You searched for:

pussy riot

Pussy Grabs Back For Planned Parenthood In “Nasty Women” At Knockdown Center

by Emily Colucci on January 16, 2017

In the months since Donald Trump’s election, I’ve often wondered about the possibility of art to enact tangible change. Looking forward to four years of terrifying and potentially life-threatening rollbacks on progressive achievements, how can artists do more than just address these issues aesthetically?

Nasty Women at the Knockdown Center provides a practical answer by effectively combining art with tactics of grassroots organizing. As much a benefit as an art show, all the proceeds from the artwork sold will be donated to Planned Parenthood. And with the first step to repealing Obamacare passing in the Senate the night before the opening, the exhibition could not come at a better time.

Read the full article →

Working Through Post-Election Grief with This Riot Grrrl Playlist

by Michael Anthony Farley on November 18, 2016

For many of us feminists, the election of Donald Trump might just be the single worst event we’ve collectively experienced. This statement needs no litany of examples to back it up.

Of course, many people—myself included—have been glued to social media, religiously reading political commentary, the news, and critical theory to help process how royally fucked the world is. But honestly, the only thing that I have found to be remotely comforting is feminist punk.

Here’s my suggested playlist, paired with a stage of grieving correlated to each song.

Read the full article →

Wednesday Links: Transphobia, The 00s, Chewbacca Mom Make Comebacks

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on July 26, 2017

Image of the day: France is burning. By Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images [h/t The New York Times]

The latest news from the surreal hellscape that is our nation’s government is that Trump is banning transgender people from the military. Doesn’t it seem like the right wing always comes up with a culture wars bone to pick when their political/economic agenda (Russia investigation, healthcare repeal, etc…) is under siege? At any rate, this is terrible, but if laughing is therapeutic for you, watch this Samantha Bee bit in which she provides commentary to rambling speeches made by potentially drunk Republican congressmen about trans people in the military. How is our country this insane? [Facebook]
Pussy Riot and Les Enfants Terribles are fundraising for “an immersive theater project” in which the audience would get to experience the Pussy Riot ordeal. That includes everything from their infamous performance in a Russian church to their crazy trial and time in a labor camp. Sounds fun? [Kickstarter]
Here’s a new, pretty comprehensive list of grants and loans for artists and entrepreneurs. Lots of funding sources on here we’ve never heard of. [Insight Personal Finance]
Remember “Chewbacca Mom”? The Texas woman who rose to brief, unlikely fame because she laughed so hard wearing a Chewbacca mask in a parking lot on Facebook Live? Writer Alyssa Bereznak does, as she’s been following Candace Payne via Google alerts for the past year. Here she has a timeline of the viral sensation’s rise and fall in public favor. It’s fascinating. The internet is a weird (and judgemental) place. [The Ringer]
Phew. After much outrage (including plenty of cute tributes from artists included in this link) Microsoft announced that MS Paint would NOT be disappearing, but will be available for download from their app store. [artnet News]
Rumors have been flying that beloved Baltimore dive bar The Club Charles will be closing, starting August 1st, indefinitely. Some say it will reopen following renovations, but there are few details here. The 66 year old institution is basically like the evening office of the city’s art/theater/literati scene. It’s John Waters’ favorite bar, among countless other filmmakers, musicians, artists, and drunks. I (Michael) will be devastated if this is a permanent closure. [City Paper]
The Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan 1994 Museum will partner with @popculturediedin2009—an archive dedicated to the drama of the aughts—to mine the decade’s pop-culture. I’m not sure what to think of this. On the one hand, these scandals may already be a source of nostalgia, and therefore hold some enjoyment. On the other, is it not too soon for this? I keep thinking there’s got to be a better use of intellectual engagement than this—particularly given our current political climate. [artnet News]
Karen Loew makes the case for the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, and looks at what other cities are doing to stop the spread of chain stores, closure of neighborhood retail, and “high rent blight” that’s been hitting Manhattan so hard. Basically, New York is way behind on protecting legacy businesses. This is something every gallerist or artist with a studio (or really, anyone who enjoys bodega food) should be getting behind. [City Lab]
Related: The Zapatista-inspired Eastside Café (which functions as an art/activism/community space in East Los Angeles) managed to stand its ground against gentrification and buy their building from the landlord when developers came knocking. Amazing. [Remezcla]
2070 photographs by Annie Leibovitz were purchased by a wealthy patron in 2012 and donated to The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. That was a boon for Leibovitz who was struggling financially at the time. The problem is, while the donor purchased the work for 4.75 million, it’s valued at 20 million and the Canadian government doesn’t want to sign off on the deduction. The panel tasked with approving the donation has accepted that only some of the photographs are art. Also, it seems the valuation of the portfolio is less than that of the individual works, thus creating the disparity of value. [The New York Times]
A score for Acquavella Gallery: Phillip de Montebello, former head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will join their staff as curator of special exhibitions. [The New York Times]
Applications close in four days for the free 360 Xochi Quetzal artist/writer residency on Lake Chapala, Mexico. This place looks beautiful. [360 Xochi Quetzal]

