Category: visual

Italy’s most notorious art vandal has struck again. “Piero Cannata, who earned worldwide notoriety by taking a hammer to Michelangelo’s David, confessed to local newspapers in Tuscany that he had struck again in the very centre of Florence. It was discovered that somebody had sprayed a thick black “x” on a plaque, set into the paving of Piazza della Signoria, commemorating the burning to death of the 15th-century preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola.”

“British Council officials, who will organise the UK exhibit at the Biennale, have triggered a row between architects by announcing plans to omit or, as they put it, “leave London behind” in next year’s display. Instead they are inviting curators to submit proposals for the British pavilion that focus exclusively on the regions. London’s best hope for attention is to be featured as part of the biennale’s wider theme, the Meta City.”

Sir Timothy Clifford has been director of the Scottish Museums for 21 years. He’s been called one of the world’s great connoisseurs, and has pulled off innumerable art coups. As he “steps down from his position as director general of the National Galleries of Scotland he has revealed how he relied on subterfuge to pull off some of the most ambitious coups in the international art world.”

The new Scottish Parliament building has won this year’s Stirling Prize for architecture. “The project, designed by the Catalan architect Enric Miralles, who died aged 45 before the parliament could be completed, has been a major embarrassment to the politicians and civil servants who presided over skyrocketing costs that took the price from an initial estimate of £50 million, to a final figure of £431m.”

“The fact that no traces remain of any active black British artist in the 19th century is surprising, given that there were more black people here than is commonly thought. We don’t know how many exactly, because ethnic origin was not recorded in the first in-depth national census of 1841, but it’s clear that our visibility exceeded our numbers (not least because artists welcomed the opportunity black figures provided for contrast, and to use neglected parts of the palette).”

Jed Perl has a new book out about art in New York between the 1940s and 70s. “Through the book’s pages pour artists, critics, dealers, museum curators, museum-goers and the views Perl has intently constructed of them, drawing on archival materials, interviews and the old books and art catalogs he’s collected over the years. Most important, perhaps, are his own responses to art, people and institutions. The book — its full title is “New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century” — is essentially a book of ideas, a critic’s analytical meditation on how and why he thinks cultural history evolved as it did.”

Two previously-unseen paintings by Leonardo have gone on show in Italy. “One is an alternative version of Da Vinci’s famous painting known as Virgin of the Rocks, with the infant Jesus and the infant John the Baptist. The other shows Mary Magdalene, thought to have been completed by Leonardo with the help of one of his pupils about 1515, shortly before his death.”

“Facing an acute art shortage, the Chinese government plans to construct 1,000 new museums by 2015, including 32 in Beijing in time for the 2008 Olympics and 100 in Shanghai before the opening of the 2010 World’s Fair, according to reports in China’s government-controlled media. The People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has so far targeted only Chinese art. Analysts say the army’s strategy over the next five years is to dip further into China’s foreign-currency reserves – about $711 billion, the second biggest after Japan, and growing – to buy and barrack celebrated Western masterpieces, often at prices above their auction-market value.”

“The Getty case is so important that it will represent a milestone and completely change relations within the art world,” says Anna Maria Reggiani, archaeology director at the Italian Culture Ministry.

“Going back in time, architecturally, was the overriding concept behind the $32 million restoration and modernization of Baltimore’s Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was built starting in 1806 and dedicated in 1821. It was the reason the 1940s-era stained-glass windows were removed. It was the impetus for re-creating 24 skylights in the dome – to ‘restore the light’ in the cathedral as Latrobe meant for it to be seen. But what happens if restorers discover works of art or other artifacts that are so significant and so well preserved that it would be a shame to peel them away?”