Category: visual

That this year’s Whitney Biennale is “the best in years,” writes Michael Kimmelman, won’t stop the usual carping and complaining. The Biennale’s three curators “overcame the inevitable strains and nicely capitalized on their differences in taste, coming up with the most cogent and layered biennial in years.”

“By now, almost everyone would agree that the traditional Warhol-Richter-Walter Benjamin defense of the use of photography in painting, the “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” argument, and the chatter about “interrogating representation” or “investigating the problem of the photograph,” isn’t just dated, it’s shtick. We all know that photography is a remarkable and remarkably complex way of seeing and picturing the world; that the space between the photograph, the photographer, and the thing photographed is incredibly rich; that the graphic field of the photograph is often scintillatingly alive, specific, and very post-Renaissance; and that reproducing photographs in paintings once represented a significant repudiation of dearly held beliefs.” But…

Chicago is transforming Grant Park, at the center of downtown, into what mayor Richard Daley calls “one of the finest recreational and cultural spaces of any city in the world.” When it opens next summer, the “re-christened Millennium Park will feature a 125-tonne steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor, a 220-foot-long video-fountain by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, a gleaming metallic bandshell by Frank Gehry, and a garden by landscapist Kathryn Gustafson, who won the Princess Diana Memorial competition for Hyde Park.”

By the time of its opening in the summer, the park will have cost in excess of $400 million; more than twice the figure originally envisaged.

Who is the best-selling artist of all time? Picasso? Van Gogh? “The truth could hardly be more different or more surprising, at least according to the publisher HarperCollins, which says the world’s bestseller is a Swiss religious artist by the name of Annie Vallotton. Even if the name is unfamiliar, chances are you may have seen her work or own an unopened copy of one of her books.”

Greece has put a halt to building the Acropolis Museum. “The country’s highest administrative court ruled that a Culture Ministry decision approving plans for the 94-million-euro building could cause irreversible damage to ancient building remains found on the plot in Makriyianni, under the Acropolis.”

A Manhattan art dealer has been arrested on fraud charges for “a multimillion-dollar international art scam in which he bought up works by 19th century French artists, forged them and sold off the fakes through prestigious auction houses. The brazen forgery racket, which spanned the globe from New York to Paris, London and Toyko, involved more than 25 paintings by masters such as Monet, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Gaugin, court documents charge.”

“Prices for African-American art have been steadily increasing as more and more lower-end black memorabilia have shown up in flea markets, antique shows and auctions for the past 15 years. While offensive items like vintage mammy and minstrel cookie jars, salt-and-pepper shakers and dolls may sell for up to $500 each, slave documents, books and other printed matter fetch four figures at auctions. At the top, art commands tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.”

So UK museums want a big block of added government funding. There’s something horribly familiar about this cri de coeur, heard again and again from different parts of the arts community over the years. But they do have a strong case. Since the government-directed abolition of admission charges in 2001, museums have become victims of their own success.” Millions more are coming through the doors, and it’s put a strain on museums.

There is plenty of art done from the victim’s point of view. But what about art from the racist’s point of view? A Seattle artist has made work explores racism from the oppressor’s point of view. His “flat style — a blend of American Pop and Japanese ukiyo-e or “floating world” graphics — gets inside his hot subject and gives it a deadpan edge.”