Monday, December 28, 2009 at 11:49PM Art Newspaper - Antique and traditional Chinese works of art have seen a huge increase in interest at autumn sales held by mainland auction house stalwarts Poly Auction and China Guardian Auction, in Beijing.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 12:39AM Art Newspaper -- Robert Storr made many good points here.
"I’m not sure that art and theory were ever that close to begin with. There are some artists who read theory seriously but not all that many. And some of the theoretical writing that was done about artists was very important, but what people now call theory is a vast field and a relatively small amount of it bears directly on art, or at least on art production."
"People who have real theoretical minds read widely, they read selectively and they read for use. "
"You can waste an amazing amount of energy, time and goodwill by chasing after stuff that’s not worth chasing after."
Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 8:44PM Art Newspaper -- Art is getting harder to insure during art fairs because a large number of art works are stored in a single location, which is susceptible to being damaged in a catastrophic event like a hurricane.
Monday, September 28, 2009 at 11:24PM Xinhua News has this nice review of the development of art in China in the past 60 years. This official review, of course, leaves out all the censorship issues and suppression of art that still haunts artists in China. But it is indeed heartwarming to see how art in China has evolved from propagandistic kitsch to expressive art.
Monday, September 28, 2009 at 10:45PM Art Newspaper -- In early October, the US Supreme Court will hear argument in US v Stevens, one of the most important free-speech cases to arise in years. At issue is whether a law that criminalises statutorily defined “depictions of animal cruelty” violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech against government intrusion.
...
Even animal rights activists ought to be concerned by Section 48. There is nothing in the statute that would prevent a prosecutor from bringing charges against a member of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) who sold a video depicting, say, the slaughter of baby seals. If charged, the PETA member would likely claim that the video possesses “serious” political value, but he or she would be subject to the same risk as Adel Abdessemed and the publisher of an illustrated edition of The Sun Also Rises.
Monday, September 28, 2009 at 10:30PM Reuters -- Remembering Chinese artists demanding for artistic freedom in front of Beijing's National Art Gallery in 1979.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 2:28AM Art Newspaper -- China's first non-government biennale. Maybe somewhat disorganized, but very vibrant.
Saturday, August 8, 2009 at 6:35PM Art Newspaper -- The founder of the short-lived Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) China in Hong Kong, Jeffrey du Vallier d’Aragon Aranita, left the country soon after the museum opened last autumn, leaving behind massive debts.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 12:09AM Xinhua -- The art show, entitled "Sound of Ink," featured paintings and calligraphy works by Zhou Suyin, who was born in November 1984 in Shanghai. Zhou is "the youngest artist ever" to open the exhibition in the landmark UN building.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:52PM NYT -- In a victory for the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger, a federal judge on Wednesday indefinitely banned publication in the United States of a new book by a Swedish author that contains a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye.”
The judge, Deborah A. Batts, of United States District Court in Manhattan, had granted a 10-day temporary restraining order last month against the author, Fredrik Colting, who wrote the new novel under the pen name John David California.
In a 37-page ruling, Judge Batts issued a preliminary injunction — indefinitely barring the publication, advertising or distribution of the book in this country — after considering the merits of the case. The book has been published in Britain.
In a suit filed on June 1, lawyers for Mr. Salinger in the copyright infringement lawsuit contended that the new work was derivative of “Catcher” and Holden Caulfield, and infringed on Mr. Salinger’s copyright.
The work by Mr. Colting, 33, centers on a 76-year-old “Mr. C,” the creation of a writer named Mr. Salinger. Although the name Holden Caulfield does not appear in the book, Mr. C is clearly Holden, one of the best-known adolescent figures in American fiction, aged 60 years.
Mr. Colting’s lawyers argued, among other things, that the new work, titled “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” did not violate copyright because it amounted to a critical parody that had the effect of transforming the original work.
Judge Batts rejected that argument, writing, “The Court finds such contentions to be post-hoc rationalizations employed through vague generalizations about the alleged naivety of the original, rather than reasonably perceivable parody.”
The judge’s ruling weighed literary arguments made by both sides in the dispute. “To the extent Colting claims to augment the purported portrait of Caulfield as a ‘free-thinking, authentic and untainted youth,’ and ‘impeccable judge of the people around him’ displayed in ‘Catcher’ by ‘show[ing] the effects of Holden’s uncompromising world view,’” Judge Batts wrote, citing a memo submitted by Mr. Colting, “those effects were already thoroughly depicted and apparent in Salinger’s own narrative about Caulfield.”
Judge Batts added: “In fact, it can be argued that the contrast between Holden’s authentic but critical and rebellious nature and his tendency toward depressive alienation is one of the key themes of ‘Catcher.’
“It is hardly parodic to repeat that same exercise in contrast, just because society and the characters have aged.”
While the case could still go to trial, Judge Batts’s ruling means that Mr. Colting’s book cannot be published in the United States pending the resolution of the litigation, which could drag on for months or years.
