Category: visual

“The interiors of his buildings feature two-storey ballrooms that are spellbinding tapestries of bright paint, LED lights and playful Andean motifs: chandeliers anchored to butterfly symbols, doorways that resemble owls and candy-coloured pillars that could hold up a Willy Wonka factory.”

“Artists also seem attracted to the button-shop concept: That an industrial workshop could house art, and that an aspiring gallerist works side-by-side with her father. The artists who display their work with Ms. Li see the space as a rare opportunity, to show artwork in a heavily trafficked neighborhood and in a shop with a unique sense of New York City’s history.”

“Adam’s plywood pedestal had buckled. ‘The head had come off,’ Mr. Soultanian said. ‘There were 28 recognizable pieces and hundreds of smaller fragments,’ he added, and skid marks on the torso where it slid across the patio floor.”

Peter Seibt: “War is not peace and the price of something is not the value. In short, the market is not the art. Cynicism is not creation. But we are not at all rendered helpless by this billion-dollar industry. Instead we created a radical art project. This has brought us great joy in the making and the sharing of art.”

“A thousand years from now when history textbooks will allocate to the Cold War a mere couple of paragraphs, the text should be illustrated by one Berlin Wall photograph. For by seizing this singular moment in history, Richard Avedon exposed in the faces of his subjects the stress and the pain behind the wall and the related historical events.”

“These graffiti are indices, minute traces testifying that our relationship with masterpieces, between the 15th and 19th centuries, was very different from what it is today.”

“With his decision on Friday approving this city’s federal bankruptcy plan, Judge Steven W. Rhodes – aided by nearly a billion dollars in private and state rescue money – ended an unprecedented threat to the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose world-class paintings and sculpture could have been parceled off at auction to help pay city debt.”

“The idea to rescue a bankrupt American city started with a doodle on a legal pad. U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen … wrote the word ‘art’ on the pad and drew a box around it. Then he drew an arrow from the box to where he had written the word ‘pensions’.”

“An Italian research team led by psychologist Antonio Chirumbolo reports people with a strong need for cognitive closure—that is, to have quick, definitive answers to vexing questions—are less likely to appreciate abstract art.”

Jerry Perenchio, former chairman of the Spanish-language U.S. television network Univisión, is bequeathing at least 47 paintings – by the likes of Monet, Magritte, Manet, and Picasso – valued at roughly $500 million. But there’s a sizable string attached.