Category: visual

“Thrillingly, for the first time in a while, art seems more important than the system. The professionalism of the recent past, the thing that made the late-’90s art world seem corporate and unsafe, is morphing into something less predictable, more homespun. The fringes feel frisky, good new artists and galleries are appearing, hype and fashionableness matter less, those capacious Chelsea galleries don’t seem as off-putting, and art is becoming the focus again.”

One of Europe’s leading art collectors bought a Greek statue said to have been carved between 1878 and 1843 BC. But a few years later, François Pinault, the head of Christie’s and Gucci, has some doubts, and now believes it is a modern copy.

The US Congress is considering legislation prohibiting the import of Iraqi artifacts unless accompanied by proof they were exported legally before UN and US sanctions. “The proposals would authorise US Customs to seize undocumented materials and return them to Iraq.”

“Some of America’s most celebrated institutions — including Harvard’s Peabody, The Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York — are indicating for the first time in reports to the U.S. government that they were more involved in the looting of Native American burial grounds than they have previously admitted. Those institutions now are in the process of returning hundreds of thousands of artifacts and human remains to tribal groups around the country.”

Hilton Kramer doesn’t like much about the new Dia:Beacon building (or the art inside). “Most of the art in the Dia:Beacon collection requires huge amounts of space. Yet notwithstanding the gargantuan quantities of art that Dia:Beacon easily accommodates, so vast are its exhibition spaces that the place itself strikes the visitor as sterile and forlorn. Visitors wander about its endless interior with vacant stares and silent lips—not so much looking at the art as looking for it, even when they are in its immediate physical presence. Sooner or later, they are found huddling together for succor around the abundant wall texts, which, although easily read, tend to be even more confounding than the objects and spaces they are meant to illuminate.”

Some 3000 artifacts stolen from Iraq’s National Museum have been returned. “More than 1,700 items were returned in an amnesty with 900 seized in raids and at checkpoints, airports and borders. Another 750 were recovered from four different countries.” About 10,000 objects are still missing.

A couple of tourists ran into the men who were stealing a Leonardo painting last week as they were getting away. “We heard the alarm going off and the first man climbed over the wall and said not to worry, ‘Don’t worry love, We’re the police. This is just a practice’ he said. When the second man came over the wall we felt something was going on. The third man over the wall was carrying something under his arm which appeared to be the same size as what we’ve been told about the painting.”

Damien Hirst’s new show at White Cube took eight years to assemble. “The idea of transition and transformation is everywhere at White Cube: mounds of dead flies turned into crunchy, black, monochrome canvases; cows’ heads as apostles and as Adam and Eve; laboratory supplies and hardware store axes and mallets in reliquaries of martyred saints; animal blood for human blood.” It all has the smell of trying too hard.

James Wood announces he will leave. “The Art Institute has begun planning to build its first major new wing in 15 years, designed by Renzo Piano and expected to cost nearly $200 million. Mr. Wood said that it would be wise for a single director to oversee the final planning, construction and opening of the new wing, and that therefore he had to decide whether to leave now or stay on the job until at least 2008.”

“Chandanagore is the capital of Indian illuminations. The small town employs up to 12,000 people, who work nine months of the year creating extravagant shows for major festivals. Sridhar Das is the town’s most renowned light artist. In the past few years, he has made waterfalls, monkey gods, dragons spewing fire, the triumph of good over evil, portraits of Nobel prizewinners, political statements, environmental messages, even pontifications by politicians. His workshops are a cross between a foundry and a tapestry studio.”