Category: visual

“Mixing Jeff Koons’s outrageous artwork with the extravagence of France’s Château de Versailles appears to be a success, as organizers have extended the U.S. pop artist’s show through the new year.”

The Art Gallery of Ontario is getting ready for its grand reopening following a major renovation and reinvention courtesy of architect Frank Gehry. “Even a quick walk-through preview makes it thrillingly clear that the AGO has scored a breakthrough, leaping into the front ranks of North American art museums.”

At Sotheby’s in New York, “the star was the abstract Suprematist Composition painted in 1916 by the Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich. It set a world record for Russian art at $60 million.”

At that same Sotheby’s auction, considered disappointing overall, Edvard Munch’s Vampire sold for $38 million and Edgar Degas’s Dancer in Repose went for $37 million.

“Being careful what we pray for, because we just might get it, today’s cautious wish is that architecture in Seattle weren’t so damn serious. And growing still more so. We are cultivating an almost unwavering devotion to mainstream modernism, conventional respectability and generic anonymity.”

“Sotheby’s failed to sell a third of the lots at its Impressionist and modern art auction last night in New York, the latest sign that worldwide financial distress is undermining demand for trophy paintings and sculpture.”

“God does not exist. However, I think human cultural history to date would have been poorer without the illusions of religion. In a completely rational world would art exist? Maybe, but only as a sort of post-Duchampian ironic plaything. Great art feeds on the same sources as god-bothering.”

“One art-world business is booming: collectors looking to borrow against works they own, especially before the fall sales threaten to lower values. ‘We’ve been contacted by lots of people who are feeling some sort of margin call,’ says Sotheby’s CEO, Bill Ruprecht. Other lenders have virtually stopped lending against art recently, but Ruprecht says Sotheby’s is still ‘very comfortable’ doing so.”

“The global financial meltdown is likely to have one unintended side effect, predicts David Chipperfield: Fewer attention-seeking buildings will go up. ‘It’s an architecture of excess, a consequence of there being too much money around,’ says the British architect. ‘At a time when people are worried about other things, those things become really irritating, and probably less relevant.'”

Windows and doors at a London gallery were smashed in response to an exhibit of paintings by British Muslim artist Sarah Maple. Among the images are a veiled woman holding a pig, Maple herself in a T-shirt saying “I love jihad,” and another veiled woman wearing a badge reading “I love orgasms.”