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Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch
by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on August 28, 2014
- With a Hello Kitty retrospective coming up at the Japanese American National Museum, a Hello Kitty scholar has stomped all over the dreams of kawaii-eyed youth by revealing hat Hello Kitty is not a cat: “She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat.” In sum, Hello Kitty and Garfield belong to two different cartoon genome pools. [Culture: High & Low]
- Russell Page’s garden at the Frick is being demolished to make way for the upcoming expansion. The Frick claims that the garden, once hailed by the New York Times as one of Page’s “most important works,” was never meant to be permanent. As a 1977 press release shows, though, this is a flat out lie. Who knew the Frick could be so controversial. [The Huffington Post]
- If several thousand dollar easter egg hunts disguised as art are your kind of thing: ArtistMichael Sailstorferburies gold bars at the Folkstone triennial at high tide and waits patiently for low tide. At that point finders will be keepers. From a statement to the Guardian by Triennial curator Lewis Biggs: “I think we might well have a lot of people.” [The Guardian]
- Adrian Searle has the review of the Folkstone Triennial. There’s a discussion of the Sailstorfer piece, a round-up of works Searle liked, and some complaints about Yoko Ono and Andy Goldsworthy. Meh. [The Guardian]
- Ben Lerner’s new novel, 10:04, gets a thumbs up in the New Republic, and I can tell why. This narrator in the novel writes 10:04 as you’re reading it, and there’s scenes that blend non-fiction and sci-fi nearly seamlessly, like one where the protagonist starts having visions while walking along the High Line after eating a plate of hallucinogenic octopus. [New Republic]
- Some notes on gigantic rabbit breeds: the now-extinct Minorcan King of Rabbits, due to its weight, was unable to hop. [Modern Farmer]
- Hissbitch published “5 worst net artists” for Christmas last year, and at the time, blogger Tom Moody predicted the post would be deleted, just as their “10 worst net artist” post. We ran across Moody’s post again yesterday, and as predicted the Hissbitch post was deleted. So too is Hissbitch, which now seems to be taken over by Chinese characters. [Tom Moody]
- The Nasher is looking for an Assistant Curator. [American Alliance of Museums]
- Glenn Ligon in association with MZ Wallace has created a tote bag to benefit the Studio Museum in Harlem. [MZ Wallace]
- Season seven of ART21 will showcase a topic that’s been close to us on the blog. For the show’s debut episode, they followed Thomas Hirschhorn around to discuss the Gramsci Monument at Forest Houses, described as “a new kind of monument that, while physically ephemeral, lives on in collective memory.” That episode premieres Friday, October 24 at 10:00 p.m. ET. [ART21]
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by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on July 17, 2014
“Clown of the Party” from POBA, the internet artist graveyard. (Pete Ham)
- “The glittering chains of galaxies are no more substantial, no more reliable guides to physical reality, than greasepaint on the face of a clown.” A New York Times video on dark matter shows the visible universe to be only five percent of the larger universe, which scientists are only now beginning to plot. This invisible universe, which is defined by dark matter, is the scaffolding for the galaxies we see today. [The New York Times]
- Art critic Barbara Rose has been buddies with artist Carl Andre since the 1950s; that camaraderie shows through in her Brooklyn Rail review of Andre’s retrospective at DIA. It might go down in history as the most glowing review ever written about the artist. (Of course, no mention of Ana Mendieta.) [The Brooklyn Rail]
- Paddy Johnson profiles digital artist Nicolas Sassoon. Sassoon is currently completing an online residency for Opening Times, a non-profit that supports online artists based in London, and has been working on creating browser-sized GIFs. [Artnet]
- This might be a scam: a site was launched yesterday that provides, at an annual rate of $49.95, immortality (at least on the Internet). POBA: Where the Arts Live, an online platform that asks grieving families, estate managers, or anybody who owns the rights to any artist’s legacy, to post the work of the deceased artist. It’s meant to be a site of commemoration, but really it just feels like an Internet graveyard. Creepy. [Hyperallergic]
- Recommended Tonight: Collector’s Night at the Brooklyn Historical Society. You can see a woman’s collection of cockroach legs left in her apartment by her cat, all the clocks featured in the movie “Back to the Future,” and a stockpile of old bike seats. There will be piles of pins, dipsticks from automobiles, and objects found in cemeteries such as a dead bird, letters that have fallen off tombstones, and feathers. Also, 600 disco shirts, 300 neckties, and 90 pairs of shoes. In short: Go to this. [The New York Times]
- The Whitney is putting on an event for teens during the Jeff Koons retrospective. AFC office response: “High school students can deal with cum on the face.” [The Whitney]
- A public art space in London called The Wall, is being torn down. Why? Because the Residents Association see the current and inaugural work being shown, Stefan Bruggemann’s Text Pieces, to be an advertisement, not art. The Residents Association even struck an unnecessarily aggressive tone: “we want this amateur daub’s wish fulfilled in that it should be recognised when it is destroyed, as one of the mindless texts suggests.” Sign the petition to keep The Wall alive here. [Frieze Magazine via. Twitter]
- Who’s behind the Artist Pension Trust, a royalties-based art sales firm? Moti Shniberg, a tech startup investor responsible for selling facial recognition technology to Facebook, and attempting to trademark the term “Sept. 11, 2001.” The latter, you can imagine, was a failed attempt. [Bloomberg]
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by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on June 23, 2014
This week, expect the arrival of the pop messiah.
