Category: visual

Thomas Ruff’s nudes are not what one generally expects from a serious artist. He starts with the crass, hardcore images of internet porn, then molds and blurrs colors and shapes, creating works which retain the raw sexuality of the ‘net, but with little of its horrifying starkness. It’s a dicey art form, Ruff admits, but his work is starting to win admirers all over the world, and inherent in his success is the question of where the lines between art and reality lie these days.

“The meaning of Dia:Beacon — a highly touted nonprofit showcase for contemporary art that opens Sunday — lies in the minds of its beholders. But everyone agrees on one thing: It’s big. Big in terms of dimensions, [and] big in terms of image and ambition.” The gallery, located along the Hudson River in upstate New York, features a jaw-dropping 240,000 square feet of exhibition space, and will feature the collection of the New York City-based Dia Foundation.

“Many of today’s first visitors to Dia: Beacon — even the skeptics among them — ought to come away speechless and with a profound understanding of the art, without the help of tidy explanations. For devotees of the kind of work Dia owns, it is as evidently and immediately great and touching as anything by Leonardo or Monet. Maybe easy-on-the-eyes Old Masters only seem so much less difficult than more current work because most art lovers have been raised on them. Dia: Beacon gives us the chance to feast on art we may not have been fed as kids.”

The seafronts at Brighton and Hove are a shadow of their formal selves these days, and the once-proud piers of the UK are decrepit old wrecks with none of the tourist-drawing power they once held. But the time may be right for a seaside revival in Britain. Architects are being hired, and thoroughly modern plans are being fleshed out for the revival of the old piers. The question is, will the public embrace what is to come, and can a simple pier really generate a great deal of interest in the fast-and-furious 21st century?

England’s National Gallery is unveiling a new machine which will allow visitors to make instant prints of any of thousands of paintings in the museum’s collection,in multiple sizes. The technology is not photographic, but digital, and the images produced are much more faithful to the original colors and textures of the works than a photographic print could ever be. And that’s what makes it so disconcerting, says James Fenton. “The fact of the matter is that, the more you study the history of art, the more you are likely to use photographs. Even when you… make a conscious effort to memorise a painting as it is when seen in natural light, there will be other paintings and other artists’ work that get stored in your mind through acquaintance with photographs.”

The Museum of Modern Art’s Matisse Picasso show closes Monday, and with it the crowds that have thronged out to the museum’s temporary home in Queens will be gone. “Everyone in Long Island City, of course, knows that the Modern’s charmed visit to Queens will end. But they still wonder whether the museum will leave anything enduring behind. Will it help reshape a raw Queens neighborhood, known for its factories and warehouses and the gridlock around the Queensboro Bridge, into the next SoHo or TriBeCa?”

Experts are reassessing the extent of looting and damage to Iraq’s National Museum. It looks like the damage is far less than originally reported. ” ‘We have dodged a bullet. Through some luck and some real preparations by the museum staff, we have saved a lot.’ The preparations included moving hundred of boxes of museum treasure to safe storage in an air raid shelter several miles from the museum. Luck spared several priceless pieces that were there for the taking but somehow overlooked by looters.”

It may be last year’s news, but the defunct Enron Corporation is still trying to pay off its accumulated debt, mainly through asset liquidation, and the company’s art colection is the latest asset to hit the block. When it was acquiring the collection, Enron hoped to eventually be the caretaker of an eye-popping collection of important contemporary art, but the open disdain of auction attendees would suggest that Enron’s taste in art was as flawed as its bookkeeping.

Washington, D.C.’s new City Museum is an exciting addition to a city which too often seems hesitant to admit that it is a city, says Benjamin Forgey. “Splendidly tucked into the old central library, a century-old Beaux-Arts building in Mount Vernon Square, the new institution is a museum with an attitude. Washington is a capital city, the familiar saying goes, and the emphasis here falls definitively on the city side of that equation. It’s a healthy shift of emphasis. The functional and symbolic monuments of the nation’s capital do, after all, get plenty of attention. The city itself deserves a space to call its own.”

The Massachusetts-based DeCordova Museum is going ahead with plans for an ambitious $10 million expansion and renovation. The plans include a sculpture ‘zoo,’ a new visitors’ center, and loads of behind-the-scenes improvements designed to better protect and house the museum’s collection. The fund-raising will be a challenge, but the museum’s director insists that “ten million dollars is not really a lot of money,” and with no signs of imminent economic recovery nationally, the DeCordova’s decision underlines a feeling by many arts groups that forward progress can no longer be put on hold simply because conditions are less than perfect.