Liverpool Banksy To Be auctioned In London-Good Riddance

Well I have to say good riddance really. In my opinion this was never a Banksy. 
 This is a copy of a Banksy who in turn copied Brec Le Rat. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/blek-le-rat-this-is-not-a-banksy-811130.html
The invention of it being by the Urban Vandal Banksy was made up by journalists at the Liverpool Echo and the Liverpool Daily Ghost (Thank god someone put that bit of chip paper out of our misery, at least it stops them spreading lies)
Now we can all marvel at the reproduction of a Georgian Building that was basically rebuilt and has almost none of its originality. Though most would not be able to tell.
The ECHO have reported that it has been saved. Well they would, wouldn't they.
They say it is now to be auctioned off for charity.:
Stuart Howard of Ascot Property Group said: “If Banksy's Liverpool Rat could feasibly have remained on the Whitehouse pub, or even returned to the building, then we would have been happy to give it pride of place. “We took the advice of experts and it lead to the conclusion that this was simply not an option. “The piece has now been preserved and we will ensure that a number of fantastic Liverpool causes benefit from its sale.”One of the beneficiaries includes Litherland’s Rowan Park, a school for children with severe learning difficulties
It must be in a thousand pieces though.


Apparantly I valued it somewhere along the line.
 Funny I don't remember saying that it was worth a million to Andrew Rosthorne, of the Lancashire Magazine. 
I may have said a million people valued it at a pound. But where did that come from.
Its about as made up, as the whole spoof of it being an original when it is a caricature anachronism of a a bit of spray can on a wall. 
Banksy was a copyist of Brec Le Rat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blek_le_Rat in France anyway. 
http://www.thelancashiremagazine.co.uk/news/north-west/masked-men-will-auction-banksys-missing-liverpool-rat-at-a-futuristic-london-hotel/

He says:
After its disappearance, Wayne Colquhoun of the Liverpool Preservation Trust declared, ‘The Banksy is no more. It was worth a million pounds but they have destroyed it. The most important part of it, the head, was painted on to stucco. It can never be restored to its original condition. They would need rather a lot of Araldite to glue that back together.
‘Artwork by its very nature can never be replicated. You can never sum up the spirit of an original. Destroying an original Banksy to put in its place a copy is beyond a joke. It would be a repro. The boards below the head may have been saved but will be badly rotted as they were not marine ply and the glue of plywood disintegrates.’
Now the rat, or cat, is listed to be unveiled with seven other Banksy works in an auction for charity at a bizarre event to be staged on April 24 in the futuristic ME London hotel in The Strand.
The auction, in the £330.00 a night hotel designed by Foster and Parters, has been named Stealing Banksy? and opens after a press conference to be given by masked men and women described as ‘curators, restorers, and salvage teams’.

The Sincura Arts Club say, ‘Stealing Banksy? is the 2014 project exploring the social, legal and moral issues surrounding the sale of street art. Though we have been accused of many things during this project, we do not steal art nor do we condone any acts of wanted vandalism or theft. We do not own the pieces of art, nor encourage their removal and to date have made no financial gain from the sales of street art. If assigned to manage a piece of art we ensure the salvage, restoration and sale is carried out in a professional and sympathetic manner.
‘We perform extensive due diligence on each piece assigned to us to ensure there are no legal issues surround the ownership, removal or sale of the art. It should be noted that both Scotland Yard and the FBI have issued statements that there is no evidence of criminality involved in the removal or sales of our pieces.’
The Sincura Group claim to be ‘market leaders in VIP concierge, lifestyle, tickets and events’ and last summer said they had rescued Banksy’s famous No Ball Games graffito by cutting it away from the side of a shop in Turnpike Lane, Tottenham Green.
Tony Baxter, a director of Sincura, now says: ‘We are delighted to include the Liverpool Rat in our upcoming show as it represents one of Banksy’s most important pieces. We understand the lengths Ascot Property Group went to, to safely salvage the piece, which was no small feat given the level of damage. Without this work the piece would have been lost to the elements forever. By putting it on the market its sale will ensure both the piece’s longevity and benefit local charities.’

If the Liverpool Rat is sold by auction in London, funds have been promised to the Rowan Park school for children with severe learning difficulties at Litherland. The school’s business manager June King said, ‘We are thrilled that Ascot Property Group has thought of Rowan Park School when choosing a charity. We are in the process of building a community adventure play park for children with disabilities within the Sefton area. It is a massive undertaking and the first project of its kind in the area – with sandpits, water pumps, tunnels, zip-wires and all kind of other activities, all of which will be accessible to children with disabilities and their families.’

What I did say was.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/liverpool-banksy-destroyed-you-dirty-rat.html

Liverpool Banksy Destroyed-You Dirty Rat-Or Was It A Cat?

                      Now Here’s something to really get hacked off about.

 The Whitehouse Public House on the Corner of Duke Street Liverpool is in the Shadow of Gilbert Scott’s gigantic sandstone Cathedral and recently had become as Iconic a landmark after was claimed that the Graffiti artist Banksy hopped off a train and knocked a quick mural of a giant Rat in the dead of night on its facade. It was said this happened in 2004 and was then covered up in 2008 when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture.

The property had been left to decay and It was claimed it was to be preserved, after a repairs notice was served on the properties owners, but Liverpool is a city that is incapable of preserving anything of note these days be it old or new.

Then to make it worse they allow a modern landmark to be butchered in plain view with little or no consultation to the masses that pay their wages that feel this piece of modern art was done for them. 

Lets Butcher a Banksy, 
Now that’s real Culcha for yeh!

This was then written up by the pay per click website Liverpool Confidential
http://www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Banksy-rat-liverpool-whitehouse-pub


All in all good riddance, its been a bit of controversial fun while its been there, but now if someone wants to pay money for a piece of garbage masquerading as art, well, there's no accounting for taste.
At least after we paid 300 grand through our taxes for its removal a charity may now benefit.

All this fuss over a spray daub by someone who copied Banksy who copied Brec Le Rat only in Liverpool!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/blek-le-rat-this-is-not-a-banksy-811130.html

La Piscine Roubaix-One Of My Favourite Things

You get around a bit and see things and then you think you have seen it all and cant have your socks blown off that easily, and then you come across a little gem like La Piscine.

