Category: visual

“The idea that every hacker is an artist and every artist is a hacker isn’t groundbreaking — recent gallery and museum shows have focused on the link between art and coding — but a new book by programmer Paul Graham gives the concept a fresh twist by advising hackers to improve their skills by borrowing creative techniques from other artists… Graham slams the artistic conceit that all art is good and taste is purely subjective, pointing out that if you aren’t willing to say that some creations aren’t beautiful then you’ll never develop the aesthetic muscles necessary to define and develop good work.”

Britain’s museums are a big success both in terms of the quality of their collections and with the audiences that throng to see them, writes Nicholas Serota. “But the museum economy itself is near breaking point. The success of free entry has placed ever greater demands on resources – at Tate Modern we have even found a sponsor for lavatory paper. With art prices reaching astronomical levels, we are having difficulty in renewing the collections that are at the heart of what we do.”

“Little more than a year after the Whitney Museum of American Art scrapped its plans for a $200 million expansion designed by the Rotterdam architect Rem Koolhaas, its board has started the process all over again. A building committee has been interviewing other architects, including the Italian Renzo Piano, who is considered the favorite, people in architectural circles said.”

This year’s shortlist for the Turner Prize has been announced. “The four artists on the shortlist are Kutlug Ataman, Jeremy Deller, Langlands and Bell and Yinka Shonibare. The installation of video and photos from Afghanistan by Langlands and Bell is called The House of Osama Bin Laden.”

“The four artists shortlisted for this year’s Turner prize include a pair of sculptors exploring the relationships between people and architecture, an artist who uses his west African heritage to play with cultural identity and an artist best known for his re-enactments of battles which became turning points in British history.”

More praise for Rem Koolhaas’ new public library in Seattle. Paul Goldberger calls it “the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating. Koolhaas has always been a better architect than social critic, and the building conveys a sense of the possibility, even the urgency, of public space in the center of a city. The design is not so much a rejection of traditional monumentality as a reinterpretation of it, and it celebrates the culture of the book as passionately, in its way, as does the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. The Seattle building is thrilling from top to bottom.”

A New York judge has dismissed a suit by neighbors of the Metropolitan Musem to block the museum from expanding. The judge said “she was dismissing the group’s petition objecting to a 300,000-square-foot expansion, partly because some claims were made after a statute of limitations had expired and partly because the Met had already scaled back its plans.”

Last week’s art auctions in New York took in $186 million and set numerous records. “The record price that resonated most was for a joke painting by Canadian artist Richard Prince, which was bought by a young American hedge-fund manager for $747,000, four times its estimate. On a stark grey canvas, the artist has painted the words from a cracker joke: “I never had a penny to my name. So I changed my name.” With prices like this, contemporary art cannot be a joke – surely.”

Denver is getting a new contemporary art center. “The 15,000-square-foot art center is expected to open in late 2005 or early 2006 as part of Belmar, a $750 million retail, office and residential development. This facility, modeled after leading contemporary spaces such as P.S. 1 in New York City, will serve as a kind of artistic research center with world-class exhibitions, scholarly publications and regular symposiums. The Lab finally gives the Denver art scene what it has desperately needed – a flexible, high-level alternative art space to complement the Denver Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver.”