Category: visual

“Globally, the recent rise in Chinese artists’ fortunes was unparalleled… by 2007, 5 of the 10 best-selling living artists at auction were Chinese-born, led by Zhang Xiaogang, who trailed only Gerhard Richter and Damien Hirst.” But with the world financial crisis having wiped out many a fortune, “galleries are laying off staff members, and the collectors who patronized them now worry that their art investments may prove a colossal folly.”

“A stone’s throw from Lincoln’s tomb, this unusual cultural repository is an unmistakable reminder that everyone’s days are numbered. Now it seems the same might be true of the museum itself.”

“On the evidence adumbrated so far, it seems to me to be to be highly unlikely that the Cobbe portrait is a true lifetime portrait of William Shakespeare, as widely reported today. I’m assuming … that Professor Stanley Wells, who has led the charge towards the identification, has something else up his sleeve – because so far the case seems rather unconvincing.”

“As you enter the Louvre, big, clear signs in several languages inform you of the museum’s rules. There is to be no running, no use of mobile phones – and no flash photography. This ban could not be more clearly announced. No one can miss it. Yet in front of the Mona Lisa, one camera flash after another blasts its ugly reflection on the glass protecting the painting. I just don’t understand how the Louvre can allow this destructive camera abuse. “

“The field of architecture is experiencing a design crisis, with clients ranging from private owners to cities demanding that architects prioritize sustainability above all else — as if design itself were an obnoxious carbon-emitter. … [M]uch green architecture reflects a quality that Ford’s Edsel possessed: It looks like the future, but it doesn’t look good.”

“News that the renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz has pawned the copyright to her life’s work to help pay her mortgage debts comes at a time when people from every stratum of society are looking to see what cash value their assets may have. With traditional forms of investment income from property and stock markets in the doldrums, is art becoming an increasingly viable option to use as collateral for loans? Recent cases might suggest that it is.”

“Cai Mingchao, the Chinese art dealer who is refusing to pay for $40 million Qing bronzes he successfully bid for in the Yves Saint Laurent auction, said he wept when he realized that his credibility was shot and he may now have to close his business. … In the world of high-end art sales, where millions of dollars worth of items may sell on the basis of a phone call or handshake, defaulting is seen as unprofessional.”

“You can see some evidence of personal tastes, preferences for slightly more or less conventional work, decorative abstracts or emphasising indigenous culture. There are some fine individual worksand respectable lesser ones, but on the whole a lot of it is simply rather insipidand looks like the kind of harmless work you would expect to find in public service buildings.”

“Some of the works – which disappeared from Maastricht’s art gallery – were found folded and seriously damaged. Two men and a woman were arrested and will appear in court on Monday.”

“Drama, the novel, even cinema have all kept a safer distance from the booming monster of modern capitalism than artists did. What I want to ask now is – why? What happened? How did art become the mirror of fraud? It is not a story that starts with Damien Hirst’s diamond skull but one that goes back to the very origins of the consumer society.”