Category: visual

Scotland and Wales are jumping ship at the Vennice Biennale this year – both countries are pulling out of the British pavilion to set up their own shows. “As if to underline their secessionist tendencies, the Welsh have bagged a bigger venue – the Ex-Birreria brewery on Giudecca – and they are throwing a party for the art glitterati while sobriety will be observed in the British pavilion. The Welsh deny that they harbour historical resentments, but do point out that the British council has not honoured a Welsh artist at the biennale for 40 years.”

The collapse of art investment company Taylor Jardine has left a lot of artists and investors owed money. “Investors were told that once they had bought the paintings, Taylor Jardine would arrange for them to be leased to companies in London. They were assured this would generate an annual income of about 15 per cent on top of any increase in the value of the paintings. But, by the time the company folded, just 300 of the 2,000 paintings had been leased. This was a company that banked at Harrods and stored its art at Christie’s. Its brochures were glossy, its website was slick and its salesmen had public school accents. But despite the swanky exterior, investors have lost £6.4m and struggling artists have been told they may have lost the works they offered for sale.”

So is Charles Saatchi’s new gallery in competition with the big London museums? “The press has made so much of the supposed rivalry. I’m looking forward to working with the two Tates and the Hayward. Where we differ is that we will always be able to remain at the cutting edge of new art because we can buy and sell, and we’re not answerable to taxpayers or to the idea of a national collection. We’re about contemporary art – that’s to say of the past 20 or so years – not modern art. Our job is to showcase new British art, and to act as a springboard between art colleges and major museums. We’ll always be changing the collection, sometimes gradually, at others quickly. And we don’t plan ahead. Only once a show is up will we think about what the next one might be.”

“It was torture with a creative flair — build tiny cells that kept prisoners from sleeping, sitting or pacing, and decorate the walls with mind-bending art. These chambers operated during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, and were the work of Communists fighting for the government side as it battled troops under fascist Gen. Francisco Franco. Their existence is a bizarre, little-known footnote to the conflict and is now the focus of historians and artists. Researchers say the Soviet-inspired cells were the size of a walk-in closet, with terra-cotta bricks sticking up from the floor at sharp angles. A cot and a seat attached to the walls teased prisoners with the lure of rest, but tilted so far downward that they were useless.”

Two paintings discovered in the home of a wealthy Madrid family have been certified by Spanish art experts as original Goyas, and will be put up for auction shortly. “The auction house admitted it was puzzled there was no record of the paintings but suggested the reason could be because they formed part of a religious triptych – three panels usually hinged together.” The works are expected to bring up to 5 million euros ($5.36 million).

Britain is initiating a national campaign to catalogue all the oil paintings in all the public collections in England, “down to the last dusty alderman hanging in a council waiting room.”

The Russian Prosecutor’s office has informed the Russian Culture Minister that he will face criminal charges if he goes ahead with a plan to return an art collection stolen from Germany after World War II. “The prosecutor’s office, which has been investigating the matter over the past few weeks, said the Culture Ministry does not have the authority to decide to hand over the 362 drawings and two paintings that once belonged to the Bremen Kunsthalle.”

“The famous Seagram art collection, including a 1919 curtain mural painted by Picasso, is to be auctioned in New York through the spring and summer by Christie’s auction house, it was announced yesterday… Last year, Vivendi Universal, the heavily indebted Paris-based media group that owns Seagram, decided it didn’t want to be an art owner and ordered the ‘liquidation’ of the 2,500-piece collection, setting off a storm of controversy.” The company’s collection of photos will be sold by Phillips De Pury & Luxembourg at a separate auction in late April.

“Millennia ago, Iraq was the cradle of civilization, hence the concern about its cultural and archaeological sites. Is the U.S. taking sufficient care to spare Iraq’s treasures? The laws of warfare make clear that while combatants may not target such sites, if they are used for military purposes they lose their protection.” Unfortunately, say US commanders, the Iraqis have are putting military targets next to important archaeological sites. Recently Iraq “placed military equipment and communications equipment next to the 2,000-year-old brick arch of Ctesiphon on the banks of the Tigris River, the world’s largest surviving arch from ancient times and the widest single-span arch in the world.”

London’s Tate museum has been given a surprise £12.5 million gift in order for it to purchase a valuable British painting at risk of leaving the country. Sir Joshua Reynolds “Portrait of Omai” was sold at auction for £10.3 million last year, and a concerted effort was launched by the government to insure that the portrait stayed in the UK. An injunction was put in place barring the work’s export temporarily, while a UK buyer was sought. The Tate had previously tried to purchase the work in 2001, but its offer was turned down.