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Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch
by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on May 8, 2014
Marie Lorenz’s Tide and Current Taxi Project (Image courtesy of Frieze)
- Artist Marie Lorenz is rowing around Randall’s Island in a rowboat for Frieze projects. She will be a “punctuation mark” within the fair, making it more of a “cultural adventure,” according to Amanda Sharp. [Wall Street Journal]
- Actually, this boat ride may be an adventure. The Wall Street Journal neglects to mention that Lorenz’s first Frieze boat sank in the middle of the East River, and her rider had to swim to Randall’s Island. Another sank back in 2009, which resulted in a show at Jack Hanley. Passengers beware. [City Room]
- Art critic Ben Davis is back at Artnet after the magazine folded and relaunched as Artnet News! His first column is about the crisis in art and comes with a giant picture of his head. He says money is drowning out thought, and art is bad. [Artnet]
- A new documentary about Llyn Foulkes is showing at Film Forum through next Tuesday, but we’re not sure how much more we could learn about the man beyond what’s in the trailer. He was forgotten for a while, he makes weird shit, and he’s obsessive. “He’s actually making the most ambitious paintings at age 73,” though, says one voiceover. [Film Forum]
- Artist Sean Carney is only 35 votes away from securing a wrestling match with MoMA’s Poet Laureate Kenneth Goldsmith. Go vote—because why not? [Change.org]
- The New York Public Library is abandoning their terrible renovation plan that would turn part of their flagship fifth avenue and 42nd street location into a circulating library. Three factors contributed to this decision: A study showing that the renovation costs would exceed the original estimate of 300 million, a change in city government, and input from the public. Woo hoo! [The New York Times]
- In related New York mayoral news, Bill de Blasio unveiled his 41.1 billion dollar affordable housing plan on Tuesday, and managed to give the Teachers Union a contract with modest raises, after 7 years of Bloomberg dragging his feet on giving them a contract at all. John Cassidy takes a closer look at these policies and describes him as a moderate. [The New Yorker]
- “The scale of conspiratorial thinking in Russia is now comparable to that of the US after 9/11.” E-flux journal’s May issue takes on Russia. [e-flux]
- Following “tepid” sales at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern auction on Tuesday night, Sotheby’s Imp-Mod sale failed to sell a whopping third of their lots. Okay, Sotheby’s just cannot keep up with Christie’s tepid pace. [Reuters]
- $$$! Creative Time raised $1.3 million at their annual fundraiser gala. It was held in the Domino Sugar Factory, which currently houses Kara Walker’s Creative Time project, but will eventually be turned into condos. [Art in America]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 28, 2014
Image courtesy of freeimages.com
- A stock image found using the search term, “feminism.” Worst “feminist” image ever? [Free Images]
- Codebabes is a website that looks like a really dumb joke. It’s not a joke. The website promises lessons from scantily clothed women teaching courses for the “HTML Virgin,” “CSS Virgin,” “Programming Virgin,” and “PHP Virgin.” The further you get in your courses, the fewer clothes the instructor will wear. [CodeBabes]
- CodeDicks, a response to codebabes, in which every course advancement takes you closer to achieving the label “douche.” Intermediate stages include “sexist” and “asshole.” [CodeDicks]
- Required reading: A history of the 1990s net art scene in Berlin. [frieze d/e]
- News rolls in daily about the new towers, as Lower East Side shops continue to close and relocate. [Bowery Boogie]
- Kara Walker makes a mammie sphinx out of sugar she says could never be beaten into submission. [The New York Times]
- Diego Rivera’s murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts have been designated national historic landmarks. Bankruptcy hearings for the city of Detroit continue. [Associated Press]
- Ladies Home Journal is shutting down its print publication after 130 years. This despite having a circulation that is amongst the highest in the country. [Bloomberg]
- The online market climbs slowly, surpassing $1 billion in annual sales. [The Art Newspaper]
