Category: visual

The legendary photographer, who died in 2016, had obsessions with various details, from gold shoes to the Bryant Park Fountain. What made him fascinated, and how did he choose? His longtime collaborator explains – for instance, “People battling blizzard winds with a little umbrella made him giddy.”

And that’s because Black Lives Matter understands how performance art interacts with the public. One piece “included a public prayer, titled ‘A Litany,’ composed of bits speech from victims of police violence, and a procession that featured women carrying banners that bore the words ‘joy’ and ‘grief.’ The performance offered the memorable sight of clutches of black women, all dressed in red, parading around the streets of Lower Manhattan.”

As the world faces ongoing cultural heritage crises – from poverty, to war, to natural disaster – is the creation of copies the answer? Increasingly sophisticated technology, including 3D printing, offers an alternative to traditional preservation techniques. However, while these new technologies may solve problems of accessibility to precious antiquities they also raise other problems of authenticity and trust.

“Cornelius Gurlitt, son of one of Hitler’s art dealers, was of sound mind when he bequeathed his extensive art collection to Bern Museum of Fine Arts in 2014, a Munich court has ruled. A cousin had launched an inheritance counter-claim. Bern can now take possession of the collection.”

“William B. Jordan, the art historian, said that he took his painting” – a portrait of Philip III of Spain – “to the Prado’s art experts last year to have it authenticated after acquiring it in an auction in 1988.”

“While art historians, provenance experts, and criminologists might seem like unlikely war heroes, the fact that the military recognizes the need for these types of experts, to advise commanders and to work with civilian authorities after battles, is hugely important. As the military are planning before and during a conflict, it is important for officers in charge to think ‘what are the historically significant places we need to protect in a conflict, and how do we preserve what is damaged as a result of military necessity.’”

Mexico was called ‘the surrealist country par excellence’ by no less a Surrealist than André Breton himself. J. Hoberman writes that the show of Mexican Modernism at the Philadelphia Museum of Art “presents a … response to European art that, at least up until World War II, was equal to and in some regards stronger than that of North America.”

“The outrage [at Kapoor] was based on a slew of misconceptions: one, that Kapoor had exclusive rights to the material, period – he doesn’t, only to one version of it and only in the field of art – two, that it’s a pigment – it isn’t – and three, that the material was ready to be used, which Kapoor himself has raised doubts about.” And now it’s not even the blackest black anymore.

“Items of Scythian gold that had been on loan from four Crimean museums to a Dutch archaeological museum when Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 must be returned to Kiev, a court in Amsterdam ruled yesterday.”

Patricia Barbizet “will hand over the reins to Guillaume Cerutti, who left Sotheby’s in 2015 to join Christie’s as president of Europe, Middle East, Russia and India operations.”