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carsten holler

I Went To The Jewish Museum’s “Take Me (I’m Yours)” And All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt

by Emily Colucci on December 7, 2016
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A loud, tacky sign emblazoned with “Everything Must Go” would not feel out of place in the Jewish Museum’s current exhibition Take Me (I’m Yours). A rack of plastic goodie bags branded with the exhibition’s title hang in the show’s entrance, encouraging viewers to fill up on artist-made pins, T-shirts, used clothing, candy and a 25-cent ball of air from Yoko Ono. With this free-for-all curatorial style, the exhibit looks more like a display of samples than a contemporary art show.

That’s a bad thing. The whole show feels like a gimmick designed to lure people in the door by offering them free swag. Meanwhile, the Museum is presenting the idea that they are challenging the traditional relationship between art and its viewers, which not only isn’t true (it’s been done to death), it distracts from the sociopolitical critiques made by many of the artists in the show. Simply put, the show is a disaster.

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Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s New Do It Video Tells You to Do It With Social Media

by Corinna Kirsch on April 29, 2014
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But why should we do it?

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A Year-End Review: AFC’s Top Rated Posts

by Paddy Johnson on December 28, 2011
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A look back at AFC’s most popular posts reveals good news and bad news. On the one hand, our second most popular page of the year proves that, yes, intelligent reviews do have a place on the web: readers can’t get enough of our Recommended Shows. On the other, this page was trumped only in numbers by Whitney Kimball’s post Streaming Hot Sex Video Games. Clearly, porn and video games remain an enduring interest on the web.

As we embark on our year end fundraising campaign, I urge you to page through these posts below and take a look at some of the discussion here. We spend a lot of time producing posts we think are valuable, and we want to do more of that. Your donations help make that happen.

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Art Fag City at The L Magazine: Carsten Holler’s Slides and Pools at The New Museum

by Paddy Johnson on November 9, 2011
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There's a slide ready to be ridden in the New Museum. It's part of Carsten Höller's career survey Experience(through January 15), and it's only one element of a show that takes every device from a traveling carnival except the concession stands.

I don't have any problem with this as an exhibition concept—I like fun—but it doesn't leave me with much to write about it. Experience is more about emptying your mind than it is about contemplating a specific philosophical question, so the kinds of conversations the show tends to inspire will more often revolve around the work than delve into its meaning.

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Weekend Links!

by Paddy Johnson on October 30, 2011

  • NEA study finds “artists’ median wages and salaries ($43,000 in 2009) are higher than the median for the whole labor force ($39,000). Yet artists as a whole earn far less than the median wage of the “professional” category of workers ($54,000), to which they belong.” Not sure how valuable these findings are though, given that these numbers are drawn by lumping designers, architects, artists and writers into one group. [NEA]
  • Cartoonist Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe in Yourself. [NYTimes]
  • Karen Rosenberg dislikes slides, pools and anything else fun. A reasonable position on the Höller show at the New Museum, but it’s too bad she ends up sounding like a stick-in-the-mud. [NYTimes]
  • Jacob Kassay, the art world’s newest art star, describes his work as “much more boring than people are taking it for”. He makes achromatic surfaces by dipping canvases in electrified silver solution. I suspect part of the reason this work is so popular amongst collectors is that it’s impossible to document. [The New Yorker: Warning, Paywall!]
  • Recommended: Jeannette Doyle at The Warhol Museum. [Warhol.org]
  • Upcoming: The Reluctant Doctorate, A PHD program for artists at SVA. A bunch of PHDs talk about whether this is a good idea. November 3rd. [SVA]
  • Apparently Peter Schjeldahl supports Occupy Museums. [Paddy Johnson]
  • Watch Slavoj Zizek talk about Occupy Wall Street. [Youtube]
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Wednesday Links!

by Paddy Johnson on October 26, 2011

  • “Pie is the food of the heroic”. A 1902 article linking pie and national success from the Times. [Lawyers, Guns and Money]
  • The slide shows for Carsten Höller’s exhibition, “Experience” at The New Museum are out. The best come from Gothamist [disclaimer, I’m in a few of those shots], and WNYC’s Carolina Miranda. [Gothamist] [WNYC]
  • I love this. From the #OWS Arts and Culture working group, Occupy Museums announces BYOM [Bring Your Own Manifesto] at MoMA tomorrow. They will be joined the Sotheby’s Art Handlers in their protest. [Paddy Johnson]
  • “I'm perfectly willing to take [the naysayers] on” David Hockney tells the Globe and Mail, in a profile largely focusing on his ipad and iphone drawings currently on display at the ROM. Me first! [Globe and Mail]
  • More than half the work at Rashaad Newsome’s show at Marlborough Gallery has already sold. I’d ask if this is an indication of the artist’s status as a rising star, but it’s hard to imagine anything like that coming out of Marlborough. [NYTimes]
  • Rumor has it Ryan Trecartin is leaving Elizabeth Dee. Anyone want to guess where he’s going? I’m going with Gagosian. [Galleristny]
  • Will someone make this news stop: Woman Gives Birth at Brooklyn Gallery [AnimalNY]
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Art Fag City’s 2011 Fall Preview: Museum Edition

by Art Fag City on September 15, 2011
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As the last of the McQueen and Trecartin buzz finally dies, you may be wondering: what could museums possibly put out this fall to top this year’s record successes? This fall’s exhibitions seem to set a slower pace, at a more somber tone, so it seems the answer: a relief. We’ve compiled a list of museum shows and events we won’t want to miss, including– buh buh da dum– the return of the Art Book Fair! Be sure to check back soon for our October gallery preview.

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