Photo by Ian Dickson / Rex Features ( 750588ck )
X-Ray Spex – Poly Styrene
- Gross. Developer JDS turned a former Gowanus art gallery into a sales office for luxury condos. And designer Anna Karlin has staged it with “sculptures” made from the building’s finishing materials. [Curbed]
- Whoa. Someone dug up a 1979 episode of the BBC show Arena titled “Who is Poly Styrene?” It’s a really awkward 40 minute documentary about the female punk pioneer. [Dangerous Minds]
- This skillfully written profile on Chuck Close questions whether Close has changed over the last couple of years. The author recounts interviews where he couldn’t keep track of his stories long enough to tell them, his latest work is garish and unskilled, last year, he was mistakenly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Close has even had trouble painting—painter’s block. Set aside a bit of time and emotional energy to read this sad, end of life story. [New York Times Magazine]
- A janitor at Art Southampton threw out a Will Kurtz sculpture (which comprised a trashcan full of trash-like art) and the internet cares because Brooke Shields curated the booth. [Observer]
- Speaking of the Hamptons, The Parrish Art Museum MidSummer Party last weekend featured a “Radical Seafaring” group exhibition about art on the water. The curator, Andrea Grover, argues that “offshore art” is a movement to be considered alongside Land Art. Or maybe they just threw a beach party for people who live for nautical-themed everything? If the art world’s elites do go full-on #seapunk, I [Michael] claim the drag names “Regatta Cotillion” and “Yacht-Club Abramović”. [ARTNews]
- And in other beach town news, Raymond Roy of Yarmouth, MA has set off a free speech debate by making a sand art mermaid sculpture with breasts considered too big by many an upstanding Cape Cod citizen. [Death & Taxes]
- I love that artnet News has filed their listicle naming collectors who own the largest sculptures under “Analysis”. It’s difficult getting through this piece—who cares who bought what—but the images are nice, so it’s worth it for that. [artnet News]
- This potentially-problematic slideshow listicle comes with a multi-paragraph introduction/disclaimer aimed at defusing a semantics debate in the comments section: “Homoerotic Art by Straight Artists”. [The Advocate]
