Kara Walker's giant sugar sculpture, A Subtlety, took over the Domino Sugar Factory. via
Art Basel Miami offered $3 billion worth of work, Peter Lik sold the most expensive photograph ever ($6.5 million), and a second Mona Lisa was discovered, making 2014 a monumental year for art. Whether it was Kara Walker's sugar sculpture, Miley Cyrus' solo show, or even Shia LaBeouf's #IAMSORRY performance, this year was filled with works we couldn't stop seeing, sharing, or talking about.This is the Year in Viral Art:+ We Instagrammed Kara Walker’s 75-foot-long sugar sculpture at the Domino Sugar Factory and she caught us taking #artselfies.+ Takeshi Murata created an alienesque sphere that could melt into itself.+ In February, a random painter picked up one of Ai Weiwei's colored vases, and smashed it into pieces at the Perez Art Museum in Miami.+ UK nanotech company Surrey Nanosystems created vantablack, the darkest material in the world. Master sculptor Anish Kapoor announced he'd soon be creating something with it.+ Jeff Koons showed off what looked like a big pile of Play-Doh and an inflatable Hulk at the Whitney Museum as part of his first New York retrospective, and later sold other peoples handbags as readymades.+ Shia LaBeouf sat in a room with a paper bag over his head in the name of performance art for his #IAMSORRY exhibition in Los Angeles.+ Artist Vik Muniz and artist/researcher Marcelo Coelho etched intricate castles onto grains of sand. Also in 2014, Muniz, alongside MIT postdoctoral fellow, Tal Danino, biogenerated artworks using cancer cells, cheek cells, and bacteria.+ Shaquille O’Neil curated his own portrait exhibition. Enough said.+ Back in February, Beijing-based sculptor Li Hongbo crafted paper sculptures that stretched like slinkys.+ Over the summer, Japanese artist Azuma Makota sent flower art traveling 90,000 feet into our stratosphere. Then, in November, Makota released a documentary about it.+ Studio Roosegaarde's glowing bike path inspired by Van Gogh’s Starry Night lit up the Dutch province where the artist was born.+ The floors of the Sacré Coeur and the Castel Del Monte were coated with a morphing virtual carpet, courtesy of digital artist Miguel Chevalier.+ We watched a model’s face transform with projection-mapped makeup.+ Disney heroines got a rude awakening in the real world.+ 8,000 balloons recreated the Berlin Wall for its 25th Anniversary, and we took a peek behind-the-scenes.+ We questioned, along with the rest of the world, who owned the monkey selfie.+ The most expensive photo in the world sold for $6.5 million. The next day, another artist joked that he'd actually sold a photograph for $6.5 million and ten cents that same week."Phantom" by Peter Lik is the most expensive photograph ever sold. via
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