Ordinary people in the company who didn’t know who Hockney was started reading books about art

Ordinary people in the company who didn’t know who Hockney was started reading books about art. Going to see shows.”So now Boss’s HQ near Stuttgart will have a Guggenheim Library Again, Littmann’s motive is both pure and impure He wants his staff to enjoy art for art’s sake But also for business’s sake “Artists are always asking, always won- dering. This kind of insecurity is healthy, it gives you the power to be creative.”By the standards of the companies I have worked for, this is visionary stuff There’s only one snag The first show Boss has backed isn’t very good. It’s paintings by Ross Bleckner, some figurative, some decorative, all (to my untutored eye) indecisive – a bit of this, a bit of that, with no clear voice. Then you wonder, who was that sponsor? Was it British Airways? Philip Morris? You don’t remember.”So far, so shareholder-friendly But Dr Littmann goes on He used to run a textile firm He got Hockney and Lichtenstein to design carpets “There was a side-effect I was not expecting. Hughes’ Law of Sponsorship states that what the sponsor gains in prestige, the sponsee loses Then I got talking to Peter Littmann, boss of Boss.

“If you don’t have an established long- term relationship,” he said, “it’s just money And money is anonymous. One of the great things about art is that it’s not corporate. In general, Boss will pick what suits its new image, which is a bit less competitive and more existential – goodbye city-slicker, hello rus in urbe.I listened to this with mixed feelings. The talk is of talk.Sponsoring exhibitions does come into it – two or three a year – but there’s more: educational programmes, developments in new media, an annual prize for young artists. He makes a speech about ideas, creativity and farsightedness He’s not talking about an artist He is talking about Hugo Boss. Yes, the Guggenheim’s new beau is the German outfitter whose suits make bankers look like Masters of the Universe.
The sponsorship is not just about money That would be too Eighties, even for Boss The contract will run for an unprecedented five years It’s all very New Age The talk is of friendship and openness.

The Guggenheim, probably the best-looking modern-art museum in the world, is embarking on a relationship with a sponsor that goes well beyond the usual one-show stand. Thomas Krens, the museum’s director, invites me and no more than 100 other hacks to breakfast. 4 TO NEW YORK, to see the future of arts sponsorship. The raw facts the producer gives him are thrown back, instantly cooked. Ice fillets, kneads and seasons in seconds – “That’s why I’m here,” he says, “because you don’t know nothing.” There is no need for an autocue.Ben Thompson! `Baadasss TV’ is at 11.05pm Friday on Channel 4.. He accepts an offer of a doughnut with humourful bad grace: “The man wants me to eat the doughnut – he knows that the vanilla extract is going to bring about heart failure in the black male.” Under the harsh lights of the set, his leather coat creaking amid a sea of fun-fur, Ice’s mind becomes a microwave. “It’s like if you made eggs every morning, and one day someone said, `Hey you should sell these eggs’.” His stage-name came from one of his heroes – ghetto author Iceberg Slim – and the initial letter of his own first name, Tracy, which in its girlish entirety was profoundly unsuitable for the inventor of gangster rap.Warming to his now complete Black Panther identity, Ice moves into the studio.