Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch

Monday Links: Pretend to Be a Pig

Best job listing ever: seeking a pig who likes whiskey. Okay, so you’d actually just *pretend* to be a pig on Twitter, but still, it’s a job as a whiskey-swilling pig. [WhistlePig via @WFMU]
There’s a white-hot market for Chinese art and antiquities—driven largely by a newfound interest within China itself. This might be motivating a recent crime wave in Europe, where several museums have had their Chinese collections burglarized. [The New York Times]
An Erwin Wurm sculpture of a truck bent so that its rear wheels are resting on a wall has received a parking ticket in Karlsruhe, Austria. [The Local Austria]
A story of a woman who became obsessed with revealing her devout Christian father’s gay identity. This whole story is ick. [Narrative.ly]
WTF is going on in this image from a new Jesper Just film installation? [Palais de Tokyo]
Fourteen watercolors presumed to be painted by a young Adolf Hitler were auctioned in Germany. The most expensive lot went to an anonymous buyer in China. The painting features the Neuschwanstein Castle, a.k.a. Walt Disney’s Cinderella castle. [The New York Times via Deutsche-Press Agentur]
It is impossible to not giggle like a twelve-year-old while reading this review of the Tom of Finland show at Artists Space: “Early gouaches from the mid-1940s feature urbane rakes whose illicit behavior is only occasionally explicit; but soon thereafter, Tom provided close-up views of every possible combination of orifice and appendage.“ [Artforum]
A maintenance worker mistakenly threw away a $10,000 piece of public sculpture because he thought it was something that “had been left by skateboarders.” [ARTnews]
To mark the 15th anniversary of “The Thong Song,” seven artists were invited to reimagine this important nugget of turn-of-the-millennium culture. MC Schmidt (of Matmos fame) rose to the occasion with a truly bizarre, singular vision that could be the soundtrack to Sisqo’s Inferno. It is awesome. [WTMD]
Huh. Apparently a penis that was allegedly removed from Napoleon’s corpse has been exhibited in museums and now resides in the private collection of a urologist in New Jersey—“The Corsica of Genitalia.” [The Washington Post]

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Thursday Links: Hand Gestures of the Occult

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on June 4, 2015

baby elephant

TIL: Baby elephants suck on their trunks like baby humans suck on their thumbs. And sometimes little pachyderms don pink blankets. [Reddit]
Wishing we were in Houston to see the Contemporary Art Museum Houston’s exhibition’s Marilyn Minter retrospective. Beth Secor’s review pins down her work pretty succinctly with this line: “These are beautiful paintings; some people in fact have complained that they are too beautiful, but there is something underlying their glitzy glamour that puts the stink of death on them, which balances things out.” [Glasstire]
Menswear dog is creepy. [Menswear Dog]
Great artist illustrates for a great author: Sara Cwynar for Zadie Smith in the New Yorker’s “Summer Fiction” issue. [The New Yorker]
The Universe Within, an interactive documentary that shows the digital lives of high-rise residents around the world. [The National Film Board of Canada]
You can’t get a BA or MA in Gallery Studies, but the closest training you can receive for becoming an art dealer might be the nine-month Gallerist Program at the de Appel arts centre in the Netherlands…if you have the means to front $8,000 Euro. Applications are due July 11. [de Appel arts centre]
SculptureCenter curator Ruba Katrib on why machines and art can produce slapstick: “Slapstick makes us laugh because machines are foreign. Their proximity to—or confusion with—the body seems humorously perverse…When bodies and machines clash, slapstick lets us blunder with a smile.” [Art in America]
Everything about this semiotic scandal is LOLworthy. Fans of the Christian rapper Lecrae are concerned that his hand gestures might be symbols of an occult allegiance. [The Christian Post]
Former Art F City intern Clara Olshansky, now in Chicago, is writing some grade-A snark. She sure does know her stuff about lame coffee and lame men. We <3 you, Clara. [Food and Wine]
“A sort of Facebook for the dead.” [The Guardian]
Protesting Facebook’s real-name policy. [Rhizome]
Hamilton Nolan gets to the root of the worst Kickstarter ever. [Gawker]

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Wednesday Links: Children Love Pee Spray?

