Posts tagged as:

censorship

Monday Links: If Trump Were a Woman

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 13, 2017

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Maria Guadalupe, an associate professor of political science, teamed up with Joe Salvatore, a theater professor who specializes in “ethnodrama” to examine gender bias in the 2016 election. For a piece of experimental theater, Her Opponent, they recast Hillary Clinton as a man and Donald Trump as a woman. It turns out audiences actually liked Trump as a brash woman and couldn’t stand a male version of Clinton, contrary to the expectations of the researchers. [New York Magazine]

This is so smart. Rather than demolish an aging midcentury modernist housing block on the outskirts of Amsterdam, NL Architects and XVW Architectuur came up with an award-winning proposal for the building. They restored the shell of the building and fixed circulation issues, and then sold individual apartments (which could be combined to make larger units) as affordable stripped-down shells that new owners could take on as DIY projects to renovate as starter homes based on their own liking and budget. This seems like a much more logical solution to the issue of aging affordable housing than the American approach—which was to implode hundreds of thousand of units of high rise housing and then hand the land over to developers. [Dezeen]

Elmgreen & Dragset caused a minor panic in Krefeld, Germany when their new exhibition suggested the town’s Mies van der Rohe Haus Lange had been sold to private owners. In reality, they’ve restaged the iconic villa as the home of a fictional family returning to Germany from the UK following Brexit. [artnet News]

This seems like a better business model than most young galleries have: L.A.’s ShowGrow is a combination marijuana dispensary and art gallery. [Los Angeles Times]

From a show about environmental damage at the Norton Museum of Art to a show about the US-Mexican border at L.A.’s Craft & Folk Art Museum, cultural institutions across the country are getting political this year. [The New York Times]

Turkish painter Zehra Doğan is being jailed over a painting. The painting is based off a photo of the town Nusaybin in ruins after a battle between Turkish security forces and Kurdish separatists. She’s being charged with producing terrorist propaganda. This is absurd. [Fair Press]

Thank you Jillian Steinhauer, for doing the one piece of reporting/criticism on the “Fearless Girl” Wall Street statue that is more than a Clickhole headline like “Wow!” or “Inspiring: Fake Girl in front of Fake Bull.” [Hyperallergic]

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Wednesday Links: Facebook Deems Oil Painting of Sleeping Lesbians Too Sexy For Web

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 1, 2017

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Charles Blackman, “Women Lovers.”

More Facebook censorship news: Australian auction house Mossgreen wasn’t allowed to post an image of Charles Blackman’s oil painting “Women Lovers”. Mossgreen executive Paul Summer says “It’s like going back to the 1950s. It’s ridiculous to censor this sort of thing.” [BBC News]

Mexican-Canadian artist Miriam Aroeste is taking considerable flak thanks to her work at Vancouver’s Trump Tower. The developers commissioned 180 pieces from Aroeste before the Trump name became quite so politically loaded. But those developers aren’t actually the Trumps—the Canadian Holborn Group built the thing. They (rather stupidly, in hindsight) just licensed the Trump name. In a strange way, I guess the relationship Trump has had to most real estate for the past decade or so isn’t so different from those “street artists” who gets paid to make some luxury condos look like they’re “revolutionizing edgy urban living” or whatever. The difference is the Trump brand makes buyers look like a whole other brand of new money douchebag. [The Art Newspaper]

Related: the Trump administration has put out an RFP for “design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico.” I would imagine any architect who submits a non-ironic proposal will likely never find work in the culture field again. [Dezeen]

Thomas P. Campbell, head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has announced his resignation. Rumors are swirling that his departure wasn’t quite by choice—despite monumental success with exhibitions and visitors under Campbell, the Met has experienced problems with budget, layoffs, postponed capital projects, and of course that pesky new logo. [The Washington Post]

This is probably one of the cutest gentrification battles we’ve read about. A luxury apartment developer is suing a longtime neighborhood resident for feeding birds. Those birds poop all over the development’s balconies and rooftop amenities. Apparently the poop is scaring away potential tenants. Is this a good resistance strategy? Or at least a good subplot in a John Waters film? [The Baltimore Sun]

We (mostly) like the Second Avenue Subway’s public art. Alexandra Lange does too, but points out a problem with so much contemporary American architecture: the art feels a bit lost in spaces designed to be have as little identity as possible. [Curbed]

The Armory Show’s “Focus” section this year, What Is to Be Done? curated by Jarrett Gregory, frames sociopolitical issues through the lens of economics. That sounds a little dry, but the work here looks pretty good (and apparently smells terrible, in the case of Ibrahim Mahama’s dead fish blankets). Somehow, though, the topic of Trump is completely avoided. Gregory explains: “I’m sure people will do great things with that material, but this is more delicate, in terms of the approach, for the most part.” Eyeroll. Even in other commercial art fairs, gallerists have had the balls to show overtly political work that was often much more nuanced and original than this quote from Gregory: “I think that in the art world, we too often have a single perspective—the European white male, for example.” [ARTnews]