I had been meaning to go for a decade and it always seemed a little out of the way and in a part of the world that you would not normally go to, unless you were in Brugges and its not far a detour to get there. Its an old industrial town that the world seems to have forgotten about, it seems to be a bit smog stained still from its past. Though it has a bit of your usual French style architecture a lot of it seems heavy and a little overworked. It seems a little like, well I wouldn't say Bradford, oops I just did, but I didn’t mean it. 

What I meant to say is that at one time it was a proud place with Civic pride and then the industry moved out and it fell down the pecking order. What all places with this past history is trying to do, is re-invent itself. Bilbao tried it and won. Liverpool copied the idea and failed with the museum of Liverpool that destroyed some of the cities most cherished views.

Roubaix has got a more difficult job. 

There are no cheap flights there is no tourist industry here and, why would you want to go there?

Well they have quietly created a gem a palace of pride in what appears at first drive, a barren wilderness.

And it is wonderful. After the approach that you take to get there and take in the underwhelming façade of La Piscine, what is after all a swimming baths, you get inside and it has everything.

We only had less than two hours but I wish I had a full day. 

I wish I would have been able to eat in the restaurant with its art Deco wrought iron balustrade that was lit with the sunlight that flooded in to the structure, through modernist style sky lights.

Now I have seen a few bits in my time. Sometimes being at a quality antique fair, I have been able to see thousands of items of beauty. You can sometimes see better, stuff, than what’s in most museums, especially if you discount how curators are like pack animals and follow the leader, and buy things that other curators or art journals say are needed.

There are curators who go out on a limb, but rather a lot of them fail, and they cant be allowed to fail because, curators are clever.....aren’t they?

Well this curator who put all this stuff together was clever. It is one surprise after another. Maybe its because the theme is Art Deco and French, but maybe its because they are just bloody good at their job, and have sewn together some magnificent things that are class, and not too pretentious, but have an unassuming sense of style, of what the period that I love has to offer.

We get the term Art Deco as a reworking of the 1925 Exposition Art Decoratif et Industrial in Paris. 

Someone or other, who may have been Bevis Hillier coined it.

This museum is both entertaining and absorbing.

 I sometimes like to think I know a bit but it was a tantalising, tingling of the senses that ensued that left me amazed. Combined with a sunny day, the sense of surprise that left me hunting for more. I was so disapointed when I had to leave, as I was on a work trip and needed to be somewhere else.

I will have to go back. I need to go back.

 Not just for some of the most amazing sculpture in a beautifully polychrome tiled swimming baths interior that was designed to be reflective and I don't mean looking back reflective I mean jewel like.

What it must have been like with water inside and beautiful French ladies in stylish bathing caps inside and around the pool, in its heyday I can only imagine, and I did.

Here it contains works of art by the likes of Paul Jouve, and the sculptor PomPom and my favourite, Rembrandt Bugatti ( the son of the furniture designer and brother of the car maker). These mix with lesser names that make you question what art means. There is a Jan Martel.

Can art, by a artist you have never had pumped up by a writer, be as good as a work by somebody you have never heard of. I know it can. You cant sell a dud to me.

The ceramics section was encompassing, not huge. 

There were ceramic works designed by the amazing French furniture designer Emile Jaques Rhulman for Sevres. 

Along with works by a ceramicist whose work I bought new a couple of years back in Lille, called Amina Roos.

There's the proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There are Picasso ceramics and a huge 8ft high pot that defies the art of firing.

Bit it is the way it all melts together that is the beauty of this place.

 I believe they were going to knock it down one at one time. It is my pleasurethat the did not.

From an age when swimming baths were palaces designed to be an experience just like cinemas and theatres were.

There were so many ceramics on show I have to go back.

 I used a whole memory stick photographing nearly every piece, but I need to go back and have lunch and take my time.

The whole area that houses the paintings would be worth a trip in itself but the experience of the whole is remarkable.

There are temporary exhibitions that are made to be contemporary and to attract people and give the whole experience a contemporary quality.

Who so ever is running this show has class and is not afraid to challenge.

Unlike the people running my local museums they understand that a museum experience should not be designed to resemble a penny arcade with flashing lights, or a creche were people can dump the noisy kids on to people who are studious in their approach to art and may be a little bit more serious than the “I don't know much about art but I know what I like brigade”

If you ever are within a hundred miles of this place, La Piscine in Roubaix Belgium, make sure you detour.
I guarantee you.
 It will be worth it.

 http://www.roubaix-lapiscine.com/

Sudley House-Why Have Liverpool Museums Ruined This Historic Gem?

I went along, as I do every now and the to Sudley art Gallery in Mossley Hill.

I first stumbled across it 25 years ago......a hidden gem.

That was before they ruined it.

 Now it is a shadow of itself, and in my opinion ruined. 

Where has all the art work gone. I wanted to see one of my favourite pictures, the small Bonnington that has hung there for decades.

I searched but I couldn’t find it. I was disappointed, but as I walked around it was evidence that this once hidden gem has been found by David “Fuzzy felt” Fleming the butcher of Liverpool Museums.

It seemed to have it all, at one time, it was bequeathed to the city and the merchant who left it to us must be turning in his grave at the uninviting mass that has now the remnants of the collection.

It was crammed with art, it was a hidden gem, that just needed a little polish every now and then, and now it isn’t. 

Why have they changed the character of this once grand institution. I know our museums need disabled access but the lift that has been fitted has taken up two exhibit rooms and is such a monstrous carbuncle that you have to question if the curators of this museum understand any thing about aesthetics.

 A modern contraption that must have cost a hundred grand. Has anyone used it?

It looks like someone has built a greenhouse in the middle of a room. Then two rooms are taken up further with no exhibits at all.

Upstairs is bland to say the least. Where has the Herbert MacNair furniture gone?

This was an amazing display. Not many people know the links with Liverpool and the Glasgow Four.

And what has happened to the Robert Anning Bell pieces? He designed for Della Robbia. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-della-robbia-pottery-by-peter-hyland.html

That were local. The Bates plaque that was on the wall.

