competition complaint

                      

Art market news

Art Loss Register faces competition complaint from Art Recovery Group

Gloves come off in fight to run international database of stolen works of art

by Melanie Gerlis  |  26 January 2016

Art Recovery Group founder Chris Marinello with Matisse's Seated Woman, which was returned to the Rosenberg family last year (left), and Art Loss Register founder and chairman Julian Radcliffe

PrintEmailFacebookTwitter

More

• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Reddit

The privilege of running a commercial database of the world’s stolen art is proving as intriguing and complex as some of the crimes committed.

For the past 25 years, the task of keeping track of the millions of stolen or looted objects around the world has been taken on by the Art Loss Register (ALR). It provides a due diligence service to the art trade, insurers and—increasingly—private individuals.

The latest twist in the tale is that Chris Marinello, who founded Art Recovery Group (ARG) in 2013, has reported the ALR—which he worked for between 2006 and 2013—to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. The ALR, which is run by Julian Radcliffe, has had a database since 1991. Marinello launched his in early 2015. Both firms have UK HQs.

That there is no love lost between Radcliffe and Marinello is now a matter of public record.

“Vexatious litigation”

ARG’s letter to the competition authority accuses ALR of “systemic breaches of competition law”, citing seven examples of “abusive behaviour”. ALR, according to the letter, “is implementing a persistent, pervasive and systematic plan to eliminate ARG fr om the market”.

Heading the list of complaints is what ARG describes as “vexatious litigation”, a reference to a civil claim that ALR took to the UK’s High Court in July. This claim accuses Marinello and others of “the unlawful establishment and operation” of ARG, citing breach of contract, breach of confidence and “infringement of database rights”, among other things. ALR’s claim demands the handover of any confidential information the defendants may have that belongs to ALR.

Marinello and the other defendants filed a counterclaim in November, in which “each and every allegation contained in the particulars of claim is denied”. A subsequent reply and defence was lodged by ALR in December, which also denied all allegations.

James Ratcliffe, ALR’s director of recoveries, lawyer and near-namesake of the company’s founder, says that, while he has not seen ARG’s letter to the competition authority, ALR’s legal actions are “certainly not vexatious” and that there is “no systematic plan” to eliminate its competitor. He says the claim had to be issued to protect the interests of ALR’s stakeholders because Marinello “took confidential information from our business and we don’t know the full extent of it”.

Marinello says: “The ALR knows exactly the extent of information in my possession because it was obtained openly, transparently and with express permission pursuant to an agreement signed by Julian Radcliffe in 2012.”

Julian Radcliffe is ALR’s majority shareholder, although Sotheby’s also has a stake (around 11%), as does Christie’s (around 3%), and Marinello himself (10%).

Room for competition

In ARG’s letter to the competition authority, Marinello describes ALR as “dominant in the market for the ownership and generation of an international database of stolen artwork”, with a market share of between 80% and 90%.

James Ratcliffe denies that ALR has a dominant share of the market. He says: “We have 90 auction houses [as subscribers], including five regional US houses. There’s a huge swathe of the market not touched by us.” The Artnet price database lists more than 800 auction houses globally, although ALR’s clients include Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two largest auctioneers. “We’ve created this market,” James Ratcliffe says. “It isn’t unfair for us to have our clients.”

He goes on: “Multiple general databases are not in the interest of the art market—they would cause chaos.” He compares ALR’s log of 500,000 items to information providers such as the UK government’s land registry. “What if a theft victim registered their loss with one database and that item was sold by an auction house that searched with the other one? What is the answer to that? Was it negligent of the theft victim not to register with both databases? Should the auction house have searched both? What happens when a third one sets up? And a fourth?”

Not always the answer

James Ratcliffe adds that there is plenty of room for other databases to exist, such as those that specialise in losses from the Second World War or the records kept by national law enforcement agencies. “We are a very good starting point,” he says. “Sometimes we are all that is necessary, but we are not always going to be the complete answer.”

