By Randy Gladman. Originally published in the Financial Times of London’s How To Spend It, March 31, 2011.

Arriving a few days ago in this wealthy city-state at the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula in order to attend the third Singapore Biennale, I wondered what type of contemporary arts could thrive in a city whose well-earned reputation is one of fabricated perfection and paternal government control. Could unvarnished intellectual explorations into political and economic realities of modern life flower in an environment of unchallenged censorship and consciously affected good behavior?

Singapore is a truly impressive place, utterly unlike any other metropolises in south-east Asia, and exhibiting uncanny similarities to a well-ordered Nordic urban environment. All of the cars driving the impeccably tidy and well-organised streets appear to be less than five years old and the brands displayed reflect a very wealthy economy. The many new glass towers and architecturally daring institutional buildings boast an impressive design bravado, particularly the new triple-towered Marina Bay Sands with its capping bridge structure that resembles a massive Noah’s Ark, had that biblical superhero intended his craft to be a sleekly modern gambling vessel tricked out with a 150m infinity pool.

The city’s planners clearly studied their urban planning textbooks with the utmost attention before implementing a balanced system of transportation networks and public spaces. The whole built situation is startlingly harmonious, a total reboot of the contemporary urban environment. Version 2.0 of the modern city. Even its Chinatown is orderly and clean.

But in its perfection, Singapore is missing something massive, and everyone I spoke to, both locals and visitors, discuss it frequently. While tipping the scale towards comfort and safety, the city has misplaced its edge, creativity and serendipity. In five days I have not seen a single police car nor a uniformed officer and, amazingly for a city of five million souls, not a single siren sound has touched my ears. This is particularly unexpected for a place with a series of civic rules so all-encompassing as to prevent even simple acts like the spitting of gum (stores do not even sell the substance).

The government is involved in the development of the arts and culture of this small country as actively as it is in all other aspects of Singaporean life, and the Singapore Biennale is its attempt to fertilise not only the nascent native contemporary art scene but also this nation’s position as the leader of new visual arts for the entire south-east Asia region. In our current tumultuous era, the official theme of the biennale, “Open House”, is rather disappointing and neutered, seemingly fearful of inspiring any real dialogue or providing opportunities for government disapproval.

Luckily, however, after close review of the impressive scope of works in the festival, it is evident that this theme has been largely ignored by the artists presented. Though the result is a hodgepodge of works lacking in any central theme or critical focus, many of the pieces presented in the Biennale are very strong and Singapore’s role as a positive incubator of an art form that is still relatively new to the region must be acknowledged.

The works by North American and European artists included in the Biennale are clearly among the best pieces in the event: videos by Charlie White, Tracey Moffatt and Candice Breitz are obvious standouts and display these artists’ expert facility with humour, editing and insightful cultural investigation. But works by many of the Southeast Asian artists included the Biennale also compare very favourably, with Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines showing evidence of particularly strong national contemporary art scenes.

Tiffany Chung’s delicately crafted and brilliantly installed sculptures, which riff on the sweeping effects of recent urbanisation and consumer culture growth in her home of Ho Chi Minh City, offer thoughtful meditations on the importance of developing alternative modes of sustainable design for the Mekong Delta. Navin Rawanchaikul’s exploration of Indian heritage and immigrant multiculturalism in Chiang Mai was offered through a sensitive and engaging installation including video testaments, written accounts of the dynamic difficulties faced by those leaving home, and an impressive multi-person portrait painting of the diverse community around the Kad Luang market, a regional trading hub for migrants in that part of northern Thailand.

Louie Corderdo, meanwhile, offers a gruesome yet hilarious and cleverly executed installation including paintings, fibreglass sculptures and a karaoke machine that exhibit comic-book horror-kitsch aesthetics. This work recreates a slice of true violence in Cordero’s hometown of Manila where a recent spate of bloody fights have ensued every time Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” is sung in karaoke bars. These real-life events have frequently ended in dismemberment and bloody death and this work offers a salient metaphor for a struggling nation experiencing the flipside of Singapore’s fortune.

Unfortunately, few of the interesting works in the Biennale offered meaningful insight into the host city itself. Perhaps the artists invited to participate were concerned about government censors who exert intimidation from invisible shadows. Or maybe they avoided using the city-state as a subject matter because, unlike their own nations, Singapore does not have major social and civil problems worth exploring.

What is certain is that the National Arts Council and the Singapore Art Museum (the government institutions supporting this worthwhile event) have succeeded in providing a nutrient-rich growth medium to advocate for the value of visual culture and provide an enhanced and much-needed base for fresh shoots of contemporary art to take hold in this region.