Read the full article →

Wednesday Links: Time to Flee America, Live in Retro-Futuristic Tents on the Seine

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 1, 2017

centre-georges-pompidou-anniversary-architecture-paris-france_dezeen_1704_col_9

It’s the 40th anniversary of the glorious Centre Pompidou, and to celebrate the offices of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers have released a bevy of gorgeous archival images. One includes their riverside inflatable office, which looks like something out of A Clockwork Orange if it were a movie about a fun slumber party I would want to go to. [Dezeen]
Sean Spicer actually retweeted his own profile in The Onion, which labelled his job distributing “Robust and Clearly Articulated Misinformation”. For once, Spicer and the rest of the world see eye-to-eye on reality. [New York Magazine]
Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova will be speaking tonight at JHU. If you’re in Baltimore, go see her. She’s a gem we need now more than ever. [Johns Hopkins University]
Iranian collector Mohammed Afkhami has loaned an impressive slew of contemporary works from his country to Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum for the exhibition “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians.” That’s the kind of cultural exchange we sadly can’t look forward to in the United States anymore. [artnet News]
Contemporary Art Review has put out a somewhat vague call for works from artists worldwide. [NOT RANDOM ART]
The Thompson Family Foundation has given a staggering $10 million to the Museum of the City of New York to keep the exhibit New York at its Core “open to the public from now until Trump starts a nuclear war.” [Observer]
Anish Kapoor has joined the anti-Trump movement with a self-portrait: “I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me.” It’s a play on Joseph Beuys’ 1974 performance “I Like America and America Likes Me,” which appropriately began at Kennedy Airport. [Blouin Artinfo]
Art blog Saint Lucy has launched an online bookstore. Looking forward to seeing this grow! [Saint Lucy]
Holy crap! The young handyman from cult classic Grey Gardens, Jerry Torre, is an all-grown up artist now. His work is on view at Geary Contemporary until February 3rd. [The Art Newspaper]
What would happen if Trump cut all federal funding for the arts? Realistically, it might not be too much of a dent in the big-city art world, where grants from private organizations and deep-pocketed institutions keep things afloat. Those who would suffer the most would be rural Americans (i.e. Trump voters), who rely largely on government arts funding for basic things like radio stations. I’ve heard what those people listen to on the radio. I say screw em like they would us over a Chris Ofili show. [The New York Times]
Why are the Republicans constantly going after the damn NEA? “Because art is one of the few things that has the power to liberate, to overthrow, to topple, to rebel, to express the forbidden, to cut the tyrants down to size? Perhaps it is a sort of secret language, only for the ‘elite’: But in this case, the elite are not the wealthy. These elite are those with open, rich and thoughtful minds.” [Salon]
Activists are already calling for another general strike, this one on February 17th, the day before Presidents Day. Hell yeah! Let’s make this a monthly thing. [Mic]

Read the full article →

Wednesday Links: Burger King to Honor Political Dissident With Performance Art Burgers

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on August 31, 2016

Pyotr Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the Red Square in protest of Putin. Now there's going to be a Burger King meal about it.

Petr Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the Red Square in protest of Putin. Now there’s going to be a Burger King meal about it.

Weirdest art news we’ve read in awhile: fast food giant Burger King is making a series of burgers inspired by Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky for its Saint Petersburg location. Pavlensky is famous for nailing his balls to Moscow’s Red Square, setting fire to a government office building, and sewing his mouth shut to protest the arrest of Pussy Riot. He’s not exactly the type of political figure usually associated with international corporate junk food. [BBC News]

“Of the 40 galleries and nonprofits that took part in the first edition of the NADA fair, only 13 remain in business—Derek Eller Gallery, Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, James Fuentes, Galerie Zink, Inman Gallery, Moniquemeloche, Momenta Art, Taro Nasu Gallery, Participant Inc, Peres Projects, Kavi Gupta, Hiromi Yoshii, and ZieherSmith.” ARTnews tracks down what became of the first class of NADA, and the results are depressing. [ARTnews]

