Hysterical and Aerodynamic Female Nude

What's in a name?

I've been wondering a little about how the name of an artwork can affect our perception of it.
Amidst doing some lazy research for my english essay, somehow I remembered Dali's "Hysterical and Aerodynamic Female Nude". It's a sculpture, but to be honest I don't recall much of the structure or anything other than the amazing name it got given by Dali.

A quick search on Google refreshes our memory:

Hysterical and Aerodynamic Feminine Nude - Woman on Rock (1934)

Does the title of an artwork count as part of the form or is it just an agreeable aspect? I suppose if all the artworks in the world were untitled they would lose their grandeur, or in some cases it could be enhanced?

I mentally experimented with Duchamp's famous work:

Marcel Duchamp - Fountain (1917)





Marcel Duchamp - Untitled (1917)






Marcel Duchamp - Nondescript urinal placed on a table and intended to piss off a bunch of uppity art critics. (1917)

After seeing my mental image materialise, it is pretty evident that the title of a work completely sets up the aesthetic experience of it, or does that experience, then, not count as aesthetic, since we've been corrupted by the title?

More often than not, where an artwork doesn't seem to make sense, I find myself scrambling to find the little descriptive card and the information I need to gather a judgment of it. Indeed, I now recall in the readings of an argument put forward that sometimes the viewer needs some empirical experience (e.g. knowledge regarding an art movement, or some specifics about the artist themselves). But Kant is quick to brush that off as 'agreeable'.

I disagree. Don't the specifics help heighten our judgment of the artwork?

Then again, they can lessen the judgment as well. I considered the work of Bacon, and when I saw his magnum opus, I didn't pay that much attention at first because I thought it was just a study. What a mean trick he did, naming his paintings 'Studies'!

Study after Velazquez' Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)

The study was the real thing. But I had, ignorant of Bacon's background, already dismissed it as a predecessor to the 'real' thing. In the end that was his point - we are so affected by the names of the artwork that it clouds our judgment of the object.

Perhaps we'd be better off if all works were named Untitled, but what a pity that would be.

Art in Week 2

To be honest I was getting a little disgruntled by the lack of art-related things that came my way a couple of weeks ago. Apart from the increasingly clichéd Archie talk (which I have yet to see, and suss out the winning work, which I think isn't quite as deserving as the others, but a slight crush on Ben Quilty may be clouding my aesthetic experience of it - so Kant would say) I was left to reminisce about the artworks I'd seen back in Europe.

But an intrigueing concept soon came my way:

Leibovitz pawns life's work in a scramble for cash

It's all been hocked ... Annie Leibovitz has handed over the rights to all her photographs, including her famous image of a pregnant Demi Moore.
Photo: AFP

Ed Pilkington

February 26, 2009

She is the world's most famous celebrity photographer, whose portfolio contains some of the most iconic images of the past 30 years, not least the glamorous pictures of Michelle Obama on the latest cover of Vogue.

As such Annie Leibovitz is hardly the kind of person you would normally associate with going to a pawnbroker. But it seems that in these unusual times even the likes of Leibovitz need to find cash in unusual places.

The photographer has turned to a company called Art Capital that specialises in lending money with fine art as the collateral. The New York Times disclosed on Tuesday that Leibovitz has borrowed about $US15 million ($23 million) from the firm in two tranches. Records show she secured the loan partly against property she owns, but also by putting up as collateral the copyright, negatives and contract rights to every photograph she has ever taken or will take in future until the loans are paid off.

Such an exceptional step, involving in essence the pawning of her life's work, may in Leibovitz's case be explained by the tumultuous few years she has been through. Her long-time friend Susan Sontag died in 2004, and she has been in costly litigation over the renovation of some of her properties.

But Leibovitz is part of a wider trend that Art Capital and other specialist lending institutions like it say has intensified since the start of the global economic crisis.

