duminică, 30 mai 2010

“Mechanical Pig” is estimated at $2.5 million to $3.5 million.









When Phillips de Pury & Company opens its new 25,000-square-foot space on Park Avenue and 57th Street this fall, it wants to grab at least some of the spotlight from the auction giants Sotheby’s and Christie’s. So executives there have looked outside their ranks, to someone who has caused a splash in the auction world before: Philippe Ségalot.

A former head of Christie’s contemporary art department who became a private dealer in New York nine years ago, Mr. Ségalot was known for putting together sales that included show-stopping works by artists like Maurizio Cattelan and Jeff Koons. He actually persuaded those artists to become involved in the installation of their sculptures at Christie’s, creating events that drew attention. (Until then such happenings were unheard of because artists notoriously dislike the public forum of auctions.)

Mr. Ségalot is also a known quantity to Phillips. In 2004 he collaborated with the company on a sale of contemporary photographs from the collection of the Baroness Marion Lambert, wife of Baron Philippe Lambert, a member of a Belgian banking family. It was a sellout, bringing a total of $12.4 million.

This time around Mr. Ségalot has agreed to start Carte Blanche, a new initiative in which Phillips will invite a collector, dealer, artist or museum curator to put together one sale. “It’s like having a guest curator at a museum,” Simon de Pury, the chairman of Phillips, explained in a telephone interview. The initiative will not be limited to New York. It may also be expanded to London too, Mr. de Pury said.

“There will be no limitations,” Mr. de Pury added. “While the focus will be on contemporary art, there can also be design objects in the sale.”

Mr. Ségalot’s auction, which may be an individual event or the first part of Phillips’s usual evening contemporary art auction, will take place in November during the contemporary auction week. (The date has yet to be determined.)

Mr. Ségalot said that he was already putting together his sale, and that it would include “Mechanical Pig,” from 2005. A seminal work by the Los Angeles artist Paul McCarthy, it is a sculpture of a sleeping pig lying on its side atop a machine. Viewers could see the pig visibly breathing. “It’s like seeing how special effects are made in a movie,” said Mr. Ségalot, talking about the way Mr. McCarthy purposely placed the pig on top of a machine. “After all,” he continued, “the artist is from Los Angeles.”

One of an edition of three, “Mechanical Pig” is being sold by Stefan Edlis, a Chicago collector, and is estimated at $2.5 million to $3.5 million. “It looks so innocent you want to adopt it,” said Mr. Ségalot. (Another “Mechanical Pig” caused a stir when it was on view at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2006 at the time that François Pinault, the luxury goods magnate and owner of Christie’s, first took over the space.)


By CAROL VOGEL
Published: May 27, 2010
The New York Times

sâmbătă, 22 mai 2010

a curious advertisment of rexona deodorants..




the inscription reads: Your smell is your visiting(business) card,
use Rexona on a daily basis and successfully avoid bad smell...
so, the pig stands for a bad or a good (Rexona like) smell?

un poster publicitar curios: sloganul zice Mirosul tău e cartea ta de vizită,
foloseşte Rexona zilnic şi evită mirosul urât.
Mă întreb, purcelul reprezintă mirosul urât sau frumos (de tip Rexona)?

luni, 17 mai 2010

2 blogs on pigs, arts and society:
http://pigofknowledge.blogspot.com/
si
http://www.porkopolis.org/art-museum/

i m not getting this caricature










printed in PoPolsku, a Polish language, minority oriented newspaper published in Netherlands (May, 7, 2010). The inscription on the pig reads Greece. Is it about that the Greeks (emigrants in Holland) are money oriented pigs (unlike poles)? I just don't get it...

miercuri, 12 mai 2010

pig related activistic art


















Tuesday 14th April 2009

A former pig farmer was arrested and held by police for more than six hours after a police officer who lived next door complained about an ornamental swine statuette in his garden. Robin Demczak, 57, insists the black and white spotted porcelain pig was in residence in his back garden long before traffic officer PC John Ablett moved in next door.

But police reportedly told Mr Demczak, who now works as a window fitter, that the statuette and a sign saying "no pigs" could be considered as harassment. He was arrested at his home in Witney, Oxfordshire, earlier this month and held for six and a half hours following a complaint.

The arrest reportedly followed an 18-month dispute between the two neighbours over a footpath that splits their back gardens.

Mr Demczak said: "PC Ablett had me arrested because he didn't like me keeping my 12-inch porcelain model pig in the back garden. He seems to think it is offensive to policemen."

