Category: visual

David Littlejohn is not very generous in his praise for Frank Gehry’s new Disney Hall. “The result is about half as spectacular as Mr. Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, with which it will inevitably be compared. Bilbao has a far more impressive location, equal excitement from all directions, and more dramatic interior spaces that visibly reflect its exterior.” Still, “it is one of the most agreeable modern concert halls I have been in (though one heard complaints about steep stairs and tight legroom), reminiscent of Alvar Aalto’s classic halls, and Mr. Gehry’s most humane interior space.”

Archaeologists say they have discovered a 1,300-year-old citadel in Vietnam. “This is the biggest and most important archaeological find in Vietnam’s archaeological history.”

Hundreds of artifacts have been returned to the Baghdad Museum. Two important pieces were found in a field and returned. “It is another bright day in the life of the Iraqi museum. We have two masterpieces not only of the Iraqi museum, but also masterpieces of the mankind. So, it is a great day today”

Perhaps it’s a mistake for the UK to spend millions of pounds trying to “save” art from being exported from the country. “Sir Nicholas Serota said it was not necessarily better to buy pieces to display in the UK rather than abroad just because they were already here. Speaking at an acquisitions conference, he suggested more should be spent on 20th Century and contemporary art.”

“Jean-Paul Riopelle’s three children fear some of their father’s key works of art will be sold at the same fire-sale prices that purchased his beloved vintage cars… Yseult, Sylvie and Yann, the three children of the noted abstract artist, are asking the [Quebec Superior Court] for an injunction to stop what they describe as an unnecessary, amateurish auction. They say if so many Riopelles are sold at once on short notice, the value of Riopelle’s art will diminish.”

Goya’s images of war atrocities were shocking and appalling to the audiences of his time, which isn’t surprising, since ‘war art’ in the early 19th century tended to consist of “generally heroic allegories, made to present a larger story of conquest and nobility through grand compositions and bold lighting.” But why should the same images still shock us today, in an age when wars are broadcast live on television? Could it be because contemporary art has simply never found a serious way to deal with the horror of war?

“The world’s largest signed Pablo Picasso canvas, which has not been seen in public for 20 years, was unveiled in London on Tuesday. A 10-metre high reproduction of his work Deux Femmes Courant Sur La Plage is on show at the Royal Opera House. The painting was copied from the original in 1924 by a scene painter for use as a stage curtain in a ballet. It will go on permanent display at London’s Theatre Museum as part of a £12m redevelopment.”

A new Canadian heritage museum – a pet project of outgoing Prime Minister Jean Chretien – won’t cost $90 million as the Prime Minister announced last May; the bill will be at least a third higher. “Officials estimated it will cost $125-million in a letter to the Department of Canadian Heritage prior to the Prime Minister’s announcement. The department had only $90-million to put toward the project, to be built in the century-old Rideau Canal train station near Parliament Hill, so expensive items were taken out of the budget to bring the cost down for the hurried announcement.” However, some of what was taken out was essential to the project – humidity controls, anyone?

Architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind are disagreeing over the tower for the site of the World Trade Center. “Libeskind continues to press for the design he sketched in his competition-winning master plan – an asymmetrical tower roughly 70 stories tall, with a slender spire that would echo the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty and culminate an upward spiral of a group of slice-topped office buildings. Childs, who heads the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, wants a more monolithic form — a muscular tower that twists as it rises, topped by a latticelike crown that includes antennas. His design, however, has not been made public. Can the two architects compromise without compromising the form – and thus, the meaning – of Libeskind’s brilliant ground zero vision?

“Traditionalists distressed by the alleged distortion of the female form in modern art are hitting back by launching the Society for the Appreciation of the Female Nude (SAFN) to encourage artists who depict beautiful female nudes, whether in a classical or modern style. The founders, a group of wealthy art-lovers, believe that contemporary artists who follow a tradition stretching from Botticelli to the Victorians Leighton and Millais are being sidelined by Britain’s national galleries.”