Category: visual

“Opponents of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s plans for a $195 million expansion designed by Frank Gehry are taking their fight to the Ontario Municipal Board. Five or six appeals have been filed, all asking the OMB to overturn the decision of Toronto City Council to approve the gallery’s so-called transformation… [T]he dissidents claim the Gehry project would ruin Grange Park and destroy their neighbourhood.” At issue is a 15-year-old pledge by the AGO that it would never again expand on the Grange Park site, a promise which paved the way for neighborhood approval of an earlier expansion.

We depend on computers to analyze many things. Why not art? Researchers have “digitally scanned artworks into a computer, and then used image-processing techniques to create statistics describing the pen and brush strokes. Like a connoisseur – a blend of Bernard Berenson and HAL – the computer analysis detected subtle differences in these strokes that might help distinguish an artist from an imitator.”

The Guggenheim has canceled a major Cezanne show, due to open in Februarybecause it says it was unable to secure loans for some of the work. The show, Cézanne: The Dawn of Modern Art, explores the painter’s impact on artists like Matisse, Picasso and Braque. It is currently on tour in Europe.

Why does Nicholas Grimshaw have a chance at turning around the fortunes of London’s Royal Academy? “He brings more than enthusiasm. As a respected architect, best known here for designing the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo Station, Mr. Grimshaw is already more of a public figure than his three predecessors. Further, unlike the artists who make up most of the academy, he knows how to run a business, in his case a 100-member firm with offices in London, New York and Melbourne, Australia. There is also a vacuum waiting to be filled.”

Fifteen years ago a 7000-pound bronze charging bull mysteriously appeared on Wall Street outside the New York Stock Exchange. Now the artist who made it wants to sell, and bidding begins at $5 million. The sculpture is much beloved on the street and the artist insists “that any deal would require the buyer to donate the landmark sculpture to New York City, with the new owner’s name inscribed on a plaque to be placed next to it. The buyer would be allowed a tax deduction.”

Chinese art has been a hot sell this year, with millions racked up at recent auctions. “But does all this mean that the new rich of mainland China are about to take the international art market by storm and that Sotheby’s and Christie’s will soon be holding sales in Beijing and Shanghai? The reality, as with most things in this vast, complex nation, is much more complicated..”

“Germany renewed its demand last night for the return from Moscow of a priceless Rubens oil painting that mysteriously vanished during the second world war. The Russian businessman who is refusing to give it back was threatened with legal action.”

Norman Foster’s latest project opens. “The Sage Gateshead, a £70m performing arts centre on the banks of the Tyne, opened yesterday. Its three music venues are shrouded by a vast and billowing steel-and-glass roof that resembles either a bank of low-lying cumulus clouds hugging the river, or the gun-blisters of a second world war RAF bomber.”

Norman Foster has had a great couple of years. Through a series of high profile public buildings, he has altered Britain’slandscape. Here’s a gallery…