 Where has that gone along with other works of art that sat beautifully in an elegant poise for all to see.

And why has a whole host of rooms now been devoted to rooms for kids to draw things that have nothing to do with the art contained, or, was contained, as they have been shipped out to make room for the new idea of creating a crèche.

Dump the kids on serious scholars so they cant learn anything seems to be the fashion.

I know we have to get our kids into museums I spent enough time bunking off school in the Walker Art Gallery, but why ruin it for the rest of us by aiming the collections for snotty nosed kids.

I saw one of them ready to strike the Godwin gong before little Johnnie Bratsville's mother took it off him.

Now little Johnnies mother didn’t look like she was taking a blind bit of notice of the exhibits.

Just killing time, getting the kids out of the house so the husband can watch the match or something like that. 

The Liverpool museums also put most of the Liverpool Herculaneum collection into permanent storage to hide our own history from us. Why?

80 million pounds they have spent in the last decade, well we spent it, its our money, our taxes. and they ruin the whole feel of this once wonderful museum.

It was here in Sudley House that I first saw the most beautiful work by Bonnington.

Had it been exhibited next to a Turner on purpose because of the quality and freshness of the work.

 I then went on to study some of his work and find out just how important the work was.

If he had lived he may have rivalled Turner. He was a traveller and went to take the light in France and was ahead of the impressionists, but had a realism that they could never achieve.

I marvelled at the simple brush strokes that created a sail or a buoy. 

How this man understood light and tone and colour, and in age without the things we take for granted.

He died so young but not before he had befriended some of the most important artists in France and exhibited there himself.

The art savagery that has taken place here at Sudley house is alarming.

It is ruined by the very people who are supposed to be protecting our heritage. Our museums.

And where is my Bonnington?

Now all I have, is a 6 by 4 postcard to remind me of the most wonderful little painting I have had the pleasure to sight.

Its probably in store they will say...well get it back and the rest of the stuff that have been taken out. Its vandalism on a institutional scale.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/herculaneum-pottery-held-by-liverpool.html

BBC Antiques Road Trip 24th February 2014

Charles Hanson is a character alright and the last time he came to my shop with the BBC Antiques Road Trip, it was funny.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b03wyp05/

 I couldn't resist taking the Charles out of Hanson and he is a good sport to have run with it.

All the wit and sarcasm was cut.

 They certainly wont show the damage he caused when he backed his car into a structural post in the garage.
It went on air 24th February.
 May be worth a look. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/antiques-road-trip-call-again-to-my.html

The crew were well entertained with Charles clowning around with his mothers hat on.

Save The Curzon-Old Swan Liverpool

This is a decent building a brick built Art Deco block that should not be demolished to make do for some B&Q shed that will only last 10 years.

We have yet to quantify all the 1930’s buildings in the city.

This is a really nice one that we should not let go.

We tend to think of saving old buildings like the Georgian or Victorian ones Only a few decades ago that these period properties were being demolished hand over fist and it took a while for attitudes to shift, when people started realising that the more that are lost the more we will regret it.

Ex Councillor Jan Clein has whose ward was Greenbank has expressed an interest in this strange planning application to demolish a decent Art Deco stylised structure.

Can we trust the Liverpool Conservation Office to respect this style of architecture when they cant even protect the Georgian. It may be hard.

It may have been mucked around with and had some naff shop signs and frontages slotted in. But this can all be put right.

The Futurist and the ABC on Lime Street are also at peril.

Does anyone care?

Save The Curzon.   Application No: 14PM/0257 Case Officer/Team: City North
Ward: Old Swan
Proposal:
To demolish former Cinema building.

Location: Applicant: Applicant Address: Agent (if any): Agent Address

599-607 Prescot TJ Morris Portal Way Quod Ingeni Building
Road Limited Liverpool 17 Broadwick Street
Liverpool L11 0JA London
L13 5XA W1F 0AX

See Also

http://oldswan.piczo.com/cinemas  

Big In Japan-My Shop Is Featured........In Japan.

Following the visit of a Japanese film crew late last year the programme Europe;Scenery of Water (yes that was the title) went out  on BS Japan.

Japans Judith Chalmers was doing the travel programme. She even bought something a rather nice vase with which had been painted well with a slightly oriental lady.

 Liverpool looks great the shop is featured at 00:26minutes  into the video and is on for about 10 minutes.
I may be dubbed. I even told a joke that I shouldn't have, when she asked me where I was born.
"Ten minutes from Liverpool F.C's ground in Anfield" I said. "I learnt to know the score from the crowds reaction. Hooray.......one nil. Hoorayyyy.....two nil.....Hoorray .....three nil, although it could be confusing when the meat pies arrived".
 To my amazement and relief, the crew all fell about laughing which is more than I can say happens when I tell it in Liverpool.

 I try to talk up Liverpool pottery and Herculaneum to be precise. Well someone has to do it, as Liverpool museums have given up on it.  http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/herculaneum-pottery-held-by-liverpool.html


 Liverpool Vision have put it on their You Tube channel

There you go..........Big in Japan watch it here http://youtu.be/hQ8NEa8h__M

The DELLA ROBBIA POTTERY by Peter Hyland

Peter Hyland called in today with a copy of his new book ‘THE DELLA ROBBIA POTTERY’

I had given him an image of a piece that I consider the best piece of Della Robbia that I have seen. I bought it in France.

Peter wrote the book The HERCULANEUM POTTERY Liverpool’s Forgotten Glory.

My image was not as high resolution as he needed for publication, which is a shame, but there you go. I love it.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/sirens-calling.html

The book is enriched with illustrations and on first glance it looks extremely comprehensive.
Della Robbia had a brief lifespan from 1894-1906. It was founded by Harold Rathbone.
Walter Crane attended a VIP ceremony at the Walker Art Gallery on 10th February 1894 when the prominent speaker Sir William Forwood spoke of the need to keep tradition with pottery and the applied arts on Merseyside. And he said he is pleased to think that Mr Rathbone and some members of his family had already made a departure in that direction.

In the same month Della Robbia opened.

