Category: visual

“An ambitious plan to recreate the Skylon, the glittering spaceship-like spearhead which once rose over London as a symbol of Britain’s postwar resurgence, has been put to the South Bank Centre. The structure, 88 metres (290 feet high) in internally lit aluminium-clad steel, would rise again near the Royal Festival Hall, upriver from the London Eye, only yards from where it stood as one of the two centrepieces of the Festival of Britain. The original Skylon, built in the last year of the postwar Labour government and immensely popular as a futuristic shape, was vengefully scrapped, cut in pieces and sold as ashtrays by an incoming Conservative administration.”

Tracey Emin worked with a school class of 8-year-olds to create a quilt. The school wants to sell it, but Emin says it’s not technically her artwork (thus making it less valuable). Nonetheless, she wants the school to give the quilt to her rather than sell it. And she’s angry over the request to sell: “As a result of this incident Tracey has since declined any further requests to work with schools or with young people.”

Jack Vettriano’s paintings are hugely popular in the UK, and are widely collected by ordinary folk and celebrity alike. So why does the art establishment dislike his pictures, and why don’t they hang in museums? “Vettriano’s work is not being suppressed; it is in every Fastframe shop you pass on the high street. Despite the legitimacy of the argument, I refuse to believe our curators should be bullied by public opinion. Fastframe and our national galleries should occupy different roles in society.”

The Russian government has ruled that a Rubens looted by the Nazis and now in Russia, should not be returned to Germany. “Its owners have included Frederick the Great, Joseph Goebbels’ lover, a Red Army soldier and finally, and most controversially, Moscow real estate tycoon Vladimir Logvinenko. The German authorities desperately want it back but Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office has ruled that Mr Logvinenko is the painting’s rightful owner and that he did not break any Russian law in acquiring it.”

“A handful of dust, gathered from the streets of New York in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, last night won the first £40,000 Artes Mundi prize for the Chinese artist Xu Bing.”

Tracey Emin is locked in a dispute with a school of eight-year-olds. “The Britart star, whose first experiment with bed linen was snapped up by Charles Saatchi for £150,000, is demanding the return of a blanket made with eight-year-olds as part of an art project after the school involved tried to auction it.”

A Painting long dismissed as a fake has been “reattributed” as a Vermeer. “Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in July, will be the first Vermeer to come on the market for 80 years and is expected to fetch more than £3 million. Researchers have spent more than ten years studying the painting, which languished in near-obscurity after being “deattributed” to Vermeer in 1947.”

The British radical architecture collective Archigram found little success back in the 1960s, and it wasn’t until decades later that theyy were appreciated. “Perhaps the fascinating thing about Archigram is what seems to be an instinctive recognition that if those involved truly wanted to be radical, they needed to steer clear of actual building. So architects became writers and artists. Ideas were developed and then allowed to work their way into the intellectual consciousness.”

There’s a new breed of art fair, and it’s doing quite well. The fairs offer “affordable art” aimed at the entry-level buyer. “Some buy for investment, calculating that as interest rates are low and the stock market is fluctuating then art should be a good long term home for spare cash. A survey this week revealed that 24 per cent of adults would consider buying art for this reason. But dealers and fair organisers say that most buy because they feel more confident than ever about doing so and because they want to spend disposable income on something for their home.”

Russian collectors are making their presence felt as they invest heavily in art. “A new elite is taking up the mantle of pre-Revolutionary collectors, the czars and industrialists whose collections became museums, including the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Tretyakov in Moscow. The Russian government has lifted taxes and duties to spur the return of works smuggled abroad by nobles or sold by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution of 1917. The authorities also want to encourage Russia’s new multimillionaires to bring home the acquisitions they have been making, and keeping, outside the country.”