Ok, we have resisted the urge to comment on Doug Aitken’s Desert X installation because literally every other art and/or design blog has already told the world that it’s “unbelievable” or “breathtaking” or “mind-boggling” or “dangerous for birds” but this link has some actually useful information in case you want to decide for yourself. Here are directions to go see it in person (you need a car). [Time Out LA]

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Monday Links: Mixed Martial Arts Are Not The Arts, According to Meryl Streep

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 9, 2017

send nudes descending a staircase

— Friedrice Nietzsche (@tinynietzsche) January 9, 2017

“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if you kick us all out you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts… which are NOT the arts!” Meryl Streep, during her emotional Golden Globes acceptance speech about the importance of empathy, freedom of the press, and how horrible Donald Trump is. Scroll down to the bottom of the linked article for a video of the whole thing, it’s worth it. Meryl Streep is a fucking treasure. [Rolling Stone]
Over the weekend, Michael Lutin released this month’s horoscopes for the art world. These are really, really weird and oddly specific. Apparently this isn’t going to be a good month for my career. [artnet News]
Hull, the UK City of Culture for 2017, has unveiled a massive wind turbine blade as a public sculpture by artist Nayan Kulkarni. I guess this is the kind of thing you have to experience in real life to have an opinion beyond “wow, that’s big!” [Express]
Adam Langer argues that all the cited precedents for great art coming out of awful circumstances don’t matter much if there’s no funding for artists from Trump’s NEA. Hear, hear! [Salon]
Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter has personally removed a painting he found offensive from the Capitol building. The artwork was created by a high school student from Missouri in response to the murder of Michael Brown at the hands of the Ferguson police. Apparently Congress is inspired to act when cops’ feelings get hurt by teenagers, but not when cops kill black teenagers? [Teen Vogue]
From gentrification and preservation battles to starchitecture and new ferries, here’s what to expect from New York’s 2017. Mostly, this list is useful because it tips you off to which affordable housing lotteries you should be entering. [Curbed]
This story was published about 6 months ago, but it’s been trending like crazy the past few days, likely due to this headline: “Hyerim Shin questions cuteness with dog-stretching device”.[Dezeen]
Dallas, TX digital art trailblazers And/Or Gallery has uprooted to sunny(er?) California, following a seven year hiatus. [Dallas News]
The Victoria and Albert Museum and the Goethe-Institut have commissioned 12 artists to speculate on the future of Europe, 2,000 years from now. A lot of Brexit angst seems to be brewing. The exhibition opens next month, and looks to be an extremely strange, tech-heavy show. [The Art Newspaper]

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Wednesday Links: Sexy Neptune Censored, David Hammons Powerless, Shazaam Movie Mystery

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on January 4, 2017

Jean de Boulogne’s Neptune is too sexy for Facebook, apparently

Why do thousands of us have memories of a nonexistent early 90s children movie Shazaam starring Sinbad as a genie? One theory is that we’re from an alternate dimension. This is so, so weird. [NewStatesman]

Adam Harvey, the artist behind anti-facial-recognition makeup technique “CV Dazzle” (which is so cool) has designed a textile print “HyperFace” that overwhelms algorithms with hundreds of false faces. [Mashable]

Are people finally tiring of social media wars? We’ve noticed a lot of people unplugging and/or stepping back from Facebook and Twitter citing self preservation (including our own Michael Anthony Farley). Now the articles are starting to come out. Frankly, this seems like a step in the right direction. [The Guardian]

Hyperallergic has released their annual Most Powerless list. It hurts a bit to see David Hammons, an artist who has made his reputation by resisting authority and wealth structures, on the list this year. It seems the staff felt that Hammons couldn’t out maneuver a news cycle that included his gallerist’s son as head of Trump’s treasury. [Hyperallergic]

A photo of a 1560s statue of Neptune by Jean de Boulogne has been censored by Facebook for being too sexy. [The Telegraph]

The long, dramatic story of how George Lucas has been trying to build a “lowbrow” museum of narrative art in three different cities. Mayors seem to want it, but no one else does. Lucas does not come out smelling like roses here, as he seems unwilling to compromise on much and emails reveal his team refusing to release even basic information (like what would be in the museum) to potential partners. [Bloomberg]

Picasso fans take note: Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía is celebrating the 80th anniversary of “Guernica” with a massive Picasso show from April to September. This will involve the loan of more than 150 works from collections across the globe. [artnet News]

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Artist Challenges Facebook With Promises of Cock Spam

by Paddy Johnson on October 27, 2016

Is the US presidential election putting many of its citizens on edge? The daily headlines are terrible, each bringing a new revelation more shocking than the next. The stakes could not be more dire and conversation more urgent.

In reaction to these times, though, perhaps many us of block friends dissenting friends on Facebook or silence comments we don’t want to hear. Under these conditions, Facebook can seem a bit more like a police state. Prolific artist, Facebook user (and now blogger) Sean Capone speculated that this was indeed the case in an email this morning informing AFC that he’d been banned from Facebook for three days. The offending update? A picture he’d posted from a Larry Clark show at Luhring Augustine back in 2014.

