Damien’s taxi tips…

From : http://animalnewyork.com/2012/03/damien-hirst-tips-driver-with-7400-shark-doodle/

Thanks Himali S-S.

HIRST TAKES OVER NYU

 

sent by our friend Jil

Race, Gender and Gagosian.

We previously wrote about our surprise when seeing the very clear racial polarity that seems to dictate many of the Gagosian galleries we visited on our trip. As we were told in the comments of that post by a Gagosian worker, Hanako Williams, it might not be a Gagosian problem but an art world problem: ‘not enough black people apply for jobs at Gagosian’.

Whereas surely Gagosian is just a mere representative of the white hegemonic structures that govern the world, it is also true it is not doing anything to try and change them. We are sure many of you already know this poster, made by the Guerilla Girls 22 years ago.

Well, it turns out that things have not changed that much chez Gagosian NYC. If this sign were to be made again today, it would look something like this:

	No. of Women 2010-2011	No. of non-white Artists 2010-2011	Total Number of Shows
West 21st Street	0	0	8
West 24th Street	1	1*	9
Madison Avenue	3	0	20**

* The ethnic-minority artist and the woman artist happen to be the same person: Ellen Gallagher (American artist of Cape Verdian and Irish descent).

** One of the shows was The Private Collection of Robert Rauschenberg which had two white female artists: Trisha Brown and Susan Weil – but fair enough, it’s not Gagosian’s fault who Rauschenberg collected. Another show was Summer Shows, which was a selection of seven artists: all white, all men.

In the past two years, in the three New York locations, and over 37 shows (most of them solo shows) there have been only FOUR women and ONE non-white artist on show at the Gagosian Galleries in New York. Now, not that we believe in labels: art is art, and labels are often imposed (as it happened to Jean-Michel Basquiat in this interview) (In the fiction film Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel, there is a great scene where an interviewer asks Basquiat: Interviewer (played by Christopher Walken): ‘Do you consider yourself a painter or a black painter?’ Basquiat (played by Jeffrey Wright) : ‘Oh I use lots of colors not just black.’)

It is true that, unlike the front-of-house staff and security guards, one cannot ‘see’ the gender or ethnicity of the artist, yet it leaves one wondering when the vast majority of the artists on show are white and male. Perhaps it highlights a lack of inclusivity in the Gagosian galleries, not attempting to challenging the hegemonic racist and sexist structures, and in fact, nurturing them. The Gagosian Galleries are arguably the most influential gallery(network) in the world, and perhaps could make use of its privileged position to change pre-conceived notions and mechanisms in the art world, to make it more inclusive, not only to ethnic-minorities and women, but also to other profiles of people that perhaps do not feel invited into the Gagosian World, to have a voice about and participate just because of some external factors, like the way they look or their cultural background. Surely it is a ‘business’ and money is there to be made, but women and black people can produce art as saleable and profitable as white males… if only they had a chance to exhibit it. But then again, maybe this is ‘not a Gagosian problem, but an art world problem’…

PS: Here is the list of the shows at the NYC Gagosians 2010-2011:

21^st street // Andreas Gursky, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Francesco Vezzoli, Robert Rauschenberg, Marc Newson, Claude Monet, Alexander Calder

24^th street // Richard Serra, John Chamberlain, Rudolf Stingel, Ellen Gallagher, Anselm Kiefer, Dan Colen, Roy Lichtenstein, David Smith, Philip Taaffe

Madison Avenue // Howard Hodgkin, Private Collection of Robert Rauschenberg (only two women: Trisha Brown and Susan Weil), Jenny Saville, Bob Dylan, Arshile Gorky, Joel Morrison, Kazimir Malevich, Piotr Uklánski, Pablo Picasso, John Currin, Jean Pigozzi, Dike Blair, Gregory Crewdson, Summer Show (Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Christopher Wool, Anselm Reyle, Mike Kelley, Florian Maier-Aichen), Tatiana Trouvé, Alberto Di Fabio, Ed Paschke, Elisa Sighicelli, Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha

WE·MADE·IT!

So there we were, in the morning of the 17th February… in front of the most beautiful Gagosian franchise.

Once inside, a very polite girl stamped our last dots, and gave us some forms to fill out. We had to write what we wanted Damien Hirst to write on our prints. Tough one.

Eduardo went for a Hirsty-comment “Dear Eduardo, Please sell this print”, which the Gagosian girl thought was “cute”. Helena went for a more controversial “Dear Helena, I made this myself” which mad the staff at the Gagosian to burst into laughter.

While getting ready to take the last picture in front of a spot painting, a group of Italian visitors thought Eduardo was Hirst… which made us think they probably had not seen a picture of Hirst before.

And then we posed for that final picture, showing our cards that had circumnavigated the globe in our backpacks… Helena’s having a double stamp (covering one of the extra Geneva stamps).

And here we are: imgwt (Eduardo) and Seeingspots (Helena), with the challenge completed!

