Category: visual

“New media. Digital art. Interactive installation. No matter what ungainly term you choose, the field of artists whose work falls outside the traditional realms of photography, film, and video is growing. In recognition of that fact, the Museum of Modern Art announced yesterday the creation of a new Department of Media, to be run by a curator from the department formerly known as Film and Media, Klaus Biesenbach.”

So this is the notorious Turner Prize, asks Rachel Campbell-Johnston? “It is supposed to showcase all that is most exciting on the forthcoming scene. But this year’s show looks set to stir little but intense public apathy.”

This year’s Turner Prize finalists are up. So “who should win anyway? Who is making the best art, and what does that mean nowadays?”

A new generation of supersized galleries is changing New York’s Chelsea. “The model of the old garage warehouse is over. There’s a real pressure on the galleries to update their space. Museums are on a building boom, so both they and collectors expect more from gallery architecture. Galleries have to stay current because their clients are moving ahead. It’s less about program and more about the character of the space.”

“Art, wherever it is made, no longer subscribes to a single dominant trend with a few rambunctious alternatives jostling for supremacy. Art is eclectic — and today we take that eclecticism for granted. Look around. The extreme breadth of artistic diversity is so familiar and so routine as to border on invisibility.”

Saatchi, one of the world’s most ostentatious art collectors, says he looks at more art than anyone else. “If you look enough – and I’ve been doing it for a long, long time – you get a sense of what suits you. That doesn’t mean that I don’t make tremendous mistakes all the time, walking straight past something that I discover a year or two later is terrific.”

It’s up, and you can see picture here. “Tomma Abts, Phil Collins, Mark Titchner and Rebecca Warren are competing for the accolade, given to outstanding projects by UK artists aged under 50.”

“Of contemporary art today, two things, and maybe only two things, can be said for sure. First, there is more of it — made in more styles and materials, by more artists who live, work and have exhibitions in more places — than ever before. Second, it doesn’t fit into neat categories or hierarchies.”

You would think that it would be a great honor to be selected as a judge in Britain’s notorious Turner Prize competition. But for Lynn Barber, who has spent the last year viewing submissions for the Turner, the experience has been terribly depressing. “There is so much bad work around, so much that is derivative, half-baked or banal, you can’t believe that galleries would show it. I think what happened is that the huge success of the YBAs in the Nineties has created a peculiar post-boom glut whereby there are now more galleries looking for young artists than worthwhile artists to fill them.”

“Beginning tomorrow, after charging guests for 24 years – currently, it’s $10 for adults – the Baltimore Museum of Art and Walters Art Museum go free, and both have blowouts planned to celebrate the move…”