Art News and Updates from Gallereo
All the latest news from the art world, as well as what's happening here at Gallereo. If you've built a gallery at Gallereo, let us know about your experience and you and your site could feature in our blog in the coming weeks.
Saturday 08th January 2011Times Square Art Take Over
Times Square is perhaps one of the best known locations in the world. Sat in the middle of Manhattan in New York City, Times Square is a giant light show that advertises everything from Coca Cola to the latest Broadway hits, TV shows to the latest in designer brands.
Now imagine if Times Square was transformed from a hub of advertisements into a gallery of art? That would be brilliant! While many of us may sit and just imagine what that would be like, some people, like Justus Bruns, spring into action and try to make it happen.
Bruns is the 22-year old creator of the nonprofit,
Times Square to Art Square (TS2AS); a project which aims to turn all of the billboards in Times Square into a display of art for just one day.
Using the power of social media to build up momentum for the project, Bruns set an aim of raising $10,000 by Autumn 2012. One of the ways in which TS2AS is raising money is through a creative funding platform called
Kickstarter. Here, you can submit your project, with a financial goal, and then solicit pledges to make that goal come true. Currently, the project has raised $4,351 from 106 backers, and there are 4 days left to go on that particular
money raising campaign. You can also donate directly on the TS2AS website.
While the project is certainly inspirational, there has been criticism that, in fact, it would cost $24million to buyout the advertising in Times Square for just one day. Therefore the target of $10,000 is no where near enough to make an impact on one of the most lucrative advertising spaces in the world.
However, to clarify - the idea is not to buyout the advertising for a day. The above, million-dollar figure probably goes a long way to explaining why that is not the goal. The money that is raised by TS2AS will be used to raise awareness of the project and get people on board. If they can get enough support, then there's the chance to get the advertises on board with project as well.
If you want to see Times Square turned into an Art Square, you can make a donation to the project, or keep up with the projects progress at the
TS2AS website.
Posted on January 08th 2011 on 11:54am
0 Comments
Wednesday 05th January 2011Sally Mann: Back In Print for all the Right Reasons
Sally Mann, Emmett, Jessie and Virgina, from the Immediate Family Series, 1989
Sally Mann is easily on of the most talked about, celebrated and debated photographers out there and is perhaps best known for her large scale photographs of her own children when they were just youngsters, and her later landscape work.
Sally Mann has received a lot of criticism for her work and continues, even now, to be used in debates regarding the decency of the fine art photograph and where the line lies between observational photography and pornographic imagery. Mann's case in this regard is particular severe, as accusations of producing pornographic imagery centered around her third major collection of works;
Immediate Family
. Published in 1992,
Immediate Family was a documentary account of the lives of her three children, taken at the family's summer cabin. In many of the pictures, her children, who were all younger than 10 years of age, could be seen naked. The work explored themes of growing up and exploration, of playing games and enjoying life as well as darker themes of death and loneliness.
Controversy was widespread and intense when the publication was released, with accusations of child pornography flaring up. Various parties reacted in different ways, with the Wall Street Journal famously moving to censor an image of one of Mann's daughters. Other critics however, stood by Mann in her argument that these are innocent and natural pictures taken by a mother, of her children, and that there is a raw humanity about them that everyone can relate to.
Having survived the backlash to go on and produce further works, and gain critical acclaim for series such as
Still Time
of 1994,
What Remains
of 2003 and
Deep South
of 2005. Notably, for many of the famous landscape shots that feature in some of these series, Mann used wet plate, 8 x 10 inch glass negatives, a method requiring a lot of care, skill and patience, that had long been neglected for more modern photographic techniques.
The photographic organisation, Aperture, along with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts now presents the latest book on the work of Mann;
Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit
. The publication, which includes a range of works and topics from Mann's oeuvre, including sill life polaroids, images of her children, stark landscapes and more recent self-portraits, is the first thematic survey of Mann's work, and stands as a book that should not be neglected by anyone serious about photography.
Posted on January 05th 2011 on 06:25pm
0 Comments
Tuesday 04th January 2011Top Tales of 2010, Straight from ARTINFOI'm a big fan of blog posts or articles that list a top number of anything. As a society we all seem to really love it; the top ten most expensive, the top 50 most powerful, the top 20 fails, top 10 tips, top 100 do not do's....the list goes on.
