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Bauhaus Still In Our House After All These Years
The school itself lasted only 14 years, spent in three different cities. Yet its teachers included some of the great names of 20th-century art and design (Gropius, Kandinsky, Schlemmer, Mies Van Der Rohe, Klee). And its ideas are all round us: "Go into any IKEA superstore and you will see a sort of Bauhaus-Lite: knock-down shelving, lightweight furniture, geometrical lamps, bright colors, abstract patterns."...
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His Work Too Expensive, Artist Offers Print Subscriptions
Philadelphia artist Andrew Jeffrey Wright "has launched a low-cost subscription series for fans who pay a yearly fee for what he has to offer. Beginning in January, his 'patrons' have been getting one of every colorful screen print he produces for the calendar year 2010 - more than 12 prints, guaranteed."...
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NYPD: Do Not Worry About The Naked Rooftop People
Antony Gormley is putting 27 life-size figures on rooftops and ledges of Midtown Manhattan buildings. "About the same time that the first figure was placed atop a four-story building at 25th Street and Fifth Avenue on Tuesday, the Police Department issued a statement reassuring New Yorkers that the figures are not despondent people on the verge of leaping to their deaths."...
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$150M Brody Collection Up For Auction
"One of the most vaunted private art collections in Los Angeles, highlighted by a prized Picasso nude and including works by Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, Georges Braque, Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard, is expected to fetch more than $150 million at auction when it goes on sale in May, Christie's announced Tuesday."...
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NYT's Bruce Graham Obit Pictures Wrong Hancock Building
Chicago architect, Chicago skyscraper -- but the Times' national edition "runs a picture of Boston's John Hancock Tower ... not Chicago's John Hancock Center, which was Graham's greatest skyscraper."...
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There Are 8 Million Sketches In The Naked City
Or there will be, if a 27-year-old artist completes his self-appointed "mission to sketch every person in New York City, all 8,363,710." He "had only just dropped anchor in a studio apartment the size of a city bus when he began the dogged pursuit of his expansive goal with nothing more than a black pen and a notebook the size of a DVD box."...
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Record Number Of Dealers Flocking To $2.7 Billion Tefaf
"The 23rd annual edition of the European Fine Art Fair -- Tefaf -- in the Dutch city of Maastricht will be the year's first test of demand from buyers outside the auction rooms, where wealthy collectors have been pushing up prices."...
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Artes Mundi Artists Are International, Little-Known
"There was no sight of a light being turned off and on at the preview opening of the fourth Artes Mundi prize exhibition in Cardiff. This was big subject art tackling subjects from post-communist social order to consumerism and globalisation. The prize of £40,000 is one of the most lucrative in the world and the biggest in the UK."...
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Has Caravaggio Dethroned Michelangelo?
"Caravaggiomania ... suggests that the whole classical tradition in which Michelangelo was steeped is becoming ever more foreign and therefore seemingly less germane, even to many educated people." Meanwhile, Caravaggio "exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible."...
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Ole Scheeren, Who Designed CCTV Tower, Splits From Koolhaas Firm
"Ole Scheeren - who is considered one of the top Asia-based architects for his work on high-profile buildings such as the CCTV tower in Beijing - is stepping down from his role as partner in Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture to open his own office."...
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Is The Barnes Really So Dependent On Admissions Income?
Christopher Knight: "A 2006 news report showed that, on average, member institutions of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, the nation's leading professional organization, earn an average of five percent of their revenue from admissions. … Five percent. … [This is not] a horrendous problem unique to the beleaguered Barnes, which therefore required drastic measures."...
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How Do We Protect World Heritage Treasures?
"According to the non-governmental organization Heritage Watch, Angkor saw 7600 visitors in 1993; by 2006, the number was 1.6 million; by the time 2010 is up, the complex will likely draw 3 million. Tourists of course bring in money for the developing country, as well as help assure a certain degree of protection for cultural sites. But they also walk everywhere. They touch things."...
