Medium Voice

Charles Saatchi has setup an online art gallery for artists to submit art for free.
http://www.saatchigallery.com/yourgallery/

He claims to be watching and purchasing art from it but says the gallery is more for showing off talented work. The goal of this is to take some of the power galleries have away.

Online galleries are nothing new but this is one of the first setup by a collector worth around $375M. Saatchi is considered one of the biggest UK collectors and is famous for purchasing young modern artist’s work.

Article found here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4953944.stm

Other online digital galleries
DeviantArt
CG Talk
CG Channel
GFX Artist

Please add any other online gallery.

In a seminar held in Lagos, Nigeria many art critics, artists, and scholars discussed the future of art criticism.

Discussions dealt with Nigerian art and criticism but they could easily be viewed on a more global basis; dealing with how art criticism determines art interpretation and the influence in art on society.

One idea which was discussed in the article is how art is always compared to European ideas which were developed during the period which it was created for enjoyment. One speaker mentioned that this view does not do well in present because of the apparent distance society has from the truth.

The discussion also accuses artists of not changing “society effectively” through their work and artists need to be more active in art criticism.

After reading this I have a few questions I asked myself.

• How much influence do critics have on the creation of art?
• Should modern artists take more of a public role in criticism?
• Do you feel art criticism has failed especially in world art in recent years because of the heavy influence in European esthetics?
• Has modern society come further in art appreciation or less?

The article can be found here http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/arts/at104052006.html