The website of the Southeastern Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, recently posted a six-minute long time-lapse video of the production of an onsite mural painted by the artist Dalek (James Marshall) and his team of assistants. Created for the exhibition North Carolina New Contemporary, Dalek’s vibrant and kaleidoscopic abstraction of video-game aesthetics slowly assembles in front of the camera lens to the beat of a jazzy soundtrack. As I watched the video this past Saturday night, with a touch of cabin-fever inspired by the Hoth-like Toronto winter outside my window, I thought about how great it is to see a deserving and brilliant Street Artist given time, space and resources by a museum, particularly one as charmingly off the beaten path as the SECCA. Here is more evidence, I realized, of the ongoing ascendance of the most important art movement of the new century.

The term “street art” has shifted in a positive direction over the past 10 years. This metamorphosis has been even more pronounced since the practical adoption of Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” posters by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Street art was once considered a societal infection that plagued beleaguered urban densities, but the mature examples of this visual art form have now invaded even the most holy contemporary museums and been championed by a new generation of collectors, curators and cultural commentators. Though many fine art periodicals have willfully or ignorantly displayed disappointing obliviousness to the importance of these young practitioners, an army of well-funded crossover magazines and websites have elevated these artists among audiences far hipper, more connected and massive than those the traditional art media enterprises can muster or interest. Possibly the current best documentary Oscar nomination of Banksy’s mind-twisting film Exit Through The Gift Shop will shake and awaken the upper levels of the art establishment from its slumber.

The pieces created by street artists like Banksy, Barry McGee (Twist), and Os Gemeos (twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo), are not yet viewed as “blue chip”. This is because their collectors and strongest admirers are still exploring the outer reaches of their youth; the oldest of these supporters are generally still developing their successful professional careers and nurturing financial resources that are not quite ready to be deployed toward the serious aid of high culture. Just like all those before it, however, this generation, my generation, is on the march, driving tastes, and growing into influence. We are far more interested in the contemporary pop street artists whose points of references we share than in the current retinue of darlings promoted by the mega-galleries whose works are surely brilliant but not popularly compelling. By the end of this decade, our financial might will come to prominence, it will be our turn. When it comes to the visual arts, it will be street art in its gallery form that we will elevate. We have already begun to do so, but this effort is still nascent.

As the great street artists and their artworks enter public consciousness, it is imperative to note the direction of the movement. The museums and the market have come to street art, not the other way around. There is no sell-out here, no compromise. Though random, monikered, cowardly critics may claim otherwise and hurl accusations from the shadows of the blogosphere, these street artists have not “gone mainstream”. At least not the better ones. Instead, mainstream went Main Street. Just as cool new vocabularies and manners of speech ferment and ripen in rough urban quarters before they are appropriated and widely adopted by the middle-classes, the works of Shepard Fairey, C215 (Christian Guémy), Stephen Powers (ESPO), and a whole loosely affiliated brotherhood of artists are being soaked up from above. Any metamorphoses that occur do so within the DNA of the consuming masses rather than within the bloodlines of the creators. Even a cursory look at the current quality of daily street art interventions on the streets of Brazil, New York, Paris, London or Tokyo demands an acknowledgment that this folk-art form has never been as good as it is right now. When the street art photographer JR recently won the 2011 TED Prize without having to compromise anything about the way he produces or displays his work, any lingering relevance of the clumsy accusations of selling out evaporated alongside whatever doubt still existed regarding the cultural imprint and crossover appeal of these artists.

And is crossover appeal not eventually the truest measure of superior artistic achievement? While cerebral flexibility and opaque moral questioning are the hallmark of many intellectual artistic masterpieces that deserve museum protection and historical relevance, our most widely-valued artworks are those produced by the popularly agreed-upon pantheon of artistic geniuses. Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh will always be cherished above Matthew Barney and Paul McCarthy because they offer a way in for everyone, not just a minority with a fetish for obscure analytical discourse. From Jacques-Louis David through Andy Warhol, the great artists of any era are those who reflect culture with a popular mirror large enough for everyone to peer into, not just a self-selected slice of the population.

Because the medium used by street artists is the most public of all, namely our transportation infrastructure (streets, trains, tunnels, and bridges), their work is suckled from the very beginning by the impulsive need to transmit meaning to anybody and everybody, not just somebody. This is their greatest strength. This form of art is no longer relegated to the kids’ table; it is finally starting to take its well-deserved seat with the adults of high culture.

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in the Financial Times of London’s How To Spend It, December 7, 2010.

I’ve resisted attending the annual art carnival that is Art Basel Miami Beach since my last excursion in 2003. From that trip, during the convention’s second iteration, all I remember is a blur of expensive cars, beautiful women at exclusive parties in boutique South Beach hotels, and an ocean of vodka. (Some figments also remain of a moment when I posed as film director Wes Anderson in order to successfully Jedi mind-trick my way past security into the Visionaire party at the Raleigh Hotel; but that’s a story for another blog posting.) What I don’t remember from that first trip was what I went there for in the first place: the art.

