“For more than 20 years, the artist Christo has worked tirelessly and spent $15 million of his own money to create a vast public artwork in Colorado that would draw thousands of tourists and rival the ambition of “The Gates,” the saffron transformation of Central Park that made him and Jeanne-Claude, his collaborator and wife, two of the most talked-about artists of their generation. But Christo said this week that he had decided to walk away from the Colorado project — a silvery canopy suspended temporarily over 42 miles of the Arkansas River.”
Category: visual
‘A Rainbow-Colored Dream’: Check Out China’s International Ice And Snow Sculpture Festival
“Preparations for the event [in Harbin] begin months in advance, with workers digging huge ice blocks from the frozen Songhua River. … Sculptors compete to create more and more elaborate buildings of ice, all illuminated in multi-colored lights.”
930-Pound Brown Bear Is Finland’s Hottest New Artist
“Juuso got some paint in his paws and started to make marks with them. We noticed that he liked it,” says one of his keepers. “We just leave paint for him, some plywood and paper … He does all the work in his own time, when he’s alone, sitting and moving his legs on the paper.” (includes video)
The Artists Who’ve Stayed On In Syria
Says one, painter and sculptor Fadi Yazigi , “Art is not only part of my survival – it’s also a way of looking for a solution.” Another, calligrapher Mouneer Al Shaarani, actually moved back to Syria from Egypt after the war started.
Selfies As Gallery Art? Really? It Was Inevitable
“In many ways, the selfie represents the epitome of contemporary culture’s transition into a highly-digitalised and technologically-advanced age as mobile-phone technology has caught up with the camera.”
The World’s Tiniest Art Biennale (On An Island That’s Disappearing)
It’s on the tiny Ilet La Biche, a tiny spit of land off the coast of the main islands of Guadeloupe in the West Indies, is rapidly being subsumed by the sea. “There is no land, really. You can walk around the structure but you walk in the water, basically.” The idea, he added, is that “each artwork will die on the island.”
Instagram Is Infiltrating The Art Market
Auction houses and contemporary galleries alike are using the photo-sharing tool to connect with interested buyers. Half of buyers in one survey said Instagram was their favorite social media platform; among the younger buyers, it was two-thirds.
Artist Wants To Borrow Back Piece For Retrospective – And Finds That MoMA Has Thrown It Out
“MoMA has a sterling reputation as a protector of art, art books and hundreds of thousands of documents relating to its collection.” Well, it had one. Poor Pat Lasch …
For First Time After Bombing Three Years Ago, Cairo’s Museum Of Islamic Art Is Open
“First opened in 1903, the museum was closed in January 2014 after a bomb attack on the Cairo police directorate across the street severely damaged its facade and dozens of exhibits. It reopened last week after a two-year restoration program funded by the United Arab Emirates and UNESCO.”
Police Break Up Big European Art Trafficking Ring
The criminal network handled artworks looted from war-stricken countries, as well as works stolen from museums and other sites, the statement said. In the southern Spanish city of Murcia, the police recovered about 500 archaeological pieces, including 19 stolen from the city’s archaeological museum in 2014.