Category: visual

Work on the first new exhibition spaces the nation’s most important paintings to be created in more than 30 years is set to get under way as part of a long-awaited overhaul of the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. However the cost of the project – which also involves a new look for part of East Princes Street Gardens – has soared by nearly a third, is running three years late, and has had to be scaled back significantly since plans were first unveiled four years ago.

“As with other markets, the UK and Europe’s art trade has been held in a state of prolonged uncertainty, an uncertainty now shifting to rising unease at the spectre of March’s looming deadline. But, politics and panic aside, what practical issues will art market professionals face after 29 March 2019, whatever the outcome: hard, soft or no-deal? Costs, paperwork and potential shipping delays at borders are the three areas of most concern and uncertainty, along with the future of London’s art agents who have benefitted from the UK having the lowest import VAT rate in the EU.”

Last week, archaeologists found a sandstone sphinx when they were excavating a temple near the city of Aswan, in southern Egypt. The statue was found close to a site where two reliefs of King Ptolemy V were recovered two months prior, according to the American University in Cairo.

“In 1924, American literary scholar and author Paul Jordan-Smith adopted a new identity: Pavel Jerdanowitch, an avant-garde Russian artist whose visceral paintings would beguile modern art critics. Parading as Jerdanowitch for the next three years, Jordan-Smith gained traction at the helm of his one-man art movement, which he called Disumbrationism. But Jordan-Smith wasn’t a brooding artist from Moscow, and Disumbrationism was less of an aesthetic than it was a practical joke intended to shame the art world.”

“In 2016, a Tehran art auction attracted record sales of $7.4 million, sparking hopes that the market was buoyed by cooling relations between Iran and the West. … [Yet,] from trade sanctions to the travel ban, global power politics may be influencing the way the West views Iran. For the country’s artists, this raises questions about whether the art boom will be halted — or even reversed — by the Trump administration’s deteriorating relations with their government.”

It’s not yet entirely clear to what extent Dundee’s plan to replicate the Bilbao Effect will work. Certainly, the V&A Dundee itself is impressive—as well it should be, given that its initial predicted budget of £27 million ($35 million) rose first to £45 million ($59 million) and then to £80 million ($105 million), with the lion’s share coming from public funds. Designed by Kengo Kuma, the building is an unquestionably evocative one that, depending on your viewpoint and the weather, might seem to resemble a cliff, the bones of some giant sea creature, or a ship.

“The initiative, which launched with a $5-million endowment, aims to establish the Getty as a primary center of scholarship, research and education for African American art and as a model for like-minded endeavors in the field.”

“For four decades, Ms. Genzken has drawn praise for her exploration of many aesthetics and mediums, including video, photography and collages. Her perceptive architectural installations and their historical themes, including reconstruction in Germany and the War on Terror, have made her one of the leading artists of the postwar era.”

The unstoppable takeover of the art world by the biennial form is evidenced by the nearly 250 biennials operating globally, listed by the Biennial Foundation’s Directory of Biennials. More than this number, it is the five-fold increase over the last ten years that warrants a certain slack-jawed response.

Whether all-women’s shows are an effective long-term strategy for achieving gender equity in the art world at large remains a subject of heated debate. At a panel discussion that accompanied the Studio School exhibit, some artists and curators argued that gender-based shows encourage tokenism and relegate women to the sidelines, while others argued that, after centuries of art shows that featured only men, all-women shows are a necessary corrective.