Walter Gropius on TV, at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. (Photo by Jenn Hsu.)
- Cyberspace, when you’re dead.
- Julian Barnes, on the issue of translation and Madame Bovary, which he describes as “the first great shopping and fucking novel.” (This is a long one, but for nerds like me who like exploring the complications of translating meaning from one language into another, quite fascinating.)
- Timbuktu: Trapped in time for the sake of tourism — and the honorific of UNESCO World Heritage status. A highly interesting debate about what the limits of historic preservation should be.
- John Baldessari wants to put your name in lights. (Modern Art Notes.)
- “So far: I must say that Twitter is more like cocaine than the wonderful opium or psilocybin mushrooms of Facebook.” Yes folks, Jerry Saltz is on Twitter.
- Criticism is dead (okay, “in eclipse”), says Ben Davis. We’ve heard this story before, says Paddy Johnson.
- Constructive criticism: 10 artists who deserve shows at the New Museum.
- Some lovely photos of Spiral Jetty in winter.
- Plans for mega-collector Eli Broad’s museum unveiled. It looks like a giant sponge.
- Jeffrey Deitch’s latest: I feel a “Scene & Heard” coming on.
- It seems that if there’s one thing a Warhol is good for, it’s generating lawsuits.
- The world of art funds. Looking forward to a future in which the word “Picasso” and “securities” are used regularly in the same sentence.
- Damien Hirst offending parenting groups by bedazzling an infant’s skull.
- Kanye West was desperately hoping his George Condo-painted album cover would be banned. Nice try. (Full story in the New Yorker; subscription required.)
- Inside the mind of an art guard.
- Love these: The street photography of the barely-known Vivian Maier — nanny, photographer, artist. See a video about her life and work. (Mercy, Yvonne.)
- Mary Louise Schumacher reviews Steve Martin’s art world novel.
- Czech and Polish posters for Kaiju films.
- Today’s Street Art: Geometry gets blue, in a piece by Gais Ama in Rio de Janeiro.
- Justin Davidson at New York Magazine proposes a new use for the Whitney’s Breuer Bunker: Architecture Museum.
- Forgotten monuments of communist-era Bulgaria.
