- “Watching ‘The Force Awakens,’ I felt as though I was being shown a trailer for the next four movies in the series.” Michael Hiltzik’s Star Wars review is the one I wish I (Michael) had written. This is a great read that hits the nail exactly on the head in regards to pretty much every compliment and complaint one could throw at JJ Abrams and his Disney overlords. Except one: why would anyone “waste” having Lupita Nyong’o by casting her as a voice actress? Didn’t the prequels teach anyone that CGI characters are practically unwatchable? [Los Angeles Times]
- After ten years in the making, The National Gallery Singapore is open. The massive museum combines two historic buildings under a glass atrium and rooftop garden and looks great. The program is what’s really interesting here though—the institution will be focused on rotating contemporary Southeast Asian art that’s contextualized with long-running and permanent exhibitions tracing Singapore’s own comparably brief art history, along with touring shows and collaborations with European museums. [Forbes]
- Robert Wilson thinks Lady Gaga is a genius and the performance work of contemporaries like Marina Abramović won’t be seen in 50 years: “I don’t think the work is meant to be reproduced.” Setting aside wistfulness for the fleeting ephemerality of the NYC art happenings of yore, is a hilarious anecdote about Wilson’s dinner with Marlene Dietrich, and what we she taught him regarding “slow performing”. [The Guardian]
- Michael Miller’s list of subjects he’s heard enough of in 2015. We agree with every item on this list, though I think we’ll be hearing about auctions, Instagram, and art fairs generally in the year to come. [ARTnews]
- “Art in 2015 was an academic’s morose porridge of pious intellectual cliches.” God, I love reading British reviews. Here, Jonathan Jones rails against the moralizing (and typically visually dull) nature of do-gooder projects such as gardens or social practice. [The Guardian]
- A Wisconsin man was arrested last week after throwing a beer bottle at a female bartender who changed the music in the bar from Black Sabbath to Christmas music. Even more pathetic: it was a bottle of Budweiser. [NBC Philadelphia]
- Queen’s University now has the largest collection of Rembrandt paintings in Canada, thanks to the recent donation by alumnus Alfred and Isabel Bader of Portrait of a Man with Arms Akimbo, worth $80 million. [Toronto Star]
- Subway story of the day: NYPD are looking for information on a man with “TEAM USA” tattooed on his forehead who masturbated for 30 minutes on the Manhattan-bound 2 train. [DNAinfo]
- Cairo’s Townhouse Gallery and Rawabet Theater, two important nonprofit contemporary art spaces, were shuttered following an unexplained raid from the Egyptian Censorship Authority and other government agencies. Laptops and documents were seized from gallery staff. BLOUIN ARTINFO’s Mostafa Heddaya says this “follows a spate of crackdowns on journalism, dissent, and freedom of expression in Egypt under the rule of military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.” [Mada Masr via Blouin Artinfo]
Tuesday Links: The Lemmy Awakens
by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on December 29, 2015 Massive Links
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