The problem with these kinds of art super events, such as the Armory show in New York and Frieze in London, is that you are bombarded with a tsunami of art, all at once, and none of it is contextualised. Whereas the biennial-type events in cities such as Venice, São Paulo and Istanbul and are curated and seek to provide a cohesive and critical social commentary, art fairs (and the dozen-odd simultaneous outrigger fairs that attend them, such as NADA, Scope, Seven and Pulse) make no conscious, intellectual effort; they don’t even pretend to. Instead, they are flea markets for millionaires and billionaires. This is where buyers and sellers of this most expensive of commodities come together to transact; it doesn’t leave much nectar for critics and curators like me to be nourished.

But by the end of the second day of this year’s Art Basel Miami, I realized I was wrong; there actually is a lot more to this event than just an art superstore writ large. Though this Dionysian art extravorgasm is still squarely targeted at that fine layer of society with enough money to burn — those extra people who have extra homes and extra cash — there is a massive, vital, literate, sophisticated series of critical contemporary art events, surprises and happenings going on as well. It turns out this experience is also truly relevant for those of us not arriving with shopping lists.

Jose Parla at OHWOW Gallery, photographed by Cara Bloch

Pop-up shows by OHWOW Gallery and Jonathan Levine Gallery, both appearing in Wynwood for the run of the festival, are excellently raucous examples of the kind of energetic satellites that make this whole event fizz. These exhibitions included exciting next-generation stars such as KAWS, DALEK, Rob Lazzarini, José Parlá, Rey Parlá, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Invader, and Shepard Fairey, all artists that possess cross-over appeal into contemporary culture. Ryan McGinness’s “Women: The Blacklight Paintings” exhibition and party at the seedy Club Madonna strip club also offered a kind of dynamic interaction with city of Miami itself, an aspect the fairs largely neglect.

KAWS at OHWOW Gallery, photographed by Cara Bloch

A highlight of the entire festival weekend was watching the soaking-wet fashion model, Entourage guest star, and international table-tennis champion Sooyeon Lee at Susan Sarandon’s “Art Stars Ping Pong Tournament”. Dressed in a blue sparkling evening gown with no shoes and cheered on by over 200 party-goers lucky enough to be poolside, Sooyeon dominated a game of ping pong at a table set up inside the shallow end of the Delano Hotel’s pool. The result was performance art at its finest.

Little girl in front of Al Farrow sculpture at PULSE, photographed by Cara Bloch

The main Art Basel fair in the Miami Beach Convention Centre is fantastic and important, for sure, but it is only interesting if artists must already have a blue-chip stamp of approval for you to notice or care about them. The artists showing with the top galleries involved with this main fair are already “made”, in the mafia sense of the word; they are untouchable, their contribution to contemporary culture beyond reproach and debate. As a result, there is a stuffiness to this main event; sponsored by a global bank, it feels like a corporate event. What I value now is the way this centerpiece functions as the sun to in entire solar system of smaller planetary events that cut spinning routes throughout Miami; though it is too hot (and expensive) to be cool and exciting, the central fair is the bright star that gives gravity to the week’s ancillary events.

The back room of Cristin Tierney Gallery, 546 West 29th St., NYC

Some management gurus say there is no better time to start a new business than in the belly of a recessionary dip. While cautionary conservatism and fearful retreat seem to characterize conventional behavior during bad days, the contrarian view is that economic slowdowns are exactly the right times to gear up for upcoming growth cycles. With world markets bloodied like losing Ultimate Fighters, there are fantastic deals available in almost all categories, from real-estate to service contracts. Auctions abound with equipment and furniture available for cents on the dollar. Highly qualified yet unemployed business leaders, many of whom are flirting with desperation, are prospecting and available for hire. And with many investors still nursing third degree burns from stock market volatility, new ventures can leverage personal relationships to tap pools of financial resources usually destined for securities.

Cristin Tierney sees opportunity in current adverse conditions. On October 28, 2010, she opened her first gallery in a ground floor space in the ultra-important Chelsea art neighborhood of New York City. After two years of watching influential galleries close and art works remain unsold, she now perceives a thawing in the art market and believes it to be the beginning of the next bull-run. Tierney is not a naïve outsider. Prior to opening her gallery at 546 West 29th Street, she worked as an advisor for a number of high net worth private collectors and institutions throughout the United States. She holds a Masters degree from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and is half a dissertation away from her Ph.D. in Art History. She has taught at Christie’s Education in New York City and knows most of what can possibly be known about Modern and Contemporary artists and art market values.

Starting off with a warning shot across the bows of her many nearby gallery competitors, her very first exhibition features a solo effort by Peter Campus, long considered a ground breaking artist who practically invented video art. Campus, whose works have been collected by the MoMA, Guggenheim, Tate Modern, Renia Sofia, and Centre Pompidou, takes over the brand new gallery with a hypnotic seven-screen installation of video landscapes. Tierney figures starting off with a seminal figure in the history of video and new media art is probably a good idea.

