Google Sheep View.
- If you think the housing crisis is bad in New York, just be happy you aren’t trying to pay rent in London. Since our post-industrial economies are so heavily dependent on real estate as a returning investment, Ben Beach argues in favor of rent strikes as a strategy for convincing the wealthy and powerful to stop trying to get blood from a stone. Oh, and when you’re reading about housing costs in London, remember that one British Pound will set you back more than one and a half American Dollars. [Vice]
- Richard Hell remembers Cookie Mueller and waxes nostalgic on the wild bohemia they inhabited in the 70s and 80s. [Electronic Beats]
- Seven finalists have been named for the Nissan Art Award. They are Sayaka Akiyama, Tsuyoshi Hisakado, Takashi Ishida, Takahiro Iwasaki, Futoshi Miyagi, Yuko Mohri, and Tomoko Yoneda. Each of the finalists will receive ¥1 million (roughly $8,000) while competing for the grand prize of ¥2 million. [Blouin Artinfo]
- Andrew Goldstein does the best trade interviews in the business. In this piece he talks with Marc Spiegler, the director of Art Basel, and former reporter for New York Magazine and Artnews. Favorite statistic quoted: less than 1,530 pieces sold at auction represent 48 percent of the volume of the entire auction market globally. What’s not spelled out here is that many galleries and fairs see the auction houses as their competitors. Read this as a jab at the competition. Also a good tidbit: the Basel Unlimited section of their fair is larger than the Venice Biennale’s Arsenale. (Unlimited is 15,000 square meters) [Artspace]
- Qatar’s royal family has been on an extremely pricey art shopping spree, most famously with the purchase of the record-breaking $179 million Picasso. What are they doing with all this art? Apparently the royal family is planning to convert a complex of grain silos in Doha into a new art museum with one hell of an expensive permanent collection. [artnet News]
- Good news for everyone in the fine art business: New York State passed a law protecting art authenticators from bogus lawsuits. Does that mean the Warhol Foundation Board and Basquiat authentication committee will return to authenticating Warhols and Basquiat’s? The foundations stopped three years ago citing a preponderance of frivolous lawsuits as the reason. [Hyperallergic]
- Archeologists in Ireland have recovered relatively intact cannons from the Spanish Armada that was famously destroyed by the British Navy off the coast in 1588. [Irish Archeology]
- An arts district in Savannah is now an “up-and-coming” destination. From the sound of this article—which focuses on the merits of office space, condos, and retail—it seems like this is better news for the real estate developers behind the endeavor than the area’s artists. [The New York Times]
- Google Sheep View. [Google Sheep View]
