Category: visual

“Mancunians nicknamed it Kerplunk after the well-known 1970s children’s game — an apt description for a £1.42 million sculpture of giant spikes that began to fall off soon after it was completed. Now, the creator of B of the Bang has agreed with subcontractors to pay £1.7 million in damages to Manchester City Council over the failure of what was supposed to be one of the country’s most exciting pieces of public art.”

“French police seized a number of works by the Ukrainian performance artist Oleg Kulik on the stand of Moscow’s XL gallery during Fiac (Foire international d’art contemporain)…. The police were acting on a complaint of pornography brought by the French customs against photographs from the 1990s depicting Kulik performances, sometimes naked and sometimes simulating sexual acts with animals.”

“When you stand under the Burj Tower it doesn’t look that tall at all. Bizarre. Alone on the flat desert landscape of Dubai, apart from the generic glitzy towers of the Sheikh Zayed Road, it seems slightly abstract, with nothing for your eye to compare it with.” Nonetheless: “This is literally a step change in the future of skyscrapers. Welcome to the world’s first superscraper.”

“Anthony Gormley’s design model for his Angel of the North sculpture has become the first £1m object to be valued on BBC One’s Antiques Roadshow. The model was one of a number Gormley made to win over sceptical councillors ahead of the statue’s commissioning.”

Work for architects dries up in recessions; in the last one, 40 percent of architects lost their jobs. As for what does get built, it won’t be the sort of thing we’ve seen in recent years. “Indeed, what we may see is a swing towards a less showy architecture, with invention squeezed into pint pots. “

“It is the ultimate, infallible tribute to a Briton: placing their portrait on a banknote alongside images of their life and work. But now a leading UK biologist has announced that pictures on the £10 note, which commemorates the achievements of Charles Darwin, are ‘little better than fiction’.” The problem is the hummingbird….

“Each time the hammer fell, it seemed to signal a new era in sales, one that featured the return of the seasoned collector and more-sober business practices. Still, given the depth of the global economic crisis, auction house experts were expecting worse. Late Friday afternoon Sotheby’s reported that it had lost $28.2 million from guarantees at its contemporary art auctions last week. That brought its total losses to about $52 million this fall, all from guarantees.”

“With its north-facing view of Millennium Park and a stack of roof-level sunshades that will filter the daylight entering the Modern Wing’s third-floor galleries, Piano’s design opens up a type of building that is typically an introverted treasure box. While that may satisfy Piano’s desire to make the Modern Wing transparent and contemporary, as opposed to the museum’s original Beaux-Arts building, it has necessitated… a ‘healthy conversation’ among [architect Renzo] Piano, his staff and the museum’s curators.”

Yup. Prices announced by the auction houses don’t make across-the-board comparisons. “They almost invariably compare the estimate of hammer price to a figure arrived at by adding hammer price to the commission that the auction house charges the buyer. The result is an apples-to-oranges comparison that makes the sale results look better than they actually are.”

“Of the world’s 20 top-selling artists, 13 are from Asia, with 11 coming from China. Asian artists make up six of the top 10 biggest sellers at auction, five of which are Chinese. Experts predict that within a decade, the term ‘Asian art’ will be as widely used as ‘Western art’ and will be responsible for most global sales.”