Make 'em pay: Outdoor advertisers face levy for public art

Well, this is fun. It seems the folks at the BeautifulCity.ca Alliance have managed to collected 4300 signatures in support of a new third-party tax on outdoor advertising, and billboards in particular, the proceeds of which are meant primarily to support community-based outdoor art initiatives.The bottom line would be added tax revenue of about $11 million per year -- which doesn't sound like a lot, but it would actually increase municipal funding to this sector by 53%.

They're taking all this before City Council tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 9:30 am, where council will vote on a draft bylaw set to pass the tax into law. The industry, of course, is, predictably, vehemently against it, saying it'll destroy their business. But wait -- a just-released Ryerson study says that, in fact, the proposed levy would eat into gross revenue by 7%, significantly less than the industry claims. According to illegalsigns.ca, an industry report submitted false data while the draft was being drawn up. You've got to think that little fact will tip any fence-sitting councillor in favour of the tax, no?

A vote in favour means that billion-dollar companies like Pattison, which owns basically all of the country's billboard space and takes in $6.7 billion annually, would be forced to take a tiny hit to their collosal profits in favour of community cultural initiatives -- and even officially giving over some billboard spaces to art groups (the above is a piece by Dan Bergeron which is unofficial, to say the least). Seems more than fair to me.

EDIT: Thanks to Leah Sandals for pointing out the very good work done by Jonathon Goldsbie over at Spacing.ca, about the lunching habits of councillor Karen Stintz, who's spent a little time lunching with billboard owner Abcon Media's chief, Les Abro. 

Then, later on today, Goldsbie offers this handy guide to lobbyists, many of whom have been lining up at city hall to help derail the billboard tax bylaw. Tomorrow should be interesting, to say the least.

Teitelbaum talks Tut: Extended transcript

Here's the thing about newspapers: For all the work we do as journalists, there's only space for a tiny fraction of it in the actual newspaper. For those of us blessed (and cursed) with online means, like this here blog, we can represent the spadework more fully.

That in mind, I thought you might be interested in the majority of my conversation with AGO director Matthew Teitelbaum regarding his view of the Tut show, and how it fits the museum's mandate. I've edited it a little bit to keep it relevant, but this is basically all of it. Enjoy ...

Q: I guess I’m here, Matthew, as something of a reluctant emissary; there’s an art community here in the city that had hopes for this, a recently "transformed" institution, to use your term, to take that rhetoric of reinvention to heart. For a lot of people, I think, Tut represents something counter to that.

A: Well, to the extent that any community believes that the AGO was relaunched with vigour and integrity and focus, that there would be a lot of goodwill to assume that we’re going to continue that.

And that we’re going to continue to serve the needs of people who care about art, and believe that art is central to a community’s sense of itself, and a civilization’s sense of itself. And I have confidence in that regard.

I think King Tut is part of that. I guess some people don’t.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming

I'm taking Tut off the top of the page, though it's not the end of the discussion by any stretch. Look for a story in the Sunday paper I've done that will be awfully lonely in the paper's coverage of the AGO's Tut show to date, in that it asks some questions about the show's context, the AGO's mission, and most importantly, if they have anything to do with each other. If response warrants it, we'll be talking Tut again on Monday; if that's what you want to do, just say so.

 
On to more immediately (ahem) relevant subjects, though, namely the weekend's goings-on; tonight, Gallery TPW is having its annual Photorama show and sale, opening with a splashy soiree at the gallery this evening. They'll be selling work by too many notable locals to count -- there are more than 100 pieces available' that's one, by personal favourite Toni Hafkenschied -- but among them is a new image by Edward Burtynsky, which surely won't last long. Even if you're not buying, the list is exceptional, so check it out.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, you might want to drop by Georgia Scherman Art + Projects, where a new catalogue of Daniel Borins and Jennfier Marman's work is being launched. It's from their excellent show at the AGYU earlier this year, Project for a New American Century. I can only call it the ridiculous dystopic sublime -- a tightly-wound package of Modernist idealism, bound in its own ultimate, brutalist failings. I'll say no more, but it was quite something, as they say, Out There. 

Also tomorrow, at Stephen Bulger, the well-known American photographer Jock Sturges is opening a new series of work called, inoffensively, Colour Prints. I passed some of the images by my editors here, who forbade me from posting them; if you know Sturges, you'll know why.

For decades, Sturges has been talkign nude photographs of family and friends, their children and his children; and while we're well-past taking offence at the nude form, for the squeamish among us, there's still something unsettling about a naked 12-year old, captured on camera. Maybe that's a problem more with the viewer than the photographer, and I suspect that's Sturges' not-so-subtle challenge to us; but to make up your mind for yourself, you'll have to look somewhere other than here.

