Dorothea Tanning, painter, sculptor, writer and wife of Max Ernst, counsels young artists: "Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars."

Antoni Tàpies, the Spanish abstract painter, died on Monday in Barcelona, aged 88, after a long illness.
Tàpies started painting as a teenager, when he was recovering from tuberculosis. While studying for a law degree, to please his father, the artist attended drawing classes at the Academia Valls in Barcelona. He was influenced by artists such as Paul Klee and Joan Miró, and would go on to found the short-lived surrealist movement Dau al Set (the seven-spotted die) with the poet Joan Brossa.

Tàpies is said to have painted around 8,000 works, and a foundation dedicated to modern art was opened in his name in 1990. In honour of the artist, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona is open to the public free of charge on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

According to his New York gallery, Pace, Tàpies has been the subject of hundreds of solo exhibitions at museums and institutions worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Kunsthaus Zürich; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Serpentine Gallery, London; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Haus der Kunst, Munich; MACBA, Barcelona; and Dia:Beacon, New York. A retrospective of his work is on show at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen in Germany (until February 19).

Tàpies represented Spain at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and was awarded the Golden Lion prize. He was also awarded Spain's top honour for artists, the Velazquez Prize, in 2003. Spain’s King Juan Carlos I awarded him the title of Marqués de Tàpies in 2010.

...privatization could be costing the state more money than if the Idaho Department of Correction ran the lockups.

Idaho officials will tell you that the state's largest private prison, the Idaho Correctional Center, saves $12 per inmate, per day compared to a similar state prison. But adjusting for known system-wide expenses and the cost of overseeing the contract for the private lockup bring the per diems to just $5 apart.

The comparable state prison also houses all of the sick and geriatric inmates, is the oldest facility in the state and spans multiple buildings on a 65-acre campus, requiring a high guard-to-inmate ratio to patrol. The private prison, meanwhile, is relatively new and compact and only accepts inmates without chronic medical or mental health needs, factors that allow it to operate with a lower staff-to-inmate ratio. Those factors make it likely that the state could operate the facility for no more than it pays the private company.

State leaders have refused to examine the issue. About four years ago, Idaho Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke asked the Board of Correction and Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter's office if his department could bid for the contract to run the Idaho Correctional Center — a move that would have given Idaho a firm idea of how much it would cost to make the facility public. The board responded with a firm “no,” and the governor's office simply deflected the matter back to the board.

“We just decided we'd stay with what we're doing,” said board member Jay L. Nielsen...