And whereas we might have collected all the spots, we are still not over with this adventure: we still have to finish our documentary, and receive our prints (which will be posted to us at some point this Spring)… and decide on our next adventure. But for now we’d like to thank everyone who made this possible.

Lotta, Miguel and parents for their executive support, Shane and Brett, Luisa and George, Joshua, Christina and her parents, David and Flavio (and virtually Anna) for housing us all over the globe. To David ‘Jimmy’,  Jil, Jihoi, Georgia, Nicole, Linying, Meelin, Nancy, Martin, the Jesus at Venice Beach, Irini, Kosmas and Louise for sharing their incredible insights with us, and awesome interviews. To Monkee and Eric, Haris, Donald, Mark and Dave, Chrysanthi, Paky, Marina, Efigeni, Nick, Alba, Asun and Gerry and Lilya for guiding us through the cities we visited and helping us with whatever we needed. Without you, this project would have never been possible. Seeing you again or meeting you for the first time was a real treat…You all are the real reward of this project!

 

rºmª!

WE MADE IT TO ROME!

The last spot of our challenge! Here we are!

Our (short) Roman Holiday only lasted 24 hours: enough to complete the challenge!

Blocks of flats near Cinecittà.

Piazza di Spagna dei turisti. A city in her head.the masses, the palm trees, and the heritage.a colourful garagewe were part of the insaciable tourists…… who were gathering to see THIS:
Roman Sunset.

Racial Gagosian

Geneva was the one Gagosian without security staff… Had there been one, it would have probably been a black person, with white people working ‘behind the counter’, which was the case at the Gagosians in London (x2), New York (x3), LA and Paris. Athens had a white security guard, and Hong Kong a chinese one… with a caucasian behind the counter. (Ok, fine, in LA there was ONE guard that was white, and on 24th Street there was one Asian… the rest were black).

We only saw black people behind the counter in two occasions: at the New York Gagosians at 21st and 24th Streets… and they were probably interns. There might be more, working in the offices, but the vast majority of front-of-house staff we met were white. An interesting dichotomy that we don’t know whether it is accidental or just a mere representative of the racist power structures that still exist in our society. We’ve been discussing a lot about this issue, and, to be honest, it has been the one aspect that has shocked us the most about the Gagosian World: if there was something similar in all the McDonaldized franchises of the galleries, it was this racial divide (as well as the spot paintings hanging on the wall). The levels of friendliness also varied greatly: from the über-friendly ‘behind the counter’ staff at Davies Street, Paris or Geneva; to the incredibly arrogant staff at the Madison Avenue gallery… which was inversely proportional to the incredible friendliness of the security guards, most of whom where chatty, helpful and extremely polite and welcoming.

Anyways, in Geneva at the time we went, there were only two guys working (yes, men! also a rare-sight for behind the counter staff) and were both really friendly. One of them stamped Helena’s card twice by mistake, so it looked as though she had finished the challenge a stop away from the victory line.

 

GENEVA: WHY ARE YOU SO EXPENSIVE TO US?

7 Euros a coffee at Starbucks. Bienvenue à Genève.

Our stay in the Helvetic Confederation was brief (5 hours between hour train arrived from Paris and our flight departed to Rome), but fruitful: we got our Gagosian stamps.

The lake was cristal clear.And the air was fresh… almost herbal.There were few spaces we saw that inspired ‘alternative street culture’… but then again, we didn’t see much… this was one of them (near the station)The Central Swiss Bank last summer put a limit to the powerful raising Swiss Franc, but they are still having a ball about the low Euro-prices, making it an even more expensive destination for non-swiss franc earners!

(translation: Touzeau makes you profit/gives you an advantage because of the Euro’s devaluation!)
Alpine Architecture…mmm

En route to Gagosian.Even dogs know they have to be clean in Switzerland… but oh wait, are those chewing-gum stains on the pavement?There is even a designated space for protest…
… but then again, which child wouldn’t like to live in a country where the adults fight to so that they have Wednesdays off-school?

 

PARI-SIAN GAGO-SIAN

VENI, VIDI, VICI.

Another, yet dramatically different, Hirst spot painting exhibition brought to you by GAGOSIAN.

Seriously, Rachel*, you are just getting a bit repetitive at this point.

[round canvases = ground-breaking]

* Rachel is Damien Hirst’s assistant and his favourite dot painter. According to Damien, her circles are “perfect”.

 

 

Pareeh

After Athens, we had two short nights in Paris, where we stayed with our friend David. As soon as we arrived we were impressed by the futuristic terminal of Charles De Gaulle, built in the 1960s by Paul Andreu, and will never be démodé.

During the day, we strolled down Champs Elysées looking for macaroons and other foods. During our stroll we visited the Parisian Gagosian, right next to the Parisian Christie’s.At night we had time for a brief visit to the Pompidou Centre, just before going for dinner  in the Marais with some friends.Eduardo met up with his high-school friends, some of whom he hadn’t seen in 8 years!RadiKal Street Art.
On the second day we took the 7 am train, TGV to Geneva.

ON EST A PARIS!