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Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara

Friday Links: A Year of Heavy Musician Casualties

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on April 22, 2016

Prince

The Guggenheim just went public with its new website. Gone is the top navigation bar, and the cluttered four column information architecture. The navigation has shifted to a static top left box that floats as you scroll through the content. An improvement, I guess, but now it looks like a Martha Stewart website circa 2009. Too much teal. [Guggenheim]
“Stay Purple.” Yesterday’s unexpected death of Prince saw its share of tributes, like Prince St station suddenly getting a P line, and Minneapolis’s First Avenue hosting an all-night street dance party in honor of the purple one. It’s been great seeing previous tributes — like Questlove discussing why Prince was hip hop, or Hilton Als on his black queer sexuality — get re-discovered. [The Internet]
And in other tragic deaths, Richard Lyons, the founder of Negativland died at 57. Cancer sucks. [Rolling Stone]
Damien Hirst is back with Gagosian. [New York Times]
When I was visiting Lisbon last fall, I was blown away by the opulence and kitsch of its palaces — specifically, the Palácio da Pena, this insane mock-Manueline Disneyland former summer residence of the Portuguese royal family. So it’s cool to see documentation of the Lisbon-based art and architecture collective Os Espacialistas’s intervention at the Marquis of Pombal Palace in Oeiras. [Hyperallergic]
Why is it, that whenever we read about a museum increasing their focus on contemporary art, it involves the purchase of a new building? You’d think the two were inextricably linked, when in fact, these projects are not always needed. Keep that in mind when reading “A Story of Two Worlds: Flush MoMA, Struggling Met”. The Met has plenty of amazing space to play around with—they didn’t need to the Breuer building to achieve that. [The New York Times]
This year New Yorkers will spend two thirds of their income on rent. The Manhattan market, though, is softening. [Curbed]

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Tuesday Links: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on April 12, 2016

4_4

“If I think about the art world as a coalition, as a moral and political economy that I’m in, then it all makes sense. It is not my home. It is a place where I do the work I need to do. The work I feel I need to do.” Artist Martine Syms shares her portfolio, which includes motivational text messages, tweets by an academic on Twitter and a Wells Fargo debit card. Great stuff. [Frieze]
University of Toronto currently has an exhibition on at Robarts Library exploring Canada’s prostitution Laws. Organized by history professor Laurie K. Bertram, the show comes through old photos, zines and even issues of the Body Politic (one of Toronto’s first gay newspaper) to show how these laws were used to regulate non-normative sexuality. [Toronto Star]
A fascinating interview between L.A. Times writer Carolina A. Miranda and writer and critic Nancy Princentha. Princentha is the author of Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art. The first full-length biography of the artist, published last year to wide acclaim, is aptly-timed: later this month, LACMA’s Martin retrospective opens. [Los Angeles Times]
Ahmed Naji weighs in on Egypt’s sudden embrace of the Egyptian Surrealist movement, even though it comes sixty years too late. The interest, however, is largely spurred by two competing surveys this fall organized by the Centre Pompidou and Sharjah Biennale, with little input from Egypt’s Ministry of Culture. [The Cairo Review of Global Affairs]
The Philadelphia Antiques and Art Show, considered a tentpole in the Americana market, opens this weekend. And for the first time in the show’s 54 year history, dealers will be allowed to show contemporary art. [Huffington Post]
London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona are co-organizing a major survey of Picasso’s portraiture this fall. [The Art Newspaper]
Jason Foumberg reports on why art schools embrace failure. Lots of different answers to this question, but most of them have to do with developing strategies that make students more willing to experiment in the studio. [Chicago Mag]
A new tree of life has been unveiled, in the ongoing effort visualize and track the evolution of all living things. The diagram looks more like a fan or a flower than a tree and to at least one viewer—yours truly—is all but indecipherable. It’s all bacteria, though apparently humans are at the lower right of the graphic. I never could find them. [The New York Times]
Experimental filmmaker and musician Tony Conrad died of prostate cancer over the weekend. I (Paddy) met Conrad just once, at an annual birthday party fellow drone musician Phill Niblock threw for himself. I can’t remember if I told him I liked “Yellow Movie”, canvases with black-bordered white screens that, over time, would eventually turn yellow. At the time, it was the only work of his I’d seen. Mostly, we spoke with his friend about her work. [The New York Times]

