Paddy has written 7 article(s) for AFC.
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Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall
by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on August 5, 2013
Photo by Paulo Whitaker/Reuters. Courtesy of The Guardian
- This is what we look like in bed: Ted Spagna photographs people’s sleeping habits. [New Republic]
- Paul Krugman identifies the problem in Bob Lefsetz’s argument that Nate Silver represents a new age in journalism where writers are brands: most journalists aren’t superstars. Nor should they be. It makes the job harder—try getting a good quote from a source that’s wildly intimidated by your stature. [The New York Times]
- In related publishing news, Torstar, the company that owns The Toronto Star, saw a 44% drop in profits last quarter. They need to start charging for their online content. [The Guardian]
- On the front page of the Times: Buying local doesn’t just apply to agriculture. Now, much like buying shares in a community supported food program (C.S.A.), you can do the same for art. [The New York Times]
- Brazilian fashion designer Raquel Guimaraes uses prisoners to knit her Doiselles brand of knitwear in exchange for pay and reduced sentences. There’s no article here but the images are truly bizarre. [The Guardian]
- The space age is upon us. A look at the architectural design proposals for Melbourne, Australia’s iconic Finders Street train station. [Phaidon]
- New York Times art critic Roberta Smith has joined Twitter. [Roberta Smith]
- Twitter updated their policies to reduce threats and abusive messages. Eat it, trolls. [Forbes]
- A narrowly eliminated candidate for this week’s Five Jobs listings: Banker Bro Now Hiring Frat Dudes With Hot ‘Slampieces’. [Jezebel]
- Jeff Koons’ MOCA LA retrospective has been delayed until 2015. [GalleristNY]
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by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on August 1, 2013
PaintNite via The Daily Beast
- This map breaks down New York neighborhoods based on whether loud party complaints or vermin complaints are more popular. [Gawker]
- In response to Pope Francis’ recent comments on how he can’t judge the gays, Scalia has stepped in to offer to fill the role. No, this isn’t the Onion. [New Yorker]
- Australian Photo show is censored in the name of family values. [The Art Newspaper]
- Fascinating and only minorly creepy, a new clock measures time with breaths instead of hands or numbers. [Wired]
- Edward Snowden has received one year asylum from Russia and left the Moscow airport today. [The Wall Street Journal]
- “Art Rules” wants to be the new Twitter for art debates, but can you really make a convincing argument for anything within their tight 100 character limit? I’m predicting a lot of over-generalizing, undefended statements. [The Guardian]
- Art fraud is so sexy right now. Check out the beginning of the “American Hustle” trailer. [Youtube]
- This is MoMA PS1. This is MoMA PS1 with Google Glass. [GalleristNY]
- Nathaniel Stern’s “Stuttering” an interactive installation at the Wits Art Museum in which blank walls come alive with text and images gets the thumbs up from Business Day’s Chris Thurman. The faster you move, the more frantic and unreadable the piece becomes. [Business Day]
- “Teaching drunk adults is basically like teaching children.” PaintNites around America mix art classes with drinking. Whoo. [The Daily Beast]
- Chicago’s opening up some gallery-themed bars. Woo hoo and all that, but basically all this means is that these bars will have some art on the walls. [Redeye Chicago]
- Classic ‘Chicken or Egg’ problem: are artists eccentric alcoholics, or are eccentric alcoholics artists? Turns out, neither one is true, but we could have told you that. [The Globe and Mail]
- Want a morning dose of a little bit of bullshit? Geno Smith, rising Jets quarterback, says that it’s his art background that makes him so talented. “I can see things on the field: angles, geometrics, and I think that played a huge role in things with football.” Yeah, whatever. [Fox News]
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by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on July 29, 2013
- Jay Z’s performance art debut will premiere on HBO. In the words of Seth Meyers, what could possibly go right? [Rolling Stone]
- More Jay Z news. A group of activists known as the Dream Defenders are occupying the capitol building in Tallahassee Florida without Jay Z until the legislature reviews the “Stand Your Ground” law. The law affected the controversial Zimmerman verdict last week. Long time activist Harry Belafonte has joined the cause, and has called out Jay Z for his lack of support. “I would be hard pressed to tell Mr Jay Z what to do with his time and his fortune. I can only be critical of what he is not doing.” Jay Z, in response, told Belafonte that his “presence is charity.” [MSNBC via Heart as Arena]
