The Greek island known variously as Holy Ghost, The Island of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Holy Trinity, or just plain Trinity, owes its greatest renown, despite its lavish New Testamentish nomenclature, to the cameo role it played in the pagan classical age. This 12-acre slip of an atoll was a staging ground for the Persian armies laying siege to Thermopylae, the famed last stand of those hot, well-oiled Spartan souls hymned by our own latter-day Thucydides, Frank Miller. Now, however, Greek government officials are straining to find a way to convert Holy Ghost, and the nation's 6000 or so other island outcroppings into [...]

Damien Hirst is in some hot formaldehyde these days. The secondary market for his works has collapsed by at least 93% in the last two years, and he's been accused of plagiarism by Charles Thomson, artist and co-founder of the Stuckists, a British arts group that promotes figurative painting. The jocular pontifications of these Stuckists fall somewhere in tone between Viz magazine and Prince Charles yammering on about "traditional" architecture. Thomson weakens his case enormously by claiming, for instance, that Hirst's "Pharmacy" was lifted from Joseph Cornell's work in the forties. Which, of course, it was. The "quotations" of fine artists-concepts, techniques, poses, etc., lifted [...]

I've been on record with my dislike for most of Annie Leibovitz's work, but even I figured it was a good value in the photography market. Her auction record is something like $57,000; today, you can actually buy prints for like $8 grand. But what are you getting? When she got into deep financial trouble, her arrangement with Philips resulted in a "Master Set" of 150 photographs, in an edition of 7; three of the set are broken up for solo sale. So, right: oh, look, a brand new edition! There's World Cup soccer photos in monster editions of 50; photographs, in an edition of 40, and sized [...]