Category: visual

“It all started a week ago at the Pompidou Centre. Spearheading the national strike, all of the seven cultural industries’ trade unions called for the governmental decision not to renew 50% of jobs in administration to be scrapped. When, on Thursday, staff at the Louvre and Versailles joined the movement, the strike reached a new pace.”

“It was on Aug. 3 that RISD, one of the country’s preeminent art and design colleges, tried to announce, in a low-key way, that the director of its 106-year-old museum, fresh off a glitzy expansion, had resigned. In fact, Hope Alswang had been forced out.”

“Art Basel Miami Beach–which saw a drop in sales and attendance last December in the face of global economic turmoil–needs an enthusiastic collecting force. About 40,000 people are expected to attend the fair this year, the same number as last year but down from 43,000 in 2007, organizers say.”

“We’re talking about building into the architecture a critical thread. A dark space. A line going through the museum in which you can make critical commentaries on the art, by using photography, film, drawing, etc. So a complex cellular idea starts to develop in my mind–and I have no damn idea of what this will be architecturally.”

“There’s a decision pending in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that’s expected to have repercussions for artists and public art all over the country. The case addresses the question of whether artists have the legal right to protect their work from mutilation or destruction.”

Steve Rose joins the schadenfreude party over the crash of the emirate’s building frenzy. “In architectural terms, Dubai has surely been the story of the decade. We’re just not sure if it’s a comedy, a tragedy or some surreal, hallucinogenic fairy tale.”

“Our lovely sprawl is stocked with colorful neighborhoods, … but public transportation is another story. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Subway to the Sea. That is, until more innovative solutions are found for making it happen. Which is the point of the L.A. 2.0 conference this weekend.”

“[F]ollowing an insurance dispute between two dealers,” paintings by Fernand Leger, Joan Miro, Edgar Degas and Yves Klein “were confiscated from the fair at the convention center in Miami Beach, Florida, about 90 minutes before the V.I.P. opening at noon for thousands of invited guests.”

“During the Age of Discovery, explorers plotted islands and continents where none existed. First, writers, and later, propagandists, discovered that a fake map can lend legitimacy to wild ideas. Maps are more than 2-D renditions of 3-D topography. They can, and often do, express complex fantasies.” Even today …

“The images hold you; the ongoing lives of the artists rarely do. And yet, the entire system of art today is geared towards the idea of the individual creative genius. Never has the myth of the artist been more powerful.”