Marinello says: “This proves our point regarding the ALR’s anti-competitive behaviour. Competition in fact would provoke the production of better databases.”

There has been criticism that the quality of information on ALR’s database could be better and when Marinello launched his alternative service in 2015 it was welcomed by the trade. That year, Marinello was named Wealth Management Innovator of the Year by Spear’s, a specialist magazine.

“We never claimed that our system is perfect and are constantly working to improve it,” James Ratcliffe says, “but we are by far the best database of lost and stolen art.”

Many of ALR’s clients did not want to comment directly on the desirability of competition in this area of the art market. Martin Wilson, the global co-head of Christie’s legal and risk department, says his firm “supports all efforts for greater transparency of information on provenance and diligence”. Christie’s continues to submit its catalogues to ALR, he says, but also works with “many public and private archives, publications and academic experts to fill any gaps in provenance”, including Unesco, Interpol and the US Department of Homeland Security.

James Ratcliffe says he hopes that the civil case can be settled before it ends up in court. Marinello responds: “At present, ALR’s intransigence is preventing a resolution to the case.”

The competition authority has yet to say if it will investigate ARG’s complaint.

Why is the database so valuable?

While recovery companies can make big bucks from finding and returning lost or stolen works on a one-off basis, the really lucrative deals are few and far between and can take months, even years, to resolve.

A more reliable revenue stream comes out of the stolen works database. Auction houses, art dealers, museums, insurers, private individuals and other trade organisations can subscribe to it on an annual basis to check works they are offering for sale.
At the Art Loss Register (ALR), the annual fee is £500 for 25 searches, although auction houses, some of which submit every catalogue for a quick matching service, pay a different rate. Art dealers tend to want a more detailed search, and again rates vary. Art Recovery Group (ARG) charges £60 for a one-off search of its database, and tailors its packages according to its clients’ needs. Wh ere applicable, the ALR will issue a search certificate; ARG issues a full report.

Neither firm would confirm the total number of subscribing clients to their databases. The ALR says it has more than 90 auction houses as subscribers and that dealers are also core to its clientele. ARG says that it has signed contracts with a small number of London’s top art dealers and some major US insurers.
The ALR’s lawyer James Ratcliffe says the ALR conducts 400,000 searches against its database every year. Fine art paintings are the most frequently searched for, although he would not go into any further detail on this.

Both firms increasingly look beyond the theft and looting history of works by also taking areas such as financial liens and export restrictions into account.

Brussels Art Fair

Fairs

The show must go on at Brussels Art Fair

Despite the security lockdown in the Belgian capital in November, Europe’s oldest art fair is back with an expanded, more international edition

by Anna Brady  |  21 January 2016

Brafa may be the venerable ‘grand dame’ of Europe, but it cannot rest on its laurels in today’s global art market © Emmanuel Crooy

The Brussels Art Fair (Brafa) is the dowager duchess of the European fair circuit. Now in its 61st edition, it is the continent’s oldest art fair, but one that still maintains a refreshingly friendly atmosphere.

This grande dame among fairs is also quietly serious, attracting a learned crowd who, as one longstanding exhibitor says, sometimes know more than the dealers. Belgium’s strong tradition of academic collecting shows through at Brafa: there is a loyal contingent of domestic visitors and—for obvious geographical reasons—French, Dutch and German collectors.

In today’s global market, domestic loyalty is no match for international status, and Brafa cannot rest on its laurels. Since his election in 2012, the fair president Harold t’Kint de Roodenbeke, a Brussels-based Modern art dealer, has made it his mission to increase the numbers of international exhibitors and visitors. More than 1,000 new foreign collectors attended last year’s edition. But home-grown “Brafa-lovers” remain a central focus, t’Kint de Roodenbeke says. “The Belgian public are very proud of ‘their Brafa’. As we are very welcoming by nature, this rubs off on other collectors.”

