Category: visual

“This year’s Guangzhou Triennial, the city’s third attempt to lure the art world, is a fair too far. Never mind that it runs at the same time as the triennials in Nanjing and Yokohama or the Taipei and Singapore Biennales. Those it could probably cope with. But Beijing and Shanghai have also just held flagship art shows. Even in the nation’s gravity-defying contemporary art market, there are only so many collectors to go round.”

An Azusa Pacific University trustee’s offer to donate a cache of paintings could mean a lot of cash for the school — maybe. “The good news was that the works were said to have been made by Jackson Pollock, the Abstract Expressionist known for his ‘drip and splash’ style. The bad news: This was yet another batch of undocumented paintings attributed to the artist.”

Yes, the Young British Artists are at it again. This year’s four finalists include abandoned supermarket checkouts with leftover food and a mannequin on a toilet (Cathy Wilkes), a lecture on such modern icons as Wile E. Coyote and Homer Simpson (Mark Leckey), a collage made up of two other artists’ work (Goshka Macuga) and video of a woman smashing crockery (Runa Islam).

Last week Italy’s Carabinieri recovered the painting of a nude woman which had been stolen from a private collector in Milan back in 1975. (And who tipped off the police? An art critic.)

The 71-year-old architect of the new California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has been awarded the 2008 Sonningprisen, Denmark’s top arts honor, “in recognition of exceptional work that showcases European culture.”

France in 1940 was not the best time to get started in the art business. But Aimé Maeght was living in the unoccupied Côte d’Azur, where “there was not enough art to go around.” Matisse and Bonnard, whose studios in occupied Paris were closed, were nearby and needed income. Thus (with some smuggling thrown in) was a great career and fortune made…

“One of Rhode Island’s most celebratory occasions will be tainted next weekend” — well, weather-related delays have since pushed it back to Oct. 4 — “by reminders of one of the ugliest chapters in its history. WaterFire, a nighttime public arts display that draws tens of thousands of people to downtown Providence on weekends in the summer and fall, will reflect on Rhode Island’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade….”

“A Mexican immigrant who spent the last 30 years of his life in California mental hospitals, [Martín] Ramírez, who died in 1963, is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He never, however, profited from his success — nor, until recently, did any members of his family.” With Ramírez works about to go on view in a New York gallery and at the American Folk Art Museum, and with other pieces in the collection of the Guggenheim, legal wrangling over ownership continues.

“In Chelsea, sales are more sluggish and art buyers increasingly cautious as the financial sector reels from losses. While dealers say it’s too early to tell whether the art bubble has burst, there are signs that the market is becoming more attractive for buyers and less favorable to sellers.”

“In a move that will significantly bolster the ongoing expansion and refurbishment of the region’s largest public art museum, a Los Angeles philanthropic couple will give $45 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and be honored with a new exhibition pavilion bearing their names.” Lynda and Stewart Resnick, “longtime art collectors, have also promised LACMA unspecified gifts of art valued at $10 million.”