Category: visual

“The massive storm that swept through Israel over the weekend caused a great deal of damage to archaeological sites all along the Mediterranean coast, but also uncovered a an impressive statue of a woman between 1650 and 1800 years old in Ashkelon.”

“She has strode forth naked and clothed, shoeless and shod, sword wielding and weaponless. She has been accompanied by a dog (for fidelity), a snake (for hatred) and a whole menagerie of other sidekicks that would befuddle the modern courthouse visitor.” (She’s pretty much always held a scale, though.)

“It was clear that neither Ward nor Katz wants the Portrait Gallery to suffer the weight of the controversy, which is looking more and more like a referendum on Clough’s tenure.”

“Of the roughly 150 people who attended the talk, most seemed sympathetic to the National Portrait Gallery’s position, having taken on a potentially controversial show and then had to endure the wrath of both conservative and liberal critics. A few people, however, sharply criticized the decision to remove the artwork.”

“Based on a stock market model, Art Exchange will offer collectors the chance jointly to own works of art with shares available from between €10 and €100.”

“The ICA and other museums around the country, which have responded to the decision by displaying Wojnarowicz’s work in their galleries, have done the public a much bigger service. They have made it easier for us to make up our own minds.”

Despite being in Europe in the 1920s, as the great revolutions in modern art were happening, “[his] mind was not blown by Cubism. He did not succumb to the excitement of any avant-garde. … Was he an ugly American, so wedded to simplistic imagery that the finer points of Cubism or abstract painting would have been over his head? Did Hopper rely on cliché because that was all he understood?”

“The de Young’s not the only museum with such a Pecksniffian prohibition, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. An exception that mocks the way that art is transmitted from one generation of believers to the next, and mocks the stature of museums within our cultural landscape.”

“The Museum of Contemporary Art just got a very expensive lesson, both in money and prestige, on the difference between being an art museum and a commercial gallery. Simply put: At a museum, planning counts.”

“It is censorship that almost turned into self-censorship when they asked me to openly agree with their decision to erase the wall. In Soviet Union they were calling it ‘self-criticism.’ [MoCA director Jeffrey] Deitch invited me to paint another mural over the one he erased, and I will not do that.”