Paddy has written 100 article(s) for AFC.
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Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch
by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on October 20, 2014
Scene from Andrew Jeffrey Wright’s Bananazz comic strip
- This weekend, Twitter raged over an investigative article that wondered why a documentary film on Jeff Koons wasn’t included in the artist’s Whitney retrospective. It wasn’t even included in the gift shop! Let’s face it: this is a non-issue. Museums do not usually include documentaries as part of their visual arts programming. [The Art Newspaper]
- Rhizome is in London. Even if you’re not there to attend their off-site programs, the lectures are online. Some lectures have been transcribed for your reading pleasure! Whee! I’m listening to the selfie panel with Amalia Ulman this morning. —Corinna [Rhizome]
- Stop venting on Facebook; go to e-flux. This week the non-profit launched “e-flux conversations,” a moderated message board addressing topical issues. So far the best discussion has been Karen Archey on “top female curator” lists. [e-flux]
- We might never know what killed Joan Rivers because her daughter has refused an autopsy. Now get back to work. [Gawker]
- Solange is throwing an art party during Prospect.3. Bey’s little sis recently relocated to New Orleans. [NOLA]
- Album sales are plummeting. Duh. [Death and Taxes]
- Painter Wolfgang Hutter died on September 26th. We’re just finding this out now, says artnet News, because he didn’t want the news to be publicized. Maybe he’d read articles like this one. (Also wow these are cool.)
- According to the National Report, Graffiti artist Banksy has been arrested in London, revealing the artist’s allusive identity. He is 35-year-old Paul Horner. Several news sites subsequently reported that that story is bogus, and National Report is a site made up of entirely fake news. [Glasstire]
- Andrew Jeffrey Wright’s latest “Bananazz” strip is pretty good. An enormous gap between this and what’s typically on Hyperallergic. [the artblog]
- What a really weird interview with Gerhard Richter. Questions include: How does doing drugs affect artistic quality? When did organized religion crumble and why do humans need art as a replacement? Are you depressed that artists now—even you, whom many consider to be the greatest living painter—can’t paint like Titian? [The Wall Street Journal]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on October 7, 2014
- The boss was on TV! We’ll have a post on this soon, but you can watch Paddy Johnson on ArtPrize finalists, here. [WoodTV]
- Documenta’s going to Athens in 2017. In all likelihood, this has no bearing on our travel plans. [artnet News]
- Debbie Harry on Blondie T-shirts. Not much to say here, but she does give a shoutout to a superfan who’s been drawing cartoons of her for 25 years. [Vulture]
- For his birthday, Vladimir Putin gets an art exhibition depicting him as Hercules. The Sochi Olympics is one of his twelve labors. Also, shooting down French war planes with a bow and arrow. [New York Magazine]
- You don’t have to tweet all the time to be a good journalist, just like you don’t have to cover court cases and police activity, says New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet to Steve Buttry. [Steve Buttry via @brianstelter]
- McKenzie Wark continues his comparison of artists to hackers. [e-flux]
- ebay’s trying live art auctions again. [New York Times]
- In one of history’s surprises, the Marcos family has returned to the good graces of the Philippines government. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos allegedly used stolen funds to amass an art collection, and now the government is hunting down the location of those works. So stolen money used to buy art that ends up being stolen. [Al Jazeera America]
- Abdel Kader Haidara, the head of Timbuktu’s privately-funded Mamma Haidara Memorial Library, has received the German Africa Prize for putting his life at risk to save nearly half a million ancient manuscripts from Islamic extremists. He rescued those documents “for all of humanity”, he says, because the knowledge contained therein can never be recovered. [Deutsche Welle via Metafilter]
- Woman gives birth with donated womb!!!!!!! A 35-year-old woman with a congenital absence of a uterus has given birth with a womb donated from a 61-year-old woman, according to a paper published by The Lancet. [The Lancet via Metafilter]
- Startup investors like Snoop Dogg and Jared Leto (really) gave Reddit $50 million in funding. The barebones, community-oriented site won’t have ads. [Marketplace Tech]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 29, 2014
If your preferred form of sculpture is a little weirder than the Richard Serra variety—you’re in luck.
