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Alexander Calder

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: A Hot (In A Good Way) New Fair

by Michael Anthony Farley on July 11, 2017

While the big galleries are still at the beach, the city’s museums and artist-run initiatives continue to keep us on our toes. Case and point: the Whitney’s opening the first US retrospective of Brazilian art/activism pioneer Hélio Oiticica on Friday. Speaking of art/activism, there are plenty of opportunities to get engaged this week, including talks at SVA on Wednesday and SOHO20 gallery on Sunday. The weekend’s real highlight, though, is Crushed, the inaugural Brooklyn Dirty Book Fair. Organized by former AFC teammate Matthew Leifheit, we’re expecting that to be great. Artist-made porn? Weird performances involving cake? A pop-up exhibition of vintage queer zines? Check, check, and check! We’ll see you there!

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Thursday Links: The Holodeck Has Arrived

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on July 6, 2017

Whoa. Artist Joanie Lemercier has developed a projection mapping technique that allows for true 3-D video to be projected into space, far better than existing hologram technology. [Facebook]
As the G20 Conference approaches 1000 art zombies took over the city of Hamburg Germany to protest political apathy. Apparently they eventually broke out of their clay, shedding their zombie personas and political malaise. I (Paddy) appreciate the message but geez this is dumb. Is it too much to ask for a bit more creativity when coming up with these performances? [artnet News]
China’s internet freedoms crackdown gets worse. Now it’s illegal to depict homosexuality, drug use, or prostitution online. [Artforum]
Hobby Lobby, the right-wing craft supply chain, has been ordered to return thousands of looted artifacts to the Middle East. The evangelical Christian owners had been using the corporation to smuggle antiquities into the United States. [The New York Times]
The Calder show gets a good review from Andrea Scott who seems especially appreciative of the show’s curation. Art handlers have been hired to “activate” the mobile sculptures three times a day but thanks to some careful selections the exhibition isn’t a circus. [The New Yorker]
62 new units of affordable housing in the Bronx are being offered up in the housing lottery. The application deadline is September 1. Those units range in pricing from $884 per month to $1740. [Curbed]
Maybe there’s no other city in the world where an art gallery based out of a car makes as much sense as in Los Angeles. That space, Gallery 1993, is one of many inhabiting unconventional spots across LA—from trucks to elevators. [The Guardian]
The Hepworth Wakefield art gallery in West Yorkshire, UK has been named the 2017 Art Fund museum of the year. I (Michael) have never even heard of this museum! We’ve apparently gotta check it out. [The Guardian]

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Tuesday Links: Draw Sean Spicer Like One of Your French Girls

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on June 27, 2017

Sean Spicer

In Los Angeles, the battle between Chicano anti-gentrification activists and gallerists in Boyle Heights continues to escalate. Maybe they should just team up to fight for something like New York’s proposed Small Business Jobs Survival Act together? [NPR]
CNN hires veteran sketch artist William J. Hennessy Jr. to record press briefings now that cameras are no longer allowed. They should hire Molly Crabapple to do some work for them too. [artnet News]
Talking Pictures opens today at the Met. For the exhibition, curators asked six pairs of artists to communicate with one another by sending photos from their smartphones back and forth. The show comprises records of that exchange in various formats. It seems kinda silly. [The Verge]
Sarah Douglas at ARTnews offers a recent history of gallery closings. The list does a good job at providing an overview of what’s happening in the industry and refutes the gallerist argument that these closures simply reflect the fact that there are too many galleries in operation. It’s not like these were bad galleries that didn’t make it because they were bad at the game, somehow. These were great galleries and businesses, often in operation for more than a decade, that should have been able to make it work. The business for lower tier galleries may not be sustainable. [ARTnews]
A lot of Alexander Calder’s sculptures and mobiles are meant to move, so they need to handled to make that happen. As such, The Whitney has hired “activators” for its new Calder show and the Times has a new feature showing them in motion. SO. COOL. [The New York Times]
Curbed provides an exhaustive account of just why Penn Station sucks so much and why this is going to be the “Summer of Hell” for commuters passing through. [Curbed]
Tarot card reader Maria Pilar Abel Martínez claims Salvador Dalí is her father and has taken the estate to court to prove it. No big deal except the court, siding with Martinez, ordered Dali’s dead body exhumed so a paternity test could be administered. If she is proven to be the heiress she would be entitled to a portion of the estate. The estate is expected to appeal. [Hyperallergic]
Rea McManara wrote about Alison S. M. Kobayashi’s detective work and performance when it debuted in Toronto last year. Now, it’s all the rage in New York. In fact, from the recordings she based her work on, the only brother still alive, Larry Newburge, gets choked-up when discussing it with the Times. It sounds like a great, great piece. [The New York Times]
Magazzino, or “warehouse” in Italian, has joined the ranks of museums in the Hudson River Valley. It’s the brainchild of collectors Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, and will showcase works from their collection of Arte Povera works from postwar Italy. [The Art Newspaper]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Mexico City Edition