- Fox News lines up an interview with religious scholar and author Reza Aslan so they can talk about his new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,”. Then anchor Lauren Green spends the whole segment questioning Aslan’s qualifications on the grounds that he’s a Muslim. [Huffington Post]
- The real art for the fake movie made by the real CIA operation that inspired the movie Argo is up for auction. [Wired]
- Caroline Criado-Perez recently made headlines for finally winning her fight to have prominent women represented on Britain’s bank notes last week. Now she’s taking on Twitter over their apparent inaction in dealing with threats of sexual abuse. [The Independent]
- Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center benefit attracted the Hamptons elite and Lady Gaga. And there were a lot of naked ladies. And $1000 meals. [Wall Street Journal]
- In another Hamptons benefit, Russell Simmons raised $1.5 million for art programs, auctioning off such fare as “Lunch with Sarah Jessica Parker in New York City,” “Meet LL COOL J & Receive 4 VIP Tickets to the concert of your choice,” and “Enjoy a walk-on role in an upcoming Tyler Perry Production.” [Huffington Post]
- In 1926 a Massachusetts professor wrote that he dreamt of “Pictorial organization. The place of subject matter…Fashionable aesthetics: fetish and taboo. Painting and modern life. The Future.” Christopher Shea sources the advent of contemporary art to an extraordinary 1920s seminar at Wellesley College by Alfred Barr. [The Boston Globe]
- The Park Avenue Tunnel will reopen to pedestrians this Saturday for an artwork by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer that will remind us all of our mortality. [The New York Times]
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by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on July 9, 2013
- The world needed this: Every mention of pie and coffee in TWIN PEAKS. [Slacktory]
- Biggest building opens in Chengdu, China, large enough to house 20 Sydney opera houses under its roof. [The Guardian]
- Edward Winkleman interviews arts journalist and blogger Tyler Green about journalism. Green thinks the old model of journalism is gone and that we should all stop bitching about it. [Edward Winkleman]
- Here’s a backwards article: Artists get more money from kickstarter than from the N.E.A., and writer Katherine Boyle writes that she isn’t surprised, because private philanthropy outpaces government support. Kickstarter campaigns aren’t philanthropy though, they’re crowdsourced funding used to support the production of products. That’s different than supporting an intangible cultural good. [Washington Post]
- Helen Marten discusses her influences. My favorite: soup and salad. [Frieze]
- Anatoly Iksanov, director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, was fired after a man threw acid in the art director’s face. A dancer said “that the theater has plunged into crime and violence under Iksanov’s watch.” [Huffington Post]
- Well, this is too bad. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago has cut short a ten-week private home tour of London-based artist Amalia Pica’s small granite sculpture on July 1. It’s assumed the piece was damaged in transit, but no details have been given. [Chicago Magazine]
- The Do It interactive show at Manchester Gallery features work from Louise Bourgeois, Ai Wei Wei, Gibert & George, and Yoko Ono, among others, that tells you what to do. Most edicts are relatively frivolous, nothing despotic [The Guardian]
- Making Room opens at the Museum of the City of New York, offering design solutions to cramped New York apartment living. [Hyperallergic]
- A record rainfall has left Toronto streets flooded. Their subway, which was shut down yesterday due to the rain, has started running again, but the city has yet to fully recover with many roads still blocked. Porter airlines was forced to cancel all flights yesterday after the airport lost power. [Globe and Mail]
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by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on July 8, 2013
From Paul McCarthy's "WS," via Park Avenue Armory
- Collector Charles Saatchi has announced he will divorce his wife Nigella Lawson three weeks after having been photographed with his hands around her throat. [The Guardian]
- The Royal Ballet of Canada has been accused of unfairly firing an aspiring ballet star for participating in porn movies. [CBC]
- Roberta Smith thinks “Life Cast,” by Paul McCarthy, featuring four sculptures and process videos, has been overlooked. [The New York Times]