- The Fridge Art Fair’s press release notes that the fair will be held in Long Island City this year and will include an opening ceremony with American Idol’s Hunter Monroe. The move comes because the Angel Orensanz Center, their previously slated venue, was given a forced evacuation order by the New York Department of Buildings due to building violations. [Fridge Art Fair]
- AFC’s one-time Roastmaster Christian Viveros-Fauné and Blake Gopnik talk about the Sigmar Polke retrospective. Gopnik nervously recounts Polke factoids and Fauné has to fight hard to get a word in. Very annoying, because he’s come prepared. [Artnet News]
- A pretty shitty situation: China’s propaganda campaign to push professional women into marriage. One government article says: “As women age, they are worth less and less…by the time they get their M.A. or Pd.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls.”[Foreign Policy]
- It’s a tale of two art markets! Lower-level collectors are now being priced out of the painting market, forcing them to buy works on paper and prints. [The New York Times]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 25, 2014
- Artforum’s profile on the Greek-born American sculptor Chryssa ends on a rather strange note. “One day in her studio, I noticed a gun. She pointed to it and said she was planning to shoot [Arnold] Glimcher. Sure she was being mistreated and ignored in New York, she shut her studio on lower Broadway for good and apparently returned to Athens.” Chryssa died earlier this year in Greece. (Above: Chryssa’s “Large Bird Shape.” Courtesy Albright-Knox Art Gallery.) [Artforum via Andrew Russeth]
- “If elected president, Barack Obama plans to prioritize, well, barring broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from prioritizing Internet content.” That was in 2007. With news this week that the F.C.C. is considering “fast lanes” for commercial providers, let’s hope that he keeps to his promise. [CNET via Reddit]
- Triple Canopy announces their 2014 Commission recipients: Kieran Daly, Primavera di Filippi & Samer Hassan, Sowon Kwon, Timothy Leonido, Frank Pasquale, Jared Stanley, and Gillian Walsh. Looking forward to seeing their projects. [Triple Canopy]
- Next week, the Frieze Art Fair will come to New York yet again; talks will include a keynote by UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith and a roundtable between Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot and David Remnick of the New Yorker. We’re sure these talks will fill up quickly—their lecture hall is pretty tiny. [Frieze via Artsbeat]
- Bill de Blasio has not yet addressed his promise to stop the Central Library Plan, and instead he’s kept $151 million in the budget for the renovation. Very fishy. [Bloomberg News]
- Artspace provides their own rankings system for “10 of the Most Influential MFA Programs in the World.” Not sure if they talked to anyone at the School of the Art Institute (where Corinna went for grad school); their excerpt focuses on their MA program in Visual and Critical Studies, not an MFA program. Thankfully, Artspace lists off the ridiculous amount you’ll pay in tuition by enrolling in any of these programs: Bard costs $55,000 per year; Columbia costs 51,676; and UCLA sounds like a bargain at $23,465 for out-of-state residents. Sigh. [Artspace]
- More on the ongoing battle between hedge funder and activist shareholder Daniel Loeb and the storied auction house Sotheby’s. Loeb has nominated three director candidates and now advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that shareholders vote for two of the three board nominees he has proposed, one of them being Loeb himself. [New York Times]
- Hyperallergic has partnered with London’s Lost Lectures. Tonight, The Awl co-founder and blogger Choire Sicha will talk along with Photographer Barbara Nitke, street performers Flex (is King) + Deirdre Schoo and scientist Marc Abrahams. Should be an interesting night. [Hyperallergic]
- At a White House event for kids, a 10-year-old girl hands Michelle Obama her dad’s resume, and says he’s been out of work for three years. [NPR]
- London’s Victoria & Albert Museum just made a pile of money. They’ve confirmed rumors that they are getting the blockbuster Alexander McQueen show. [Artnet]
- Kriston Capps continues his coverage on Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design. On April 7, the museum’s board, along with the boards of the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University were supposed to vote on how the Corcoran will be absorbed into these other two institutions. That deadline was skipped. [City Paper]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 24, 2014
We saw provisional painting, photos of detritus, and lots and lots of homorerotica.
