Art Critics

Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight is one of three recipients of the Chemical Bank Award for newspaper art criticism. Knight was recognized for his March, 1991, article "Why the Artist Can't Draw and Why We Shouldn't Care," a commentary based on the L.A. County Museum of Art exhibition "Why Artists Draw: Six Centuries of Master Drawings From the Collection." Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times and Nancy Stapen of the Boston Globe are the other winners.

For William Wilson, the former Los Angeles Times art critic who died Saturday at the age of 78, art was a childhood refuge, a teenage survival mechanism, and, finally, a career that saw him chronicle the city's rise in art-world stature from his first byline in 1965 to his retirement in 1998. "He grew up under really rotten circumstances, and was just a self-made person," said Diane Leslie, a novelist who was a close friend. Another longtime friend, artist Don Lagerberg, said Wilson died in his sleep at a Los Angeles care facility from Alzheimer's disease, which had been diagnosed about four years ago. Wilson, born July 5, 1934,  never knew his father and often talked of hard times growing up in Los Angeles with a single mother who was given to radical mood swings and who fell to her death in an apparent suicide when he was 18. Among his boyhood memories, Leslie said, was eating a great deal of canned tuna - and noticing that sometimes the can had a picture of cats on it. He often spoke of how his mother took him to the library, where he would pore over picture books.

Finally, somebody has come out against money. Oddly, the new U.S. currency has drawn enemies, and they are the elite cultural critics of the world, as viewed from Manhattan. With a haute culture sneer, they have vilified the cleaner, greener bills. "Everybody hates them," Adam Gopnik of New Yorker magazine wrote recently of the new $20 bill. "Everybody who sees the New Money says that is doesn't look like money.

Will there be portraits of Jar-Jar Binks emerging from a half shell? George Lucas, the producer of the "Star Wars" movies, is planning to build an art museum in San Francisco. The filmmaker told "CBS This Morning" on Tuesday he hopes to create an institution that would be dedicated to exploring "cultural fantasy. " "It's my big project right now," Lucas told CBS. "There's a world of young people who need to be inspired. " PHOTOS: 'Star Wars' at the box office Lucas is a big collector of art, though it's not the kind of art that is likely to impress art critics.

About 200 art critics from around the world will congregate this week in Los Angeles for the 1991 congress of the International Assn. of Art Critics. The meeting, scheduled for Thursday through Tuesday, is the first time the 43-year-old organization has convened in the United States. Generally known by its French acronym AICA (Assn.

"Perhaps we spoke too soon," New York critic Kim Levin cautioned her 200 colleagues as she opened the 25th Congress of the International Assn. of Art Critics, which was held during the weekend in Santa Monica. The meeting's theme, "Beyond Walls and Wars: Art and Politics in a Multicultural World," was chosen in "that brief ecstatic interim between the toppling of the Berlin Wall and the burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields.

Among the thousands of people who have trekked through the Tejon Pass to see Christo's "Umbrellas" few have been more intensely interested than art critics Luchezar Boyadjiev and Philip Zidarov of Bulgaria, the country that Christo Javacheff left 33 years ago. " 'Umbrellas' is a gift that disappears in a few weeks but grows symbolically and spiritually to an incredible dimension.

It feels like the kind of Christmas miracle depicted in a Thomas Kinkade painting. The tangled legal battle over Kinkade's estate, which pitted the late artist's girlfriend against his estranged wife, has been settled out of court. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the parties have reached a "secret settlement. "  Lawyers for Nanette Kinkade and Amy Pinto released a statement: "Putting Mr. Kinkade's message of love, spirituality, and optimism at the forefront, the parties are pleased that they have honored Mr. Kinkade by resolving their differences amicably.

Anne Hollander is mad about suits. Other people may dismiss them as dreary symbols of conformity, the predictable retreat of the terminally unimaginative. Not Hollander. In her new apologia, "Sex and Suits" (Alfred A. Knopf), the art critic contends that the suit is nothing less than an aesthetic triumph, a grand design that continues to please hundreds of years after its invention.

