Sunday, July 24, 2011

Art News

By Charles Kessler


There have been a couple of deaths in the art world: Cy Twombly and Lucian Freud. Roberta Smith has an insightful appraisal of Cy Twombly’s art.
  Cy Twombly at Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston in front of the gallery's largest painting, Say Goodbye, Catullus, to the Shores of Asia Minor.
And The Telegraph has an excellent obituary of Lucian Freud. 
Lucian Freud, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, 1995, oil on canvas, 59 5/8 x 86¼ inches

I   must admit I never cared much for Freud’s art, and it always annoyed me that what I considered to be minor art got all this acclaim and astronomical amounts of money — $33 million for the painting above. On the other hand, at least the guy could really paint, unlike Elizabeth Payton, George Condo, etc.

Also, sadly, Amy Winehouse died at age 27 - a cursed age for rock musicians. The Telegraph once again has an excellent obituary.

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Peter Plagens reviews two new books about the history of Los Angeles art: Rebels in Paradise by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp and L.A. Rising by Lyn Kienholz.

Via the art blog Hyperallergic I found out about this video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous house, Fallingwater. It’s very much an amateur video, but you get to see some beautiful details.



The always topical Brooklyn Rail has two in-depth interviews, one by Jarrett Earnest with Peter Selz,  and one by Phong Bui with Richard Serra.

And finally, Triggerpit.com, a website devoted to “photography and events that makes us go WOW,” has 37 photographs of extreme weather conditions by the storm chaser and photographer Mike Hollingshead. Here’s a sample:
Extreme Instability: Shelf cloud moves over a storm chaser producing what they term the “whales mouth” in southeast Nebraska August 9, 2009. All rights reserved by extremeinstability.com

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