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Make Plans For Common Field Convening Los Angeles

by Michael Anthony Farley on June 30, 2017

Everyone working in the arts should attend this year’s Common Field Convening in November. Members are invited to propose panels, conversation sessions, working groups, workshops, teach-ins, reports from the field, and projects.

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Monday Links: Don’t Blame Roberta Smith for Donald Trump

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on May 15, 2017

Jeff Koons’ sculpture “Play-Doh 1994-2014” has paved the way for Donald Trump, according to Alex Melamid. Is it because there’s a melty orange blob in the center and a weird yellow thing hanging off the top?

Of everything that’s been written about Trump’s unlikely ascendence and the art world, Alex Melamid’s recent piece in TIME might just be the most specious and bizarre. According to Melamid, artists and critics have created a culture that idolizes avant-garde thinking, infantilism, and publicity above all else—thus legitimizing Trump’s outrageous approach to candidacy and governing. Two of the most laughable moments: Melamid citing Roberta Smith’s praise of Jeff Koons’ “Play Doh” sculptures (because the average Trump voter is an avid NYT Arts reader, I’m sure?) and the wildly out-of-touch statement “plagiarism in the arts has mutated into what’s now called appropriation, a term stripped of any negative judgment.” LOL. [TIME]
For anyone else who ever thought the Harvard campus reminded them of Hogwarts, you’ll enjoy this bit of news that sounds like something out of Harry Potter. The Harvard Art Museums is restaging “The Philosophy Chamber,” a sort of wunderkammer from the university’s early history that became the basis for the museums’ present collections. [The Harvard Crimson]
A lottery has opened for affordable housing units in a new Long Island City high rise, starting at under $1,000/month. Apply now! There are only 34 slots, sadly. [Curbed]
Coming as a shock to no one, Anne Imhof’s “Faust” has snagged a Golden Lion at Venice. The “health goth”-esque performance was by far the most talked-about piece of the Biennale. [ARTnews]
Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is being lauded as the biggest and most important exhibition of Cuban art in recent history. Patricia Restrepo, however, feels that the Cisneros-backed show is lacking in nuance. We haven’t seen the show ourselves, but if you’re in Texas, it looks like a must-see. [Terremoto]
AFC friend Jeanette Doyle has launched “CF” at the Research Pavilion in Venice and is looking for artists and curators to participate. The framework: you chose a nation you want to represent and an art work and stage it. CF will present these staged works via a series of projections chosen at random with the help of a computer algorithm. Deadline for submissions is August 11th. Submit here. [Art & Education]
Steven H Silberg has launched an art-making project titled “In Care of the White House”. Artists are invited to create works in response to the Trump administration, which the organization will document and send to the White House, with the idea that all the pieces will end up as a document of dissent in the National Archives for posterity. [In Care of the White House]
Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips are looking to auction off over $1 billion worth of art this week, including a 6-foot Basquiat at Sotheby’s that’s valued at $60 million. These auctions are being watched closely as a litmus test for the art market. Since Russian and Middle Eastern bidders have retreated from the auction scene due to lower oil prices, it’s been a buyer’s-market-boon for American and Asian collectors. But now the market might’ve bounced back, as the auction houses are hoping. [CNBC]
15 Art Deco buildings not to miss. [Curbed]

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Thursday Links: Get Your £1,705 IKEA Shopping Bag by Balenciaga

by Michael Anthony Farley on April 20, 2017

balenciaga

Balenciaga has released a “knockoff” of those blue IKEA shopping bags… which costs £1,705. The peculiar logic of late capitalism keeps the LOLs coming. [Dezeen]
Peter Garritano photographs New Yorkers he meets through Craigslist’s “Strictly Platonic” friend-seeking section. These are surprisingly less sad than one would expect. But some of the ads are really, really strange. And borderline not platonic at all. [The New Yorker]
The DOT is seeking proposals for a new public artwork/design object for the Canal Street Triangle for a project called “Gateways to Chinatown”. The selected proposal will receive a $900,000 budget. [Curbed]
Happy 4/20. Why is today Marijuana Appreciation Day? Like most stoner stories, it’s murky and complicated. [WJLA]
Hmmm. Alex Jones now considers himself a “performance artist” (in defense of the craziest of his rants, while in court during a nasty divorce). I’ve long suspected this of Ann Coulter, but always suspected Jones was just legitimately out of his mind. [The Huffington Post]
Here’s news that should make most city dwellers laugh: residents of a luxury highrise in London are suing the Tate Modern because visitors to the museum’s outdoor spaces have views into the floor-to-ceiling glass apartments. Apparently the condo owners didn’t understand the whole “glass houses” adage? Following this logic, does the museum have the right to sue the apartment owners for their views? [artnet News]
Wow, I had no idea Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett was an artist! Hopefully the exhibition Mentoring a Muse: Charles Umlauf & Farrah Fawcett at Austin’s Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum can disabuse us all of that oversight. [ARTnews]

