Okay, I like it, Picasso ... and Murano, and Marina!
The next page in the story of MONA's Ladies Lounge
Last week, news finally broke on a question to which Australian arts journalists, academics, dealers, gallerists and others claiming expertise should have been alive since 2020. On 10 July, Kirsha Kaechele, the curator and artist responsible for the Ladies Lounge work that has been displayed for three years and seven months in Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) – a private museum bankrolled by her husband David Walsh, whose wealth derives from innovative gambling methods – revealed on her blog that the three Picasso paintings she’d hung on its emerald silk walls throughout were copies.
Kaechele admitted she painted the pretend Picassos herself, in collaboration with the niece of her manicurist, and partly at the suggestion of her friend Natalie who co-created another key piece in the Ladies Lounge. Quoting Kaechele on that, it’s ‘a large, emerald velvet snake – a “sofa” that is really more of a tethered, rearing, restrained-by-golden-chains-and-then-ultimately-defeated cock.’ More from Kaechele – ‘I knew of a number of Picasso paintings I could borrow from friends, but none of them were green and I wished for the Lounge to be monochrome. I also had timing working against me, not to mention the cost of insuring a Picasso – exorbitant!.’ More was then disclosed. Spears in the Ladies Lounge said to be from Papua New Guinea were not historical artefacts with a rollicking Rockefeller family backstory as alleged, but brand new items. A ‘mink rug’ said to be from the royal furrier of the Tasmanian-born Queen of Denmark was in reality synthetic. Green and gold items in the glass jewellery cabinet of the artwork were not precious family heirlooms belonging to Kaechele’s great-grandmother, but mainly cheap costume jewellery.
Kaechele’s public statement was a new page in the story of the Ladies Lounge. Famously, the artwork was the subject of a negative ruling in April this year by Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (TASCAT) – about which I wrote at the time for The Saturday Paper. TASCAT decided that the limitation of entry to the Ladies Lounge to ‘ladies’ and people who identify as ladies, was in breach of Tasmania’s anti-discrimination legislation. That decision resulted from a complaint made by a man from New South Wales, Jason Lau, who had visited MONA and was aggrieved at being excluded from the Ladies Lounge. TASCAT described the in-court behaviours of around 20 supporters who accompanied Kaechele to the hearing (similarly dressed in navy suits accessorised with pearls, sensible shoes and spectacles, referencing the expected attire of many women in the law) as ‘inappropriate, discourteous and disrespectful, and at worst contumelious and contemptuous.’ This behaviour involved sitting in silence and stillness, apart from occasional synchronised shiftings of position, some ‘pointedly’ reading ‘feminist texts’.
All this covered Tasmania – whose cherished tourism economy has traded strongly for over a decade on the irreverence of MONA’s modus operandi, especially in the island State’s leaner winter months – in a kind of golden shower of fresh attention. The story went global through a mix of established outlets and social media. Following the TASCAT ruling, MONA closed the work ‘for reform’ and began a process of legal compliance.
As part of that, the copied Picassos were hung in the museum’s toilets. Since MONA opened these all have been unisex, but a few became designated ‘ladies only’ for this compliance purpose. This relocation of the paintings generated more media attention. None of it seems to have focused on the regendering of the toilets, slightly surprising given how peculiarly enervated contemporary Australia has become around LGBTQIA2S+ identity and accompanying spaces. I did think the rehang raised glancing questions around the safety of any unprotected painting hung near a toilet bowl, mainly because I used to be CEO of Heide Museum of Modern Art (Heide) in Melbourne, which made me alive to the protocols applied to all works on museum display. There’s also the known tendency of people with penises – many of whom now clearly define as ladies, a position never challenged by MONA – to wee outside the bowl. And, you never know what ‘standard’ ladies will do behind locked doors anyway. This risk seemed slender but real, given the close proximity of those loos to MONA’s exceptional bar. It is strategically placed at the underground entry point of the museum because of Walsh’s defensible view that art is best approached somewhat inebriated.
Call me an art snob, but I didn’t lose sleep over the toilet splash factor because from my first viewing of these paintings – around the time the Ladies Lounge opened – they obviously were not by Picasso. Ditto the Danish fluff on the floor, it was super sweet on the feet, but I imagined they’d sourced it somewhere like Spotlight. I have zero interest in museum weaponry displays so I didn’t fasten on the spears. A stylish friend visiting the Ladies Lounge from Sydney ogled an attractive bracelet on display, I wondered if it might be from the stable of talented Tasmanian makers MONA supports – and suggested she enquire to buy it? My favourite piece in the Ladies Lounge was the retro Murano chandelier overhanging the giant green cock-sofa. The Murano seemed entirely authentic to me and a quick google confirmed that. Heide famously owns a major stash of Sidney Nolan, and a highly reputable Nolan expert formerly advised Walsh on MONA’s art purchases as well as Heide’s own collection – so I knew the fabulous Leda and the Swan (painted by Nolan in 1960) on display assuredly was the real deal.
