Some grandmother tips about the internet (via swiss-miss.com)
This week, Charles Saatchi drops a bomb, can art portray the economic crisis, public art in New York, Knoedler closes, a giant forgery scandal is brewing and sales from the 2011 Miami art fairs.
British collector Charles Saatchi writes a post a tell all post for The Guardian that he thinks the art world has become too shallow … even for him. He admits:
But even a self-serving narcissistic showoff like me finds this new art world too toe-curling for comfort.
A video from Reuters has blogger Felix Salmon, critic Blake Gopnik and artist William Powhida discussing the financial crisis, representations of it and Powhida’s recent show, Derivatives, at Postmasters Gallery.
Curbed has a list of what they consider some of the best public art in New York, including a “sort of” Serra in the Bronx.
More than you ever wanted to know about a horse painting, courtesy the Getty’s blog.
One of the biggest news item of this week was that the 165-year-old Knoedler gallery will be closing. Also this week, a bomb shell about some possible Modernist forgeries hit the headlines. Related? We’re not 100% sure yet:
The Knoedler gallery … has not been implicated in the investigation. But on Friday a London collector, Pierre Lagrange, who bought one of the works, “Untitled 1950” by Pollock, for $17 million in 2007, sued the gallery and Ms. Freedman, contending that it is a forgery. His forensic analysis found that two paints in the work had not been invented until after Pollock’s death, the suit said.
For those going to Sundance in January 2012, there are two art-related films to see: one on Ai Weiwei and another on Marina Abramović.
In case you were wondering, Occupy Art Basel was a no go and didn’t do anything of note.
And if you’re itching to know what sold this year during the Miami art fairs, Art Market Monitor scrapped posts by others into these useful bullet lists:
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning-ish, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links (10 or less) to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.
Funny… based on what he bought and how he bought Saatchi is probably more responsible for the shallowness and careerism of contemporary art today than any other single person. After all, he is the one who launched the mostly vapid WBAs into the stratosphere and others of their brash, loud, but essentially empty ilk.