| TLC |

1/ a visual arts buffet sliced into ten sentences or less (...or sometimes more). 2/ for people who enjoy and nurture their short attention span. 3/ thoughtful but often tastefully disordered grab-bag of topics. 4/ a mashup between a didactic panel and a status update. 5/ writing that aims to have more substance & integrity than reality TV.

[thelazycurator]

As found in a 2009 Maxim magazine, the above is an infograph to get you covered on the basic economy of the Black Market in the artworld.

[thelazycurator]

It's Black Market Friday! YAY. On the last BMF I looked at Interpol which didn't tell us a hell lot about art thieves  Whatever. This week, I am going to introduce you to the Art Loss Register and other similar databases that hold information about stolen art and antiques [1]. The Art Loss Register is a company that was originally owned by a number of big auction houses and a man named Julian Radcliffe. Julian was the brains behind the project. Poor Julian almost got fired in the late 90s; it was an initiative that Sotheby's started. The problem was that the auction houses only liked the idea of knowing if a work was stolen but they weren't too keen on doing anything about it. Julian on the other hand, was pushing the idea of recovery of stolen goods. Recovery also meant money for the company, but at the expense of humiliation and scandal to long-time contacts of the auction houses. As such, Julian was about to be fired from the project he started and the Art Loss Register company was financially going under. In a fortunate turn of fate Julian was able to buy out the auction houses shares with a commission he made from a successful art theft recovery; a paycheck at the tune of about 3 million. The Art Loss Register is live and well, and has become (to some degree) an institutionalized procedure when buying works of art. That is, to those who can afford to use the resource. You can buy a single search for $95 or 25 search/yr for $800. If you need more access, you have to contact the company to determine a subscription rate. Yeah, it's kind of absurd. But, there is also the LAPD Art Theft Detail database and the FBI National Stolen File search. Both of which are free to anyone with access to the interwebs. Enjoy.

http://www.lapdonline.org/art_theft_detail/  

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/vc_majorthefts/arttheft/arttheft

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[1] The information in this post is taken from the following book: Joshua Knelman, Hot Art : Chasing thieves and detectives through the secret world of stolen art, Vancouver & Toronto : D&M Publishers Inc., 2011.

[thelazycurator]

...perhaps there is still hope?

[thelazycurator]

The last Friday of each month is Black Market Friday! On Black Market Friday I post something about art forgery or art theft. To kick off the first Black Market Friday I turned to Interpol, which is less-known as ICPO (International Criminal Police Organization), to find the slickest art criminal --in the world. From a drop-down menu of Interpol's Wanted Persons, I clicked on an offence labelled 'Work of Art', which is listed alongside offenses such 'War Crime', 'Maritime Piracy/Robbery on the High Seas', and 'Arson'. Without further ado, allow me to introduce Jean Jacques Stromboni, a sharp-looking chap born in Guinea, with citizenship in France. His crimes are quite vague, other than to say that he is into 'Crimes involving works of art'. So if you happen to see Jean on the street, just know, you probably have the wrong person. Jean is now 71 years old, and probably looks nothing like that picture. But, if you have one of those, what do you call them? hunches? Yeah, just give Interpol a heads up, or contact your local 5-0. Or give Jean a high-five and carry on with your day.

[thelazycurator]

Despite its dodgy and uninformed use of Papyrus for its logo typeface, and its lack of specificity in its branding, LibraryThing is just about the coolest idea I've seen in some time. There really is nothing I like more than to have my art and theory books organized and accounted for. The first 200 books you catalogue are free, after that you pay a small yearly fee or $25-fo'-life. It does a million cool stuff, most of which are not shown in this screenshot. Unlike GoodReads, LibraryThing is not a social networking site; it is a social-networking database system. And, it doesn't appear to be sucking the tit of the corporate sloths. -Love that. -if its true that is. The best part: the comment section allows me to keep track of what I loan to my book-thief friends. The second best part: it locates your book's LCC (Library of Congress Classification) code; you know, so you have it when you get around to picking your books up off the floor and putting them on shelves. So, fellow amateur librarians rejoice! You are in the literary loop. Now, back to typing some ISBNs.

