Category: visual

“The wonderful thing about Stonehenge: there are more theories about its meaning and purpose than there are stones inside it, a trend that goes right back to the idea, popular in the Middle Ages, that its monoliths had been assembled on Salisbury Plain by Merlin, though exactly why he bothered to do so remains a mystery. The crucial point is that every age gets the Stonehenge it deserves.”

“In rescuing the $1 billion deal to redevelop Manhattan’s Hudson Rail Yards, Related Cos. and Goldman Sachs could create a spectacular shaft of greenery and sky from the western end of Midtown to the Hudson River. The nature of the deal, unfortunately, may squander the city’s greatest remaining development opportunity.”

“China’s art boom lures more overseas galleries to set up shop in the Chinese capital and the country’s economic growth and Olympic Games draw more business travelers and tourists.”

“With Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet – and now with Francis Bacon – you know exactly how the attraction works and why the auction records are blown. These are familiar giants. But Klimt was a Viennese petit maître. He didn’t create an unstoppable movement. He didn’t change art. Until Lauder splashed out on him, Klimt was a beautiful but essentially minor Viennese secret. So, why is he so valuable?”

“Russia’s industrial oligarchs are the new force in the multibillion-pound global art market. Behind the scenes of the Russian art revolution are a host of familiar British names, all connected in some way with Damien Hirst, one of the world’s most successful – in monetary terms – living artists.”

“Even in Canada, art theft is more prevalent than most people imagine. Canada is vulnerable because we don’t have an FBI-style or investigative-art team to work on these crimes. The porous Canada-U.S. border is a factor, too.”

“So, why is Montreal art so strong these days? First, you have to credit the strong art schools in Montreal and Quebec City. Looking at the CVs of these artists, one sees most of them are homegrown talents trained at Concordia University or the University of Quebec at Montreal.”

In their place will be 10 huge shipping containers — a hot unit that’s turning up all over in applications as varied as exhibition spaces to pre-fab homes and apartment buildings.

London’s museums are famously free to the public, and the scrapping of admission fees has resulted in waves of new visitors. “The new reality is that art and heritage have taken on a central place in a leisure economy previously dominated by sport and Thorpe Park. In that role, for good or ill, art finds itself playing by different rules.”

It was 20 years ago this summer that “an art show was staged in London’s Docklands that has entered modern art history as a cataclysmic happening.” It was the beginning of Damien Hirst’s BritArt movement, and it changed the UK’s art scene irrevocably, even if few realized it at the time.