– Modern Winery Throwdown!: Norman Foster and Richard Rogers have both recently designed sleek homes for vinters, since who wants to live in a history-suffused farmhouse with crumbling stone walls overlooking a vineyard like in that Bertolucci movie? [Independent]
– “The Tony the Tiger of Contemporary Art": That would be Simon de Pury, in the assessment of his fellow "Work of Art" judge Bill Powers. (Better or worse than Jerry Saltz's newest sobriquet, the "Rodney Dangerfield of the art world"? [NYPost]
– Tauba Auerbach = LeBron James?: According to at least one art consultant, the entire art world is waiting to see whose gallery the former Deitch artist (and bi-, tri-, and quinquennial star) will join. [Bloomberg]
– Ugly Animals!: How do aesthetics and ideas of attractiveness apply to the animal kingdom? If you ask the star-nosed mole, it has to do with asymmetricality, deviations from norms of beauty (wide-set eyes, etc.), and the appearance of ill-health. [NYT]
– Paddy Johnson Tackles the Art Sneaker: The Daily Checklist's favorite is the Puma-Lichtenstein collaboration. [AFC]
– Anne Barlow Named Bucharest Biennial Director: The Art in General director (and initiator of the New Museum's "Museum as Hub" program) will organize the 2012 event. [Artforum]
– The Lives of the Artists: Jonathan Jones,Versace, Britain's hardest-working art critic, laments that exhibition catalogues don't offer up enough juicy stories about artists. [Guardian]
– Dia:Beacon Hires a New Manager: The art temple that Leonard Riggio's Barnes & Noble money built has tapped Susan Sayre Batton to serve as its managing director. [Artforum]
– Blockbusters Bust Wallets Too: Heavily promoted art shows have not been cash cows, at least in Australia. [The Australian]
– End-of-the-World Mural Meets End: A wall painting by Demetrious Felder outside a Staten Island bar was destroyed by some firefighters who thought it depicted a terrorist attack, when really it showed the rapture as perpetrated by glow-in-the-dark flying jellyfish. [NYT]
– Very Bad Art: A helpful slide show. [Paste]
– Court Artists,Tiffany, of a Different Sort: "The look of courtroom art in New York is pastel," says one of the courtroom artists interviewed about how they support their art through forensic work. "The look in California is watercolor." [WSJ]