Recent Blog Posts

Hirst Selling Briskly and Well at Sotheby's

The sale the art world has been waiting for is at the midway point. Damien Hirst's gallery-shunning Sotheby's sale, "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," has already busted through all the records this evening, with a 100% sale rate so far. At the time of writing, it has made £43,563,800 ($78,307,220), passing its pre-sale low estimate of £43.2 million ($77.6 million). "The Golden Calf," a gold-hoofed dead calf in formaldehyde with closed eyes, has gone for £10,345,250 ($18,598,130). "The Kingdom" (a formaldehyde-sunk tiger shark) has gone for £9,561,250 ($17,188,697). In the week or so that the exhibition has been up in advance of the sale, 21,000 people have passed through Sotheby's for a look.

I was one of them this morning. Within moments of entering the vast exhibit, my cynicism about Mr. Hirst and his dead animals, cigarette butts, flies, butterflies, medicine cabinets, and spots vanished. A great number of pieces are simply astoundingly beautiful, particularly the butterfly canvases, some of which are made in the image of cathedral stained-glass windows. Mr. Hirst deserves every penny he'll get from the sale and more.

By Zoe Strimpel | Mon, 15 Sep 2008 at 4:37 PM | Permalink

The Booker Short List, Minus Sir Salman

Shock, horror, gasp! Sir Salman Rushdie, darling of the literary establishment and the crown prince of the Booker Prize, has been snubbed from the short list for ... the Booker Prize. Earlier this year his "Midnight's Children" won the Best of Booker (the book having won the gong nearly 30 years ago). That he has not made it on with "The Enchantress of Florence" is a surprise but a nice one, actually — hinting at less cronyism than one is tempted to attribute to the literary world. Then again — maybe he just pissed off one of the judges.

Instead of Sir Salman, the judges, whose chairman is the notorious politician Michael Portillo, went for work by 33-year-old Aravind Adiga, an Indian journalist; Amitav Ghosh; Linda Grant (long-listed in 2002 and winner of the Orange Prize for fiction), and novice Steve Toltz, 36, an Australian screenwriter. Sebastian Barry and Philip Hensher are also on the list.

Jonathan Ruppin of Foyles Bookshop was quoted in the Times of London as saying, not without a little glee: "The absence of Rushdie means that there will be a new star in the literary firmament."

By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 9 Sep 2008 at 5:31 PM | Permalink

Lucian Freud Lays Out the Bacon

The champagne-swilling Contemporary art circus will roll into town again next month with Frieze Art Fair and the Contemporary art sales at Sotheby's and Christie's. But what a difference a year makes: This time last year the credit crunch still felt like a distant, almost unbelievable rumble and the mood was greedy and extravagant. Now, large shows of cash-splashing are considered tasteless.

All the same, if one artist seems to rise way above the recession, it's Lucian Freud, who has been commanding excruciatingly high prices all year. Now Christie's has announced it will be offering one of two portraits by Mr. Freud of his great friend Francis Bacon, the other top-earning artist on the market. The house's press release — though slightly muted — says it expects the work to command between £5 million ($8.8 million) and £7 million ($12.3 million). This sounds impressive, but taken next to Mr. Freud's "Supervisor Sleeping," which went for $33 million at Christie's New York in May, it's positively modest.

The next month will tell whether the strutting, bombastic Contemporary art market is quite as vigorous and autonomous as thought. As the auctioneer Nick Bonham (of Bonhams auction house) told me today, in a recession, the froth is the first thing to go. His bet is on Old Masters retaining value. We shall see if Freud and Bacon count as masters enough.

By Zoe Strimpel | Mon, 8 Sep 2008 at 4:50 PM | Permalink

Reading the Market's Mood in Formaldehyde and Spots

Damien Hirst's decision to hold an everything-must-go sale at Sotheby's next week, a collection called "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," has reignited debate in London. The booty, a 223-piece strong trousseau which includes plenty of formaldehyde and spots, went up on display on Friday at the auction house and remains there until the sale on September 15 and 16. The auction is estimated to make up to £65 million ($116 million). ArtTactic, an art-market analyst, said the result could determine the whole mood of the art market. So it sure is important. It could also be seen as ludicrously ill-timed given the deeply shaky economic feeling in the air.

Announced earlier this summer, the sale immediately got backs up because it is an unabashed commercial grab for the artist, and artists, of course, are meant to be about deeper things than hard, cold cash. Then there's the politics: Mr. Hirst has simply gone and cut out the middlemen (the gallerists Larry Gagosian and Jay Jopling) and gone it alone.