[thelazycurator]

Ah yes, the Curatorial Fail. Only a few days before the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, at her art gallery--an annex to the Buckingham Palace--it was a bit disheartening to find display case exhibit falling apart. On show at the Queen's Gallery from May 4, 2012 to October 7, 2012, 'Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist' was the largest exhibition to date of Leo's drawings of human anatomy. In Figure 1, we can see an example of how Figure 2 should look. But do not fret fellow art aficionados, what you see on the ground in Figure 2 is only a repro; the original is safe in the other room. To contextualize, in these awful cell phone pictures with no flash (of course) what you see is the tried-and-true, good ol' compare and contrast situation. At the top, a modern anatomical model, and immediately under, Leo's study of anatomy. A didactic panel close by explained that, and I quote, "Although these models are 'accurate', they are no less schematic than Leonardo's drawings. All anatomical illustration, even in three dimensions, requires a degree of stylisation to make it comprehensible," end quote. Well said curator; it makes up for the gallery's terrible choice in glue.

Oh yeah, btw, the exhibition was great.

Post-Script: Take note of the eerie reflection of a skeleton flanking the kid-in-utero model. A little nod to Terror Management Theory for all you Psychology majors out there. 

[thelazycurator]

No older than the age of ten with my keen eye for aesthetics, I walked up to our Chevy Astro van on the crushed white rock driveway and enthusiastically named it 'The Box'. But, with the vehicle’s obvious disregard for basic aerodynamics, our Astro van rested on my conscious like a pillowcase of bricks; you know a love-hate relationship. In the 90s, a part of me did not understand why our van was so enthralled with angular lines when the swanky new vehicles kept their tireless but steady progression to look more-and-more like a Jetson's car. Some years down the road, on one very bittersweet and unforgettable day, my parents sold 'The Box'; by that time, I believe we were on 'The Box III'. Today, that moment seems like forever ago. So, when I was entrusted to drive artist Rebecca Belmore to Museum London last Wednesday night to see Kim Adam's "Auto Lamp" (2009) installation of a '96 Dodge Ram cargo van, my tendency toward nostalgia rang true. With its colour changed from Teal to Titanium White (or perhaps more appropriately 'Whispering White Marshmallow'), and with its illuminated modernist doily design, this, for me, was 'The Box' reincarnated. Mon ami, that is of the best compliments I can give because some of my most cherished memories were in a vehicle not too dissimilar to that. 

[thelazycurator]

I love Brutalist chic. Like Western University's library, an imposing concrete structure of our built environment offers a feeling of self-bettering belittlement that makes a girl swoon. However, its seems as though I'm always alone in this opinion.

For others, Brutalist architecture is the keystone to a post-apocalyptic deathscape, or whatever. To think that something could be colder than the International Style is just too profound of a thought for my contemporaries. It's that tension between Brutalism's natural dirty tones (a result brought on by the beton brut technique) and  its oh so clearly made-man, not natural, structure that fosters an other worldly disgust. 

All things considered, there's something familiar and unsettling about the Brutalist "I want to take over the world" quality; so much so that it keeps me up at night. It is hard for me to forget that each time Pinky and the Brain plotted a scheme of global dominance, it always failed.

I fear that Brutalism has too. 

[thelazycurator]

K, regional ephemera is pretty hot right now. McIntosh Gallery's collection manager, Brian Lambert, recently curated an exhibition of music posters and paste-ups called Graphic Underground: London 1977-1990 at the Forest City Gallery. In the spirit of all that is not meant to be preserved, I give you a postcard. What we have here is some local midcentury modernist architecture. It might not be as rad as London's punk rock scene, but the Modernist era is the new populist nostalgia--sorry Impressionism, but your time left in the spotlight is dim. Oh, and I'm loving the Futura typeface; you really don't see enough of it anymore. 

[thelazycurator]

A potent, graphic, textual mess. I thought it looked pretty. To be clear, this picture was a brainstorming assignment for an Advertising Creative class I took in Australia. Now it's layman's art. Actually, this isn't even my work, it was written by my project partner. That is, until I subjected it to the some Picasa tools, then it became my Cover Photo on Facebook. Now, I shamelessly put it on this blog. Ah well.