From velvet mice with red-bulb eyes to bubbles of blood on a tile wall to paintings of desaparecidos that fade away as they dry, exhibitions in Colombia reveal “a resurgence of contemporary arts in the country” – new work in which “violence permeates and transforms everything.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Wiki-ing Truth-In-Media
“But what if there were a device that objectively flagged questionable elements in online news articles, poking and parsing words and phrases, and letting you contribute your own critiques? Well, a Seattle company called SpinSpotter has produced a piece of software – a free download that works within a Web browser – that tries to do just that.”
James Gleeson, Australia’s Leading Surrealist Painter, Dies at 92
“[He painted] a completely new kind of picture: large imaginary landscapes, set in the littoral zone that had always fascinated him, and executed with a rich painterly fluency… hard mineral forms, like teeth, seem to grow out of slimy viscera or tender mucous membranes. These pictures could be construed either as visions of genesis or of apocalypse, but the tone is less of menace than of wonder at the sublime spectacle of life.”
The Frieze Free Art Fair
“Some people queued and camped out for two nights to get their hands on work by artists like Gavin Turk and Stella Vine at the Free Art Fair. The 40 pieces available, which were allocated by a ballot system, were all gone within an hour and 20 minutes. The most valuable piece given away was worth £15,000. Interest in the Free Art Fair was so great, its website crashed as people clamoured to log on.”
Pistol-Packin’ Fiddler
Italian violinist Matteo Fedeli travels with his $10 million Stradivarius – “and has been given police permission to protect it with a .357 Smith and Wesson Magnum.”
English Architecture Was Multi-Culti Before Multi-Culti Was Cool
“Nowadays, a Norman Foster building in Hong Kong looks just like a Norman Foster building in Canary Wharf – neither British nor Chinese, just nationless steel and glass in both places. […] We were much more open to influences from abroad two centuries ago, taking styles from all round the world and modifying them to suit our cool home climate.”
Oops, We Forgot The Rimsky Centennial
Tom Service: “But given that the only excuse for classical music’s fetishisation of big round numbers is to reveal music that wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to be heard, the almost complete lack of fanfare for Rimsky-Korsakov has been lamentable. And I’d take Rimsky’s Russian Easter Festival Overture over yet another Lark Ascending any day of the week.”
The Largest Private-Sector Museum in Germany
Attorney-businessman-collector Harald Falckenberg has opened a “stunning” new museum in Hamburg to showcase his collection of contemporary art. “A fascination with the grotesque runs throughout the collection, lending it a no-holds-barred irreverence that might be difficult to represent at public expense. ‘I’m not interested in reaching a broad public,’ he said, ‘and I have no official mandate. Instead, I can offer alternatives.'”
NYC Schools Lag in Arts Ed (But They’re Getting Better)
The 2nd annual Arts in Schools report finds that 8% of city elementary schools met state requirements for arts instruction last school year up from 4% the previous year. Middle schools rose from 29% to 46%.
Birmingham Named Britain’s Ugliest City
“More than a third of 1,111 people surveyed thought Birmingham had the ugliest buildings in the country.”