Category: visual

“The only known complete manuscript of Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 – one of the most influential documents in modern art – will be sold by Sotheby’s in Paris tomorrow. To the annoyance of art critics, the document is to be sold separately from eight other Breton manuscripts which are associated with the first published version of the manifesto.”

Citing the recent change in the top leadership at the Smithsonian Institution, Sharon F. Patton announced yesterday that she is leaving as director of the National Museum of African Art at year’s end.

“The looting not only funds unscrupulous dealers of artifacts, but also elements of the Iraqi insurgency. Experts say it has dwarfed the high-profile looting of Iraq’s National Museum shortly after the US took Baghdad in 2003.”

“Neither Sotheby’s nor Christie’s disclose information on buyers but sources close to the market confirm that Roman Abramovich, whose fortune is estimated at £11.7bn by The Sunday Times’s Rich List, purchased both lots, apparently for display in his London home. He has not previously been known to purchase works of art at this level.”

“A portrait stashed in a bank vault in Athens could be the last painting Vincent van Gogh produced, according to some art experts and collectors who are attempting to determine the authenticity of the picture found among the possessions of a Greek world war two resistance fighter.”

“The two-week New York art auctions were a raucous party for some of the world’s richest spenders, who parted with $1.56 billion, confirming that contemporary art has become their sport of choice.”

“New York graffiti is the stuff of legend. At least, it was: a messenger boy calling himself TAKI 183 is credited with launching the craze in the early 1970s, and later, when the city was fighting crime and recession, the scene exploded in the city’s subway. Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat brought it into the galleries in the 1980s. Then a succession of New York mayors cracked down.”

“Architecture is usually functional and built to restrict the use of space. Some people say architecture is inherently totalitarian and fascistic and these artists are all trying to reinvent the space in all sorts of different ways.”

“This week, opponents of the move were handed a big defeat when Judge Stanley R. Ott ruled that neither the Friends nor Montgomery County government had the legal standing to ask for a new hearing. County officials said yesterday that they were unlikely to appeal Ott’s refusal. The Friends group, which has spent six years fighting to keep the foundation’s Renoirs and Picassos hanging where Barnes left them, are considering one.”

“The artist was awarded the commission unaware that he was the target of a conspiracy hatched by Donato Bramante, the architect of St Peter’s Basilica, and the painter Raphael, who persuaded Pope Julius II to oblige Michelangelo – a sculptor with little painting experience – to take on the commission. They believed that, faced with a work on such a vast scale, he was bound to fail and be humiliated.”