You have to ask in retrospect why a pottery was formed, to produce wares of an antique Italian tradition than of a thrusting enterprise in a modern age.

Arts and Crafts had swept the country and we see at this time the same principles being laid down in numerous potteries the length and breath of the British Isles.

Liberty sold Della Robbia.

The Birkenhead based pottery had a retail outlet in Berry Street Liverpool.

Some of its pottery ladies would be trained at the Art Sheds under the influence of Herbert MacNair and his wife Francis MacDonald who were half of the Glasgow Four. The others being Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald.

CRM would submit a design for the proposed Anglican Cathedral.

Cassandra Annie Walker who is recognised as one of the top pottery ladies at Della Robbia must have fell under the influence of The Glasgow Style.

Her designs for the cover page of The Sphinx certainly bear that out.

That style would be swept away by Charles Reilly at the Liverpool School. He hated Art Nouveau and led the city into a Beaux Arts style, not only in his architectural teaching but also in the practice of applied arts and decoration.

The Della Robbia covers such a small period in the development of art and architecture on Merseyside, slightly idealised with sentimentality and rustic ideals.

This would be swept away with the industrial scale killing in the Great War that would employ methods of mass production that would later be employed in the domestic manufacture of almost everything.

Though it closed in 1906 we see through the beginnings of Della Robbia a microcosm of society and its ideals.

Della Robbia prices have been on the increase for a while now, but beware, as a potter, I see it as some of the worst pottery that should not have been let out of the workshops…and some of the best.

The pottery is an oxymoron of itself.

My personal opinion is that its rustic antique style is hiding, on a far too often occasion, bad workmanship.

Yet ‘Boy and Lanthorn’ a panel by Conrad Dressler which was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in 1895 is of the highest quality in design and workmanship.

Frank Watkin was the thrower. And Dressler was the chief designer and modeller until 1896. Carlo Manzoni took over the role in 1898.

It was quite a going concern.

There is a huge collection in the Williamson Art Gallery.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/williamson-art-gallery.html


They designed a fountain for the Savoy Hotel and a monumental fountain in Newsham Park with Hippocampus holding a monumental bowl aloft.

There are amazing pots and plaques and tile panels.

The main decorators were….well you will have to buy this well put together book that Peter has exhaustively compiled for your delectation.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Cabinet pops out after being lost for 50 years.

It is some time ago now but whilst writing an article about Mackintosh and his links to Liverpool I recalled this article I had seen. It always makes you think just what is still out there when a recorded design surfaces after being lost for at least half a century. Check your attics!

Mackintosh cabinet offered without reserve takes £36,000

February 2013

This Arts and Crafts music cabinet, entered into a recent sale at Robertson’s of Kinbuck, near Dunblane, without reserve, turned out to be a hitherto lost design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

The consignor was a local lady who had stored it in her garage for several years. Her grandmother had purchased it from a Dumfries saleroom sometime in the 1950s although its significance was never appreciated.

Research shows that a watercolour for the design (available online) is in the collection of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow. Signed and dated 1898, it is inscribed Music Cabinet for Mrs Pickering, Braxfield, Lanark.

A stencilled or embroidered panel would have covered the shelves below the stained glass.

Mackintosh produced cabinets with the same distinctive cornice for other clients during the same year, including those made for the Edinburgh printer Alex Seggie.

After vigorous bidding in the saleroom on January 24, the Kinbuck cabinet was bought by a trade buyer for £36,000 (plus 15% buyer's premium).

http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2013/feb/04/mackintosh-cabinet-offered-without-reserve-takes-36000/?utm_source=newsletter_up540&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=update_mc&utm_content=ATG-story2

Liverpool Preservation Trust: India Buildings-We Welcome A Coffee Shop

Liverpool Preservation Trust: India Buildings-We Welcome A Coffee Shop

Caravaggio-The Taking of Christ-One of My Favourite Things.

I was going to write about the Caravaggio oil http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/caravaggio-whats-all-fuss-about.html painting that I saw in the Irish national gallery in Dublin.

I have not been able to. I couldn't start writing, mainly because I didn't feel I could express the power of the painting that knocked the stuffing out of me, that rendered me speechless, if only for a quarter of an hour. (that may be a feat in itself)).

I didn’t think I can find those words that I need to highlight the prowess of this work.

I know we have thesaurus to pluck words from, but for me that’s not enough, I don't want to use a dictionary, and I cant find those words that are needed in simple form then I wont.

When you say something is marvellous, well we know what it means, but what happens when it is ten times better, what the bloody hell do I say then.

I don’t need to be clever in what I say, just to portray a meaning.

I don’t have a degree in English literature. Sometimes bleedin' 'ell is good enough to express the power of something that hits you, between the eyes, like a sledge hammer, that stops your breath and causes you involuntary reactions that you cant explain.

Well that's a Caravaggio all right.

I recall those series like 'Civilization' where Mr Clarke the cultured man, eloquently told me, on TV in my living room, about the great masters.

I almost believed him he was so good at it. I don't believe anyone.
You need to have seen a bit to be able to argue a way through a bluff.
Personally I don’t prescribe to Clarke’s waffling through the series especially about Henry Moore. Especially when you know he was being given sculptures by the artist on the cheap, by the sculptor he was waxing lyrical about. I think he got it wrong, and most of his work is no more than a formula.
His wartime underground paintings are rubbish. They sum up nothing other than a man with a bit more talent than most, doodling. Whiling away the hours.

People are usually up there because you are on your knees looking up at them. AA rolling stone gathers moss. One writer carries on where the previous left off, the myth grows. Who will question an art critic who is published?
I always want to question the credibility of any writer, as I find that the people who write about artists couldn’t emulsion a wall if you gave them a 10 inch wallying brush.
I once said to a lady who wanted to write about throwing a pot, “Why don’t you learn to throw one then you can write about it”.
That didn’t go down too well, she argued that you don’t have to be an artisan to understand the emotion of a craft.
I argued that you have to have a certain amount of understanding of skill to be able to talk about it, there are those that do, and those that write about doing it.
You have to have seen a decent amount of art good, bad and Henry Moore, in order to be able to differentiate from what you are being told, and what you should think, what you understand and what you may think, you may understand.

