BEYOND DEMONS AND ANGELS
is Bruce Rimell's first solo show in five years.
​It opens next Friday (10th Feb) at 7.30pm, at Cupola Gallery in Sheffield, UK:
check out this short film he made to talk about his work and the exhibition!

​Promotional film for Bruce Rimell's exhibition 'Beyond Demons and Angels' at Cupola Gallery, 178a Middlewood Road, Sheffield S6 1TD, UK. Opening 7.30pm Friday February 10th. Exhibition continues February 11th til March 11th 2017.

A promo for a small scale C31 TV series featuring Visionary Artists who currently live in, or were originally from Australia. This is the second season of this show.
Featuring artists:  Adam Scott Miller, Bonny Hut, Bryan Itch, Chandrika Steinhardt, Kuba Ambrose, Melissa Shemanna, Orryelle, Paulie Mann, Tobius Miller. 

Produced and edited by Bonny Hut
Brought to you by Metro Television
In association with 
Visionary Art Network Australia

Demnächst erscheint der Kunstband von Angerer der Ältere "Die Rückkehr des Menschen in die Kunst", angelehnt an das weltberühmte Buch von Ortèga y Gasset "Die Vertreibung des Menschen aus den Kunst".
Die Gestaltung der 2 Bände mit Schuber lehnt sich auch an die Tradition des "Schönen Buches" an. Es wird das Gesamtwerk von Angerer der Ältere sein, das sich im Programm des Verlagshauses Kastner wiederfindet. Weitere Informationen werden folgen. Es ist ein großes Oevre geworden. Aber hier als Vorausschau die Titelbilder als erste Information.

Soon the art book  of Angerer der Ältere, "The Return of Humanity to Art" appears, inspired by the famous book by Ortega y Gasset "The Dehumanization of Art". The design of the 2 volumes with slipcase leans also on the tradition of "the beautiful book". It will contain the complete works of Angerer der Ältere, which again can be found in the publishing house Kastner program. Further information will follow. It has become a large oeuvre. But here as a preview, find the titel pages as a initial information.

Numerous assistants helped in the completion of this project.

From an insiders point of view:

Images in  the gallery below are courtesy of Maria Antonia 'Gigi' Schramek, long-time assistant of Ernst Fuchs.

Post by Otto Rapp

Embedded playlist from YouTube by SirMixItAllUp2 ▼

​"American Visions," an eight-part series on American art written and narrated by Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes, is both an account of American life and a tribute to American art that will likely propel thousands of the not-yet-converted into museums and galleries, antiques shows and auction rooms to see (and inevitably shop) for themselves. Filmed in 100 locations around the country, covering everything from Quaker to Shaker, George Washington to Bierstadt, Remington to Warhol, and the skyscrapers of New York City, Hughes has applied his considerable wit and imagination to the problem of revealing how art records and preserves both points of view and ways of life. It is American history told through art, not merely a history of art. It offers a perspective that is refreshingly elevating and inclusive.

--- by William Hosley

from Amazon.com Review of the Book:

Australian-born art critic Robert Hughes, author of the highly acclaimed study of modern art, 'The Shock of the New' has made his home in the United States for the last 20 years. His latest undertaking, which he calls "a love letter to America," is his most massive: a 350-year history of art in America. Published in association with an eight-part PBS series of the same name, this is no scholarly text. With the same voracious wit and opinionated brilliance that have characterized his criticism for Time magazine, this tour-de-force spans three centuries of events, movements, and personalities that have shaped American society and its art.

Post by Otto Rapp

The recent exhibition Phantastische Venus in Viechtach made me think of this great romantic painting by Alexandre Cabanel, painted in 1863. 

My previous blog posed the question: Yes ... But is it Art? It featured a nearly decade old CBS 60 Minutes program. The questions posed then are still ( and sadly) as topical today as they were back then. Nothing much has changed, except perhaps the numbers. Rather than adding this video here to that blog, I present it as a separate post, though they are very much related.  

Go inside the glittering world of the super-rich as art critic and journalist Alastair Sooke explores the remarkable stories behind the Top Ten Most Valuable Paintings in the World to sell at auction. The documentary tells the stories behind the astronomical prices of art and why the world's richest people want to spend their millions on it.