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 24, 2014
- Time’s “100 Most Important People” is out. Sheikha al-Mayassa Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani has been dubbed “important” because she’s really rich, collects lots of art, and will make some of it available for view to the public. The piece was written by Takashi Murakami, who barely speaks English. Looks like the magazine found a translator. The other bullshit art entry is Marina Abramovic, with a write up by James Franco. Barack Obama does the write up for Pope Francis but also gets his own entry. [TIME]
- Sotheby’s expects pre-tax loss of $6 million for first quarter 2014, an improvement on $32 million loss for first quarter 213. Where exactly are they losing money? The press release doesn’t say. [Benzinga]
- Say goodbye to net neutrality. The F.C.C. has shifted its position and now supports an Internet with fast lanes and slow lines for web traffic. You can expect more from us on this today. [The New York Times]
- Chelsea real-estate woes continue, this time on 26th Street. Tony Shafrazi, Lehmann Maupin, and Stephen Haller will lose their entire building to developers who plan to bulldoze it in order to make a “130,000-square-foot commercial, office, community facility space.” [Gallerist]
- Bushwick will get a new art fair, the NEWD Art Show, at 592 Johnson Avenue. It’s set to run May 30 – June 1. [Hyperallergic]
- FREE CHOCOLATE-COVERED MARSHMALLOWS AT DAVID ZWIRNER! [artnet news]
- Art, fashion, and Michelle Obama:
Michelle Obama will cut the ribbon on Anna Wintour’s Costume Center at the Met on May 5 (morning of Met ball)
— John Koblin (@koblin) April 23, 2014
- Speculation over whether Art Cologne and other EU-based art fairs are slowly suffering from fewer tax breaks for art dealers. [Euronews]
- A portable masturbation hut. [Reddit]
- Yes! Now we can watch untold hours of British newsreels, thanks to the archive British Pathé, which has uploaded its entire archive of 85,000 films on YouTube. The featured video is of Arnold Schwarzenegger winning the Mr. Universe contest. [YouTube, h/t The Baffler]
- Is Detroit “the new Brooklyn”? ArtINFO interviews Jane Shulak, the founder of the Culture Lab Detroit Conference, a summit on building Detroit’s cultural industry. [BLOUIN ArtINFO]
- Three years after getting assaulted by police, OWS protestor and journalist has gotten a $55,000 settlement from the city. [ANIMAL]
- Omg! The Andy Warhol Museum has uncovered new Warhols, which were made on the Amiga computer program, and to this point trapped on floppy disks. They have been liberated. Here’s a video of him painting Debbie Harry. [The Warhol Museuml]
- Even more mystery art has been unearthed. A “virtually unknown portrait” by Gustav Klimt will be unveiled in May. Alas, “The identity of the sitter remains a mystery.” [The Art Newspaper]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 23, 2014
- All this week, the Art Market Monitor has been churning out doomsday scenarios for the collectoratti. The Italian art market is dying, and “Sadly, The Picasso Ceramics Market Isn’t For the Entry-Level Collector Anymore.” [The Art Market Monitor]
- This week at artnet Paddy Johnson interviews Nicholas O’Brien, a co-curator of the exhibition The New Romantics, currently on view at Eyebeam. [artnet news]
- More horrific news of bodies piling up in Chicago, aka, Chiraq. [The Daily Beast]
- The broken down World’s Fair towers in Flushing Meadows now have National Treasure status. There’s even talk of fixing them up! [New York Times]
- New York Magazine features a whole bunch of Internet celebrities, and that’s gotta be a boon for their site. We only knew a couple of them, but Eckhaus Latta got a shoutout from Mike the Ruler. [New York Magazine]
- 100 new emojis on Vine. The only way you can see any of them is to pause the video. Nicely done! [Vine]
- Looks like Paddle8 is doing well.