For my part, tonight, I'm going to the Gibsone-Jessop Gallery in the Distillery to see an experimental documentary film by the Chinese artist Ou Ning; I met Ou when I was in China last month, and he's a true iconoclast -- an artist/activist in a political climate where such things are not meant to exist. It's part of a series running throhg December; check it out if you can.

Happy Weekend.

Weekend notes: Openings, closings, and other th-ings

Busy week and week-end in town for a dreary November. Some of my highlights follow.

Clark Faria has a show of new work by painter Kristine Moran, whose trippy canvases (right) explore an enigmatic borderland between representation and abstraction. The work is filled with candy-coloured dread: Moran loves working with a narrative, and this show is no exception. The paintings, we're told, unfold the tale of a character trapped in a tangled, overgrown swamp; Moran's play with perception and the formal tension between order and chaos confounds the eye, and I mean that in a good way. Opening at the same time across the way at Jane Corkin was a show of new work by Toronto video artist Sharon Switzer. It's called "I shoudl be dreaming of butterflies," and Switzer's trademark black humour is on display here in her text-and-image work, setting idea against image in ways both amusing and self-loathing.

Also opening last night was Mowry Baden's show at Diaz Contemporary. Baden, a senior artist from Victoria, B.C., has spent decades building large-scale sculptures dependent on viewer involvement (I remember one, which seemed to be a giant red button with a plinth you're supposed to lie on to push); here, he returns to a favourite fascination with "Mirroring," a suite of pieces that fiddle with viewer perception as you engage them. 

Tonight, Toronto painter Stephen Andrews opens at Paul Petro on Queen Street West with a suite of new paintings, while around the corner at MKG127, artist Jayce Salloum has given over his solo show to a, ahem, Group of Seven artists he's chosen to show with him. The number can't be a coincidence, as Salloum and crew explore "differing geographies and explicit conditions," they say; think of it as a non-heroic take on the contemporary landscape -- external or internal. It's called "rockpaperscissors," opening tomorrow.

From there, take a meander on up to Jessica Bradley Art+Projects, where a solo show of Ben Reeves' paintings opens tomorrow as well. Psychedelically indistinct and bordeline abstract, Reeves canvases in this show, called "Oil and Water," "ostensibly depict rainy day scenes," the gallery says -- just what we need as we sink past the dreariness of fall and into the black hole of winter. Still, Reeves' work is anythign but dreary;bold, assured and awash in colour, it's worth your time.

Also opening tomorrow is Ross Bell's show at Georgia Scherman, an engaging contemporary take on post-modern Modernism, particularly the latter's view of the former. Bell works with found materials particular to his trade, like packing materials used to transport artworks; he uses them, along with construction materials, to build sculptures with an internal, dislocated logic. The viewer enters into these structures to find a mirrored world, infecting purist Modern edicts about form and materials with a weird dislocation that's anathema to the philosophy. At once playful and commanding, Bell's "Strip Cubes" order space and then confound your perception of it all at once. 

Also Saturday is the annual showing of semi-finalists of the RBC painting competition. Why it's restricted to painting I'm not sure -- maybe they think painters get poo-pooed at the country's other, bigger emerging artist prize, the Sobey? -- but whatever the case, the RBC event has helped boost the careers of several young painters since it was founded in 1999, winners or not (Kim Dorland, Melanie Authier and Arabella Campbell, last year's winner, spring to mind) and is usually worth a look. This year's $25,000 winner is Vancouver's Brenda Draney (left), so congrats to her.

Closing this weekend are two shows from photographer Bertrand Carriere, both at Stephen Bulger and at Oakville Galleries. Carriere, who focuses on revisiting the sites of distant Canadian wars long past, offers new images at Bulger retracing the steps of an unnamed World War I photographer with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe. At the Oakville Galleries, Carriere's Caux Project, from 2003, is the photographer's exploration of the war-scarred landscape of Northern France, specifically Dieppe, where so many Canadians died on D-Day. Sombre and unpeopled, Carriere's images speak of teh disquieting churn of memory into history, and the inevitable pain of forgetting. 

Happy weekend.

Kane record to fall? Harris sketches at auction next week pose serious challenge

Last week, an early, unique Andy Warhol painting sold for $43.7 million (U.S.) at Sotheby's auction in New York, more than triple its presale estimated.

As I mentioned in a story that followed, that sale, and the auction's glowing results in general, had some on this side of the border finally seeing the glass half-full -- no easy task in this past year of economic armageddon, where auction results have, by and large, stunk. 

