Category: visual

“Bad times for dealers mean bad times for artists. According to a national study conducted last summer, more than half of American artists — two-thirds of whom made less than $40,000 last year — reported a drop in income from 2008 to 2009.”

“The 2010 edition of the Whitney Biennial … will not only try to chronicle current goings-on in contemporary art, but it will also reflect the world at large. Thus, in these recessionary times, the show will be smaller than it has been in recent years, with just 55 artists, down from 81 in 2008 and 100 in 2006.”

“A lost painting by Caravaggio which art lovers have long hoped might still be found was burnt and destroyed by the Mafia, according to a former hitman turned pentito (informer). The painting, Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence, was stolen from the oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo in 1969.”

“[N]o god of any shape, size or hue owns those great works of art we would classify as religious. These works – and the secular flourishing of art that springs from and reacts to the sacred tradition – are human to the core.… Religious in title and content; human in the stretch and reach of imagination trying to give meaning to life, in the same way that religion itself is a human creation.”

“The worker, Richard Pullman, 54, has settled a lawsuit with the institution for $233,000, according to records obtained by The Post this month from the Department of Labor under the Freedom of Information Act.” Meanwhile, an outside consultant has recommended changes to the Smithsonian’s asbestos procedures.

“The last self-portrait by Anthony van Dyck doubled its estimate to set an artist auction record at Sotheby’s in London as buyers fought for the best work and rejected other paintings.”

“Russia’s State Hermitage Museum last night bought 92 watercolor portraits valued at about 3 million pounds ($4.8 million) from the Paris-based Popoff Collection after the works failed to sell at auction earlier this year.”

Four major Chicago-area architectural firms took up the challenge of designing gingerbread houses — in one case, a village of them. Blair Kamin offers critiques: “The design achieves the clean-lined, sculptural look the architect desired, in part because the baker tossed out rigid gingerbread for the curving rooftop walls and substituted more malleable fondant.”

At Christie’s Old Masters auction in London last night, a “Raphael study fetched 29.2 million pounds, the most at a public sale for any work on paper; the Rembrandt made 20.2 million pounds, an artist record at auction.”

“Financial crisis is the moment of truth for real collectors and true artists,” the Ukrainian billionaire said on a walk through the Museum of Modern Art. “That’s why we do the prize: to discover new talent.”