Recession forces art world to get creative

At New York's annual Artexpo trade show -- a massive event that's been scaled down from previous years -- some of the exhibits are downright, ah, revealing

By Tina Susman

It's hard to say which booth was drawing more attention at Artexpo New York: the one with the paint-splashed naked man holding a box around his hips, or the one displaying cityscape paintings of tall buildings that resembled what you would see if the naked man dropped his box. 

If, as Chicago gallery owner Woody Slaymaker said, the only thing worse than a lousy comment about your art is no comment at all, then creators of both works must have been gratified. 

"I hope he doesn't drop it. Or maybe I should hope he does," one woman quipped as she wandered past the naked man, part of an interactive work by Turkish artists Gulay Alpay and Emre Erturk that dared browsers to peer through a hole in the box. 

"I wonder where his head was when he did those?" a man muttered while staring at the phallus-dominated cityscapes in the booth of South Korea's Gallery 31. 

At a time when art sales, like other luxuries, are struggling against the lingering recession, one message making the rounds at the annual Artexpo -- which brought fine art, popular art, artists, gallery owners, collectors and browsers together in one eclectic group -- was that it pays to be different.

"People are more demanding than they used to be," said Slaymaker, the president of Slaymaker Fine Art Ltd., whose 14,000-square-foot gallery deals in original works from around the world. 

He said he was urging artists to be more creative to lure reluctant buyers. The recession has pared his business about 18%. Today, he said, buyers are more interested in works in the $1,800-$2,800 range, unlike the past, when $5,000-$8,000 works were in demand. 

At Artexpo, the world's largest art fair of its kind, panel discussions leaned heavily on marketing and sales tips: Keep gallery floors invitingly clean; check real estate listings to spot potential new clients; offer financing plans to young buyers who will become loyal, big-spending collectors as they become older. 

Repeat exhibitors couldn't help but notice the scaled-down scene at the expo, which this year moved out of the massive Javits Center to a smaller space on the Hudson River. 

The previous spot "became too cavernous" as the number of booth rentals dropped, said Eric Smith, Artexpo's chief executive. Booths, which range from 5-by-10-foot spots for $3,000 to bigger spaces for $50,000, used to fill 100,000 square feet. This year, they covered about 57,000 square feet, Smith said.

The art world, he said, is tied to other hard-hit industries, such as housing and construction. "We need the housing market," he said. "We need more walls".

Luca Battaglia, who lives and works in New Mexico, was exhibiting his "green" art -- works made from old car parts and beeswax -- at a booth half the size of his past rentals. "Before, you could not walk through the aisles because of the crowds. I had a double booth and two assistants," said Battaglia, who first came to Artexpo in 2003. 

For many artists, the need to drum up business and catch the attention of gallery owners has changed the way they work. No longer is it enough to hole up in a studio and churn out magnificent pieces.

"You have to wear so many different hats now. You have to be a really good self-promoter," said Sarah Goodnough, a painter in Astoria, Ore., who was at Artexpo for the first time in hopes of finding someone to represent her outside Oregon. "If you can't connect the painting or sculpture to Facebook or Twitter and use that to promote your work, you're not going to get the exposure".

It's not an approach that comes naturally to many artists, such as Battaglia, who said he would rather focus on art than selling his works, most priced at more than $1,500.

"This is the time to lock yourself in a studio and make art, so when the economy comes back, you'll be ready," he said, though adding that he is not convinced the future is bright. "I'm trying to be positive, but I don't really see it coming back".

Los Angeles Times

Body found on Sydney bridge

Police are investigating the death of a woman, whose body was found on a bridge in Sydney's inner west this morning.

Emergency authorities were called to the Iron Cove Bridge on Victoria Road in Rozelle at just after 2:00am (AEST), where they found the woman's body lying across city-bound lanes.

A crime scene has been established and the Crash Investigation Unit will investigate the circumstances of the woman's death.

Both south-bound lanes are closed and motorists have been told to expect traffic delays.

Officers are asking for anyone who was in the area at the time and may have seen the woman to contact police.

Police spokesman Chris Nash says they are calling for witnesses.

"Leichhardt police are also appealing for anyone who may have been driving along the bridge and may have seen the woman either walking along the bridge or near the bridge early this morning," he said.

