The organizing committee for the Singapore Biennale has just pulled another rabbit out of the hat. Not only have they managed to team up with the Biennales of Gwangju, Shanghai, Sydney and Yokohama to form the next Grand Tour, in 2008 (another soon-to-be recurring art world trend?), but Fumio Nanjo will be appointed for a second term as the Artistic Director of the Singapore Biennale. This is of course, an old trick, as we’ve already experienced two consecutive Venice Biennales by Harald Szeemann and two consecutive Busan Biennales by Manu Park.

While the initial splat of responses to this decision was far from being positive (heh!), I have been thinking about the possibility of Nanjo actually being able to construct a relevant exhibition for the general public in Singapore and for the international art bubble at large, now that he’s been on the island’s case for a couple of years now.

After all, time, experience and access can do wonders when it comes to exhibition-building. Perhaps the Singapore Biennale has thrown up an interesting proposition: What if biennales were to follow in the footsteps of a system, say, an art fair or a theatre festival, where an artistic director would actually retain the post indefinitely, have more time to do research on the context and develop the exhibition for a few terms?

Who says bubbles are bad? Not Daniel Gross, financial columnist for Slate, who just published a pithy tome etitled Pop! Why Bubbles are Great for the Economy. The book doesn’t contain a word about art, but its conclusions are worthy of pondering. His message: sure, bubbles create a huge mess when they pop, but the energy and innovation they generate while they last is worth it. Here it is in a nutshell:

“[Besides,] if some omniscient Bureau of Management were tasked with the capacity to halt enthusiasms before they go out of control, we wouldn’t necessarily want it to do so. ‘I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical,’ Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787. In the economic realm, a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, too. And bubbles, entrepreneurial storms that disrupt the existing commercial order, provide shots of adrenaline. The enthusiasm they generate has led successive generations of entrepreneurs to open new territory for settlement, to create valuable new infrastructure, to spur innovation, and to push people to work, invest, and spend at a higher level—all in pursuit of promised massive short-term gains.” (p. 188)

Thoughts?

I had dinner last night with Terence Koh, arguably one of the hottest artists in the world right now, and he told me about a rather unexpected email he had just received.

With his kind permission, I reprint it below.

From: documenta 12 <professionalpreview@documenta.de>
Date: May 30, 2007 7:50:05 PM GMT+02:00
To: tiffany@peresprojects.com
Subject: documenta 12
Reply-To: documenta 12 <preview@documenta.de>
_______________________________________

Dear Terence Koh,

Thank you for your application for accreditation. Unfortunately we have to inform you that we are not able to communicate a positive answer for the professional preview.

The team of documenta 12 is nevertheless happy to welcome you in Kassel during the entire duration of the exhibition from June 16th to September 23rd 2007.

Please go to our website www.documenta12.de for information on admission prices and the supporting program.

Please note: This message has been automatically generated. Please do not reply. This e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that does not accept incoming mail.

Apparently, having solo shows at the Kunsthalle Zurich and Whitney Museum in the last year does not qualify you as a professional artist in the eyes of Documenta 12’s accreditation mavens.

Or maybe they consider him TOO professional?

Hirstian Math 1 From Linda Sandler of Bloomberg’s $100 Million Diamond Skull Is ‘Almost’ Sold: “The skull represents about a fifth of the value of Hirst’s show at Jay Jopling’s White Cube galleries, according to the artist’s business manager, Frank Dunphy…. The life-sized platinum skull, studded with 8,601 stones weighing 1,106.18 carats, cost Hirst $20 million to make — about the same amount as Jopling spent to build his new White Cube Mason’s Yard gallery.”

Hirstian Math 2 From the BBC.com’s Hirst unveils £50m diamond skull: “The 18th Century skull is entirely covered in 8,601 jewels, while new teeth were made for the artwork at a cost of £14m .”

Hirstian Math 3 From the Reuters skull story: “Hirst, who financed the skull himself, said he couldn’t remember whether it had cost 10 or 15 million pounds.”

Hirstian logic Richard Dorment, dependably crystalline in his prose writes: “If anyone but Hirst had made this curious object, we would be struck by its vulgarity. It looks like the kind of thing Asprey or Harrods might sell to credulous visitors from the oil states with unlimited amounts of money to spend, little taste, and no knowledge of art. I can imagine it gracing the drawing room of some African dictator or Colombian drug baron.” Read More »

I’ve been meaning for a long time to write about the way in which the artworld talks about collectors who made their money from hedge funds. In fact, I’d rough-drafted a post two months ago, but newsier topics (and my hectic life) interceded. A comment posted by Olav Velthuis in response to Ian’s “Contemporary: what real value?” post prodded me to pick up that draft again. Because I often wonder if artworld insiders haven’t started to treat hedge-fund buyers as their handy whipping boys, blaming them for everything that makes people uneasy about the art market as it progresses into uncharted territory. Let’s start with the case against hedge-funders. [UPDATE: Olav says I misread the above. See comment #1 below. ] Olav wrote:

The new players on the market are hedge fund managers who have on the one hand an enormous reputation deficit (they are considered the parasites of the financial system, much more so than the Wall Street traders that flocked the art market in the 1980s) and on the other hand an enormous surplus of capital (again, much more so than Wall Street in the 1980s or, for that matter nowadays).

In April - when I wrote that rough draft - two pieces published in the same week likewise touched on hedge-funders in the current art market. Both pieces noted the wariness with which many regard those collectors (albeit while happily taking their money). In the New York Sun piece, “Art Market Shifts With Players” Marion Maneker wrote: “Many in the art world [are] nervous that their market is beginning to resemble the volatile financial markets. The presence of many hedge-fund managers — the puppet masters of the herky-jerky stock market — among the new breed of art collector has many dealers on edge.” Likewise in an item I contributed to a small part of New York Magazine’s blowout package on “hedgies,” I quoted a dealer saying: “The big fear is that if the market turns, they’ll get out of art just as fast as they came in.” Read More »