Category: visual

“Construction, which began in 2012, was delayed by one of the building’s most distinctive features: a honeycomb-style concrete-and-steel structure, known as the veil, that wraps around the museum.”

“Every great artist leaves stylistic fingerprints across a picture. This could be exquisitely handled drapery, a unique softness of expression or a masterful depiction of light. A knowing eye will locate and identify these tell-tale traits quickly.”

Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller): “It’s a big, big hairy deal … as time goes on, it will change the way everybody sees 17th-century art.”

“Going back as far as the Renaissance, artists have had an uneasy relationship to patrons and the money they offer. And the fear of mass commercialization has been a perennial theme of art at least since the days of the pop artists a half century ago. But something different is in the air today.”

David Shrigley’s Really Good is a 10-metre high hand with an elongated thumb, crafted from bronze. Shrigley, who was shortlisted for last year’s Turner Prize, said his work was “slightly satirical but also serious at the same time”.

“In view of its exceptional attributes, its importance in Picasso’s development, and its close association with the Seagram Building almost from the moment of the tower’s completion, it seems astonishing that the painting is unprotected by the landmark status accorded the Four Seasons interior in 1990.”

“It’s unclear how many so-called “spoliated” cultural objects – paintings, sculptures, drawings, graphics, prints and decorative works obtained illegally or by force from European institutions and private collectors by Nazi German authorities between 1932 and 1945 – may be housed in Canadian art museums.”

“The Museum Folkwang in Essen has cancelled a planned exhibition of Polaroids by the French-Polish artist Balthus featuring a model called Anna who posed for him from the age of eight to 16. The museum … decided not to stage the show because it ‘could lead to unwanted legal consequences and the closure of the exhibition’.”

The parish father for three small villages near Granada says that the 17th-century canvas depicting the bound Christ is the first of painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s several treatments of the image, titled Ecce Homo. Experts are divided on the claim’s accuracy.

“When supporters of resale royalties in the US seek to advance their arguments, they usually look to other countries for supporting evidence—starting with France, which originated droit de suite in 1920 and now works on the EU model of a sliding scale up to 4%, capped at €12,500. They tend to overlook the California act.”