Category: visual

Light artist Bruce Munro has laid out more than 600,000 discarded compact discs in a 10-acre field in Wiltshire, England, creating “an ocean of light that from one angle glows with a soft blue haze and from another, dazzles with the light of 600,000 mirrors.”

SoCal artist Seaton Brown “has created a 144-square-foot [Pop Art-style] portrait of the King of Pop out of 1,680 empty soda pop cans” in downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square.

“Complaining that ‘my heart sank’ when he saw the proposed plans, the Prince appears to admit that he is ‘interfering’ in the development and puts forward an alternative scheme based on a sketch by his favourite architect, Quinlan Terry, which he says would have the added benefit of uncovering the river Westbourne, a long-buried tributary of the Thames.”

The “$120 million art swindler” on Wednesday “got yet another free pass from a generous judge,” who “declined prosecutors’ vehement demand that he be thrown in jail immediately.” This “followed a prosecutor’s nearly half-hour long listing of Salander’s broken promises to the court in the three months since he pleaded guilty to a massive, decade-long swindle.”

“The choice signals that UC Berkeley remains serious about a cultural expansion that would bolster city efforts to position its downtown as a cultural destination. The selection also is an implicit act of one-upmanship to a friendly rival across the bay: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has DS+R on a list of four finalists to design an expansion to its home….”

“Sotheby’s sale of 1,200 photographs from the collection of the bankrupt Polaroid Corporation shook out and developed into a $12.47 million triumph.” An Ansel Adams image of a winter storm at Yosemite sold for $722,500; two Warhol self-portraits drew a total of more than $400,000; a Chuck Close self-portrait from 1987 went for $290,500.

“Over the last decade our galleries have become almost entirely devoted to mounting exhibitions, their general collections forgotten, their reserve holdings left untouched and the energy of their directors and keepers devoted to arranging and cataloguing temporary shows.” Meanwhile, success is judged by “the size of the crowds and the length of the queues.”

“[I]f the ‘double-dip’ recession that some economists fear should occur, LACMA is prepared to repeat the drill from the recent downturn by curtailing spending to avoid large deficits. The hiring freeze has been removed, [LACMA President Melody] Kanschat said, but the coming year’s budget calls for adding just three positions to the current staff of 325.”

“The RCA is not in the habit of destroying artworks. It describes itself as ‘the world’s most influential postgraduate art and design school’ and counts David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Tracey Emin among its alumni.” But the school deemed a staircase that was part of a student’s MA project “‘not a sculpture’ but a health and safety hazard,” so it was ripped down.