All of this seemed and still seems totally faithful to the press-all-buttons plus pleasure-meets-provocation ethos of the Ladies Lounge. However, having hoodwinked Australia’s arts establishment for almost four years, and I suspect to her own relief, Kaechele finally was outed. The pissoir rehang attracted a ‘please explain’ enquiry to MONA from the people who manage the Picasso estate in France. As the statement they subsequently issued in French said, ‘MONA immediately responded, expressing its regrets and declaring it was ready to take the paintings down.” Kaechele’s own blog statement referenced her gracious pardonne-moi message to them, in neat French, a language at which she is increasingly adept, including as a mark of basic respect of the fact that in 2016 the French government awarded Walsh its prestigious Chevalier des Artes and des Lettres for his cultural contributions through MONA.
The Succession Picasso continued, with reciprocal grace – ‘While we can only regret this situation and the current overexposure, we believe that this matter is now closed … We also specify that we in no way hold this against the Museum itself, nor the artist. The urgency of creation sometimes makes us forget that there are principles of law protecting the interests of authors, which apply to everyone … Mistakes are also part of learning and we have no doubt that MONA will make sure to call on authors when necessary in the future.’
Ça suffit, as the French might say. Basta, if we’re going Italian – I do believe a Tasmanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale would be a great pop-up home for the Ladies Lounge. All the ladies and lady identifiers could arrive in gondolas, dressed in emerald green frocks and costume bling, the fiercer ones holding spears, everyone sipping absinthe-infused cocktails in an homage to the stunning opening party of MONA in 2011.
And if the publicly funded Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) is hot enough to trot, it might request collaboration with MONA to embed this unfolding and engaging performance work in Tasmania’s wider democratic domain. An interpretive exhibition could recount the remarkable story of the Ladies Lounge in its social and cultural context – what a great Tasmanian tale, and what a context Tasmania truly is. This might feature the non-Picassos (duly explained), the elegant statement from The Succession Picasso (duly translated into English), the unclutched pearls the supporting ladies-and-people-identifying-as-ladies wore to the TASCAT hearing, the ‘feminist texts’ they read quietly in court (these could be sung very loudly?), you name it. They could call the exhibition Contumelius. There’s already a precedent, the magnificent Theatre of The World exhibition combining works from MONA and TMAG presented across 2012-13 in Hobart and Paris – curated by French icon Jean-Hubert Martin, assisted by Geneva-based Olivier Varenne who still advises MONA.
To me, there may be some moral imperative around attempting that. The MONA project is largely a private and extremely generous gift to the Tasmanian public by Walsh (and now Kaechele), and has never charged locals for museum entry. At the same time, too many Tasmanians still sit stubbornly and shamefully near the bottom of Australia’s socio-economic pile, especially in terms of literacy and educational engagement. That’s a major class and opportunity question, and none of the Australian critics vocal in the Picasso chapter of the Ladies Lounge has referenced it. Instead there’s been some sideways sniping at Kaechele as some kind of rich bitch indulging her whims on her husband’s coin – some quite viciously on social media. Who amongst them even noticed that a few weeks ago MONA leveraged its pizzazz to raise around $400,000 at a gala event for the 24 Carrot Gardens/Material Institute charity, a food education programme established by Kaechele in Tasmania and New Orleans (Kaechele is originally American) that targets young people with limited access to locally grown nutritious food. Currently that programme operates school gardens at 24 public schools in communities across Tasmania considered to be low SES.
Two days after Kaechele came clean about the Ladies Lounge not-Picassos, The Guardian published a strangely sour piece by its arts reporter Kelly Burke. Maybe Burke was miffed because Kaechele beat her to breaking the story. It featured a conga line of Australian ‘arts experts’ (I’m starting to stop taking this term seriously) who seem not to understand performance art in general, the Ladies Lounge in particular – or are running other agendas. Here’s a cherry pick of quoted statements. ‘Mona has delivered a crushing blow to its own international standing in the art world … A museum can’t do this kind of thing and expect to maintain much respect from people around the world.’ – How so? Who’s crushed? How many of the estimated 425,000 people who visited the original Ladies Lounge weren’t there because of Picasso, but because of Kaechele and her unusually alluring concept? ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if the public felt betrayed or hoodwinked in this case, they might feel that Mona has tried to make them feel silly.’ – Who was really hoodwinked and who is feeling very silly? ‘Mona’s action could have a serious impact on the state’s domestic and international tourism industry. Mona is listed among the top 10 attractions on multiple websites, including the Tasmanian Government’s Discover Tasmania and Lonely Planet. You don’t travel from overseas or interstate only to be shown fake Picassos … This is serious and will impact tourism.’ – Don’t you? Won’t you? Show me the 2024-27 visitation numbers, baby?