To celebrate our love of lists, order and categorisation, I wanted to draw your attention to ARTINFO's latest top list;
Sex, Scandal, and iPads: ARTINFO's Most-Read Stories of 2010. The ARTINFO Daily Arts Digest drops conveniently into my inbox about mid-afternoon, and I can fully appreciate the humour and more relaxed mode of language that they use to engage their readers. The subheading in the e-newsletter for this particular story read: "These were the lurid tales you liked the most last year, you animals." How could I not click on it?
While the introduction to the list of top articles points out that, once again, sex, money and politics rein supreme, I was more enthused to see that an article about the
Top 10 Artist Websites had made it in at number 9, showing a huge interest on the part of ARTINFO readers in what sorts of websites artists and photographers have to offer. Once I'd finished drooling over some of the offerings in that article, including sites for
Olafur Eliasson (no.3),
Ed Ruscha (no.5) and
Jeff Koons (no.10), I returned to see which articles had beaten, or been beaten by the Top 10 Artist Websites.
Take a look at this
great list, complied by ARTINFO, and relive some of the greatest art stories of 2010.
Happy New Year!
Posted on January 04th 2011 on 05:51pm
0 Comments
Wednesday 29th December 2010A Private Moon to Brighten up Your DayWhile browsing through a range of different creative blogs, we came across
Toxel, a daily blog that takes a sneak peak at the best that design and technology have to offer. A particular post that we took interest in on the site was
Beautiful Moon Photography from Russia.
As the post claims, back in 2005 two Russian artists, Leonid Tishkov and Boris Bendikov created their very own moon, and took it to various locations to get some truly stunning photographs.
A little more investigation proved that there was a little more to these series of images, than just random shots capturing some great scenes of Russia; there was a story to the whole project.
"Private Moon", as the project was called, is "a visual poem, telling a story about a man who found the Moon and stayed with her for the rest of his life". These are the words of Tishkov, who went on to describe the story of the man and the fallen Moon and how their relationship embodies the age old dichotomy between the mythological and the human; fairy tale and reality.
The project is beautifully shot and represents a beautiful story. Take a look at some of the shots below:
Posted on December 29th 2010 on 01:56pm
0 Comments
Monday 27th December 2010Once Again, Olafur Eliasson Takes Us Closer to Our Surroundings
Any one that has visited an exhibition of the work of Olafur Eliasson will be able to testify to how complete an experience it is. You are able to see, hear, feel and be part of creations that speak to the full range of your senses. By intervening in the gallery space to create something which transcends physicality and permeates the entire room, Eliasson invites you to be more aware of your surroundings and to response to things which may be common place, but which we take for granted.
Take for example, Eliassons famous work,
The Weather Project, which was part of the
Unilever Series held at the Tate in 2003. The installation, which dominated the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, aimed to represent the sun and sky. Hundreds of mono-frequency lamps, in a semi circular formation, were used, along with a mirrored ceiling to re-create the sun indoors. Mist filled the room in varying densities to produce cloud like effects or the haze of an autumn morning.
The project allowed visitors to the Tate Modern, the chance to get up close and personal with the sun; with a weather effect that we deal with on a daily basis, yet completely take for granted. Bringing the weather indoors, and into the gallery space, opened up conversation about how we live with weather and experience it throughout our lives.
Eliassons latest project it entitled Din Blinde Passager (Your Blind Passenger) and it is a 90-metre-long installation that is filled with a dense fog. As a visitor to the installation you are able to walk through the 90-metre-long tunnel to experience the fog first hand, making your way from one end to the other with visibility being at 1.5 metres at best.
Eliassons work once again transcends the physicality that this is just a tunnel full of fog - it opens up the gallery space to be a full body experience that asks you to use all of your senses to partake fully in the installation. With visibility so low, your other senses are heightened and you are asked to concentrate singularly on the work of art for an extended period of time. It is well known that for gallery and museum audiences, the average amount of time spent looking at a single piece of art can be quoted in seconds rather than minutes - Eliasson has created something here which leaves the visitor unable to move their focus elsewhere until they have reached the end of the piece.
The installation which investigates our individual relationship with our surroundings, can be seen the
ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen. The exhibition is on view until the 27th November 2011. For more information, please visit the museum website.
Image Credits: (Left) Courtesy of Tate website. (Right) Olafur Eliasson,Test for Din blinde passager, 2010, foto Studio Olafur Eliasson © 2010 Olafur Eliasson
Posted on December 27th 2010 on 04:47pm
0 Comments
Thursday 23rd December 2010Gallereo Tip of the Week - Social Media Linking on Your WebsiteSocial media has become a global phenomenon that helps people to communicate, promote and share ideas amongst like minded people. Social media can also help you to connect with fans, find out about new opportunities, and let people know more about what you are doing as an artist or photographer.