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Wednesday Links: NYC’s Most-Cocaine-Worthy Hotel Lobby Landmarked

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 18, 2017

The UN Plaza Hotel, Courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates

Artist Emily Spivack has opened a T-shirt store, which only sells plain white, medium t-shirts, in honor of President Obama. The piece is in reference to an inside joke POTUS once made about not wanting to make decisions, and is presented through the Honolulu Museum of Art. [Hyperallergic]
Applications are open for Terrault Contemporary’s second annual juried exhibition. Terrault is one of our favorite artist-run spaces in Baltimore, and this year’s jury comprises artists Stephanie Barber, Mina Cheon, and Amy Sherald. This should be good, apply! [Terrault Contemporary]
Applications are also open for a two-year fellowship at Washington, DC’s Hamiltonian. This is one of the capital’s best arts spaces, and the program is pretty tricked-out. It’s open only to artists without gallery representation, and applications close Wednesday March 1st. [Hamiltonian Artists]
The National Parks Service is struggling to find space to accommodate the dozens of huge demonstrations that will accompany Trump’s inauguration in Washington, DC. There are now an estimated 1 million people planning protests, scattered among all 50 states and 37 countries across every continent. Yes. We will be striking, and have a guide for protests and other events in some of the cities where we have the most readers. [USA Today]
Yay! The UN Plaza Hotel’s retro-glam interiors are now a NYC Landmark. [Curbed]
86 artists were displaced from the massive Sample-Studios in Cork, Ireland last month to make way for a demolition/development project. They’ve documented it across social media. [YouTube]
Nancy Spector, the new chief curator of the Brooklyn Museum, shares her wisdom for balancing hectic nonprofit/online feminist/family life. My favorite gems: she writes best at 3:00 a.m. (samesies!) and sets aside one day a week to see art shows at other institutions. [The Cut]
There’s some academic debate about the veracity of a maybe-Velázquez painting at Florida’s Ringling Museum of Art. The painting is a portrait of Spain’s King Philip IV, and new scans reveal that the author had repositioned the monarch’s legs to make him look less portly, and added more fashionable garments on top of his armor. [The Art Newspaper]
Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky, of nailing-his-balls-to-Red-Square-fame, is seeking political asylum in France. [The New York Times]

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Thursday Links: Storm Systems of Art and Politics

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on October 20, 2016

From James Bridle’s “Cloud Index” website.

Surprise, surprise. Ryder Ripps, the artist known for his Donald Trump-like vacuous chest thumping and misogynistic paintings was interviewed last night as a Donald Trump supporter. His biggest concern? The wall between Mexico and the US. “I just hope they build it high enough,” he said. “Because people climb walls.” The artist then updated his Facebook to brag about duping a reporter into believing he was a Trump supporter when he actually supports Bernie Sanders. [The Guardian]

Dezeen is a blog we enjoy for many reasons, including their weekly round up of notoriously snarky reader comments. This one might just take the cake. Responding to a reverse-vaulted pizzeria interior, reader TFO remarked “I feel violated. Cis male architecture sitting on my face.” Architecture criticism is starting to look a lot like art criticism. [Dezeen]

Thinking of funding your brilliant project through Kickstarter? Maybe reconsider… factories in China are ripping off design ideas from the internet before they even hit their own production start. [Quartz]

So, that naked statue of Donald Trump mostly elicited plenty of laughs (and one high-profile theft) but when a similar sculpture of nude Hillary Clinton was erected in Downtown Manhattan this week it caused a minor violent street brawl. A National Museum of the American Indian employee (identified only as “Nancy”) toppled the sculpture by Anthony Scioli (maybe?) and enacted a pretty comical tug-of-war with the artist that ended with Nancy sitting on top of it. Of all the borderline hilarious/cringe-worthy confrontations this trainwreck of an election has stoked, this art fight is probably the most of both. [New York Daily News]