Haute époque sculpture and tribal art have traditionally been the fair’s core offering, a reflection of the Belgian market’s strength in these fields. But Brafa is eclectic: a mix of antiquities, Old Masters, antiques, Modern art and design can be found on the stands. Affordability is important, t’Kint de Roodenbeke says. Entry-level pieces can be found at the fair for €1,000.

Eclectic: Brafa brings together antiques, Old Masters, antiquities and Modern art

Brafa is cautiously expanding from 126 to 137 stands this year due to demand. The redesigned 2016 fair takes over an extra 660 sq. m in the Tour & Taxis exhibition hall, which will be festooned with flowers courtesy of the Ghent Floralies festival, this edition’s guest of honour.

Although 17 countries are represented, the exhibitor list still has a strong local accent, with 55 coming from Belgium and 47 from France. But ten of the 12 new exhibitors are foreign, travelling from France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the UK and the US, thanks in part to a charm offensive aimed at international galleries, who were invited to reassess the fair last year. Among them are New York’s Safani Gallery, which specialises in antiquities, and the Frankfurt-based Frank Landau, showing 20th-century art and design. One of the eight galleries returning after a break is De Jonckheere, the Old Masters dealer with bases in Geneva, Paris and London.

The memory of the terrorist attacks in Paris last November and the subsequent emergency lockdown in Brussels undeniably lingers over the 2016 edition, and may deter some visitors from further afield. The organisers are “taking security extremely seriously” says t’Kint de Roodenbeke, who wrote a letter to exhibitors in November explaining how the fair plans to “ensure a secure yet relaxed environment”.

“We will never change our joviality and way of life here,” t’Kint de Roodenbeke says—and the exhibitors seem to agree. One response to the letter from a Parisian dealer read: “We will just drink a little bit more champagne…”

• Brussels Art Fair (Brafa), Tour & Taxis, Avenue du Port 86C, Brussels, 23-31 January

Art & Design

An Art Powerhouse From North Korea

By AMY QIN

JAN. 25, 2016

  

Visitors at the new 360-degree panoramic installation at the Angkor Panorama Museum. Credit Luc Forsyth for The New York Times

SIEM REAP, Cambodia — The giant mural in the foyer depicting a smiling stone face offers a mere taste of the grandiosity within the new Angkor Panorama Museum here. Inside, a 360-degree painted vista covers an area the size of nearly four basketball courts. Over 45,000 figures populate this cyclorama, a depiction of 12th-century Angkorian history.

The museum, which opened in December, is a sweeping homage to what historians call one of the greatest cities in the world between the ninth and 15th centuries and the capital of the Khmer empire. But almost everything that went into this building — the money, the concept, the design and the artists — came not from Cambodia but from North Korea, namely, Mansudae, the largest art studio in that country.

At a time when much of the world’s focus is on North Korea’s mercurial leadership and nuclear capabilities, this studio’s work is quietly making its way beyond the borders of that hermit kingdom. In recent years, monuments and sculptures made by Mansudae artists, modern-day masters of Socialist Realism, have popped up in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and even Germany.

Photo

A detail from the panorama, which depicts 12th-century Angkorian history. Credit Luc Forsyth for The New York Times

The Angkor Panorama Museum is the studio’s most ambitious foreign project. It took 63 artists, flown in from North Korea, four months to paint the cyclorama.

“Mansudae has great talent and a good reputation in artwork, painting and construction,” said Yit Chandaroat, acting director of museums for Apsara, the government agency responsible for managing the Angkor complex, explaining why Cambodia chose its partner.

Photo

The work includes over 45,000 figures. Credit Luc Forsyth for The New York Times

Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang, founded in 1959, is one of the world’s biggest art factories. It employs about 4,000 people, including 800 to 900 of North Korea’s most talented artists, according to Pier Luigi Cecioni, its representative in the United States and Europe.

The studio produces a variety of works, including most of the propaganda art and sculptures that dot North Korea. Its artists are said to be the only ones permitted to portray that country’s ruling family, the Kims. In 1972, it built a 66-foot-high statue of Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s founding leader and the grandfather of the current leader, on a hill in Pyongyang, the capital. A second, similarly sized likeness of Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-sung’s son and successor, was added beside the original in 2012 after Kim Jong-il’s death.