You might like to check out the previous blog 
Yes ... But is it Art?

Original broadcast date: SEPTEMBER 12, 1993, 7:00 PM
A vacuum cleaner. A urinal. Three basketballs floating in water? Morley Safer takes a critical look at the contemporary art world, where household items like these are sold as high-priced art. In this much talked about piece, Safer takes on the artists, dealers and critics of the 90s with gusto.

The producer of 60 Minutes is Andy Rooney. 
Some years ago, in his weekly opinion piece, Andy Rooney shared his views on public art. 
When Did This Become Art?

About the 'artspeak' that describes some of these works he said: 
"I may not understand art, but I do understand the English language, and that is pretentious nonsense. "

UPDATE: 
I now posted a related topic  -  The Value of Art  -  in a separate blog. 
It features a more recent BBC Documentary asking the question 
What makes art valuable?

Here is a related subject: 
Art critic and film-maker Ben Lewis spent 2008 following the booming contemporary art market, from its peak in May until its collapse in October.

To watch the entire 95 minute movie, a streaming rental can be ordered from this preview below: 

On my Blogger The Mystic Otto Rapp I had written several pieces dealing with this and similar subjects. 
Here are a few samples:

LAOKOON, ANTI-LAOKOON and ANTI-KOONS

I'M SICK OF PRETENDING: I DON'T "GET" ART

and finally, since Jeff Koons was mentioned in the 60 Minutes video:
A Millions Poodle - ostentatious display of enormous wealth

The late art critic Hilton Kramer, interviewed in the  CBS video "But is it Art?" had published several very interesting books on this subject, such as this one (1985)  - check it out on Google books, available at Amazon:

Another Update - this is too good to leave out:
Jeff Koons's Louvre Show Cancelled
article on Artnet by Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Quote: 
"It is about time somebody called Koons out for what he is – a circus showman peddling over-blown, over-priced tourist souvenirs."

To commemorate St. Stephan's Day, here is a early 16th C painting by Austrian artist 
Marx Reichlich (1460 to 1520). 

Jacobus and Stephan altar, right inside wing, lower scene: Stoning of Saint Stephan.

Reichlich was a painter of primarily religious works. He painted a number of traditional scenes as commissions for churches, including "Adoration of the Magi", and "The Last Judgement". Some of his works reside at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. This particular work however is in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. 

Post by Otto Rapp

I had recently posted a tongue in cheek spoof about a 'artspeak generator': 
INSTANT ARTIST STATEMENT

OK, now I am trying to get a bit more serious here - 
below is a picture and quote from the blog Translating Artspeak (who in turn took it from an article in the Arts & Culture section of the ChicagoMag (January 2014): 

The quote:
“With his keen knowledge of paint’s spatial effects, the artist exploits the transformative qualities of color applied directly to the architectural frame.”

The Translation:
 The artist painted a mural. 

Of this English upper-middle class speech we may note (a) that it is not localised in any one place, (b) that though the people who use this speech are not all acquainted with one another, they can easily recognise each other’s status by this index alone, (c) that this elite speech form tends to be imitated by those who are not of the elite, so that other dialect forms are gradually eliminated, (d) that the elite, recognising this imitation, is constantly creating new linguistic elaborations to mark itself off from the common herd.
—E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure, 1954
........................read MORE

but to be fair, here is the critique, if you will, of the above essay, by Ben Davis:

INTERNATIONAL ART ENGLISH
 - THE JOKE THAT FORGOT IT WAS FUNNY

“International Art English” is back. 

The essay of the same name, penned by David Levine and Alix Rule and published in the online journal Triple Canopy one year ago, touched off a minor furor with its attempt to prove scientifically that the art world was a hive of pompous windbags — that is, that the official language of art was a linguistically meaningless jumble of buzzwords written in a tortured style imported from French theory, a claim the authors said they could verify through running 13 years of press releases through a computer. 
..................read MORE

But if you prefer humorous, then by all means, check my earlier blog 
INSTANT ARTIST STATEMENT

Post by Otto Rapp

Thank you Scott for including one of my works and a short text contribution in your excellent article. 