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Wednesday Links: Mo’ Money

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on March 23, 2016

Totally had a crying laughing emoji reaction to this: dogs with stuffed animals that look like them. [@davidiverson]
More on the money the Canadian government will be spending on the arts. Canada’s national museums are getting an immediate injection of 33 million to cover operating expenses and a promised $105 million over 5 years. The big winner here, though, is the CBC, in which the government will invest $675 million over the next five years “to modernize and revitalize CBC/Radio Canada in the digital era.” This is good news, I think, but is worth asking whether investing in radio makes a lot of sense when most of us spend all our time online? I guess we’ll have to see how they modernize. [CBC]
Painter Jamian Juliano-Villani on art school: “I read too, and there are formalities and academic shit involved in painting, but who fucking cares? We’re out of school and we don’t have to talk like that now. We’ve proved ourselves. It’s like, I know you have a dick—chill out.” [Artspace]
A racist, sexist, homophobic, domestic abuser and psychopath died at 46 yesterday. His name was Rob Ford. While I [Rea] won’t celebrate his death, as a Toronto resident who lived during his terrorizing mayoralty, which was defined by bigotry, entitlement and a rampant distaste for the city’s marginalized communities, I refuse to mourn him. [Torontoist]
But I will mourn the death of Phife Dawg of Tribe Called Quest. The 5 Foot Freak was the high-pitched gruff counterpoint to Q Tip’s mellow flow, and dropped such hilarious smart lines: “I float like gravity, never had a cavity/Got more rhymes than the Winans got family.” [okayplayer]
The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco has hired Max Hollein, formerly of Frankfurt’s Städel Museum, as its new director. [New York Times]
A profile of Oliver Leach, the artist behind the twitter personality Bakkooonn. We learn that most other social media networks creep him out and that he’s lazier in real life than on Twitter. It’s a great interview, but I can’t help but wish it were conducted over Twitter. [ARTnews]
A Pokemon designer has been killed by a falling tree. [USA Today]

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Tuesday Links: Institutional Trysts

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on March 22, 2016

Puppets singing lounge-style as they recount a museum date. [YouTube]
Is this the new normality we have to live with? To hashtag a city with the phrase “terrorist attacks” following? To expect safety check updates from Facebook friends in that region? Brussels’s airport and metro were hit by explosions early this morning. So far it’s been confirmed that 11 killed and 81 injured at Zaventem airport, 15 killed and 55 injured at Maelbeek metro. [Al Jazeera]
Prospect New Orleans has announced it’s opening dates: Saturday, November 11th 25th, 2017 through February. So, mark your calendars. Also, a newly-formed Artistic Director’s Council has assembled to help Artistic Director (and Nasher curator) Trevor Schoonmaker achieve his vision. What a line up: Miranda Lash Curator at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, Omar Lopez-Chahoud, Artistic Director, Untitled, Miami, and artist Ebony G. Patterson. [Press Release]
Podcast of the day: Artelligence has an interview with Adam Fields of Arta, an uber-esque platform for matching galleries and collectors with appropriate shipping options. If you want to go deep on white gloved art shipping — or revisit previous traumas of shipping gone awry, since who enjoys it? — give this a listen. [Artelligence Podcast]
This recap of last week’s TEFAF Maastricht suggests it was a “refreshing expansion” in terms of exhibitors being unafraid to distinguish between fine and decorative art, high art and craft. Death to 19th art historian barriers! [The Economist]
Behold, the latest entry in the annals of allowing the internet the freedom to name something: the R.S.S. Boaty McBoatface, the proposed name of a new British polar research ship. People are really excited about this name—the poll has been hit so hard by traffic it’s gone down several times. [New York Times]
Christopher Knight weighs in on the dual Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective at LACMA and the Getty; despite the awkward LACMA wall text regarding Mapplethorpe’s “openly gay lifestyle” (according to Knight, “an accurate wall text would say he advocated living an openly gay life”) the show is a worthwhile collaboration involving the institutions’ joint acquisition of Mapplethorpe’s 1970s and 1980s photography alongside the artist’s archive of supporting materials. [Los Angeles Times]
Don’t miss The Conversation with Andrew Russeth. We’re a little late on this—it was made back in December—but it’s worth a listen. Highlights include: The observation that the best work being made today is sculpture, that middle tier galleries who have been in business for 10 plus years have it really hard, and that Lucien Smith and Oscar Murillo aren’t all that, but Anicka Yi is. Also an interesting question from Podcast host Michael Shaw: Are there conservative critics any more? According to Russeth, no. Just people who get out to more places. [The Conversation // Art Podcast]
Holland Cotter really is a hero. Nobody else at the paper of record so consistently brings to light the political and economic issues that shape the art industry. In his most recent piece (published last Friday), he writes about museums that take money from ethically challenge corporations, increasing gentrification and the museum’s role in that and more. [The New York Times]