Photo

The African Renaissance Monument in Dakar, Senegal. Credit Nichole Sobecki for The New York Times

Starting in the 1990s, Mansudae also began taking on outside projects. Governments in Southeast Asia and Africa have commissioned its artists for large-scale projects at low costs, among them the African Renaissance Monument in Dakar, Senegal, and the Fairy Tale Fountain in Frankfurt. The studio also maintains a gallery in the 798 Art District in Beijing, opposite the Pace Gallery and the Faurschou Foundation.

Mansudae’s overseas division first approached the Council for the Development of Cambodia, the government’s investment board, with a proposal to build a museum in Siem Reap several years ago, Mr. Yit said.

Cambodia and North Korea have historically maintained strong ties, based largely on the personal relationship between Kim Il-sung and King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, who died in 2012.

In the 1970s, that North Korean leader gave King Sihanouk, who once referred to Mr. Kim as “more than a friend, more than a brother,” a palace outside Pyongyang. During his many years in exile, the Cambodian monarch spent several months annually in North Korea and even wrote and directed a series of films starring North Korean actors.

  

The museum’s foyer. Credit Luc Forsyth for The New York Times

Today, North Korea operates several restaurants in Cambodia, part of a growing overseas restaurant franchise that experts say is an important revenue generator for the financially struggling government in Pyongyang.

Unlike the restaurants, however, experts say that Mansudae, though state-run, enjoys relative autonomy from the government, including on decisions involving foreign outreach.

“I don’t see this museum as an attempt to project soft power,” said Nicholas Bonner, founder of the Beijing gallery Koryo Studio, who has worked with Mansudae for more than 20 years. “Mansudae is a massive studio, and they need to keep working to bring revenue in from inside and outside of the country.”

The Angkor museum differs from past Mansudae projects in one significant way. According to museum officials and experts, it is the first in which Mansudae, which usually works on a commission basis, has invested a large amount of money.

Photo

A worker in the museum’s gift shop. Credit Luc Forsyth for The New York Times

“It doesn’t seem to fit into the profit-making aspect that we usually hear about Mansudae,” said Adam Cathcart, a lecturer at the University of Leeds in England. “But then again, there’s always something going on behind the scenes when it comes to North Korea.”

Neither Mansudae nor the North Korean Embassy in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, responded to requests for comment relayed by email, telephone and Cambodian museum officials.

Construction of the Angkor Panorama Museum began in 2011. Mansudae designed the structure and the cyclorama in consultation with a committee made up of Cambodian government officials, Mr. Yit said.

Proceeds from the museum are scheduled to be disbursed in three stages. Initially, revenue will go to Mansudae. After 10 years (or less, if costs are recovered before then), both sides will share revenue. And in the third and final stage, the museum — both the property and the management — will be transferred to Apsara.

Long Kosal, a spokesman for Apsara, said the museum was part of a long-term plan to diversify attractions at the Angkor complex and minimize the impact of growing numbers of tourists at the temples. More than 2.5 million foreigners visited the complex last year, up from about 400,000 in 2000, Mr. Long said. He said he expected an influx of tourists to the museum soon, after the central ticket booth for the complex is moved to a new building next to the museum, which is not formally part of the complex. The entrance fee for the cyclorama section is $15 for foreign tourists.

In the meantime, museum officials say they are averaging only about 20 visitors a day. On a recent afternoon, there were almost none to be seen. As one of the few approached the main hall, a worker rushed to turn on the lights, explaining that the staff had been instructed to keep the lights and air-conditioning at a minimum to save money.

“It’s very hot and humid here, not cool like back home,” a young North Korean woman working in the museum cafe said in fluent English. “It’s been difficult to adjust.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 26, 2016, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: An Art Powerhouse From North Korea . Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Listen if you dare...!

