Category: visual

“Collar and Bow, a 65-foot-tall sculpture of men’s formalwear accessories, was supposed to go up in 2004 to provide a jaunty greeting outside Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Los Angeles Music Center, which hired Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, is suing the married couple, along with fabricators and engineers who tried to assemble their work, in Los Angeles County Superior Court.”

“Designed for one of the biggest developers in the United Arab Emirates, Nakheel, Rem Koolhaas’s master plan for the proposed 1.5-billion-square-foot Waterfront City in Dubai would simulate the density of Manhattan on an artificial island just off the Persian Gulf.”

Büchel is making art “based on the thousands of pages of correspondence and museum documents made public in the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Mr. Büchel’s lawyer is also demanding that other documents that Mass MoCA designated as confidential during the case be made public so that Mr. Büchel can use them as art material too.”

“These IRS reviews caught $183 million in exaggerated claims over the last two decades. But that probably represents a small fraction of the total problem, according to a more detailed 2006 study by the agency’s inspector general.”

“Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury & Co. said they sold 56.4 percent more contemporary art than the total of 157.1 million pounds with fees in February 2007.”

“The city of Basel rejected a claim by the heirs of Curt Glaser, a Jewish art collector persecuted by the Nazis, for the return of more than 100 works by artists including Edvard Munch, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse.”

A big metal scuplture outside a library on Chicago’s North Side was stolen this week. Will the thieves find a buyer? Ths sculpture is valued at $70,000. “The more relevant figure, police and art officials say, is $300. That’s what the piece may fetch on the scrap market, probably double what it would have gotten a few years ago.”

As building materials go, concrete gets an awfully bad rap among artists and critics. But concrete has a long and fascinating history in 20th-century architecture, and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t have to be ugly and bland.

In case anyone was wondering, artist Christoph Büchel and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art are still battling over Büchel’s aborted commission for the museum. The latest salvo is Büchel’s: he wants legal documents in the dispute released so that he can use them to create new works of art.

“All of the current soul-searching concerning a Cuba after Fidel is entirely in line with the sort of contemplation that began decades before he showed up and is evident through most Cuban art… And being Cuban involves a certain sense of isolation, of the kind best-known to an island people.”