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On Auction: Vasari Archive Of Renaissance Treasures
"On sale will be the archive of the man credited with being the father of Western art history: Giorgio Vasari, whose Lives of the Artists chronicled the lives of the painters and sculptors of the Renaissance. The documents include 17 letters from Vasari's friend, Michelangelo, together with correspondence from five Renaissance popes and the 16th-century ruler of Florence, Cosimo I de' Medici."...
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Consensus Building? Vancouver Art Gallery Should Stay Put
"Moving the Vancouver Art Gallery would empty out the heart of the city, make no economic sense, and do nothing to improve the situation for art, say a chorus of advocates from arts and urban-planning circles."...
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The 15 Most-Anticipated New Buildings Of 2010
A slideshow. "Everyone from the most high profile "starchitect" on down has seen their business affected by This New Reality. Here are some of the projects set to open their doors, break ground, or gain attention in 2010."...
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So What's The Future Of Architecture?
"America fell out of love with super-tall skyscrapers years ago. Now it faces a commercial-property meltdown that's more about delusional debt than the building frenzy seen in Shenzhen and Dubai."...
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Photography, Paris And The Genesis Of Surrealism
"Looking out at the madness of modern life in the early 20th century, Surrealism said, 'Bring it on.' … There was so much going on. The chaos of traffic and lights and humanity was constantly producing jarring images. Reality seemed to blur into a dream state and then back again. … By grabbing a moment from the flow of experience, [photography] gives it individual meaning. The throbbing life of Paris in the 1920s gets broken down into its bits, its isolated incidents."...
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The Alabaster Mourners Of Dijon
Forty carved figures from the tomb of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, are currently touring the US. "With faces of portrait-like specificity, gesturing hands, and expressive body language, the mourners mix mystery with candor as they pray, chant, weep, wipe away tears, turn towards their neighbors, bear witness."...
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Blow To Architectural Tours? Chicago River May Be Closed
"As state and federal officials hunt down the elusive Asian carp, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is looking at the financial and environmental costs of closing navigational locks in Chicago waterways and shutting down the Chicago River to boat traffic as many as four days a week."...
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Must NYC's Pedestrian Plazas Be Quite So Unsightly?
"Now that the plazas at Times and Herald squares are permanent, the next step is making them look worthy of the part, a process that began somewhat haltingly yesterday. ... [W]hy isn't the DOT taking more assertive steps in making the plazas attractive? Epoxy gravel is hardly the stuff of inspiring design."...
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With DNA Analysis, FBI Seeks Break In 1990 Gardner Heist
The robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, "which included three Rembrandts and a Vermeer, remains the world's largest art theft in dollar value." Sources said the evidence to be analyzed "would probably include long strips of duct tape used to tie up the museum's two night watchmen, whom the thieves overpowered to get access to the artwork."...
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Staff Rebellion At London's ICA
"In a blow to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, which has just received an emergency Arts Council bailout of £1.2m, Mark Sladen, its director of exhibitions, has told bosses he would consider a new role in the organisation only if its director, Ekow Eshun, resigned. … The staff have also taken a vote of no confidence in Eshun."...
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Reflecting Its City, Detroit Institute Opens Islamic Gallery
"Sunday's opening [at the Detroit Institute of Arts] comes as several museums worldwide are broadening their collections. ... In Detroit, the gallery of about 170 works of art from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Central Asia and India was several years in the making."...
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Banksy-Robbo Battle Highlights Art-World Rift
"On one side are old-school graffiti writers who 'tag' or 'bomb' their names in as many places as possible and seldom, if ever, seek compensation for their work. On the other are street artists, who aim for a political or cultural resonance and also create portable pieces they can exhibit and sell."...
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Edinburgh Court Hears Case Of Ransomed Leonardo
A 73-year-old tour guide testified that "she saw one of the men with an axe, standing in front of Madonna of the Yarnwinder while the other removed it. ... The evidence emerged as five other men went on trial accused of demanding £4.25 million for the safe return of the painting, estimated to be worth £50 million."...
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