Category: visual

Santa Monica’s City Council is expected to vote Tuesday on an “agreement in principle” that would hasten Eli Broad’s plan to create a new $40-million to $60-million museum next to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium housing his 2,000-piece contemporary art collection.

“The 828-metre tower, which officially opened this week, is dead on arrival. Indeed, the race to erect – and we do mean erect – the world’s tallest building has become a tired cliché that can no longer be justified. In the 21st century, when less has never been more, such displays of conspicuous consumption are obnoxious, if not downright offensive.”

“The pictures provide rare documentation of nearly every aspect of Warhol’s world at the so-called Silver Factory on East 47th Street in Manhattan and at the studio’s later incarnation near Union Square.” Now they’re missing…

“When the civil war finished [in 1939],” says Mr. Tuñón, 51 years old, it was necessary to “rebuild the whole country,” which led to the singular importance of architects on projects of every size. Unlike in other countries, he says, “architects in Spain are personally responsible for everything.”

“The heirs of a German Jew who sold his art in the 1930s to keep it out of Nazi hands have quietly settled their claims over three paintings by Pablo Picasso.”

“For the Impressionists and the Japanese ukiyo-e artists, it was a force for beauty and contemplation. For the inhabitants of the Alps in the middle ages and after, it was associated with evil and witchcraft. … Until the 16th century, [European] artists showed little interest except where it had a religious context. Then came the shocking winter of 1564-5.”

Jonathan Jones: “My candidate is The Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the Royal Collection. … It could be a scene from a 21st-century war. But it portrays a realistic moment in Bruegel’s own 16th-century Flanders.”

“Two youths pose dressed for war – and we are at war. One of them has served in Afghanistan. Beyond advertising the Windsors’ most marketable wares, this is actually a contemporary history painting that alludes in a dignified way to the most important fact about Britain now, that people are dying in uniform.”

“An anchor in the city’s downtown cultural arts district for more than 25 years, the Met had struggled financially since it reopened in November 2008 after a three-year renovation that went far over budget. Something like the Met ‘will rise again, but it will be years from now,'” the museum’s board president said.

A new Whitney Museum restaurant by Danny Meyer (the Modern, Tabla, Shake Shack) is slated for a fall opening. “The Whitney’s current restaurant, Sarabeth’s[,] has been at the museum for almost 20 years and … will close on Jan. 17, the same day the museum’s big Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition ends.”