– Larry Talks Shop: Kelly Crow snags a surprisingly substantive Q&A with Larry Gagosian as he prepares to open his latest gallery in northern Paris. Asked about the euro crisis, the megadealer replied, "It's almost become a badge of honor that we have a gallery in Greece," adding that the gallery keeps "the price points in Athens lower — under $1 million." Gogo also discusses his attitudes toward various emerging markets, noting that he's scouting a big industrial space in Hong Kong and perhaps a gallery in Brazil, but sees little promise in India. Oh, and he'd really love the chance to sell that Pablo Picasso painting "with all the women in it" — also known as "Les Demoiselles d'Avingon." [WSJ]
– Met Uploads Catalogue Cache: The Metropolitan Museum has launched MetPublications, an impressive online database where it will make available digital copies of hundreds of its catalogues, beginning with an initial selection of 643 publications — including 368 that are now out of print, 140 of which are available as print-on-demand copies — spanning the last 38 years. "MetPublications presents a rich and fascinating record of the last five decades of Met scholarship," Met director Thomas Campbell said. "It will extend the reach of our past, current, and future publications, and give new life to out-of-print volumes.” [Press Release]
– France Frets Over Art Tax: The French art world — as well as the country's president, Francois Hollande — is up in arms over a proposal to extend the country's wealth tax to works of art. If the measure passes in parliament, artworks worth more than €50,000 would be included in assets used to calculate a person's fortune and determine their tax rate. (In an effort to support collecting, France has spared artwork from the wealth tax since 1982.) The measure "would cause a haemorrhage of art, and collectors' exile to more welcoming countries," said Socialist party veteran Jack Lang. [Reuters]
– Ai Weiwei Blasts Nobel's Literature Pick: The outspoken artist and activist — who has been prevented from visiting his new Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden survey due to a travel ban imposed by the Chinese authorities — savaged the Nobel Prize committee for giving this year's Literature prize to China's Mo Yan. "Giving the award to a writer like this is an insult to humanity and to literature," Ai said. "It’s shameful for the committee to have made this selection which does not live up to the previous quality of literature in the award." [Independent]
– LOLCats Photo Show Opens in London: As if the Walker Art Center's festival of cat videos hadn't done enough to legitimize the Internet's cat obsession as some kind of pan-cultural collaborative art project, London's Photographers' Gallery is about to open an exhibition of photos of and by cats titled "LOL of Cats: Felines, Photography and the Web." The exhibition offers a survey of feline new media art, from early ASCII art portraits to recent images of celebrity cat Maru and images shot by Cooper the Photographer Cat. [Independent]
– Tate Sends New Acquisitions Committees East: The Tate is establishing two new acquisitions committees, one that will focus on sourcing contemporary from India and other South Asian countries, while the other will be devoted to art from Russia and Eastern Europe. The former committee will be an offshoot of the Tate's Asia Pacific acquisitions group, which in 2010-11 acquired 26 works, while the new Russian committee will be guided by Florida-based curator Kira Flanzraich. [TAN]
– Hockney to Show His Multimedia Art in California: On the heels of his wildly popular landscape exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, David Hockney is heading stateside. The 75-year-old artist will exhibit some of his newest films, paintings, and drawings next year at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The show, which kicks off October 26, 2013, is the artist's first outing in the United States for six years. It will feature, among other works, previously unseen movies filmed simultaneously on 18 digital cameras. [NYT]
– Rough Going for Islamic Art Sales in London: Last week, Sotheby's and Christie's held their biannual auctions of "Islamic Art" in London, a category that encompasses "half a dozen art market categories" into "a single meaningless denomination," notes Souren Melikian. At Sotheby's, 56 percent of the lots that came on the block on October 3 remained unwanted. "Such a miserable showing had not been witnessed in a long time," Melikian quipped. [NYT]
– Gates Buys the Bank: The day before Chicago artist Theaster Gates rocked the house at London's Ronnie Scott's jazz club after the opening of his White Cube solo show, he learned that his hometown's Community Development Commission had approved the transfer of an abandoned bank owned by the city to his company, helping to pave the way for its eventual renovation into a multi-use center. "This is a really important building, this bank project," Gates said. [Gallerist]
– Illuminated Manuscripts Get the Scientific Treatment: The Fitzwilliam Museum is teaming up with scientists from Cambridge University to analyze the composition of illuminated manuscripts. Until now, art historians speculated about how these manuscripts were created, "but much of the analysis was circumstantial," according to specialist Dr. Sella Panayotova. Now, the team will use non-invasive analysis to unpack the precise art of manuscript illumination. [BBC]
VIDEO OF THE DAY
Dr. Sella Panayotova talks about illuminated manuscripts at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum
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