Police say anyone with information is urged to contact Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.

ABC News Australia

Conservatives accused of diluting gay rights

By Tim Castle

LONDON (Reuters) - Gay rights campaigners accused the Conservatives of tolerating prejudice on Saturday after a party spokesman sympathised with people who offer guest accommodation in their own homes but turn away gay couples.

The remarks by home affairs spokesman Chris Grayling, just days before the expected start of an election campaign, threaten to undermine efforts by Conservative leader David Cameron to make the party appear more representative of British society.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce on Tuesday he is calling a general election for May 6, with the Conservatives, also known as Tories, favourites to win.

The Observer newspaper said Grayling made the comments, which were recorded, at a think tank last week.

"I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences," he was quoted as saying, referring to cases of Christians refusing to accommodate gay couples.

"I personally ... took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a bed and breakfast (B&B) in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home".

Last week newspapers said a gay couple had reported a Christian B&B owner to police for refusing to let them stay.

Under equalities legislation it is illegal to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay rights group Stonewall, told the Observer that Grayling's remarks would be "very alarming to a lot of gay people who may have been thinking of voting Conservative".

"I don't think anyone, including the Tories, wants to go back to the days where there is a sign outside saying: 'No gays, no blacks, no Irish,'" he added.

In response Grayling said any suggestion he was opposed to gay rights was "wholly wrong" and that he had voted in favour of legislation that prohibited B&B owners from discriminating against gay people.

"However, this is a difficult area and on Wednesday I made comments which reflected my view that we must be sensitive to the genuinely held principles of faith groups in this country," Grayling said.

"But the law is now clear on this issue, I am happy with it and would not wish to see it changed," he added.

Chris Hume, home affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, told the Observer: "Chris Grayling's plan would allow discrimination to thrive, as every bigot was given a licence to opt out of equality rules".

Editing by Paul Casciato

Reuters UK

Eugene Terreblanche killed in South Africa

South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche has been killed on his farm in the country's north-west.

Mr Terreblanche, 69, was beaten to death after a dispute over unpaid wages, local media reports said. Two people are said to have been arrested.

President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm, saying the killing should not incite racial hatred.

Mr Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s.

He became the champion of a tiny minority determined to stop the process that was bringing apartheid to an end.

"Mr Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries," AFP news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.

The report said he had been killed after a payment dispute with two workers, who have since been charged with his murder.

"He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," a family friend in the town of Ventersdorp was quoted as telling Reuters news agency.

Prison sentence

The murder comes amid growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians say are irresponsible and racially inflammatory sentiments from a minority of the ruling ANC party, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Johannesburg.

Farming organisations in the Ventersdorp area have called for calm as they are worried that rising tensions may escalate out of control.

Our correspondent says it is too soon to say whether Saturday's killing was politically motivated.

However, a spokesman for Mr Terreblanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement - AWB) linked the killing to the recent singing of an apartheid-era song by the head of the ANC's youth league.

"That's what this is all about," Andre Visagie told Reuters news agency. "They used pangas and pipes to murder him as he slept".

A spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Alliance party pointed to racial tension.

Juanita Terblanche, who is no relation, said: "This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances".

Mr Terreblanche was released from prison in 2004 after serving three years of a five-year term for attempted murder.

He had founded the white supremacist AWB in 1973, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then-South African leader, John Vorster.

His party tried terrorist tactics and threatened civil war in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections.

In the 1980s, the government of PW Botha considered a constitutional plan allowing South Africa's Asian and coloured (mixed-race) minorities to vote for racially segregated parliamentary chambers.

For the likes of Mr Terreblanche, this was the start of the slippery slope towards democracy, communism, black rule and the destruction of the Afrikaner nation, analysts say.

Claiming on occasion to be a cultural organisation - albeit one with sidearms and paramilitary uniforms - Mr Terreblanche and his men promised to fight for the survival of the white tribe of Africa.

Mr Terreblance continued to campaign to preserve the apartheid system until the early 1990s but had lived in relative obscurity since it collapsed.

The AWB was revived two years ago and there had been recent efforts to form a united front among white far-right groups.

