Category: visual

“The author says conditions are remarkably similar to the bubble of 1990 and the market is still inflating, in what they term the ‘mania phase of its formation.'”

“I used to be a figure skater. That was mostly high school into college. You had to trace a figure eight on the ice. You had to go through three times and trace the same circle over the same circle. It was really about control and the body. So it goes back to using my body to trace this almost impossible circle over and over and over.”

“As the time-lapse video above shows, a lot more work and craftsmanship goes into painting a factory-fresh Boeing 737 than one might think. It’s an expensive process, with an estimated cost between $100,000 to $200,000, depending on the colors and level of detail involved.

“Francis Morris becomes the fourth director of Tate Modern after the Swede Lars Nittve, the Spaniard Vicenti Todoli, and Dercon, who is Belgian. Some observers had expected Tate to once again recruit from elsewhere in Europe or from the US – instead it chose an insider, someone steeped in Tate culture and someone well known and respected in the art world.”

“As cultural heritage becomes one of the softest targets for financial brutalism, Derby’s three museums – Silk Mill, Derby Museum and Art Gallery and Pickford’s House – may be forced to reduce their opening hours or close altogether if the council withdraws funding to the trust that runs them. If you think this does not matter much – if you safely assume that all Britain’s real masterpieces are in places like the British Museum and that regional galleries are also-rans – think again.”

Aravena practices what he calls “incremental design.” With this approach, he and the designers at Elemental, his studio, build housing structures that are deliberately unfinished.

“Just six months after she was given her very first camera, Julia Margaret Cameron applied to join the Photographic Society of London … From the start, Cameron’s work was lambasted in the press. And the biggest cause of criticism was the thing that, ironically, would turn out to be the hallmark of her style and her enduring fame.”

“Venture up the Amazon or into a Masai Mara village in Kenya, explore a jungle bazaar in southern India or even a roadside shop in Arizona selling Navajo knockoffs, and the chances are excellent that most of the beads you will see were produced in this unlikely mountain village a stone’s throw from the Polish frontier and a short drive to Germany.”

“Compared with those so-called “starchitects,” and their principally aesthetic set of concerns, Alejandro Aravena couldn’t be geographically or conceptually farther away: He is young, at 48; and almost all of his projects are in his native Chile. And, he is best-known for scrappy but effective social-housing projects, in which he leaves room for residents to invest their own work and resources to alter his designs.”