Category: visual

“The artwork of music producer Brian Eno is illuminating the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House as part of a sound and light festival in the city. They have become a canvas for audio-visual work 77 Million Paintings which uses ‘self-generating software’ to manipulate 300 of Eno’s drawings. He says it aims to provoke ‘visual ecstasy’ and ‘heightened calm’.”

“The Italian art world is in a messy ‘is it or isn’t it’ debate over a wooden sculpture that may or may not have been made by Michelangelo. Standing just 40cm (16 inches) high, it depicts Christ on the Cross, but leading art experts simply cannot agree who made it.”

“In this small town just across the border from Germany, a small group of Dutch scientists and one irrepressible Austrian salesman have dedicated themselves to the task of reinventing one of the great inventions of the 20th century — Polaroid’s instant film.”

“A large part of the design’s success stems from the altered relationship between the pedestrian and the structures that frame the square. Walking down the cramped, narrow sidewalks, a visitor could never get a feel for the vastness of the place. Now, standing in the middle of Broadway, you have the sense of being in a big public room, the towering billboards and digital screens pressing in on all sides.”

“Imagine a museum that boasts the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. Now imagine that an intrepid female curator puts all the men’s work in storage and fills the permanent collection galleries with a new version of 20th and early 21st century art history, the one that women created.” That’s what’s happening in the Centre Pompidou exhibition, “elles@centrepompidou,” opening Wednesday.

Free entrance to museums may become a thing of the past as the recession and funding cuts bite, according to the head of The Art Fund.

“The absence of the originals on the reconstructed frieze, and the glaring whiteness of the copies put in their place, is a powerful broadside aimed at Britain by a Greek government that is dedicated to bringing the marbles home.”

“Philip Mould’s discoveries come, he thinks, not only from his ‘deep love for the paintings’, but from his willingness to call on the expertise of historians who know more about a subject than he does, and from his interest in the organic life of a work.”

“The Obamas are sending ripples through the art world as they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists for the White House. In a sharp departure from the 19th-century still lifes, pastorals and portraits that dominate the White House’s public rooms, they are choosing bold, abstract art works.”

If the architecture profession was “interested only in icons and cash”, why are they earning less than other professions and why are more RIBA awards not given to the “glass boxes, blobs and phalluses” that developers the world over are so fascinated by? Our awards are far more likely to recognise ­”modern designers” who “have worked well within the rhythm of ­existing city streets”.