There are some moments in the making of music when the boldest thing a player can do is nothing—or, to use the phraseology of Robert Fripp, “contribute silence.” That point is driven home in gripping fashion by “Horizontal Hold,” the second track on the self-titled debut album by British experimental trio This Heat, first released in 1979 and just reissued by Light in the Attic Records along with the rest of the band’s slim catalog (a two-track EP and a second album).
Here’s what happens: Guitarist Charles Bullen, keyboardist Gareth Williams and drummer Charles Hayward have locked into an explosive groove full of distortion and hi-hat sizzle. The music’s heavy doom quotient is further enhanced by the lo-fi ambience; parts of the album were recorded on cassette tape in an abandoned meat locker, and you can kind of tell. Suddenly everything stops, as if someone had just cut the mains, and for two seconds all you can hear is the ringing in your ears. The band then returns to its previous noisy business, only to be cut off again twice more in short order. It’s clear that the interruptions are intentional, produced simply by turning a master fader all the way down, but realizing this doesn’t lessen its impact. On the contrary, the abrupt disappearance and reappearance of sound has turned into a memorable hook. Absence becomes presence.
This audacious move takes place one minute into a seven-minute piece. By that point, the mood of the music has already drastically changed three times, from rapid-fire dissonant strumming to stuttering dub. It will change five more times before the track is over, ending with what sounds like, and probably is, the piece’s opening section sped up by a factor of 10.

Although This Heat performed live frequently during its six-year lifespan, it’s hard to think of its music existing without the prominent manipulation of tape via looping, varispeed and montage. All these tricks, which are a breeze to perform now in GarageBand but required real engineering skill to achieve in the 1970s, lend a kaleidoscopic intensity to the proceedings.
Then again, Bullen, Williams and Hayward didn’t need technology to think in unusual ways. The vocal melody for the title song of 1980’s Health & Efficiency EP is in a different time signature from the accompaniment, creating an effect of woozy disorientation. On the band’s second album, 1981’s Deceit (deceit, This Heat, get it?), the eerie “Independence” takes its words from the preamble of the American Declaration of Independence and its tune from the first album’s “Fall of Saigon,” played backwards. And so on.
Surprising instrumental textures and compositional structures are This Heat’s main focus, but all three members sing as well, more on Deceit than elsewhere. That album’s opening song, “Sleep,” contains an element of trancy British folk; at the other extreme, Hayward’s vocal on “Makeshift Swahili” is choreographed shrieking. The lyrics don’t tell stories but explore philosophies, with a skeptical edge. The final lines of “Paper Hats” are typical: “What does this tune signify? What is its meaning? Is it really that straightforward? Or are our ears beyond words?” A current of anxiety about some kind of impending apocalypse runs through many songs. It would be nice to say that this is what dates them the most, but no such luck last time I checked.

I’ve been aware of This Heat’s reputation for a long while, but until the arrival of these reissues, I’d never listened to a solitary second of their music. Putting it on for the first time, I was stunned not just by its adventurousness but by its modernity. Stylistic precursors are audible here and there—Frank Zappa, Can, electric-era Miles Davis—but it reminded me most of groups that postdate it by two decades: Mogwai, the Jesus Lizard, and especially Tortoise (whose latest album, The Catastrophist, is well worth checking out, by the way, although even its most uncompromising moments sound like ad jingles compared to This Heat).
There will be no more where this came from. The three members of This Heat parted ways in 1982, and although a reunion was mooted in 2001, Williams died of cancer shortly thereafter. All the more reason to treasure these reissues, which are enlivened by period photos and Hayward’s alternately insightful and obscure liner notes. He describes Deceit as “a dream within a dream,” a turn of phrase that applies equally to all of this band’s work.
Some more sensitive listeners may find that the dream inches closer to nightmare on the Health & Efficiency B-side “Graphic Varispeed,” in which a series of electronic tones are sped up and slowed down over 11 minutes. One could make a case for this being hypnotic, but not for it being the ideal introduction to This Heat. The curious would be better off starting with the more tuneful Deceit, then working backward. What you’ll hear is music that, going on 40 years after it was written and recorded, continues to feel like a memory of tomorrow.




