ABOVE: detail from Tim Eitel’s Boygroup (2003), currently on display at the Cleveland Museum of Art as part of its “From Leipzig” show. Not anything to do with this story, but looks like a good show)

The Cleveland Museum of Art recently told the Newhouse News Service that it spiked a show of nearly 100 J.M.W. Turner paintings because it couldn’t afford the terrorism insurance to cover it, and neither could its American partners. Those partners aren’t slouches either: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The institutions decided to axe the whole plan in December.

The Turner show, organized by London’s Tate Gallery, included works totalling more than $1 billion in value. To insure those works against Terrorism (with a capital T), it was going to cost Cleveland $800,000—or 40 per cent of the total budget planned for the show. In New York and Washington, i.e., places that are actually terrorism targets, the costs would have been much higher.

And the culprits for these high insurance costs? The Guv’ment. Always The Guv’ment.

Newhouse News Service: Price of Terrorism Insurance Scraps Touring Art Exhibit

ABOVE: Detail from François Boucher’s A Triton Holding a Stoup in his Hands (date unknown; mid-18th century), on view at the Frick Collection starting June 1

The Frick Collection announced this week that they’ll be showing off a selection of about 70 drawings on loan from Germany starting June 1. The show, “From Callot to Greuze: French Drawings from Weimar,” are from the combined collection of the Schlossmuseum and the Goethe-Nationalmuseum in Weimar, and many of them haven’t left the Eastern bloc before.

Some of the drawings on paper in the collection were originally donated to the German national collection by the philosopher, poet, and all-around party animal Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was an avid collector of French drawings. The press release is quite detailed and touches on some of the important work that will be on display. Several scans of the important pieces are also available, and details on a free public lecture on opening day, June 1.

The Frick Collection: Stunning Drawings from Weimar Museums to Be Presented in the United States for the First Time

ABOVE: detail from Jean Michel Basquiat’s Future Science vs Man (1983)

The New Yorker is currently running on its website this quietly glowing review of the retrospective of Basquiat’s work that’s on right now at the Brooklyn Museum.

The show features over a hundred works by the brilliant and self-destructive young artist, who pumped out hundreds of paintings in under a decade and then died of a drug overdose in 1988. Peter Scheldahl’s review in The New Yorker touches on the live-fast-die-young ethos of Basquiat’s rockstar rise and fall but never slips into obit mode, focusing more on Basquiat’s genius for lines, something he honed as a graf artist before going legit (Banksy, do you hear?).

The Brooklyn Museum’s website also features a browser-crasherriffic mini-site aimed at angst-saturated teens, where they can scribble Basquianically on a little Flash™ canvas and then post the results for all to see and laugh at.

The New Yorker > The Critics > The Art World > Young Fun [nb: link will expire after about week, so read it now…]

“Artists may never starve again!” shrieks Wired magazine in its patented tone of glassy-eyed hyperventilation in this article from its current print issue about the Artist Pension Trust.

The APT is a sort of retirement mutual fund for emerging artists, in which they give pieces to the fund up front and the fund sells them off over the course of a few decades to provide retirement income to the group. Some of the pieces turn out to be of little long-term value, but only a few of the artists have to hit the big time to ensure that everyone gets a decent slice at the end. It’s a great idea and apparently turning into a profitable one. The Trust screens the artists it lets into the club to make sure they’re all at about the same career plateau—earning $5,000-$10,000 per work, selling well enough but not exploding in popularity, and so on.

It seems to us that anything that ensures that artists can concentrate on doing their work undistracted is a good thing, even though the APT also seems to be one more step in the commodification of art, creativity, sensuality, rainbows, sunshine, and everything else in the known universe. In any case, it’s food for thought at tax time.

Wired 13.04: Paint by Numbers

ABOVE: Some of British graffiti-prankster/interventionist Banksy’s handiwork. See more at banksy.co.uk

NEWSgrist pointed out this New York Times story about the English graffiti-artist Banksy, who has popped up in North America doing his interventionist-type thing at the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Met curators found a painting of a woman wearing a gas mask stuck on their wall, and the museum’s reaction was almost comically upper-East-side: “I think it’s fair to say that it would take more than a piece of Scotch tape to get a work of art into the Met,” sniffed spokeswoman Elyse Topalian.

Banksy’s paintings—at least judging from the ones posted on his website—are actually quite nicely done. His more voluminous stencil work, spray-painted on outdoor surfaces around Britain, are undeniably skillful, regardless of whether you think it’s legit art or not.

Anyway, it’s better than vomiting all over the place.

The New York Times > Need Talent to Exhibit in Museums? Not This Prankster

Missed this a few days ago when they officially went online, but the expanding web empire of MoCoLoco, the online web magazine of “modern contemporary” design and decor, has started another website, ArtMoCo, to focus on MoCo art.

Must be something about spring: quite aside from the launch of ADD itself in February, there was the launch of Artkrush just last week. Anyway, there’s enough room for all of us, so make room in your browser for another bookmark.