How can you understand emotion, when art bleeds if you haven’t bled yourself?

How can you understand how difficult this is to achieve if you have not got a brush out and give it a go.

Even if you get some way and fail at least you know how hard it is. There are always those who say “I cant do that” and then give up. Others that have to work at it and comes later after a lifetime of study.

And then there is Caravaggio.....genius, pure utter genius.

Its like he was born with a brush, from a womb of paint instead of placenta.
Its as if he knew how to mix it from birth, as if someone has shown him a secret way to see life. Dare I even say he was born to a holy angel who really did sprinkle something over him that nobody else has.
Something that renders all those who come after him a student and all those before arguably irrelevant.
Its not my style, most old masters are stuffy but this paint packs a punch, a Rhapsody in Black with an unbelievable rawness that allows you to have involuntary movements.
That curls your lip and makes you cry, or die, on your feet. For you know that once you have seen, and I only mean, really seen, into the depth of his imagination, nothing will ever be the same again.
I tried not to be embarrassed when I discovered The Taking Of Christ...........there were people all around. Some of them were even watching, waiting for reactions. It is right that you don’t care what anyone thinks that your involuntary spasms mean more to you, that you don’t care. Because you just cant help yourself you have been floored with an uppercut, and it was done with paint and a brush.
This is before you even look, at the picture and the detail and what it is about. This is religious and you know most of the story was made up to kid the silly plebeians that there really was a miracle from two loaves and three fishes and that some disciple didn’t sneak away get the rest of the food to feed the five thousand from a shop down the road, in the town and they sneaked the food into the party.
This sight would even convince me that there was a God and Jesus was his son, and the Jesus was betrayed by Judas....... because Caravaggio was there, and he saw it, and what’s more he took a picture of it, and then copied it down meticulously after the event, and it was just like it was.
Then your mind starts thinking how stupid that would sound if you actually said that.
So how did he get this onto a canvas from a thought, from a story?
Vag must have been so absorbed in the whole world of what he was painting that he must have been near to popping with his blood boiling. He must have been a simmering pot, a pressure cooker. What makes someone take this route? Just what did he take to pump his adrenalin through his veins and make religion believable? Even to non believers such as myself.
The subject, ah, yes the subject. He decided to make it the very moment that Jesus is betrayed as if a war photographer had raised his lens at the very time a bomb had gone off and captured an explosion, in real time.
Vag does it better, with laborious strokes of bristle. It must have taken forever to paint such is the apparent skill. The marvel is, how do you make something explode when it takes so long how can you capture a split second when it takes a year.
How can you sum up the work of a genius that makes you cry, on the spot, and not because of the story but because of the character in the faces, and the shades of reflection, from the lamp, held aloft, that makes a spot on the armour glisten, and then reflects a spot which shows you just how the lamp bounced the light around.......a painting.
I hear Hendrix in my head and then Tubular bells then Choral cantations, throw in a verse or two of some gut wrenching blues, and all the time I hear nothing.
He takes you into a world that you never knew and you are there, you troll the canvas looking for mistakes and it only captivates you more. Then after ten minutes longer you see something that he knew would take ten minutes to see, and then there is more.
When an artist makes flesh tremble it makes mine do the same. Shivers run up the back and karate chop you in the neck, making your head move. You go up close and see the brush strokes, the hand of a master with a indefatigable hand. A hand so strong and yet so delicate as to paint the white spot in the corner of a betrayed eyes, oh and a dot on a quivering hand and I am not even looking right now at a copy, I can remember the picture as if I am looking at it now.
It is singed into my memory I knew he was described by the likes of Clarke as a master but he is more that that, he is a link to another world before camera obscurer and pin hole magic happened. How can you make such raw with ground up pigment from the earth.
Eventually I got up and walked away, I don’t know if that has ever happened to me before certainly never with such intensity of soul.
All the other paintings I looked at seemed tame by comparison. I walked into room of Yeats artwork. He had become the darling of the Dublin-esque, and I laughed.
I had never seen anything that failed so miserably. To compare is not fair, a confidence trickster with a magician. I laughed out loud at the disgrace that had invaded my space. An insult to my senses. But for sure even without the controversy of his life, Caravaggio will only come along once in a century and for fifteen minutes, I met him.


The painting had been lost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taking_of_Christ_(Caravaggio)
 It had been hanging in the Dublin Jesuits dining room for only a few to see and was wrongly attributed as a Dutch Master it was rediscovered in the 1990's and now hangs proudly for all to see.

This is what the NGA says about it(the spelling mistakes are theirs nit mine)  http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/caravbr-2.htm

The painting represents Jesus Christ being captured in the Garden of Gethsemane by soldiers who were led to him by one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot. Tempted by the promise of financial reward, Judas agreed to identify his master by kissing him: "The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away safely" (Mark 14:44). Caravaggio focuses on the culminating moment of Judas’ betrayal, as he grasps Christ and delivers his treacherous kiss. Christ accepts his fate with humility, his hands clasped in a gesture of faith, while the soldiers move in to capture him. At the center of the composition, the first soldier’s cold shining armor contrasts with the vulnerability of the defenseless Christ. He offers no resistance, but gives in to his persecutors’ harsh and unjust treatment, his anguish conveyed by his furrowed brow and down-turned eyes. The image would have encouraged viewers to follow Christ’s example, to place forgiveness before revenge, and to engage in spiritual rather than physical combat. Caravaggio presents the scene as if it were a frozen moment, to which the over-crowded composition and violent gestures contribute dramatic impact. This is further intensified by the strong lighting, which focuses attention on the expressions of the foreground figures. The contrasting faces of Jesus and Judas, both placed against the blood-red drapery in the background, imbue the painting with great psychological depth. Likewise, the terrorized expression and gesture of the fleeing man, perhaps another of Christ’s disciples, convey the emotional intensity of the moment. The man carrying the lantern at the extreme right, who looks inquisitively over the soldiers’ heads, has been interpreted as a self-portrait.

On a dark dank Dublin day, the day I discovered Caravaggio, the day I came face on to a genius. 

Liverpool To Commemorate the First World War-With A Party!

