Category: visual

“Bank of America’s First Republic unit agreed to share proceeds from the sale of art with other creditors of the bankrupt Salander-O’Reilly Galleries LLC,” whose owner “has been charged with grand larceny, securities fraud, falsifying business records, forgery and perjury.” The agreement “increases the chances that the roughly 400 unsecured creditors of the gallery … will get something back.”

“Talk to San Francisco architects for any length of time and unless they worship at the shrine of Victoriana, the complaints begin. Our buildings are too conservative. Our skyline lacks drama. Sharp designs are dulled by small-minded neighbors and planners. Talking to out-of-town architects is a much different story….”

“A collector who lost money in Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme is quietly selling a major Picasso painting on Wednesday at Christie’s International in New York. Jerome Fisher, co-founder of the footwear company Nine West Group, has anonymously placed a yolk-yellow, nearly 5-foot-tall 1968 Picasso titled ‘Mousquetaire a la pipe’ on the block, estimated to sell for $12 million to $18 million.” And, yes, he got a guarantee.

“With less hope of easy sales, artists could refocus on making difficult, complex, less-marketable art. If you can’t sell, you can’t sell out. We might see fewer attractive paintings with a veneer of substance (Peter Doig might fade from view) and more works that directly address the substance of life (the films of Tacita Dean could take up the slack).”

“Envisioned as the complement to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts that will form downtown’s cultural anchor, the Museum Park Plan is the most ambitious public-private partnership for the arts since the $483 million performing arts center, which was completed in 2006.”

“You could say a faint whiff of desperation is in the air: the catalogs are a shadow of what they were six months ago, as are the values and — for the most part — quality of the paintings, drawings and sculptures on offer.”

“The committee charged with examining Brandeis University’s controversial decision to change the Rose Art Museum’s mission and sell some of its art issued a vote of confidence for the beleaguered administration and made no push to save director Michael Rush’s job.”

“It is, I think, a measure of our confused relationship with art if we believe that the general public is better equipped to judge the work of artists than professional juries or peers. Would we pick heart surgeons this way? Architects? Firemen? The ArtPrize reminds me of Komar and Melamid’s spoof surveys of the desirable aesthetic traits of art.”

“Although downtown Los Angeles still boasts the city’s densest concentration of traditional public art — the sort of sculpture that dresses up corporate lobbies and courtyards — less likely spots in the greater metropolitan area have become home to what one could call drive-by art.”

“In the 43rd installment that closed on Sunday, Art Cologne made clear that the first order of the day was to create a sleeker, leaner profile after years in which the fair had become so bloated that many gallerists and collectors honored it more in the breach than the observance.”