Category: visual

“A large chunk of the art world seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid, too. Megacollectors suppose they can enter art history by spending astronomical amounts. They’re P.T. Barnums, showmen and -women who have become part of the show. Art magazines, once left on coffee tables, are fat enough to be coffee tables. Ten years ago this month, Artforum had 124 pages. This month, it has more than that many pages of ads, and 412 pages overall.”

The LA County Museum director was in New York last week and was asked if he might succeed Philippe de Montebello as director. “Why would I leave? This is the most exciting project going on. The Met has one of the most amazing collections on Earth, but it was set up with a Eurocentric eighteenth-century model.”

“The dealer who paid $35 per square foot for a ground-floor space on a prime block three years ago will now pay $80 to $100. Major dealers who own their own galleries, like Paula Cooper, Matthew Marks, and Barbara Gladstone, are insulated. But the number of art galleries this will affect could be in the hundreds: There are now 360 galleries in Chelsea, up from 124 eight years ago.”

The Indian art world has more than changed. It has exploded. Prices have increased tenfold since 2002. In the last two years alone, they have nearly doubled.

Intruders, apparently drunk, broke into the Musée d’Orsay in Paris early Sunday and punched a hole in a renowned work by the Impressionist master Claude Monet, “Le Pont d’Argenteuil.”

Christie’s in London has “unlawfully sent a £3m Rubens masterpiece to America, in breach of UK export regulations. In an unprecedented move, Culture Minister Margaret Hodge has deferred an export licence for The Hunt of Meleager and Atalanta (above), despite the fact that the painting is already in New York. UK buyers are now being offered an opportunity to match the price.”

“A museum built on a rock plateau in Germany won Britain’s most prestigious architecture prize yesterday. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects, the building captured ‘the soul of the German imagination’, said judges of the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Stirling Prize. The Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, which houses the original text of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, saw off competition from five other finalists.”

“A controversial auction of art owned by Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co. in South Los Angeles set record prices at Swann Auction Galleries in New York… The auction Thursday had infuriated local art historians who wanted the collection to remain in Southern California… Of the 94 paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings on offer, 88 were sold for a total of $1,541,470.”

“At about 7 last night, ‘The Encampment,’ an installation of 100 19th-century-style tents by the Canadian artist Thom Sokoloski, was to open in an empty field at the southern tip of New York’s Roosevelt Island. A year in the making, the tents represent the patients who once lived in the island’s smallpox hospital, the remains of which loom nearby… But first, it had to be finished.”

How could a huge baroque palace more than half as big again as Versailles (80,000 as against 51,210 sq. m) simply get ­forgotten?