Category: visual

“A pair of rare multimillion-dollar paintings by the Russian-born artist Wassily Kandinsky were reunited Wednesday at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts after being separated in a crude artistic surgery more than 70 years ago in Munich, Germany. The Minneapolis museum has owned one of the colorful abstractions since 1967, but the other, which was originally painted on the back of the Minneapolis image, fell through the cracks of Europe’s war-torn history and was all but forgotten for nearly a century. Preserved by the family of a Kandinsky friend, the second painting recently resurfaced in Munich and is now on loan to the Minneapolis museum.”

War has inspired countless powerful works of art over the centuries, but most of it has been created by outside observers rather than by those who actually experience the horror of battle and the triumph of victory. In recent years, however, more and more veterans have been creating artworks to express their lingering feelings about the conflicts in which they were involved, and the results, as shown at a Chicago museum devoted to vet art, are deeply personal and overtly engaging.

When Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center closed for a full year in order to renovate and expand, it launched “Walker Without Walls”, a series of events and installations intended to keep the museum’s name on everyone’s lips. The most constantly visible example of the museum’s efforts has been a large billboard on one of the city’s main downtown streets, which has featured a new specially created artwork by a different artist each month. But what is the public actually getting out of the billboard, which offers no explanation of what it is or why it’s there? One passer-by mistook the latest billboard for a beer ad – “Red Stripe, I think. Definitely not Budweiser” – and another thinks she sees “dried-up death on one side.”

An action-filled painting representing the pinnacle of 17th-century Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel’s career sold at auction in the UK this week for £3.7 million. The Kermesse of St George depicts the drunken revelry of a village feast day, and has been out of the public eye since 1930, when it was bought by a Belgian family. The new buyer has not been revealed.

The San Diego Museum of Art is returning a painting believed to have been stolen from a Mexican church four years ago. “The trafficking of stolen artworks concerns all of us – museums, scholars, and the public at large. This is an example of how the museum and trustees really want to do the right thing.”

“A collection of pre-Islamic wooden idols chopped up by the Taliban in 2001 in their drive for a pure Muslim state is back on display in Afghanistan after being restored in a project financed by the Austrian government. The near life-sized idols, some bearing at least a passing resemblance to the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island, went on display this week at the Kabul Museum, which was badly ravaged in Afghanistan’s civil war and Taliban rule until 2001.”

“The centerpiece of Norway’s famed Vigeland sculpture park, the Monolith, may have suffered permanent damage after the lowest section was spray-painted black. A crew from a maintenance company removed the black paint on Tuesday and the Vigeland Museum is still not sure how much the incident will cost them.”

About $2 million worth of art was found. “The art, which had been reported stolen on Oct. 13, included works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko and others. It belonged to an out-of-state family that had stored the items in the St. Louis area, authorities said.”

Residents of the island of Crete are banding together hoping to buy a painting by El Greco that is up for auction. “He is the most important person Crete has ever produced. It upsets us that … so many think he is from Spain.”

The Louvre is going to open an outpost at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2006. “The two museums have been in discussions since spring and expect to sign an agreement next month. Under the terms of the collaboration, the French museum is to lend hundreds of its works to the High Museum for an indefinite period in return for an undisclosed sum, estimated at $10 million for the first three years.”