Thirty Seven million people died during the First World War and what do the dummies at Liverpool Council do to commemorate it….they have a street party.

It was bad enough that they commemorated the Titanic tragedy by having a party but now they are to do the same about the war.

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/titanic-girl-liverpool-dances-on-graves.html#links

Most of the people of Liverpool will use this as an excuse to party.
This should not be allowed. If you bring the giant French puppets in the people will come and justified it would be but not for this subject it is too big a subject than to have giant puppets prancing around the streets.
What are they going to do have them walking up Dale Street with no legs while bombs go off around them.
No this is in bad taste.
The real puppet is Joe Anderson.

In charge of publicity no doubt will be the Echo Editor, Alastair “Burger and Ships” Machray the disrespectful fool on the hill. If he has any staff left to lord over.

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/should-alastair-machray-be-sacked-from.html
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/alastair-machray-apologises-but-its-too.html

Those who lie in some forgotten field will be turning in their graves,
Only in Liverpool,could the muppet who runs the City Council Herr Fuhrer, get away with this
 http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/mayor-joe-anderson-fails-to-deliver.html

Woolley and Wallis, Auctioneers of Salisbury-Try to sell me a Gio Ponti Fake.

I was a bit pushed for time so I got some pictures sent from Michael Jeffrey at Woolley and Wallis.

 It was a specialist sale with a specialist 20th Century Design department.

http://www.woolleyandwallis.co.uk/departments/20th-century-design.aspx

Michael has been around a long time, I first met him at Greenwich town hall 20 years ago, and so I had a bit of trust for his judgement.

How wrong can you be?

Richard Ginori are a company that have made quality ceramics for centuries and their collaboration period with Gio Ponti is a period that I admire. This was a golden period in the history of the company in my opinion. They combined fresh wonderful design with the quality of the reputation that they upheld.

I must say I had a reservation about the quality when I saw the pictures.

Trust and auctioneers is something I keep on forgetting is non-existent.

But I gave the benefit of the doubt to Jeffrey, as this is what he does for a living. There is a good possibility that he had seen more of this genre than I.

He used o work for a major London auction house.

The auctioneer’s job is to look after the seller. So I do as much as I can to mitigate my purchases.

I think it is slight of hand when the cataloguer knows that something is damaged and does not give a condition report willingly so on this occasion I requested said report and received a glowing recommendation as to its worth.

I looked at the catalogue description. A Richard Ginori earthenware vase designed by Gio Ponti.

It even pointed to comparable auction records from Sotheby’s

If Jeffrey had have stood on the steeple of Salisbury Cathedral and shouted.

‘This is Gio Ponti vase’ it could not have been clearer that he was knocking this out as a genuine article. He wrote the script himself.

See picture to right.

Should I buy some Royal Mail shares or a Gio Ponti I thought there is a clear 300 quid profit in the shares but as ever I prefer art and I would make a bid.

I bought it online as per Woolley’s recommendation covered legally by the description. It was not after or from the circle of it was A Richard Ginori designed by Gio Ponti.

I was thrilled to be successful bidders I have hardly seen any Ponti never mind own one.
It was the fact that I got it for £700 that sent a few alarm bells ringing. But I knew I was covered by the catalogue description.

Someday you get busy others you don’t so when I had time I started my research, a little late, granted, and slowly came back down to earth.

I was even more concerned as I had been inspired by one of Ponti’s designs for a vase of my own. So if I can paint t someone else can.

So I asked Colin my friend what he thought and we set out to do a bit of research together.

I wanted to take a back seat so I don’t look too deeply into it.

In no time at all, he did, what Wallis and Gromit should have done.

“Not sure Wayne I think its fake” he proclaimed.

‘How dare the Woolleybacks of Salisbury try to sell me a fake’ I thought

Now it’s my turn so I contacted Ginori and they said quite clearly this is no one of theirs.

Jeffrey phones me talking about the tone of my email telling him he had tried to knock me out a fake.

“How do you know?” he said
“I contacted Ginori”

“Oh right” his attitude changed completely.

I didn’t call him a disgrace to his profession or claim he was trying to extort cash under false pretences.

“Can you send me the correspondence?” he asked

“No” I replied
Left an original Gio Ponti Vase by Ginori.
It makes you feel a bit stupid when this happens “Do they think I am a bit woolly around the ears”

Selling fake C.D’s is a punishable offence. Selling fake Louis Vuitton bags will land you in jail.
At least you know where you are when you go around a dodgy market.

Can Ginori seize this vase as it could damage the credibility of the company and its heritage for absolute quality?
It is not a vase by them
Could Woolley and Walls be reported to the Police?

But when the air of credibility is misleading well it could be said that this is a purposeful action. Well it fooled me this time.
At least you know when a robber is mugging you.

I know we all make mistakes but in this instance it took me 10 minutes to do what Michael Jeffrey should have done. I would like to know why he did no research.

I contacted the trading standards who duly visited them.
I think he will be a bit more careful with his descriptions from now on. I will keep my eye on them.
I will not trust his judgement again and I don’t think you should either.



Should Auctioneers be regulated?
 Should the-saleroom.com be checked over in more detail?

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/should-uk-auctioneers-be-regulated.html

Celebrity Antique Road Trip With Edwina Curry

It seems an age ago when they came in to film. I received a call from STV who produce the programme who told me that it was due to go out this Friday.

It will either be very funny, Edwina Curry buying a corset in my shop that I didn’t even know I had. Will I ever be able to show my face in public again? I threw in a pair of diamante flapper girl garters, I said flapper girl, garters. See for yourself.

7pm this Friday 15th November 2013 on BBC2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b03j032t/ watch it here for 7 days



http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/celebrity-antique-roadtrip-drop-in-to.html

This is what I wrote at the time.

Tuesday, 28 May 2013

Celebrity Antique Roadtrip Drop In To My Shop To Film......With Edwina Curry.

I decided to open the shop Saturday last 25th May, as there was a massive commemoration to honour the part Liverpool played in the Battle of the Atlantic.

So I get in and put my lights on and a board out in Water Street and my mobile rings.