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Tuesday Links: Hillary Clinton is a Person Too

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on September 27, 2016

Jonathan Horowitz, “Hillary Clinton is a Person Too” (2008)

Jonathan Horowitz’s creepy sculpture “Hillary Clinton is a Person Too” has been added to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit exhibition Art as Social Force Exhibition: It’s Your Party, Cry If You Want To. That is probably the best name for a show about politics in 2016. [ARTnews]

Outraged activists are calling for the removal of works by Kelley Walker from the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Walker (who is White) uses appropriated imagery in his work, including magazine covers featuring Black women and historical photos of Civil Rights era protests. This has offended a number of people, including museum staff, who view the work as insensitive. In response, the museum has walled-off the pieces in question and added trigger warnings. People still want the works removed. Didn’t we all decide in the early 90s that museums should be spared from censorship? Even if the images in question might be offensive to some viewers (viewers who decide to read the trigger warning and walk around the wall anyway) censoring artwork is probably one of the least fruitful outcomes of a controversy. [St. Louis Post Dispatch, Artforum, Hyperallergic]

And in Moscow, activist group “Officers of Russia” succeeded in getting Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography shut down in hopes of censoring Jock Sturges, who they accuse of being a child pornographer. His exhibition, Absence of Shame, documents families living in nudist colonies. The Officers of Russia succeeded in shuttering the gallery by dousing the photographs in urine, a tactic that thusfar hasn’t been employed in St. Louis. [artnet News]

Have no fear, the (beloved?) statue of Lenin that had been watching over the East Village from a Houston Street rooftop until recently will be back. Lenin is moving a few blocks away to the roof of 178 Norfolk Street, another building owned by Michael Rosen. [Curbed]

Uh oh. A real estate industry publication has declared the Bronx is the new Bushwick. According to the article, rents are rising and artists are moving in (I’d like to point out that the causality of these two phenomena isn’t as clear-cut as it seems) and the Bronx Museum of Arts is broadening its profile. None of the above is without controversy. The Museum has recently been focusing on expensive-to-produce blockbuster shows to elevate its profile, which sounds like a strategy that’s working—attendance is way up, and the institution is able to offer artist-centric services such as studio space for local artists. Realistically though, doesn’t it seem like far more people are leaving Brooklyn and heading to LA or small towns upstate than the Bronx? [Crain’s]

Speaking of real estate, the Observer is up in arms about the fact that Jimmy Van Bramer won’t support a 100 percent affordable housing building in Sunny Side. They chastise him for being a hypocrite, but don’t bother to explain his position. (They just call it lame.) If they had, they’d know that the residents of Sunny Side are against the building because it’s a pilot program to redevelop the entire stripe from light manufacturing to residential. A lot of jobs are on the line here, which the Observer would care about if they were anything more than a propaganda arm for REBNY. [The Observer]

Sacramento, California finally has its new $8 million Jeff Koons sculpture… and it’s actually pretty decent. This local news station, however, seems determined to drum up some sort of scandal surrounding the unveiling, perhaps to rival the heated debates surrounding its commissioning? No such luck. They ended up with controversies such as… a “live painter” tweeted something totally unrelated at the same time? Jeff Koons is from New York? It’s a pretty funny example of fishing for a story. I do like the suggestion at the end, that the city should flip the piece for a profit. How’s the secondary auction market for public art looking these days? [CBS Local Sacramento]

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NSFW GIF of the Hump Day: The Best NSFW GIFs from DIS/dump

by Michael Anthony Farley on August 31, 2016

Back in 2010, before they were curating controversial international biennials, DIS collaborated with the image-sharing website dump.fm to produce DIS/dump. The project represented a crowd-sourced, user-generated “lookbook” of absurdist “New Style Options in Real Time.”

Their curated documentation of the project is fantastic, and much of the content points to the fact that “fashion” is essentially just censorship of nudity.

See more after the jump.

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The Great Firewall of GIFs: Miao Ying’s Chinternet Plus

by Michael Anthony Farley on July 8, 2016

Currently featured as part of the New Museum’s First Look: New Art Online series, Miao Ying’s “Chinternet Plus” takes on Chinese web censorship, corporate aesthetics, and propaganda with the power of .net art.

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NSFW GIF of the Hump Day: Happy Birthday Frida Kahlo

by Michael Anthony Farley on July 6, 2016

Okay, this GIF shouldn’t be considered NSFW at all, but today is Frida Kahlo’s birthday and it’s the only vaguely “inappropriate” animated GIF I can find, shockingly. It’s a scene from the 2002 biopic Frida, depicting a mostly-clothed Salma Hayek in the titular role painting a topless self-portrait. Why would this possibly be NSFW? Because Facebook hates art historical nudity. Paddy knows all-too-well how annoying violating Facebook’s decency rules can be.

You know who else would hate Facebook’s censorship rules? Frida Kahlo, who would be 109 today. She would probably come up with some incredibly original NSFW revenge tableau to post all over their servers. Because Frida was a badass. She was such a badass that a documentary about her life and work even sparked controversy in the supposedly-ultra-liberal Portland school district earlier this year. One can only imagine how escandalosa Kahlo must have been during the first half of the 20th century. And she probably gave zero fucks about it.

Rest In Power, Frida!

“NSFW” GIF after the jump.

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