Category: visual

Robert Smithson’s legendary “Spiral Jetty” is once again visible just off the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. As the world’s most prominent example of the Earth Art movement, the piece is attracting visitors from around the world. “It is, however, strangely changed. Three decades of immersion have coated the dark rock with sparkling salt crystals, so the Jetty and its surroundings now resemble a landscape from the frozen north. The rich, rusty waters coloured by moulting shrimp and algae have now turned pale pink. All of this poses a neat conservation dilemma for the Dia Centre for the Arts, to which the Spiral Jetty was donated in 1999.”

“An appraisal has placed the value of the Barnes Foundation’s ‘non-gallery assets’ of artwork and real estate below the $50 million that may be needed to keep the struggling institution viable” in its current home.” A Judge had ordered the appraisal as he considers the Barnes’ desire to break its founder’s trust and move into downtown Philadelphia.

Magazine publisher Conde Nast, known for its consumer magazines, wants to get into the art magazine business. The company has “developed a prototype of a luxe and glossy fine arts magazine that he hopes to begin publishing in 2006.” The magazine is designed “to bring visual art, or at least a magazine about it, to the masses. The magazine has no name yet, no business plan and no publication schedule. It does, however, have an editor.”

This year’s Site Santa Fe Biennial is notable for its focus on art that is, well, decidedly ugly or disturbing. “The intent is to make a case that what is grotesque can also be beautiful, if viewed from the proper perspective. There’s nothing really new or even strange about that concept. The grotesque is just a fuzzy catchall for what might also be called anticlassicism. It encompasses distortions of the body, hopped-up colors, cartooning, horror, the gothic, camp, burlesque — all forms of envelope-pushing, convention-busting expressionism, with its implicit strain of dark comedy. It has been around forever.”

“In terms of museums, the only thing better than an outstanding exhibition is an outstanding exhibition with a worthy opponent, a second show that energetically counters and contradicts its position. Such is the fruitful overlap, in time if not in space, achieved by ‘Austria West: New Alpine Architecture,’ at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan, and ‘Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio: Community Architecture,’ at the National Building Museum in Washington. These shows reflect very different worlds, literally and philosophically, and are also housed in buildings that enrich their individual focus while accenting their differences.”

Even as Chicago struggles to preserve the reputation of its international art fair, Art Chicago, the stage is being set for a major “art war” in the Second City. As things stand now, Chicago will see not one, not two, but three major art fairs next summer, all within weeks of each other, and all insisting that they are the real Chicago art fair. A battle for top exhibitors and the high-rolling collectors they attract is already raging.

For years, London’s South Bank Arts Centre has struggled with a plague of skateboarders. But the complex’s latest management team has taken a new approach, trying to improve relations between the arts community and the skaters. Now, five “skatable sculptures” have been commissioned for the centre’s undercroft, in the hope that skaters will embrace the idea of a designated area for their display of skills.

A quarry operation in the North Yorkshire section of England is threatening the survival of several 5000-year-old “vast dumbbell-shaped earthen hedges” which archaeologists say are some of the most significant manmade constructions in the UK. More than 600 protests have been filed with the local planning commission.

“Guerrilla artist Banksy has covertly cemented a 20-foot (6-metre) satirical statue protesting at the British legal system into a central London square. Banksy, best-known for sneaking his work into the Tate, has depicted the figure of justice as a prostitute with leather boots and a thong… The location, an ancient green just outside the City of London, was chosen because it was the site of Banksy’s last arrest.”

Is there anything in common about the architecture of the announced list of potential al Qaeda building targets? “As the list of targets revealed Sunday by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge demonstrates — again — when it comes to the grisly business of blowing up buildings, these media-savvy terrorists clearly prefer a certain kind of target: Big. Global. American.”