In 1972, a year before his death in a plane crash at 35, the artist Robert Smithson wrote, “I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day.” And with the creation of his greatest work — “Spiral Jetty,” the huge counterclockwise curlicue of black basalt rock that juts into the Great Salt Lake in rural Utah — he certainly put that conviction to the test.

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A children’s book illustration from the early part of Andy Warhol’s career is to go on sale in New York next month.

The delicate drawings of four story book animals are expected to fetch $600 (£355) at auction on 9 December.

The US artist, who became famous for his pop art creations including silk screen prints of Marilyn Monroe, was a book illustrator from 1957-61.

At a recent sale of contemporary art, a Warhol print of a series of one dollar bills was sold for $43.8m (£26m).

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A Tokyo university is planning to open a library to promote serious study of Japanese manga comics.

The proposed Tokyo International Manga Library will house two million comic books, animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artefacts.

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Image from BBC

Nancy Spero

“Ms. Spero, who always viewed art as inseparable from life, developed a distinctive kind of political work. Polemical but symbolic, it combined drawing and painting as well as craft-based techniques like collage and printmaking seldom associated with traditional Western notions of high art and mastery.”

Please click here for full article in the NY Times.

BERLIN — It wasn’t a happy ending. Once celebrated as Europe’s leading art and design school, by early 1933 the Bauhaus was reduced to camping in a hastily converted telephone factory on the outskirts of Berlin and subsisting on handouts from its director, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Denouncing it as “un-German,” the newly elected Nazi government forced the school to close.

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Wondering which green roof art school I’m referring to…?

Where else?! It’s none other that the School of Art Design & Media building in Nanyang Technological University.

The 5-storey structure, which houses the ADM Library as well, was featured in WebUrbanist.com among 14 other  educational institutions’ buildings which are deemed as “cool” and buildings which “looked like this, attendance rates would skyrocket!”.

Click on the link below to read on what was written about the SADM building find out other similar other “cool” buildings of academic institutions in the world.

15 Cool High School, College and University Building Designs | WebUrbanist.

In light of the recent decision to close Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum by the university Board of Trustees, much has been written about it. Below is a snippet of an article in the New York Times written against the decision …

“… University museums are unlike other museums. They are not intended to be powerhouse displays of masterworks, though some have their share of these. They are, before all else, teaching instruments intended for hands-on use by students and scholars. As such, they often house objects that are considered of second- and third-tier value at auction but that fill out a deep and detailed account of cultural history. ”

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“Slumdog Millionaire” is a hit across the world, but in India, protesters have taken to the streets to attack the film.

Some Indians find the word “slumdog” in the movie’s title to be insulting to slum-dwellers. More generally, the rags-to-riches romance has been called “poverty porn” for the way it casts a glowing light on a very poor section of Mumbai society and promotes “slum tourism.”

Please click here for the full debate published in the New York Times.

Image from Bridgeman Art Library

“Armchair tourists who are used to travelling the globe with Google Earth can now use the same technology to crawl all over the masterpieces in one of the world’s most famous galleries: the Prado.”

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