Category: visual

“What makes this fall from grace so striking is that when the Garden Bridge plan first entered the public domain it caused a ripple of pleasure. Month by month, it has steadily descended from being perceived as a flagship for a new brighter London to becoming a symbol of the city’s wider problems. So how exactly did the Garden Bridge fall from grace?”

“The reason some paintings are so incredibly expensive is that they ought by rights to be in a museum. As modern art enters its third century (oh yes), most of its great canonical works are in collections like that of New York’s Museum of Modern Art or Guggenheim – so if a work of that calibre comes on the market it is worth, oh, about $274m.”

“The answer involves everything from the rise of ascetic Protestantism, Soviet contrarianism, Zen reflection and the ever-unstoppable power of the dollar. The last one – market forces – goes a long way towards explaining the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ attitude that fuels the white cube’s persistence.”

“While the goals of this program are admirable, the costs and structure are unreasonable in light of the many legitimate demands and constraints on the Commonwealth’s capital investment plan,” Governor Charlie Baker wrote in his veto letter.

In a bidding session that lasted nine minutes, the artist’s Nu couché sold for $170.4 million to an unnamed Chinese buyer. The work is only the tenth ever to sell for a nine-figure price.

“It is one of only five states without any sales or use tax, meaning that a Manhattan collector who might owe, say, $887,500 in sales tax on the purchase of a $10 million painting at Sotheby’s in New York, would owe nothing by shipping the art to Delaware directly after purchasing it.”

“While the end result – graffiti – can be seen as a pain in the backside for the authorities, arguably a blight on communal areas, the perpetrators, consciously or unconsciously, question long-accepted norms about how our cities and spaces should be used.”

“This chapter of the performance deals with Huxtable’s sense of frustration and mourning about the internet’s ‘transition to something like an oligarchy … The idea of people’s personal information being controlled goes hand in hand with this access to history – the two things are determined by Google algorithms. And if a server is not renewed, then it’s gone for good.'”

“The art press greeted the first installation/iteration of the permanent collection with a run of unexpectedly hostile skepticism; this results from the fact that, despite an adulation for buzzwords like ‘public engagement,’ ‘appeal to younger audiences,’ ‘cultural tourism,’ and ‘accessibility,’ in contemporary art discourse of late, those in power don’t actually like it all that much when paralegals from Pacoima show up with their kids. But that’s exactly who this glorious museum is for — those kids.”

“The Vogels acquired art not because it was fashionable, part of social and economic aspirations, or because it could guarantee a return on an investment, but because they thought the work to be truly important. The couple built street cred with the artists in their collection because they were there from the beginning, when every artist needs the most support, financially as well as emotionally. … Compare the Vogels’ history with the Broads.”