Art

These days China feels "both older and newer than any place on the planet," writes  New York Times art critic Holland Cotter. And nowhere is that tension more palpable than in the country's museums, which use antiquities from the millennia-old civilization in service of a rising world power. In a trip across China, the critic discovers a different approach to museum display. More »

The art market has again defied the economic downturn, with Christie's and Sotheby's bringing in more than $1 billion combined during the past two weeks' London sales—a 19% rise from last year. But those numbers disguise the erratic nature of the market, writes the Wall Street Journal . While new collectors from Russia and the Middle East are paying top dollar for works by established modern masters, younger artists went bust. More »

New Yorkers can feast their eyes on an unusual site over the next four months—waterfalls. Four manmade falls, each about 100 feet high, came to life yesterday at different sites along the East River, the Daily News reports. City officials hope the structures—the work of artist Olafur Eliasson—will bring in loads of tourists before they come down in October. More »

One of Monet’s rare waterlily paintings sold at Christie’s in London tonight for more than $80 million, a record price for the artist, the New York Times reports. At least six buyers competed for Le Bassin aux Nympheas , a 1919 work from a series of paintings considered among Monet’s most important. An anonymous buyer won the painting with a high bid of $80.4 million. More »

A Chinese graphic novelist determined to keep the aftermath of last month's earthquake on the front burner is using her new blog to get the message out, and fellow citizen journalists on the other side of the world are catching on. "We love you, Coco Wang," a blogger at New York-based Jezebel writes to the Beijing-based artist. More »

In recent years, art collectors and auction houses have been reaping the profits of soaring contemporary art prices, while living artists watched with chagrin. Now Damien Hirst has stepped into the fray, bypassing the gallery system and bringing his latest works straight to auction. "It’s a very democratic way to sell art," says Hirst, "and it feels like a natural evolution for contemporary art." More »

A self-portrait formerly considered a Rembrandt knockoff has been deemed a genuine early work of the Dutch master—and valued at $40 million. Rembrandt Laughing , executed on a small copper plate, was examined by Holland's leading Rembrandt experts. A British art collector purchased the work late last year for $4.5 million from an auction house that had appraised it at $3,100. More »

Picasso remains the artist of choice for the criminal elite of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Three armed robbers made off with two of his prints— The Painter and the Model and Minotaur, Drinker and Women —from a city museum today, Reuters reports. The robbery comes just weeks after thieves nabbed Picasso's Suzanne Bloch painting from a different city museum. More »

America has an army of artists that rivals the military in size, the New York Times reports. The National Endowment of the Arts has used census figures to paint a portrait of the almost 2 million Americans making their living from artistic professions—more, the Times notes, than the number who ID themselves as lawyers, doctors, or police officers. The combined painters, photographers, dancers, writers, and others play a huge role in the economy but often struggle with underemployment and below-average incomes. More »

Architect Daniel Libeskind won worldwide acclaim for his stark, unsettling Jewish Museum in the heart of Berlin. Now the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco has moved into a new Libeskind-designed building. But as a critic for the New York Times observes, the Bay Area institution shies away from the particularities of the Jewish experience. More »

Don’t accuse them of playing with their food; the finalists in the 2008 London Festival of Architecture’s Jelly Design Contest aren’t fooling around. Using what Americans would call gelatin, “a vast range of architectural motifs and techniques have been used to spectacular effect,” an event organizer tells Building Design. Entries will be evaluated on aesthetics, innovation and “wobble factor.” More »

Pittsburgh police have charged a museum guard with defacing a $1.2 million painting he "didn't like," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Timur Serebrykov, 27, added he was "sorry" for keying the night sky image by Vija Celmins. The work suffered a "large vertical gouge" and is "a total loss," said an official at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. Serebrykov may plead a mental health defense. More »

Art Basel, the world's most prestigious (and most expensive) art fair, opened Tuesday in Switzerland amid grumbles that works for sale were of middling quality and overpriced. "Now there are just too many art fairs," said a director of PaceWildenstein, one of New York's biggest galleries. As the New York Times writes, this year's Art Basel is loaded with well-known names at the expense of new discoveries. More »

Beware the scruffy artists at the corner cafe—they may be serial polluters and not even know it, Laurie Fendrich writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education . Many painters, tree-huggers by claim, will flush chemicals down the drain, and ignore the carbon footprint of their synthetic pigments. They just "think of their paints as gooey stuff that can be turned into a nice painting," Fendrich writes. More »

A fire broke out at the Berlin Philharmonic today, bringing more than 100 firefighters to the concert hall, Der Spiegel reports. No one was injured in the blaze, with musicians fleeing with their instruments; a lunchtime concert had to be evacuated. "We don’t believe anyone is in danger, as the fire appears to be contained in the roof," a fire official said. More »

A painting under examination in Greece is being billed as the last work of Vincent van Gogh, the Guardian reports. Seized by the Nazis from French Jews, then "liberated" by Greek resistance fighters in 1944, the work appears to be a third portrait of van Gogh’s physician, Dr. Gachet—though a notebook found with the portrait has been dismissed as not van Gogh's. More »

In some ways, Robert Rauschenberg lived more of the rock ’n’ roll life than his friend and collaborator David Byrne, who offers an affectionate farewell in the New York Times today . His life was just as wild and unpredictable as his work, says the Talking Heads founder. "Conversation was like one of his pieces: a crazy mishmash of images, multiple layers and references, and a spray of allusions that were simultaneously silly, profound and beautiful—he was the Neal Cassady of the art world." More »

A 1976 triptych painting by Francis Bacon became the most expensive piece of contemporary art ever sold when it went for $86.2 million at auction last night, Reuters reports. Seventeen other artists also set records at the sale, boosting Sotheby's to the best night in its 300-year history and quashing predictions that the economic slowdown would douse the red-hot market for postwar art. More »

Christie's auction of contemporary art in New York belied an economic downturn, the Times reports, with paintings, sculpture, and even a house fetching handsome prices. Two works drew particular attention: a portrait of a 280-pound nude woman by Lucian Freud, which sold for $33.6 million, and a house in Palm Springs by Richard Neutra, which fetched $16.8 million. More »

Now that the shutdown of the Guggenheim Museum's Las Vegas satellites is complete, many in the art world are faulting museum leaders in New York for not understanding the realities of the Strip. But for one LA Times critic, it's not just the Guggenheim that misread Vegas. Rem Koolhaas, the musem's designer and perhaps the world's most lauded architect, deserves some of the blame. More »