Category: visual

“It can be hard to walk into a freshly decorated house without feeling preemptively sad at the decay impatiently waiting to begin: how soon the walls will crack, the white cupboards will yellow, and the carpets stain. The ruins of the Ancient World offer a mocking lesson for anyone waiting for builders to finish their work.”

San Francisco is a beautiful city. And yet, it has more than its share of ugly buildings. “Architecturally speaking, San Francisco has been like a beautiful, rich woman who has never developed an interest in cooking and serves TV dinners to her family, then occasionally—somewhat frantically—hires caterers whenever she has company for dinner. OK, it’s an imperfect analogy, but you get the idea.”

Boston’s new Institute of Contemporary Art will open Dec. 10, three months later than planned. “The museum postponed the slated Sept. 17 public opening with only weeks to go, citing small but significant construction problems. The $51 million building will be the first new art museum in Boston in nearly a hundred years.”

An art teacher has found and catalogued “almost every comic book panel later blown up and sold for megabucks by 1960s Op Art icon Roy Lichtenstein. So far, David Barsalou has about 140.” So what about the original artists? Are they owed anything?

“In a move that has cheered museum directors and art dealers and dismayed archaeologists, the State Department has agreed to delay a decision on a controversial request from China that the United States strictly limit imports of Chinese art and antiquities.”

“Wednesday night is buddy-up time in the art world. Artists who have cable make room on their couches for those who don’t. Unless held early in the evening, art openings aren’t happening on Wednesday nights. Nobody would come. The reason is ‘Project Runway,’ now in its third season on Bravo and the hands-down, coast-to-coast favorite of artists, curators, critics, dealers and collections. Ever since blogger Tyler Green (Modern Art Notes at on www.ArtsJournal.com) admitted his addiction to the show in September, everybody’s been coming out of the closet with his or her ‘Runway’ obsession.”

Is the sizzling hot art market cooling? CultureGrrl reads the tea leaves…

Steve Wynn was showing a group Picasso’s “Le Reve” when… “He raised his hand to show us something about the painting — and at that moment, his elbow crashed backwards right through the canvas. There was a terrible noise. Wynn stepped away from the painting, and there, smack in the middle of Marie-Therese Walter’s plump and allegedly-erotic forearm, was a black hole the size of a silver dollar – or, to be more exactly, the size of the tip of Steve Wynn’s elbow – with two three-inch long rips coming off it in either direction.”

“Casino mogul Steve Wynn will keep and restore a Pablo Picasso painting that he accidentally damaged shortly after he had agreed to sell it for a record $139 million.”

“Berlin’s famed Museum Island complex moves a big step closer to recovering its former glory this week when the Bode Museum, home to the city’s sculpture collection, reopens after six years of restoration. The domed building, which juts out into the Spree River in the heart of former East Berlin, is the second of the five Neoclassical museums to get a full makeover as part of a government-funded $1.5-billion overhaul.”