In between frantic final preparations for the opening of her new gallery, I caught up with Tierney via email and asked her for her thoughts about starting a business in desperate times and what to buy with my last five grand.

Randy Gladman: Congratulations on the opening of your gallery. The contemporary art market in New York City is cutthroat and there are already hundreds of galleries in this one neighborhood alone. Here you come with another one. Are you crazy?

Cristin Tierney: Wow. Geez. Aren’t you supposed to start with a warm up question? Some kind of softball first? Anyone who opens an art gallery is a little bit crazy, although I prefer to think of myself as “colorful.” It is something one does for love not money. Are we really perceived as cutthroat? I think of the gallery system in New York as a really collegial place. I suppose from the outside looking in, other gallerists are competition, but from the inside looking out, those same people are some of your biggest supporters.

RG: You already have a thriving art advisory business. What made you want to move beyond that business model and start representing artists in a gallery format?

CT: I really enjoy working with many of our advisory clients and I plan to continue doing so. But I needed new challenges. And in the wake of 2008, lots of artists needed support. My Director, Heather Dell, and I curated several exhibitions in 2008-2009 and I really loved the whole process. I especially enjoyed working with the artists. I realized that I have worked in the art world for almost twenty years, and in all that time I never worked directly and consistently with artists. If not now, when?

RG: Why Chelsea?

CT: Because this is where deals are made, exhibition ideas are hatched and big things happen. Also, at this point in my life I am just not hip enough for the Lower East Side. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. With age comes self-awareness, I guess.

RG: You are already “representing” a number of artists. What does that mean to you? How will you manage all that responsibility? What do you plan to do differently than other galleries?

CT: Representing an artist is a huge responsibility. It isn’t just about selling his or her work, you are helping write the work into history. You have to strike a balance between the long-range plan and the daily to-do list, and spend time working on each one every day. One thing that we will do differently at our gallery is place a heavy emphasis on the idea of building a community. It isn’t just about selling art, it is about helping your artists build a network, helping them win residencies, fellowships and awards, placing their work in museum collections and making a whole team of people feel they are a part of this—curators, collectors, critics, artists. We want patrons to come into the gallery to view some art and stay a while. Have a coffee, talk about what’s on view at museums, and get invested in the artists and their projects, not just buy something. Our back room has a comfy couch, an oriental rug and a large library, not just more white walls. I want patrons and artists to feel at home here.

RG: How do you decide which artists you want to represent? What type of artists do you most want to work with? Early career? Established? Painters? Photographers?

CT: The artist/dealer relationship takes time to develop, and it is a bit like dating. You find some work that intrigues you, and you spend time learning about it, then you do a studio visit to see if personalities are compatible, etc. Usually we will do a project with an artist first, to see how the working relationship might develop, and also to see how the audience and market responds. And just like dating, you don’t always fall in love! Sometimes it turns out to be lust, and sometimes you end up becoming just friends. I don’t really have a “type,” although I gravitate toward artists who are borderline workaholic, no matter what materials they use. Some of the artists we work with are emerging and some are legends, like Peter Campus. I think that mix is important for the gallery and for our community of artists. It is inspiring for a young artist to show in the same space as Peter, and Peter’s work, in turn, evolves in response to younger artists. That’s great synergy, and that’s how it should be.

RG: Do you have a 5- and 10- year plan or are you taking it day by day?

CT: We do have a 10-year plan, but you still have to come to work every day with a to-do list, don’t you? It is important to dream big, but still be practical when it comes to execution.

RG: Many of our readers are professionals from fields not directly involved in the arts. They are, however, actively interested in the visual arts and trying to develop their tastes and understanding because they have the goal of developing sophisticated collections of their own over time. Do you have advice for people who want to purchase good contemporary art but aren’t yet sure of their own tastes?

CT: The more you look, the better your eye gets. See everything you possibly can, and try to do it with someone else, so you can talk about what you are seeing. Don’t spend all of your time at art fairs, because that is a terrible context for viewing artwork. Make sure you get out to the big (and small) museum shows on a regular basis— the art exhibited in museums is usually only the highest quality, and that gives you a basis for comparing art in other contexts. Connoisseurship is all about comparison. Judgments of quality are always based on how good an artwork is in comparison to other art. The more you see, the better your judgment gets. And make a conscious effort to get to galleries, to see the exhibitions on view and also to spend some time in the back room with the gallerist. These people are experts, and they are happy to spend time looking and talking about art with you, in a relaxed, intimate setting.

RG: Who are some artists new collectors should pay particular attention to?

CT: Oh my, where to begin?!?! I try to encourage new collectors to spend lots of time investigating video and new media, because I really believe it is the great art form of the 21st century, and there is amazing work being done in this arena. I am always surprised when collectors hesitate to buy video work. What is the big deal? This is an art form that everyone is already very familiar with—we were all raised by the same television, weren’t we? I am reminded of the fact that in the 20th century, many people were similarly hesitant about photography, and look what happened. You can build an amazing collection of video and new media right now. It is available, affordable, and some of the best art today is in this format. Take the risk—isn’t that what patronage is all about? Doing something daring and meaningful? Take a look at work by Kate Gilmore, Jesper Just, Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation, and Woods and Harrison. All are doing museum-quality work and each is very different in style and execution.