Wealthy individuals and institutions have increasingly turned to the firm for help - numbers have risen by 30 per cent to 40 per cent since before the crash.

"What's amazing is that individuals and institutions who previously we thought were untouchable are being deeply affected. People who were enormous financially are now scrambling," says Ian Peck, the joint owner of Art Capital.

The numbers tell the story. Art Capital expects to make about $US120 million in loans against art this year, up from about $US80 million last year. Some of that has gone out to several hedge-fund managers, hit by the Wall Street collapse, who have put up striking contemporary and modern art works.

The company's offices, which are next door to the designer Vera Wang's wedding dress showroom in a Sotheby's building in Madison Avenue, resemble one of New York's more select art galleries.

Among the art works that have recently been taken in by the company, and put into secure and climate- controlled specialist art warehouses for safekeeping, are pieces by Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Henry Moore and even Picasso. Cash-strapped clients have borrowed money against vintage film posters, antique teddy bears and valuable scientific instruments.

Peck dislikes his business being described as upmarket pawnbroking, saying that is an over-simplification. He points out he is an expert in art markets, having taken an MA with Christie's in London and run his own art gallery for almost a decade before he set up the company.

Firms such as Art Capital typically lend out 40 per cent of the value of the art works they take in, making most of their profit by charging interest of between 6 per cent and 18 per cent.

Peck says only about one in 10 of the deals ends in default. "Our aim is to avoid defaulting at all costs. Given the trouble involved in a default, it's better karma and business not to."

But even if the works are not sold, and remain in the client's ownership awaiting their return in better economic times, Peck admits that this is intensely emotive stuff.

"It's akin to giving up your home, particularly for people who have built up collections over many years. People don't feel emotionally about stocks and bonds, but they certainly do over art."

In the case of Leibovitz, Beck insists that few places could have coped with her request for money based on her images.

"We're pleased to have her as a client and it's a good fit. We are one of the few - if not the only - lender who could have valued her body of work; that's a fairly esoteric thing to value."

Guardian News & Media

IR 30/5: I remember being kind of shocked at the idea of Leibowitz essentially mortgaging her work, which is usually so lovely and polished (its artistic value, I think, is far overshadowed by the glitter of her subjects and if anything it has a chance more as a mirror to social commentary - i.e the famous Demi Moore Portrait and its influence on the ideal pregnant woman - than as an artwork itself). In any case, I guess this is a more extraordinary example of Adorno's theory of the arts as an industry (which is frightening, but after examples like this, probably more true than ever). What is hardly ever considered is the artist as a business person.

By all means, Leibowitz is prefectly allowed to sell of the rights to her work to for money, but isn't there some kind of inherent betrayal in that, to the art world itself? Maybe it even discredits her as an artist, which to be completely honest I think has already happened in my esteem of her. The respect has kind of blunted a bit. But it's not as if she's the first and only artist to do so. It's been conspired that Salvador Dali ran a legiance of endorsed fakes of his work, created by his apprentices so he could sell them off and continue his lavish lifestyle! Now, I really really really hope that's not real, but, after Adorno, I can't help but feel that it is.

With Adorno, art is dead, it was taken in a hostile takeover by Christie's, the Tate and MoMa, homogenised and sold off, piece by piece.

A belated beginning

Yep, it's already week 3 and I'm lagging behind. To be honest it was mainly due to the difficulty of naming this temporary blog and deciding whether I should go for the pretentious angle or a sassy one. So I ended up with a mixture of both. Being a massive Simpsons nerd, I couldn't help the mental image of Gummy Venus whilst I was reading up on Kant (haven't done Plato or the Intro, so the posts won't be chronological any time soon) and it was such a great satire of the whole concept of art.

The most beautiful marble statue gets turned into gummy craft, stolen and sticks to a babysitter's bum. Isn't that fantastic, doesn't it say it all?


So that's my angle for the next 12 weeks - casual but insightful with the vague hope of being sophisticated on occassion.

Enjoy.