Category: visual

“Zhang Xiaogang, age 54, a Beijing-based painter whose hypnotic portraits have topped $10 million at auction, recently suffered a pair of heart attacks, and his doctors told him – for the first time in his three-decade career – to rest. Few artists embody China’s art boom better than Mr. Zhang, who grew up amid the Cultural Revolution … Yet his desire to keep breakneck pace with China’s developing art scene has taken a toll.”

“Experimental software developed to reassemble Cold War documents may soon shed light on the mysteries surrounding around 5,000 medieval stained-glass fragments from Coventry Cathedral, as well as on the work of John Thornton, one of England’s greatest stained-glass artists.”

“The British Museum has said that is loaning works to UK museums at an unprecedented level to help them weather waters that are likely to be choppy for at least five years.”

The instantly recognizable design, dating back to 1935, “has been reimagined in whimsical full-size replicas that are scattered about London through July 18. Peter Blake, Zaha Hadid, Philip Treacy, Nina Campbell, and some 70 others artists and designers were up to the task of creating ‘ArtBoxes’ for the project.”

“Of the 114 institutions questioned by the Museums Association, 22% have closed all or part of their sites in the last 12 months. Services to schools have also been dramatically reduced.”

“The leaders of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s board of trustees said Friday that chief curator Paul Schimmel resigned and was not fired, as The Times and other news outlets had reported.”

James S. Russell: “The surface modeling … [of] facets to catch the varying light, and carved deep vertical seams … gives the tower presence on the skyline, but its proportions, seen full height, are ruinous. It’s too thick at the bottom and looks as if it crushes its brick and stone surroundings – among the most ancient in London – rather than soars out of them.”

“It’s longer than an Olympic swimming pool, took two-and-a-half years to complete and fulfils a 40-year dream — a new mega-canvas by one of Uzbekistan’s best-known artists,” Lekim Ibragimov. “[He] started working on the project – named One Thousand Angels and One Painting – in 2010 and put the finishing touches on it in April.”

The press release is evasive, couched in vacuous language overseasoned with superlatives: the show “connects absolutely local issues, the most intimate meanings of place and time, with great currents of art and thought”. No details about what these issues or currents may be, of course; and yet this, apparently, amounts to a “groundbreaking premise”.

“In May, the Baroness, who owns four luxury villas across Spain as well as expensive cars and employs a household staff of around 80 people, announced the sale insisting she needed cash because even multimillionaires were feeling the pinch of the economic crisis.”