Category: visual

“Spanish art collector Baroness Carmen Thyssen threatened yesterday to chain herself to a tree on Madrid’s most emblematic street, the Paseo del Prado, to stop proposed building works outside a museum of valuable paintings donated by her family. The baroness said a redesign of the street, planned to keep traffic away from the nearby Prado museum, would leave her own museum choking in exhaust fumes.”

One of Sweden’s more prominent museums has requested a special government grant of $6.6 million to purchase 20th century works exclusively by female artists. Officials at Moderna Museet say that the grant would help it “redress the gender imbalance in its collection.” But are such “positive discrimination” plans really serving the best interest of art?

Increasingly, the international debate over the ownership of antiquities which may once have been procured in less than honest fashion seems to be swinging around to a “give everything back if they ask for it” consensus. But the British Museum’s steadfast refusal to hand over the Elgin Marbles that once belonged to Greece has stood out as a notable example of an institution claiming a higher right to an artifact. “In many instances, national treasures are better off outside their countries of origin – better cared for, receiving more attention, and more accessible… It is one of the paradoxes of culture that museums confer as much as acknowledge beauty.”

“Since the start of this month, police and propaganda officials have launched their biggest crackdown on Beijing’s counterculture hothouse – Dashanzi art district – where at least three galleries have been ordered to remove politically sensitive works.”

A leading Russian art expert says that “corruption and criminality in the Russian art market has reached alarming levels.” He believes that “inexpensive works by little-known European painters were being reworked in Russia and then fraudulently marketed as Russian paintings at much higher prices.”

It happened in February. “Initial press reports on the 1 February Hyams theft, from Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire, suggested that the losses were worth £30 million. More is now known about precisely what was taken, and their values, and it appears that the figure is closer to £80 million, although this remains an estimate.”

A prominent British pop artist is accusing the UK arts establishment of treating young artists like prostitutes and strippers, and of ripping off up-and-comers who don’t know any better. “When I went into the art world, I didn’t have any knowledge of the little systems, all of the details of the interaction between you and the dealer. I just thought, if you make great art, you can put it anywhere, the environment is irrelevant. But it’s not about that, it’s about the psychological exchange. The art world is really exactly the same as the sex industry: you have to be completely on guard, you will get shafted, f****d over left, right and centre. And you will also meet charming, wonderful people like a rainbow at the end of the day.”

Officials in New York have returned the disembodied head of Dionysus, god of wine and revelry, to Italy, 23 years after the deity was rudely dismembered by thieves. (Okay, it was actually a statue of Dionysus.) Following its severing, the head “was acquired sometime before 1990 by a Japanese museum that went out of business several years afterward…
The head then appeared in the Christie’s catalog,” and was withdrawn when the auction house received information that it might be stolen goods. The NYPD got involved, and eventually linked the head to a list of missing Roman antiquities.

“In the auction business, Vincent van Gogh is the magical name. With fewer than a dozen of his portraits in private hands, the two significant ones to have sold in the last 16 years achieved spectacular prices: $71.5 million for Self-Portrait Without Beard in 1998 and $82.5 million for Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990, the record for van Gogh at auction. So there is great anticipation about what L’Arlésienne, Madame Ginoux will bring on May 2, in the Impressionist and Modern Art sale at Christie’s New York.”

Actor Brad Pitt is frustrated by the slowness in rebuilding New Orleans, so he’s sponsoring an “environmentally-friendly” design competition. “Our goal is to kick off the rebuilding effort. It’s certainly long overdue and I can only go from the reports that we get … that it’s behind, absolutely. People are frustrated. We could possibly build something that was better and took into account the historical traditions of the city and the voices of the people and turn this into some kind of good.”