Walking around this year’s Art Basel and some of the peripheral fairs such as Design Basel, Liste and Volta, I was struck by how often one encounters artwork that parallels material at METRO (or at least turned my mind in that direction!). Much of the similarities I noticed involved blurring boundaries and playing with the order of things.   More

Recently Der Spiegal, organized a rowdy question and answer session with artist /provocateur Jonathan Meese at Kassel University on the occasion of Documenta 13 (now on view through mid-September). Meese assessed the fair: "Debilitating!" and threw out the accusation that some sculptures at Documenta, were more about design than art and demoted a swath of artists to the status of mere illustrators. In Germany fine art is still thought of as loftier than the applied, or decorative arts and is considered the realm of true thinkers and the highly educated. "Kunstgewerbe", or the applied arts are still linked to "Handwerk" and, as such, are considered lesser. More