RG: Which three visual artists do you most admire?

CT: Who can answer that? That’s like asking who your favorite child is. Pass. (Although I admit that at the very top of my list is Edouard Manet, and that’s all I will say.)

RG: If you could convince any living artist to exhibit with your gallery, who would you be most likely to ask?

CT: I wish I could convince Gilbert and George to do a re-performance of their Singing Sculpture piece in the gallery. That would be pretty fabulous. And we would serve Gordon’s gin to everyone in the audience.

RG: Are there any particular initiatives you believe the government (local, state, federal) should undertake to help the creative industries at this difficult point in the economic cycle?

CT: Um, wow. Clearly you are Canadian, because this sort of thing doesn’t even occur to us folks down here in the States. The government? Every time they get involved they just tell us we are immoral, unconstitutional and un-American.

RG: What keeps you awake at night?

CT: Nothing keeps me awake at night. That’s how I know that I love what I do.

RG: In 100 words or less, what do you believe is happening in the art market right now?

CT: Yikes. Well, it is a period of regeneration. Two years ago the market came to a dead stop, and it is just now beginning to move again. And recovery will not be as slow as everyone thinks. Technology, and the resultant interconnectivity and availability of information, have created a new market with much tighter cycles. The ups and downs come and go much more quickly, and we are about to swing up, so get on board now.

RG: Buy or sell?

CT: Definitely buy. Great opportunities are out there in the galleries right now, and that won’t last forever.

RG: I have $5,000 and a great spot over my couch. What should I buy?

CT: Buy a photo by Joe Fig entitled Inka’s Floor from 2006. It has amazing color, great subject and size, and is really well priced at $2800.

To learn more about Cristin Tierney and her new gallery you can check out The New York Observer which is also from where we borrowed the photo of her gallery.

Contemporary culture is at its best when it is fresh and stuffed with wide-ranging and original ideas. Many of the most interesting contributors to the current arts have a fierce facility with extreme variety. While many of us get trapped in whirlpools where our bright ideas get replayed until they grow dull, great artists move from idea to idea, their notions adjusting in interesting ways at each pivot point. Sometimes the changes they push are vertical in that the artist dives deeper and deeper into a concept, unveiling ever-richer interpretations and aesthetics or carrying hot ideas across boundaries into new mediums. Just as valuable are the artists who move laterally, with each project totally different from the previous in both conceptual point and material production. Two artists whose finest works are currently touring the world strike me for their ability to constantly refine and reinvent their vision.

Roger Waters, the former co-frontman of Pink Floyd, has reincarnated his masterpiece, The Wall, to celebrate its 30th anniversary. At its initial release in 1980, this simultaneous double-album and feature film combo rocked audiences in both audio and visual ways. Weaving together music, spoken word, and psychedelic animation, The Wall told a heartbreaking story of alienation and self-imposed isolation in a revolutionary non-linear manner.

Now Waters is back with an epic-scale, live, theatrical version of The Wall. This touring mega-imaginarium is on an adventure through many of the best stadiums in the world, including fourteen nights at London’s O2 Arena in 2011. Complete with a rock orchestra, a crashing airplane, a flying pig, a giant inflatable schoolmaster, mind-warping digital projections, choirs drawn from local schools in the vicinity of the stadiums visited, and a massive wall that is built brick by brick before being destroyed at the concert’s climax, this manifestation of an all-time classic piece of culture is blazingly new in its production.

Though I was disappointed that the rumors that David Gilmour was going to join Waters on stage proved false, I was thrilled with the show’s faithful, note-for-note reproduction of the original soundtrack and impressed that Waters’ new stage version has fully modernized the telling of the tale by injecting it with updated imagery, technology and energy. Like a Broadway performance jacked on both steroids and LSD simultaneously, this live variety show left no doubt in my mind about the continued relevance of Roger Waters as a cultural visionary.

While Waters drills down ever deeper into a timeless tale, German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans leaps across surfaces through a bewildering variety of content. Jumping from subject to subject and exploring a vast assortment of genres and photographic media, Tillmans brandishes a sharp, multifaceted, diamond-like eye in his ongoing attempt to see the entire world in new ways. I was initially drawn to his early visual documentation of youth social movements, but I’ve continued to track his career as it has careened through photographic explorations of portraiture, still-life, sky and astronomical subjects, aerials, fashion, political activism, gender identity, and club culture.