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on June 3, 2015

What is going on in this video of a giant puppet’s detached genitalia dancing with children and spraying audience members with pee? Apparently, this a piece entitled “Everybody” by the Australian collective [Snuff Puppets].
Adrian Chen writes a story on Russian troll farms only to find himself caught up in their web. Note to self: Never sit down with a source’s brother who looks like a neo-Nazi skin head. [The New York Times Magazine]
David Byrne on contemporary society’s obsession with all things curatorial: “Why this insistent emphasis on choices and filtering now? It’s obvious: when everything is available, within reach, accessible, the problem becomes not one of scarcity but of abundance.” [New Statesman]
Harry Beck’s original London Underground map is one of the most iconic, successful, and influential diagrams in the history of graphic design. But as London grows, has the once-elegant design gotten too cluttered? Between a mess of fare zones and the addition of new services such as light rail, the Overground, and even a cable car critics claim the map is starting to lose legibility. Londoners, if you want to fall back in love with your tube map, spend a day staring at NYC’s. [City Lab]
The New York Botanical Garden’s Frida Kahlo exhibition will soon include light projections by Jenny Holzer. What? We assume the greenery was good enough on its own. (AFC’s Michael Anthony Farley has the review of Kahlo’s show, minus the Holzer.) [Observer]
Wow, MoMA has some gall. In the midst of fundraising enormous sums of money for an atrium no one but their board members likes, they hope to cut employee health benefits. Ew. [Hyperallergic]
The Art Law Report brings a lawyer’s clarity to the Richard Prince/Suicide Girls debate on “copyright.” Guess what? Copyright is not the same as public domain. “Instagram photos are not in the public domain. The public domain applies to works over which no copyright exists. The ease with which something can be copied has nothing to do with whether it is in the public domain. If what Prince is doing is acceptable it is as a fair use under the statute, not because of a lack of copyright in the first instance.” [Art Law Report]
Did anyone else find Gawker’s post on Fusion’s traffic numbers, “More People Work at Fusion Than Are Reading Its Most Popular Post,” a bit confusing? The fact that 32 people are viewing a single post is brought up, but without saying if that’s how many people are viewing a post at a single second, minute, or hour. [Gawker]
Florida man’s conceptual art piece has his neighbors confused and angry. Piotr Janowsky has wrapped his house and several surrounding trees in aluminum foil. People are not happy about it. [Orlando Weekly via Bmore Art]

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Tuesday Links: Camouflage of the Future, Hologram Legal Troubles, Superhero Romance Problems

