Category: visual

“Realising his British clientele can no longer soak up the quantity of art that he produces, Hirst is tapping the wider international market. He is putting 223 other works up for sale at Sotheby’s next month in his first sale of newly produced art at a major auction house. Hirst has opted for the auction house route partly because the commission is lower than the 40% often levied by galleries. He has also said that galleries can be “snobby” towards possible customers and “look down” on them.”

“In a way, Devi is the natural next step for a country awash in new wealth, soaring art prices and a prolific crop of artists and collectors. A modern art museum is also under way in the eastern city of Calcutta. Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that built the Tate Modern in London, is designing it.”

“Over the past year, Luca has chosen over 100 prominent Pisans to represent the leading figures in his fresco. There have been public castings and auditions to find the other 150 characters.”

“A prized 1921 painting by the French cubist Fernand Leger has been lost – perhaps unintentionally thrown out – by Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center. That would be a costly mistake. Last year, the average Leger painting sold for $2.8 million.”

“In the past year, two new contemporary art fairs have gained considerable attention because of their sheer size – ShContemporary in September in Shanghai and Art HK in May in Hong Kong – but they are still far from being seen as equal to their Western counterparts. Now, a new entrant, Singapore Showcase, is also hoping to be noticed.”

“The final insult was yesterday heaped on the bridge Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has built over the Grand Canal in Venice when its official opening was cancelled. Their decision will avert a demonstration planned by opponents of the project, and remove the opportunity for another round of media comment on the cost overruns and repeated delays that have marked the bridge’s construction.”

A suit involving the artist John Chamberlain and a work that may or may not be by Andy Warhol will go forward, after a judge denied Mr. Chamberlain’s attorney’s request for summary judgment.

Antony Gormley’s towering Angel of the North sculpture has spawned a whole family of imitators. Now “the scale of public sculpture is about to be changed. Before this winter’s first frosts, a steel monster will creep across the debris around the old Tees Dock in Middlesbrough. At 164ft, it will stand almost three times the Angel’s height and its 360ft span will stretch the length of several city streets.”

“Several major paintings failed to sell at Sotheby’s Melbourne auction, including animportant Tasmanian landscape by early 19th-century artist John Glover.”

“If hosting the Olympics was China’s way of shoring up its strength and visibility on the international stage, than the architecture was the look-at-me muscle flexing that brought together aesthetics and political will in a peculiar dance of neo-perestroika.” Future Olympic cities are taking a different approach. “The most promising approach looks at Olympics infrastructure as a reflection of what they really mean for a city: a splashy, but ultimately temporary event.”