“Oh hi it’s the BBC we will be with you just after eleven”

“What for” I asked as I didn’t have a clue

“Antique Road Trip”

“Oh right” I said as I realised I didn’t even have a shave and I realised I wasn’t looking my best. Surely they could have let me know and I would have made an effort, but there you go we can manage this lack of oversight that makes the usual lack of planning that the BBC undertake, look efficient.
I found a razor and s destubbled my chin and had a little tidy around. It wasn’t bad and its something I can take care of. It was after 12 and I sent a text to check I have the right day receiving the usual we are a little bit delayed.
I had been going to pen a letter to the Antique Trade gazette complaining how the glut of programmes are not helping the trade when the phone rang some weeks ago.

“Hi Wayne its Celebrity Antique Road Trip we would like to film in your shop”

“Where do you want me?” I said ashamedly capitulating to the power of the media.
Now here I am standing in front of the washroom mirror with a head like a burst couch and a hangover after a late night in Alma De Cuba in Seal Street regretting it.
“Who is the celebrity? “ I had asked and the subject was surprisingly well dodged by Sandy on the other end of my mobile.
It was manic in the streets so I got them into the private garage that was half empty below the building and I went to greet them.
I recognise that face I thought as a woman walked towards me.
“Bloody ‘ell its Edwina Curry” I said under my breath as I greeted them all welcoming them to India Buildings.
Trust my flippin’ luck I thought she must be one of the most hated politicians in Liverpool.
Most Liverpudlians have abandoned her saying she was from Crosby and that’s not really Liverpool. I will just have to get on with it I thought, but I am in for it when this programme goes out.
To commemorate the passing of Lady Thatcher I had a recent antique in the window to show my feelings towards her.
I had been saving it for a special occassion.
Was this now, not looking in good taste or are we going to get into a bit of a ding-dong.
She was quite nice really I was surprised on how pleasant she was as they set up the gear and off we went.
They started looking around in cabinets and behind things and in no time at all “Whats this Wayne,” she said
I couldn’t believe it she had found an old 50’s corset that I had found in the bottom drawer of a cabinet, a Maccassar Ebony buffet and I had forgotten about it.
Trust her, no one has even noticed it before and off she went modelling it while I am standing there thinking I wish I had sent that letter in to the gazzette.
Then she tries it next to me for size to see if it fits.
“I can’t believe I have just let you do that,” I said. Thinking how am I going to retrieve my reputation after this.
Anyway in for a penny I threw in a pair of flapper girl garters that she loved and we were off, here is a cigarette holder while she pretended to blow smoke in my face I just stood there flabbergasted.
I don’t usually do cringe but I must have looked like I had been slapped.
Her and the BBC dealer who was a nice bloke doing his best to control her went off round the shop and we managed to calm her down.
It is a good job I had just moved house splitting with my ex-girlfriends because I wouldn’t be getting in tonight after having Egwina in the shop.
Then to make it worse she is kissing me goodbye on camera.
My god those same lips have been all over John Major I thought as I tried to keep a straight face.
The things you have to do for publicity.
Next thing I am having my photo taken with her and she is going to tweet me will I ever live this down.
I think I will stay closed from now on of a Saturday.
I am going to be in a lot of trouble when this goes out which I think is September.

Fornasetti Teapot-Piece of the Week.

 

Piero Fornasetti was born in Milan on 10th December 1913.

 He began drawing from an early age.

His first project was a collection of silk scarves for the Milan Triennale of 1933. Printed in a Trompe L’oeil using newspaper print they were rejected by the committee.

He returned the next year with even more adventurous designs.

He caught the eye of the remarkable Gio Ponti in the late 1930’s.
Ponti was to be influential in his life.

He uses surreal images that seem to have a historical place in the mind of anyone who understands art. He is able to juxtapose ideas in the mind of the onlooker.

Today he has become big business a money-spinner.

A whole industry has set up around his work. There are fakes.

Prices can range from £50 to £50,000 or more. There are probably 13,000 creations of his. Items after Fornasetti’s death in 1988 are marked with a date. Generally a under glaze mark.

A cabinet recently valued by a nerd at Peter Wilson of Nantwich at £1000 to £2000 made £19,000 plus commission.

I always try to have a few bits it is always so interesting. http://www.classicartdeco.co.uk/miscellaneous.php

Here a teapot that is my piece of the week.

Should UK Auctioneers be regulated?

I often deal with some of the most knowledgeable and professional auctioneers in the antique trade. I have ongoing relationships with auctioneers that spell out their terms and I feel I can rely on them.
I also have to deal with some of the biggest shysters who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them.

It is often the porters, the people who usually run a saleroom, who go unmentioned. These are usually the people I rely on to get a feeling of a place.
Very often not the spiv in a suit who runs it.


The Internet has made it easy for commission merchants to fleece the public.
This combined with the BBC, advertising the salerooms, for cheap entertainment, giving them credibility, on a daily basis.
The public now seem to be of the mindset that an auction house is the source of the goods.
That may often be the case but I am often surprised how the public will often pay more from an auctioneer than the price you would sell it for in a shop….. Then give the commission men 20%.

Most people could not be aware that an auctioneer will get 40%, yes 40% of the hammer price.
That is 20% from the buyer and 20% from the vendor. Some charge more.

They then have the insult to not even wrapping the goods for you.
Most of them don’t even supply bubble wrap.

Many of them belong to trade associations that are no more than sewing circles. That collude to give an air of credibility.
If you look into many of them they are no more better than the fences that some of them represent.

The auctioneers can’t and won’t regulate themselves. It’s too good for them at the moment with the Internet connecting them worldwide.

Why would a saleroom wish to hide the fact that a work of art is damaged?
Yes I know we deal in a trade that has articles that have hundreds of years of wear and tear on them, but really why shouldn’t each lot have a condition report attached to it. Why do they hide behind a caveat emptor of buyer beware.
 This is slight of hand in my opinion. Any other trade would be outlawed by society if they were treated the way some auctioneers treat the public.

Back street garages get a bad name, but what about back street auctioneers.
 That said I have had particular problems with Bonham’s Chester, no wonder they are closing.