Best of all – ‘There’s a kind of sacrosanct quality to museums.’ Here I laughed out loud, remembering the wild founding energy of Heide, the museum that is the legacy of wealthy 20th century art patrons Sunday and John Reed. The Reeds were long in a creative and sexual menage-a-trois with the same Sidney Nolan whose work hung in the original Ladies Lounge. They also supported the Angry Penguins literary venture – which in turn generated the Ern Malley literary hoax in the 1940s involving Sydney poet James McAuley, who later decamped to the University of Tasmania as part of an anti-communist Cold War stacking of its humanities leadership. The Reeds were profoundly unafraid of pushing boundaries.
The Guardian piece appeared the day after The Conversation published a more informed analysis by Joanna Mendelssohn, editor-in-chief of Design and Art Australia, a collaborative database and e-research tool for art and design researchers. She named up the Ladies Lounge saga as ‘perhaps the most effective piece of performance art I’ve seen since Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece of 1964 – a work hailed as being the Titanic of performance pieces. In it, Ono sits, as members of the public are invited to approach and cut off pieces of her clothes’ – placing Kaechele ‘within a great tradition of performance art, which had fallen out of fashion since its heyday in the 1960s and ‘70s.’ Mendelssohn said a fair bit more, including, ‘As well as taking the mickey out of the patriarchy, one lesson from Kaechele’s work is that gallery and museum visitors should use their eyes and not always believe what labels say … If Kaechele had persisted in claiming the works were by Picasso after being challenged by the Picasso Administration, she would have been guilty of fraud. However, she immediately “confessed” and explained why and how she acted as she did.’
Tasmanian-based commentator Jane Rankin-Reid made a bookend point on social media a few days later –‘I'm not sure any of the critics cited know what they're looking at. Or that they're not indulging in a bouquet of home grown double standards. Though her defenders have rarely if ever cited the artistic context her work operates in, Kirsha Kaechele’s social sculpture installation is part of an international genre of rebellious art works. From Joseph Beuys, to Agnes Dene, Angela Bulloch, David Hammons, David Medalla, Rirkrit Tiravanija and onwards. Museums are the places where such experiences are best explored though I've participated in street based social sculpture artworks. The emphasis needs to be on the artist's art work, not reputations or burst bubbles. As for fakes, there are a mile a plenty in Australian museums so I won't go there because I don't want rocks on my roof by a bunch of superannuated arts bureaucrats!!! There is also a late 20th century tradition of appropriations, from Mike Bidlo, to Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Sturtevant and so on. So, representing/ reprising/ reinterpreting masterpieces is no more sacreligeous than me wearing a Canal Steet Rolex!’
I’m writing this from somewhere near Belgrade, so I’ll throw in more examples of local provenance. Pre-eminently, the globally renowned artist Marina Abramović – who has presented herself as distinctively as Yoko Ono since her youth in the 1970s, who likes to call herself ‘the grandmother of performance art’, and who MONA hosted in major retrospective in 2015. She is Balkanly best known for her Rhythm 0 in 1974 (in which the audience was invited to manipulate her own body with objects including a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, olive oil, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet) and more widely for The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010. Abramović was the only woman member of the informal group of Six Artists, whose careers began with the opening of the Student Cultural Centre in Belgrade in1971 – resisting the mindset and pedagogy of the local arts establishment. Another member was Raša Todosijević, whose key works include Was ist Kunst, Marinela Koželj?, a 1976-81 video performance around the physical and psychological abuses associated with totalitarianism.
A generation following, we find Uroš Djurić who like Todosijević is still in Belgrade. The co-creator of the Autonomism Manifesto in 1994, he has variously appeared as a punk drummer, night club DJ, radio host, graphic designer and as star talent in the 1992 cult film Mi Ni Smo Angeli (We Are Not Angels). Djurić now combines his work as a painter-who-can-really-paint with acerbic verbal performances that dissect the British class system, European football, some fuck-you politics – and reflections on the meaning of contemporary everything, which may be exactly nothing.
And today’s next-gen exemplar is Marina Marković, born in 1983 and also based in Belgrade, who bounces from her adolescent experience of anorexia to unpack questions about freedom and coercion related to women’s bodies. Last month, in a sweltering heatwave, I pushed my way through crowds to watch Marković being live-tattooed on a consenting piece of her live flesh, at the opening of her latest exhibition The Arrangement(s) at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade. Kind of a pinkish version of the Ladies Lounge, except that men were allowed because gender power games are played differently here.
Meanwhile down home in Tasmania, hopefully with next-step momentum, the Ladies Lounge is still in promising motion. MONA has appealed against TASCAT’s ruling to the Supreme Court of Tasmania. I can’t see how the Picasso question would have any legal relevance to that, beyond indicating the exclusionary loss suffered by Lau was either less or larger than his own initial perception. It’s unclear when that ruling may land – it may be September, it may be later, the judicial workload of that court allegedly is heavy. It’s also unclear when and how Kaechele may move again on the Ladies Lounge in the meantime. I’d bet money on one thing – around this particular project, the MONA team is unlikely to jump the shark.