If you have social media accounts at the likes of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, why not let more people know about it, by linking them directly to your Gallereo website?
It's easy, all you have to do is go to General Settings on the Configuration menu, which is here:
Have a look for the 3 social media linking fields, tick the boxes for the ones that you want to show, and add the URL for your Facebook page, Twitter account, or LinkedIn profile.
Press save at the bottom of the screen, and your social media links will be displayed here in the bottom right of your website.
Happy sharing!
Posted on December 23rd 2010 on 03:00pm
0 Comments
Monday 20th December 2010James Franco to Take On Berlin as a Fine ArtistJames Franco may be particularly well known for his acting roles in films such as Spiderman (1, 2 and 3), Pineapple Express or more recently 127 Hours. Franco has been in the press a lot recently with regards to the latter movie presentation as he plays the role of Aron Ralston; the climber and outdoor sports fanatic who notoriously ends up trapped under a boulder in an isolated canyon, where he has to remove his own arm in order to escape.
Directed by Danny Boyle, the film has had a lot of press surrounding the the fact that there has been a high faint-rate amongst initial audiences.
Looking forward to 2011, it's not Franco's film career that we are curious about, it's his career as an artist. He made his move into the art scene back in June this year, where he exhibited at the New York Clocktower Gallery. The show, entitled
The Dangerous Book For Boys, was curated by the founder, and former director of
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre, Alanna Heiss; adding a certain level of validity to what may have otherwise been overlooked as a celebrity indulgence.
Franco's 2011 exhibition, which is to be held in Berlin at the
Peres Projects Gallery, will be an expansion upon the work shown in
The Dangerous Book For Boys show. The work looks at themes of boyhood and sexual confusion in adolescents. Reportedly, the show will contain many of the same videos as the show at the Clocktower, but will have more drawings, paintings and photographs by the artist.
Speculation about how the work will be priced, given Franco's Hollywood celebrity status, and the reasons for him opting to show in Berlin, rather than closer to home has been on the rise since the exhibition was announced. In various interviews, including one with
ARTINFO, gallery owner and curator Javier Peres has commented that the works have yet to be priced, but that they are likely to be "quite reasonable".
As for having Berlin as the host city to the show, it has also been suggested that Franco may be taken more seriously as a fine artist in Europe than he would in the States. Peres has said that, "we don't have the same general fixation on [celebrity] in Germany". Whether that is true or not, Berlin is certainly an amazing city to exhibit in if you are a contemporary artist; it's a great hub of artistic energy and there are some great galleries there.
Franco's show will open in February, during which Franco will also be screening a film at the Berlin Film Festival.
Posted on December 20th 2010 on 10:03pm
0 Comments
Saturday 18th December 2010Andy Warhol: Show Me the Money!
Installation of Andy Warhol Enterprises at the Indianapolis Museum of Art
I think it goes without saying that not all artists are in it for the money, many artists construct, create and innovate because that's what they love to do. Andy Warhol, however, was definitely in it for the money.
The commercial and business aspects of art fascinated Warhol and infiltrated every aspect of his artistic practice. Before Warhol truly became Warhol as most of us know him, he was a commercial artist for magazines and publications, creating illustrations for articles or advertisements.
Upon breaking into fine art circles, Warhol didn't dropped the commercial drive that had brought him from Pittsburgh to New York in the first place, in fact, he saw the creation of art as an opportunity to make big bucks.
Warhol and Pop Art are inseparable; Pop Art being a movement that started in England, but really found its leg in the US where artists were truly able to grab hold of commodity culture and popular culture that was built on ease of living and excess.
Warhol was building up his Pop Art oeuvre at a time when the New York Abstract Expressionists were bringing art down to abstracted canvases depicting the emotive stroke of the paint brush or the emotional pull of colour above that of figurative depiction. There are artists like Jackson Pollock creating his 'paint splash' canvases or Franz Cline with his sweeping monotone depictions.
In parallel to the Abstract Expressionists, Warhol was working at a time when Capitalism in was viewed skeptically or even with hostility by many artists and creative types.
