Category: visual

“In a surprise turn of events, a team of legal researchers has issued a 120-page report that could exonerate embattled former Stedelijk director Beatrix Ruf, who resigned from the museum amid allegations that her private art consultancy posed conflicts of interest with the museum. … Although the report says that Ruf should have been more transparent about the remuneration she was receiving from outside professional activities, this did not pose a conflict of interest to the publicly funded museum.”

“Helena [Newman] is the chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and co-head of Impressionist & Modern Art Worldwide and also happens to be the auctioneer who recently sold the firm’s most expensive painting to date: a 1917 Modigliani that went for $157.2 million. Helena tells us how she finds and sells some of the most expensive art in the world and what it takes to command a room full of people bidding millions of dollars on masterpieces.” (podcast)

“In the piece below, Biesenbach, who is the director of MoMA PS1 and chief curator at large at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, narrates the founding of the Biennale and its first edition, working with artists like Sarah Sze, Christoph Schlingensief, and Carsten Höller in a very different Berlin.”

“The difference between an art-fair business and a gallery business is our costs are fixed way ahead of time, and our revenue is also predictable because we’re not taking a percentage of the sales. We have a very stable business in terms of forecasting six months out. So by definition, we’re going to come in between the most successful and the least successful galleries. We have to maintain a fair model that allows us to stay in business and allows galleries to do business at the shows. For us to cut costs drastically would make our business precarious, which wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest.”

Some have described the image by Jesco Denzel, an award-winning photographer with many stunning compositions, as a Renaissance painting or the work of a Dutch master. Indeed, its composition resembles famous artistic portrayals of contention, from Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew to Edward Degas’s Rehearsal Hall at the Opera. Its ambient quality speaks to the work of Johannes Vermeer, who so skillfully blended light and color to tell a story. Indeed, the image is otherworldly and surreal, in many ways more like a painting in a museum than a photograph from a geopolitical summit. But the photo reminded me of something more mundane: Yanny vs. Laurel, a debate spurred by an audio clip that was shared widely online last month.

“‘Pyonghattan’ was the joke nickname given by foreign diplomats to a cluster of shiny cylindrical towers that emerged in the capital in 2012, assuming this was a one-off publicity stunt. But since then, almost every year has seen the grand unveiling of another lavish trophy project, each more futuristic than the last, with parades of jaunty towers dressed in sci-fi costumes and crowned with cosmic symbols, worthy of scenes from The Jetsons.”

What? Er, yes. It’s all about technology. “Auctions have become a public forum for private transactions.”

After a legal battle, Bath’s Victorian pews are going away to an airplane hangar before being sold. This “will create a vast open space under the abbey’s spectacular fan vaulting. Supporters of the project say this will allow the abbey to host community events, concerts, exhibitions and even formal dinners, and allow the restoration of ancient ledger stones in the floor, hidden for 150 years.” But critics aren’t happy.

Well, it’s Olafur Eliasson, of course – and, also of course, he describes the new Fjordenhus like this: “We were able to turn years of experiments in physical movement, light, nature, perception and the experience of space into a building that is a Gesamtkunstwerk [a total work of art] as well as a fully functioning architectural structure.”

One gallery wants all of its fee, not 10 percent of it, refunded. Frieze: “We made a commitment during the fair to give something back to every exhibitor, and since then we have consulted a number of galleries, including those on our committee. … We are now following through on this promise.”