He is one of few artists who have been successful in experimenting with camera-free photography and his abstractions grab my attention with their purist, luxurious approach to color. Tillmans, who was the first photographer and the first non-Brit to win the prestigious Turner Prize (2000), brought his investigation of the world through photography to London’s Serpentine Gallery this past summer. His work is currently on display at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery (through December 12, 2010) and at Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Berlin (through December 11, 2010). He is also included in an excellent survey of contemporary British art in Nottingham Contemporary’s “British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet” (through January 9, 2011).

The most important contributors to contemporary creativity are those, like Waters and Tillmans, who experiment in many directions at once and weave disparate modes of thinking and viewing into high quality quilted culture. Wielding new ideas like burning torches, they light the way through the cavernous spaces revealed by advances in politics and technology. The rest of us just follow along.

Mexican beer company Dos Equis recently ran a wonderful advertising campaign, presenting “The Most Interesting Man in the World”. In these radio and television spots, a dignified, slightly accented, well-dressed, rough yet sophisticated man is described in impossibly exciting detail. “The police often question him, just because they find him interesting. His blood smells like cologne. His personality is so magnetic he is unable to carry credit cards. Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number. He never says something tastes like chicken, not even chicken. People hang on his every word, even the prepositions. He can speak French, in Russian. He is the most interesting man in the world.” A cursory glance at the life of Conrad Black could lead one to believe that he was one inspiration for the complex character in these clever advertisements.

One of the last true Renaissance men, Montreal-born Conrad Black, aka Baron Black of Crossharbour, has experienced high highs and low lows throughout his illustrious life. As head of Hollinger International, the company that published hundreds of newspapers worldwide including The Daily Telegraph (UK), Jerusalem Post, and Chicago Sun Times, Black held the post of third largest newspaper magnate in the world. Through his ownership of various holding companies, he was involved in many industries including the manufacture of farm equipment, mining, and broadcasting. Perhaps his most lasting creative effort to date was the development of Canada’s daily National Post, a newspaper he launched in 1998.

For most of his life, Black lived a life of luxury and was rated in 2003 as one of the 250 wealthiest people in Britain, where he was raised to the peerage by Queen Elizabeth II who knighted him with a membership in the British House of Lords. Like Icarus, however, Black’s self-made wax wings began to melt as he soared too close to the sun. By July 2007, he had been convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice in the Illinois US District Court. Sentenced to 78 months in federal prison, Black is currently incarcerated in the Coleman Federal Correction Complex near Tampa, Florida.

As the saying goes, you can’t keep a good man down, and Black has continued an intellectually active and decidedly productive life regardless of his present circumstances. A published author of biographies of great personalities from history such Maurice Duplessis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, and himself, Black continues to contribute regular editorial opinion pieces to the National Post (a wonderful example of which presents his comparison of cats and dogs) and has published history and criticism articles in a variety of other publications since his incarceration. He continues to work hard throughout his days, writing, communicating via email, and teaching English and the history of the United States to fellow inmates. Considered a “low risk” prisoner, he has practically unlimited access to emails, and the media, and plenty of time for visitors. In an article published in Spear’s Wealth Management magazine, he said his current life is “a little like going back to boarding school, which I somewhat enjoyed, nearly fifty years ago (before being expelled for insubordination), and is a sharp change of pace after sixteen years as chairman of the Daily Telegraph.”

The inquisition that follows was conducted by Randy Gladman via email in May 2010. Conrad Black, Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate # 18330-424, is scheduled for release from Coleman Federal Correction Complex in October, 2013. We expect Baron Black of Crossharbour will be enjoying a cold Dos Equis shortly after he gets home.

Convicted newspaper baron Conrad Black leaves the federal building in Chicago Monday, Dec. 10, 2007, after sentencing in his racketeering and fraud trial. (AP Photo/Jerry Lai)

1. Which historical epoch would you most like to have participated in? (ie. Ancient Rome, Revolutionary France, 1960s Counterculture…)

Twentieth century.

2. If you could live as one historical figure for one month, who would it be? (Feel free to describe which particular month, if relevant.)

Jesus Christ, the month ending a few days before he died. Or Napoleon in 1803, at the time of the Treaty of Amiens. That would have been the time to end the Napoleonic Wars and avoid the nonsense of the Empire.

3. If you could be internationally famous for any achievement, real or imagined, what would it be for?

A timelessly influential book, like Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

4. Do you think it is better to be exceptionally intelligent with average charm or exceptionally charming with average intelligence?

The first.

5. Which 3 visual artists do you most admire? (For their work and/or the manner in which they lived their lives)

Michelangelo, Leonardo, Monet.

6. Which 3 musicians’ music most closely resembles a soundtrack to your life?

Wagner, Beethoven, Verdi (everything is to scale).

7. Do you listen to music when you are being creative? What music? If not, why not?

Yes. Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Chopin, Faure, Sibelius, Bach.

8. If you could change one significant aspect of your talent, what would you change?

I would be more naturally musical.

9. What three cities would you most like to live in?

New York, London, and Paris.