I have also been illegaly overcharged by Sotheby’s, a company most people foolishly believe are squeaky clean.
They colluded with other auction houses to price fix.
The head of major auction houses were even sentenced in the US. Jail was too good for them.

Now many of the Antique trade newspapers have set up sites that enable buyers to bid from the luxury of their own home, via computer.
They have one purpose in mind, to add further charges for themselves.
To add another layer of commission.
Do these web-based vehicles check the credibility of the company that they are representing on the web?
Do we now have middlemen representing middlemen?

Today I ask, “Should auctioneers be regulated”.

So the main person who would benefit would be the buyer.
A saleroom currently has no moral obligation to a buyer as they work for the vendor.

Good commerce achieves good results.
Surely the long-term style of a company keeps the public coming back.

I get contempt from auctioneers, threats of storage charges, hidden fees, terms and conditions hidden away with unworkable contracts that you would never expect in any industry.

Maybe its time to stop this.

In France commissaires priseurs are highly regarded, they have to take exams and be examined by the State for credentials.
Its about time this happened in the UK I think.

Should UK Auctioneers be regulated.

Red or Dead-I Turn Into An Anorak.

I don’t much care for the secondary market in memorabilia.

Autographs and all that sort of stuff don’t do anything for me.

It is sometimes easy to dismiss collectors and their habits. I want bronze.

What is it that we all collect stuff? What drives a stamp collector?

Is it more like a disorder than a vocation? Who am I to say?

Then the other day while on the Internet my finger hovered over the mouse in my right hand and I pressed the button, suddenly I owned an autographed picture of the Liverpool team, from when I do not know it just seemed cheap, so I bought it.

I then wondered whether it was damaged or whether there was something that I had not noticed about it, why did no one bid.

I picked it up and Wow it was the team of…well that’s easier than it looks.

David Fairclough, Ginger, was in there, and I say that with regret because as cruel teenagers that what we used to call him when he watched us playing football on the school playing field next to where he lived. We knew he had trials for Liverpool and how he got his own back on all us horrid little boys the night he scored the goal against St Etienne. It was explosive I had no nails left that night.

Shortly after he came and knocked the ball around on he field, did Davey or Mr Fairclough as we now called him.

He has been in the shop since and I did not own up to it.

Dagliesh or Dog leash as he was called on his testimonial, is there, bottom shelf.

Keegan had left for £550, 000 and they signed Dagleish for £440,000 what a bargain.

Makes the price that Suarez the cannibal is worth look a bit ridiculous. Tommy Smith is not there and he would have battered Suarez the way he has made a fool of the Football club.

I bet any player in the photo would have played for Liverpool for nothing…well except Yozzer Hughes look-alike Graham Souness who was always a bit greedy.

Bill Shankly would have sacked him on the spot.

It’s all about money now.



I claim I am the only one who ever bunked into the Boys Pen…yes into the pen.

It was the deciding match of the season, remember the one that Bill Shankly took off his jacket, and proclaimed, to all, with his red shirt. I am one of you. Leeds United was the big team and we had to break their stranglehold under Don Revie and we did that and took the title.

I had got my place in the Pen, as it was only 20 or 30p or some silly price leaving 10p of my milk round money for a packet of cigs.

I got caught smoking once when the Old Man, who was in the paddock, was watching me.

You would wait for one of the coppers on guard of the lovely little treasures in the Pen to turn the other way or stop someone getting over the 10ft high railings with spikes, and you were off, skimming up and through the gap in the barbed wire that seemed to be left there to entice you to have a go.

He got the end of my leg this time but I was too quick for him as he adjusted his helmet I give him a cheeky grin the other side of the fence.

The game started and it was bad, they used to say the ground held 65,000 but there must have been 80,000 in the ground that day.

I was continually picked up and swirled around as if on a tempestuous sea.

I would be moved yards in one direction, then the other, and the risk was always to ensure you did not get trapped and pushed on to a barrier. It was too much. I was going to chance it.

Off I went up the railings of the boy’s pen stockade and through the wire nicking my collar as I ducked my head through.

There was plod standing there waiting for me…. to throw me back into the Kop, the Spion Kop and all its dangers to a young whip of a kid.

‘What’s he doing’ I thought ‘That’s being a bit too conscientious’.

He seemed to stall, a look of ‘what’s he up to’ on his face.

“Let me in I am getting crushed and he let me in and helped me down. So there was Plod was standing there adjusting his helmet again bemused as nobody had ever thought to bunk into the Boys Pen before.

Jimmy Case is lower left it used to be so funny standing in the Kop and he would get the ball and the Kop would collectively gasp urging him to shoot because he had a shot like a rocket. Then you would see those around the goal start to realise that if he missed they were in the line of fire. You can see it on the old replays sometimes the terrified look on the faces of those behind the goal.

Steve Heighway is there. He and Brian Hall had degrees apparently

Heighway was the youth team coach that brought Steven Gerrard and others through from the Academy. Only to have his services dispensed with by a cocky manager who then buggered off for a bigger payday.

Phil Thompson came to our school once to give an inspiring talk. He tells a great tale of the day after winning The European cup. He had ‘borrowed’ the trophy, and took it to celebrate in the Peacock Pub in Kirkby where they had a lock in.

It took them half an hour to find the cup the next day when they all woke up safely under a table still full of champagne.

Just imagine that today ‘Tommo’ borrows the European Cup for the night.

Sammy Lee is there, he of sheer hard work and determination, he used to drink in Kirkland’s on Hardman Street Saturday nights after the match.

He sank his money into a bar called Rumours on Smithdown Road.

That’s what footballers did then in the days before they featured on the Sunday Times rich List.

Alan Kennedy had a rough ride he died young he was a nice man.

I saw some of his cups and trophies for sale once at Charnick Richard but did not buy them.



There are lots of others in the picture I had better stop now I will be here all day. I am turning into an anorak.



Can anyone date the picture I think the player far right on the top shelf may be a clue as he was only around for a season.

It looks like I have got caught up in this memorabilia myself, what’s happened to me? And with the new book out about Mr Shankly by David Peace, about the life of the inspirational man, entitled Red or Dead, which will be a Birthday present that I hope I get the chance to read.