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Monday Links: The Repercussions of Rendering Trump’s Dick Pencil-Sized

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on March 14, 2016

warhol_dressing

Jeff Melanson’s career is cooked. The high profile arts administrator has been served a 34-page court application filed by his estranged wife Eleanor McCain. The application is packed with allegations of behind-the-scenes abuses and misconduct at three major arts organizations where Mr. Melanson has worked in the past decade – the National Ballet School, the Banff Centre and the TSO. Yikes. [The Globe and Mail]

If you’re looking for your Monday morning courtroom drama, Gawker’s got you covered: they have conveniently provided a live feed of the Hulk Hogan v. Gawker trial. [Gawker]

Blake Gopnik clearly has a Google alert for Warhol. (Makes sense, since his Twitter bio confirms he’s been working on a “giant bio” on the pop artist since, well, the amount of time you’ve seen him on panels or at lectures discussing the artist.) Nonetheless, sad news: Warhol’s surgeon, whose operation on Warhol after he was nearly killed by Valerie Solanas in 1968 was called “one of the great saves in surgical history” — died today. [artnet News]

“What was once reserved for the best, the most awe-inspiring and the wondrous is now routinely deployed for the mundane, the banal and the taste of fro-yo.” On the sad and nebulous overuse of the adverb “super”. [New York Times]

An artist’s rendering of presidential candidate Donald Trump, naked and with a pencil-sized dick, has gotten her banned from Facebook—perhaps indefinitely. Illma Gore says “The idea was to take a man who prides his image and reputation and confront him with it,” [Hyperallergic]

Curator Daniel Palmer observes that while the rise of speculative collecting has buoyed the professionalization of the emerging artist, the market has recalibrated goals as well. Artists now, build a practice geared towards short-lived commercial success rather than a career. [Artnews]

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Friday Links: Warhol’s Piss Paintings are Better Than Anything Pigasso Can Paint

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on February 26, 2016

Newfoundland finally has its own “Pigasso”: Izzy, a two year old pig who plays the piano, dabbles in ring toss and paints. She uses her head and snout, and already has a Facebook page selling her works for under $20. Paddy thinks Warhol’s piss paintings are better, but with the Canadian dollar just three quarters of the American, it’s at the very least an easy way to build that animal art collection.) [CBC News]
Sotheby’s CEO confirms their most recent sales period is lower than in the 2013 and 2014 periods. On top of that, even though overtures are made that they’re focusing on retaining talent, two of their top dealmakers have bounced: Alex Rotter, co-head of their contemporary art department and David Norman, co-chairman of their Impressionist and modern art world-wide. The exits follow the November exodus of senior experts following a management shake-up. [Bloomberg News]
Jim Windolf, the New York Times’ Men’s Style editor, is live-tweeting the late delivery of a Will Forte profile from writer George Gurley. Trigger warning: any writer who has pushed back at a deadline might suffer PTSD flare ups in reading the despairing communiqués from Gurley. [@jimwindolf]
Related: turns out writers and spies have a lot in common — isolation, loss of perspective, a willingness to disappear, alcoholism. [Lapham’s Quarterly]
Barry Schwabsky punctures the mythic balloon of Black Mountain College, the subject of a touring exhibition that’s been at Boston’s ICA and is now at the Hammer until May. “Why the recurring preoccupation with a short-lived, unaccredited school at the back of beyond, which never had enough students to pay its way?” he asks. While Schwabsky acknowledges its creative optimism and “infectious sense of possibility”, he points out its illusions: the school’s impossible internal politics, and “an education philosophy based on ‘the whole person’ gave no indication of how to square the conflicting goals of community and individuality.” [The Nation]
The digital age has flooded us with images and reproductions of everything and anything. That has its ups and downs, but certainly one “up” is that this iconic Gordon Parks photograph of Ella Watson is available for anyone to purchase and put up in their homes thanks to 20×200. The image shows Watson, an African American, with a broom and a mop standing in front of an American flag. Parks once called the photograph an indictment of America. [20×200]
Artprize has announced its partnership with Independent Curators International (ICI). ICI will develop three curatorial mentorship programs intended to pump up the experience of curators and partner institutions participating in the ArtPrize Fellowship for Emerging Curators. [Artprize]
There is an editor asleep at the wheel over the Observer. Ryan Steadman interviews NewHive curator Lindsay Howard about online art, and begins his questions with the following outdated cliche “The Internet Art is still so new to the art world that it feels a bit like the Wild West”. Later he tells Howard she “legitimized” digital art by organizing the first auction of digital art at Phillips. Howard, in her answer, not only doesn’t challenge the assumption that only the sale of culture legitimizes it, but fails to mention the collaborators who approached her with the idea to do the auction in the first place: Megan Newcome and Annie Werner. Other than that, a great interview. [The Observer]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Gatekeepers Be Damned