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by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on June 12, 2014
- What’s trending, according to London’s smartest art magazine? Feminist cyborg theory is hot, Charles Bukowski is not. I suppose this is satire. (Behind the paywall.) [Frieze]
- Why is everyone leaving the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts? Sylvia Hount will leave her position at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to head up the Met’s American art department. This announcement comes less than two weeks after a fellow curator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Robin Nicholson, gave notice of his leave. [Art in America]
- You won’t be able to find any of the Brooklyn Paper’s articles online; they lost their website URL to “Bar & Bat: A Mitzvah Guide.” [Brooklyn Paper]
- Rick Perry describes homosexuality akin to alcoholism and the world isn’t that surprised because, really, we’re that used to him being horrible. [Gawker]
- This week’s must-read: Molly Crabapple on the lack of support and freedom dissidents like Cecily McMillan and Chelsea Manning actually receive at home. [Vanity Fair]
- Art book publishers are battling over who got to Ai Weiwei first. Taschen just released the “first comprehensive monograph on Ai Weiwei’s life and work”; this edition costs between $1,500 and $12,500, and comes wrapped in a silk scarf. Phaidon claims they came first with a 2009 tome they refer to as “the first comprehensive monograph on this key figure in China’s burgeoning art scene.” [Taschen, Phaidon]
- MOCA loans a Frank Stella to a Los Angeles gallery; Critic Christopher Knight claims this conflict of interest goes against MOCA’s own written loan policy. Petty? [Los Angeles Times]
- Grumpy Cat is set to star in a Christmas movie, airing on Lifetime. In Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, this furry meme can communicate with a 12-year-old girl. Grumpy Cat’s voice actor has yet to be cast. [The Wire]
- Adrian Searle compares Marina Abramovic to a cultish dominatrix in his a tongue in cheek review of her new performance, 512 hours. “I’m waiting for Mistress Marina, the relaxation-class dominatrix, to give me a good telling off. Later, she takes my hand again. “Breathe slowly. Just be in the present. It’s a good feeling.” Not: “See you round the back later, you naughty boy.” But who knows what might happen if you hang around for long enough.” Ha! [The Guardian]
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by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on June 11, 2014
Peter Doig, “Country Rock (Wing-Mirror)
- It’s official! Senator Ted Cruz’s application to revoke his Canadian citizenship has been approved. [New York Magazine]
- This morning, online editions vendor Artspace announced plans for hosting online auctions. For these upcoming livestream events, they’re soliciting artwork from their newsletter subscribers. Free appraisals, anyone? [Artspace]
- Proof that art listicles can be done well: “Western Art History: 500 Years of Women Ignoring Men.” [The Toast]
- In the world of politics: Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was unexpectedly defeated in the primaries by David Brat, a candidate to the right of him. Speculation is that Cantor’s more “moderate” position on immigration did him in. Here’s how Brat won. [Politico]
- Shootings are up in NYC by more than 10 percent this year, and by 31.6 percent when comparing a 28-day period. No cause for the increase has been cited. [The Wall Street Journal]
- Yes, your RSS feed is down. Feedly has been hacked. “The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop,” wrote a Feedly representative in a blog post this morning. [BBC]
- Why does Marina Abramovic make performance art? “I want to show that the public actually can kill you,” she told the BBC Radio 4’s Will Gompertz. How much punch does she drink? [The Washington Post]
- Everyone on the Internet’s hedging their bets that Scottish expat Peter Doig will take over Damien Hirst’s position as the most expensive living artist at auction. His painting “Country Rock (Wing-Mirror)” goes on the auction block at Sotheby’s later this month. [The Telegraph]
- New York City has been ordered to pay a $600,000 suit that accuses officers of falsely arresting Occupy Wall Street protesters who were walking on the sidewalk. [The New York Times]
- Studies prove it: Internet trolls are horrible people offline too. [Slate]
- What the hell is going on at The Washington Post? Here’s an editorial that talks about how married women are safer than unmarried women. Here’s an editorial that talks about the “supposed campus epidemic of rape” which, according to George Will simply makes victimhood coveted. How did this stuff get published? [The Li.st]
