Glass artist Dale Chihuly provides personal insights into his work.

London city council has ordered the removal of a Banksy work, located on the side of a building. The official rationale is that the mural is graffiti and should be covered over to deter other graffiti artists. One has to wonder however, whether the message of the work – “One Nation Under CCTV” – has something to do with it.

via ArtsJournal

Pop over here to see an intriguing film by filmmaker Teresa Brezan. If you enjoy the film, why not give Teresa a bit of help as part of the Video Revolutionaries Exhibition at the Getty Museum. The most popular and highest rated films in the series have a chance of being shown at the J Paul Getty Museum in L.A. Pop over here to view and rate the film.

About the film:

This short video artwork explores three different relationships to secrets: hiding, destroying and revealing. Through images of hands interacting with a tiny envelope containing a secret, the video examines what we do with our secrets and what they do to us. Which has more power: the keeper of the secret or the secret itself? To reinforce this theme, the visual perspective vacillates between that of the \”secret keeper\” and the secret. In one moment the viewer watches hands cup around the envelope; in the next, those same hands seem to be enveloping the viewer, turning them into the secret. Ultimately, who is hiding whom? Who is destroying whom? Who is revealing whom?

Yet more crime related news from the art world: the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, Germany has discovered that the its prize Monet painting, “The Seine at Port Villez” is really a fake.

“Our restoration department examined some 70 paintings with X-rays, with infrared technology and paint tests to deconstruct and explain the painters’ techniques for an exhibition starting in two weeks,” Stefan Swertz told AFP.

“There were several things that made us take a closer look at ‘The Seine at Port Villez’ and we have absolutely no doubt that it was not painted by Monet,” he said.

One of the things that unmasked the fake Monet was the fact that the painter’s name was not signed just once but later retraced to be darker.

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting ‘Hannibal’, which disappeared after its Brazilian owner’s art collection was seized after being found guilty of money laundering, has been found in a New York City warehouse.

Its last known owner was Edemar Cid Ferreira, the former owner of Banco Santos and one of Brazil’s largest art collectors. The bank went bankrupt in September 2005, leaving behind debts of over $1 billion.

Ferreira was convicted in Brazil on charges including money laundering and bank fraud. He was ordered to begin serving a 21-year sentence in December 2006, but was released while his appeal winds through the courts.

A Brazilian court ordered the seizure of $20 million to $30 million worth of art, saying Ferreira and his relatives and associates had bought the works with proceeds of illegal schemes, according to U.S. prosecutors.

From the National Post:

Shaun Greenhalgh, an Englishman whose furtive career has been unfolding in courtrooms, newspapers and museums for the last three months, may well be the most versatile art forger in history.

In 2002, Dad dropped in to the Bolton Museum to ask whether anyone would like to see a 20-inch-high Egyptian sculpture, which his great-grandfather had purchased in 1892 from the contents auction at the home of the 4th Earl of Egremont. It was translucent alabaster, and in photos it’s pretty.

Dad suggested it might represent a daughter of Nefertiti. He guessed it could be worth £500 ($996). He brought along the catalogue of the auction, which his great-grandfather had fortunately kept. In truth, Shaun had found the catalogue. He used the descriptive details in its yellowing pages to make the sculpture.

Experts pronounced it authentic and Bolton Council paid £439,767 to buy it for the Bolton Museum. It wasn’t local money, of course; it came from a national fund supported by lotteries. The museum people were quite chuffed. They thought the piece possibly worth twice that much. One museum employee called Dad “a nice old man who had no idea of the significance of what he owned.” The sculpture remained on exhibit until one fateful day in February, 2006.

After many successful years, and scores of sales, the Greenhalghs were caught out by that old devil hubris. Shaun, deeply impressed by his own talent, forgot that serious chicanery requires careful attention to detail. He sent the British Museum what was apparently an ancient Assyrian stone relief showing a soldier and horses with cuneiform writing. It looked great until someone noticed a minor spelling mistake in the writing and someone else said that the harness on the horses was from the wrong period.