In fact, the New York sales have prompted experts and auctions houses to believe that the return of free-flowing discretionary capital could mean the tumbling of a Canadian all-time record. It was set in February of 2002, when a Paul Kane portrait, "The Surveyor: Portrait of Captain John Henry Lefroy," was bought for a shocking $5.1 million by Ken Thomson, who promptly donated it to the Art Gallery of Ontario. 

That painting was estimated to go for a cool half-million, but competition was heavy and Thomson wouldn't be denied. So what to make of a pair of gems up for sale at Heffel's auction Nov. 26? Both are sketches by Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris, each of them a study for two of his best known works.

This puts them both squarely in Warhol territory, at least in the sense that they're both unique and significant.  The first is what you see above, "The Old Stump, Lake Superior," a study sketch for one of Harris's most famous paintings, "North Shore, Lake Superior," owned by the National Gallery, with a pre-sale estimate is $2 to 2.5 million. The other is "Iceberg, Baffin's Bay North," a study sketch for the painting "Icebergs, Davis Strait," owned by the McMichael. Its estimate runs from $1.2 million to $1.6 million.

So will the Kane record fall? Significant works don't get moved in down economic times, for fear of not getting full value; this much we know. So don't be surprised if you see this image again on the front page of the paper Nov. 27, heralding a new record. In my humble opinion, it's a safe bet.

You can check out the Harrises, and works by Emily Carr, Paul-Emile Borduas, Tom Thomson and many others at the Heffel preview in their Yorkville Gallery this weekend at 13 Hazelton Avenue.

Dean Drever: (Insert Favourite Bear Pun Here, ie. "Essential Bears") at the Toronto Sculpture Garden

The only real gripe I can have with the Toronto Sculpture Garden is that it only changes installations twice a year. They've been on a hell of a good run for most of the decade, with work from Micah Lexier to Euan MacDonald to Luis Jacob to Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins to Katie Bethune-Leaman to the most recent closure, Instant Coffee's surreally super-cool Disco Fallout Shelter, which you can't help but love.

Speaking of which, what's not to adore about Dean Drever's "Bear Hunt," which appeared in the garden, on King East, a couple of weeks ago? Drever had a minor hit at MKG127 with his show "Bear Minimum" (hence my headline), which featured bright yellow bear sculptures not unlike the above in the tight gallery space. But out here in the world, the work takes on a new kind of life in context.

Drever's background is Haida, west coast First Nations, and the bear is a potent symbol for his culture -- a supreme force of nature, imbued with mystic power. Drever's urban bears, though, appear to have met their match. Rendered in decidedly unnatural day-glo orange, they lope into the cold embace of a concrete wall. In contact with uncaring urbanity, do they melt and pool into the garden's tidy patch of grass? Or are they passing through it to a more forgiving plane? Either way, it's an electric scene loaded with an old debate -- humanity's estrangement from the natural world -- presented in a gloriously eye-candy kind of way. Not to be missed. Don't worry -- you have until April 10.

Talking Tut: Over to you

The Art Gallery of Ontario's much-hyped King Tut show opens next week; previews are on Friday. This newspaper has spilled a lot of ink on the show, most of which you can find in this special section online.

I've made it pretty clear how I feel about it: That it's of place, out of context, and at the expense of programming that might actually help a badly-disconnected institution build some bridges with the local contemporary cultural community. 

Now, I want to hear from you. Please leave your comments here, or if you don't want to be that public, email me directly at mwhyte@thestar.ca. Agree or disagree, I want to hear what you have to say. Are you looking forward to the show? Think it's embarrassing? Puzzled as to what it's doing at the AGO in the first place? I've heard from several subscribers with a range of opinions, but there's no such thing as too much. So fire away. I'm listening. 

EDIT: Let's start the ball rolling with David Lee's Letter to the Editor in today's paper.

Re:Why the AGO needs King Tut blockbusters, Nov. 16

Sure the AGO needs to increase attendance and Tut might do that, but there is a total disconnect between the Tut show and the AGO collection and its mandate.

What do a bunch of 3000-year-old stone carvings have to do with modern art? Not a lot. Will the new audience brought into the spectacle of the Tut exhibit ever return to see a painting by the Group of Seven or a photo by Jeff Wall? I doubt it. And of course the Tut exhibit is not free.

Couldn't Martin Knelman have given us an idea of the cost of the exhibit and the ensuing mass advertising campaign? Sure Tut will build the AGO brand, but in the end the Canadian art scene will be left with a lot of fizzle.

David Lee, Toronto

For heaven's sake, discuss!

