Edible Art Exhibition

A new art show at a Brighton art gallery gives visitors the chance to eat the exhibits. The Lost Apple Field at the Brighton Fringe Basement features 700 varieties of apples. It's part of an art exhibition funded by the British Council looking at how people have lost touch with traditional farming. Artist Andre Viljoen said: "It makes the point that although there is discussion about choice, the reality is that there is very little choice." He said there are 2,000 varieties of apple in the country, but only about 10 types are found in most shops.
Irish Art

Tate Art Trouble

These are troubled times for the Tate. Behind the scenes, the critically-acclaimed series of 13 paintings, said to be Ofili's take on the Last Supper, is at the centre of a row that has engulfed some of the biggest names in Britain's artistic establishment. At the heart of the affair is the fact that, when The Upper Room was purchased from him for £705,000 earlier this year, Ofili was himself a Tate trustee. This, critics say, represents a major conflict of interest. The matter is so serious that, last week, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it will investigate.
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Irish Art

Art Creativity = Sexual Success

Pablo Picasso, Lord Byron and Dylan Thomas had more in common than simple creativity. They also had active sex lives, which researchers said on Wednesday was no coincidence. Psychologists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Open University in Britain found that professional artists and poets have about twice as many partners as other people. Their creativity seems to act like a sexual magnet. But Dr Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at Newcastle University's School of Biology, said it is a double-edge sword. "Poets and artists have more sexual partners but they also have high rates of depression."
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Irish Art

9 Inch Art Worth A Million

A diminutive sculpture by Henry Moore yesterday sold at auction for more than £1 million. Mother and Child, described by the iconic sculptor as "one of my best earlier pieces", was snapped up for £1,069,600 at Bonhams in London. It was sold to a private collector and smashed the world auction record for a carving by Moore. The sculpture was carved in 1931 using the finest marble - verde di prato - and is just under 9in tall. It was initially purchased soon after Moore's exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in the same year, for just 18 guineas. Bonhams' head of modern British art, Matthew Bradbury, said: "It is an immense privilege to have sold this beautiful Mother and Child sculpture. The enormous price reflects the quality of the work."
Irish Art

Mafia Informer Stole Caravaggio

Art lovers in Sicily are appealing to a mafia informer serving a life term in prison to reveal the hiding place of a stolen Caravaggio worth an estimated £20m. They believe Francesco Marino Mannoia knows the location of the Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence, which was cut from its frame in the San Lorenzo oratory, Palermo, in 1969. Mannoia, a heroin refiner whose mother, sister and aunt were murdered by the mafia after he turned state's evidence, has admitted taking part in the theft. He has revealed that the painting was damaged but has never given any clues to its location. More than 1,000 people in the city have signed a petition asking the underworld for information.
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Irish Art

Tate Art Is Epoch Defining

Walking into Tate Modern's Turbine Hall this winter is set to become an epoch-defining moment. It seems at first that the vast space has been filled with thousands of blocks of ice rising vertiginously above you - looking as if at any moment they might come toppling down. Welcome to Embankment, the latest large-scale sculpture by Rachel Whiteread. Walking into its corridors, between the towering whiteness, has the effect, so beloved of the Romantics, of making you feel microcosmic. It does not, as some have said, induce a sense of claustrophobia. What it does do is persuade you to suspend disbelief, and the deeper you penetrate, the more bizarre and dislocatory the experience becomes. Embankment is the apotheosis of Whiteread's work, the finest thing she has done in a decade, even though that decade saw her produce some of the most memorable works of the fin-de-siècle. Embankment confirms Whiteread's position among the true greats of 21st-century British art. It is a phenomenon you cannot afford to miss, a moment of transcendental beauty in which time stands still in an unforgettable, unrepeatable paean to the human race.
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Irish Art

Russian Art Forgery Shock

The discovery of forged paintings and the arrests last month of a Moscow art dealer and her husband are raising concern among collectors that fakes are inundating the profitable and fast-growing Russian art market. The couple denies the charges. They say they were framed by an organized crime group. Police are investigating 10 paintings considered forgeries that were together priced at more than $2 million. What is unnerving collectors is that one of the fakes has an authenticity certificate signed by an expert at the Grabar Art Conservation Center, a prominent state institution. Russia’s art market has estimated annual sales of between $700 million and $1.5 billion. Criminals are increasingly buying artworks by little-known 19th-century European painters cheaply, bringing them back to Russia, and making changes that include removing the original signature and replacing it with a Russian artist’s signature.
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Irish Art