Sinanation

Sotheby’s Art Impressioniste & Moderne Auction will take place in Paris on December 7 and 8. Below are my favorite three pieces.

Karel Appel’s Virilité. I mentioned before that I really like Karel Appel‘s style and use of color as a painter. Since then I have been keeping an eye on his stuff. His Virilité (Manhood) is set to go on sale in Paris on 7 December 2011 with an estimate of EUR 200-300K. If you look closer I think you’ll see that the title matches the work perfectly.

Picasso’s Double Portrait de Mousquetaire (Double Portrait of a Musketeer). For me this is a great example to Picasso’s style in painting. It is not as complicated as Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, yet it still has all the elements necessary to trace Picasso’s vision in art. I am also a fan of the color choice on this piece.

André Masson’s Femme Attaquée par des Oiseaux (Woman attacked by birds). The French painter, Masson’s life is a work of art itself. He was influenced both by cubism and surrealism, but he had a unorthodox technique to painting. He would force himself to work under very strict and unhealthy conditions such that he would starve himself and/or take drugs before painting to be able to break free from consciousness and thus rational control. He is know for his erotic and rather violent themes and the one below is no exception to that. I personally like the piece because I am a fan big chunky curves on women portraits. The use of color is also a plus on this specific one.

Turkish painter, Leyla Gediz’s solo exhibition “Coming Soon” opened at the Rampa Gallery in Akaretler yesterday. I kept getting good remarks about the work of this figurative artist, so I had to go see her new pieces with my own eyes. The exhibition to me seemed more like a collection of unfinished works that once finished could be the one stop to a great composition.

The exhibition was a collection of portraits and still life. I didn’t like at all the big chunks of white space left on the portraits. The detailing on the hair of each figure was completely left out forcing the viewer to focus on the face, especially the eyes. Although the strategy is there, I wasn’t happy with the fact that the artist was so dominant in her motives. I wanted a little more room to move around the canvas and be stuck at a spot I was not forced upon, but I was left empty handed. The still life pieces, I think were the better thought out part of the exhibition. Yet I did not find their composition (such as fireworks and a film roll) interesting. This does not mean that Gediz did not put a successful show on display. She definitely had a strong persistance and unity through all the pieces she created for this exhibition, but I for a fact was expecting a little more challange, a little more “why” out of Coming Soon.

Coming Soon will be on display until January 7, 2012.

A much bigger flood of art comes through Istanbul as the influence of October’s artbeat is fading out. The location is again Lütfi Kırdar Convention Center. Hundreds of galleries (domestic and international) are displaying and of course selling their hand-picked precious works of art under the roof of Contemporary Istanbul. Large pieces dominate the collection and prices are a bit on the heavy side especially on the 1st floor. The opening night was on Wednesday, but the fair will go on until Sunday November 27. If you are a serious window shopper you certainly need more than one visit to get enough of this massive (in Istanbul terms) art carnival.

The ever-so diverse crowd of art lovers fills up the halls once again. There are the camera-lover nouveau riche running around with their mink coats and tight dresses, there are the sophisticated over-60 couples digesting the art with their reading glasses, there are the newly weds who didn’t know what to do with their little children and had to take them with for some amateur canvas shopping and finally there is the hipster cool youngsters mingling with friends and sucking in the best of the flourishing art in Istanbul.

Some of my favorite pieces from the event include works by the Saudi artist, Abdulnasser Gharem, the Turkish artist, Sabire Susuz and an Armenian artist (I couldn’t get the name of).

What to expect? Some call it the Venice of Northern Europe, but I refuse to agree. Unlike Venice, Amsterdam was not built with the delicacy of religion and the pride of the rooted wealth. It was built over a dam in the river Amstel for the emerging, the nouveau. It florished with the instinct of survival. It was a shelter for the handful few.

One of the busiest ports of the past, the most luscious and sometimes the most contaminated fornication center of the north, the delicious brewery of Europe, the tiniest city with the biggest opportunities, Amsterdam climbs over its canals with rows of tiny bricks and greets its passengers (once merchants now mostly tourists). Every corner, every bridge in this city reeks history. The glittery past blends into the gloomy and Amsterdam emerges as an ever so young enlightened town of the future, thanks mostly to its current occupants. Away from the century-old daring red light district and the posh but not so fulfilling museums, it houses some of the coolest design offices and warmest eateries around Europe. Even an amateur tourist can find peace here despite the alien language, the reckless bikers, and the complicated traffic. The reason might as well be the smoke coming out of the Coffee Shops spread all around the town, but Amsterdam will definitely have your word for a second visit by the time you make it back to the Schiphol Airport.