10. Imagine you are driving on an open, gently curving highway with a guarantee of no police, no other drivers, and perfect weather conditions. What kind of car would you want to drive and how fast would you go? Is there a particular stretch of road you have in mind?

A Bentley Continental, about 70 mph, between San Francisco and San Luis Obispo, Quebec City and Tadoussac, or on the upper Corniche between Monte Carlo and St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

11. Which current global calamity would you fix with one all-powerful wish? (ie. global warming, HIV/AIDS, starvation, …)

Terrorism.

12. If you could solve one of the great mysteries humanity has never been able to figure out, which would it be?

The existence and nature of God.

13. Do you believe the United States of America is getting better or worse?

Worse.

14. What is your favourite film of all-time?

Richelieu, starring George Arliss.

15. What is your favourite restaurant in the world? (Please name the city, too.)

Mark’s Club, London.

16. What job would you least like to do for 40 hours a week until retirement?

Cleaning public washrooms.

17. What superpower would you find most useful? (Flying, invisibility, indestructibility…)

Indestructibility.

18. Have you ever been in a fist-fight in which blood was spilled? (Feel free to offer a brief description.)

Yes, a few bloody noses, given and received, when I was in elementary school,m especially playing hockey.

19. Do you have any phobias? (Feel free to explain which ones.)

No.

20. Do you think it is better to ask for permission or beg for forgiveness?

The first.

21. If invited to travel on the next NASA space shuttle mission, would you go, knowing that statistically there is a 2.52% chance that you would die (126 missions so far, 2 disasters)?

No, not out of fear but because the preparation would be too onerous.

22. What is humankind’s single best invention?

The wheel.

23. If you could clone a human, would you and who would you clone?

Abraham Lincoln.

24. What is your favourite toy from your childhood?

A little metal model of a pre-war Lagonda convertible.

25. Which news media sources do you most trust? (Please list up to 3 sources)

Wall Street Journal, Economist, Commentary.

26. Which corporation do you think has had the biggest positive effect on the Earth and/or mankind? Which has had the biggest negative effect?

IBM; no opinion.

27. Do fully developed ideas pop into your head or do they develop slowly with effort?

Both.

28. Do you believe in reincarnation?

No.

29. If given a choice for your next life, do you want to be a man or a woman? (As with all these questions, answering “why?” is optional.)

Man, I would know better how to do it.

30. If you could pick, as which animal would you choose to live your next life?

Human. If it had to be another animal, I suppose a whale, the largest kind.

Dalek’s first solo exhibition in Canada introduced Toronto audiences to a Brooklyn-based member of a large underground urban art movement that is attracting attention in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo. While the group is still effectively unnamed, the members of this loose affiliation—Shepard Fairey, KAWS, Twist (Barry McGee), Phil Frost, Evan Hecox, Ryan McGinness and others—have exhibited together on many occasions, including in the recent “Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture” exhibition at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center.

Dalek, whose real name is James Marshall, is a prominent member. His work, even spray-painted on the sides of buildings, is reminiscent of both historical and contemporary Japanese art. The artist once worked in the studio of Takashi Murakami, and the Pop master’s “Superflat” aesthetic is clearly evident in Dalek’s pieces. Like ancient Japanese scroll paintings, his works always move from right to left, and their humour and quirky violence are comparable to that found in Japanime.

Every piece Dalek paints tells a tale about a character he calls a Space Monkey. Often there is more than one of these creatures in the picture plane, each one focused on carrying out some demented, obscure mission. They execute their destructive tasks with glee as they fly through two-dimensional, Super Mario Bros.-like spaces.

The glory of Dalek is in the attention he pays to the details. Every punk-rock song sounds the same to someone who dislikes punk, but to a true punk fan the small differences are the sites of the purest creativity. Like a snowflake, every Dalek piece is one of a kind, its essence contained in the minor variations on the theme. Each work seems machine-made in its plastic perfection; only upon very close inspection do traces of the artist’s hand in the brush strokes betray the fact that these are all handmade objects.

The works reflect the prominence of the cartoon in the contemporary pop aesthetic. Our culture, like Japan’s, is permeated with animated programs for adults. The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park are supported by leagues of dedicated fans who cherish these programs for their humorous attempts to make sense of a crazy world. Dalek’s images of skinny-armed, fat-fingered Space Monkeys do the same by highlighting the underlying insanity of our highly competitive, violent, goal-oriented, button-pushing wired culture.

{{Postscript by the author:
The article above was originally published in Canadian Art Magazine a number of years ago.  I have not written about Dalek (James Marshall) in a long time but I am so excited by the incredible work he has been doing recently that I wanted to get this article onto Akrylic.  Please see below for some of his recent paintings, circa 2009/2010.  For more info on this amazing artist, you can check out his website:  www.dalekart.com. }}

Dalek, aka James Marshall, at home in his studio

Run With The Hunted, 4.5' x 4.5', oil on canvas, 2010

By Randy Gladman. Original Akrylic Content. Published online April 28, 2010.

