1. London’s great exodus (New York Times)
The property market is no longer about people making a long-term investment in owning their shelter, but a place for the world’s richest people to park their money at an annualized rate of return of around 10 percent. It has made my adopted hometown a no-go area for increasing numbers of the middle class.
2. JP Morgan losses bring bank’s era of exceptionalism to resounding halt (Guardian)
JP Morgan, the bank that sailed elegantly through the financial crisis with no scratches, just announced its first quarterly loss since 2004. That nine-year winning streak of outrageously good profits is a prize for any bank. But for JP Morgan, that winning streak is over. JP Morgan is showing its mortality as the same plagues that took down its rivals – litigation, regulation, falling profits – finally circle around to the one bank that seemed immune from trouble.
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3. Review: ‘Facing the Modern: The portrait in Vienna 1900’ (Financial Times, £)
The National Gallery does not do bling, or sex, or decadence. Its reading of Vienna in 1900 is a travesty. With astonishingly scanty top loans, it does not even attempt to trace the narrative of the new psychological portraiture as it evolved from Klimt’s serpentine femmes fatales, condemned as “purveyors of perversity”, to the frank nude self-depictions and likenesses of lovers for which Schiele was arrested as a pornographer. This is Vienna’s contribution to art history: introspection, fantasy, Eros, distilled on canvas as never before.
4. The art of darkness (Sunday Times, £)
Donna Tartt’s debut novel, The Secret History, catapulted her to instant fame. Now she’s back with her third chilling tale, another rich slice of gothic drama. We meet the surprisingly chirpy writer.
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5. AbEx fakes scandal silences the experts (The Art Newspaper)
The crisis around fake Abstract Expressionist works sold in New York — around 40 of which were handled by the now-defunct Knoedler Gallery — has sent shockwaves through the art market and is having a chilling effect on scholars. As well as a federal investigation, there has been a slew of civil lawsuits. Most recently, a suit filed last month by the former director of the Knoedler Gallery, Ann Freedman, claims — in an effort to show that she was not negligent — that numerous experts accepted the authenticity of the works.
