Category: visual

Mathias Woo: “The essence of architecture is not economics, but art. Architecture is everywhere, in every part of our world of the senses: sounds, colors, smells, light and air.”

The number of “characters from the comic world who have been in Tibet is really quite surprising; there’s Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Lara Croft, Dr. Strange, Bugs Bunny.” A new show at New York’s Rubin Museum explores the trend.

“It seems that almost the entire art world was caught out… The [forgeries] have circulated widely over the years, passing through the hands of major auction houses, art dealers, experts in their field, and distinguished, knowledgeable private collectors. I’m sure there will be more wreckage washed up on the shore before we see the end of this.”

“1 January 2012 will mark 10 years since the euro coins and notes appeared in people’s wallets. But as simple objects, pieces of design and branding, emotional items that bind us together, they are seen as a failure: a limp bureaucratic compromise where art was needed.”

“An outstanding, unfinished Edouard Manet portrait of a woman sitting sedately on a balcony has had a temporary export bar placed on it by the government in the hope that someone will raise £28m to keep the painting in the UK.”

It was a tricky and clandestine deal that settled the exchange of a de Kooning and an Islamic masterpiece.

“A team of art historians have spent the past year studying thousands of works and compiling a list of their distinct and measurable elements. The result is the Art Genome, composed at present of more than 550 “genes”: attributes of fine art that range from the simply factual (the medium, the color palette) to the undeniably subjective (the “movement” a work falls into, or its “subject matter”). Using these attributes, Art.sy’s recommendation engine can evaluate a piece on the fly and suggest relationships with other works, presenting those results on any device–even, eventually, a phone.”

“Two utterly disparate artworks now on view in Manhattan – a centuries-old masterpiece and a modernist grotesque of immense price – are linked by a history that has remained largely in the shadows.”

“The database reveals that Hitler was the best customer at the shows, spending more than 7 million reichsmark on 1,312 works over the years. Some of his acquisitions were surprising.”

“At this moment, when the 1 percent has the cash to burn, buying art is less about finance than about the cultural value of money, and of art.”