Archives for December 2007

Like last year, Art Basel Miami Beach's final post-sale wrap-up report claims much success and provides little hard information. We do know that 43,000 visitors came "from every continent" (even Antarctica?) compared to last year's 40,000. The number of journalists covering this momentous event also increased: This year 1,600 reporters and critics (all of whom came from … [Read more...] about Art Basel Miami Wrap Up

Today was depressing enough, thanks to the continuing saga of my mother's hip replacement (the reason why I've been posting with less than my usual compulsiveness). Today was blood-transfusion day. (On a more positive note, it was also sit-up-in-a-chair day.) While attending to my mother's hospital misadventures, I've also unhappily discovered that my blog is sick: This post is … [Read more...] about Self-Censorship: CultureGrrl Takes Down Two Photos

Black Mold Patches Above the Cow's Horns Photo: French Ministry of Culture In my Wall Street Journal article a year and a half ago about the fungi and bacteria problems jeopardizing the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, France, I quoted Jean-Michel Geneste, the cave's curator, asserting that everything was under control: There is no damage to the paintings....Now the … [Read more...] about Lascaux’s Prehistoric Paintings Still Endangered by Fungus

Two readers respond to my recent post, The Met's New European Galleries: The Good, the Bad and the Dumbed Down: ---Veteran art writer Paul Jeromack, whose work has appeared in The Art Newspaper and Art & Auction, among others, writes: The two walls with the Sorolla, Zorn, Sargent and Boldini portraits are dazzling: Each is a masterpiece of its kind. I like [Metropolitan Museum … [Read more...] about BlogBacks: Defenders of the Met’s European Installation

I am now in the midst of the middle-aged daughter's rite of passage: My mother fell Friday morning and had hip replacement surgery yesterday. I've got no siblings, so it's all me. Which means it's probably less of you. I do, however, have BlogBacks coming up later, disagreeing with my take on the Met's rehang of its 19th- and early 20th-century European paintings and sculpture … [Read more...] about My Mother’s Hip and Me

Gary Tinterow, the Met's curator in charge of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art, showing off the new galleries to the press. The Metropolitan Museum's renovated galleries for 19th- and 20th-century European paintings and sculpture provide 8,000 square feet of additional space (the Henry J. Heinz II Galleries) for more art---always a good thing, but particularly welcome … [Read more...] about The Met’s New European Galleries: The Good, the Bad and the Dumbed Down

The above headline is a shameless tease, because I don't know the answer...yet. But I do know CultureGrrl readers are fascinated by the subject, because you've been hitting my previous two posts about the tiny, exquisite limestone carving (here and here) in record numbers today, making me Number Four, at this writing, on the Guennol Google-search hit parade. Harold Holzer, … [Read more...] about Who Bought the Guennol Lioness?

---This is not exactly a new subject of inquiry but fascinating nonetheless---how the physical infirmities of great artists have affected their art. In Simulations of Ailing Artists' Eyes Yield New Insights on Style, Guy Gugliotta writes in the NY Times that "an ophthalmologist at Stanford, Michael F. Marmor, described in the Archives of Ophthalmology creating computer … [Read more...] about Links for Your Lynx: Great Artists’ Infirmities, Sitting Bull’s Last Stand, Antiquities in the Bronx, Blogging and Flogging Basel Miami UPDATED

Harold Holzer, the Metropolitan Museum's senior vice president for external affairs, responds to Gertrude Stein, Modern No More, at the Met's Reopened Galleries: Gertrude Stein herself left the portrait to the Met specifically so it would NOT be installed with more recent art. In fact, when Alice B. Toklas learned it had been lent to the Museum of Modern Art for an exhibition, … [Read more...] about BlogBack: The Met’s Harold Holzer on Relocating Gertrude Stein

The Guennol Lioness This just in from Sotheby's: A man from England, standing at the rear of Sotheby's salesroom, battled a phone bidder this afternoon to purchase the 5,000-year-old Guennol Lioness for $57.16 million (with buyer's premium). The miniature feline-on-steroids (above), which had for almost 60 years been displayed at the Brooklyn Museum, had been estimated to bring … [Read more...] about News Flash: Guennol Lioness Fetches $57.16 Million from British Buyer

NY Times theater critic Charles Isherwood had lots of fun, in last Sunday's "Arts & Leisure" section, mocking a common and (to my mind) innocuous method by which arts institutions encourage and acknowledge major donors---ubiquitous naming opportunities. Isherwood decries the "veritable carnival of nomenclature" and wonders: What became of those wealthy philanthropists … [Read more...] about The Isherwood Files: Should Donors Put Their Names on Elevators? Should Critics Speak on Ads for Events They Will Later Review?

Although Picasso's "Gertrude Stein" has been exiled from the Metropolitan Museum's modern art galleries to the new 19th- and early 20th-century European galleries, she's just a few steps away, across the hall, from Jaws, who is temporarily menacing the contemporary art galleries. So I went to check whether what I have heard is true: That Damien Hirst's visiting shark is no … [Read more...] about Met Revises Its Hirst Shark Warning

It's Vernissage and Media Reception day for Art Basel Miami Beach! And is CultureGrrl on the scene, to report to you on the VIP onslaught? You know me better than that! I am not going to see the "20 cutting-edge art galleries presenting projects in shipping containers"; I refuse to attend the opening-night concert with Iggy and the Stooges on the beach; I'm taking a pass on … [Read more...] about Second Annual Art Basel Miami Sour Grapes Soufflé

Picasso, "Gertrude Stein," 1906, Bequest of Gertrude Stein ©1999 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Poor Gertrude Stein, above, must be rolling in her grave. I'll have much more to say soon about the Metropolitan Museum's renovated and expanded galleries for 19th- and early 20th-century European paintings and sculpture, which reopened to the public … [Read more...] about Gertrude Stein, Modern No More, at the Met’s Reopened Galleries

Hot Lot: The Guennol Lioness, Elam, ca. 3000-2800 B.C., estimated at $14-18 million [NOTE: My follow-up post on the auction result is here.] In the just published 30,000 Years of Art (Phaidon), the so-called "Lioness Demon" (above), a 5,000-year-old Elamite figure (from what is now Iran), is listed as belonging to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It's not surprising that even some … [Read more...] about Guennol Lioness Auction: Brooklyn Museum to Lose Its Long-Term Loan