Xin nian kuai le

Shanghai Eye is now going to join the rest of China and disappear for a couple of weeks….
Happy year of the Ox

Happy Year of the Ox party

Shanghai Eye had a few paintings up at the new year party hosted by Dai Wei and Neocha. Photos below.

Pres. Putin painting sells for about $100,000

Story here
Review of the painting here

Quote:
Putin’s deft canvas, titled Pattern, fetched 37 million roubles (about $100,000?) at a charity auction in St Petersburg – 32 million more than its reserve price. The work was sold together with paintings by other Russian celebrities to raise money for children with cancer. The sale price is thought to be a record for the sale of a painting in Russia.

French Tv announces art bubble in China has burst

Report here (with video)

Quote:
After becoming one of the hottest things in the art world over the last decade, galleries are now struggling to sell pieces, works are failing to reach minimums at auction and artists are having to rethink their choice of career…
Many had expected a slowdown in the market after years of explosive growth, but the slump currently hitting the global economy has had a much bigger impact than anyone had foreseen…

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Better get some wellington boots

According to climate specialists we are looking at a dramatic change in sea levels in the not too distant future.
ie:
Sustained warming of at least a few degrees (more than approximately 4° to 13°F above average 20th century values) is likely to be sufficient to cause the nearly complete, eventual disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet, which would raise sea level by several meters.
Apparently this is looking likely to happen:
Hansen’s institute monitors temperature fluctuations at thousands of sites round the world, data that has led him to conclude that most estimates of sea level rises triggered by rising atmospheric temperatures are too low and too conservative. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says a rise of between 20cm and 60cm can be expected by the end of the century.
Science daily has some more recent data here.

This is what Shanghai will look like with a few meters of sea level change (ie. wet)

However, Hansen said feedbacks in the climate system are already accelerating ice melt and are threatening to lead to the collapse of ice sheets. Sea-level rises will therefore be far greater - a claim backed last week by a group of British, Danish and Finnish scientists who said studies of past variations in climate indicate that a far more likely figure for sea-level rise will be about 1.4 metres, enough to cause devastating flooding of many of the world’s major cities and of low-lying areas of Holland, Bangladesh and other nations.

Art made in Shanghai

The next installment of BBc’s Art made in China is online for a few days. The presenter is one half of the old spitting image team, Roger Law. The interviews are all from about a year ago…

Presser: 10mln Euro tender for memorial ‘freedom and unity’

Germany has put out an international tender for a 10 million Euro monument:

The first stage of the open, international competition for a Freedom and Unity Memorial in Berlin has now begun! The submission date is 10. March 2009.

On 9. November 2007 the German parliament decided that the Federal Republic of Germany will erect a Memorial to Freedom and Unity, in memory of the peaceful revolution of Autumn 1989, and as a memorial to movements and efforts undertaken over the centuries to achieve unity and freedom. The German parliament agreed on the main issues of the competition on 4. December 2008.

The German government is the official organiser, represented by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs. Coordination and execution is to be managed by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning.

The Federal Government Commissioner, Bernd Neumann, emphasized: “After the decision made by the German parliament on 4. December 2008, the start of the competition for the Freedom and Unity Memorial is an important milestone in the realisation of this memorial project of national significance. An open competition renders possible broad participation, and is intended to contribute to wide, public acceptance for the memorial.”

The Memorial for Freedom and Unity is to be erected as a national symbol in the centre of the German capital. Its form and design are to express its special significance and effect.

The future Memorial for Freedom and Unity will be located at the plinth of the former national monument for Kaiser Wilhelm 1, at the ‚Schlossfreiheit’ in Berlin-Mitte.

The competition process is to be executed in 2 stages: The first stage is organised as an international open competition of ideas for visual artists, architects and other freelance creative minds, without any restriction on entitlement to participate. The jury will select approx. 20 participants from the works, which are assessed anonymously, to enter into the 2. stage. The 2. stage is executed as a competition for specifically invited entries, in the form of a cooperative process. The language of the process is German.

The public is included in the process by way of exhibition and information events after the 1. and the 2. stage.

The aim of the competition is to gain concept ideas in the first stage. The works selected should provide a base for development for further processing. The artists and creative groups selected in the first stage should be able to plan and erect the memorial.

A total of 10 million Euros has been set as the upper cost limit.

Further information, as well as application material and documents, are available at http://www.wettbewerb-denkmal.de

Old Shanghai Photo album

I have built up a small collection of old photo albums over the years, mostly bought from this old fellow at Chengua Temple. TBH Mrs Shanghai Eye finds my collecting these a ‘bit creepy.’ Personally I find them very interesting, especially the designs. Below are a few pages from one of my favourite ones. There are no details as to who the family are.

The (London) Times calls for art world cull

Rather dramatic, but Waldermar Januszczak goes on a long rant, even giving China a bit of a slagging, in his call for a cull of the art world. Nothing really to do with the Chinese art scene. Funnily, I remember the documentary he did back in the day, saying China was producing the most radical art ever, etc, etc, when refusing to drink human penis baijiu. Bit like Glenda Slag in Private Eye. You can watch his video ‘Beijing Swings’ here. Anyhow, the entire Times article is here…

Quote:
I don’t mind Chinese billionaires kidding themselves in Shanghai that their trite pop artists are worth squillions, but flaunting appalling nouveau-riche tastes at our auctions is embarrassing.

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Erm
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My best bit quote:
German painter Georg Baselitz, the one who specialised in painting figures upside down, and asking him if he felt any guilt about the astronomical prices his pictures were fetching at auction. Baselitz, who lived in a castle at the time, took a big puff on his cigar and actually blew the smoke out in my face, with the words: “What is better than a painting? Nothing.” Conversation over.

The Futurists- a documentary

A BBC radio documentary on the Italian futurists is available here, listen now before it disappears…