned out.

Continue reading "Is it child porn if the subject is famous?" »

TO a graffiti vandal, it’s the equivalent of a madman running through the Louvre with a knife at night slashing the Mona Lisa and other canvases. A secret squirt squad is systematically defacing illegal “artworks” daubed along Melbourne’s train lines by painting the letters “CTCV” over the top.

The anonymous vigilantes are bombarding hundreds of sites across the rail network with their simple tag, prompting cries of foul play from graffiti crews.

Outraged vandals have accused employees of train operator Connex, and also the transit police, of somehow orchestrating the blitz as some sort of bizarre “tit for tat” campaign to wipe out street art.

Continue reading "Are Victorian authorities fighting graffiti with graffiti?" »

The Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow with a local community church has opened a new exhibition that originally aimed to “reclaim the Bible as a sacred text”.

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In a somewhat unorthodox way of achieving this end they have left a Bible open at the exhibition inviting people to write whatever they want in it.

“If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it,” asks the gallery.

Continue reading "Bible bashing is easy, but would artists touch Islam?" »

In 2007, for the first time in its history, The Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning was awarded to a cartoonist whose submission consisted of both print cartoons and animations.

America’s editorial cartoonists, already under siege from dwindling newspaper circulation, syndication and political correctness, were quick to circle the wagons around their craft. “What next…the Family Guy gets a Pulitzer?” bleated USA Today’s Scott Stantis.

They miss the point. Anybody who’s ever picked up a pixel and tried to churn out an animation knows how laborious, how mind-numbingly tedious, how frustrating a process it can be.

Continue reading "An animated discussion about political cartoons" »