Category: visual

Philadelphia artist Andrew Jeffrey Wright “has launched a low-cost subscription series for fans who pay a yearly fee for what he has to offer. Beginning in January, his ‘patrons’ have been getting one of every colorful screen print he produces for the calendar year 2010 – more than 12 prints, guaranteed.”

Antony Gormley is putting 27 life-size figures on rooftops and ledges of Midtown Manhattan buildings. “About the same time that the first figure was placed atop a four-story building at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue on Tuesday, the Police Department issued a statement reassuring New Yorkers that the figures are not despondent people on the verge of leaping to their deaths.”

Chicago architect, Chicago skyscraper — but the Times’ national edition “runs a picture of Boston’s John Hancock Tower … not Chicago’s John Hancock Center, which was Graham’s greatest skyscraper.”

Or there will be, if a 27-year-old artist completes his self-appointed “mission to sketch every person in New York City, all 8,363,710.” He “had only just dropped anchor in a studio apartment the size of a city bus when he began the dogged pursuit of his expansive goal with nothing more than a black pen and a notebook the size of a DVD box.”

“The 23rd annual edition of the European Fine Art Fair — Tefaf — in the Dutch city of Maastricht will be the year’s first test of demand from buyers outside the auction rooms, where wealthy collectors have been pushing up prices.”

“There was no sight of a light being turned off and on at the preview opening of the fourth Artes Mundi prize exhibition in Cardiff. This was big subject art tackling subjects from post-communist social order to consumerism and globalisation. The prize of £40,000 is one of the most lucrative in the world and the biggest in the UK.”

“Caravaggiomania … suggests that the whole classical tradition in which Michelangelo was steeped is becoming ever more foreign and therefore seemingly less germane, even to many educated people.” Meanwhile, Caravaggio “exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible.”

“Ole Scheeren – who is considered one of the top Asia-based architects for his work on high-profile buildings such as the CCTV tower in Beijing – is stepping down from his role as partner in Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture to open his own office.”

Christopher Knight: “A 2006 news report showed that, on average, member institutions of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, the nation’s leading professional organization, earn an average of five percent of their revenue from admissions. … Five percent. … [This is not] a horrendous problem unique to the beleaguered Barnes, which therefore required drastic measures.”

“According to the non-governmental organization Heritage Watch, Angkor saw 7600 visitors in 1993; by 2006, the number was 1.6 million; by the time 2010 is up, the complex will likely draw 3 million. Tourists of course bring in money for the developing country, as well as help assure a certain degree of protection for cultural sites. But they also walk everywhere. They touch things.”