Category: visual

Tokyo’s new Mori Museum could reinvent the Japanese modern art world. “The 30,000 sq ft museum covers two floors at the top of the 54-storey Mori Tower. To help lure visitors, the £8 admission charge includes access to the observation floor, which commands staggering views all the way to Mount Fuji. The challenge is to get visitors as interested in the art as the scenery. The Japanese public remains wary of contemporary art and has traditionally been interested only in the big names of Western art: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Picasso.”

An exhibition of photographs of 600 human posteriors has caused a stir in Argentina. The “Carne de Identidad” (a play on the Spanish words for “identity card” – “carnet de identidad” and “flesh of identity” – “carne de identidad”) exhibition has been drawing in the crowds in Buenos Aires. Its next stop is Chile and then, if the civil unrest there dies down, Bolivia.

A prominent curator attacks the British government for not stepping up to keep Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks from being sold to the Getty and moved to the US: “Can anyone seriously suggest that the country would not be much much poorer without the great works of art in this exhibition? The National Gallery is the greatest place in the world for the study of early works by Raphael, and that’s where the picture should be. For God’s sake! If it’s not Raphael then it must be the work of some even greater artist whose name is currently unknown to us. Of course it’s a Raphael.”

Archaeologist Pietro Gaietto has found what he believes to be the earliest evidence of art. “Gaietto believes the sculpture is 200,000 years old, and would have been used in rituals. He says it would have been made by an extinct species of human called Homo erectus, of which there is evidence in the region. Gaietto’s claims are controversial because hominids such as Homo erectus are not thought to have been capable of the symbolic thought needed to create art.”

The Greek Prime Minster Costas Simitis is being attacked after TV cameras recorded him telling British Prime Minister Tony Blair that England’s returning the Parthenon Marbles would help his re-election chances. “It is sad for him to use a national issue, such as the return of the Parthenon marbles, for petty party-political ends.”

Some shareholders of the fashion retailer Monsoon have criticized the company for adding to its art collection and not paying out the money to shareholders. “They are prepared to pay money adding to what they have on the walls of their headquarters but are not prepared to give anything to long-suffering shareholders.”

The lead American investigator of the looting of Iraq’s National Museum says that more than 10,000 artifacts are still missing. “What we are finding is well known and otherwise respected members of the art community are in fact authenticating stolen pieces for a fee. The second point of this is many of these items are either destined for less scrupulous museums or art dealers or are placed with art dealers in transit, as the middle location. We need the art community first to stop that.”

Does an Armani fashion exhibit belong in the British Academy? “Prejudice, fear and suspicion still surround the status of fashion within many galleries. This sometimes takes the form of fashion being tolerated as a form of entertainment which will pull in the crowds, with no acknowledgement of the serious contribution it also makes to the educational role of the museum. More than anything else, however, it is fashion’s slippery nature that helps to perpetuate the prejudice.”

Last Sunday, LA Times art critic Christopher Knight suggested that the Getty step in to rescue the Barnes Collection in suburban Philadelphia so it wouldn’t be moved to downtown Philly. But Getty president Barry Munitz flatly turns down the idea. “It can’t generate enough revenue, and why squabble incessantly with the neighborhood when you can have a new facility in the company of other great cultural institutions along that corridor? This keeps the collection intact and keeps the hanging pattern intact, and it will have the educational philosophy still at the core.”

Siri Hustvedt was as surprised as anyone when she realized that he had discovered an apparently unknown self-portrait of Goya hidden in the corner of on of the artist’s best-known works. The painting, titled “The Third of May,” depicts a bloody peasant massacre conducted by Napoleon’s soldiers, but a shadowy portion in the lower left of the canvas hides an unmistakable image of the artist. “It’s a simple rendering – large eyes, flat nose and open mouth, but it includes the artist’s signature leonine hair flowing out from around his jawline. I turned away, thinking I had really gone crazy. After a moment, I looked back. He was still there.”