Richard Dorment, the head arts critic at The Telegraph who is retiring after serving at the position for over 30 years, has an article in the newspaper this week, reviewing the changes in contemporary art since he began writing, and his thoughts on writers unwilling to accept the new in the world of art. “Had the same critics been writing about film, sport, or the stock market they’d have been rumbled in a week,” he notes. (more…)

Following the reception of Stefan Simchowitz’s profile in the New York Times, Jerry Saltz has taken to the New York Magazine website, publishing a considered analysis of both the article and the art world’s response to Simchowitz’s aggressive approach, noting the conditions that may generate such mixed feelings on the collector.  “More and more artists now appear resigned to a cynicism that basically says, ‘The whole art world sucks; Simchowitz doesn’t suck anymore than anything else.'” He writes. “Many now see Simchowitz as an outlaw/do-gooder ‘disrupter’ invading the closed domain of the bad gallery world and spreading the wealth around.” (more…)

Continuing what could arguably be the most controversial series of Christmas-themed public artworks, Paul McCarthy this past week installed Tree, an enormous inflatable sculpture on Place Vendome in Paris that bears a striking resemblance to both a Christmas tree or a sex toy.  The work has already garnered considerable controversy, with one man slapping McCarthy as he viewed the work.  “Does this kind of thing happen often in France?” McCarthy reportedly asked shortly after being attacked.

Since being installed, the sculpture has been repeatedly attacked by vandals, and has ultimately been removed from Place Vendome.
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The Guardian notes the ongoing backlash in Helsinki against the Guggenheim’s proposed expansion, as many doubt the actual benefits a Guggenheim branch may offer the Finnish capital.   “I’m not paying my taxes to be handed over to an American corporation to do with what they want,” says one interviewee. “If we’re spending that kind of money, it should be on our own national museum, not another outpost of a global company.” (more…)

Manifesto 10, Installation View, all photos courtesy of Manifesto 10

Despite a steady stream of critiques, criticism and outright protest over the current political climate in Russia, Manifesta 10, one of Europe’s leading contemporary art biennials, has pressed on.  The exhibition, which opened late last month, has made much of its presence in Russia, presenting an exhibition that addresses its own political background while using it as a spring board to broader issues. (more…)

The costs and logistics of the Guggenheim’s Helsinki expansion plans are causing a backlash against the museum in the Finnish capital, the New York Times reports.  “I felt some defensiveness and some very developed hostility to us, a fear which I was empathetic toward,” says Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong, “that the distinct local character of Helsinki would somehow be amalgamated into some sort of gigantic industrial apparatus.” (more…)

The British Council has confirmed reports from earlier this month that a YBA show planned for Moscow has been cancelled.  The show had suffered from lack of funding, following the withdrawal of potential sponsorship funds from Russian patrons Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin of the Ekaterina Foundation over harsh Western criticism of Russian involvement in Ukraine.   (more…)

As exhibitions of Balthus prepare to open in New York, critic Jerry Saltz writes on the history of one of the artist’s more sordid works, The Guitar Lesson.  Only exhibited once in 1977, the work has moved through the back channels of the art world in the past 40 years, finally coming to rest in the collection of shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos.  “I don’t love Balthus’s work, but I grant that all parts of the best examples are charged with something wild, almost half-human, some sleeping need, rage, frustration, and restraint. What makes the banishment of The Guitar Lesson so bitter isn’t only that MoMA came this close to owning a second take on the blatant sexuality of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”  Saltz writes. (more…)

A woman who openly criticized painter Eric Fischl at the Art Southampton art fair this past weekend later received a call from the artist himself, apparently incensed that she did not care for his work.  Isabel Barnard-Biderman, a former gallery owner, had left her phone number in hopes of getting a signed copy of Fischl’s book, Bad Boy, and instead received a call from the artist. “I went home and the phone rings and it’s Eric saying, ‘What do you mean you don’t like my paintings?’ ”Bernard-Biderman said. “I don’t really know him. He said, ‘Maybe when you come back you’re going to like them.’”  (more…)

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has been invited by Creative Time Reports to publish his thoughts on the role of writing as criticism in the face of authoritarian censorship.  The artist, who was detained by the government last year, calls on internet users in China and abroad to use the system to oppose oppression by speaking out.  He writes: “Every day we put the state on trial—a moral trial, conducted with logic and reasoning. Nothing could be better than this. I am preparing a budding civil society to imagine change. First, you need people to recognize they need change. Then you need them to recognize how to make change. Finally, change will come.” (more…)

Former curator for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Sir Roy Strong has called British art galleries and museums to task for presenting exhibitions avoiding criticism of British policy.  The harsh words come as the V&A gears up for an exhibition on David Bowie.  He says: “I always saw the role of director as primarily to lift people to paradise and to give them information and delight – and then, at another moment, claw them, so they were absolutely shocked and they were made to think about what was going on around them.”

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