Brian from MyArtSpace has asked some interesting questions on his Spiritual Side of Art post..

“Has a specific work of art touched your soul? Can you recall a specific work of art that helped your through a difficult time or defined a time of joy for you? I know that some people suggest that there is no longer room for the spiritual in the art of today– do you agree? Or would you say that the spiritual aspects of art surround us just as they did in other periods of time? In your opinion, why does visual art have this power– why do viewers establish these personal connections?” My ArtSpace

I think most of the spirituality in art is in the making of art, with the artwork simply being the byproduct. So a painting can be of something unspiritual, if there is such a word, but the artist may have felt that he/she was touching god while painting it.

I have never seen an artwork that has “touched my soul” or moved me to tears, even though I have looked at lots of art and think of myself as a reasonably sensitive person. Installations and moving images have come close as they have more tools to play with. A painting or sculpture has to work harder to affect the viewer as it simply sits there with no movement or sound, so we have to do all the work ourselves if we are to end up in tears. Film on the other hand has more tools available to press our emotional buttons at will.

Art affects us on a more subtle level, it seeps into our soul rather than blows our mind on the spot. Good art will linger, it will hang around for weeks and months after viewing it, but it probably won’t make you cry or save your life. I think the viewer has to be content with knowing that the artwork is just the waste byproduct of something spiritual, which doesn’t necessarily make the finished piece spiritual. Sometimes that waste product works as a mirror or points to something greater and it affects a person deeply, but usually it just ends up as something pretty hanging a wall.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia is selling two major works by two Australian artists from it’s collection to raise the remaining funds needed to purchase a painting by Cezanne titled Bords De La Marne. Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon, is the driving force behind the purchase of the work for AUD$16.2 million from a Swiss private collection which will be the most expensive work ever purchase by a gallery in Australia. Having committed to purchasing the work without having all the funds available, Capon and the gallery have had to do everything that they can to raise the extra funds in hurry and have been begging for donations at every opportunity.

The two works being sold to help fund the purchase are Balmoral by Brett Whiteley’s and Pleasure Craft John Perceval’s both of which are very important works by two of Australia’s most important artists. Apparently the benefactor who donated the pieces has given his blessing to the sale which is all very nice but what would the artist’s think and what would their opinion of the sale be if they were alive today?

It is expected that the price paid for both works at the auction, which is due to take place on the 24th of November, will be considerably lower than if they had been sold six months ago. Capon has even admitted that this is not the ideal time to be selling works of art at auction. By selling these works during a slump in the art market for a lower price it would seem that the sale of these two works has the potential to have a negative effect on the value of the work by both artists which would not reflect well on the gallery.

What concerns me the most is that the Cezanne is being purchased to mark the 30th anniversary of Edmund Capon’s directorship of the gallery. The reason that this concerns me is that two important works of Australian art are being sacrificed in what seems to be a last ditch and desperate effort to secure a work by a non-Australian artist. The whole saga raises the question of whether the gallery has jeopardised the value of the work of two Australian artists just to ensure that Capon gets his anniversary trophy. According to Capon the sale of the two Australian works is not an act of desperation but there is the potential for the market to still perceive the sale to be an act of desperation even if it isn’t. Regardless of the reasoning behind the sale of the paintings I doubt that any artist would want their work to be sold under such circumstances.

I agree that a work by Cezanne will fill a hole in the galleries collection and that Bords De La Marne does seem like a good buy but considering the economic climate and the circumstances in which the work is being purchased, I question whether the purchase of Bords De La Marne at the current time is such a good idea. Capon is quoted in an article from the Sydney Morning Herald as saying “Our timing is obviously not ideal, but there is a degree of urgency from the gallery’s point of view – we simply have to pay for the Cezanne,” If the gallery is that short of funds then should they have committed to purchasing the work in the first place or should they have waited for a better time to make such a significant purchase?

Image: Bords De La Marne by Cezanne

Created by Nicholas Forrest On 11/26/08 At 05:18 PM