Category: visual

Artist Katherine Sherwood was always an artist. But a debilitating stroke at the age of 44 transformed her career.  “Critics see a huge change in Sherwood’s work. From the restricted, analytical style of the art professor she once was, she has been transformed into a vibrant, free-flowing painter. She has just finished a show at New York’s prestigious Whitney Museum, and her abstracts sell for $10,000. “I have sold more paintings in the past few months than in 25 years as an artist,” she says with a smile. – The Times (UK)

Italy has a wealth of art treasures. But how to take care of it? “Art restoration in Italy is in a mess. It’s not that we lack restorers of the highest ability. It is rather that the organisation of the whole, and the role of the government, is chaotic… The government may get involved when some world-famous building has collapsed, or a world-famous fresco starts peeling off its wall. But there’s no interest at all in the thousands of buildings and churches that are quietly crumbling, along with the objects inside them, in the centres of Italy’s ancient cities.” – The Telegraph (UK)

The Guggenheim Museum announces the finalists for this year’s Hugo Boss Prize. – National Post (Canada)

— “Still Life with Fruit and Pot of Ginger,” sold well above its expected price for $18 million at Christie’s in London Thursday night. – The Age (Melbourne) (AP)

Three major art auctions in Australia this week have generated a record $21 million in sales in just four days. Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Deutscher-Menzies all saw unprecedented attendance and fiercely competitive bidding from collectors around the world. – Sydney Morning Herald

An interview with Charles Esche, curator of Tate Britain’s upcoming “Intelligence” exhibit of contemporary British art. “Rather than fixing little wall plaques next to each exhibit containing the curator’s interpretation of the work, the smart thinking of this exhibition shows in its lack of reassurance over the works’ meaning. “With a lot of work, you know instantly what it has to say and you move on, but I think that good art is about a lack of clarity. The handle that you get on it is the handle that you choose; it is as much up to you as it is up to the artist.” – The Sunday Times (UK)

The Museum of Modern Art will vacate its midtown Manhattan location in the spring of 2002 and move to a temporary exhibition space in Queens for the two-year expansion of 53^rd St. MOMA. – New York Times

At around 6pm EST on June 29th, an original first printing of The  Declaration of Independence sold for $8.14 million on Sothebys.com. The same copy, which was last sold for $2.4 million, failed to sell at a regular auction in 1993. So maybe it was the new technology, which allows viewers to examine the document, and the fourth of July holiday that spurred the buyer on. – MSNBC

• CELEBRITY BUYER: Television producer Norman Lear was the buyer. The price was a record sum for an online auction and far more than the estimated selling price of $4 million to $6 million. – Los Angeles Times

Why do we think of certain colors as possessing beauty or emotion? “Flamboyant colour has always been associated with the pursuit of the beautiful, with aestheticism, with hedonist visual pleasure. Think of Matisse and his painting The Red Studio, in which every object in the room is choreographed to the rhythm of an overwhelming red; the boundaries of walls, a table and a clock are visible only as traces in redness. The very vocabulary of colour is saturated in ideas of beauty; the word “hue” comes from the Old English for ‘beauty’.” – The Guardian

London’s Millennial footbridge across the Thames will likely be closed for months while engineers try to correct a problem with severe swaying whilst people are on the structure.  Engineers “concluded the movement was caused by ‘synchronized footfall,’ or hundreds of pedestrians stepping in unison. “I am disappointed, but not ashamed.” – Times of India (AP)

Architect Norman Foster defends London’s “bouncing bridge”, the £18.2 million Millennium Bridge, insisting that its problem had been diagnosed and the solution would be designed, although the structure might remain closed for months. – The Guardian