Category: visual

The artists’ collective APY has warned the Australian federal and South Australian state governments that certain outside art dealers, referred to as “carpetbaggers,” have been manipulating some artists’ family members into debt and then taking those artists away from their families and homes and forcing them to make paintings to pay off that debt. – The Guardian

After an unprecedented expansion in recent years, third-party guarantees may have lost their magic. Their use appears to have peaked. Now, the trade is left wondering: Have guarantees become too popular for their own good? And what will happen to the market if a tool it once relied on is put back in the shed? – Artnet

Published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the critique, led by New York University archaeologist Randall White and co-authored by 44 international researchers, suggests that the dating technique used in the earlier report might not be reliable. “There is still no convincing archaeological evidence that Neanderthals created [southwestern European] cave art,” the document states. – Artnet

The 2019 BP Portrait Award will still take place in December, but that will be the last time NGS will host that show (at least, as sponsored by BP). The holdouts, that is, those arts organizations still sponsored by BP, now include the National Portrait Gallery, where this move will increase pressure. – The Guardian (UK)

Imagine photographing the people lining the streets for 28 different parades in the U.S. – in 2016. “The very existence of each group portrait produces an illusion of unity, as if the people in each frame, at least for that instant, cohere. Maybe an act as basic as standing alongside other people still counts for something.” – The Atlantic

But is it worthy? The sculpture started out with the name “We’re No. #1” and moved to, uh, “Unity,” a little less focused on the longstanding animosity between Brooklyn and Manhattan. “Perhaps Mr. Thomas is saluting the new Brooklyn — the one of rising property values and more anodyne art.” Ouch. – The New York Times

Well: “That depends on how much you value your time — and what you expect of art in the age of Instagram. The smartphone, with its ever-finer cameras and ever-shinier screens, now shapes our experience of art as thoroughly as the church did in 14th-century Italy or the unadorned, white-cube galleries did for midcentury abstract painters.” – The New York Times

Garden and art history books tell a specific story that leaves some important bits out. “In a few short decades, what became known as the ‘English style’ had spread across Britain and on to the rest of Europe. In fact, centuries later it remains the dominant garden style in the world. You’d be forgiven for assuming this style arose entirely spontaneously from the imagination of a handful of ingenious 18th-century Brits. However, the evidence paints a different picture.” – The Guardian (UK)

Simone Lia is a comic-strip artist, but one day she noticed that she couldn’t stop drawing worms. Her “worms look like demob-happy frankfurters. They have floaty bodies, dazed smiles. … With a laugh, she explains she realised how much she admired the character of the worm: ‘They’re very humble, live in the ground, do good work, get on with it.’ These qualities, she says, ‘I’d like for myself.'” – The Observer (UK)