[MSN] New Zealand. four paintings lost in a courier truck fire.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Saturday, 4 August 2007  

Vulnerable stuff 
It wasn't a blaze of glory, exactly, but when a courier truck's innards
became a cremation chamber for 34 much admired pieces of New Zealand art,
the lamentations were great.

Prime Minister Helen Clark called the July 10 fire on State Highway 1 near
Clinton a "tragedy for the art world". 
Southland artist Nigel Brown lost four pieces in that fire, two of them
redolent with personal memories. 

He felt the loss and noted the bereft tone of the Prime Minister's
acknowledgment, but by golly he can't bring himself to feel all that hard
done by in any out-of-the-ordinary sense. 

Art succumbs so often, to so many unhappy fates, he says, and often without
grabbing headlines. 

"Much art is lost, damaged and rejected in society. We would like to think
that only the good, the best, survives. But that is not always so." 

Though this is the first time his art has burnt, he's lost pieces to flood,
mould, gallery damage and theft - one was nicked in Queen St. 

And one - a survivor - took flight. 

"I'd driven off with a painting on a trailer and watched a wind gust pick it
off, land it on the road, just missed by cars. 

Some Nigel Browns have drawn the unhelpful attention of rats and mice - and
critics. At one Auckland school, which he declines to name, a pupil felt
moved to gouge his offering. 

Art can also be a third-party victim. 

"These days one of the biggest enemies of art is things like marriage
breakups. They happen to even the richest of people and art sometimes
becomes a squabbling point." 

The victor might not always be the one who cherishes the art. 

And yes, some artists have deliberately destroyed their own work. 

"I've done that," Brown says. 

"Some are technically flawed. Some get painted over. Under every one of my
works are traces of changes and crossings out."

Rush to console Nigel Brown about his most recent loss and before long you
might find yourself steering the conversation away from subjects such as how
much of your own children's exultant splashes of colour from kindy and
infant school you've kept, you stony-hearted bastard parent you. 

Brown's art sells and is valued. 

But he doesn't see it as disconnected from the uncounted offerings of
hobbyists or students which may so readily be thrown out, damaged or
disregarded. Then there's art of "a reasonable standard" , but not
reputation-building enough to attract critical or institutional attention. 

And at the top of the tree, there's art that is deemed culturally
significant. It gets status and is collected and exhibited. It's analysed.
It might even get placed alongside McCahons and Hoteres in a courier van. 

The risk of transporting art needs to be minimised, Brown says, but measured
against the stultifying effects of keeping the stuff so securely inert that
it can't budge. 

The ill-fated trip taking "investment" art from Milford Gallery in Dunedin
and back had been a case of a private gallery stepping up to fill a void. 

"Public galleries in my opinion are doing quite a poor job in bringing art
to people. There's a lot of accessible New Zealand art that they don't
really circulate around the country that well." 

Though good art needs professional care and conservation, and transport
hazards need to be minimised, sanctifying safety to the point where are is
kept stationary "would mean they wouldn't send Monets from France to
Australia and New Zealand." 

Artists can readily talk among themselves of horrible fates befalling their
work and even our most celebrated artists are hardly immune. 

A Ralph Hotere commissioned in 1978 to celebrate Hamilton's founding was
criticised as looking like a giant bar code. It spent many years neglected
as chairs were stacked against it and posters tacked to it before, in 2001,
the city council spent $50,000 to restore it. 

One of the most endearing saves occurred after a cat got to a watercolour in
Olivia Spencer Bower's studio. In frustration she finished the job herself,
shredding it. A visiting Auckland City Gallery director, Peter Tomory,
noticed the fragments, took the pieces to his conservator who delicately
reassembled the jigsaw. 

The fully restored work became part of the Auckland gallery's collection. 

Sometimes an act of malice can even provide enhancement. 

On his televised tour of New Zealand, Billy Connolly delighted in Russell
Beck's piece, an anchor chain arising from the ground in Stewart Island's
Lee Bay - particularly the shotgun holes that one local put into the
structure after a drinking session. 

If anything, the shooting improved the chain's credentials in the eyes of
some locals, who prefer hard-case stories to public art. 

Other times, the loss is simply devastating. 

Notoriously, a depot fire in Christchurch destroyed an entire Phillip
Trusttum exhibition destined to be his first major show in Sydney's
prestigious Gallery A. 

The Nelson City Council apologised to Nelson potter Jack Laird after the
council destroyed and dumped a mural he'd spent six months making, and which
had been displayed in the town's Post Office in the 1980s. 

Worldwide, even masterpieces are vulnerable. Two of Edvard Munch's
four-piece series The Scream have been stolen. One in 1999, was recovered a
few months later, and the other in 2004, was recovered last year but found
to have been damaged beyond repair. 

Perhaps the ripest case of art atrocity in recent years has been the case of
Frenchman Stephane Breitweiser, an art kleptomaniac who looted 232 works
from 139 slackly guarded castles, country homes, galleries and museums for
seven years from the mid-1990s. 

Upon his arrest, his furious mother Mirielle put ancient porcelains,
metalwork and ivories, into trash bags, bashed them down with a hammer, and
slung them into the Rhine-Rhone canal. 

She cut about 60 paintings to pieces and shoved them down her sink disposal
unit with potato peelings, or hid them at the bottom of her dustbin for
trash collection. 

Their total estimated value: $US2.9 billion. 

The September 11 attack on the New York's World Trade Centre wiped out art
with an estimated insurance value at the time of $US100 million, including a
significant collection of Rodin sculptures. 

Ironically, the lost art also included a memorial fountain for the victims
of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. 

The private Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston exhibited an empty
frame to mark where The Concert, by Johannes Vermeer, should have been. It
was one of 13 treasures, including three Rembrandts, nicked in 1990, while
the city was preoccupied with St Patrick's Day celebrations. 

Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington was missing for four years during
the 1960s, during which time James Bond movie producer Albert Broccoli would
have us believe Dr No had it. 

Of all the art that has disappeared from the cultural firmament, not many
have gone as spectacularly as a work by well-travelled Southlander Jon
Petrie. 

A religious mural he painted in Lautoka, Fiji, depicting Christ on a Cross,
ascended by an act of God, albeit less miraculous than tempestuous. 

A hurricane took it away. 

God knows where. 

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