Some, like the London Sunday Times's Waldemar Januszczak, think it's fair play — both the greed and the timing. "There's even a chance Hirst's ridiculous auction will lighten the mood of the entire nation," he writes. "Who else but an artist could ignore all this nonsense about recessions and cutbacks so blithely and stride so crazily in the opposite direction?"

Others have seen Mr. Hirst's move as heroic; to those minds, because galleries claim up to 60% commission, they can rightly be called vultures. On the other hand, as Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote in the Times of London last week, they work as talent spotters and agents, too, bringing unknowns along and giving them the wrapping and bow that turns them into attractive property. Mr. Hirst may well be attractive, but whispers abound that the age of pickled animals has passed and that finally, he may well be selling above his worth.

By Zoe Strimpel | Sun, 7 Sep 2008 at 6:00 PM | Permalink

Vying To Keep Titians in Britain

Britain is embroiled in a classic tussle about just how much the country's artistic heritage is worth — and whether the taxpayer should be stumping up for it. Last week, the National Gallery in London and the National Galleries of Scotland launched a campaign to keep two Renaissance masterpieces on this island. They are Titian's "Diana & Actaeon" and "Diana & Callisto." Both come from the Scottish Duke of Sutherland's collection, and their price tag is a modest £100 million ($177.5 million). However, the paintings are to be supplied one after the other, the second to be sold only if funds for the first are raised.

If Britain fails to come up with the cash — of which about half is hoped will come from Westminster and the Scottish government at Holyrood, and half from private donation — the paintings will likely go to auction and wind up overseas. This, for all the heritage hounds in government and the arts in Britain, would not be at all desirable. The question is what price tag is appropriate for keeping the paintings here. After all, there are plenty of other great works around in the hallowed halls of the museums of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Both paintings — which are indeed breathtakingly splendid — are currently on display at the National Galleries in Scotland. If both were purchased, one would hang there and one in London. The director of the National Gallery, Nicholas Penny, said in a statement: "Now the paintings have been offered on remarkably advantageous terms; their acquisition by both institutions would be an historic event." Finding the cash would be equally historic.

By Zoe Strimpel | Wed, 3 Sep 2008 at 6:45 PM | Permalink

Cooled-Down Hot Spots, a Joy of August

The dog days of summer are drawing to a close, and the European holiday season — most if not all of August — is over. Today people trickled back into the city, and tube trains were full again with suits and briefcases, not just sweaty families.

August was pretty boring. But one good thing about it was getting into places the tourists won't go but that would normally be out of reach. One such was the new talk-of-the-town restaurant, Hélène Darroze at the Connaught, helmed by two-Michelin-starred-single-mother-darling-of-Paris Ms. Darroze, at one of London's fanciest hotels, the Connaught. And, boy, is her restaurant fancy. The hotel underwent a £70 million ($126.1 million) refurbishment recently, and no efforts were spared in upgrading the dining room and the Coburg Bar next door.

Sitting atop throne-like silk banquettes and chairs, with an exquisitely ornate ceiling above and gleaming wall paneling around us, I thanked God it was August and I could get a table. And, man, was it good, if super-fancy French is your bag. Even if it isn't, everything — no matter how fancy-shmancy (it all was fancy-shmancy) — was heaven. Delights included a kind of caviar martini: oyster "tartare" at the bottom, black jelly of oyster next, haricot cream and a garnish of caviar and gold leaf on top. There was lobster, pork three ways (sounds dirty, eh?), and desserts such as panna cotta with almond crumble to die for.

The reviews have been trickling in, all positive — astounded, in fact — apart from those from the characters Giles Coren and Adrian Gill of London's Times and Sunday Times, respectively. They called it awful. Such a verdict, surely, can only be a sign of too many years of restaurant reviewing. A few too many veloutés, consommés, and tartares, no doubt.

By Zoe Strimpel | Mon, 1 Sep 2008 at 4:15 PM | Permalink

Ritchie's London Is Old Hat

It's a very sorry season for movies. Guy Ritchie's new one, "RocknRolla," has been laughed out of London. Bigwigs from the Observer's critic Jason Solomons to the author of "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," Toby Young, were among a crowd who were roundly unimpressed.

"The film is basically another mad trawl through London's seedy underworld with mavericks and crack addicts around every corner," James Christopher writes in the Times of London today.

This city may be the hot new place for movies, but it looks like Mr. Ritchie's brand of gangster-flick has grown far too old and nobody wants to know. Meanwhile Will Ferrell's oh-so-American new one, "Step Brothers," came out here last week to utter dismay, too.