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on June 2, 2015

Fashion fans rejoice! The U.S. Army has unveiled its new Fall/Winter collection. Although you’ll have to wait for the autumn for it to become standard issue, select military retailers are offering preview sales of the highly-anticipated line starting July 1st. [US Army]
Legal battles over holograms plague two of the burgeoning “let’s project dead music and TV stars” industry. Plans for a Liberace tour are in the works. [The Hollywood Reporter]
The world taxidermy championships were held last month in Springfield Missouri last month. Topics covered in this video: an increase in female competitors, likeness and/or realness, and the winners. [The New York Times]
Does anyone else find this bunny named Wally slightly disturbing? [Gawker]
A police shooting of a black bear in Newmarket Ontario has sparked outrage. It wandered into someone’s back yard. [The Toronto Star]
Leaked emails for failed superhero movies provide a glimpse into why we rarely have any female-led movies: writers can’t come up with any good boyfriends for them. Malcolm Harris hits the nail on the head with this problem: “Female superheroes are stuck in a narrative Catch-22: Their only suitable romantic partners are male superheroes, but male superheroes don’t play substantial supporting roles.” A solution? “If superhero movies need an at least plausible romance, the recipe won’t work for women. The masters of formulaic narrative need a new formula.” Duh. I, for one, think I could write up an awesome Rogue movie, but that might need to be one for the fan-fiction bin. (Corinna) [Al Jazeera America]
Not online yesterday? One meme you may have missed pre-Caitlyn Jenner, was the Shia Le green screen that led to many an inspired knock off. Even if Shia LaBeouf’s performance-art antics make you cringe, this collab between the rat-tailed actor and undergrad students at Central St. Martins in London is better than you might think. [The original, some memes]
The new ICA in Miami hosts an exhibition curated by the Little Haiti gallery Guccivuitton. Given the ICA’s digs in the increasingly high-end-retail-focused Design District, the name is too perfect. Also perfect: curatorial decisions like installing works behind large sheets of glass to mimic the area’s familiar pastime of window shopping for something you can’t afford. [Miami New Times]
Lights of Soho, a new gallery in London, has an all-neon exhibition including work from Tracey Emin. Apparently their basement is also a member’s-only club with secret VIP events. Why does this place sound like a Chicks on Speed song? [Time Out London]
More than one-third of museum directors are aged 60 or over, according to a survey of 150 US museums published by the Economist last month. This means a lot of them are going to retire soon. Julia Halperin has the story. [The Art Newspaper]
Olafur Eliasson’s new High Line exhibition sounds fun: visitors are invited to construct a collaborative cityscape out of thousands of white Legos. A group of starchitects were invited to contribute their own fantasy creations to get the project started. Interestingly, it looks like Rem Koolhaas resurrected his plans for his unbuilt “polite” tower that would’ve cantilevered out of the way so as to not block a neighboring building’s views and referenced the classic Manhattan “wedding cake” skyscraper. That building was one of the few casualties of the recession that would’ve been a great addition to the cityscape. [Dezeen]
Uh, oh! In news that should come as shocking to absolutely no one, apparently Shell tried to influence the content of a recent exhibition on climate change at London’s Science Museum. The first red flag probably should have been the fact that an oil company was sponsoring an exhibition about climate change. [The Guardian]
A related story: Let’s all stop letting oil companies boost their public image with arts sponsorship. [The Guardian]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on June 1, 2015

Roll through Bushwick and experience artisanal cheese doodles, mobile vintage clothing stores, and bars as far as the eye can see. It’s Bushwick Open Studios this weekend, which means the most democratic of all New York art events will inevitably be paired with lots local culture. We’ll publish a separate post dedicated to those events shortly, but in the meantime we’ve got a bunch of show recommendations that have nothing to do with BOS: Indulge your penchant for nostalgia with a rock and roll puppet show set in the late 60’s. Explore the world of mobile phone art. Brace yourself for a multichannel immersive video game experience. Even without BOS, there’s no free time in our schedules. There shouldn’t be any in yours either.

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Tuesday Links: Making Gene Roddenberry Proud

