Category: visual

“All artists who focus on wildlife, historical and nautical scenes are confronted on a regular basis by people who are knowledgeable in these fields” and who are “looking for mistakes. … How to research is not taught in studio art classes, but it is a skill artists in the accuracy trade need to acquire.”

“We question whether, in this landscape of scale and huge horizons and with a very robust end point that has stood for centuries and centuries, this is the right design approach?”

“Iran cut ties with the British Museum on Sunday in protest at repeated delays in the loan to Tehran of an ancient Persian treasure.”

“Not the agony of painting but the far greater torture of writing about paintings, in order to attract people to see them. Art for art’s sake? Forget it. What you need is artspeak for artspeak’s sake.”

“The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced Thursday that it had raised more than $250 million to expand the museum and double its endowment. The museum is building a new wing to show the collection of Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher.”

“The sale prompts many questions, not least: is Giacometti the most important artist of the modern era? Is he really better than Picasso? Comparisons between different artists are vexed and horribly subjective.”

“[T]he Foundry, an east London gallery and pub that for more than a decade has served as a focal point for the area’s alternative art scene, is set to be demolished after the site’s owners drew up plans for an 18-storey hotel and retail complex.” But “a wall painted with one of the biggest Banksy murals in Britain” will be preserved.

“According to the records, 34 rats were captured and killed between 1940 and 1946, with the staff’s boots being the main weapon of choice. The events surrounding [a] 1909 murder-suicide, in which a man shot his wife then himself in one of the galleries, minutes after they had been seen looking at portraits together, are recorded in detail.”

Walking Man I “sold for £65 million ($104.3 million) at Sotheby’s, setting a record price for a work of art at auction and signaling a potential resurgence in the art market.”