Category: visual

More contemporary art. Fewer Americans and more Asian collectors…

“Following last week’s news that the Smithsonian would stand by its much-criticized exhibition ‘Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue,’ which features a number of works from Bill and Camille Cosby’s personal collection, the Associated Press is now reporting that the Cosbys also gave the museum $716,000. As the report notes, that gift “virtually covers the entire cost” of the show.”

“Today’s art craze is baked into the global economy – not a local cyclone but a climate change caused by belching emissions of excess money that won’t stop while the carbon of present mega-wealth holds out. That is, art prices can crash only as one piddling consequence of a planetary catastrophe. … Sensing that people will one day look back on this era as a freakish episode in cultural history, why not get a head start on viewing it that way? Detach and marvel.”

RJ Rushmore: “A year inside of ‘Philadelphia’s community-engagement juggernaut'” – that’s the city’s famous Mural Arts Program – “has taught me a lot. It’s made me fall deeper in love with street art than ever before, and it’s also helped me to better understand the medium’s shortcomings. Here are a few observations.”

No, the set of cards most of us know doesn’t come from the Middle Ages. It’s “is a product of the intuitive thoughtfulness of an American-born occult scholar in late 19th century London, a British-born creative visual genius who studied art in New York City and lived in Jamaica, and a businessman whose first book was about coal mining techniques … These three people, essentially, are the only reason any of us know much of anything about tarot.”

Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O”) was born out of a rivalry between Picasso and Henri Matisse. But competition can evolve into adoration, and when Matisse died on November 3, 1954, Picasso embarked upon an ambitious form of mourning: He would make a series of 15 works in homage to Eugène Delacroix’s 1834 painting Les Femmes d’Alger, a work held in near-religious regard by the late artist.

“Fairey’s arrest, and his release, provides a window into the evolution of street art, its growing acceptance in American culture and the extent to which an old question, ‘Is it art or is it vandalism?’ now gets answered through new eyes. The social media and press attention that the Detroit incident received speaks to the artist’s fame, which is itself a marker of how street art has become part of the zeitgeist.”

“Tower Hamlets council has been declared the legal owner of the Henry Moore sculpture Draped Seated Woman – more popularly known as Old Flo – following a protracted legal dispute. … The Old Flo ownership battle was fought by Tower Hamlets against Bromley council, which claimed rights to the sculpture in 2012.”

Tweeted one wag, “I guess this is what she looked like four days after she died.”

“‘The language I use, the way I try to talk about things, is always with that in mind,’ the Vancouverite says during a phone interview. ‘It’s something my mom can enjoy, or people I grew up playing hockey with can enjoy.'”