Heather Goodchild: Bloody great, at Katherine Mulherin

What feels like not so long ago, there was a functioning artist collective at 50 Borden Street, doing what these youthful, hybrid beasts do: Sharing ideas out of creative desire, and rent out of necessity. In saying this, I have to acknowledge it was almost 7 years ago that the various members put on "The Borden Street Show" at Luft Gallery, probably their most public appearance as a collective. 

They've all since dispersed, most of them finding their own kind of success: Tyler Clarke Burke remains the hectic downtown scene's most active cultural concierge, all while making her own work; Balint Zsako has decamped for New York, leaving behind a handsome published monograph of drawings at Art Metropole; and Brad Peyton, last anyone heard, was working on a film adaptation of Edward Gorey's creepy work of genius, The Doubtful Guest; and Heather Goodchild just keeps making her own particular brand of morbidly folksy, fascinating girlish mythology.

Goodchild is showing in two places in town at the moment, a solo show at Katharine Mulherin on Queen West, and in a group show at the Department on Dundas West. The Mulherin show is Goodchild undistilled, continuing her work with Anna Ward Brouse Society, an opaque, ritualistic women's circle she created. Apparently, as Goodchild reveals their beliefs to us slowly, at least one of them is the importance of sacrifice; a bloodied toy lamb, unbearably cute and incongruously grisly, poses gingerly in the window, blood pooling at its feet. Nearby, a quiet-eyed girl in braids and robes stands quietly, blood dripping from her just-used dagger.

That Goodchild surrounds this scene, and others, with homespun accoutrements -- quilting, rug-making -- tricked out in the Society's heraldic symbols -- is fantastically completist and devoted to a narrative vision, and you can't help but marvel at it. 

At the Department, Goodchild takes part in a group show about necklaces, which nicely parallels the Mulherin show and her work in general. Taking the convention of paganistic ceremonial dress, Goodchild offers a collar of rug-hooked wool fitting for any ritualistic occasion, sacrifice or otherwise. At Mulherin until Nov. 22, and the Department to Nov. 28.

Far Away, So Close: Talking to Detroit from Windsor's Broken City Lab

 

Viewed from across the river in Detroit, it must seem like a cruel taunt: Caesar's Casino in Windsor, its huge, bright red neon sign glowing next to a massive Jumbotron filled with beautiful people living large -- sipping cocktails, lounging on the beach, and, of course, gambling.

"This is the life you were meant to live" goes the on-screen sales pitch. Which, given hard-luck Detroit's descent ever deeper into economic armageddon recently -- subprime foreclosures, big-three automaker near-bankruptcies -- is nothing short of heartless.

So the good folks at Broken City Lab in Windsor are trying to make amends. Tonight, tomorrow and Wednesday, Broken City, an artist collective/urban activist team/"creative research group" (their preferred term) will be projecting messages of their own on the Daimler Chrysler building in downtown Windsor, which sits in plain view of Detroit across the river. While not exactly boosterish, it acknowledges what Caesar's blithley ignores: that in these down times, escapism isn't only foolhardy -- it's impossible.

Tonight's message? "We're in this together." Which, if not exactly hopeful, is at least realistic, and lets Detroit know: Someone out there understands.

Art of the Times, Pt. 2

The other story that caught my eye in the New York Times over the last few days was the news that Jeff Koons would be curating a significant show, incuding much of his own work, at the New Museum in New York. Which is novel, I suppose, and not a terrible idea; but the fact is that Koons is curating exclusively from the collection of Greek shipping magnate Dakis Joannou, who, with 40-plus Koons, happens to be one of the artists' biggest patrons.

It's not hard to see where the calls of impropriety are coming from -- and why the story landed on the front page; in the post-financial crash world, the art market tumbled heavily, causing many collectors to take a bath on high-priced superstars like Koons. A museum show is a stamp of approval, and affects secondary market prices significantly. Simply put, the fear is that Joannou is indulging in some Saatchi-esque marketing in having the freedom to install his own collection in a museum -- particularly so when he happens to be a trustee.

Needless to say, Joannou is deflecting such notions, as is the museum; and the collection, which includes big bodies of work by Maurizio Cattelan, Urs Fischer, Robert Gober, Kiki Smith as well as Koons, is worthy of a public exhibition. And to be fair, many museums, including the AGO, show work from prominent patrons.

But there are rules to these things, if loose ones, meant to keep institutions free from market manipulation, at least of the actual works they're showing. The Whitney, for example, only does it on the pre-condition that the works shown will be donated, removing the concern that the patron is using them as a marketing platform. The AGO has had that relationship with the Thomsons for years. Not so in this case, where Joannou will retain ownership of the works -- at least until he takes them to auction. Any bets on when that will happen?