Where to stay? The taxi ride from the airport to the city center takes approx. 20 min. There is also a train ride available if you are traveling light.

I think choosing a hotel seems to be the most difficult task in Amsterdam because there is an apparent gap between the luxurious and the modest hotels. The luxurious such as the Dylan and Hotel de l’Europe (which are still less impressive than their other European partners) are considerably expensive. The modest hotels on the other hand are cursed with bad service and the tiniest squicky rooms one can ever imagine.

For our first visit, we chose to stay at Hotel V because it was close to all the attractions and looked like a boutique design hotel with manageable rooms online. The reviews on Trip Advisor and other travel sites were good and very informative. Although our expectations were set for V, we still ended up a little disappointed with our stay. The sizing for each room assigned to our group was different and some were much smaller than expected although they were classified “large”. There was no elevator in the hotel and no bellboy to help with the luggage. Despite the shortcomings in some of the essentials, the hotel had a very helpful staff and a delicious complimentary breakfast (until 10 a.m. every morning).

What to do/see? 3 to 4 days is more than enough for a wholesome Amsterdam trip. We chose to walk everywhere thanks to the dry weather. Definitely start the museum hunt with the Hermitage, then the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and finally the house of Rembrandt. You can easily do two attractions a day. We couldn’t make it to the Heineken Brewery although it is said to be a great visit. The house of Anne Frank, which is basically a renovated modern glass structure from the outside, should be the last on your list. Go stand in the line if you have so much time to kill.

Bike rental for one day and a boat tour around the canals is a must.

For some cool design shopping go no place else but The Frozen Fountain and if you like the Greenwich Village in New York, head directly to the Nine Streets Shops.

Sotheby’s November 9th Contemporary Art Auction in New York pocketed USD 315m in sales and reminded me once again the unfixable fracture in today’s capitalist mechanism. It seems despite the crisis around the EU, Middle East and Asia the privileged minorities are still thirsty to add more luscious art into their collections and nobody can blame them.

Among the highest bids of the night were pieces by Clyfford Still, considered to be the father of abstract expressionism (the “sugar daddy” of Pollocks and Rothkos). One of Still’s works, “1949-A-No. 1″ was sold for USD 61.7m, while an impressive oil on canvas: “Three Studies for a Self-Portrait” by Francis Bacon, sold for USD 19.6m. My most favorite, of course by Joan Mitchell, was sold for USD 9m. Another favorite, an oil on paper, “Women in Forest” by Willem de Kooning found a buyer for USD 3m.

Erwin Wurm is a famous Austrian artist focused mainly on sculptures and photography. Many know him by his fat car series and those pieces are my favorites. Similar to Botero, Wurm differentiates his work from others with the use of obesity. Using tools and gadgets of our modern society, he tackles the rigidity of formalism with humor. The sleek modern sports car becomes overweight, defying the very purpose it was built for. The durable sailboat oozes into the water, going against the dynamics it was designed with. The properly dressed man reaches into his pants to masturbate, breaking the principles of the modern society. Through his art, Wurm reminds the contemporary man that he can still embrace humor and sarcasm without losing balance and lift off some of reality’s weight off his shoulders.

A bit of research shows that Wurm’s small sculptures go for approx. USD 80K in auctions.

I am a disaster when it comes to remembering favorite artists’ names. Even though I get auction results from major houses like Sotheby’s regularly and skim through them to pinpoint the favorable works of art, my brain rejects permanent storage of essential information. So, I decided to make a note of my favorite pieces/artists in the hopes of overcoming the short memory loss.

The most recent pick is Karel Appel from the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Auction that took place in New York on 22 September 2011. Appel, as I found out, is a Dutch painter who was born in 1921 in Amsterdam and passed away in 2006 in Zurich. This contemporary artist lived his life in between America, France and Japan and was greatly influenced by the American poet Walt Whitman. As it is apparent in Whitman’s works, Appel was moved by individualism and his view grew stronger in the aftermath of World War II. He became the founder of the Cobra Group which celebrated the complete destruction of the past and cherished the survival instinct of the now.