- Paul McCarthy’s “WS” at the Park Avenue Armory is already the art institution’s second most attended exhibition. Not bad for a show that contains nudity, faked violence and explicit sexual acts. Apparently this is attracting the young’ns. [The New York Times]
- Peter Plagens wonders whether talent is still a factor in art education. He compares art education to “American Idol”. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]
- The Dutch Royal Family gets their picture taken. The images are pretty meh. [digifotopro.nl via Hyperallergic]
- Not surprisingly, the DOMA repeal spells good news for gay art collectors. [Art Newspaper]
- Works by deceased British designer Alan Fletcher are now available to view online — alanfletcherarchive.com—thanks to his daughter Raffaella’s efforts. [The New York Times]
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by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on July 1, 2013
- Long lost Michelangelo? New evidence surfaces that attributes a damaged statue of an young John the Baptist to the Renaissance master [NYTimes]
- Today, Thomas Hirschhorn opens a monument to the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci in the Bronx. [NYTimes]
- Oooh. Author Lynne Tillman is one of the judges for this year’s Frieze Writer’s Prize. The other two judges are Christy Lange (associate editor of Frieze) and Sean O’Toole (co-editor of CityScapes). You want them reading your work. Deadline July 22nd. [Frieze Magazine]
- Many US Museums haven’t been following their own guidelines pledging to return art looted by Nazis. MoMA looks particularly bad here, claiming that, after numerous conversations with the George Grosz estate, they had a good title to works by the artist in the collection. Meanwhile, Grosz himself had complained they exhibit a work stolen from him, according to his son, who also claims he spoke with his father about it personally. [NYTimes]
- Penguin and Random House merged this morning, creating the largest publishing house in the world. They now control 25 percent of the trade book market. [The New York Times]
- Cirque du Soleil performer Sarah Guyard-Guillot dies after falling from the stage—the first death in the company’s history. [Las Vegas Sun]
- Jerry Saltz’s photos from his late visit to the Venice Biennale, and what he thinks shows “the good, the bad, and the overhyped.” [Vulture]
- In an impressive display of irreverence (or perhaps pettiness, depending on who you ask), an organization of atheists in Florida unveiled their monument to atheism next to a slab of the ten commandments. [Huffington Post]
- This is pretty great: A conversation between Dealer Edward Winkleman and Artist William Powhida on contemporary art narratives. Interestingly, Powhida speculates that curators don’t tend to show his work because it’s too dangerous for them politically. [Edward Winkleman]
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by Paddy Johnson Clara Olshansky Ian Marshall on June 26, 2013
Ahoy, Royal Canadian Navy veteran
- Wendy Davis helped stop an anti-abortion bill in Texas yesterday thanks to a 10 hour plus filibuster effort. We watched the events pass last night over Twitter. Huffpo has our favorite summary of the nights events, complete with a triumphant use of Vine. [Huffington Post]
- We have a new online auction record: Last Friday, a watercolor by Egon Schiele, “Reclining Woman” 1916, sold for €1.5 million ($1.96M) or €1.8 million ($2.36M) including the buyer’s premium according to German auction start-up Auctionata. The previous record was set by a work from Andy Warhol (“Flowers”) that sold for 1.3 million on Artnet Auctions in 2011. [Hyperallergic]
- Royal Canadian Navy vets no longer have to obtain permission to wear their old uniforms. [The Toronto Star]
- Oxbow classes are like “adult Hogwarts for artists.” [Bad at Sports]
- The new Lower East Side artist-run Essex Flowers gets a profile from Gallerist’s Dan Durray. Some high hopes here; He thinks they may be the way forward in an art world dominated by mega-galleries. [Gallerist]
- Government officials seize a Picasso painting from a pretty shady couple. Yes, Picassos are a very effective way to settle your debt to society. [New York Times]
- In her new show, Carina Úbeda Chacana uses the only medium the world isn’t desensitized to at this point—menstrual blood. Hrag Vartanian suggests that, while shocking to the average viewer, it’s not very new to the art world. [Hyperallergic]
- Just a reminder: Best Link Ever continues to live up to its name: Catflakes—or, as we like to call it, Kittycat Snowstorm—is seriously awesome. [purrpurr.org]
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