art

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Damien Hirst Paintings 'Shockingly Bad'
 Damien Hirst Paintings 
 'Shockingly Bad' 
ART REVIEW
Oct 14, 2009 1:09 PM CDT

Damien Hirst Paintings 'Shockingly Bad'

British artist's exhibit got much hype, but only because he's famous, say critics

(Newser) - “Bad boy of British art" Damien Hirst decided to put his headline-grabbing, conceptual art projects aside and return to painting. Critics, however, are not impressed with the exhibition of 25 new paintings, which opened today:
  • “There are many painters in evening classes much worse than Hirst,” writes
...

Teacher Fired for Butt Art Paints Colbert for Charity

Stan Murmur's auctioning portrait to benefit Va. public schools

(Newser) - A Virginia teacher fired after a YouTube clip surfaced of him using his posterior to paint is turning the other cheek—and auctioning off a portrait of comedian Stephen Colbert to benefit public schools. Stan Murmur uses what WTVR-TV calls “the anthropometric monotype method of painting. That means he...

Obamas' Art Collection: Modern, Aggressive

White House borrows 47 works of art from Washington museums

(Newser) - Barack and Michelle Obama, working with curators at the White House and DC museums, have borrowed 47 artworks for their walls, and their selections are far more modern and discerning than their predecessors', writes Blake Gopnik. The Washington Post critic is impressed by the "surprisingly sober, even dour" choices...

US Lensman Captures Life-Size Whale Pics

Photog praises 'gentle, friendly' beasts

(Newser) - A US lensman who has opened an exhibit of life-size whale photographs in Norway calls the great beasts "the most friendly and inquisitive carnivores on the planet." Bryant Austin spent five years, including days diving with "exceptional individual" whales he could touch, to collect enough photos to...

Warhol Collection Stolen From LA Home

$1 million reward offered after fortune in original Warhol art vanishes

(Newser) - A multi-million dollar collection of portraits by Andy Warhol has been stolen from a prominent collector's home, the Los Angeles Times reports. Former investment banker Richard Weisman's housekeeper discovered that The Athletes series of 11 portraits—worth as much as a million a pop—had vanished when she entered the...

NEA Is Playing Politics, Filmmaker Charges
NEA Is Playing Politics, Filmmaker Charges
OPINION
Aug 27, 2009 11:38 AM CDT

NEA Is Playing Politics, Filmmaker Charges

(Newser) - The National Endowment for the Arts recently encouraged artists to create works that focus on “health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal”—a disturbing step away from the its actual mandate, filmmaker Patrick Courrielche writes for Big Hollywood. “Artists shouldn’t be used...

Collectors Give 50 Artworks Each to 50 States

(Newser) - Herb and Dorothy Vogel had just modest incomes—he was a postal clerk, she a librarian—but over four decades they acquired more than 3,600 drawings, paintings, and collages from America's leading artists. They collected so much that they had to stuff works under their bed. But now the...

How to Bust Art Myths
 How to Bust Art Myths 
OPINION
Aug 9, 2009 5:19 AM CDT

How to Bust Art Myths

(Newser) - Too many people have given up talking about modern art, retreating behind pat statements like “art is subjective,” writes Paddy Johnson in the Christian Science Monitor. Here are some attitudes that drive her crazy: 
  • Anyone could do that: A typical rejoinder is, “But you didn’t.
...

Jackson Couldn't Face Man in the Mirror

He 'was most himself' when someone else

(Newser) - Michael Jackson was always trying to be somebody else: he "was most himself when he was someone other than himself,” writes Hilton Als in the New York Review of Books. The need to redefine himself emerged in his thirst for fame that would let him “wrest from...

Deface the Bible— Don't Worry; It's Art

Reactions mixed on gallery exhibit

(Newser) - An exhibit at Scotland’s Gallery of Modern Art intended to “reclaim the Bible as a sacred text” did not go entirely as planned, the Telegraph reports. Visitors were invited to “write your way back into” the Bible on display, and the resulting additions ranged from the angry—...

UK Art Honcho: We Need More Fakes

Could be due to planned imitation exhibition, of course

(Newser) - The head of London’s National Gallery wishes “we had more fakes,” he tells Reuters. “It’s worth having some in a collection. Not having them on display for what they pretend to be, but for what they are,” Nicholas Penny explains ahead of a 2010...

China Censors Artist Leading Quake Inquiry

Police stake out whistleblower's studio, shut down blog

(Newser) - The Chinese artist who has made investigating the deaths of children in the Sichuan earthquake a personal crusade is facing a government crackdown, reports the CBC. Ai Weiwei's widely read blog has been deleted, and plainclothes police officers are staking out his studio in Beijing. Ai has relaunched his blog...

Dumped by Girlfriend, Artist Sells Everything

(Newser) - Jasper Joffe isn’t taking his breakup well. When his girlfriend of 5 years walked out on him, the painter, who’s sold work to such heavyweights as Charles Saatchi, decided to sell not just paintings, but all his worldly possessions, the Independent reports. Every single paint brush, keepsake, doodle,...

Digital Rembrandt Show Restores Lost Details

Controversial reproductions aim to show the works at they were

(Newser) - The life work of Rembrandt, including all 317 known paintings, goes on display next week in full-sized digital reproductions that attempt to re-create the works as they emerged from the artist's studio. The Complete Rembrandt, Life Size, in Amsterdam, restores sections lopped off of canvases, transforms colors, and brightens up...

Madoff's Money Man Sells Rothkos for $310M

Merkin unloads art, but buyer's identity a mystery

(Newser) - Ezra Merkin, the financier who pumped billions of his clients' money into Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, is selling more than 10 paintings by Mark Rothko and two sculptures by Alberto Giacometti for $310 million, reports the Wall Street Journal. Some of the proceeds may go to his defrauded investors, who...

London Art Market Feels a Chill

Lack of once-plentiful foreign cash hurts auctioneers

(Newser) - London became the hottest art market in the world last year, eclipsing New York, but the recession is putting the squeeze on auction houses, the Wall Street Journal reports. Last year’s influx of foreign money has dried up, and sellers are keeping a firm hold on their  most desirable...

Site Showcases Awful Obama Art

(Newser) - Barack Obama inspired a lot of art during his meteoric rise to the highest office of the land. Paintings, videos, and songs are still trickling in, and some of it is good. But much of it isn’t. Much of it is, to put it gently, utter bird poop. But...

Kinkade's Art Firm Loses Court Battle

'Painter of light' must pay two 'duped' gallery owners $2.1M

(Newser) - Hugely popular painter Thomas Kinkade claims God is his art agent, but a federal appeals court has ruled against his company for putting art gallery owners through financial hell, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The plaintiffs accused Kinkade and his firm of exploiting their Christian faith to lure them into...

What's Up, Doc? Cawwot Bombs in Sweden!

(Newser) - Swedes got a scare this weekend after an artist wrapped bunches of carrots with black tape to make them look a bit like dynamite, attached clocks and wires and placed them around the southern city of Orebo. Police received several concerned calls from the public about the "Bunny Project:...

Banksy Strikes Again— With Huge Museum Show

(Newser) - Controversial artist Banksy has mounted a huge show at his hometown Bristol City Museum—but the secretive vandal is nowhere to be seem, the Times of London reports. The exhibition was planned in secret through Banksy’s representatives. “We couldn’t even tell the council and the whole thing...

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