Category: visual

“We might think it absurd to look at such supreme human treasures and ask which artist is best – but that was what the Florentine republic tried to establish, by getting them to work at public expense on competitive battle paintings, Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina, for the Great Council Hall of the civic palace.”

Step one: Do not be bashful. (A historical anecdote.)

Peter Plagens: “I walked up to Canal Street a couple of weeks ago to buy a porn video and was ripped off. When I got home and opened the DVD case, instead of the advertised ‘Naughty Stewardesses,’ Part VI, there before my eyes was a disc containing a documentary film by the renown art critic, Robert Hughes…. (This is my official cover story….)”

When Marina Abramovic took her place at an empty table for her performance/installation The Artist Is Present one recent day, “the first visitor in line was a young woman who showed up dressed in [Abramovic’s signature] long dark blue dress and a black braid swept over one shoulder. As Abramovic’s doppleganger, she sat across from her and assumed a mirror pose. And there she sat, to the bafflement of the museum staff and visitors, all day.” A Q&A with the perp.

“The £400,000 Turbulence project by Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was set to fill the River Teifi in Cardigan with 127 buoys fitted with LED light sources. Microphones along the quayside would have recorded the voices of passers-by, setting off the lights. But local opposition has helped scupper the five-year venture.”

“Did some Renaissance artists use lenses or mirrors to help them paint more accurately? Analysis of a 16th-century artwork dubbed a “Rosetta stone” for optical techniques suggests they did.”

“Whether to rewrite history or reinterpret masterpieces, replicas made with a palette of high-tech tools are changing the way tourists see art.”

“Garish colors, aggressive shapes and dodgy typography were just a few of its design crimes. Some thought it looked like a swastika. Others spotted Lisa Simpson doing something unmentionable. The animated version caused seizures among some people with a particular type of epilepsy. Fly posters appeared across East London featuring an unofficial version of the logo in which the numbers 2, 0, 1 and 2 were replaced by the letters of an off-color word.”

“The pair’s buildings include the acclaimed New Museum in New York, a sculptural stack of rectilinear boxes on the Bowery, which was completed in 2007. The first Sanaa project in the United States was a glass pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art, completed in 2006.”

“The National Gallery of Victoria has rejected a $400,000 bequest from the estate of two committed communists, Len and Mona Fox. The gallery told the NSW Supreme Court on Friday it ‘does not wish to accept the gift’ and may seek legal costs from the estate.”