Category: visual

The rise of street art “as something to take seriously says something about the weird state of art now. The core of art today is satire and gags and attention-getting stunts. As a society we all kind of know this but somehow we also accept that it’s a social faux pasever to mention it.”

“Zhang Xiaogang seems almost untouched by his rise to fame and fortune. An unassuming, bespectacled man of nearly 50, he is unimpressed that his paintings can now command between $500,000 and $1 million per canvas. And several times that at auction.”

Architect Rem Koolhaas has been chosen to redesign the art displays inside St. Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum over the next six years to modernize the landmark Russian institution.

Five artists have been shortlisted in a competition to “create a sculpture measuring 50 metres (165 ft) that will be visible from road, rail and air. The commission is for the new Ebbsfleet International station and Ebbsfleet Valley, a development on 1,000 acres of open land between Dartford and Gravesend in north Kent.”

“On Thursday, the same day federal agents raided four Southern California museums suspected of displaying stolen art, authorities also searched the private museum of Barry MacLean, a trustee of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. The newly revealed allegations have significantly raised the stakes of the ongoing investigation, suggesting that a suspected network of illegal art dealers extended far beyond Southern California and included objects far more valuable than those previously revealed.”

“We clearly need to restructure the Smithsonian Business Ventures. We want to make sure that decisions are not only driven by profit but also by the mission.”

“Historically, architects expressed judicial power by building massive neoclassical temples decorated with inspirational quotations and noble statuary. The results were often fortresses that intimidated the innocent and the guilty alike. By contrast, Rafael Vinoly imaginatively mixes dignity and welcome, even in a two-block-long, nine-story structure that leaps over a side street.”

“It is a truism of feminist history that women have been regarded primarily as body, passive, fertile body, as essential to human survival as earth.” But “why does a female artist need to use flesh in the first place? The feminist art historian can no more ask these questions than she can ask why most women’s art is no good.”

A stock analysts has “lowered his estimate for auction sales at Sotheby’s to $5.02 billion, from $5.4 billion previously. He cut his earnings estimate for this year to $2.50 a share, from $3.09.”

“Shaun Greenhalgh, an Englishman whose furtive career has been unfolding in courtrooms, newspapers and museums for the last three months, may well be the most versatile art forger in history.”