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on February 9, 2016

During this hallmark week in which we celebrate our love for our partners, what romance is the art world serving up? Nothing we’ve listed, save for an anti-gentrification protest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this Valentine’s Day. In fact, it seems the entire week has been taken over by activists. From the Act Up—Dyke Action Machine talk at The 8th Floor to the Affordable Housing Show at Hunter, there’s plenty of discussion about how to make change.

Meanwhile, those with a sense of humor should balance all this seriousness out. Between Jayson Musson and Sean Patrick J Carney at SVA tonight to Larissa Valez-Jackson’s improv dance comedy at DANCEROULETTE this Thursday, you’ve got plenty of events to fill up your calendar.

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Tuesday Links: Everyone’s Wearing Zika

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on February 9, 2016

When we wrote about Trinidadian artist Marlon Griffith’s mas-inspired art project in Toronto last summer, we talked about how carnival can operate as a form of political spectacle-slash-street theatre. So it comes as no surprise that there are many Zika virus-inspired floats and costumes at this year’s Brazilian carnival. [Quartz]
“But we all feel vulnerable to judgement. And scapegoating critics is a way we express that vulnerability.” An interview with Times film critic AO Scott weighing in on why critics are often portrayed as failed artists, and how Twitter has made criticism “more lively”. [Salon]
A Florida man was arrested for tossing a three-and-a-half foot alligator through a Wendy’s drive-thru window. (Don’t worry — the alligator was caught and later released in a nearby canal.) [WPTV West Palm Beach]
Will Harlem be the successor of Chelsea? Last year, Gavin Brown moved from his longtime West Village location to a former brewery in the Manhattanville neighbourhood. Now it looks like Elizabeth Dee will be inhabiting a two-storey space that was once the Studio Museum in Harlem’s original location. Dee confirms that at least 10 Chelsea dealers are angling for a Harlem move. [artnet News]
Monica Lewinsky has released solidarity-representing handshake emojis to combat cyberbullying and trolling. [Vanity Fair]
“With the release of ‘Formation,’ Beyoncé went from manipulating the pop culture music industry machine to usurping it. And that’s what freedom looks like when you’re a black female pop star in a capitalist country. As she sings in the last line of ‘Formation’ with an unwavering gaze below the brim of a low slung hat ‘best revenge is your paper.’” Academic Naila Keleta-Mae breaks down Bey’s latest meditation on female blackness. [Noisey]
Toronto’s Artscape has just released an open call for expressions of interest from artists, artist collectives and cultural non-profits for programming and tenant opportunities in its new Weston Hub. The development will be located in the city’s northwest Weston neighborhood, located near Weston Road and Lawrence Avenue West. It’s slated to open in late 2018. [Artscape Weston]
The latest in Chicago’s housing crisis: a two bedroom in a newly erected luxury high rise near the demolition rubble of the Cabrini-Green housing project starts at $3,200 per month. [Chicagoist]
Kim Kardashian gets more retweets in three days than ISIS ever has. [Fusion]
Considering the internet as a mass-collaborative project. [Kunsthalle Wien]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: The Roving Eye

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on February 1, 2016

Yes, this is a Lorna Mills GIF.

Legacies, transitions and milestones loom largely in this week’s slate of events. Black History Month kicks off in Harlem tonight at the Schomburg Center with a panel featuring Juliana Huxtable and Kimberly Drew among others dwelling on Basquiat’s life and legacy. Further on the BHM-related tip, decolonial knowledge is dropped by Tabita Rezaire at MoCADA’s Window Gallery, and the representation of black and queer personhood is re-assessed in Sondra Perry’s selection of video works for MoMA PS1’s Sunday Session.

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