Category: visual

Jeddah, the “ancient city near Mecca is home to one of the world’s most spectacular arrays of open-air modern sculpture. Perhaps aware of the kudos its neighbours are getting from their Guggenheim branches and skyscrapers, Jeddah has just restored these modernist marvels and moved a selection into a new seaside sculpture park.”

“Some sculptors here, such as The Essankro Master and The Master of the Arched Back, are designated only by their region or style, but many others … now have names and stories (one, Kuakudili, has a face) and so they are slowly becoming known as individuals.”

“The artist, who grew up in Methil, Fife, first found fame in 1989 when two of his canvases submitted to the Royal Scottish Academy sold on the first day. His work has since featured in exhibitions in Edinburgh, London and New York. He was made an OBE in 2003.”

“Although a few museums will be pleased to be able to exhibit the original works — as reminders of the fanatic cult of heroism that led to the deaths of millions of people — the artistic value of the bombastic sculptures is debatable at the very least.”

“Whatever its fate in art or social history, Mattress Performance could well live on in objecthood. But would a museum or gallery want it? On the phone from California, where she is visiting a friend in Laguna Beach post-graduation and luxuriating in the distance from the 50-pound mattress she hauled around daily since September, Sulkowicz says no one has approached her about the prospect yet.”

“As the USC students and the administration go back and forth over what promises were and were not kept, a larger debate now rages about the future of art in education.”

“Current and former Roski faculty also issued a statement, expressing solidarity with the USC7, urging the administration to ‘honor its commitments to its students.'”

“Everyone knows that major shifts are inevitable once capitalism begins to flood the socialist zone. And a sense of mingled excitement and apprehension is in the air at the 12th Havana Biennial, a diffuse, gradually unfolding, monthlong series of art exhibitions that have been injected into the tissue of this majestic heirloom of a city, adding contemporary warmth to its gorgeously crumbling bones.”

“Here, you’ve got an appropriation artist whose whole reputation is from taking images that he finds interesting and turning them into art,” Ian Ballon, an Internet copyright litigator with Greenberg Traurig, LLP told The Daily Beast. “But courts evaluate ‘fair use’ based on a multi-part balancing test and, if you change the facts just a little bit, something that looks very similar could actually be a ‘fair use.’”

The percentage of guaranteed contemporary works at Christie’s evening auctions increased to 52 percent in May from 44 percent in November, according to ArtTactic. Meanwhile, average prices decreased 15.8 percent.