Category: visual

“[T]he image of President Obama in Heath Ledger Joker-face is especially disturbing because it is completely devoid of context – literary, political or otherwise. The image seems to have emerged from nowhere and was created by no one. Deracinated from authorial intent, Obama-as-Joker becomes a free-floating cipher that can be appropriated and re-appropriated by everyone.”

Oscar-winning filmmaker Costa-Gavras last week asked the Acropolis Museum “to withdraw his credit from an animated short that the museum” had edited “after the Greek Orthodox Church objected to what it saw as a depiction of Christian priests destroying parts of the ancient temple. But on Tuesday, the Acropolis Museum said it had reversed its decision to cut the film after days of picketing and the threat of a lawsuit.”

“Sotheby’s Chief Financial Officer William Sheridan said art prices and sales have stabilized, after the New York-based auctioneer reported a worse-than- expected 87 percent drop in second-quarter earnings. ‘Unless there’s some external event we’re not aware of, we believe the market has bottomed out,’ Sheridan said in an interview last night. … Yesterday, Sotheby’s reported its first quarterly profit in a year.”

Blair Kamin: “The pavilion, one of two in Millennium Park commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago, is a virtuoso display of structure, space and light. With its arresting combination of naturalistic forms and alien shapes, plus a dazzling video installation, the pavilion does exactly what it’s supposed to do: invite us to boldly contemplate the future.”

Children’s laureate Anthony Browne, an author and illustrator, “is concerned that the pressure of national curriculum tests means priority is given to reading rather than drawing. He believes that the two should be prized in equal measure and any failure to promote art could lead to a shortage of talented artists in later years.”

“It was supposed to symbolise a new beginning, but the B of the Bang has met a sad end. The last of the 180 hollow spikes on the sculpture next to Manchester City’s Eastlands stadium have been cut off for recycling, leaving the 56m (184ft) sculpture a shadow of its former self. Only the steel core remains after councillors decided it had to come down earlier this year.”

“Before global finance crashed, Robert Jain, the head of Credit Suisse global proprietary trading, commissioned twelve artists through the private curator Kipton Cronkite to create works inspired by Wall Street terminology.” Bad timing, turns out. “There’s a painting of gathering clouds inspired by ‘hedge fund’ called Ominous … there’s a light-box of snarling red bulls….”

“Tourists now wander through museums, seeking to fulfill their lifetime’s art history requirement in a day, wondering whether it may now be the quantity of material they pass by rather than the quality of concentration they bring to what few things they choose to focus upon that determines whether they have “done” the Louvre. It’s self-improvement on the fly.”

“Even the director of the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum here doesn’t know how many of the artworks and artifacts under his care are genuine and how many are extremely skillful copies. But he says he is going to try to find out.”

“It is the world’s biggest open-air art festival and the fourth Triennial opened last weekend with more than 350 artworks by artists from 38 countries. Sculptures, paintings and installations pepper the landscape and are set amid rice fields, forests, in abandoned schools and vacant wooden houses.”