Category: visual

“When the cardinals convene today in the Sistine Chapel, they will be listening not only for the voice of the Holy Spirit but for those of Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli and other titans of the Italian Renaissance, whose paintings and frescoes adorn its walls and ceilings. No place is richer in spiritual inspiration and admonition than this – from Botticelli’s Punishment of the Rebels to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, the most harrowing depiction of sin and damnation in Western art. The room has a vote.”

Before the middle of the last century, American art lived in the shadow of Europe. Now the Art Institute of Chicago is attempting to tell the story of American art in a more completely historical way. “In what may well be the first time in the history of the museum, American paintings, sculptures and decorative arts occupy a sequence of beautifully installed galleries that clearly and exclusively unfolds about 250 years of American art history.”

A billionaire businessman says he’s canceling plans to build a spectacular new museum of contemporary art outside of Paris because of his annoyance over red tape and official inertia. “François Pinault, owner of one of the finest private contemporary art collections in Europe, is now likely to put it on display in a magnificent 18th-century palace in Venice.”

Archaeologists have found a prehistoric village under Pompei. “Carbon dating shows that the finds are from prehistoric times, that is, from 3,500 years BC,” Leander Touati said. It was until now believed that Pompei was first inhabited during the Bronze Age. The group of archeologists – part of a larger international project – were mapping a Roman neighbourhood of Pompei when they made the discovery.”

Only a few years ago, the idea of artists gathering to paint from a model would have seemed impossibly old-fashioned and hokey – and if the model was female and nude, sexist to boot. Yet for nearly three years now, a number of artists – not students putting charcoal to paper for the first time, but successful artists with established styles and audiences of their own – have flocked to weekly invitation-only sessions. ‘There’s something kind of fun about doing something so geeky, so nerdy, so traditional. To do something so anti-conceptual and anti-Modernism feels really good, as if it were going to lead to helping you express things’.”

A scholar has “suggested that “Laocoön,” a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery – possibly by Michelangelo himself.”

“The history of modernist architecture is like a highway whose exits are abstract theories about what contemporary architecture should be. Instead of a home for architecture such as it knew when tradition ruled, each exit leads to a dead end. So the architect gets back on the highway to nowhere and heads for the next exit, and the next dead end. The result has been an extreme stylistic instability involving recurring discoveries of new modes of artistic dysfunction. You can’t make a city more beautiful on these terms.”

An artist is making an exhibition of pictures of him scratching the paint of cars with a key in Glasgow and London. “They should feel glad that they’ve been involved in the creative process. I pick the cars randomly. got the idea when my sister and brother-in-law’s cars were keyed. Is it jealousy that causes someone to key a car? Hatred? Revenge? There is a strong creative element in the keying of a car, it’s an emotive engagement.”

Architect Antoine Predock has been chosen to design the new Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg. “The $300-million museum aims to be the largest human-rights institution and education centre in the world. Scheduled to open in 2009 or 2010, the museum will be built at the historic Forks site in Winnipeg, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.”

In usually free-wheeling Venice California, a controversy has sprung up over plans to erect a headless nude sculpture. “In keeping with the community’s contrarian reputation, unexpected alliances have formed on both sides: Conservative church leaders have joined with staunch feminists in opposition; some old-guard activists have connected with ambitious developers to defend the torso.”