The news above makes us ask: what is the average lifespan of a gallery? Does it map to what gallerist and art fair founder Edward Winkleman once described as the average length of time an emerging artist’s work remains profitable for a gallery—seven years? [Art F City]

In other NADA news, the fair’s Miami Beach iteration is moving back to the Deauville this year. Thank God. Fontainebleau sucked the life out of NADA. [ARTnews]

Star Trek Beyond’s weird/desperate cross-promotion with Rihanna was pretty terrible. But for the film’s Chinese release, they replaced her with pop star Zhang Jie and an even more terrible track. His song sounds a bit like it was written by an algorithm in 15 minutes, which at least makes it a little more interesting that the U.S. brand of schlock. [Fansided]

People in one South Carolina apartment complex have convinced the local police that clowns are in the woods offering money to children and flashing laser pointers. The Atlantic seems to be the only publication wondering if some kids just made this bizarre story up. [The Atlantic]

Lisa Crossman discusses the state and importance of art criticism in Boston. It sounds like institutions get most of the mainstream press coverage, and the criticism that emerges from those institutions tends to focus on its own bubble. It’s a great read about the need for criticism in general. [Big Red & Shiny]

Starchitect Renzo Piano will lead the cleanup effort in Italy after their major earthquake. Amongst other buildings Piano designed the new Whitney building in New York’s meatpacking district. [The Guardian]

Can cities be too tall? According to most Londoners they answer is yes. Residents associate tall buildings with rich people and are increasingly voicing their opinion that cities should not be so dense. The anti-density movement is heating up. [Curbed]

An interview with artist, activist and Arts Advocacy Project Program Associate Joy Garnett from the Arts Advocacy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship. She discusses Artist Rights, a new online resource that informs artists on their rights and what is and isn’t protected under the first amendment. [Creative Capital]

Read the full article →

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: LOLs & Other Post-Internet Feels

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on April 13, 2016

This is a good week for the arts. Wednesday night, head to e-flux for performances by Viktoria Naraxsa and a talk from Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. Thursday night promises even more glamour, when Malik Gaines discusses disco legend Sylvester at The Artist’s Institute. Meanwhile, Olga Balema will be presenting her modified map pieces at the Swiss Institute.

Friday night, you’ll finally be glad for the G Train, with the all-day Theorizing the Web conference at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens followed by a night of openings in Brooklyn. Be sure to catch performances at the opening of Low Grade Euphoria by the Flushing Ave station, then continue to Gowanus for openings at Ortega y Gasset and Trestle Gallery. Saturday, the Cue Foundation will teach you the all-important skill of art handling, followed by an evening of unpacking a different type of baggage at Kimbery-Klark by Alex Ito and Masami Kubo. Sunday afternoon, hang with queer performance artists at Flux Factory for the latest installment of the do you: open source series.

Read the full article →

Tuesday Links: Auction Results, Auctions on Cruise Ships

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on November 10, 2015

On Friday, street artist Retna (real name: Marquis Lewis) smashed a bunch of ceramics at Soze, a West Hollywood gallery. Apparently this tantrum is the latest in a long string of violent outbursts and assaults on both artwork and gallery employees. Maybe everyone should stop inviting this dick to openings? [artnet News]

Kerr Houston muses on the obsolescence and glamour—or lack thereof—of aging Art Deco buildings in three cities. [BmoreArt]

Rafael Schacter convincingly argues that street art festivals such as Miami’s Wynwood Walls provide little but wallpaper for gentrification. It’s a pretty obvious observation, but one worth reminding people of. [The Conversation]

Why does reading The New York Times auction reports always feel like reading auction house sales copy? The breathless first line of a report by Robin Progrebin and Scott Reyburn, “In an overheated art market where anything seems possible…” Liu Yiquin, a Chinese taxi-driver turned stock market billionaire, is now the proud owner of a reclining nude by Amedeo Modigliani. He purchased the work last night at Christie’s for $170.4 million with fees. Some other stuff sold too. 34 lots brought in $491.4 million. [The New York Times]

Two, more balanced auction reports: Nate Freeman at Artnews notes the weak sell through rate of 77 percent and the difference between this auction and last May’s (which was 97 percent!). Brian Boucher over at Artnet news, noted that auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen said the 10 works that didn’t sell were perhaps “just not good enough.” I guess the story the auction house wants to push here is that there is that art market bubble is doing just fine. It’s just the quality of the work available that’s the issue. [artnet News, Artnews]

