I realize that I’m coming late to the party with Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, one of the three debut exhibitions of the Met Breuer, and I have little to add to the conversation about the fundamental problem with the show.
Gustav Klimt
The Met Breuer Traces the Unfinished to the Deliberately Incomplete in Western Art
At a press preview earlier this month, Sheena Wagstaff, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s chairwoman for modern and contemporary art, said that “arguably only the Met” could put on a show like Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible.
Crimes of the Art
On this week’s art crime blotter: a cow sculpture gets tipped, Warhol prints get ripped, and Lil Wayne’s collection gets raided.
Should There be a Statute of Limitations on Nazi-Looted Art?
Should countries set a deadline for restitution claims brought by descendants of Holocaust victims whose art was looted by the Nazis?
Painter, Interrupted: Losing Egon Schiele
Despite its inclusion of more than 130 works on paper and canvas, the ravishing retrospective Egon Schiele: Portraits, occupying the third floor of New York’s Neue Galerie, leaves you hungry. Not for more art, because there’s plenty of that, but for something else, something to make whole an ineffable absence — a deficit attributable not to the artist, nor to the exhibition or curator, but to time and fate.
10 of the Most Infamous Art Destructions of World War II
While the recent news of Cornelius Gurlitt’s cache of 1,400 Nazi-connected paintings is an astounding recovery of works long missing, the extent of irreparable cultural damage during World War II remains a gaping void of loss.
10 Painters’ Lives Chronicled as Infographics
At about the same time Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was losing himself to depression, Matisse’s longterm relationship with his wife was unwinding, and when Mondrian was discovering Cubism, Miró was delving into Surrealism. All these little landmarks of 10 abstract painters’ lives have been charted into infographic form, so you can contrast the timelines of what it takes to be an artist.
5 Art-inspired Barbie Dolls We Want to See
You may have heard that Mattel has launched its new Museum Collection of Barbie dolls. Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I,” these dolls, which are part of a brand cherished by children the world over, aren’t exactly exciting … yawn. What if Mattel was a little more adventurous? Here are our suggestions.
Oldest Temple Found, State of Arts Funding, Detroit Police Terrorize Art Patrons
… winning design of new U.S. embassy in London announced … Vienna’s famed Secession hall is turning gallery space into a sex hall as part of an art project … the 2010 Whitney Biennial has opened and the reviews have started to roll in.