Category: visual

“Artist Warren Baldwin has won the Jerwood Drawing Prize for his pencil and charcoal on paper drawing, Study for Portrait… This year saw more than 2,500 entries submitted to the UK’s largest annual open drawing competition.”

“The celebrity girlfriend of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich on Tuesday opened a major new Moscow art gallery billed as Russia’s answer to London’s Tate Modern and New York’s MoMA… Some in the Moscow art community have expressed scepticism that Zhukova, a onetime fashion designer, is much of an art expert.”

“While the Venice Architecture Biennale remains the most anticipated and ambitious design show in the world — not to mention the only one featuring cocktail parties in canal-side palazzi — every edition is marked by a curious split personality.”

“Much has been made of the commercialisation of art and Hirst’s tilt of the status quo – his decision to bypass the 50% cut of the dealer in favour of 15% at the auction house. The tacit position of dealers as unquestioned conduit of new works was, as Hirst has commented, established in the 19th century. That change, pioneered by Holman Hunt, required an act as audacious as Hirst’s, and far more significant: the circumvention of the Academy.”

The artist poses shirtless, the tenor wears armor, and Mickey Rourke wields a magic marker: An on-the-scene report from the studio as Schnabel whips up a painting for the 40th anniversary of Domingo’s Met debut.

Five 17th Century paintings that were stolen from the renowned Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands in 2002 have been recovered by Dutch police.

“The street was filled with television camera crews; fans hoping to spot celebrities like Bianca Jagger; and a crowd of collectors, dealers and curiosity seekers waiting for the doors to open. Inside later it was standing room only. While Mr. Hirst wasn’t at Sotheby’s, he was following the results via phone — while playing snooker.”

“Many antiquities are more mobile than the Temple of Artemis or pieces of the Parthenon, and were meant to be moved. These mobile antiquities, precisely because of their mobility, illustrate the real damage caused by indiscriminate collecting.”

“The built environment is at risk of becoming a very boring place where one design is much like another because one architect is much like another. We need to change: involve people in the design process through community consultation; encourage young people from across the spectrum to take an interest in architecture and possibly make a career of it; educate qualified architects about the world they live in and broaden their horizons at every opportunity.”

“Sotheby’s in London sold £70.5 million ($127 million) worth of his pickled animals and polka-dotted canvases. The evening sale, which surpassed its £62.3 million ($112 million) high estimate, underscored the resilience of the art market despite woes in the broader financial markets.”