The Impossible Polaroid Project
New company breathes life and vision into our Polaroid memories… As a child growing up in Australia in the 1970′s my life was framed by polaroid moments. My Uncle worked as an engineer, traveling all over the world on big ocean-going cargo ships. Each time he visited us he brought many wild and exotic presents ...
LA Weekly Art show opening, January 10, 2008
This weekend I went to the LA West art show at the Bxsxxx in Santa Monica…. I’m used to zipping around Manhattan on the subway, not sitting in a long snaking traffic queue. I didn’t see a huge amount of art that resonated for me but there were some quite interesting landscapes by XXXXX. The smoothness of the application and the bright colors were gorgeous. The event was packed with artists, their families and collectors. It was quite a feat in patience to see all the different exhibits. Other pieces of art that i liked: You can see the rest of the photos from the show here, in my photo albums…. The artists were jumping up and down on a car covered with a pile of rubbish, yelling and beating it with sticks.
$135 Million dollars paid for Gustav Klimt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
The NYT has an interesting article on the acquistion of a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer which was bought last month by the billionaire collector Ronald S. Lauder and is on display his Neue Galerie for German and Austrian art, on the Upper East Side, NYC. “The art market operates according to its own logic, which may have nothing to do with the quality of the art. Value is not price — whether the issue is a Klimt, or a ballplayer, or a chief executive paid millions of dollars, who runs his company into the ground…. It’s only natural to play the skeptic when the art world is a circus of profligacy, drunk with cash, and when dimwitted speculators make headlines, wasting fortunes on bad art. Who knows what the most money paid in private for a painting really is: maybe $135 million. For that amount, assuming it is what Mr. Lauder paid, his portrait of Adele, a hedonistic masterpiece, will be talked about in terms of how many lives might have been saved or how many lifted from poverty for this sum…. The Met spent more than $45 million two years ago for a tiny Duccio “Madonna and Child” whose modesty seems its most endearing virtue. The tipping point between endearing and hedonistic is evidently somewhere around $100 million…. The Neue Galerie is Christie’s annex now, exhibiting paintings for sale ($15 general admission, no children under 12 allowed), whose display is also a public service.
Einstein Finds Inspiration in the Music of Mozart
Last year, the 100th anniversary of E=mc2 inspired an outburst of symposiums, concerts, essays and merchandise featuring Albert Einstein. This year, the same treatment is being given to another genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on Jan. 27, 250 years ago. There is more to the dovetailing of these anniversaries than one might think.
Destroying The National Parks
Yesterday’s New York Times featured an interesting but very disturbing editorial on forthcoming policy decisions which may wind back the clock on America’s National Park system…… Mother nature seems to be having something to say about her treatment of her ocean and sky lately. I wonder how she will react to more carelessness in our national parks?
Lego Art Exhibition
I came across an interesting gallery exhibition called Art Craziest Nation – The Little Artists: (thanks to Art in Liverpool): “The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave) immortalize iconic artists and their artworks in un-manipulated Lego. In Art Craziest Nation they have curated and built their own mini-exhibition of modern art. Cake & Neave have transformed themselves into two loveable, mischievous cartoon characters, The Little Artists. They exist in the realm of merchandise, between aggressively marketed children’s culture like Pokemon and gallery gift shops, where art becomes a commodity: “We question what it means to be an artist in the current super-branded cultural climate.” Priding themselves on the integrity and accuracy of their hybrid artworks, their knowledge of Lego is comprehensive and respects its association with learning and creativity. The Little Artists’ ambition is to be considered great artists and win the Turner Prize. Art Craziest Nation is a bustling gallery featuring an array of modern art masterpieces. Look out for Damien Hirst with his Shark Tank, Tracey Emin’s infamous Bed and the transvestite, Turner Prize-winning potter Grayson Perry, and of course the gallery shop.”
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts receives $100 million in paintings from collectors Frances and James McGlothlin
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts receives $100 million gift of 130 American paintings including some of my favorite painters: Whistler, Homer, Sargent, and Cassatt. RICHMOND. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has received 130 American paintings, valued in excess of $100 million, from trustee Frances G. McGlothlin and her husband James W. McGlothlin, chairman and ceo of the Virginia-based financial services and industrial supply company United Co. and one of the US’s wealthiest individuals. The gift transforms the museum’s holdings of American art with oil paintings, watercolours, pastels, and sculptures by artists who include Whistler, Homer, Sargent, and Cassatt, among many others.
A Park Slope Memorial
I was touched by this memorial on 5th Avenue and Prospect Place in Brooklyn. What a beautiful way to commemorate the passing of a loved one in traumatic circumstances. Somehow I felt something of the person, Liz Padilla, and the ones who loved her.
“Vancouver Bay” has a new home
“Vancouver Bay” is off to a new home with Richard and Gloria Moylan of Park Slope.
New York Times Champions The Drawing Center
Yesterday’s New York Times featured an editorial which goes to the heart of America’s foundations and the need to safeguard our cultural and spiritual freedoms. Speaking of a recent protest directed at an exhibit by The Drawing Center, The Times editor had this to say:
….in the past few weeks, we’ve watched a handful of vocal family members, who may not represent a majority of 9/11 families, change the dynamic at the World Trade Center site for the worse. They have begun a movement to “take back the memorial,” which means, in essence, eventually purging ground zero of its cultural partners, including the International Freedom Center.
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