Wallpaper magazine has put together a world-savvy committee of judges to select it’s 2008 Design Award winners. But enough about that, on to some of the winners:

Winners – International Judges’ Awards:
Best New Hotel: Riva Lofts, Florence
Best New Public Building: New Museum, New York, by SANAA
Best Fashion Collection: Jil Sander, autumn/winter 2007
Best New Grooming Product: TweezLight tweezers
Best New Private House: Ring House, Karuizawa, by TNA
Best Domestic Appliance: Katamari 01 speaker by Gyanze
Furniture Designer of the Year: Tokujin Yoshioka
Best New Restaurant; Mathias Dahlgren, Stockholm
Best City: Los Angeles
Most Life-Enhancing Item: $100 laptop, by Yves Béhar

There are 63 categories in this year’s ‘Best’. If you head over here you can see the full list. Why not review the shortlists and decided for yourself if the judge’s got things right (look for the short list links towards the right side of the screen).

Bansky is one of the most notable and well received graffiti artists in the world (meaning he has achieved a certain level of relevance that has translated into a purchasable product). It appears that a graffiti removal crew in London has cleaned up and removed one of his more famous works, which is a depiction of a scene from Pulp Fiction, where Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are posing with bananas instead of guns. It was apparently valued at $500,000.

(C) 2007 Annie Whiles and photographer

From Wallpaper Magazine:

Danielle Arnaud’s gallery is well worth a visit for anyone with an interest in domestic architecture and interiors, as the space is also her home.

The current show: Annie Whiles Cuckoo, plays with the interior theme further with a series of large scale drawings that give a number of iconic 20th-century pieces of furniture a starring role.

Follow on forward to Wallpaper’s gallery.

Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol were the top selling artists in 2006. It is the 10th year in a row that Picasso has been named the top selling artist based on revenue with over $339 million in sales. Warhol’s sales were north of $199 million.

via artsjournal

This interview with Andrew Coyne, lead singer of the Flaming Lips, reports that Aaron Sorkin (creator/writer of The West Wing, Studio 60) is developing a musical linked to the Lips’s album ‘Yoshimi Battles Pink Robots’.

A great find on youtube by Artsjournal, Sylvia Plath reading her poem ‘Daddy’.

Here is a little item that I found on Etsy, ‘love bubbles float away’ a photo by Cabaret/Voltaire. Prints are available for sale. The photo was taken of some graffiti in Dresden, Germany.

I think is the latest video to be hot on the youtube/viral scene: speed painting with ketchup and fries the cover art from the movie Super Size Me.

FoxNews (I know, I know…) reports that a Norman Rockwell painting stolen over 30 years ago in St. Louis has been found by the FBI in Stephen Speilberg’s art collection. Speilberg bought the painting back in 1989, but only found out last week that “Russian Schoolroom” was a stolen work and his staff alerted the authorities.

Vice Magazine has a great quick interview with filmmaker and creative sort David Lynch.

Mizue Hirano is a Tokyo-based freelance artist whose watercolour and canvas illustrations and paintings are imaginative and superb works of mainly abstract art. Plus, you have to love the website.

(c) mizue hirano
via design milk

Bloomberg reports that Christie’s International’s recent art auction in Dubai netted over $9 million U.S. in art sales. This is a healthy sum for the auction of this caliber and indicates a good market in Dubai.

Design Milk had a posting yesterday on Portland-based artist Trish Grantham whose work I now absolutely love. She has such a striking sense of play that bursts through her paintings. Check out her website for a full gallery, show information and even to purchase some of her work.

(c) Daniela Edburg

Photographer Daniela Edburg has made a deliciously evil photo series featuring death by sweets as her subject matter.

For anyone who has eaten the whole box, or bag, or carton the photographs in this series make light of our secret binges. Here, the consequences of indulgence are tabloid or monster movie deaths. Daniela Edburg’s Drop Dead Gorgeous both mocks and satisfies our cravings. 

You can learn more about Daniela’s work via this interview with The Morning News.

via bibi’s box