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on February 1, 2016

¡Estamos en México D.F.!

We’re here for the art fairs ZONA MACO and Material, but there’s literally so much going on in this city of 20+ million people that it’s only Monday and we’re overwhelmed. There’s no shortage of art events. We’ve done our best to collect some of the shows we think should be on your must-see list, ranging from heady shows such as that of artists Virginia Colwell and Emre Hüner at Iniciativa Curatorial MARSO to the fusion of more minimal and playful aesthetics by José León Cerrillo at josé garcía. If you think there’s anything we should add to our list let us know. And look to the blog tomorrow for our Mexico City Weekend Guide. There’s literally so much worthy of your attention here we had to split our post in two!

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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]

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Thanks, Wikipedia: Happy Birthday to Marcel Duchamp!

by Andrew Wagner on July 28, 2014

Happy birthday, Marcel Duchamp! In honor of the famed Dadaist, who would have turned 127 today, our second installment of “Thanks, Wikipedia” is a selection of rarely discussed facts on the artist, all found in Wikipedia.

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Friday Links: Flooding the Art World

by Corinna Kirsch on June 13, 2014

Alexander Calder, “Waves,” 1973.

Problems continue to rack up at Louise Blouin Media. The New York Post finds an anonymous source who claims Art + Auction Senior Editor Julie Baumgartner resigned over a flooding in the publication’s offices that resulted in a mold outbreak. Louise Blouin refused to pay for the clean up. [New York Post]
Poet Charles Wright has been appointed the nation’s poet laureate. You can read one of his sad poems here. [TIME]
Anti-minimalism artist Sterling Ruby is now a fashion designer. [T Magazine]
Here’s your new doomsday scenario: We’re running out of IP addresses! [Ars Technica]
Out in Marfa, Texas, Ballroom Marfa has “postponed indefinitely” its drive-in theater project. Co-founders Fairfax Dorn and Virginia Lebermann cited fundraising as an issue. It always is. [Glasstire]
Is it okay to take Instagrams at Auschwitz? [The Awl]
Tired of responding to texts? Set up the bell hooks answering service and let everyone you know you’re a feminist who doesn’t like to text back. [The Hairpin]
“Can you tell me, is Petra Cortright a feminist?” asks a curator who doesn’t get what’s happening with the under-30 generation; specifically, she doesn’t understand all the hype surrounding the DIS Magazine aesthetic, citing the work’s general lack of political or theoretical awareness. In defense of the young, Artforum claims that “…the culture propelled by DIS and affiliated parties like GHE20G0TH1K felt like a life-affirming, gender-fluid, multiracial utopia.” Please point me in the direction of this utopia because I have yet to see it. [Artforum]
Do not hire a Chinese artist to make knock offs of someone else’s sculptures—you will get your comeuppance. Real estate developer Igor Olenicoff was sued by sculptor Don Wakefield over six sculptures that he claimed looked just like his; Wakefield received $450,000 in damages. [Artnet news]