Category: visual

We need more “collective efficacy” and “ordered complexity,” or so says one writer. (The writer also claims we need to be able to see long distances, be able to map our terrain, and enjoy patterns that mimic the fractal patterns in our bodies.)

Trevor Paglen, for the last two decades (yes, digital surveillance has been going on for that long and longer) “has been on a mission to photograph the unseen political geography of our times. His art tries to capture places that are not on any map – the secret air bases and offshore prisons from which the war on terror has been fought – as well as the networks of data collection and surveillance that now shape our democracies, the cables, spy satellites and artificial intelligences of the digital world.”

But he can talk about painting Michael Jackson: “It was extraordinary. His knowledge of art and art history was much more in-depth than I had imagined. He was talking about the difference between early and late Rubens brushwork. OK, why not? One of the things we talked about was how clothing functions as armour. And if you look at the painting, he’s on horseback in full body armour.”

The Los Angeles Times architecture critic takes his mother-in-law, and then all of us, on a tour of nine stops through the city: “I sort of tied myself in knots trying to produce the list. I had to balance architectural significance against geography: the buildings had to make up at least a semi-coherent loop, rather than forcing us to hopscotch all over the map. I also wanted the choices to suggest some kind of narrative progression, some sense of how architecture (and Los Angeles) changed over those decades.”

And, well, the funding is coming to a close. (The libraries say they think they can get other corporate sponsors.) Surprise number two: The funding is going away … because Canadians said they valued music education over any other arts access.

“Given the Christie’s result, there is a temptation to wonder if the art market will be recalibrated in the way that it was in 1987, when Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” sold for $39.9 million. That price also blew minds, being almost four times the previous high for any artwork at auction at the time.”

“Our current built environment squanders too much fresh water and other vital resources, and tips too many poisonous substances into our surroundings. To develop a more sustainable relationship with the natural world, we need to allow chemical exchanges that take place within our living spaces, and between the inside and the outside. We need to embrace permeability.”

“Flash brings a form of democracy to the material world. Many details take on unplanned prominence, as we see in the work of those Farm Security Administration photographers who used flash in the 1930s and laid bare the reality of poverty during the Depression.”

“It’s really unusual to have a piece of decorative art (not a painting) that has as much cultural resonance as a Fabergé egg,” says curator Jo Briggs. “It’s almost the Mona Lisa of the decorative art world.”

Below the image of the Leonardo da Vinci, Campbell, who left the Met at the end of June, wrote the caption “450 million dollars?! Hope the buyer understands conservation issues…” followed by “#readthesmallprint”.