Picasso's "banal legal" Row

It's not quite a coffee house debate on the merits of cubism over his blue period, but the battle between Picasso's family and a car maker over a vehicle's name has finally been resolved. Five members of the late artist's family claimed there was too much risk of confusion between the trademark "Picasso", which has been licensed to Citroën, and "Picaro", a name that DaimlerChrylser had tried to register as a trademark. But the family lost in the European court of justice in Luxembourg. An earlier appeal criticised the commercialisation of the great artist's name, expressing dismay that it should be caught up in such a "banal legal matter". The Picasso name is controlled by the Picasso Administration in Paris run by Claude Ruiz Picasso, one of the litigants. He is one of four children the painter had to three different women.

Art Market Bullish

Bloomberg reports that art collectors are becoming more bullish as prices rise. Buyers were twenty-five percent more confident in November than in May. ArtTactic Market Confidence indicator also shows that about eighty-four percent of 150 collectors and dealers surveyed expected prices to stay strong for the next six months. The survey attempts to show how the art world resembles the stock market, where successful initial public offerings can boost optimism.
Irish Art

Michelangelo Art In Danger

Environmentalists have begun a campaign to save a church worked on by Michelangelo from ruin after the use of explosives on the underlying Tuscan hillside raised fears that the 1,000-year-old building could collapse, A large crack has already ripped through parts of the Romanesque Pieve della Cappella in Fabiana, near Lucca. The church nestles midway up the Altissimo hill, at the foot of which Michelangelo Buonarroti arrived in 1517 in search of the area's distinctive marble that he intended to use for the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence.
Irish Art

Art of America's Picasso

Robert Rauschenberg may be the American Picasso. He is a Dionysian maverick of experimentation, openness, visual wit, and roguish nerve; an artist who cannot be diminished by others but who can only diminish himself; someone whose envelope-pushing has been inspirational for generations. As Jasper Johns generously avowed, 'Rauschenberg was the man who in this century invented the most since Picasso'.
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Irish Art

Fishy Drawing Story

New York's Drawing Center was to be part of the World Trade center project until controversy torpedoed the deal. Since then the center has been hunting for a home. "Scouring abandoned buildings, vacant parking lots and high-rises, they fell in love with some locations and flatly rejected others, while learning the perils of what its president calls a 'lack of nimbleness' by losing out to quick bidders." Now a home has been found - in the old Fulton Fish Market.

Art Is Stress Antidote

Visiting an art gallery may be the perfect antidote to stress, according to research. Analysis of 28 City high flyers who spent their lunch break viewing art found their stress levels fell by 45% after 40 minutes at the Guildhall art gallery in London.
Saliva samples contained 32% less cortisol stress hormone than before the visit. Normally, it would take about five hours for cortisol concentrations to fall this far. Angela Clow, from the University of Westminster, said: "A short break at lunchtime, in a beautiful and calming environment, can help restore normative levels of cortisol."
Irish Art