Category: visual

A physicist has used computer pattern analysis to identify consistent patterns in the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock. He’s “determined that half a dozen small paintings recently discovered and claimed by their owner to be original Pollocks do not exhibit the same patterns.”

Moscow has been tearing down much of its Soviet-era architecture. But now “Moscow is seeing a rash of cool industrial conversions that draw inspiration from projects like London’s Tate Modern. It has yet to turn the tide of destruction but embattled preservationists believe it’s a sign of hope for the future:”

“A gold coin dating to Anglo-Saxon times has been bought by the British Museum for more than £350,000. The deal by the central London museum makes it the most expensive British coin ever purchased… When the owner put it up for sale last year, the Government put a temporary export ban in place hoping it would be saved for the nation. The National Heritage Memorial Fund provided £225,000 of the £357,832 total cost.”

That’s what Los Angeles has become, claims Christopher Knight: “Los Angeles has emerged as America’s most interesting and exciting production center for new art. Meanwhile, New York has consolidated its position as art’s primary consumption center. What this dichotomy means for art museums is significant. New York’s museums are ruled by patterns of consumption. Because of it, their contemporary art programming is a shambles — mostly safe, conservative, star-driven, geared toward cultural tourists, oriented toward the bottom line. It’s the art equivalent of popular entertainment, with the museum as Hollywood movie studio. By contrast the most consistently vivifying contemporary art programming will be found in LA, which reflects the city’s prominence as a production center.”

The Hermitage Museum says it will complete a $100 million expansion within three years. The new complex “is a state-of- the-art museum space that will allow us to experiment with different methods of exhibiting art works.”

Officials in a Belgian town have banned an artwork depicting Saddam Hussein. “The piece, called Saddam Hussein Shark, shows the handcuffed ex-Iraqi ruler suspended in liquid and wearing nothing more than underpants. The mayor of Middlekerke, Michel Landuyt, said the work could ‘shock people’, including Muslims.”

“An amateur caver has discovered prehistoric human remains and cave art in western France believed to date back 27,000 years, several thousand years older than the world-famous paintings at Lascaux.”

An Austrian publisher, Hubertus Czermin, is tryin to mount a public campaign to save a Gustav Klimt painting that was recently awarded to the family of a victim of the Nazis. He’s urging “5 million Austrians – 60% of the population – to each donate €20 (about £14) to raise the estimated €100m needed to buy back the work.”

The Dutch government will return more than 200 paintings to the family of a Jewish art dealer. The paintings were looted by Nazis in World War II. “The paintings, by Rubens, Rembrandt, Goya and other well-known painters, are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. They will be returned to the family of Jacques Goudstikker, a major pre-war art collector who fled the Netherlands shortly before the German invasion in May 1940.”

Though art fairs like Frieze and Art Basel Miami are doing well, there is mounting evidence that many traditional art fairs are struggling to survive…