Sir Kyffin Williams, one of the UK’s leading painters, attacks contemporary art and artists. “Speaking at the opening of the Oriel Gwyngyll gallery in Llanfairpwll, north Wales, on Monday night, he blamed the art establishment, including the arts councils and competitions like the Turner Prize and the Welsh-funded Artes Mundi. “Nobody ever likes the work in the Turner Prize. Conceptual installation art is worthless and people don’t want it. Galleries are desperately trying to find young artists who can draw – even in places like Cardiff and London’.”
Category: visual
WTC: Barren Memorial
Inga Saffron writes that the World Trade Center memorial is a major misstep. “Launched a bare two years after terrorists pulverized the twin towers – which were themselves a compendium of dehumanizing architectural features – the competition demanded that architects distill meaning from that historic event while the rest of us are still reeling. The result is a design so generic and so sanitized that it drains the site of its sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Saving Spiral Jetty
The Dia Foundation is discussing whether to restore Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in Utah’s Great Salt Lake. The work is Smithson’s masterpiece, but as the lake has receded, it has exposed the earthwork to environmental damage. “To ensure that “Spiral Jetty” is accessible to future generations, Dia, which exhibits and preserves art made since the 1960’s, has discussed raising it by adding more rocks. Dia is also studying whether nature will restore the contrast the “Jetty” originally had with its surroundings by dissolving some of the salt crystals when the lake’s waters rise, or whether the foundation needs to do something more.”
English Cathedrals May Close As Tourists Stay Away
“A cash crisis, caused by an acute drop in American tourists visiting the UK, will soon force many of England’s 42 Anglican cathedrals to bolt their doors to the public for part of the week as they lay off staff.”
Here Come The Russians
Russian art is hot right now. “This dramatic change has been brought about by the Russians who made fortunes in the economic free-for-all that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The market for Russian silver and decorative arts has always been international, but the hunger for paintings is driven by buyers from Moscow and St Petersburg, and the long-term problem for Western auction houses is that the pictures that are so eagerly snapped up are almost all going back to Russia.”
Options For The Barnes
Why Does the Barnes Collection need to move to Philadelphia? There are other options, writes Lee Rosenbaum. “The foundation could begin by selling unused or little-used assets. Chief among these: the foundation’s 137-acre property in Chester County, for which the Barnes was recently offered $12 million. Auctioning off some of the foundation’s ancillary collections — some 5,200 objects and documents — could also generate cash. The Barnes provenance would give these objects market cachet far in excess of their artistic or historic importance. While art museums are supposed to use sale proceeds solely for acquisitions, not operations, the Barnes considers itself an educational institution (and it doesn’t acquire new works). In addition, legal strictures against selling the Barnes Foundation’s holdings apply only to works on view in the galleries.”
The Most Popular Artist The Artworld Doesn’t Like
Jack Vettriano is the most popular contemporary artist in Britain. He’s” sold more than three million poster reproductions around the world and earns an estimated £500,000 a year from the royalties. The works themselves disappear from public view into the hands of private collectors, with buyers including Hollywood star Jack Nicholson, composer Sir Tim Rice and British actor Robbie Coltrane.” So why is his work unloved and uncollected in “official” art world circles?
A History Of Art Restoration
“Unlike other institutions—hospitals, universities, libraries—whose origins can boast roots dating back centuries, the museum is a “new” invention. Its growth and development, through the course of the nineteenth century, was conditioned by a mixture of local traditions, expediency, and idealism. Restoration remained a craft practiced by independent, secretive private entrepreneurs who were able to maintain a delicate balance between their private and public clientele.”
Faberge Riches
Nine Faberge eggs from the Forbes collection are to be auctioned. “The last Imperial Easter Egg sold at auction – the 1913 Winter Egg -went for more than $9.5 million to an anonymous buyer in 2002. In 1994, the same egg sold at auction for just over $5.5 million. The czar had paid Fabergé the equivalent of $250,000 in 1994 dollars, back in 1913. Our analysis of 16 Fabergé eggs, which have appeared on the auction market since 1934, shows an annual appreciation of 7% to 22.5% in the investment. These prices are a combination of buyers’ desire for the very best, of rarity of product, and of limited accessibility: The eggs infrequently come on the open market.”
A Canadian City Courts Gehry
It’s been a mating dance of four years between the Art Gallery of Ontarion (which has a new $300 million collection it wants to display) and architect Frank Gehry. Finally plans for the museum’s expansion are about to be revealed. “What took so long? Well, it was a complicated courtship involving negotiating strategies on both sides. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. There were endless brilliant ideas that were eventually discarded. There were plane trips, and there were bonding experiences, including hockey games. There were problems that sometimes seemed insurmountable, and for a while, a division of opinion within the AGO board. And always, there were money issues.”