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by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on June 10, 2014
- In San Francisco, a 6-foot-tall dolphin sculpture falls on a 2-year-old boy and he dies. Public service announcement: Don’t let your kids climb on a sculpture at an art gallery called Friday Majestic Collection Art Gallery. [Boston.com]
- Obama will impose a 10 percent limit on student loan repayments. [Chicago Tribune]
- Art critic Ben Davis writes about Twitch, a massively popular website where you can watch and chat with people playing video games. In Ben Davis fashion, we get reminded of the constant political fact that popular entertainment is awful: “…video games, which are, after all, commercial products, precision-engineered instruments of distraction.” [New York Magazine]
- Chicago’s been big on social practice art for some time, and now more of the city’s universities are catching on. The University of Illinois at Chicago has hired artist Laurie Jo Reynolds to become the school’s first-ever assistant professor of public arts, social justice, and culture. [Newcity Art]
- This is not okay: James Franco has been caught slut-shaming Lindsay Lohan. He published a short story on VICE on how he definitely did not sleep with this “damaged” starlet. [MTV]
- A new study by the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts shows that people consistently prefer art that is authored by one rather than multiple artists. Apparentlytwo isn’t better than one. [Hyperallergic]
- Guccifer, the hacker who leaked former president George W. Bush’s nude self portraits, is being sentenced to four years in prison [Gawker]
- Painter Ben Shattuck worked with Sandra Harmel, a historian based in Iowa to find locations that were recorded as being part of the underground railroad. Based on that research, he’s produced a remarkably cliché and academic body of work that got a write up in the New Yorker. [The New Yorker]
- An interview with Los Angeles-based painter Noam Rappaport. The interview most concerns itself with the minutia of process, yet somehow it never gets tedious. [Artspace]
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by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on June 5, 2014
Nick Keyegan’s contribution to GIFbites
- Paddy Johnson writes about an animated GIF exhibition shown online and in Iran that has some real highs and lows. [Artnet]
- In today’s edition of word vomit, Vladimir Putin ends up making sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton. [Daily Intelligencer]
- Google Glass releases a $1,620 designer line by Diane von Fürstenburg. Yet again we are reminded that “Glass is a class divide on your face.” [Motherboard]
- This roundtable seeks to debunk the stereotype that contemporary Latin American art is all about geometric abstraction. [Collecion Cisneros]
- Job change! Curator Robin Nicholson leaves the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to direct the Pittsburgh Frick. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
- How do we create a market for digital artworks? We’d like to have a constructive discussion about this with the author of “From Mail Art to Tumblr.” The article supposes that online works are abstract manifestations: “What does it mean to own an artwork if the piece is not a self-contained object but rather an abstract manifestation?” writes author Willa Koerner. But what about the many websites, files, and code that are physically there? [Art21]
- At the ZMK Media Museum in Germany, visitors can now whisper into the disembodied, 3-D printed “ear” of Van Gogh. This strange artifact is partially replicated from the painter’s genome. [The New York Times]
- Manhattan art dealer Helly Nahmad is being charged with hiding a $13 million Modigliani stolen during World War II. The story has all the makings of a solid scandal: Money, an enigmatic, villainous corporation, and the Nazis. [The New York Post]
- A whirlwind trip through the art loot collected by the world’s richest financiers: “Bernie Madoff’s prized piece of office art was a four-foot sculpture of a screw that he frequently dusted off himself…A defense lawyer pleaded for the valued object to be photoshopped out of court documents.” [The Baffler]
- After two of his works were barred from being displayed in two separate Chinese cities this month, artist and dissonant Ai Weiwei writes an appeal to the Chinese government in Bloomberg: “Censorship has in effect neutered society, transforming it into a damaged, irrational and purposeless creature.” [Bloomberg View]
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