“I am pretty blown away by the judge’s decision,” Mr. Colting said in an e-mail message after the ruling. “Call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books.”
Mr. Colting and his lawyer, Edward H. Rosenthal, said they would appeal. The decision means that “members of the public are deprived of the chance to read the book and decide for themselves whether it adds to their understanding of Salinger and his work,” Mr. Rosenthal said.
Marcia B. Paul, a lawyer for Mr. Salinger, declined to comment on the decision.Mr. Salinger, who has not published any new work since 1965, has sued several times to protect his writing, including successful efforts to stop publication of some of his personal letters in a biography and to halt a staging of “Catcher” by a college theater company in San Francisco. He has also turned down requests, from Steven Spielberg, among others, for movie adaptations of “Catcher.”
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 3:51AM UNITED NATIONS, June 22 (Xinhua) -- An exhibition of Chinese ink and wash paintings made its debut in the UN headquarters in New York Monday night as part of a series of events marking the 7th UN Public Service Day which falls on Tuesday.
China's Permanent Representative to the UN Zhang Yesui said at the opening reception that Chinese calligraphy and painting is not only the cream of traditional Chinese culture and arts, but also a unique component of the Chinese civilization.
On display are the works which vividly depict the beautiful landscapes, and the ethnic and social traditions and customs in China, he said.
"These works will help people in the United Nations to have a better understanding of China, and will also open a window of friendship for the cultural exchanges between the people in China and the rest of the world," Zhang said.
Sha Zukang, under-secretary-general of the UN, said the extraordinary images in the exhibition are "indeed much stronger vehicles of expression than plain words."
"By letting the light of art shine through the policy making world, we can boost the spirit of public service," Sha said. "In all this, art can be not only useful but essential in better serving citizens."
According to China International Cultural Communication Center, the sponsor, the exhibition displays over 120 paintings of some 30 well-known contemporary Chinese artists, including Han Meilin,
the designer of the mascot Fuwa of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Ink and wash painting is an East Asian type of brush painting also known by its Chinese name shui-mo hua. First developed in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), the art was later introduced to the Korean Peninsula and Japan in the mid-14th century.
In most cases, only black ink -- the same as used in East Asian calligraphy -- is used, in various concentrations.
Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 1:13AM AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Armed robbers stole two paintings from a Dutch museum on Friday, one of them a piece by Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali, police said.
Several masked robbers walked into the Scheringa Museum for Realist Art in Spanbroek, a village north of Amsterdam, at around midday on Friday and took two paintings from the wall, threatening museum staff with a gun, police said in a statement.
The paintings taken were a 1941 Dali piece entitled 'Adolescence' and Polish art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka's 'La Musicienne', painted in 1929, which are both owned by the Dutch museum.
The robbers ran out with the paintings and drove off in a small black car, police said.
(Reporting by Catherine Hornby)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 9:58PM BLT: An art dealer in the District must pay more than $630,000 in attorney fees and expenses to Christie’s for a suit a judge said only served to harrass the auction house after it refused to sell a painting, the U.S. Court of the Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled today in upholding a trial court decision.
The claims arose after the plaintiff, Robert Fastov, a Stanford Law School graduate, sought unsuccessfully to sell a painting through the London-based auctioneer, court records show. In 1994, Fastov sent Christie’s a 79-page, single-spaced letter—with hundreds of attachments—threatening litigation. Fastov pitched a $168,000 settlement.
“Do not bet against my inclination, will, ability, experience, and tenacity to file and successfully maintain (Fastov v. Christie’s) through its successful conclusion,” Fastov wrote in the letter, according to court records. “It will be the worst and most costly conclusion and bet of your life. The settlement proposals and purposes of this letter are inherently pacific in nature.”
Fastov filed a 225-page complaint in 1997 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. U.S. District Judge William Stafford of the Northern District of Florida, sitting by designation, granted summary judgment in favor of Christie’s in February 2006. In his order, Stafford excoriated Fastov, saying his “well-documented proclivity in this case to engage in obstructionist litigation tactics” will not be tolerated.
“Here, there is no public wrong to be righted, no class of victims seeking redress, no constitutional liberty being vindicated,” Stafford wrote in April 2008 in ordering Fastov, who is barred in D.C., to pay Christie’s attorney fees. “Instead, a greedy individual, with the advantage of a legal education and a claimed litigation experience, has initiated and maintained this lawsuit, which anyone with a modicum of common sense would have realized was without merit.”
Circuit Judges Douglas Ginsburg, Judith Rogers, and Merrick Garland said today in a one-page per curiam decision that Fastov’s “egregious conduct after judicial warning” caused Christie’s to spend unnecessary time defending a “baseless” suit. The court upheld Stafford’s finding that Fatov engaged in bad faith litigation.
Christie’s was represented by Hughes Hubbard & Reed in Miami. A lead attorney, Aviva Wenick, declined to comment on the D.C. Circuit’s judgment. Fastov, who was pro se in the D.C. Circuit, declined to comment.