Arts in the News

Hello and welcome to my new Art and Design blog. In this blog I will be posting research, work and oddments as part of my Art and Design Level 3 Diploma.

I thought I'd post a few interesting pieces from the news recently to get the ball rolling.

Outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose contraversial pieces have frequently landed him in trouble with the Chinese regime, seems to have been arrested by authorities in his home country. Mr Ai is most famous for co-designing the Birdsnest Stadium and for a recent installation at the Tate in which he filled a space with 100 million hand-made porcelain sunflower seeds. He has not been seen since trying to board a plane to Hong Kong. Though there is no official line on his whereabouts, rumours of torture, hunger strikes and serious allegations are filtering through from China. I find his case very interesting. Today in the West we tend to think of artists as an elite few whose work, however controversial, rarely causes friction with the government, but in a totalitarian or extreme country, art can be as inflammatory as ever.

China doesn't seem overly concerned about all it's famous artists, however. A triptych by Zhang Xiaogang has been sold for £6.3 million, the highest price ever recorded for a contemporary Chinese piece.

Older artworks have also retained the power to cause controversy: in Washington DC a woman was arrested for trying to deface a Gaugin painting depicting two semi-nude Tahitian women. According to the would-be vandal the painter was "evil" and the work was "dangerous for children" because of its nudity. She also expressed homophobic fears that the subjects were lesbians.

Also in America, a new scheme has been put into place by a website offering potential art buyers to rent a piece before buying it giving them a chance to "try before they buy". I wonder if this could also open up the fine arts dealing business to less wealthy people?

Finally, the BBC has an "in pictures" feature about artist Nancy Fouts, whose work is the subject of a new exhibition in London. Her surreal sculptures, made by combining ordinary items and taxidermy, offer arresting juxtapositions, and though Fouts claims her pieces are not intended to express political themes, it's hard not to draw political and social commentary from the combinations she chooses.