Category: visual

“This talk of prices taints our relationship with great art. It becomes … sleazy. Picasso’s Coq failed to sell: does that mean Picasso is less cool than he was when he set a world record in the same auction house in May 2010? Has he somehow become less good?”

“A towering beacon of pink mirrored glass has overtaken the Shard to become the tallest building in Europe. Moscow’s Mercury City tower, which topped out on Thursday, now rises to 339m, making it 29m taller than London’s own crystalline pyramid.” (The Shard held its title for only four months.)

“Glenbow Museum president and CEO Kirstin Evenden resigned Tuesday after 19 years with the organization.” (Two other senior staffers resigned in September.) “Although attendance is up, the museum has run deficits at more than $1 million for the last three years. A well-known historian describes the Calgary institution as operating in survival mode.”

“From Here Until Now, by Winnipeg-based architect-artists Eduardo Aquino and Karen Shanski, makes the massive Osborne Street bridge into a surprisingly delicate concrete-and-aluminium poem. … The end result isn’t an immense, attention-grabbing monument but a slow, quiet, interactive experience, something that will sneak up on you gradually as you bike, walk or drive by.”

“Michelangelo was too eminent for his art to be damaged in such a crude way during his lifetime. But as soon as he died in 1564, one of his pupils was ordered to daub draperies over the Last Judgment’s array of genitals and buttocks. Many of these prissy curbings of Michelangelo are still there. When the painting was restored between 1980 and 1994 it was a chance to remove the additions and reveal the full glory of the resurrected flesh.”

“Pre 1990, art colleges [in the UK] were at their peak. All the things that made the richness on which creativity depends have been significantly altered.”

“A council spokesperson said the ‘tough decision’ was made due to “the massive government cuts we are facing”. Moore sold the sculpture, currently worth millions, to the council in the 1960s for less than the market value.”

“In a deposition made public on Wednesday, Mr. Gagosian said that he frequently represented both the seller and buyer in a deal without disclosing that fact to either party.”

“Art restorers working on frescoes in a forgotten chapel in Assisi believe they have stumbled across proof that stunning images found under layers of grime are the work of medieval artist Giotto.”

“Is it daring? It is controversial? On the contrary: pregnancy has become the modern equivalent of a fig leaf, making nude images of women acceptable to all sections of society and all divisions of the media.”