“The March contemporary art sales held last week at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury are the Off Off Broadway of auctions. Ignored by the broader world, they are where damaged or failed works go, where ideas are tried out, where works by veterans whose careers have stalled often end up.”
Category: visual
Egypt’s Former Antiquities Chief Denies Charges of Trafficking
“Zahi Hawass, the former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs has declared that allegations that he is an intermediary for stolen artefacts are totally unfounded and he considers these accusations a serious insult, without proof or documentation.”
Ansel Adams Trust Wins Settlement Against Possessor of ‘Lost’ Negatives
“Ending a legal dispute that began last summer, Rick Norsigian has agreed he will stop using Ansel Adams’ name, likeness, or the ‘Ansel Adams’ trademark as he continues to sell prints and posters of Yosemite National Park and coastal California that he has long contended document ‘lost negatives’ shot by the great nature photographer.”
Gauguin’s Voluptuous Nude Tahitian Maidens? Nothing But A Fantasy
“It’s a glamorous vision, but a false one. The artist had hoped to find such exotic, half-clothed beauties – but did not.” Tahiti “had been thoroughly Christianized and colonized. The women were not walking around half-naked. … They tended to be wearing … Christian missionary gowns.”
Collector Sues Gagosian Over Painting Ownership
Robert Wylde, “who is based in Monaco, is suing New York’s Gagosian Gallery for several million dollars, claiming that the gallery sold him the painting without telling him that it was part-owned by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Chinese Art Market Beats UK Market
The US continued to dominate the market in 2010, with a global share of 37%. China’s share is 23%. The UK’s is 22%. The British Art Market Federation – which represents many UK dealers – said the figures made “alarming reading”.
With Native American Art, Using Museum Display to Transcend Stereotypes
“Everyone who visits a museum display about American Indians ‘wants to see feathers, tepees and horses,’ Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian, lamented recently in his Washington office. But new installations at NMAI’s New York facility, as well as at the Denver Art Museum and Brooklyn Museum, are out to prove, in Mr. Gover’s words, that ‘Indians are not what you think they are’.”
Peter Zumthor, the Anti-Starchitect
The Pritzker Prize winner “has hardly been toiling in obscurity. But he has eschewed the flamboyant, billboard-on-the-skyline, globe-trotting celebrity persona, setting himself apart from, and in his own mind clearly somewhat above, some of his more famous colleagues.”
Connecting an Artist’s Head and Hands
Edmund de Waal: “When I was a child there was a truism that anyone could make something (a rabbit hutch, say) or mend something (a bicycle) if they had a classical education. … This annoyed me. Partly because I could only stumble through my Latin lessons but mostly because my afternoons were spent in a pottery workshop learning to throw pots.”
Re-Engineering the Arab City Center in Doha
The Qatari capital’s “Musheireb [project] learns from traditional urban models and uses modern architecture a world away from the dim glass towers of the business district. … So where Abu Dhabi apes a broad Manhattan-style city grid, Doha’s Musheireb adopts tight, discontinuous streets and alleys – so that the hot wind which gathers heat as it blows is diverted and coerced into a cooling breeze.”