Art MoCo - Modern contemporary design & architecture

ABOVE: two of Richard McGuire’s new narrative-driven spot drawings for The New Yorker

This probably wasn’t keeping anyone awake at night, but did anyone else not know that The New Yorker had been reprinting those little drawings throughout the magazine on a six-month rotation? This piece from the New York Times quotes editor David Remnick: “We’ve been running some of the same windmills, toasters, umbrellas and shoes in six-month rotation for a long time.”

Anyway, no more: with its 80th anniversary issue on February 18, the magazine has turfed out the old collection of tiny doodles that appear throughout its pages, and replaced them with new ones by some new artists. And no longer are they random line-drawings of hats or flowers—now they have narratives attached, and come in series of six to ten, so you get a progression of the little story as you read.

These drawings are probably not leading to huge paydays for the artists who draw them, but it’s nice to see The New Yorker giving people some work to do. The Times story also includes a slideshow of one of the new doodle series.

The New York Times > Talk of the Town (Make That Whisper)

The Scotsman reports that European art dealers are steamed about a new EU law that will skim up to four per cent off of the purchase price of resale art and give it to the original artist. The move is designed to reimburse artists for the maddening phenomenon of watching their art inflate in value long after it’s left their studios.

Resellers and dealers apparently say that the art will just flee to New York or Geneva (Switzerland, always the non-joiner-inner, is not a member of the EU), although The Scotsman does not bother us with frills like quoting an actual art dealer. An older article from The Telegraph does, however: the chairman of the British Art Market Federation calls it “the most significant threat that faces the London art market by far.”

He also points out that since the “droit de suite” levy remains in effect for 70 years after an artist’s death, most of the money ends up going to already-wealthy descendents of the artist who have already made small fortunes auctioning off daddy’s doodlesome shopping lists and other ephemera.

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Art Levy ‘Will Destroy Jobs’

[In other news: apologies for not posting yesterday; in penance, look for double the posts today. That is to say, two. It’ll be up later.]

ABOVE: the mountain that gives Puy-de-Dome its name. French police (not pictured) said they cracked an art theft ring operating in the area on Friday.

Such gallic charm, the French: pensioners can sizzle to death in their apartments in downtown Paris during a heat wave, but show them an art theft ring operating in the scenic Puy-de-Dome countryside, and they’ll put 390 investigators on it for 15 months straight.

Sounding like some evil-parallel-universe version of the Antiques Roadshow, the accused theives—many of whom were part of the same family and some of whom “specialized in bronzes, others in paintings or furniture,” as the prosecutor assigned to the case put it—had made off with millions by nicking priceless pieces from the homes of wealthy toffs and re-selling them (it would be too cynical, of course, to suggest that the presence of the wealthy toffs was what drove such a costly and time-consuming investigation. Right?). 60 arrests were made in total; 500 pieces were seized, and $2.7 million in cash. That’s a lot of baguettes.

French Police Bust Art-Trafficking Ring [AP via Yahoo]

ABOVE: detail from Subodh Gupta’s Everybody is Inside, appearing in issue #01 of Artkrush

The people who put out hepster must-read e-newsletter Flavorpill have announced a new bi-weekly newsletter called ArtKrush, which will cover the international art world with the same heady mix of insider condescension and proletarian enthusiasm that makes their other e-pistolary so helpful and entertaining to read.

And like all good opt-in self-spam, it’s free to subscribe.

ArtKrush: Issue # 01

ABOVE: Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (2004), the centrepiece of “SBC Plaza” in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

Boeing announced that they’re piling into the corporate stroke-monument known as Millennium Park in Chicago with a new $5-million donation to build two new outdoor exhibition spaces yesterday. Millennium Park, which is an interconnected series of plazas, fields, and gardens built on reclaimed rail lands in the windy city, is a bonechilling glimpse of the future of public artistic expression, as most of the park consists of heavily-sponsored and branded enclaves whose development is bankrolled by private enterprise: you can walk along “Chase Promenade” (paid for by the Bank One Foundation), linger in “SBC Plaza” with its centrepiece Anish Kapoor sculpture (the sculpture actually looks fascinating), or sit in “Wrigley Square,” at the corner of Michigan Ave. and Randolph St.

Boeing deserves our thanks, naturally, for spending its money on important artistic projects like public sculpture, but the whole scenario of Millennium Park (it must have seemed like a great name when they started buildling in 1998) is disturbing in its implications for public development of communal spaces and the artworks that fill them. Chicago has essentially outsourced its mandate to govern municipal spaces to multinationals with deeper pockets. Art has always relied on patrons, but the extent and scope of corporate namedropping going on in Millennium Park is a little offputting.

Then again, advertising is the art form of the 21st century, so let’s all throw our hands up in despair and have a refreshing ice cream beside the “Exelon Pavilions,” generously sponsored by the ominously-named Exelon Corp. Boeing is joining some good company.

