Smithsonian.com

Catching up on my reading last night, I happened upon two unrelated articles that illustrate what a wide array of materials and substances inspire artists.

British artist Damien Hirst has always been drawn to audacious subjects. He made his foray onto the art scene by submersing various animals—sharks, sheep, cows—in display cases filled with formaldehyde.

But many were taken aback when the news circulated that the inflated asking price of $100 million of his most recent work—a diamond-encrusted skull sculpture—had been met. For the Love of God, as the piece is titled, has made Hirst the record-holder for priciest living artist on the open market. The veracity of the purchase has come into question, but even if the sale turns out to be a hoax, the piece is an ostentatious, titillating example of investing far too much in our consumer-driven world.

A platinum-cast skull bedecked in 8,601 diamonds cut and crafted by the same firm that made the Crown Jewels, Hirst’s bauble is quite a contrast to the materials used by a well-known folk painter hailing from Alabama, who died early this month.

Jimmy Lee Sudduth had an earthly palate. As he would say, he was partial to “sweet mud.” His paintings are known for their raised, often patterned surfaces, and this effect was achieved by applying thick layers of mud combined with an adhesive—syrup, sugar, Coca-Cola—to wood panels. Sudduth incorporated color by adding berries, flower petals or vegetables to the mix.

It’s incongruous that the oeuvres of these two artists were developed contemporaneously: exalted riches or humble earth, there’s no telling what catches an artist’s fancy.

Most artists long for flow, a blissful state beyond any blocks. Time fades away; images and ideas roll onto the canvas or the page. Maybe that’s why we’ve beatified On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. Published 50 years ago, the story of how Kerouac created his seminal novel seems even more memorable than its pulsing prose and semi-autobiographical plot.

The original On the Road looked nothing like a traditional manuscript. After many years of idea formation, Kerouac legendarily let it flow–a coffee-fueled, three-week writing spree on a 120-foot long, taped-together scroll of delicate paper. “The scroll,” the envy of all those seeking flow, is now on exhibit until October 14 in Kerouac’s birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts.  (More…)

Hoping to visit a friend this weekend, I was foiled because she didn’t have Labor Day free. Ironically enough, she had to work. As she put it, “The real laborers never get a holiday!”

Perhaps that explains why depictions of workingmen and women are so prevalent in art.

The artist that springs first to mind is Thomas Hart Benton. Of the Regionalist school, Benton defied the wave of modernism that crashed into this country during the 1920s by devoting much of his work to depictions of rural America: the toiling farmer and small-town life. Not a glamorized look at the heartland, the painting Plowing It Under shows a weary farmhand hoeing a row in the blazing sun. (More…)

Phew. That was quite a summer.

Richard Serra’s massive sculptures tested the strength of the renovated floors at the Museum of Modern Art, while those of Frank Stella looked ready to float off the walls at New York’s Paul Kasmin Gallery and spruced up the rooftop garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Across the pond, calendrical coincidence made the summer a blockbuster for the world’s leading art fairs, with Art Basel in Switzerland, the 52nd Venice Biennale, Documenta XII (which takes place every five years) and Sculpture Projects Munster (held once a decade) opening within weeks of one another. (More…)

Wal-Mart was once charmed: a chain store founded by a pickup truck-driving CEO. Sam Walton, the founder, created a brightly lit world, filled with white-haired greeters and a bevy of cheap, potential Christmas presents.

Now, Wal-Mart’s founding family eyes a legacy far from cheap blue jeans and tiny tags that read “Made in Bangladesh.”

Alice Walton, the daughter of the Wal-Mart namesake, is founding Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas—the same town that hosted the first Wal-Mart. At $50 million, this spacious museum accommodates its natural surroundings gracefully, far from recent museums that might upstage the art within, such as the celebrated, steel whimsy at Bilbao, Spain.  (More…)