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 29, 2014
- The Studio Museum’s Thelma Golden reveals all, from being inspired by The Jeffersons to become a curator, as well as the importance of listening to artists: “I was raised as a curator by a fierce group of artists who really demanded that I understand what their work was about.” [Studio 360]
- Holland Cotter discusses the new Aspen Art Museum designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. The shows have little relationship to the architecture, but two out of the five are good. Cotter notes that all of them are trendy and that the museum should try to do better. [The New York Times]
- Camille Henrot has won the Nam June Paik Award and will receive $32,000. [Artforum]
- Facebook launches a new ad platform that analyzes every status update you’ve made over the last five years on the network to determine which ad will be the most effective. Apparently, they will be particularly effective on mobile (a point we find hard to believe because their own app is nearly unusable). [The New York Times]
- If only I were rich. I would be clearing out the shelves on Paddle8. Brian Bellot’s sock paintings were some of the best pieces from all the Miami fairs last year; I wanted them then and I want them today. He also covered marshmallows in glitter, and they’re selling that, too. (Whitney) [Paddle8]
- It’s national coffee day, which means free coffee at places that sell disgusting coffee (Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s). Editor’s note: AFC’s Corinna Kirsch likes the iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. Editor’s editor’s note: The author of this link, Paddy Johnson, does not drink coffee, and therefore, is unqualified to make an assessment on said subject. [WGNtv]
- An untold story nobody needs to know: how real estate developer Harry Macklowe came up with the Apple Cube. He came up with the idea, got it past Steve Jobs and the city, made some size adjustments, and wa lah, one of the most successful retail locations in the world was born. And now we have another giant Apple Store. [New York Magazine]
- Do you hate looking at subway ads? Well, there’s an app for that. Put your phone up to a subway ad, and then the app will replace the ad with art—but you still have to look at your screen and not the actual wall. And then there’s that issue of having to look through your phone screen at the advertisement instead of doing anything else. [The New York Times]
- The Folk Museum is being demolished. Thanks, MoMA! [Curbed New York]
- Jayson Musson gave a talk at the BHQFU’s “Humor and the Abject” class last night. In case you missed it, you can still watch the livestream. Image quality isn’t too great, imo. [YouTube]
- “It Took 50,” the documentary about 90-year-old East Village housing activist Frances Goldin (whom we wrote about here), has five more days to fundraise for part two. If you want to know the story behind the plan that’s already preserving tons of affordable housing in New York City, then fund this. Plus, this woman is just incredible. [Indiegogo]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 25, 2014
- Feminism’s biggest problem. [The Toast]
- In a world where definitions change on a whim, Prada Marfa has been named an “art museum site” by the Texas Department of Transportation. [Associated Press via Ballroom Marfa]
- Also in Marfa, a terribly expensive art project: artist Robert Irwin has received funding to go ahead with a new installation after receiving a $1 million gift. [Glasstire]
- One of these four artists is about to be € 25,000 richer: Cory Arcangel, Camille Henrot, Thomas&Craighead, and Ulf Aminde. They’ve all been nominated for the 2014 Nam June Paik Award. [e-flux]
- After Art F City covered the American Royalties Too Act (twice), now WNYC has added their two cents, interviewing a law professor at Ohio State University who argues that it might “drive sales to galleries and private sales, which would be exempt from the law.”[WNYC]
- This KLM commercial has the airline employing a beagle to return lost property to its passengers. It’s pretty much the most joy-inducing video ever, though the buzzfeed investigative reporting team discovered that the airline doesn’t actually have dogs on staff. Whatever. It’s slightly misleading, but adorable regardless. (And you get to listen to Dutch, which always sounds lovely.) [YouTube]
- Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, the co-owner and co-directors of Frieze have stepped back from their role and appointed Victoria Siddall as the new director of Frieze London and Frieze New York. Siddall already managed Frieze Masters. Sharp and Slotover say they are stepping back from the business so they can pursue other projects. Slotover says they aren’t opening a new publication or fair, so what’s next? Frieze auction data? [FT]
- Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia student who has been carrying her mattress around campus in protest of the school’s tepid response to her rape, is not the only student suffering from this problem. A new Times op-doc reveals that universities routinely punish rapists with a slap on the wrist. [The New York Times]
- “I work in a 24-hour kitten nursery.” [Imgur]
- A good, long read on the downfall of the all-black sitcom on network TV. By now, it’s history. [The New Inquiry]
- Free Art Friday, a treasure hunt on Instagram for free art. Good luck finding good art. [artnet News]
- A photographer documents squatters inside a Venezuela skyscraper, where construction was halted mid-project in 1994 when a third of the country’s banks failed. [Hyperallergic]
- Holy shit. An elevator into space could be possible. [OMNI Reboot via @Nullsleep]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 12, 2014
More big reasons for big sculptures for big galleries. *Sigh*
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 9, 2014
As a testament to how bad Chelsea has gotten lately, artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw are currently running a successful souvenir business solely of items making fun of celebrity-obsessed curators and James Franco. Things are bleak, but we’ve at least managed to find a few events that continue to make our jobs worth doing.
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on September 9, 2014
- Our new favorite single serving site turns Hugh Grant’s face different colors with the Hue/Saturation tool. Lightness and saturation have been turned off. [Hue Grant]
- Perhaps a public service, but sleazy execution: Somebody combed the porn star database and put together every demographic statistic imaginable on adult film entertainers. Here’s the opener: “I can’t recall how I first heard about the Internet Adult Film Database—the self-proclaimed ‘premier resource for information about the American porn community on the web’, but for the longest time I knew I wanted to plunder its treasure trove of juicy information.” Further findings are often relayed in cum jokes. [Jon Millward]
- Electronic shock collars stress out dogs. This should be obvious to all dog-lovers. [Washington Post]
- The history of SWAT teams from the 60s through to today. Watch the segment about the guy whose dog was shot. No spoilers from us, but it’s jaw dropping. [Retro Report]
- As is customary, The Apple Store has been taken offline in anticipation of today’s big launch of the iPhone and iWatch. The Times has been live blogging since 8:00 a.m. and the conference doesn’t start until 1:00 p.m. (EST) today. [Bits Blog]
- The British Museum is looking for a student or recent computer science grad to help them update their website for free. [Hyperallergic]
- Here’s a Google image search for “Tom Otterness.” It’s a mixed bag of work, for sure, but sometimes those cutesy figures demonstrate great inventiveness! [Google, in response to this Twitter thread]
- The New Yorker Festival events are out. Ew: Malcolm Gladwell. Stuff we actually want to see: a talk about income inequality with David Brooks, call-ins with Edward Snowden and Kim Dotcom, an interview with Laurie Anderson, and an intelligentsia-stocked debate on cats versus dogs. We feel that this last event compares apples and oranges, and both animals contain contain lovable features. [New Yorker Festival]
- The Google Cultural Institute adds more museums to its growing rosters of museums who like to put their art online with the help of Google. [Google Art]
- One (or a few) bad apples spoil the bunch. Costumed cartoon characters in Times Square are now all getting background checks and licenses. Apparently the “Spider-Man incident” was the come-to-Jesus moment. [The New York Times]
- Here is what Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gubernatorial portrait looks like. The Kindergarten Cop star paid for the portrait himself, choosing the the hyper-realistic flair of fellow Austrian, Gottfried Helnwein. [SF Gate]
- Wow. Tim Wu, a candidate for Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor, and the man who coined the phrase “net neutrality” is suing the New York Democratic Party for interfering in its own primary. [The Nation]
- Magic, barn-raising, meteorites: all that you missed during the Edinburgh Art Festival. [Frieze Blog]
- Two Trump casinos to file for bankruptcy. [Bloomberg]
- Note to art jurors: Never stand up during an awards ceremony and announce that none of the artists are worthy of a prize. [Yahoo! Australia]
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