The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that an artist is required to pay licensing fees to depict a celebrity unless the art contains "significant creative elements." The ruling, in a lawsuit filed by the heirs of the Three Stooges, sets up a novel legal test for determining when artwork is commercial exploitation and when it is protected by the 1st Amendment. Experts said the case is likely to influence courts across the nation and may force judges to become art critics.

Since 2010, the New York- and Venezuela-based Fundación Cisernos has published a series of critically acclaimed books in which several of Latin America's most renowned modern artists speak.   They're gorgeous, thoughtful books, in which creators such as the Argentine-born artist and industrial designer Tomás Maldonado speak at length and freely about the birth of their vision and their careers, often accompanied by illustrations of their work. Now, the Fundación Cisneros/Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros is making six of these works available for the first time in e-book format.

Kate Middleton's official portrait has been unveiled. Prince William's wife's likeness can now be seen in Britain's National Portrait Gallery - but not everyone is in love with what they see. The painting, by Scottish artist Paul Emsley, who also painted South Africa's Nelson Mandela in his photographic style, was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, where William and Kate saw the portrait for the first time on Friday before...

It feels like the kind of Christmas miracle depicted in a Thomas Kinkade painting. The tangled legal battle over Kinkade's estate, which pitted the late artist's girlfriend against his estranged wife, has been settled out of court. The San Jose Mercury News reported that the parties have reached a "secret settlement. "  Lawyers for Nanette Kinkade and Amy Pinto released a statement: "Putting Mr. Kinkade's message of love, spirituality, and optimism at the forefront, the parties are pleased that they have honored Mr. Kinkade by resolving their differences amicably.

Glenn Beck, art critic, is back. The conservative commentator posted an online video Tuesday in which he addressed at length the subject of "obscene" art and the 1st Amendment. In an homage to Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," Beck concluded by dunking a likeness of President Obama in a mason jar filled with a clear yellow liquid.  Beck offered to sell the work, titled "Obama in Pee Pee," for $25,000. "It's all protected by this document," he said, pointing to a copy of the Constitution.  "So whether you're offended by this one or by this one," Beck said, pointing to various examples of controversial art, "it sucks to be you, doesn't it?"

One of the most controversial moves in recent art-world memory, the relocation of the Barnes Foundation, has drawn the national press to Philadelphia where the venerated art institution opened its new building earlier this month. The Barnes, which was founded in 1922, possesses numerous pieces of art ranging from ancient works to Impressionist paintings to modernist masterpieces. For many, it represents one of the most important art collections in the world. The foundation was located for many years in Lower Merion, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia.

Robert Hughes, a sometimes lacerating reviewer who may have commanded a larger audience than any other art critic in history, reaching the masses through 31 years as chief art critic for Time magazine and in a series of multi-part television documentaries for the BBC and PBS, has died. He was 74. Hughes, who also authored "The Fatal Shore," an acclaimed history of his native Australia's founding as a British penal colony, died Monday at Calvary Hospital in New York City after a long, unspecified illness, according to a statement issued by his wife, painter Doris Downes Hughes.

One of the most controversial moves in recent art-world memory, the relocation of the Barnes Foundation, has drawn the national press to Philadelphia where the venerated art institution opened its new building earlier this month. The Barnes, which was founded in 1922, possesses numerous pieces of art ranging from ancient works to Impressionist paintings to modernist masterpieces. For many, it represents one of the most important art collections in the world. The foundation was located for many years in Lower Merion, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia.

Robert Hughes, a giant of 20th-century art criticism who first became known in the U.S. through his reviews for Time magazine, has died at age 74. The Australian writer was famous for writing big books on big subjects -- from the early history of Australia ("The Fatal Shore" of 1987) to the pioneers of modern art ("The Shock of the New" of 1981).  Both books were bestsellers for his publisher Random House, which confirmed that Hughes died Monday in New York after a long illness.

Hilton Kramer, one of the art world's most polarizing and widely read critics for 50 years and founding editor of the conservative arts journal The New Criterion, died Tuesday in Harpswell, Maine. He was 84. Kramer had a rare blood disorder and died of heart failure, said New Criterion's current editor Roger Kimball. A staunch champion of modernism and fearless detractor of most of the art that followed, Kramer was chief art critic for the New York Times for nearly a decade before giving up the coveted post to start New Criterion in 1982.