Count 2015 as yet another banner year in the deep lexicon of experimental and avant-garde music where mountains of exceptional records—from both the old guard and fresh, new talent and across myriad genres—were dropped.
The following list may carry the obligatory “best of” distinction, but we can easily pluck out another batch of stellar recordings released this past year that blazed its own innovative trail and do another round. But as much as we’d love to highlight ’15 “out” faves we spun incessantly like XE by Zs, Henry Kaiser & Ray Russell’s The Celestial Squid, Circuit de Yeux’s In Plain Speech and just about anything pulled from the catalog of the Portugal-based outsider Clean Feed label, that, alas, cannot be swung. So, dig deep and indulge in our list of 2015’s best avant and experimental albums—in no particular order.
Pulverize The Sound, Pulverize The Sound (Relative Pitch)

Perfectly fitting of its assaultive moniker, Pulverize The Sound do, in fact, pulverize the living heck out of the sound with whiplashing start/stop energy music designed to snap necks. On its self-titled debut, the apeshit trio of trumpeter Peter Evans, Child Abuse/Lydia Lunch Retrovirus bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Mike Pride vomit jazzified grind-metal ragers that are as razor sharp composed and hammering repetitious as they are industrial-strength deranged. You’ll never hear the trumpet the same way again after absorbing the salvos of Evans’ bizarro circular breathing techniques, Dahl’s thuds and thumps and the sonic heaviosity of Pride, who is currently touring arenas as part of a jazz trio opening for Amy Schumer(!).
Chris Pitsiokos Trio, Gordion Twine (New Atlantis)
Brooklyn-based alto sax terrorist Chris Pitsiokos may be a 20-something but this rising firebrand wages total war out of his horn. On any given night, the lanky punk jazzer can be found around New York City’s DIY avant scene, gigging at dingy bars, raw loft spaces and Chinatown record store Downtown Music Gallery where he works, pitting his squawks and shrieks against the likes of Flying Luttenbachers overlord Weasel Walter, no wave goddess Lydia Lunch and banjo destroyer Brandon Seabrook. On Gordion Twine, his first record as leader, Pitsiokos has joined forces with bass ace Max Johnson and Talibam! drummer Kevin Shea for a set of breakneck speed bebop-core madness that recalls the legendary Ornette Coleman’s butt-shaking swing, the schizophrenic sound world of John Zorn’s Naked City and the “brutal-prog” of Walter’s own Luttenbachers.
Mary Halvorson, Meltframe (Firehouse 12) 

On her solo guitar joint Meltframe—inspired in part from her opening for The Melvins’ King Buzzo on his acoustic tour in support of This Machine Kills Artists—Brooklyn’s six-string virtuosic godhead Mary Halvorson takes your ass to shred school, showing she’s to avant-jazz what Krallice guitarist Mick Barr is to metal (and, by the way, those two have collaborated). Sure, Halvorson has swung the ax for jazz legends such as Anthony Braxton and Marc Ribot but on tracks like the fuzz-drenched symphonic metal-jazz ripper “Cascades,” she’s channeling both Barr and her tour bud Buzzo. Serious fret-hopping magic gushes from Meltframe as Halvorson covers jazz standards by Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman and Roscoe Mitchell along with tunes from forward thinking peers like Tomas Fujiwara and Chris Lightcap.
Many Arms & Toshimaru Nakamura, Many Arms & Toshimaru Nakamura (Public Eyesore)

