Category: visual

The forced demolitions of thousands of migrants workers’ homes isn’t a quiet process in China. The artists are making sure of that. “Musicians are performing rap songs that take aim at overzealous bureaucrats. Poets are condemning apathy and inequality in society. Painters are using scenes of devastation to denounce the harsh treatment of struggling families.”

Virtual reality museums are almost too real – and new tools to make the art look 3D, plus some collectors eager to share their own work with people at a great remove, mean that anyone with a smartphone and a headset can have a pretty strong encounter the art. Also: “You never have to think about security, insurance or transport fees or any of that. No plumbing or building codes.”

Before the sale, the pre-1945 Modern content was estimated at 37 percent of the value of the entire sale—an increase on any previous Phillips sale. By the end, it was more like 60 percent. So with only Phillip’s day sale to go, the London Impressionist and Modern sales total has ended with just over £400 million ($551 million) in sales, the second highest for the capital, while the Contemporary bracket is looking at a record in the region of £340 million ($469 million). When the two categories are combined it also marks a new record for London—and there, in the heart of the scrum, Phillips has proved they can mix it with the big boys.

“Over the past year, the Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance has stepped up seizures of allegedly looted artefacts, some worth millions of dollars, with highly publicised raids targeting the billionaire collector Michael Steinhardt, Phoenix Ancient Art gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. … One effect of the DA’s actions is clear: an increasingly jittery antiquities market.”

“Nearly six months after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, museums on the US island are resuming their everyday pace and pushing forward with new initiatives.”

The Chinese have two different concepts of a copy. Fangzhipin (仿製品) are imitations where the difference from the original is obvious. These are small models or copies that can be purchased in a museum shop, for example. The second concept for a copy is fuzhipin (複製品). They are exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original. It has absolutely no negative connotations.

Looks like somebody was missing the Maurizio Cattelan solid-gold toilet (the one titled America) that was in the same bathroom last year (and which was not actually lent to Donald Trump’s White House). “While that work stayed in place for a full year, Saturday’s unsanctioned intervention remained in place for roughly two hours.”

In its judgment on 7 March, the Cour de Cassation found that the 1996 agreement between Pegeen Vail’s descendants and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation “imposed no constraint on the number or the duration of the displays of other collections, nor did it require a constant presentation of all the works” in Peggy Guggenheim’s collection.

“In the summer of 2016, while digging the new Metro C subway line in Rome, workers came across a rare archeological find, a 2nd-century CE Roman barracks. Late last week, archeologists uncovered the remains of a ‘commander’s house’ (domus) connected to the barracks, … complete with marble floors, mosaics, and frescoes.”

This former assistant to Le Corbusier (whom he calls “my guru”) and Louis Kahn, now aged 90, is the first Indian architect to win the Pritzker. Relatively unknown in the West (all his built projects have been in India), Doshi is noted for bridging the gap between Modernism and traditional Indian architecture as well as for several complexes of low-cost housing.