Required Reading
This week, the Venice Biennale makes the art world go round, a new accessibility icon, Starry Night explained, Warhol inspired Dior, James Turrell overload, and more.
This week, the Venice Biennale makes the art world go round, a new accessibility icon, Starry Night explained, Warhol inspired Dior, James Turrell overload, digital conservation, and more.
Does the Venice Biennale make the art world go round? The Art Newspaper seems to think so:
So why are so many dealers unwilling to acknowledge the commercial side of the Venice Biennale, let alone discuss details of sales? “There is this idea that the world of commerce and the world of pure, unpolluted art should remain separate,” says Olav Velthuis, an associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Talking Prices, an examination of the workings of the art market. “But the truth is that these two worlds need each other. Venice needs Basel and Basel needs Venice.”
Reporting on Art Basel in Basel, the New York Times gives us a lot to chew on, particularly that the very rich, like in the rest of the world, are getting much richer, while everyone else is suffering:
At 669 Swiss francs per square meter, or $65 per square foot, an entry-level booth at Art Basel costs $42,900.
… In a market report for the European Fine Art Fair this year in Maastricht, the Netherlands, the economist Clare McAndrew found that dealers generating sales of more than €10 million, or $13 million, in 2012 saw an average 55 percent increase in revenue. Midsize dealers, with sales of €500,000 to €10 million, experienced a decline of 1 percent to 2 percent. The smallest dealers suffered the most, with a 17 percent year-on-year drop in revenue for those with sales of less than €500,000. Dr. McAndrew suggested that the top 5 percent of dealers could now account for more than half the market’s overall value.
A fantastic short video (12:56) on Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” (1889):
Hyperallergic contributing editor An Xiao gave a talk at TEDGlobal this week about memes, and as expected it was amazing:
“Memes are used to talk about police brutality, government corruption, the problem of pollution.”
Kriston Capps reviews Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life: 1928–1945 at The Phillips Collection and places the artist’s work in context:
The Phillips Collection exhibition makes the case for Braque as avant-guerre, if not avant-garde: the artist who never left one moment in time, the singular prewar concern with space, motion, and simultaneity, even as the world around him refused to stand still.
Two artists launched a project in 2009 to discuss international symbols of access, and now their revised image that replaced the sedentary figure with a more active one is being used in NYC.
Novelist Jonathan Franzen responded to a recent article in the New York Times on sexism in literature with a very succinct note that says:
There may still be gender imbalances in the world of books, but very strong numbers of women are writing, editing, publishing and reviewing novels. The world most glaringly dominated by male sexism is one that Mr. Bruni neglects to mention: New York City theater.
The Fall/Winter 2013 Dior Collection is inspired by Andy Warhol … and boy, do the people at the Warhol Foundation love selling out pimping out accessorizing Andy.
Are you ready for the James Turrell takeover of the American art world? With retrospectives at three major art museums (Guggenheim in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and various displays in Las Vegas, it really is Turrell season in the USA.
The Pritzker Prize jury rejected petition for Denise Scott Brown to be recognized as 1991 winner alongside her husband and partner, Robert Venturi, but they also said that doesn’t prevent them from awarding her a future prize … hint, hint. The Architectural Record posted the whole letter.
Arturo Vega, “spokesman, logo designer, T-shirt salesman, lighting director and omnipresent shepherd” for the Ramones punk rock group and a downtown legend in his own right, is dead at 65.
The issue of conservation for digital artworks is in the news.
And just in case you don’t have Ai Weiwei fatigue, then here’s an article about his collaboration with Laurie Anderson.
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning EST, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.
