Sacrifice for Cezanne
The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia is selling two major works by two Australian artists from it’s collection to raise the remaining funds needed to purchase a painting by Cezanne titled Bords De La Marne. Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Edmund Capon, is the driving force behind the purchase of the work for AUD$16.2 million from a Swiss private collection which will be the most expensive work ever purchase by a gallery in Australia. Having committed to purchasing the work without having all the funds available, Capon and the gallery have had to do everything that they can to raise the extra funds in hurry and have been begging for donations at every opportunity.
The two works being sold to help fund the purchase are Balmoral by Brett Whiteley's and Pleasure Craft John Perceval's both of which are very important works by two of Australia’s most important artists. Apparently the benefactor who donated the pieces has given his blessing to the sale which is all very nice but what would the artist’s think and what would their opinion of the sale be if they were alive today?
Nicholas Forrest on 11.26.08 @ 05:18 PM EST [more..]
In a pleasant change from reviews of other peoples work, I am very happy to be able to report on something of my own this month. At the end of October I took part in a panel discussion and exhibition in Abu Dhabi organised by the Abu Dhabi Authority of Culture and Heritage and the Goethe Institute. 
The theme of the exhibition was land change, art and the environment and it featured 5 artists who work in some way with environmental issues. The main artist was German photographer Petra Petrick who showed a series of photographs called ‘German Desert’. The images are desolate, barren and beautiful just like real deserts but actually taken at the abandoned sites of former open cast coalmines in Germany.
