Posts tagged as:

Christopher Knight

Tuesday Links: Institutional Trysts

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on March 22, 2016

Puppets singing lounge-style as they recount a museum date. [YouTube]
Is this the new normality we have to live with? To hashtag a city with the phrase “terrorist attacks” following? To expect safety check updates from Facebook friends in that region? Brussels’s airport and metro were hit by explosions early this morning. So far it’s been confirmed that 11 killed and 81 injured at Zaventem airport, 15 killed and 55 injured at Maelbeek metro. [Al Jazeera]
Prospect New Orleans has announced it’s opening dates: Saturday, November 11th 25th, 2017 through February. So, mark your calendars. Also, a newly-formed Artistic Director’s Council has assembled to help Artistic Director (and Nasher curator) Trevor Schoonmaker achieve his vision. What a line up: Miranda Lash Curator at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, Omar Lopez-Chahoud, Artistic Director, Untitled, Miami, and artist Ebony G. Patterson. [Press Release]
Podcast of the day: Artelligence has an interview with Adam Fields of Arta, an uber-esque platform for matching galleries and collectors with appropriate shipping options. If you want to go deep on white gloved art shipping — or revisit previous traumas of shipping gone awry, since who enjoys it? — give this a listen. [Artelligence Podcast]
This recap of last week’s TEFAF Maastricht suggests it was a “refreshing expansion” in terms of exhibitors being unafraid to distinguish between fine and decorative art, high art and craft. Death to 19th art historian barriers! [The Economist]
Behold, the latest entry in the annals of allowing the internet the freedom to name something: the R.S.S. Boaty McBoatface, the proposed name of a new British polar research ship. People are really excited about this name—the poll has been hit so hard by traffic it’s gone down several times. [New York Times]
Christopher Knight weighs in on the dual Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective at LACMA and the Getty; despite the awkward LACMA wall text regarding Mapplethorpe’s “openly gay lifestyle” (according to Knight, “an accurate wall text would say he advocated living an openly gay life”) the show is a worthwhile collaboration involving the institutions’ joint acquisition of Mapplethorpe’s 1970s and 1980s photography alongside the artist’s archive of supporting materials. [Los Angeles Times]
Don’t miss The Conversation with Andrew Russeth. We’re a little late on this—it was made back in December—but it’s worth a listen. Highlights include: The observation that the best work being made today is sculpture, that middle tier galleries who have been in business for 10 plus years have it really hard, and that Lucien Smith and Oscar Murillo aren’t all that, but Anicka Yi is. Also an interesting question from Podcast host Michael Shaw: Are there conservative critics any more? According to Russeth, no. Just people who get out to more places. [The Conversation // Art Podcast]
Holland Cotter really is a hero. Nobody else at the paper of record so consistently brings to light the political and economic issues that shape the art industry. In his most recent piece (published last Friday), he writes about museums that take money from ethically challenge corporations, increasing gentrification and the museum’s role in that and more. [The New York Times]

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Massive Links: Ellsworth Kelly Dies at 92