The thing that struck me on Appel’s “Portrait of Mr. K” is the use of color and the detailing of the brush strokes. From afar this piece looks like a casually completed draft, but as you get closer to it you become aware of the math behind each move. The orange, although not a preferred color, brings life and warmth to this abstract portrait and so does the red flower. The thicker brush strokes on the other frame gather the attention on the face: an apparent piece of heavy emotion and subjectivity.

Portrait of Mr. K was sold by Sotheby’s a few days ago for USD 74,500.

Wrapped in a bright yellow, artbeat Istanbul makes its first appearance to the public in the Lütfi Kırdar Complex.

Similar to all the openings I have been to so far, the event welcomes guests from all different backgrounds with a diverse set of reasons for attendance: The old wealthy couple looking to expand on their art collection and be pampered by the gallery owners; Their not so eager friends accompanying them and weighing the benefits of spending “that much” in art; The off-the-edge artists and the art professionals fishing for an interview with one of the TV crews; The confused newly weds hoping to find heartwarming pieces to decorate the blank walls of their new home and get some subtle perspective on the ever-so growing art scene; The clean cut, sexy yet bohemian young crowd prepped up to run into some friends, chit-chat and expand on their social networks. Each character has a major role in giving the art on the floor a purpose, a life. Being around such a bright united crowd in a city of major culture clashes makes one feel even more welcome and reminds what Istanbul has been long yearning for.

The event consists of two floors with the ground floor reserved to local and foreign art galleries and the lower floor reserved for massive private projects. Both are loaded with impressive pieces. No maps are provided at the information kiosk. Yet thankfully the booths on the ground floor are numbered, making it harder for the visitors to wander off (something I tend to do a lot and hope to avoid everytime). Most of the pieces on display are considerably large. Most of the tags are not informative enough: listing the materials used on the piece and giving a short bio of the artist is always helpful and appreciated. I get pulled to works of Mehmet Ali Uysal, Aslımay Altan Göney, Yağız Özgen and Özgür Korkmazgil. The well-hidden prices are tough to assimilate: the average is around 10,000 TL and goes well above EUR 400,000.

Being informed of all the hard work that went into making this very first of many-to-come-event possible, I can’t do anymore than emphasizing my appreciation for bringing so much vision to a city that lives by it. Like any other newborn project, artbeat has lots of room to grow but promises to be one of the leading art events in Istanbul because of its social network, strong sponsors and well-chosen location. I hope the people behind it will have the guts to take it up again next year.

Roberto Bolle is known to be one of the youngest masters of Ballet. This Italian genius has danced all over the world, in any climate and on any stage possible and is currently the principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre. So it is no wonder that when Bolle set foot in our hometown, the only wise thing  for us to do was be to watch his performance.

Roberto Bolle & Friends, a no-intermission 2-hour performance consisting of multiple short plays, took the stage for the first time for an exclusive gala last night at the Harbiye Açık Hava Amphitheater. It could have been Bolle’s mediocre performance in L’Arlesienne, the +30 degrees, the absence of any refreshing breeze and/or the heavy humidity, but there was certainly a missing link between the audience and the stage. Desperate fanning, inescapable tissuing, unlimited wiping, crabby hoping and undeniable thirst and hunger: we were in a chaos and had to escape. So, it took me any my friends 20 min. to leave the performance and trade art for some crispy Chinese duck and fried ice cream.

Cooled off and satisfied with great taste we made it back to the gala’s after-party. Regret was the first to slap us in the face after hearing all the others’ awe with Bolle & his friends (even though we knew we wouldn’t certainly make the whole two hours). Sweat was the second the knock on our door (again) and this time we no longer had the energy to fight back. We pulled up the sleeves, got into the music and the funk and surrendered to salty drops.

and when it was time to leave the party fate had one more surprise for us: a cab with a plate number that read “sweat”. The exhausting reminder of a unexpectedly fun night out in Istanbul.

A friend recently forwarded me the winners of the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that took place in June. I was greatly impressed with the numerous campaigns that received recognition. Yet, there is one website in the list that I couldn’t wait to share. Walloffame is basically an endless digital white board that allows its visitors to draw, write, scratch anything they want on it. You sign up with a username or your Facebook profile, are given 10 board-markers to choose from and then just go at it. You have the option to take snapshots of the piece that is coming together (by hundreds or users from around the world) and share it with anybody you want.

I am amazed by the possibilities we have on the internet today. I am also curious to see what kind of a server walloffame runs on. Don’t wait any longer, start drawing.