Alex Gilkes of @Paddle8 made winning $900k bid 4 Koons’ Fabergé egg wearing a 1966 @GirardPerregaux rose gold chrono. pic.twitter.com/KjXZ4p7ccz
— Jim Shi (@jimshi809) April 23, 2014
- Peter Schjeldahl, with his tender prose and passionate research, is hard to leave, but it’s finally time to walk away. Enough with the MoMA and Guggenheim retrospectives! [The New Yorker]
- For whatever reason, Roberta Smith ended up reviewing James Franco’s exhibition at Pace. She’s written about the actor-artist a lot. Thankfully, with this exhibition, she shows no mercy. Franco, she writes, seems informed by “confused desperation” and an “entitled narcissism.” She ends her piece with a death knell: “It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for him, while also wishing that someone or something would make him stop.” This is what we’ve all been thinking—that he needs to stop—and now she should never write about him again! [The New York Times]
- Start-ups beware of the Red Herring Award. The company informs nominees of their opportunity and then charges them $3,820 for the privilege. This article was written in 2013, but as the awards are coming up again, it seemed a good time to issue the reminder that this resembles a scheme. [TechCrunch]
- Judy Chicago is celebrating her 75th birthday with an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. During the press preview, she tells Village Voice reporter Lilly Lampe about her first meeting with critic Harold Rosenberg. “She brought her slides; he brought a hard-on.” [The Village Voice]
- A quiz to end all Buzzfeed quizzes: the New Inquiry’s darkly sarcastic “What briefcase full of money are you?” [New Inquiry]
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by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 18, 2014
Barack and Michelle Obama and the Easter Egg Roll
- People (Liam Neeson) are losing their shit over Bill de Blasio’s campaign to ban horsedrawn carriages. The anti-carriage people think that it’s inhumane to keep horses in the city; the pro-carriage people say that horse carriages are already under tons of scrutiny and don’t want the industry to die. De Blasio wants to replace the carriages with electric cars, but apparently this alternative had failed in San Francisco. [WNYC]
- The New York Times Editorial Board observes that Mayor Bill de Blasio has little to show for his first four months, but has made welcome promises to deal with the lagging Sandy recovery. Of the $1.45 billion in federal funds that has been allocated for post-Sandy rebuilding, only $380 million has been spent. There is much to do. [The New York Times]
- Downtown Brooklyn now has free wi-fi! [ANIMAL New York]
- PETA is angry at Michelle Obama for using real eggs in the Easter Egg Roll. [The Root]
- Chelsea Clinton announced she’s pregnant. USA Today weighed in saying, “It’s unclear how Chelsea’s pregnancy will affect Hillary Clinton, who is considering a race for president in 2016”, prompting rage around the web about the sexist undertones of the statement. It’s a weird comment probably stuck in as a means of attaching a small news story to a larger one. It’s horseracing and in 2016 Chelsea’s baby will be royality giving Hillary Clinton a grandma likeability boost. [USA Today via: The Li.st]
- Why do people check into Facebook. It’s no longer clear, says Jenna Wortham. [The New York Times]
- Glow-in-the-dark roads—such a good idea. [Ars Technica]
- Olafur Eliasson’s “Subtle Nows”: A bunch of light colored falling disks paired with poetry. Perfect for an acupuncture office. [Where-You-Are.com via: @Powhida]
- The Party Monster, a.k.a. Michael Alig, has been holed up in prison for 17 years, but according to this interview, he’s been able to Tweet from prison by dictating 140-character sayings over the phone to his book editor. Then she manually tweets them. [The Daily Beast]
- Another ridiculous op-ed from Taki’s Magazine, the aggressively bigoted society magazine created by the wealthy Greek journalist Taki Theodoracopulos. (We heard about him four months ago from this “cage match” throwdown that never happened with Charles Saatchi). “Modern feminism has become fascism and it’s making women miserable.” I hate this magazine. [Taki’s Magazine]
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