Bring on the fall.

By Zoe Strimpel | Mon, 1 Sep 2008 at 3:34 PM | Permalink

Kafka's Porn Stash and Edinburgh Off to a Good Start

A collection of pornography belonging to Franz Kafka has been discovered in the British Library in London and the Bodleian in Oxford. It appears that the stash had been concealed by scholars in an attempt to preserve the writer's image. The naughty material was unearthed by the academic James Hawes, whose forthcoming book, "Excavating Kafka," will reveal some of the pornographic material. "These are not naughty post-cards from the beach," Mr. Hawes was quoted as saying in the Times of London, to counter any objections that Kafka would never have gone in for this sort of thing. "They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark. It's quite unpleasant."

As for the long-standing secret of Kafka's tastes, Mr. Hawes said: "Academics have pretended it did not exist. The Kafka industry doesn't want to know such things about its idol." Mr. Hawes was also quoted in the Times as saying there are more dissertations written on Kafka than on any other author except Shakespeare. The number should only increase with these findings.

* * *

August is the month that comedy and theater — or at least their spirits — leave London for Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Festival, under whose umbrella exists the Fringe (regarded as the last word in British comedy) and a variety of other festivals, has got off to a rollicking start. This is despite fears that the move by the Festival's big four venue operators to launch a breakaway Comedy Festival within the Fringe would create a bad atmosphere. Quite the contrary: initial reviews describe an excited atmosphere and lots of new talent. Felix Dexter, of "The Real McCoy" and "Absolutely Fabulous" fame, launched an hour-long show that went down a storm, as did newcomers Josh Howie and Sarah Millican. Newcomers at Edinburgh are watched closely; those that prove a hit often become major comedy stars: Think Ricky Gervais and Brendan Burns.

Wrote author and books editor Stephanie Merritt in the Observer: "Even the grisly weather couldn't dampen the anticipation of comics and
audiences embarking on a month-long marathon of comedy in which some of the most exciting work is coming from first-timers." And it's only just beginning.

By Zoe Strimpel | Tue, 5 Aug 2008 at 12:28 PM | Permalink

At the National, Some Trace of 'The Idiot'

The National Theatre is associated with "proper" theater: big, luxuriant, expensive, and expansive productions of heavy hitters from Michael Frayn to Tennessee Williams, Beckett, and Shakespeare. Indeed, that's been my experience of the place. Bit of a shock last night, then, to find myself at the Cottesloe (the National's most intimate theater, tucked around the side of the main building) for a play ominously entitled "…some trace of her," directed by Katie Mitchell.

A title containing no capitals and three dots is a warning sign for me, cautioning me that something thinks it's cleverer than it is. Well, "…some trace of her" may, in fact, have been cleverer than me. It is a sequence of "reimagined filmic shots" based on Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" (the adaptation is credited to "Katie Mitchell and the company"), requiring mind-bogglingly complex staging.

A big screen appears, and the arty, black-and-white scenes that appear on it are coming from hastily arranged shots onstage. It takes a while to realize that the screen is a real-time reflection of what's happening in front of us. Indeed, the stage is somewhere between a film set and a theater's backstage with props, cameras, and costume wardrobes galore. The actors themselves are part characters, part stagehands, and part producers, all wielding cameras when they aren't, well, acting.

The structure of the performance does not allow for any coherent buildup of story, and I imagine you're a little in the dark if you don't know the Dostoevsky. (I didn't.) Basically, this is a sequence of set pieces: some impressive, even mesmeric in their dramatic tension. But in no way does this play draw you in, and I'll wager I'm not the only National regular who came away scratching her head.

By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 31 Jul 2008 at 10:20 PM | Permalink

A Social Worker Makes the Booker Long List

A 63-year-old social worker from Birmingham has been announced as one of 13 contenders on the long list for the Man Booker Prize, Britain's famous literary honor. It's a satisfying victory for Gaynor Arnold, whose manuscript was initially rejected by publishers and a literary agency. Her debut novel, "Girl in a Blue Dress," is about Charles Dickens's loveless marriage, and the judges are said to have proclaimed on reading it: "Here is somebody who can tell a story." Ms. Arnold may be modest, but she sure is educated, having studied English at Oxford.

Among those she's up against: Salman Rushdie with "The Enchantress of Florence," Linda Grant with "The Clothes on Their Backs," and Amitav Ghosh with "Sea of Poppies."

By Zoe Strimpel | Thu, 31 Jul 2008 at 9:52 PM | Permalink

London Arts & Letters Archive