He insisted he had painted the sign to reassure passersby that there were no pigs kept in a shed in his back garden he previously used as a pig sty. He explained: "When I got rid of all the pigs, I painted a sign saying there weren't any left in there. That was in case someone was worried about them."

A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: "We can confirm that a man was arrested on suspicion of harassment in relation to the incident. He has been released without charge. But the investigation is still ongoing. There was an ornament in the garden and also some writing on a wall." PC Ablett was unavailable for comment.

.............
Animal rights activists arrested in protest at Harborplace store
February 06, 1994|By Liz Atwood,Sun Staff Writer

Five animal rights' advocates, two dressed in pink pig suits, were arrested at Harborplace's Light Street pavilion yesterday, protesting against a store they say contributes to the cruel deaths of wild animals in the Hawaiian rain forest.

Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals shouted slogans, distributed literature and handcuffed themselves to the doors of the Nature Company, which sells science and environmental materials.

They were protesting the store's support of the Nature %o Conservancy, an environmental group that the protesters contend uses wire snares to trap wild pigs on its rain forest lands in Hawaii.
PETA says the pigs and other animals caught in the snares die slow, agonizing deaths.

The Nature Company and the Nature Conservancy say the pigs, which were brought by settlers to the islands and became wild, are destroying the rain forest and must be eliminated.

"At the heart of this is a split in environmental groups between the eco-system managers and the animal rights advocates," said George Cruys, a spokesman for the Nature Company in Berkeley, Calif.

The Nature Company has raised about $1 million for the Nature Conservancy in the past five years. None of the money goes directly to the Hawaiian preserve, however, Mr. Cruys said.

"It's not a method we like," Alan Holt, director of the Nature Conservancy's stewardship programs in Hawaii, said of the traps. The Conservancy lays snares in about 4,000 of its 20,000 acres of rain forest, he said. It has tried hunting the pigs and fencing the land, but he said snaring is needed.

PETA has been demonstrating at Nature Company stores for about a year.

Yesterday, Baltimore police arrested Mike Markarian, 19; Jennifer Boffinger, 25; Connie Schaeffer, 28; and Joel Zink, 19, all of Washington, D.C.; and Peter Wood, 32, of Silver Spring. All were taken to Central District station and charged with trespassing.
..........

Published on Sunday, August 12, 2000 by the Associated Press
PETA Activist Drops Manure at DNC Hotel
by Anthony Breznican












LOS ANGELES –– An activist dressed in a pink pig costume dumped four tons of animal manure from a truck Saturday in front of a hotel housing guests attending the Democratic National Convention.

Police arrested the animal rights activist and impounded the truck.

At the Wilshire Grand Hotel, about 10 people from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood on the sidewalk as the activist dumped the manure in the hotel driveway. Some wore the same full-body pig costumes and carried placards that read, "Meat is murder."

City workers and hotel employees cleaned up the 5-foot by 10-foot spill with shovels and trashcans.

In February, the group performed a similar stunt outside a restaurant where Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush had just eaten breakfast.


Photo by M. Spencer Green (AP)
..................................

The nomination of the boar hog Pigasus for President of the United States by the Yippies had been the most "transcendentally lucid" political act of the twentieth century.
Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, the Golden Apple & Leviathan; Pigasus was nominated at the Democratic Party Convention on August 23, 1968

We want to give you a chance to talk to our candidate and to restate our demand that Pigasus be given Secret Service protection and be brought to the White House for his foreign policy briefing.
Jerry Rubin at the nomination of Pigasus for president of the USA

They nominate a president and he eats the people. We nominate a president and the people eat him.
Pigasus nominators' slogan

Everybody's smoking and no one's getting high
Everybody's flying and never touch the sky
There's a UFO over New York and I ain't too surprised
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed – most peculiar, mama


1968 USA: During the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, at the Civic Center plaza (now known as the Daley Center), Yippie leaders Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and others nominated their presidential contender – Pigasus the pig. His platform was 'garbage'. Seven Yippies – and Pigasus – were arrested.

On the same day, almost 6,000 National Guardsman were mobilized and practised riot-control drills. Special police platoons did the same.

"Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, along with David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, John Froines, Lee Weiner, and Bobby Seale were arrested for conspiring to incite violence and crossing state lines with the intent to riot. The group became known as the Chicago Eight until Seale was removed from the proceedings and sentenced to four years in prison for contempt, the group was then known as the Chicago Seven. After a protracted trial and appeals, all charges were dismissed."