The eardrum-destroying and mangled math-metal tsunami let loose by Philly/NY free-improv Many Arms has fried brains over the course of an epically noisy four-album stretch, earning the fandom of avant-garde jazz icon John Zorn, who released the trio’s last two records on his elite Tzadik label. After bringing guest saxophonist Colin Fisher on board for 2014’s Black Flag-meets-Coltrane blitz of Suspended Definition, Many Arms are bolstered by yet another new addition—Japanoise improviser Toshimaru Nakamura. On its eponymously-titled joint effort, the quartet go time signature-maximalist ballistic, deconstructing jazz as guitar hero Nick Millevoi’s (also of Chris Forsyth and the Solar Motel Band) gushing hydrant of prog-rock riffery crashes head on with Nakamura’s wall of “no-input mixing board”-twiddling noise.
Merzbow/Mats Gustafsson/Balazs Pandi/Thurston Moore, Cuts Of Guilt, Cuts Deeper (RareNoise)

The seeds were first planted in 2013 for this holier than thou meeting of pioneering brutarians when Japanoise godfather Merzbow, Swedish sax/electronics dude Mats Gustafsson of The Thing (who cut an album with Neneh Cherry) and Hungarian metal/jazz drums ace Balazs Pandi came together to bleed noisefest, Cuts. That alliance continues but with an art-rock and renegade improviser added into its lethal mix: Sonic Youth founder Thurston Moore. On the second marathon installment of Cuts, titled Cuts Of Guilt, Cuts Deeper, the foursome cook up a bloodbath of skronk and clatter that is drum circle ritualistic and deep as hell fire music. No shocker that earplugs are highly recommended.
Laddio Bolocko, Live and Unreleased 1997 – 2000 (No Quarter)

Sitting neatly on the fringe fence while wearing the badge of one those “most influential bands you’ve never heard of” was the NYC-based Laddio Bolocko, a super-obscure, radical band of noisemakers who intersected free jazz, math rock and Kraut grooves to skronk-heavy perfection. From 1996 through 2001, LB—birthed from the ashes of mathy metalists craw and Dazzling Killmen and prog-rock stars The Mars Volta—flew under the radar with its all-instrumental beast of firebreathers and grooves: envision the avant-garde jazz of Albert Ayler under the influence of Kraut-rock pioneers Can.
In LB’s canon, there’s already been one set that’s documented its schizoid recorded output (2003’s The Life & Times Of Laddio Bolocko) and now over a decade later, the LB vaults have been raided again. Both a stellar find and ideal introduction, Live and Unreleased 1997 – 2000 further crystallizes these outré heavyweights to-die-for cred with rare captures of their sax and organ-fueled dronescapes and intricate Don Caballero-isms. It’s no wonder Oneida drummer Kid Millions and no wave brutarian JG Thirlwell both sing the praises of Laddio Bolocko in the package’s liner notes.
Accidental Sky, White Out with Nels Cline (Northern Spy)

Percussion maverick and longtime NYC staple Tom Surgal has been swinging double duty as of late and coming up aces. Just recently, Surgal—in his film director guise—shattered the Kickstarter goal needed to help fund his free jazz documentary called Fire Music: A History of the Free Jazz Revolution and, shortly thereafter, White Out (the freethinking, free-improv space-jazz outfit he shares with his wife, analog synthesizer artiste Lin Culbertson) celebrated its first new album in six years called Accidental Sky.
Joined by their oft partner in noisy crime, Wilco’s pedal-hopping riff monster Nels Cline, these experimentalists-in-arms transmit spiritual jams from the outer regions where Sun Ra dwells, dripping, bleeping, squelching and beaming layers of alien drone with spastic, feedback-laden licks and massaging and stabbing beats that resemble a voodoo ceremony. For the last two decades, the true conversationalists in White Out have counted honorary members such as Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke and William Winant into its fold, but the sonic language they and Cline share on Accidental Sky may be its apex.
Jacob Garchik, Ye Olde (Yestereve)