Pyotr Pavlensky, the Russian performance artist who famously sewed his mouth shut to protest Pussy Riot’s imprisonment and later nailed his balls to the Red Square, has been arrested for setting fire to the door of Russia’s Federal Security Service building. [The New York Times]

A new exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum pays tribute to Marie Spartali Stillman. Stillman was often a model for the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a painter in her own right, but being a woman in the Victorian era, she never rose to fame like her male peers. [BBC News]

An upcoming Alexander Calder exhibition at the Tate Modern will feature a restoration of the sculpture “Acrobats”. The piece depicts a male and female acrobat, who have been in separate collections since 1929, when someone cut off one of the legs to use the wire for a repair. Now, they’ll be reunited. [The Guardian]

Okay, is this the dumbest art project ever? It’s Vincent Van Gogh’s ear, constructed from genetic samples artist Diemut Strebe took from Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother. It’s grown tissue displayed in fancy petri dish. [artnet News[

This is a thing? Apparently cruise ships have art auctions. This recollection from an art history major who found herself working for a cruise ship art company is pretty funny. I would have (incorrectly) guessed that getting to be on a cruise and talking about art all day would be less horrible than it is. [Travel Pulse]

Read the full article →

Friday Links: Hey Girl, Did You Get that Eviction Notice?

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on August 21, 2015

Bay Area queers take on the techie-led gentrification of San Francisco in the above music video “Google Google Apps Apps”. Can someone on the East Coast please write us an equally amazing anthem? [Youtube]

After much speculation, it turns out Banksy is behind the subversive amusement park “Dismaland” in a small British town after all. The temporary attraction offers sculptures by other artists including Damien Hirst, a performance by Pussy Riot, and typical theme-park tourist traps tweaked to offer a bleak look at late capitalism. [Colossal]

An office building renovation near Bryant Park has revealed a mid-century modern tesserae mural by Max Spivak. It’s being restored and will be on display and accessible to the public soon. [The New York Times]

The privately-owned Academy of Art University has translated millions of dollars of federally-subsidized student loans into a real estate empire for one San Francisco family. Beyond the cost to taxpayers, the school has an abysmal dropout rate and the few students who do graduate are faced with mountains of debt and few job prospects. Its abysmal graduation rates—32%—have put its accreditation in jeopardy. This sounds like a very, very good thing. [Forbes]

Hedge fund manager Bruce Berkowitz has been trying to build a private art museum with offices for his firm in Miami. Earlier this year, it looked like the city had rejected plans for the bunker-like building, which would house massive Richard Serra sculptures, a Basquiat, and other works from Berkowitz’s collection. Now, the project seems to be moving forward. [The Art Newspaper]

“Going to a sports art gallery is a lot cooler than it sounds” Sports Illustrated gets into the art criticism game. [Sports Illustrated]

How can you spot a fake painting? A breakdown of tricks and anecdotes. [Salon]

Kingston, in the Hudson River Valley, has converted an old mill into 55 units of affordable artist housing and exhibition space—one more potential lure in the exodus of city artists seeking more space for less money upstate. [Mid Hudson News]

Here’s a GIF of a Delta aircraft getting hit by lightning in Houston. It’s oddly satisfying to watch. [Gawker]

In architecture, postmodernism’s aesthetic triumphs and failures aren’t unique—to some extent, almost all buildings are victims or successes of fickle fashion. What’s truly the defining, problematic legacy of the movement is its impact on public housing. As the Thatcher/Reagan years eviscerated the English-speaking world’s social services, postmodern architectural thinking used modernist architecture as a scapegoat for the resulting problems. It was a diversion that somehow is still accepted widely. [Dezeen]

Life lessons from the older and wiser to the younger. A little cutesy, but fun nonetheless. [CBC]

Artist Daniel Buren is considering legal action against the city of Lyon, France over lack of maintenance of his 1994 Place des Terreaux public artwork. [artnet News]

Read the full article →

Friday Links: It’s Cold

by Corinna Kirsch on February 20, 2015

New York (and me) right now.

