ART AND AUCTION

LOOKING FOR BANKSY IN BELARUS

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:50:43 +0000

The Moloko Bar sits halfway down a shaded alley a short walk from Minsk's Victory Square. You know you're on the right road when you see the avant-garde mural, a mash-up of Renaissance-era paintings and graffiti, that runs along the pavement, ending at a matte white building with a black "?" by the door, the name of the attached art gallery. Such venues are around every corner in European cities like Berlin and Barcelona. But in the drab Belarusian capital, they are very much an exception.

Maria, a 29-year-old poet and journalist, told me over a milkshake that the bar/gallery complex is one of a handful of places in Minsk where brash, open-minded intellectuals can let off steam. Not too loudly, though: plain-clothes agents of the KGB (as the security agency is still called here) are known to stop by and eavesdrop. In their case, however, less plain would help. “Their clothes,” she says, “tell us who they are as soon as they walk through the door.”

The first time Maria and I met, "Casablanca" was playing silently on a flat-screen television mounted to the wall. In the smoky bowels of Rick’s Café Americain the Nazi Major Strasser was confronting Victor Laszlo, the Czech dissident. Coincidence? I couldn’t be sure. But the film was replayed as soon as it ended. As another activist would later assert, everything in Belarus is political when the context is understood. read more »

FLESH AND DUST

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:55:10 +0000

Remembering Lucian Freud, a painter who brought realism to the nude ... read more »

THE SKY IS MINE

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:02:03 +0000

Around the world Kathryn Gustafson is feted as a leading landscape architect. But in Britain she is still the woman behind a much-derided memorial to Princess Diana. Michael Watts meets her ... read more »

NOTES ON A VOICE: JOAN DIDION

Robert Butler — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:12:42 +0000

In our sixth instalment of Notes on a Voice, Robert Butler considers the distinctive prose of Joan Didion ... read more »

THE WIZARDS OF THE WARHOL MARKET

Tue, 17 May 2011 16:18:15 +0000

How big is his market anyway? read more »

SCARCE SUPPLY, FUSSY DEMAND

Tue, 10 May 2011 15:43:51 +0000

It seems few sellers care to gamble on an auction these days, to the dismay of discriminating buyers ... read more »

MAGRITTE'S MISSIVES

The Economist — Wed, 26 May 2010 14:45:44 +0000

A cache of over 40 letters reveals the artist’s humour and imagination ... read more »

COLOUR ME DAZZLED

Art.view — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:03:30 +0000

Art.view chats with the "King of Diamonds", divulges the "four C's" of diamond grading and reports on the state of the gem market ... read more »

CHINA SYNDROME IN LONDON

Art.view — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:30:37 +0000

London’s Asian art festival was full of surprises. Art.view reports from the front lines ... read more »

OUT FROM STORAGE

Art.view — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:20:54 +0000

A successful Romano sale in Florence proves there are exceptions to recessionary rules ... read more »