Category: visual

Who are these “artists” who paint the “genuine oil paintings” for $29.95, and why do they have to be so bad? “The pedestrian banality, if not downright kitsch, of these offerings is as numbing as a TV sitcom or Norman Rockwell Christmas card. Seagulls, sand dunes, beached rowboats, heeling sailboats, wooden pilings, twinkly lighthouses and ineptly drawn old-time sailing ships parade endlessly by as evocatively as place mat decorations.” – Chicago Tribune

Jackson Pollock movie to debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. – Variety

Seventy American artists including Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein have donated artwork to raise money for the Democratic National Committee. Some 1,500 works will be put up for sale on a web art auction. – CNN

“Britain’s art world is shaking its head over an unknown British artist who spent a decade chronicling the Gulf War. The artist is about to sell his entire output to a Saudi Arabian prince for £17million.” – The Herald (Scotland)

Under pressure, Austrian state governor Jorg Haider is having Nazi artwork removed from the state parliament buildings. But instead of painting over the fresco, he’s having a new museum built for it so it can be restored to its former glory. – Ananova

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new Eames show has raised charges of conflict-of-interest. The show is sponsored by makers of some of the Eames furniture in the show. LACMA’s gift shop also sells copies of some of the furniture in the show. “If the museum has a problem funding the Eames exhibition without the sponsorship of the company that makes the furniture, they oughtn’t to do the show. The conflict of interest is too blatant.” – Los Angeles Times

“No Mexican cultural figure has ever been as sought after by Hollywood. For years, filmmakers here have tried to make a movie based on Kahlo’s gripping and tragic life story, but they have found their projects derailed by bickering parties, mediocre scripts, lack of financing and controversy about casting decisions.The latest chapter in the making-of-the-Frida-Kahlo-movie saga is the fierce competition between three bio-pics rushing to be the first in production. They involve some of the biggest Latino names in filmmaking.” – Los Angeles Times

News stories are almost never about the art itself; they’re almost always about the people that make art happen, or try to take it down. That’s why I had my doubts about the artistic interest of the stuff I was likely to see in Dust on the Road, the show of Indian art activism now on at Toronto’s York Quay Gallery; despite its very modest scale and ambitions, it has sparked a widespread controversy over the last few weeks. Many of the pictures on display were no great shakes, but the issues that they raised are so important to how art works these days that the stuff is worth a good close look.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Once a bastion of exclusively Western art, New York’s Metropolitan Museum now has more than 50 permanent galleries devoted to the largest and most comprehensive collection of Asian art under one roof. Wen C. Fong, who headed the museum’s Asian art department from 1970 until his retirement this summer, is largely responsible for the transformation. – New York Times

The Museum of Modern Art has been the arbiter of all things modern since it opened in 1929, and has always championed a linear view of art history as the evolution of one “ism” after another. The museum is currently re-hanging its permanent collection by theme rather than era. “The assumption behind MOMA’s reshuffle, like the Tate’s, appears to be that to continue creating, we have to free ourselves from a burdensome history. Picasso has to be put in his place.” – The Guardian