The Unfair Fair: It's the economy, stupid

Friday, 22 February 2008

It's the economy, stupid

ARTIST: Italo Zuffi
TITLE: Elenco (Flash Art 2006), printed version
DATE: 2006
DESCRIPTION: Two inkjet prints on paper (diptych), 20 x 20cm each, edition of 3

Elenco (Flash Art 2006)was a performance during which the singer of the band the Madcapsread, with growing emphasis, the ranking published in the magazineFlash Art in April 2006. Flash Art asked a group of critics and gallerists to vote the best artists operating in Italy after Maurizio Cattelan. The singer started to declaim the artists from the first position (occupied by Roberto Cuoghi, with 285 points), and stopped as soon as he reached Italo Zuffi (25th, with 76 points).
-Italo Zuffi

italozuffi.com

ARTIST: Elena Nemkova
TITLE: 'In 30 years' time the middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat,- the British military experts affirmed.'
Unique edition
DIMENSIONS: 20x27 cm
DATE: 2008

www.brrrrr.blog.com

ARTIST: Domenico Mangano
TITLE: Spray 'n Buy
MEDIA: Treated aerosol spray can

Spray on potential collectors during art fairs to maximize sales. Use advisedly.

ARTIST: Johan Tirén
TITLE: Do you believe in change?
MEDIA: Lambda prints

An opportunity for you to be instrumental to art.

www.johantiren.se

About

This blog catalogues the inaugural UNFAIR FAIR, which took place in Rome from Friday 29 February to Monday 3 March 2008. The first UNFAIR FAIR project was a sort of event, situation, exhibition, intervention, action and infiltration timed to coincide with two new contemporary art fairs in Rome - ARTEcontemporaneamodernaROMA and ROMA (The ROAD TO CONTEMPORARY ART). The UNFAIR FAIR is in no way formally associated with these art fairs, though it does have a strategic relation to the mainstream economy they represent. Whereas the raison d'être of the contemporary art fair may be characterised by maximization and accumulation, the conditions of the UNFAIR FAIR relate more comfortably to the states of minimization and disintegration. The aim of the UNFAIR FAIR is to show the process of artistic production and transitional art works that index broader practices by each of the invited artists.
Click here for further information

The Principle of Equivalence - Well done, badly done, not done

In 1966, Robert Filliou proposed that the world economy no longer be considered from a political angle, but rather from a poetic point of view, so that work as pain would become work as play. From 1968, he developed his Principle of Equivalence - the principle of the equality in value of the Well Done, the Badly Done and the Not Done. Filliou proposed an unfinished work, by essence not done, but in the process of being done, realised in a state of "Permanent Creation" - "to decide nothing, to choose nothing, to want nothing, to possess nothing, fully awake, sitting quietly, doing nothing."

Going, going gone for ... how much?

The highest price ever paid for a Francis Bacon (£14 million), for a photograph (an Andreas Gursky, 1.7m)... all auction records were shattered in London last week. But who is buying art at these prices - and, frankly, is it worth it? Carole Cadwalladr went in search of the top bidders.

The Observer
Sunday February 11, 2007
Click here to read the article

Silly money

5 Dec 1766
Date of first sale held in Pall Mall, London by James Christie, founder of Christie's

$104.168,000
Record sale at a fine art auction: for Picasso's Garcon a la Pipe, May 2004, Sotheby's, New York

£186,645,960
Value of total sales realised last week at Sotheby's, London

40
Record number of days for an auction sale (for Duke of Buckingham's collection at Stowe House by Christie's in 1848)

£2.51bn
Total global arts sales by Christie's in 2006

85
Number of works sold for over £1m last week at Sotheby's and Christie's, London

£1.7m
The record price for a photograph sold at auction (Andreas Gursky's 99 Cents II, Diptychon sold last week at Sotheby's, London)

£70.4m
Total revenue from Christie's Post War and Contemporary Art Sale last Wednesday. This broke the record set by Sotheby's just 24 hours earlier for a contemporary art auction in Europe.