The Guardian (UK), by Helienne Lindvall
Friday, February 12, 2010

Music and the visual arts have had a loose relationship for decades. From the 60s onward, bands like the Beatles, The Who and Roxy Music all had at least one member who went to art school before embarking on a music career. Others, like Tony Bennett and Ronnie Wood, pursued careers as painters in the later part of their careers.

Still, the funding and business side of the visual arts has traditionally been dominated by trust funds, the rich and corporate City patrons. There is evidence that this is starting to change. As the music business became more lucrative, so artists such as Madonna, Sir Elton John, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno and his ex-band mate Bryan Ferry invest much of their accumulated wealth in both modern and classical art. Even Kylie, Robbie and the Gallagher brothers have been seen in art galleries and auction houses.

Music manager and promoter Raye Cosbert thinks that the art community can gain more than just funding from the music industry – he thinks it could use the expertise and experience gained from manoeuvring some of the most successful music careers of the last couple of decades. That’s why this week he along with artist agent Serena Morton launched new art venture Morton Metropolis.

If anyone should know how to nurture the talented, but emotionally fragile, personalities that frequently populate the art world, it’s Cosbert. He has managed Amy Winehouse since the spring of 2006, and has also worked as a promoter with acts such as Blur, Robbie Williams, Lily Allen, Massive Attack and Björk.

“Developing talent, that’s what I do,” he says. “I find it and I A&R it, which I guess could be called curation.” Cosbert thinks that although accessibility to music has changed the music business, what hasn’t changed is that talent still needs to be found and nurtured. “The middle man is still important. What Serena does is to transpose my experience into the art world.”

Morton had taken Cosbert, a personal friend, to artist Gerald Laing’s studio to see his piece Belshazzar’s Feast, based on a picture featuring Raye at a table with Amy Winehouse reaching for a bottle of champagne at the Ivor Novello awards. From then on, Cosbert’s interest in the art world grew.

The idea for the project came about after a chance encounter with another music manager – Pat Magnarella, who looks after Green Day. “Pat was the first music industry person to truly spot the market,” explains Morton. Last year, Magnarella’s management signed up UK visual artist Charming Baker – giving him some rock’n'roll-style promotion – and recruited Morton to work on a US art show for them.

“I introduced Raye to Pat,” she continues. “and seeing what Pat was doing in the US got Raye thinking along the same lines.”

“The art world is ready for some new blood,” says Morton, who joined Christie’s 20th century and contemporary British arts department in the 90s and set up one of the first pop-up shows in London’s Brick Lane in 1998. “We want to make it more fun.”

Morton Metropolis is funded by Cosbert and, he says, Morton provides “15 years of eye”. The gallery opens with an exhibition of prints by Gerald Laing, including Belshazzar’s Feast, and is aptly located on Berners Street, where the Perfoming Right Society and UK Music are also situated. The company will focus on artists in their mid-careers, aiming to spot talent that has been overlooked by the more established houses. “We want to provide a safety net for our artists,” says Cosbert.

Winehouse’s manager thinks he can take the business of art forward. One thing artist managers and concert promoters know about is risk management – they understand the intricacies of profit and loss. In the same way that a record label can use the profit from one successful artist to underpin the funding for another whose music isn’t selling well enough, so Cosbert and Morton say that if they’re able to help two artists to become the new Hockney, they can afford to support other up-and-coming artists with the profit.

“Art is long, life is short,” says Cosbert. “I was tired of going to my friends’ houses, seeing Ikea pictures on the walls. I haven’t felt this excited for a long time.”

But maybe there’s more to it than that. As the internet has made music more disposable, easily transferable and downloaded for free, the visual art world may in the future become even more alluring to people in the music business. After all, you can’t download a painting, installation or sculpture.

By Linda Yablonsky
Published Feb 7, 2010
NYMag.com

Despite holding down a demanding day job, Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal has published two memoirs, cut six records, acted in seven movies, starred in a reality show, served as a reserve police officer, and studied for a doctorate in “human resource development.” Now he’s curating “Size DOES Matter,” an exhibition opening February 19 at the Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea. Shaq made 66 selections for the show—which features works ranging from the ginormous (Andreas Gursky’s billboard-size photograph Madonna I) to the microscopic (a Shaq portrait by Willard Wigan)—out of over 200 images that founder Glenn Fuhrman and director Stephanie Roach showed him over dinner after a game.

How did you make your choices?

Art is a process of delivering or arranging elements that appeal to the emotions of a person looking at it. It’s what you feel. I picked those things because they were beautiful. The thing about size—if it’s big or small you have to look at it. Because I’m so big you have to look at me. I think of myself as a monument. But sometimes I like to feel small.

Do you ever get time to visit museums?

I used to go a lot with my kids. Donald Trump is a great friend, and he has four or five Picassos on his plane. And that’s where I would look at them. One time, I was at a museum and tried touching a Picasso. You break it, you buy it, they said. I was told it would cost $2 million.

Have you ever tried painting?

No, but I’ve met a lot of artists who wanted to paint me. LeRoy Neiman was one. He did it from a photograph. He made 20,000 copies, and we sold them all. Now I’m working with the greatest artist in the world, Peter Max.

Do you buy art?

I have six kids, and if they ripped something, I’d be devastated. Maybe when they grow up, I’ll buy. I’d like Ron Mueck [whose Untitled: Big Man appears in the show] to do a sculpture of me. I would like to make it twenty feet tall and put it in the middle of a residential neighborhood—make it two stories high and in the head I’d have my office.

You like people looking at you.

Yeah. When I go to New York I like to stand in the street and see what happens. When you look at a painting and try to figure it out—you look at me [the same way]. Everything in the world is art.

Including basketball?

To me, it’s ballet, hip-hop, and kung fu. The ballet is grace, the hip-hop is cool, and the kung fu is kill the opponent.

Read more: Shaquille O’Neal on Curating the ‘Size DOES Matter’ Exhibit at the Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/63658/#ixzz0fQYXCDqu