One of your lead sentences that summed it all up was:

"The idea that you might train a surgeon to be clumsy, or an engineer to build poorly, or a lawyer to ignore law, would be patently absurd. In the arts, however, you will find an occasional musician who purposely plays badly, or a writer who ignores grammar, but only in the visual arts is training in the traditional skills of the profession systematically and often institutionally denigrated."

Allow me to elaborate a little on my contribution to this article. The teacher I spoke of, lets just call him Professor B, was also a ardent follower of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the art school that was first introducing Conceptual Art into Canada, and the first to eliminate traditional art classes, almost a decade prior to my student days at the University of Lethbridge.  While studying at the UofL I also worked part time as a Gallery Assistant to Professor B, the Gallery Director, who was also my printmaking teacher. The story about his classes is retold in your article, so I won't elaborate here. I would like to state however that I found that the UofL Art Department, then chaired by Professor H who was my painting teacher, had resisted the new trend of eliminating traditional courses, and my best and most useful classes were in Figure Drawing. It was only some time after I graduated when the Conceptual trend took over and I was shocked on subsequent visits to my old Alma Mater how misused and mistreated the studios and equipment in the former Printmaking, Sculpture and Ceramic Studios were.

But lets rewind to a specific event. I believe the year was 1979 when through the visiting artists program Garry Neill Kennedy was invited for a guest lecture. These were usually combined with a exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Kennedy employed art students to apply successive layers of different colored paint onto the exhibition space, ending up with the final color rust-brown. Just prior to the opening he scraped an area off a outside corner with a knife to show the underlying layers of paint. This installation was called 'Revealing'.
A throng of admiring students gathered around him (he was by then already a celebrity) and I joined the question and answer session. At one point Kennedy stated that "in this world there are only about a half dozen people that understand my art", to which I replied "if visual art is a form of communication, and as the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, then I would think if only six people understand you, you fail to be a good communicator". After a short spell of silence he said something like that I am funny, haha; and his body language excluded me from the circle of sycophants.

A year passed, and my Professor B went on sabbatical. The Art Department squeezed by, by not replacing him but dividing his course load among the other faculty. I was Gallery Assistant at that time and for that year, entrusted with running the University Art Gallery. The department Chair, Professor H, had signing authority, but he basically handed me the keys and named me Assistant Gallery Director. This also included looking after the UofL Art Collection during that time. Ironically, the local phone extension to my little office space I was given was 666. I found this extremely funny!

One of the first things I did that year was to change the scheduled Student exhibition from the Saturday Afternoon Pop and Donuts opening to a formal Friday Evening Wine and Cheese reception, like all other shows received. I then got in touch with Prof.B at his sabbatical hide-out in sunny California and asked about the schedule for the following year, since there was none, but needed to be published. No answer. I discussed this with the Department Chair Prof.H and he said to 'go ahead and make your own'. There were some Provincial Artists I scheduled and displayed. At that time the new Fine Art Wing had been built and we moved. To celebrate the opening of the Fine Art Wing it was suggested that it should coincide with the opening of a International Exhibition. Since I scheduled travelling to Austria at that time already I suggested the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. I got in touch with Rudolf Hausner in Vienna, and he invited me to his home. Laden with information he gave me - and he also sent me more books and catalogues after - I then wrote a  essay for this proposal once I returned to Canada. Long story short, I was shot down. The 'Nova Scotia' connection had gotten stronger by then in our far flung Western Province, and to suggest pure and highly skilled painting for a exhibition that was supposed to be also the opening of the new Fine Art Wing was considered sacrilege.
And that, at least in my mind, was the beginning of the end. Cultureburg  had finally taken over the rest of Canada.

To put this into perspective, check out the background of the main-player in this development in Canada, the afore mentioned Garry Kennedy, at that time president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design .
Tim Zuck recalled about his student years, "I didn't paint at all there. In fact, that wasn't even an option. I think if you painted in Nova Scotia at the time you would be tarred and feathered." (Abstract Painting in Canada, Roald Nasgaard, page 338)
In retrospect I now understand the question put to me by the curator of the Edmonton Art Gallery (now called the Art Gallery of Alberta) when I submitted a painting to a show called "What's New" (October 1976).  He mockingly said "What, you still paint?" (but they did take it, I might add).