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Opinion Analysis Debate
Recent entries: 1-21 of 21
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Good morning
Posted 16 days agoAmerica has a new President-elect. Yesterday’s vote was not only a political event, but a cultural one. It ushers in a generational shift in American leadership as well as a deeper realignment in ideology and outlook that seems to happen every 30-40 years here. The mood and texture of the country will indelibly change. Barack [...] -
Artoon
Posted 21 days ago -
Message in a bottle
Posted 23 days agoSarah Thornton’s book Seven Days in the Art World, which documents the frenzied peak of the recent art boom, arrives next week in American bookstores, just as that boom appears to be sputtering out. Some would call this bad timing. In fact, it’s a stroke of good luck. It puts Ms. Thornton, a Canadian-born, London-based [...] -
Considering “Relational Aesthetics”
Posted 27 days agoMuch art of the 1990s will forever remain associated with Nicolas Bourriaud’s exhibition Traffic (1995) and the book it spurred him to write, Relational Aesthetics (1998), which put forward the terms of art we now use to identify (describe?) the offerings of artists such as Liam Gillick, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerester and others. Whether one [...] -
And so it starts…
Posted 1 month agoBloomberg today reported the dramatic drop in prices achieved at all the major auction houses this weekend. Sales by Sotheby’s, Christie’s International and Phillips de Pury & Co made a combined 59 million pounds ($102 million), against minimum estimates of 106.2 million pounds, according to Bloomberg calculations. They follow a five-day auction by Sotheby’s in Hong [...] -
Join the oligarty party
Posted 1 month agoThe art world’s love affair with Russian money continues. After Roman Abramovich snapped up works by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, he then shipped half of London’s arterati to the opening of his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova’s CCC Garage in Moscow. Now auction house Phillips de Pury & Co have been bought by Russian retail giant, [...] -
Artoon
Posted 1 month ago -
What’s next for nonprofits?
Posted 1 month agoNow that government regulation of investments and markets is suddenly back in vogue, it’s only a matter of time until the reformers and the ethical cleansers train their sights on the least regulated market of them all–the art market. This will take time, but stay tuned. As last week’s exchanges made clear, taking a measure [...] -
9/15
Posted 2 months agoThe topography of Wall Street and the financial system was redrawn over the past weekend. So what’s next? And specifically, what’s next for the art market? In recent months, heightened anxiety about the credit crisis and the meltdown in global finance did not translate into a flight from art purchases. Quite the opposite. Will the [...] -
Artoon
Posted 2 months ago -
The Hirstian knot
Posted 2 months agoDamien Hirst’s decision to sell 223 new pieces direct to auction at Sotheby’s on 15 and 16 September represents the breaking of an unwritten rule: thou shalt not defile your dealer. While threatening the very gallery system that helped to make him a household name by selling his work in the first place (and supposedly [...] -
Summer reading: The Art Critic
Posted 2 months agoJust in time for late summer, Newsweek and Artforum critic Peter Plagens has started publishing his new novel, The Art Critic, in weekly installments on Artnet. The “book” is about a slightly cranky male critic of a certain age who has seen enough and done enough in the art world to call it just like [...] -
Artoon
Posted 3 months ago -
Considering “Tino Sehgal”
Posted 3 months agoEditorial Note: This post marks the initiation of a new AWS series entitled “Considerations.” With some regularity, we will turn our readers and commenters’ attention towards a particular artist, work or enterprise that the AWS editors believe merits a sustained critical discussion. The idea, of course, is not to have the last word on the [...] -
Summer readings: The dismal science does art
Posted 3 months agoLast week came news that a reputable economist at the University of Chicago, David Galenson, has devised a quantitative method to measure the importance of 20th century artists. His rankings, which received major section-front coverage in The New York Times, are based on how often paintings or sculptures by a given artist are reproduced in [...] -
Artoon
Posted 3 months agoPablo Helguera -
Arts of torture?
Posted 3 months agoFor those needing any practical reassurance that “waterboarding” is a form of torture, Christopher Hitchens provided something close to a final word on the matter, at least in the realm of public opinion (and persuasion), when he subjected himself to it for the benefit of Vanity Fair’s readers. One is reminded of the Hitch’s stunt by [...] -
Welcome back
Posted 3 months agoWelcome back, dear reader. Over the past few weeks the site has been going through some under-the-hood changes. We return with some light summer fare–the first in our new series of cartoons by artist, author, occasional AWS contributor, and astute art-world observer Pablo Helguera, who also happens to be cartoonist. His latest cartoons about the [...] -
Gone fishing
Posted 4 months agoWe apologize for the recent lack of new content, and the current appearance of our site. AWS is in the process of upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress and dealing with some Database issues. We hope to have things up and running before long, so please bear with us. - The Management -
Critiquing with clenched fists
Posted 5 months agoBefore New Republic art critic Jed Perl penned his latest insights, he visited a good number of recent exhibitions, including * The inaugural exhibition at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art * “© Murakami” at the Brooklyn Museum * Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, at the Museum of Modern Art * “Unmonumental: The Object [...] -
Summer reading: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark
Posted 5 months agoA side benefit of the boom has been a stream of new books on the business of art. Given the lack of independently verifiable data, especially about the gallery trade, these books usually promise more than they can deliver. Don Thompson’s The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Art and Auction Houses (until [...]