Author: Douglas McLennan

Guggenheim Removes Controversial Art From Exhibition

The works, all by conceptual Chinese artists, came under fire last week when activists characterized them as “instances of unmistakable cruelty against animals in the name of art.” The criticism erupted after a measured preview of the show ran in The New York Times, titled “Where the Wild Things Are: China’s Art Dreamers at the Guggenheim.” The comments on the article, however, reflected the distress many experienced even before the show’s opening.

Research: How We See Color, What We Name It…

“Why should humans all choose roughly the same places to identify transitions, when color is just photons, irreducible quanta of light on a continuous spectrum of wavelengths? Linguists might say it’s because language creates cultural norms. Anthropologists might say it’s because some colors have more cultural relevance than others. Neuroscientists and physiologists might say it’s because of the specific light-sensitive cells in the primate eye tuned to pick up red, green, and blue wavelengths and send signals to the visual cortex—trichromatic vision.”

How Politics And The American State Department Helped Shape Post-War Art

The end of New Deal subsidies led to a new wave of competition between artists, and the abstract-expressionist style expanded. The market for this new art was energized by a number of factors: the postwar period of inflation and the pent-up demand and incomes from the war led to a new cascade of collectors. Additionally, French art was no longer imported after 1944, and the European art market had been devastated by the war.

Moscow’s Plan For A Massive New Museum Complex

“Inspired by the 19th-century world’s fairs and exhibitions in London and Paris, VDNH began life in 1939 as an agricultural showcase for the Soviet Union, with dozens of elaborate pavilions representing the different republics and industries. In the 1990s, the site lost state funding and became a flea market. Now, like much of Moscow, it is in the throes of a massive reconstruction programme backed by the city government.”

Jean Nouvel Explains How His Abu Dhabi Louvre Works

“Louvre Abu Dhabi is a neighbourhood with its streets, squares and terraces, where the works of art are shown inside the galleries as well as outside. It is also a palace, with palatial proportions; a peninsula, with its own mystery, shaped by light and water, the archetype of a micro-city devoted to a spiritual mission that you can only guess at from the outside and only discover by entering.”

Some Advantages To Being Mis-Translated?

In 1980, Henry Kissinger (the former US secretary of state and a non-native English speaker, originally from Germany) told Arianna Huffington (the Greek immigrant and entrepreneur/writer who would eventually start The Huffington Post) not to worry about [her] accent, ‘because you can never, in American public life, underestimate the advantages of complete and total incomprehensibility’.

When The Rise Of Modernism Made Us All Nervous

“The era’s psychiatrists were fighting the psychic fallout produced by the frenetic pace of urban existence. The profession faced an epidemic of so-called “nervous” diseases, such as hysteria and neurasthenia, which were thought to be caused or exacerbated by overstimulation. Modernity brought speed, stress, and constant sensory bombardment—a perfect recipe for rattled nerves. To repair a shaken nervous system, doctors often prescribed a change of scene, sometimes coupled with baths, special diets, or exercise regimens.”