Dali House

A bit more on the Artist.Ranking (A.R) system mentioned in our Rousseau biography, as found at ArtFacts.net.

As mentioned, lonely old Henri is currently ranked #724 with a bullet on this overtly mercenary chart, which arranges 62,436 artists by volume of exhibitions over the last five years.

Picasso is #1, Cezanne 32 and Monet 62, just to grab some examples.

“The basis of the A.R thinking is the so-called economy of attention (after a book from Georg Franck),” the website explains. “Franck says that attention (fame) in the cultural world is an economy that works with the same mechanisms as capitalism. Capitalist, or economic, behaviour is based on property, lending money and charging interest.

“For Franck, the curator (eg the museum director or the gallery owner) acts as a financial investor. The curator/investor lends their property (their exhibition space and their fame) to an artist from whom they expect a return on their investment in the form of more attention (reputation, fame etc).”

Here’s the top 10 after Picasso: Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys, Paul Klee, Robert Rauschenberg, Henri Matisse, Edward Ruscha and Cindy Sherman.* See the rest.

Considering the noisemaker of a painting we’re talking about, the Norwegian cops are staying pretty damn quiet about how they managed to get back Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” on August 31, a full two years after it was snatched in broad daylight from the Munch Museum in Oslo.

Hopefully the jumpy Scandinavian press, now that they’re no longer busy doodling cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, can get to the bottom of this mystery within a mystery. Most likely a ransom was paid, but if so, it only deepens the mythology swarming like irked bees around Eddie’s freaky little canvas.

It is, after all, a potent symbol of the frightfulness of our times (and perhaps of Munch’s a century ago), and it was no small irony that Norwegians treated the theft of this national treasure as as terrorist act.

But for now, at least, all the cops are saying is that they recovered “The Scream” and “The Madonna”, seen above, the other Munch painting stolen with it, in better-than-expected condition, a ragged corner and water damage to the former and some small rips and gouges in the latter, all of which can be repaired.

If “The Scream” — or “Skrik” as it’s known in Norway (literally, “yikes!”) – weren’t such an important symbol, this would have been one zany comedy from start to finish.
See the rest.