Follow Up Friday
A little summary of the week that’s just been!
Including art history news, DIY tips, exhibition & literature reviews, auction announcements, etc.
Email me with your ideas. I’d love to hear from you.
1. Frieze Top Ten
Frieze London opened it’s doors on Tuesday with over 150 booths featuring galleries, dealers and auction houses from 25 countries. ArtNet published their thoughts on the new and improved fair the next day:
Frieze has a new dazzling layout, which makes navigating the fair a much more pleasant experience (or so the rumors went), but it is also bigger than last year. Although many visitors have commented that the fair seems smaller and friendlier, the truth is that this year the roster of galleries has increased by an additional 10 exhibitors.
They’ve also compiled a list of their top ten stands which include Carlos/Ishikawa (pictured above), and big hitters Lisson Gallery, and Hauser and Wirth. See the full list here.
2. Beyoncé and Jay Z Live Out MY Dream!
We all know that Bey and Jay are musical royalty, but now they’ve proved they have more pull than most — a private audience with the Mona Lisa at the former royal residence, The Louvre. The pair, and their daughter Blue Ivy roamed the galleries of the most famous museum unhindered by the usual massive crowds. Harper’s Bazaar compares our experience in front of Da Vinci’s famous lady to theirs:
If you do manage to get a photo, it’s crooked and there are like 10 strangers in the frame. Well, you are a plebe. If you were royalty like Beyoncé and Jay Z, your Mona Lisa photo would look like this.
See more photos, including some epic selfies of life imitating art on the Harper’s Bazaar website here.
3. Unused Abbey Road Photos Up for Auction
Six rare photographs of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road are about to go on the auction block at Bloomsbury Auctions, London. Shot by photographer Iain Macmillan, a friend of Lennon and Yoko Ono, on 8 August 1969 he used a Hasselblad and a step ladder. The shoot lasted less than 10 minutes.
They are incredibly rare, said Sarah Wheeler, head of photography at Bloomsbury Auctions. I’ve spoken to other music dealers and no one has been able to find a complete set on the market for at least 10 years.
The collection will be sold at Bloomsbury Auctions on the 21st of November and has an estimate of £50,000-70,000. Get more info on The Guardian website here.
4. Sneak Peek into the AGOs Michelangelo Exhibit
The Globe and Mail takes us inside the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Michelangelo: Quest for Genius exhibition. There are thirty drawings featured by the Italian master, which are shown alongside pieces inspired his oeuvre. Rodin’s Adam (shown above) was inspired by Michelangelo’s work after the French sculptor visited Florence in 1875. The curator of European art Lloyd Dewitt gives us a preview of what to expect from this exciting addition to the AGOs programming: click here to see the video.
5. Nat Gal allows Photographs Starting …Now
A few weeks ago I mentioned that the National Gallery, London was updating it’s photography policy to fall in line with their new app launch. Tuesday saw the first day that punters were able to take photographs in the galleries and Bendor Grosvenor (above with a Rembrandt) from Art History News saw this as an opportunity for an inaugural selfie. The idea of photographs being taken in galleries has always been controversial. One of his readers writes:
I have been mulling over the photography issue over the last while and in the last 30 days (not to mention the London trip in July) I have visited numerous museums in Boston, Philadelphia (we saw a Vermeer on the its last day!) and Edinburgh – I really enjoyed the American Impressionists exhibition in Edinburgh – and taking photos is simply not an issue. I take a lot of photos and I exercise just the barest amount of restraint and wait until people have left a painting before stepping in to take my photo and it impacts no one. If it’s really crowded brush stroke aficionados then I simply return when it’s not so busy. My camera emits no sounds and with nobody in the vicinity it’s really a non-issue.
The real issue based on my experience is overcrowding and whether people are taking pictures or not it makes no difference if too many people are in a gallery. The National Gallery was the busiest by far and it was a different experience to the other galleries. If galleries want to increase traffic as seems to be the fashion of late they might want to consider set times as the Gardiner Museum in Boston does; it was busy but not over crowded (but they don’t allow photos).
I find being able to take photos useful for documentation — especially of the labels so that I can look more up on the picture later, but the practice can also be intrusive. I’ve never actually been able to see The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum as it’s always crowded with tourists taking quick snaps. Grosvenor’s comments on the subject are quite poignant. Read more on the Art History News here.