Bethany “Sick Din” Dinsick is seeking music videos from artists for a screening at Bushwick’s Otion Front Studios on November 1st. Email her submissions at bdinsick@gmail.com. [Facebook]

Can anyone else figure out James Bridle’s “Cloud Index”? The artwork/website maps cloud patterns to potential outcomes of the Brexit vote, and talks about cloud seeding as a form of propaganda, as well as cloud computing. It’s a really pretty website, but what exactly is the relationship between the clouds and the vote? It brings Spurious Correlations to mind. [Serpentine Gallery]

Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde’s smog-eating mini-tower has come to Beijing. In tests in Rotterdam, it sucked about 60% of pollutants from a small area, which were then made into jewelry. In far more polluted Beijing, however, data on its effectiveness won’t be made public. [Forbes] According to Chinese press, the tower (which is installed in the capital’s 798 arts district) hasn’t really impressed locals. [ECNS]

Carolina Miranda reports on why memes have greater currency this election than artwork. [Culture: High & Low]

Amid investigations of corruption and money laundering, the US Justice Department has seized some pretty valuable paintings from Jho Low, an aide to the Malaysian Prime Minister. Now art dealer David Nahmad, of Monaco, is claiming a Monet in the collection actually belongs to him. Although he attempted to sell the painting to Low, and received a $2 million wire transfer, he reports that the deal fell through. This story ought to get juicier as it develops. [International Business Times]

Turns out there’s lots of poisonous heavy metals in paint. Not exactly a surprise, and the writer doesn’t seem to understand that while cobalt blue is more expensive and toxic than its cheaper cousin french ultramarine blue, there are actual differences in the color. It’s useful, though, because it does offer examples of colors made with heavy metals and their knockoffs. [The Observer]

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Deadline Reminder: Submit to We Are SO Not Getting the Security Deposit Back; a Guide to Defunct Artist-Run Spaces

by Michael Anthony Farley on September 27, 2016

Reminder: the deadline for submissions to We Are SO Not Getting the Security Deposit Back; a Guide to Defunct Artist-Run Spaces is this Saturday, October 1st. So send the completed questionnaire at the bottom of the page, along with any photos of your space you’d like to see reproduced in glorious zine format to submissions@artfcity.com

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Thursday Links: Mexican Tolerance Museum’s Trump Invitations

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

Trump

Ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico, the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City (which has a program of artworks and exhibitions about war, genocide, racism, etc…) has been posting messages to him on their social media accounts. My favorite: “FOR YOU IT’S FREE.” [Instagram]

The Italian government, which likes to think of itself as a preservation expert, really didn’t want Venice to go on UNESCO’s list of endangered sites. But Venice is pretty endangered, largely from an out-of-control tourism industry. [The Art Newspaper]

Ramin Shokrizade used the economic model of a multiplayer online game to figure out what’s wrong with our IRL economy, years before the recession hit. Basically, property taxes should be higher to keep speculation in check. In the game, factories sat idle because players bought them up with the idea that they would be worth more “money” as the game progressed. In the real world, speculators snatch up real estate and land bank it as well—most of the “abandoned” buildings you see in East Coast cities are actually owned by investors who don’t put them to use because they’re waiting for a higher return on their investment. Taxing the hell out of vacant real estate would incentivize them to put all that inventory back on the market and force a housing/commercial real estate price correction. [Gamasutra]

The First International Contemporary Art Biennial of South America is seeking proposals from artists through September [BIENALSUR]

Is a museum show really the best and most logical capstone for an art award? Amber Eve Anderson makes a convincing argument that it’s not, based on the Baker Artist Awards exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I agree with her—after seeing the show I thought “this is it?” All but one of the artists would have been better served with programming such as film screenings or performances. [Bmore Art]

In other Baltimore museum news, The Walters is presenting the tour “Drinking Our Way Through History” with local beers and a focus on art-historical imbibing. This looks like fun. [Facebook]

United Talent Agency is opening an art space in LA’s Boyle Heights. But the agency, which represents celebrity artists, claims it won’t function like a typical gallery. Instead, they’ll partner with out-of-town galleries who want to expand their collector base to Los Angeles and use the space for their artists to “experiment”. [The New York Times]

