The famous German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, once said, “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?” I wonder what Brecht would say about banks having become benefactors to today’s art museums? The Tate Modern gallery in London just recently rehung its collection at a cost of £1 million, or around $1,860,000, an expenditure underwritten…
The Tate Modern in the UK is defending its bold resolve to play a non-stop audio tape loop of fart noises as part of the museum’s permanent exhibition. According to the British newspaper The Times, “Martin Creed’s Work No 401 is a recording of nine minutes of the artist blowing raspberries into a microphone, which is played back on a loop….
The May 9th feeding frenzy at Christie’s auction house in New York signifies a new level of absurdity for the art world. The New York Times dubbed it the evening when “Minimalism went mainstream.” Walter Robinson, writing for artnet.com, politely referred to it as “irrational market exuberance,” and noted the otherworldly nature of it all, “A galvanized metal box, roughly…
Francois Pinault is the billionaire who owns the Gucci fashion group, Yves St Laurent, the Chateau Latour vineyard and the auction house, Christie’s. He is the 74th richest man in the world, and it’s only fitting that a business oligarch be allowed to help shape the face of contemporary art, after all, culture is just another commodity in today’s monopolized,…
I groaned when I first read that rocker turned postmodern artist, David Byrne, had written a musical about Imelda Marcos titled Here Lies Love. Does the world really need another de-politicized musical ala Evita? The musical premiered at the 2006 Adelaide Arts Festival in Australia. Byrne collaborated with British DJ Fatboy Slim to produce the musical. The Adelaide Arts Festival…
No it’s not a law firm, but you might be asking, “what on earth do those names have in common?” On January 17th, Artnet Magazine reported that the “Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has added three new trustees to its board, among them artist Ed Ruscha, whose work has been included in eight exhibitions at the museum over the…
This year’s prestigious Turner Prize for artistic achievement was awarded to Simon Starling, who successfully dismantled a rotten old wood boat shed he found located on a river bank, constructed its pieces into a boat in which he sailed down the river – and then reconstructed the boat back into a shed. Starling, who fancies himself an “Installation artist,” claims…
Here in Los Angeles the banners advertising the Jean-Michel Basquiat July-Oct. 2005 exhibit at the Museum Of Contemporary Art (MOCA) have been ubiquitous. That no one knows how to pronounce the name of the deceased artist only adds to the carefully manufactured aura of mystique that surrounds his legacy. I’ve heard “Bäs k-ät”, “Bas-KEE-ah” and several malformed variants – but…
