Category: visual

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Italian culture ministry officials have agreed to meet to discuss objects in the New York museum’s collection that Italy says were looted.

Architects Richard Meier and David M. Childs have unveiled a master plan for four buildings, a park and an ice rink on part of an enormous nine-acre site near the United Nations. “They say the designs, filed with the city last week as part of an environmental assessment statement, will restore a sense of the Manhattan grid to the edge of the East River. The project is part of a four-parcel property between 35th and 41st Streets that Sheldon H. Solow, the developer, bought from Con Edison for $630 million in a deal approved last year.”

Larry Gagosian, the Manhattan dealer, fought off five aggressive bidders and paid $23.8 million at Sotheby’s for David Smith’s “CUBI XXVIII” (1965), the last of the artist’s renowned Cubi series. “The reason for the high price was plain to lovers of contemporary art: this elegantly composed melding of boxes and columns may be the last example of the series to come on the market for some time. Most of the others are in museums or collections where they will stay for generations. So this last-chance opportunity was irresistible, which is why the sculpture’s final price was nearly double its high estimate, $12 million.”

“For years, Zaha Hadid’s architecture was problematic. Her ideas were stunning, particularly when ex-pressed as large paintings full of what seemed like exploding buildings, sharp angles and jagged planes, but many found it hard to believe that they could ever be built. Today, however, she seems omnipresent.”

The Chinese government is spending 1.5 billion Yuan ($185 million) to restore the Forbidden City over the next 15 years.” Work has already started, and scaffolding now covers dozens of buildings in the complex. Projects along the central axis are scheduled for completion by 2008, in time for the Olympic Games in Beijing.” The restoration often takes the form of replacement of worn materials.

The Getty Museum has returned three artworks to Italy. “Among the pieces returned is a 2,300-year-old Greek vase, known as a krater, painted by Asteas. A bronze Etruscan candelabrum and stone inscription were also returned. The Italian government had filed a claim with Los Angeles legal authorities. The museum is hoping to build goodwill with the Italians ahead of further lawsuits involving 42 pieces of art in the collection of the Getty museum.”

If you’ve noticed that museums and galleries seem to be getting louder in recent years, you’re not alone. Sound bleeding from those headphone-equipped self-guided tours mingles with the shrieks of schoolchildren and leaves some art lovers decidedly irritated. “It’s certainly become increasingly difficult to tour a gallery or museum without being assailed by extraneous sound, and virtually impossible to look at a painting or sculpture in any sort of contemplative tranquillity. Galleries and museums used to be regarded as temples of art, to be approached with a certain reverence – glass cases, do not touch. Now it’s all lights up, hands-on and enjoy.”

Aboriginal art has become a booming industry in Australia, despite the inherent complications of marketing and trading in a product manufactured by artists whose culture does not accept Western ideas of ownership. But the craze seems to be beginning to die down, and “amid the frenzied buying and selling, with important Aboriginal art objects changing hands as often as several times a year, there is still a pervasive anxiety that Aboriginal art might be a con.”

“The ordinary has become the universal currency of contemporary art… Contemporary British culture fetishises the ordinary, whether it’s Tracey Emin or Coronation Street, Reality TV and its stream of pleb-celebs, or the slightly condescending, awkward glory of Mike Leigh, Alan Bennett and Martin Parr… The odd thing is that while other arts increasingly revel in everydayness, architecture, the art that touches our lives in the most practical and everyday ways, remains in thrall to the gravitational pull of the ‘icon’.”

“An oil painting by Mark Rothko has set a new world record of $22.4m for any post-war work sold at auction. The work, entitled Homage to Matisse, was sold at Christie’s post-war and contemporary art sale in New York on Tuesday evening. New records were also set for Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon and several other artists. Lichtenstein’s In the Car sold for $16.2m, while a Willem de Kooning untitled work from 1977, sold for $10.66m, far above the high estimate of $6m. The sale took a total of $157.4m, exceeding the pre-sale high-end estimate of $145m, with only four of the 70 lots on offer failing to sell.”