Huh. Dublin painter Kevin Sharkey has been homeless, arrested for destroying artwork, and collected by celebrities including Courtney Love. Now he’s running for president of Ireland. Somebody give this guy an HBO biopic. [artnet News]

Good Lord. Brooklyn Museum Chief Curator Nancy Spector gets up at 3 AM to write, because that’s the time she can find the quiet and solitude she needs to do it. That is drive. An interview with her at New York Magazine—she is intense. [New York Magazine]

The L Train’s planned disruption in services are more than three years away, and companies are scrambling now to profit off it. Uber has proposed a temporary deregulation of their services that would allow commuters to use a car pool app. We’re not sure how to feel about this. It may well be useful during that time, but it also will compete with the city’s own bus services, which as seen in other cities, has the effect lof eroding those services and creating class systems. Once we have this app will we be able to get rid of it? [Politico]

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Submissions for GRIN’s 2017 Spring/Summer Exhibitions Close Tomorrow

by Michael Anthony Farley on August 31, 2016

Providence, RI gallery GRIN is accepting proposals from curators and artists for group or solo exhibitions for their 2017 Spring/Summer season. But the deadline is tomorrow! If you’ve had a pretty solid idea for a show simmering on the back burner, now’s the time to get your act together.

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Monday Links: This Video of Nico Covering David Bowie is the Best

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

Someone dug up footage of Warhol Superstar Nico covering Bowie’s “Heroes” with a disco beat in a small British bar in the early 1980s. She looks totally crazy and it’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life. [YouTube].

More counterculture nostalgia out of England: London’s Michael Hoppen Gallery has a show of vintage punk memorabilia and 1970s photographs of Vivienne Westwood, Siouxsie Sioux, Johnny Rotten, and more. It’s on view through August 26th, if you’re planning a trip to take advantage of the cheap pound! [Blouin Artinfo]

Alexandra Lange questions the veracity and relevance of the “50% of the world’s population live in cities” assumption. She makes some good points about the inaccuracy of the UN’s methodology and the need for more nuanced looks at local morphologies for designers and theorists. In the Bay Area, for example: “I can think of a dozen other reasons, right in their own backyard, why a Silicon Valley incubator should be interested in the future of housing, transportation, regional planning, and workplace design. Why, then, must they go global? The future of one kind of city, in which people live densely and work in sprawl, is being written on their doorstep, and yet, the use of the statistic implies that they want to change a larger, less knotty idea of the city.” But isn’t the whole fun and spirit of architecture, design, and planning a never-ending strive for the utopian? [Curbed]

The New York Post unearthed pictures from the mid 90’s, when Melania Trump (then Knauss) posed with another female model for a “lesbian-themed” photoshoot. True to the Post’s classy editorial style, this just reeks of slut-shaming and isn’t really journalism. Maybe all those out-of-work Gawker staff can send their resumés over to Rupert Murdoch. [The New York Post]

Related: Australian muralist Lushsux has had his Instagram account deleted after publishing photos of a mural he completed depicting Hillary Clinton in a sexy American Flag swimsuit. [9 News]

Update: Lushux responded to the censorship by covering Clinton in a Burqa. [ABC News]

This must’ve been a fun article to research… the history of drugs in art, from ancient times to Kenny Scharf’s installations for tripping and Damien Hirst’s medicine cabinets of psychopharmaceuticals. Even Marina Abramović has dabbled in mind-altering substances! But for the best example of drug-induced creativity, rewatch Nico’s “Heroes” rendition at the top of the page. [CNN]

Job alert: Italian art fair Artissima is seeking a new director. The fair takes place in Turin in November. [artnet News]

The AC Institute is holding an open call for a gun memorial design. Those interested should submit a mock up for a memorial design at the National Mall in Washington DC. The winning projects won’t be installed at the mall, but will be included in an online show and a publication. Deadline: December 2016. [AC Institute]

Creative Time has added seven new board members: artist/actor Waris Ahluwalia, artist Trevor Paglen, designer Ivana Berendika, collector Heather Farrer, curator Sofía Hernández, Clinton Foundation program vice president Maura Pally, and Andrei Tretyakov, a venture capitalist. [ARTnews]

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