Boeing to Fund Open-air Gallery Spaces in Chicago’s Millennium Park

ABOVE: Damien Hirst’s Away from the Flock (1994), on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston until April 24

Damien Hirst often seems too popular to be good—’popular’ in the true sense of the word, as in “Of, representing, or carried on by the people at large.” It’s elitist, sure, but come on, this is contemporary art we’re talking about here.

Hirst’s work seems unsubtle, too easy to read, shocking but not challenging. Something you’d find 150 words about on the “Oddly Enough” page of USA Today, so that the regulars at Dunkin’ Donuts can pass it around and shake their heads at that British weirdo who preserves lambs in formaldehyde. The kind of artist your cabdriver has an opinion on.

This New York Times review of the Hirst show currently showing at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston does not entirely change our minds, but it does nicely define the Prankster/Philosopher dichotomy that so much Hirst criticism oscillates between. It also gets points for an indirect zinger in which it calls Hirst “a third-rate Warhol, a second-rate Koons,” thereby managing to insult Hirst and Koons simultaneously.

What did interest us was this blog entry about seeing The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (also known as “The Shark”) up close, an experience we have not had. The writer makes it sound genuinely compelling to see; but it sounds like the show in Boston, as some of the responses indicate, doesn’t quite live up to it.

New York Times > Art Review > Varied Phases of Damien Hirst (Sliced-Up Cow Not Included)

ABOVE: Detail from Andy Warhol’s Cowboys and Indians (1986), Lot 253 in Sotheby’s auction of Old Master, Modern, and Contemporary prints, taking place today.

Sotheby’s London will be auctioning off about 250 lots of prints today, covering a grab-bag of styles and periods: a smattering of Rembrandts, some Munchs, a few Picassos, and a healthy shot of Warhols, such as Cowboys and Indians, seen above.

Prints—those poor cousins of the art world, one step up from university poster sales—tend to get relegated to these types of catch-all liquidations, but there are some nice items in this catalogue. And while prints don’t really have the cachet of uniqueness and singularity, it’s honestly the only way most non-Millionaires could ever own a pedigreed work by, say, Miró (estimated price: £2,500-£3,000) or Matisse (pegged between £5,000 and £6,000). Expensive enough that you’re not going to find them for sale at the 7-11, but way cheaper than a car. Egalitarian in their own way, bringing major artists’ minor works into the minor homes of minor collectors.

Well, it doesn’t sound so nice when it’s phrased that way, but you know what we mean. Bidding starts at 11 am GMT, so it actually started an hour ago by EST. Uh, get out your chequebook and read fast.

Sotheby’s | Old Master Modern and Contemporary Prints Including Andy Warhol and the Pop Generation

ABOVE: Sheikh Saud Al-Thani relaxes at home with a copy of the Audobon Birds of America, purchased for $8 million in 2000.

Sheikh Saud Al-Thani, who in the last few years was on the art-shopping spree of all time, has been arrested in Doha on allegations of misused public funds. Sheikh Saud was until February the Chairman of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Heritage in Qatar, the tiny, obscenely wealthy middle eastern nation which has been converting its plentiful oil money into one hell of an art collection. As Chairman, the Sheikh was responsible for keeping the country’s growing museums—there are five (five!) under construction right now—well-stocked with priceless objets from around the world.

Well, “priceless” wouldn’t exactly be the right word; while no one doubts the Sheikh’s impeccable taste, his talent as an acquirer, it seems, left something to be desired: namely, thrift. The Art Newspaper reports that he was in the habit of acquiring pieces at, oh, up to 113 times their appraised value, such as the gem-encrusted fly-swatter valued in the catalogue at £5,000 - £8,000, which he eventually bagged at a cost of more than £900,000.

So—and we’re just sayin’, is all—the Sheikh obviously isn’t so hot at the bargain shopping. But even in diamond-studded Qatar, throwing around that kind of dough draws attention, and so Sheikh Saud Al-Thani is under house arrest, hopefully swatting flies.

The article alludes to more of the Sheikh’s adventures in tomb-raiding and the possiblity of royal intrigue. Sounds like a John Le Carré novel waiting to be written.

The Art Newspaper — World’s Biggest Art Collector Arrested in Qatar

ABOVE: Jan de Bray’s Couple Represented as Ulysses and Penelope (1668), opening March 13 at the National Gallery of Art.

A small exhibit of 17th Century painter Jan de Bray opens on Sunday at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., showcasing his “portrait historié” works in which ordinary people, in several cases members of de Bray’s family, are represented as historical or literary figures. The press release doesn’t really follow the portrait-role-playing into its murkier psychological questions: the Gallery says that it is “juxtaposing” two of de Bray’s paintings of his parents, one in which they are portrayed as themselves, and one in which they are playing the parts of Antony and Cleopatra. Uh, paging Dr. Freud, guys. Perhaps it’s a little too 21st-century-postmodern-revisionism for the NGA, but it leaps off the screen from where we’re sitting.

The exhibit, which also features a Rubens and a Frans Hals, runs until August.

National Gallery of Art presents Rare Look at Portraits by Dutch Artist Jan de Bray