Warhol was never shy about his exploits in the art world, and never tried to hide his commercial goals or drive for money. He is famously quoted as having said that "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art". He also named his studio The Factory, opening alluding to is as a place where works are commercially produced on mass for economic gain. Throughout his career, money, consumerism and celebrity culture have filled his canvases as he depicts everything from dollar signs to Elvis Presley, sex and drugs to Superman.
Right now there is an exhibition of Warhols work at the Indianapolis Museum of Art entitled, Andy Warhol Enterprises. The exhibition takes a look at Warhol as businessman and commercially successful artist; taking views on how Warhol treated money and art during his life.
The show runs until 2nd January, visit the
website for more information about visiting.
Posted on December 18th 2010 on 02:30pm
0 Comments
Friday 17th December 2010Art Stimulates More Than Just Imaginations In New York CityNew York City was very much at the forefront of the global economic collapse in 2008, with eyes around the world watching what was happening to the likes of Lehman Brothers and wondering what would be in store for us financially in coming years. The same was true of the art world; people looked to New York for signs of how the global economic crisis would affect the art market and culture on a whole.
Two years later we are looking back at New York, and in particular the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA), to see how art and culture are helping to stimulate the economy for everyone.
In a survey and report by the MMA, it has been announced that, over the Summer period, the MMA's trio of exhibitions - Picasso in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú, and American Woman: Fashion a National Identity - stimulated a staggering $784 million in economic activity. That activity came from local, national and international tourists making the journey to New York to feast their eyes on some of the best art that the world has to offer.
Statistics from the Museum show that the three exhibitions drew in crowds of 703,256, 631,064 and 335,759 visitors respectively. Of those visitors, the report stated that 72% of visitors travelled from outside of the five boroughs of NYC, 20% were from the Tri-state area, 34% were from other US states and 46% were international visitors.
Each person that visited the museum is thought to have spent around $1,050 on accommodation, sightseeing, entertainment, admission to museums, food and shopping.
Overall, the report which was conducted by the Office of Market Research in the Visitor Services Department, calculated that the City and State of New York would receive a direct tax benefit of $78.4 million as a result of the Museums activities over the summer period.
While New York and the MMA have proven to be a great example of how art and culture can benefit cities and economies on a whole, there is no doubt that other institutions around the world are having the same effect by continuing to put on quality exhibitions and running programs that continue to innovate and bring world class art to the masses.
Posted on December 17th 2010 on 02:19pm
0 Comments
Wednesday 15th December 2010The Benefits of Selling Fine Art OnlineThe practice of selling art online has become increasingly popular in recent years due to the buoyancy of the online market and the fact that the cost effectiveness of selling online proves to be just as competitive, and even more profitable than trying to sell via a traditional bricks and mortar business model.
Firstly, the price of obtaining an online exhibition or portfolio space, as opposed to that of a physical gallery space, is certainly more cost effective and 'hanging' the work out there for people to see definitely take a lot less time - time that you can put into marketing that work.
Selling art online also offers you a higher margin on the sale of your artwork. You don't have to put that money into rent, heating bills, electricity bills or paying for staff. To take it to the extreme, you don't even have to get out of bed to update your art gallery website so no paying for commuting and no battling rush hour traffic to meet the expected opening times of a traditional gallery space.
In talking about gallery times - a physical space is generally restricted to regular opening times, whereas an
artist website ensures that you are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year.
All that being said, it's not enough to build an artist website and expect the sales to come flooding in - that's not how the internet works, and it definitely isn't how the art world works. Selling art online will take dedication to marketing and a great deal of communication with potential collectors or interested parties.
You should make an effort to be as descriptive as you can on your artist website to encourage trust and comfort amongst your audience. It is also wise that you think about the keywords that you use to describe your work as this will be useful for search engine optimisation. We have already put together a few
blog posts on search engine optimisation, so take a read to find out more.
To make the best use of the benefits of selling online you should aim to get to grips with how the internet works in terms of people finding your website, and how people behave when they visit your site. Then do your best to create an artist website that looks good, works well and offers your visitors just what they are looking for.
To be successful in selling art online, you have to drop the penny somewhere between having a great website that showcases your work and the marketing activities surrounding that website that will let the world know who you are. Having confidence in your artwork and your website so that you can promote it to the best of your ability is the first step in becoming successful at selling online.
Stay tuned for a blog post about potential places for marketing your artist website, and how to go about having your site featured there.
Posted on December 15th 2010 on 07:59pm
0 Comments
.jpg)
.jpg)