ANALYSIS

Martin Plaut, Africa editor

For most South Africans, Eugene Terreblanche was a throwback to another era. But his death is a blow to the country's image of racial tolerance, fostered so carefully by Nelson Mandela.

Some are likely to believe that the fact that his alleged attackers were arrested so rapidly smacks of a cover-up. Others, on the minority far-right fringe, will see his death as a vindication of their assertion that whites cannot live under black rule.

It is a tragic fact that more than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994. And it is possible that some people may seek retribution.

Mr Terreblanche's funeral could become a rallying point for such sentiment.

BBC News

Yemen upholds death sentence in Israel spy case

By Reuters

SANAA: A Yemeni appeal court upheld on Saturday a death sentence passed against a Yemeni man convicted of trying to work for Israeli intelligence services.

A Reuters witness said the court also upheld jail sentences of five and three years handed down for the same offense to two other Yemenis in March 2009.

The three had been convicted of e-mailing the Israeli prime minister's office and offering to work for the intelligence service of the Jewish state.

The three men had denied the charges, which they said were fabricated by an officer with whom they had a dispute.

The three, arrested in 2008, had been also convicted of demanding money from the embassies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

They had been also accused of claiming, in the name of a group calling itself Islamic Jihad, an attack on the US Embassy that killed 19 people in September 2008.

The twin suicide car bombings outside the US Embassy, later claimed by Al-Qaeda in Yemen, were the biggest militant operation in the Arab state since the attacks on the French tanker Limburg in 2002 and the US warship Cole in 2000.

Al-Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing has since claimed responsibility for the failed bombing of a US-bound passenger plane on a flight from Amsterdam in December.

Arab News

My black widows will have more blood

Mark Franchetti

THE dense woods on the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia afforded little protection to Doku Umarov’s men when Russian special forces tracked them down.

For a full day or more, the Spetsnaz troops lobbed mortars and rockets into the thickets where a militant cell loyal to the country’s most wanted terrorist had tried to hide. Then they moved in for the kill.

The bloodshed that followed became the focus of an escalating conflict that culminated in last week’s suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro.

According to the Russians, the deaths of 18 terrorists that February day dealt a blow to Umarov’s ferocious little army of militants fighting for an Islamic state in the Caucasus.

Umarov highlighted another side to the story: a group of teenage boys who had been picking wild garlic nearby had been stabbed, shot at point-blank range and riddled with bullets after being mistaken for his followers.

While the Russians conceded that four civilians had been caught in crossfire, Umarov railed against a slaughter of innocents that required him to avenge their loss.

It was barely six weeks later that two female suicide bombers took a bus to Moscow, boarded underground trains in the morning rush hour and blew themselves up. One was Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, the 17- year-old widow of an insurgent from Dagestan with whom she had posed for a photograph as both brandished guns. The second bomber was believed to be Markha Ustarkhanova, 20, the widow of a Chechen militant leader.

Together they killed 40 people and wounded more than 80. The Russian capital had seen its first big terrorist attack in six years.

Shortly afterwards Umarov, 46, wearing camouflage fatigues and with a long beard, warned in a video of worse violence to come. The bombings had been a “legitimate act of revenge” for the deaths of civilians “massacred by the Russian occupiers”, he said. “They attacked them with knives and made fun of their corpses”.

He added: “The war will come to your streets and you will feel it on your own skins”.

Until that moment most Russians had never heard of Umarov. They had started to believe the Kremlin’s claim last summer that the war in Chechnya had been won.

As the victims of the Metro bombings were buried, the question many people were asking was whether a terrorist who has eluded Russian forces for nearly two decades will be caught before he can carry out his threat of a fresh attack on a far more grotesque scale.

UMAROV was born into an educated family in a small Chechen village and later graduated as a construction engineer and moved to Moscow. He returned to his homeland out of “patriotism” in 1994 when Chechnya tried to break away from Russia.

During a bloody war that lasted two years and claimed tens of thousands of lives, he rose swiftly up the ranks of the rebel movement, earning a reputation as a skilful fighter.

The rebel leadership appointed him security minister after Russia withdrew from Chechnya in 1997. His job was to curb the influence of the Islamist groups that had moved in from the Arab world. But Chechnya became one of the most dangerous places on earth, plagued by kidnappings and clan warfare. Umarov was sacked.