One of the strange and disappointing characteristics of the Toronto art scene is the way our local and national art critics have a knack of missing important exhibitions. In 2004, Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini, hosted a museum quality posthumous exhibition of the work of Joseph Beuys, marking the twentieth anniversary of that legendary German conceptual artist’s Difesa della Natura project. While New York City-based Artforum.com offered a glowing “Critic’s Pick” review, the Toronto contingent of critics more or less totally neglected to cover this exhibition of works by one of the most important (if challenging) artists of the twentieth century. One of the only reviews was NOW Magazine’s blathering piece that may have caught the show but missed the point entirely. This article wished more explanatory information would have been provided (and lamely suggested viewers spend a night in advance doing library research) yet neglected to mention that an excellent catalogue providing an intelligent backgrounder on the artist and the series of works was published for the show.

The astigmatism of Toronto art criticism-at-large was revealed again recently when Matt Bahen’s “Run with the Hunted” exhibition of paintings at Moore Gallery was all but ignored in our local press. Though I am writing this blog posting on April 27 and it is still possible that press-delayed publications like Canadian Art will offer reviews, the fact that the dailies and weeklies seem not to have noticed this show says so much more about their critical abilities than it does about the show itself. Those who saw it will consider this exhibition one of the best painting shows of the year.

Bahen paints like no one else in Toronto. He modernizes classical impasto handling and earthy palettes by interpreting the catastrophes of twenty first-century societal conflict. While there are a number of interesting painters in Toronto who are currently exploring this thick-paint style, Bahen does not fall into the trap set by Kim Dorland (and followed recklessly by Brendan Flanagan and recently James Olley) whose high-key synthetic colour will surely be seen in the long run as dated as 1980s shoulder pads. Loose and honest, Bahen’s brushwork is abstract up close but offers highly representative interpretations when the entire composition is visible.

With Wings Spread, 6' x 8', oil on canvas, 2010

Bahen is Earthbound. His problems are those of the everyman with whom he empathizes and represents. Hailing from small town Ontario, he struggled to pay for art school and found himself homeless on more than one night during that educational program. Parallel with his art career, he now spends many of his productive hours as a front-line social outreach worker, delivering hot food, condoms, and dignity to Toronto’s most needy. These real experiences inform Bahen’s sense of truth and value. His paintings, dating back to 2002 when he graduated from OCAD, carry the weight of the world and betray his inability to ignore the plight of mankind’s most downtrodden.

In earlier series, Bahen’s works used images reaped from international media sources to present the devastating effects of politics, war, famine and disease around the world. A flag above a Red-Cross tent is shown in stark relief, surrounded by thousands of displaced Africans as they scramble for inadequate supplies of food and medicine. A pick-up truck rolls unsteadily down a broken dirt road, impossibly overloaded with refugees clinging to each other on the last ride to somewhere, anywhere but here.

Winter, 4' x 4', oil on canvas, 2009

In “Run with the Hunted”, which closed on April 24, 2010, Bahen turned his attention away from the suffering masses of people and focused instead on the wildlife that is left after the fall of man. A pack of hungry dogs trudges silently through a broken cornfield, the snow blending seamlessly into the horizon-less sky, searching for food. A stag deer bellows a requiem for its destroyed habitat while in the background a church collapses into ruin. A saddled yet rider-less donkey stands lonely and aimless in a barren wasteland. In these works, the busted and rusting relics of man are left behind while the surviving fauna scavenge the wreckage, searching for food and a new way to live. It is unclear if Bahen’s apocalypse is a warning about or a yearning for the end of man, but his soulful handling of colour and paint suggests a definitive certitude that this, friends, is where we are headed. There is something of Bono’s concerned social gravitas in these paintings but none of that singer’s preaching.

Truthful painting exhibitions like Bahen’s recent effort are rare in Toronto. They should be celebrated, debated, appreciated and recognized. Similar to the way we disrespect our natural environment, we ignore shows like this at our own peril.

Through The Ministry, members access a program of events that include studio visits with rising and established local artists, intimate visits with notable collectors, exclusive gallery exhibition previews, film screenings, talks and panel discussions with published art thinkers, and group art fair excursions. The Ministry offers an informative and creative social environment for young professionals to network and explore the enrichment of collecting and supporting the arts.

For more information, please see our website at www.ministryofartisticaffairs.com.  Though The Ministry is a members-only social network, everyone is welcome to join.  The Ministry values diversity.

Here is the invite we sent out for the first event:

We hope to add at least one new artist per week with the questions changing over time.  Please click the photo or name of the artists below to reach their interrogation.

Dirk Westphal, photographer

Yorgo Alexopoulos, multimediartist

Rob Carter, video and photographer

Cara Bloch, photographer

Jason Gringler, painter

Heather Darcy Bhandari, artist advisor and curator

Ana Benaroya, illustrator