Category: visual

The Basel Miami Beach art fair was fun, writes Peter Schjeldahl; it is an example of the fairism that at the core of the current art market. But “one day, perhaps soon, someone in a convivial group of money guys at a bar will say, ‘I just got back from [name of art fair]. It was fantastic!’ Another will drawl, ‘You still into that?’ In the ensuing embarrassed silence, the bubble won’t burst; it will vanish.”

“As often happens in the natural cycle of the art world, the photographer’s work has found new resonance among today’s artists, who are looking back at the 1960s and ’70s with fresh eyes and combining the past and present in inventive ways.”

Is France’s art market failing? Perhaps. “France has announced a e100m ($120m) plan to support French artists and boost the market for contemporary art in the country.”

“The global face of architecture became more real than ever in 2006 as star architects from Europe, Asia and the nation’s coasts deposited dazzling buildings in New York and throughout the Midwest. Yet even as globalism grew, local design events in Chicago commanded international attention while the city’s rising design stars made their presence felt far beyond Chicago’s borders.”

Artists aren’t necessarily the best preservers/restorers of their own work. “Many a travesty has been caused by artists restoring their own paintings where not only the repair of the object is haphazardly carried out, but enthusiastic updating is quite commonly practised, much to the detriment of the object.”

“Five days after being criticised for poor management, the Ulster Museum in Belfast has received its largest ever grant from the [UK’s] Heritage Lottery Fund. Last week the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster accused the museum’s officials of ‘profound deficiencies in custodianship’ and found 90 per cent of the museum’s collection was stored out of public view. But yesterday £4,527,000 was handed over to rejuvenate one of Northern Ireland’s best-known landmarks.”

Portraiture is hot all across the art world right now,and London seems to be its unofficial center. “Every day, it seems, you can go to a different [London] museum and see another portrait show as enthralling as the one you saw the day before. The upshot: This has turned into what many seasoned cultural consumers describe as the greatest year in memory for art exhibits.”

“When a young Turkish artist named Serkan Ozkaya set out recently to practice his skills as a copyist — a scrivener, as he says — his goals were a little less ambitious than channeling Cervantes. He simply wanted to draw and see printed a faithful copy of all the type and pictures planned for a broadsheet page of this newspaper: this very page you are reading right now, which shows his version of the page you are reading right now, which shows his version of his version of the page you are reading right now, which. . . . Do not be alarmed: There has been no break in the space-time-newsprint continuum.”

The Guggenheim operated two locations in Manhattan for a while, so why not the Whitney? That appears to be the plan, with the museum deciding to build downtown. “While acknowledging that the cost of operating two sites would be substantial, Mr. Weinberg said the possibility of selling the 1966 Marcel Breuer building at Madison Avenue and East 75th Street was not on the table, at least for now.”

A design competition produced seven ideas. The winner? “A plan to revitalize the eastern end of downtown L.A. by building atop railroad tracks and freeways while filling the concrete-trapped Los Angeles River into a center for tourists and parkland. Honorable mentions went to the Office of Mobile Design and the team of Xefirotarch and Imaginary Forces, for visions involving bioengineered buildings made of living plant matter.”