Category: visual

“The show, now at the Guggenheim Museum, is called ‘1900 – Art at the Crossroads,’ which it isn’t, really. It’s more like ‘Art on Tumble Dry,’ which is to say art as the usual mess, any year you could pick. The curators have not only dragged out 1900’s frolicking nymphs, adored virgins, symbolist tombs and gloomy peasants painted and sculpted by people you never heard of; no, the outrage is that they’re hung next to Cezanne, Picasso, Munch, Sargent, on and on, as if they were all equals. – Washington Post

Self-taught artist John Mahnic has spent some 2,900 hours over eight years recreating paintings of the Sistine Chapel – but where Michelangelo used Biblical figures, Mahnic’s is an homage to hockey. “The masterpiece shows 162 recognizable hockey players emerging from temple columns. Whereas Michelangelo’s most famous scene depicts God’s forefinger touching that of the newly created Adam, Mahnic reprises this image showing hockey hero Bobby Orr falling toward the celestial digit after scoring the winning goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup final.” – National Post (Canada)

After agreeing to give up a painting by Cranach to heirs of the collector it was stolen by the Nazis from, The North Carolina Museum of Art gets a surprise. Rather than selling it on the open market, the heirs sell it back to the museum for a fraction of its value. – Scripps Howard

“If it seems glib, after a few hours’ lurching about in a media ruck, to give a simple thumbs up to an exhibition of such scale and diversity as the Biennale of Sydney 2000, there is nevertheless a point here worth insisting on: if you choose interesting work by terrific artists rather than forcefeeding art through a predetermined, predigested theme, you come up with an exciting show.” – The Age (Melbourne)

The budding business of online art auctions is still trying to work out some of the kinks, as last month’s sham auction of a fake(?) Diebenkorn showed. “A close analysis of that and other eBay art auctions reveals that the flourishing cyberauction world faces a deeper, more intransigent problem than lone self-bidders: the prospect of rings of shill bidders, acting as partners.” – New York Times

What to call web art? Calling it “web art” is so…well, dull and uninspired. So why wait around for the art historians to name it? “Names are rock and roll: They bring friends to the party,” says Miltos Manetas, (cool name Milt) who embarked on a project to find a name for the art and he approached some professional namers (yes, they do exist) They came up with… – Wired

Artists in Vietnam are so good at reproducing international paintings that the Vietnamese government has asked them to make the copies three centimeters (1.2 inches) smaller or larger than the originals. – Yahoo! (Reuters)

An entrepreneur asks museums and galleries around the world to loan their Picassos for a symbolic exhibition of peace in war-torn Bogota, Colombia. Only one in 100 says yes – but our friend manages to collect 37 paintings. Were loaners afraid for the safety of their treasures? “Actually, walking along this street, I’m probably more in danger than the paintings back at the museum,” he says. Then he admitted that one asked for “war insurance,” which doesn’t exist. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Robert Rauschenberg’s latest work, “Synapsis Shuffle,” is comprised of 52 nine-foot panels adorned with his signature hand-painted passages and photographic screens. What’s unusual is that he’s asking a new group of artist- (and celebrity) friends to re-assemble them every time they’re exhibited. “At first I thought we should ask the first 12 taxi drivers who passed the museum to put panels together.” – New York Times