It was during the second Chechen war that he regained his stature. Following a series of apartment block bombings in Moscow and other cities in 1999, Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader, ordered his troops back into Chechnya.

Umarov became one of his country’s most forceful field commanders, despite being wounded several times. He is said to have undergone plastic surgery on his jaw and, since stepping on a mine some years ago, now walks with a limp.

With Shamil Basayev, Chechnya’s militant leader at the time, he launched a daring attack on Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia, in 2004. Dozens of security forces were killed.

Yet he did not share Basayev’s view that ordinary Russians were legitimate targets. He openly criticised his comrade for staging the Beslan school siege that year. Some 330 hostages died, more than half of them children.

“If we resort to such methods I do not think any of us will be able to retain his human face,” Umarov said. “Innocent civilians are not our targets”.

As the war continued Umarov, the father of six children, found his family targeted repeatedly. His brother Ruslan was abducted in 2005 and allegedly tortured by agents of the FSB (the former KGB) in Chechnya. He is thought to have been executed. Two other brothers, Mussa and Issa, were killed in combat.

Then Chechen forces loyal to Moscow abducted Umarov’s young wife and one-year-old son, along with his father Khamad, 74. The wife and son were released. Umarov claims his father was executed. His sister Natalia was abducted and freed. After that it was the turn of his cousin Zaurbek and nephew Roman, who are still missing, presumed dead.

Umarov took charge of the rebel movement in 2006 after Basayev and his successor were killed. One of the few leaders to have survived both wars, he has become increasingly extremist in his views and methods.

BY his own admission, he did not even know how to pray at the outbreak of the first Chechen war. But in 2007 he abandoned the ideology of Chechen independence and proclaimed himself leader of the “Caucasus emirate”, a nominal Islamic state spanning the region. In the process he brought his campaign of violence to neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia, where he now holds sway over local Islamic terrorist cells.

Among the attacks attributed to Umarov is an attempt to kill President YunusBek Yevkurov of Ingushetia, whose motorcade was bombed. The Russians have declared Umarov dead at least six times but, to their frustration, he recently claimed that he had walked 80 miles along the Dagestan border “without any problems”.

Last summer he reactivated the Riyadus Salikhin brigade, a suicide unit founded by Basayev and disbanded after his death. The brigade took 800 people hostage in a Moscow theatre in 2002 in a siege that ended with 130 dead.

Umarov also announced that he had changed his mind about targeting ordinary people.

“For me there are no civilians in Russia,” he said. “Why? Because a genocide of our people is being carried out with their tacit consent”.

For last week’s attack he adopted Basayev’s tactic of using “black widow” bombers — women who have typically lost a husband in the war and have been indoctrinated.

Abdurakhmanova, whose poetry recitals are still remembered at her village school, was drawn away from her single mother by Umalat Magomedov, 30, one of Umarov’s commanders, after meeting him on the internet. He was shot dead in a car on New Year’s Eve and she is reported to have carried a love note on her mission to kill at the Park Kultury Metro station. “We’ll meet in heaven,” she had written in Arabic, a language used in the Caucasus only by Islamic militants.

The other bomber attacked the Lubyanka station near the FSB headquarters. One of her victims was Yulia Shukinoi, the mother of an eight-year-boy, Danil, whose father died in a car crash last year.

“After the blast he was calling me every hour to ask where mummy is,” said the boy’s grandmother, Nadezda. “I could not bring myself to tell him she had been killed. I kept repeating that we’d find her”.

The bombings were embarrassing for Putin, a former KGB officer who has made defeating Islamic terrorism a priority of his leadership, both as president and now as prime minister.

Umarov’s change of tactics may signal the influence of Arab militants close to AlQaeda. Analysts believe he could be seeking extra funding from Arab extremist groups.

Support for Umarov has already been expressed by Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, a Jordanian described by American intelligence as a jihadi mentor. He was believed to have advised Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the late leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

According to security sources, an FSB hit squad has been sent to assassinate Umarov. The Kremlin fears that he is plotting the kind of mass hostage-taking for which he once condemned Basayev.

Asked recently whether he had such plans, Umarov replied: “If that is the will of Allah. Shamil Basayev did not have the opportunities I have now ... If Allah allows me, there will be a result”.

Times Online