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on May 26, 2015

A Queens rapper’s homage to feta cheese. The video includes close ups on spanakopita and performer So Tiri walking a goat down a street in Astoria [YouTube]
In an attempt to lure “young creatives” to the t̶o̶t̶a̶l̶i̶t̶a̶r̶i̶a̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶k̶ city of Dubai, Foster + Partners has been tapped to design a trendy neighborhood based on the Meatpacking District and London’s Shoreditch. [Dezeen]
More on Hitler’s horses: Apparently there’s secret market for Nazi art where the Third Reich’s neoclassical kitsch can fetch millions of Euros. [The Wall Street Journal]
A group of artists in Washington, D.C. are planning to convert unused trolley tunnels into exhibition space under Dupont Circle. [BBC]
Elmgreen & Dragset discuss their show at Galerie Perrotin. The narrative installation is the “sequel” to their recent Victoria & Albert Museum project, which offered glimpses into the fictional life of an aging architect. [ARTnews]
Because no one is sick of hearing about the $179.4 million Picasso, it’s been revealed that the painting’s new owner (maybe) is former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani. [artnet News via the New York Post]
Colin Alexander on the challenges of writing about DuoX’s sprawling, decentralized practice: “[S]earches for ‘non-supplemental’ content of BOY’Dega prove to be fruitless. The large body of interviews the duo have participated in seems to outnumber critical discussions around the seemingly endless web they have manufactured. Why criticize when you’re not sure you can even point to anything? It does follow that all you can do is ask more questions.” [Temporary Art Review]
Guilty-pleasure alert: bask in the nerdy bliss of this behind-the-scenes peek at the Smithsonian’s conservation team restoring the original starship Enterprise model from Star Trek. Apparently there’s some debate over what color gray to use. [Star Trek]
In at least one AFCer’s household, there has been great debate over the value of William Riker’s contribution to the Next Generation. (Paddy Johnson thinks it’s next to nil.) She’s considering reevaluating that opinion now that there’s fan fiction episodes dedicated to making fun of him. [YouTube]
Rounding out today’s STNG coverage, a Chinese tech executive has shelled out $97 million to design offices in the shape of the USS Enterprise. [The Verge]
What happened to walking to a friend’s for dinner? As rising housing costs continue to scatter New Yorkers farther and farther from central Manhattan neighborhoods, the social life of the city has come to be defined by a second commute. Surprisingly, the average city resident now lives in a less-dense neighborhood than in 1970. [New York Observer]
The New York Times Editorial Board weighs in on the de Blasio plan to turn the New York City Housing Authority around. Basically the Housing Authority, after years of neglect and mismanagement is in total disarray. They are operating with a 98-million deficit this year, and need 16 billion just to cover all the repairs that are needed. The plan is to get that money by cutbacks, parking fees, and better rent collection. Also, they will sell some of the parking lots to private developers and then demand that 50 percent of the units be sold at “affordable” rates. A lot of work on the horizon here. [The New York Times]

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Monday Links: Don’t Steal From Your Boss

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on April 27, 2015

Baby otters

The Chinese government would like people to stop hiring strippers for funerals. [The Wall Street Journal]
Here’s how to help the people suffering in Nepal. [AVC]
Sadly-not-very-shocking footage of Baltimore police beating a press photographer covering one of the many Freddie Gray protests over the weekend. [City Paper]
How art collectors can avoid paying taxes on artwork purchases. [The New York Times]
The Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art has become the first museum to purchase an artwork using Bitcoin. [ARTnews]
Katy Perry’s application to trademark the “Left Shark” Super Bowl meme has been denied. [Art Law Report via Live Nation]
The op-eds continue! In Sacramento, the $8-million commission for a Koons “piglet” sparks a debate over the lack of public art made by women. [The Sacramento Bee]
Curbed reports: “Forget the Whitney: The Tonya Harding & Nancy Kerrigan 1994 Museum Is the Best Museum.” [Curbed]
Medical robots can be hacked. [MIT Technology Review]
Somehow this seems like a slap on the wrist? James Meyer, Jasper Johns’s former studio assistant, stole $6.5 million in work from the artist; Meyer then sold the work to galleries and other purchasers. He will face one-and-a-half years in prison. [Courthouse News Service]
We feel strangely empowered using CloneZone, an app that clones websites verbatim and allows users to edit and share them. We’ve been editing the New York Times. [CloneZone via: Rhizome]
I visited the new restaurant Santina the other day and wondered why so much of the building was made of glass (it was very loud). I hadn’t been to the Whitney yet, though, so it didn’t occur to me that restaurateurs Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi, and Jeff Zalaznick would want it to match the museum (which is literally a stone’s throw away). Anyway, turns out Renzo Piano designed the restaurant too. A review tells us the food is pretty good. (Paddy) [The New York Times]

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