Trombonist colossus Jacob Garchik totes quite the eclectic resume. For the last decade, he’s served as co-arranger for Kronos Quartet, leads a 10-piece marching band dubbed the Atheist Gospel Trombone Choir and is part of Banda de los Muertos, self-described as “NYC’s best (and only) Mexican banda.” On his latest jazzcentric venture Ye Olde, Garchik trekked even further into a mystical stratum, hatching a concept record centered on the medieval architecture found in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
To interpret his mythical tale, Garchik assembled a supergroup of sorts, recruiting a guitarist murderers row consisting of Brooklyn avant-jazz vets Brandon Seabrook, Mary Halvorson and Jonathan Goldberger and backed by heavyweight drummer Vinnie Sperrazza. Led by Garchik’s doom metalish gale-force blows and bluster and a small guitar army in full-on slay mode, Ye Olde invokes the arena-sized coiled rock riffs of King Crimson as Garchik’s gothic prog-jazz beast sets out to “imagine a 2015 cover of the soundtrack to a 1970s remake of a 1930s movie about the Middle Ages.”
Sam Kulik, The Broadcast (Self-released)

While Garchik’s imagination runs prog-rock wild with the medieval architectural themes of Ye Olde, the conceptual vision of his trombonist contemporary Sam Kulik takes America’s national pastime and soundtracks it to avant-garde jazz. What? An Astoria mainstay and diehard Mets fan (Kulik actually performed The National Anthem at a game at CitiField this past season), Kulik hatched this otherworldly idea: he’d take a complete baseball game, set it to music and then make it available as a set of 20 collectible baseball cards featuring all the musicians who played on the record decked out in baseball uniforms.
With a natural born baseball announcer’s voice, Kulik muted his television and recorded himself doing the play-by-play of an early season contest between the Mets and the Florida Marlins and came away with the three-hour long The Broadcast. Featuring a host of Kulik’s cohorts, including members of Talibam!, Shahzad Ismaily (of Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog) and Mostly Other People Do The Killing bassist Moppa Elliot, Kulik’s mind-expanding The Broadcast achieves the unthinkable: soundtracking a Mets game to experimental jazz.




http://observer.com/2015/12/the-10-best-jazz-albums-of-2015/

http://observer.com/2015/12/the-top-10-hip-hop-albums-of-2015/


http://observer.com/2015/12/why-the-brilliance-of-the-beatles-should-piss-you-off/

A Guerrilla Girl Takeover, Visual Trends for 2016—and More

By Ryan Steadman • 01/22/16 11:02am 

The “Guerrilla Girls Twin Cities Takeover” is upon us. The fuzzy feminists are being celebrated with a two-months extravaganza that spans 30 arts organizations in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area. It’s meant to be an anniversary of sorts, with the women’s rights organization now celebrating their 30th year in existence.

The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University (NCAR) just did their own study on diversity in the arts that contradicts the October 2015 study conducted by the University of Maryland’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management. NCAR’s findings show that arts organizations don’t represent people of color less than other cultural institutions, it’s just that they are simply “at a different stage in their evolution.” Oh snap—looks like you’ve been served, DeVos Institute of Arts Management!

Artnet’s Ben Davis breaks down Getty Images’ six visual trend predictions for 2016. Some are kind of “duh” and some are a little more “oh neat.” The trends supposedly apply to commercial art as well as fine art, so maybe your art ideas are back in vogue?
Massimo de Carlo is preparing to open a third gallery space in Hong Kong. The high-rolling dealer, who has shown big names like George Condo and Dan Colen, already has galleries in Milan and London, and is now jumping into the burgeoning Chinese market.

The director of NYC’s Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), Glenn Adamson, will be stepping down from his post, effective March 31, 2016.  

Filed under: Dan Colen, DeVos Institute of Arts Management, George Condo, getty images, Glenn Adamson, Guerrilla Girls, Hong Kong, London, Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Minneapolis, The Museum of Arts and Design, The National Center for Arts Research at SMU, Tracey Emin, Twin Cities, University of Maryland

An 18th Century Roman Holiday || video The First Art Newspaper on the Net Established in 1996 Monday, January 25, 2016

An 18th Century Roman Holiday

More News

The First Art Newspaper on the Net

Established in 1996

Monday, January 25, 2016