– THE BIG STORY –

Qatar has been getting a lot of attention recently for its high-profile and rather sudden emergence as the world’s biggest art buyer, snapping up Western masterpieces at top dollar to fill its new museums, but is this acquisitional whirlwind all it’s cracked up to be? Yes and no, according to an in-depth article in the Guardian. It turns out that the Qatar Museums Authority—headed by the Sheikh’s 28-year-old daughter Sheikha al-Mayassa al-Thani and run under the guidance of former Christie’s chairman Edward Dolman—has actually been doing more than just buying up Cézanne‘s The Card Players (for a record $250 million) and more than $1 billion in other Met-quality works. It’s also  funding foreign art spectacles like Tate Modern’s new Damien Hirst show (which will tour to Doha in 2013), while the culture ministry is sponsoring cultural initiatives in ” Syria, Kazakhstan, Turkey, India and China.” But at home, it seems, the royal passion for art has failed to so far trickle down to the Qatari people. Walking around the al-Riwaq Exhibition Hall‘s survey of Takashi Murakami‘s spectacular Superflat art—a show said by one museum education official to be “entry level easy” as far as cultural crossover goes—the Guardian‘s David Batty spotted only five other people there, and empty galleries at Mathaf: The Arab Museum of Modern Art too, in contrast to the Islamic museum, which was “bustling with locals.”

– QUOTE OF THE DAY –

“A lot of ideas that any art student has, Picasso had them already. He took a huge amount of what was possible, and took it for himself. That is his power. He was brilliant at that balance between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional, the illusion of space and real space—and all using real life as a departure point. But, you know, he never left the picture plane, which is brilliant. He made it the whole world, which is difficult to do. Picassos are infinitely awesome.” – Damien Hirst on Picasso

– MUST READ –

Meet Adam Pendleton – The 28-year-old artist, who just signed on with the Pace Gallery and will be included in MoMA‘s upcoming Ecstatic Alphabets show, talks to Michael Miller about his “Black Dada” art, which draws as much from Sol LeWitt and 1960s poetry as it does from Duchamp. (Observer)

Assessing the French Art Scene – Devorah Lauter takes a look at the way that contemporary artists in France are trying to break through to the wider world, despite insufficient support from museums and galleries in their country and abroad. (LAT)

A Big Thought in Mali – Holland Cotter, in the second of his dispatches from the continent, has an epiphany—brought on by the “Cliff Notes” tourist version of an ancestral Dogon dance, and an ancient, undeciphered group of wall markings that keeps getting refreshed to look like “just-bombed graffiti tags”—that maybe Western notions of the unique, the original, and the exaltedly old are rather provincial when it comes to world culture. (NYT)

Now That’s a Real Cal-alogue Raisonné! – The crack cultural squad over at BuzzFeed brings joy into the world this week in the form of photos of cats “imitating” classic works of art, from Titian‘s Venus of Urbino (putting that lazy dog to shame) to Cezanne’s still life Apples, Peaches, Pears, and Grapes. (BuzzFeed)

“That’s Not a Woman, It’s a Man, Baby!” – The Austin Powers school of art scholarship was inaugurated this week when British art dealer Philip Mould looked at a painting of a woman attributed to Gilbert Stuart and decided that, no, it is a painting of a famed spy and transvestite known as Chevalier d’Éon by the painter Thomas Stewart—supposedly making it the “earliest portrait” of a transvestite in art history, though there’s probably some ancient Hercules-and-Omphale paintings out there somewhere, right? (Telegraph)

Takashi Murakami Talks: About loving YouTube and junk food, being tired of activism, and having a smaller ego than Picasso. (WSJ)

– ART MARKET –

Christie’s to Sell Eight Gerhard Richters – Striking while the iron is hot, the auction house will be offering this “major comprehensive grouping” of the artist’s paintings—estimated to together bring in more than $40 million—at its May 8 sale in New York. (Press Release)

Jean Pigozzi Is a Big Collector – Judd Tully (aka The Master) profiles the large, in charge, and very colorfully attired photographer, designer, and collector of African art, giving us a glimpse of a truly outsize life. (Artinfo)

– IN & OUT –

Discovery Times Square, the Madison Square Garden of aging foreign superexhibitions on tour, will follow up its shows of Tut‘s treasures and Dead Sea Scrolls with a display of China’s renowned terra-cotta warriors. (NYT)

This fall’s São Paulo Biennial will feature 110 artists from 21 countries (13 from the USA) and explore “the illusion of connectivity” in the age of globalization, curator Luis Pérez-Oramas revealed in a press conference. (TAN)

The Italian government is replacing the board of Rome’s Maxxi contemporary art museum because it hasn’t been able to raise enough millions in private funding in the wake of governmental budget cuts. (NYT)

Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Campbell made $1.04 million dollars in 2010, which is within telescope-viewing distance of the $1.6 million that MoMA director Glenn Lowry made in 2009. (Bloomberg)

The body of Barnes Foundation general counsel Brett Miller was found at his home over the weekend, weeks before the controversially relocated museum’s opening at its new home in the city of Philadelphia. (TAN)

Brooklyn Museum associate curator Karen Sherry is departing the museum to become the Portland Museum of Art‘s curator of American art. (Gallerist NY)

Let it be known that Julian Schnabel is now dating 29-year-old supermodel May Anderson, at least according to (Page Six).

 

Posted on: April 17th, 2012 by Andrew
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