Sotheby's Art Institute Course @ Gulf Art Fair 2008

Courtesy of Mezze, I was offered the opportunity to attend the Sotheby's Art Institute Course on Art Business during the Gulf Art Fair. The lovely Emilie Faure of the Sotheby's Art Institute invited me to join them on the last day of the course and I happily obliged.





I wasn't quite prepared for the fact that I might be vastly more interested in art business than in art itself. I guess I never really thought I'd be interested in art business. But as it turns out it is a fascinating and lucrative business- probably one of the most lucrative business in today's world. We learnt about trends and trend spotting and how to recognize patterns and artists that might be of value. We learnt about investing and re-investing and about building private collections. We learnt about how to set the prices for works, how this then snowballs,and the ladder that curators need to be climbing with their artists to get to that very desirable peak- the auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's.



Just under the million dollar mark...Mohammed Ehsai's calligraphic monstrosities...


Iain Richardson was funny and engaging and Phillip Hoffman from The Fine Art Fund was inspirational, and quite simply put, legendary in terms of what he has done for art business (and himself!).




Putting Iran in the art headlights...Parviz Tanavoli...


I learnt about Farhad Moshiri's rise, as well as Mohammed Ehsai and Parviz Tanavoli. ( We are lucky enough that one of Tanavoli's "Heech" sculptures sits in the DIFC foodcourt and no one even realises what a symbolic work of art it is!).



His diamante works have firmly placed the Middle East on the art map with "Eshgh" selling for over 1 million US dollars at Bonhams, Dubai in the first quarter of the year...Farhad Moshiri.


All in all I met some great people, had a fabulous lunch at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel and got my induction into a whole new way of looking at art and business. A day well spent!



Charles Hossein Zenderoudi- the next big thing?

Creek Art Fair

So the Art Fair came and went, and as part of this year's platter of offerings was the Creek Art Fair. Down at the Bastakiya, peering from the sandy walls and hiding behind stony staircases and windy towers were arrays of installations, exhibits of photography, painting, calligraphy and sculpture. This year's edition occupies 22 houses rather than last year's nine, includes more sculpture, video and installation, a programme of forums, special events and film screenings and even some free painting workshops.







The ambience was quiet, a sort of thoughtful silence. The works looked out of place- sort of like awkward adornments-birds of paradise caught in an unkempt head of hair. The effect was that the art seemed approachable, out of context, alien immigrants in their own country, you almost felt sorry for them.







Farhad Moshiri's million dollar works could be breathed on, Mohammed Ehsai was patch-worked onto a wall alongside relative unknowns, and the galleries didn't seem to imprint their mark on a visitor- it all seemed like one long tangled exhibit- each one bleeding into the next.





I can't say I was unimpressed, for I am a big fan of Ehsai, but I would say the format was rather unfitting for works of such a high calibre. Nadine Thouin and I wandered about and were perhaps most enthralled by the free eats at the XVA gallery where we stopped by to catch the tail-end of a talk session on the subject of Green architecture in Dubai. I was hoping to catch Rem Koolhaus but he remained elusive.

Nadine Kanso's work dominated the Creek Art Fair and while some of her work is rather striking in an attention-seeking sort of way, I rather preferred some of the collage/ mixed media works that littered the festival. Fereydoun Ave's fire-inspired works also inspired, especially in their presentation format with a carpet of real grass below them...but I'm even more impressed with Mr. Ave's curatorial strengths as the recent merger of the XVA and Ave Gallery has brought some gorgeous works under one roof.




Hopefully Mezze will have a presence at next years Creek Art Fair and stand our ground and create something screaming new and fresh.

Reza Aramesh's works from the collection "The Eternal Spring" sort of hung in a dark corner near the entrance of the XVA. His photographs of men dressed at hitmen, intertwined with children and nudity are designed to really get under your skin. Think these images will get my blog blocked?

Lions with litterboxes

this little guy farted all evening

..there's something stuck in your teeth..oh right..it's my hand


This is one of those things I'd label as an "only in Dubai" thing. Not only do some friends of ours happen to have an African lion, a white lion and a cheetah for pets, but they are also adamant about keeping these monsters roaming about the house, sleeping in bed with them, and biting people. Yes, I repeat- biting people. Or rather they've only bitten one person so far. And that person was me. So as it happened, I had a neat slit of my palm caught in the incisors of a young lion cub about the size of a Labrador. Doesn't sound that big, right? But it isn't the size that's impressive- it's the power these creatures wield.

So yeah, I have a cool scar- the source of much dinner table conversation for years to come I'm sure. And some day I can exaggerate it to my kids. Aaaah. Dubai.

Persepolis

After a very long time I watched an animation feature that has made it to the, well somewhat, mainstream theatres. So far it's only been Miyazaki whose managed it with "Howl's Moving Castle" and the like. So I relished the opportunity to catch Persepolis when it was screened at the Mall of The Emirates, courtesy of Front Row Entertainment, the same agent who also represent Dhruv's film "From Dust".

Persepolis is a 2007 award-winning animated film based on Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. The film begins with Marjane, growing up under the Shah's dictatorship and follows her journey to adulthood parallel to the Iranian Revolution. Painting a powerful portrait of a family's dashed hopes as Islamic Fundamentalists took power, and of a young teenager, Persepolis is both a gorgeous graphic novel-style animation and an existentialist journey of a young Iranian woman.

The film won a Cannes Jury Prize, but is, unsurprisingly, banned in Iran.