Author: Douglas McLennan

RECORD FOR JOYCE

“An autographed and hand-written chapter of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses has raised a record $1.5 million at auction – and is going back to Ireland. It was bought by the National Library of Ireland, in Dublin.” – BBC

YES, MINISTER

As minister of arts you get to decide who gets money to do what. “It’s the feel-good job that basically comes down to deciding which arts companies, projects and artists you’re going to assign money to, the job that makes you look popular even when your other job doesn’t.” And yet there are the downsides too… – The Age (Melbourne) 12/15/00

RIGHT OF SALE

The UK is strongly resisting a European proposal to give all EU artists a share of the resale value of their work. The British government has warned that its art auction businesses could suffer greatly if the law is passed and sellers begin to take their work elsewhere to avoid handing over a cut of every sale. – BBC

  • THE ATTITUDE OF PARLIAMENT IS BIZARRE, particularly as a number of leading European artists including David Hockney have petitioned against the directive.” – London Evening Standard

GET YOUR GOLDEN AGES STRAIGHT

It’s quite easy to pick on the follies of Post-Modernism. But to harken back to some “Golden Age in the 1960s, as a new critique of po-mo does, is just wrong-headed. The book appears “fixated on some late 19th century concept of order on the art scene – the artist in his (yes, his) studio, the work displayed in its correct place in the museum, the audience properly intimidated by Masterpieces, the moral value of Art interpreted by beady-eyed critics – perhaps the unhappy author of this book. But much has changed since the 19th century, not all for the worse.” – The Idler

CREATIVE FINANCING

Germany has decided to buy the Berggruen collection containing more than 170 works ranging from Cézanne to Matisse. The price was to be $200 million, with half the amount coming from the private sector. But no one stepped forward with the money, so the government will spend $100 million, keep half the art and sell the other half to finance the purchase. – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

THE ART-LOVING SPY

The National Gallery of Canada is investigating the provenance of some of its artworks after it was revealed that they were purchased on the advice of a British art connoisseur who was later unmasked as a Soviet spy. Anthony Blunt drew on a network of fellow spies who acted as art dealers in Europe to make some of his acquisitions for the National Gallery. – National Post (Canada)

THE GREAT BUILDING OF OUR TIME

“Bilbao is amazing, but the proposed New York Guggenheim is more amazing (and also much bigger). It’s obvious that Gehry has given Bilbao a long hard look, figured out what works and what doesn’t, and taken a giant stride forward. You might think he’d just settle for another Bilbao. Bilbao is a great building, but it has some aesthetic problems it shares with other Gehry buildings. Gehry attacks those problems in this new design.” – Boston Globe