Category: visual

“A century ago, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. But today the country is reeling from record 22 percent unemployment and a poverty rate approaching 50 percent.” Artists starve in such conditions. So a benefactor has donated paints and brushes and many have taken to the streets to paint and sell their work…

So what if ideas for structures on the World Trade Center site seem impractical. “It’s only because members of the public have taken the trouble to argue with reality that the official process of reimagining ground zero has taken a turn for the better. What we’re learning, at this stage, is how to put the shoe on the other foot.”

Some of the ideas for rebuilding on the World Trade Center site come straight from fantasy. “At least four of them propose to build the tallest building in the world. And the designs are not only tall. Towers tilt and dance at weird angles as they rise. Often they’re linked by bridges in the sky, in the best tradition of your favorite Flash Gordon comic book. This isn’t exactly avant-garde architecture.” So what’s real?

Blair Kamin believes that one of the seven proposals for the World Trade Center site stands above the others. “Libeskind’s plan for the former World Trade Center site at once offers a deeply moving memorial to those who died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a joyous but dignified celebration of New York’s street life and skyline.”

“If the architects have exceeded the design study’s requirements, we should be grateful. They’ve helped to expose a major defect of the entire design process thus far: the attempt to contain architecture within such restrictive boundaries that it cannot perform its legitimate poetic function.”

Stealing paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is an act that hurst us all. “How dare they? Why would they? Van Gogh is so famous, experts argue, the culprits probably will have difficulty selling the works for the millions they’re worth. Assuming this isn’t the more whimsical scenario of a team of genuine van Gogh fanatics, the audacity of the heist wildly overshadows the practical financial benefit. Yet, such thievery happens.”

Two years ago the new Melbourne Museum attracted 800,000 visitors. A year ago attendance was down 20 percent. And this year looks to see further 20 percent decline. What to do? A management shakeup. After all – the museum opened with projections of 3 million visitors a year…

Two paintings by JMW Turner belonging to the Tate that were stolen eight years ago, have been recovered in Germany. “The paintings, both 19th Century biblical works insured for £24 million and now worth about £50 million, were taken while on display in Frankfurt, Germany. Described as two of Turner’s most significant paintings, the works were found intact but without their original frames.”

Where did the popular image of Santa as a jolly old man come from? “What most people don’t realize is that Santa’s origins were very commercial from the beginning. He was created by mass media artists and invented by Americans in the beginning of the 19th Century. Haddon Sundblom painted a series of portraits of Santa between 1931 and 1964 for Coca-Cola advertisements that helped to shape the modern image of the jolly character known as Santa Claus.”

Does any art outrage Seattle? “While attendance at museums and galleries is among the highest in America for a city of its size, Seattle can’t boast of doing much to fan whatever outrages it encounters.” Shows that cause impassioned debate in other cities seem to pass through Seattle without a ripple of controversy. “In Seattle, people don’t tend to get mad at art, even if they find it personally offensive. They either like it because it’s offensive, because they like the way it’s done or they go, ‘whatever,’ and move on to the next thing.”