We will have Part II of our Venice coverage coming shortly but till then here are some good stories:

Not surprisingly, Roberta Smith thinks Robert Irwin's scrim piece at the Whitney is the yardstick to measure all other light and space art. I have to agree on Irwin being the best of the lot. Overall, I've experienced in Irwin's work a kind of art that invites the mind to push its perceptual acuity. It is extremely generous, whereas with Turrell, Wheeler etc... I always get this sense of pageantry in production (which is fine, just not my preference). The pageantry is often there with Flavin as well but at least with his work the use of very mundane light fixtures strips away the focus on production values the closer one gets to it. Overall, it bears repeating that Irwin is also the most intelligent human being I have ever met and the only art world denizen art world that can crack my top 10 (art isn't always about intellect... it is about perception, which sounds a lot like something Irwin would say). Basically, Irwin's work allows the viewers greater room for processing, whereas those like Wheeler and Turrell present a more pre-processed experience that owes more to stagecraft.

The unexpected Francis Bacon and Henry Moore connection.

Katherina Fritsch gets more than a little "cocky" in London.

The New York Times is pretty much making it official... it is the summer of Carol Bove. I've always liked her work but it has always had a slightly "curator art" aspect to it.... ie its strategies directly and indirectly point to the "moves" that curators routinely make when installing work. This turns it into a kind of institutional feedback loop, but the recent installation in the unfinished portion of the Highline seems to turn a corner... call it "developer art." The Highline installation seems to tap the palpable real estate potential inherent on the site... which positions Bove's work as a kind of advance survey party. Still, I'm pretty certain it is not some kind of art world Lewis and Clark expedition. For comparison, decades ago Gordon Matta-Clark with his Fake Estates and activities in Soho and Chelsea seems make Bove's worthwhile project appear like a somewhat quainter "reservations only" preview.