Artists live unhealthy lives
Death by design — or sculpture, or painting ...
As if your parents’ nagging about what you’ll
do after you graduate isn’t enough, new evidence suggests
that the course of study one chooses in higher education may
directly correlate to one’s lifespan. A study conducted
at Glasgow University in Scotland found that art students
were more likely to die earlier than others. Reasons for this
phenomenon ranged from the fact that, as BBC News describes,
“arts students were more likely to have experienced
socioeconomic deprivation in childhood” (presumably
resulting in poor health) to the “arts culture”
in which smoking has greater social acceptance. With this
new possibility of young, creative, tuition-paying types dropping
like flies, no wonder student health insurance is compulsory
at SAIC.
Invaluable artifacts found
Treasured artifacts feared stolen from that other country America’s at war with (if you can’t remember, it’s Afghanistan) have been found safely in a locked vault beneath the presidential palace compound. Known as the Bactrian gold, the “hoard was originally excavated in 1978 in the north of Afghanistan and was immediately sent to Kabul for safekeeping, but within months the country was plunged into war and occupied soon afterwards by Soviet troops. The treasure was locked away,” The Art Newspaper reports.
The treasure has only been seen once since it has been locked away, and it was feared to have been either destroyed by the Taliban, sent to Moscow, or, worse, melted down. These fears were put to rest last month when “government officials opened a vault which they believed would contain bullion bars belonging to the central bank. This secure area set in concrete beneath a treasury building in the presidential palace compound had been sealed in 1989, when the Afghan government was still backed by the Soviet Union. Successive regimes, including the Taliban, made numerous attempts to gain access, but all failed to open the seven locks which secured the thick steel door.” Specialist locksmiths were imported from Germany, and along with $90 million of bullion was the Bactrian gold.
In addition to the Bactrian gold, large portions of the Kabul museum seem to have been safely preserved, locked away in the presidential vault. This is very good news, considering that after the Kabul Museum was systematically looted by extremists in 2001, it was assumed that the entire collection was lost, just like the giant Buddha statues blown up by the Taliban earlier that year.
Crocodile hock
The Guardian (UK) reports that Sir Elton John, tired of his gaudy, excessive home decorating style, is giving his London mansion a “minimalist makeover” by auctioning his collection of art and antiques at Sotheby’s. It includes a banquette and chairs upholstered in faux leopard skin, handmade by Viscount Linley (a furniture designer who is 11th in line for the British throne); a 17th century portrait by William Larkin; platinum records for “Candle in the Wind;” and a cushion-topped bed emblazoned with the words “laugh often, love much, live well.” Meanwhile, celebrity insiders are gossiping about Sir Elton’s purported psychic communing with the ghost of Liberace for minimalist style tips.
New photography sale record set
Last May a new record was set for the most expensive photograph ever sold at auction. French traveler, artist, and historian of Islamic architecture Joseph-Philiberg Girault de Prangey’s photograph of the Athenian Temple of Olympian Zeus fetched $922,488 at a Christie’s auction in London. The Art Newspaper reports that the photograph, “the oldest extant image of the remains of” the temple, was purchased by an anonymous overseas collector “widely believed to be the wealthy Sheikh Saud al-Thani of Qatar.” The Sheikh is also believed to have also bought “a number of other top lots from the sale, which doubled, tripled, quadrupled and quintupled estimates or, even, exceeded them by a factor of 10.” Indeed, Girault’s photograph fetched four times its estimated sale price. If al-Thani is in fact the purchaser, it is speculated that the photograph will accompany his remarkable collection of 19th century British and French photography in his new museum.
One glove, no love
For the curators and artists of a recent art show in Toronto, Michael Jackson is not just the King of Pop or a cultural oddity — he’s an artistic inspiration. A review by Sarah Milroy in The Globe and Mail describes the exhibition, called The Michael Jackson Project, as a “suitably complex homage to this mysterious public figure — a dangler of babes in arms, a demonstrably combustible icon of the Pepsi generation ... a living, breathing postmodern grotesque.”
Two sticky but absorbing works of note: A booklet of semen-stained love letters (with rubber gloves for audience perusal), and a video called “Jackson Bath Scandal” in which, as Milroy writes, “two paunchy middle-aged men [sit] in a sudsy tub together, one sporting a chimp mask in reference to Jackson’s beloved pet chimpanzee Bubbles. The soundtrack plays ‘She’s Out of My Life,’ a bittersweet ballad about lost love, while the non-chimp bath buddy masturbates (not very convincingly) before releasing himself in a spray of hair conditioner.”
Next week on Cops
A tourist couple from New Zealand, visiting Scotland’s Drumlanrig Castle, encountered and photographed the gang of thieves who made off with a Da Vinci painting from the Castle’s collection. Ananova reports that the two “were visiting the castle when they heard an alarm sound and then saw three men climbing over a wall. [Tourist Olivia] Reed said one claimed they were police testing the castle’s security.” They suspected something was amiss when they saw a second man climbing over the wall, and then a third “‘carrying something under his arm which appeared to be the same size as what we’ve been told about the painting,’” as was explained by Mrs. Reed.
The painting in question is Da Vinci’s Madonna with the Yarnwinder, estimated to be worth between £25 million and £50 million. The couple took photos of the thieves and their getaway car, a Volkswagen Jetta, with their digital camera.