On the rise of the art fairs: “This shift in the market has been problematic for many traditional art galleries, which are going out of business at an alarmingly steady rate.” [Art Media Agency]
Hahahahaha. The New Republic claims, in one headline, “The Privileged Are Taking Over the Arts.” Oh, thank you for warning me because I had never noticed all the rich people in the art world! [The New Republic]
CCA is now publishing the online art mags Art Practical and Daily Serving. Another college/non-profit crossover: Coronograph, Texas’ newest online art magazine. The interview-only pub will be jointly published by Dallas’ Southern Methodist University and Austin’s Pastelegram. [Glasstire]
HNWI Alert: Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has gifted the Museum of Contemporary Art with $10 million. In return, he will receive an art gallery in his namesake. On February 10, Griffin purchased a very large Richter at auction. Maybe Chicago will be able to see that. [Bloomberg]
“[T]he works are porous, they leak out or into each other, and their material realities exist with or without the gaze of a person.” Artist Pierre Huyghe on his current show at LACMA. [Art in America]
Nadya and Masha of Pussy Riot have released an English-language song and music video named “I Can’t Breathe,” after Eric Garner’s chokehold death. [The Guardian]
This spring, expect to see Op-art fashion on the cool kids who can afford wearing Kenzo. [Opening Ceremony]

Read the full article →

Wednesday Links: Runway Jedis

by Paddy Johnson Andrew Wagner Whitney Kimball on August 13, 2014

A runway jedi by Konstantin Kakanias. Image courtesy of T Magazine.

Apparently, we can look forward to seeing Jedis on the runway this fall. [T-Magazine]
Baltimore’s City Paper spotted Pussy Riot in Baltimore, shooting for the next season of House of Cards. [City Paper]
A well of linkage here from Carolina Miranda on the history of a largely-unseen 1992 war photo of an Iraqi man burnt to a crisp trying to escape his truck on the “Highway of Death”. She couches it in the history of painting and photography, shows that war photos are an essential piece in art, and that “there’s something a little weird about a culture that revels in…the blood-spurting, limb-chopping, brain-eating horror of “The Walking Dead” but can’t handle it when a dead guy shows up on the news.” The essay reminds me of the final scene in John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, which argues that in placing ads next to stories of war “one can only say this culture is mad.” [The LA Times]
Here’s proof that, for two days, a secret noise festival happened in a basement in the Rockaways. “At the Burning Fleshtival, ‘Hey, man, can you help me out?’ really means ‘Hey, man, check this rock chained around my balls for me?’” Marina Galperina chronicles Burning Fleshtival. [Animal New York]
The Washington Post profiles Save the Corcoran, a group of students, staff, and faculty who have filed a lawsuit as a last-ditch effort to stop the Corcoran’s merger with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. (The story runs with a very, very, very, very, very dramatic photo of the group). If the deal goes ahead, then the National Gallery would take the collection– dissolving one of the oldest museums in the country– and George Washington University would absorb the art school. The judge will rule on August 20th. [The Washington Post]
If you’re having trouble understanding why a merger would be such a disaster, then read Philip Kennicott’s very convincing argument against it. He makes this sound like another Cooper Union case, of a willfully neglectful board that will be rewarded for failing the institution they’ve been appointed to protect. [The Washington Post]
Two German artists have taken responsibility for those white flags that replaced the American ones on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. They attribute the project only as a celebration of “the beauty of public space” and the German-born engineer John Roebling, who designed the bridge. [New York Times]
A Fox News pundit suggested that we shouldn’t be taking nutritional advice from Michelle Obama, because the First Lady “needs to drop a few.” [Politico]
Film noir actress Lauren Bacall has died. She was awesome at playing a bitch. The Hairpin has pulled some choice quotes from her Vanity Fair profile, like “I wasn’t put on earth to be liked.” Can the Internet please give us more people like this? [The Hairpin, Vanity Fair]
The Frick made an app to “engage with youth.” Should we expect video tours of the collection with rappers next? [ARTnews]
The National Portrait Gallery has installed a photo of Robin Williams. Also, Artnet news has a story about how Williams agreed to play the genie in Aladdin, as long as his voice wouldn’t be used to sell merchandising. Disney obviously violated that agreement, so they gave him a Picasso self-portrait as an apology. But the painting didn’t go with anything in the house. [Artnet]
The Met is displaying all 17 of its van Goghs for the first time in a decade, and in response, Peter Schjedahl has written about how he learned to love the crowd-pleasing painter. “What makes van Gogh so magnetic? Picasso nailed it: “The drama of the man,” he said.” [The New Yorker]

Read the full article →

← Previous Results

Next Results →

pussy riot

Get Our Newsletter!

Like Us On Facebook!

Follow Art F City

What is Art F City?