Category: visual

Last week, a receptionist at a small New York gallery unlocked the front door for two men she thought were telephone repairmen. Minutes later, the men walked out of the gallery with a valuable painting by the 19th-century artist Théodore Chassériau hidden under a jacket. It’s not exactly a common occurrence, but the city’s gallery owners say the thieves’ modus operandi is familiar, and very hard to combat.

Buy one of artist Stephen Rumney’s works and you get the image, a virtual image and a web address. His ‘online art installations form part of his Domain Art exhibition. As well as the online image, the buyer becomes the legal owner of its integrated website address and an art gallery installation of the image.”

How did the giant stones get moved to Stonehenge? A new theory suggests levers. “They have tested his ‘stone-rowing’ theory which involves a 45-tonne stone being levered on a track of logs. It’s akin to rowing a boat, weights can be picked up with levers using body mass and balance.”

This year’s Art Basel Miami Beach opens, bigger than ever. More galleries, more artists, more media, more collectors and even more celebrities are participating in the fair than ever before — creating an energy unlike any other art fair in America.”

Chicago’s Field Museum nets $17 million auctioning some of its art. “Included in the sale were 31 paintings of American Indians and bison by artist and adventurer George Catlin, representing the bulk of the Field’s Catlin collection, which the museum has owned since shortly after it was founded in 1893. The decision this fall to auction the Catlins, which the artist is thought to have painted during his travels in the American frontier in the 1830s, generated controversy within the museum and on the Field’s board of trustees, but museum officials said the sale was part of a strategy to focus its holdings on scientific materials and to expand its collections.”

New records for the sale of Russian art have been set in London this week at auctions, underscoring the rebound in Russia’s economic fortunes and its boost to the British capital’s position as destination of choice for affluent consumers from the east.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could wave your hand and the ugliest building in town would go away? Of course ugly is subjective, as John King admits, but there are some basic rules about what defines an offensive piece of architecture…

This week in London, the largest sales of Russian paintings were up for bid. And who’s buying? Russians. “So-called ‘New Russians’ have accumulated vast fortunes, helped by rising prices for oil and other raw materials, and have spent some of that wealth on buying works by artists they were taught in school to revere.”

“Underneath a German bus terminal, archaeologists have found the remains of a 2,000-year-old Roman roadside rest stop that included a chariot service station, gourmet restaurant and hotel with central heating. The building complex indicates that citizens of the Roman Empire traveled in relative comfort.”