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on December 28, 2015

Ellsworth Kelly at the Guggenheim

Post-War Art master, Ellsworth Kelly, died yesterday at the age of 92. “I want to live another 15 years.” Kelly told the Observer in November 2015. “But I know I’m not going to. I’m not really whole any more. I think it [the state of his lungs] is to do with the turpentine, because I wasn’t a smoker, but I need the oxygen now. I feel like the world is over there, and it keeps coming at me, and I want to do it, respond to it.” [The Guardian] [The New York Times]
A fantastic review of Jackson Pollock’s black paintings in Dallas by Christopher Knight. Almost from the day they were first shown, Pollock’s controversial black paintings have been commonly regarded as emblematic of a hugely important artist falling apart and flaming out. After seeing “Blind Spots,” which unfortunately will not travel in the U.S., I now think of them in a very different way: The paintings instead show him experimenting with the artistic implications of what he had already achieved. [The Los Angeles Times]
Curator and writer Alexander Shulan just opened LOMEX, a new gallery in the L.E.S. The space, as described by Nate Freeman is remarkable for its lack of usable wall space. The first show includes no painting. Shulan says he wants to turn over shows every two weeks and promises a unconventional program. [ARTnews]
Joss Barton interviews Ted Kerr about his new project in honor of Robert Rayford, the first confirmed victim of AIDS in the United States, who died in 1969. It’s a fascinating story that prompted me to read Rayford’s Wikipedia entry, which offers a somewhat conflicting account of his life. [Visual AIDS]
Makers of the game Cards Against Humanity have purchased a 1962 Picasso linocut. Depending on how their 150,000 subscribers vote, it will either be donated to the Art Institute of Chicago or shredded by a laser and distributed amongst them. [Hyperallergic]
Oh dear god why? Here’s your hate-read of the day: someone actually wrote a think-piece about Tina Fey’s Philly accent on SNL. Miraculously, the words “privilege” and “appropriation” don’t make an appearance. As an aside: all of us from Baltimore and Philly cracked ourselves up at the Artist-Run Show by remarking on the cruel irony that so many galleries from the Mid Atlantic had to repeatedly say the name “Oooooh-shun Terruhhhhce Hooh-tel.” [Philadelphia Magazine]
SF MoMA is hiring for tons of jobs, including a curatorial assistant! [Snaphire]
A Very Bushwick Christmas: locals are putting up lights with messages such as “GENTRIFICATION IS THE NEW COLONIALISM” and “NO ME DISPLACES”. Fuck yeah! [The Village Voice]

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Superscript: Two Days in an Auditorium with Art Critics

by Paddy Johnson on June 4, 2015

Let me tell you about what I learned.

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Tuesday Links: Pained Cries Over the Whitney’s Spilt Milk

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on April 28, 2015

The new Whitney. Photograph Ed Lederman. Image via: The Whitney

A grumpy review by Christopher Knight about the Whitney’s new digs. It’s a tourist attraction. The art doesn’t start until the 5th floor. The collection is parochial. There aren’t enough West Coast artists in the collection! Get a grip, dude. Sure, the collection is parochial, but on balance it should have been mentioned that the museum is doing better than their contemporaries. The rest of these complaints seem really trivial. [The L.A. Times]
A great, simple first-hand account of what happened yesterday when one person stumbled upon teenagers and police in Baltimore. [What I Saw While Riding My Bike Around Today]
Sara Reisman, director of New York’s Percent for Art Program, gets a new job. She’s been appointed the artistic director of the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. [Artforum]
In an article on Francis Bacon self-portraits going to auction, we learn that Bacon liked to paint himself to look youthful. “Although Bacon was in his 60s he looked much younger in the work, having dyed his hair and worn make-up as he grew older.” So he’s normal [BBC]
From the “Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2015: “ Investment return is a growing motivation for online art buyers, with as many as 63% driven to purchase by a piece’s potential return on investment.” [Hiscox]
More on flipping for investment with sneakerheads, obsessive tennis-shoe collectors, compared to art collectors. [It’s Vintage]
Canine private investigator. [Craigslist]
You know The Toronto Star is running low on story ideas when they dedicate an entire story to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s tweets from last year. The paper claims this has made him a “Twitter star” among other world leaders, but provides no evidence to support the headline. [The Toronto Star]
A collection of sparkling prose from recent New York Times articles. My favorite is the following lede by James Gorman: “For anyone who has ever been told by a smarty-pants 7-year-old, ‘There’s no such thing as Brontosaurus; it’s called Apatosaurus’ — it is payback time.” [The New York Times]

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Wednesday Links: The Pits

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on September 11, 2013

Roberta Smith explains why selling art works from the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection is shortsighted and damaging to the city’s future. “If the United States aims to produce more and import less, it needs designers and inventors of things to be produced. Such skills require just the kind of imagination and ingenuity that are nourished by art training from an early age and by museums.” [The New York Times]
Holy shit. The New York City Opera will be cancelling its current season, and the next, unless it can raise $20 million by the end of the year. [BlouinArtinfo]
Edward Winkleman thinks artists can do more good for the world if they’re well-known, so it’s okay to be a bit selfish in the studio. It’s true, of course, but fame won’t be the path or even the goal for every artist. [Edward Winkleman]
Carla Gannis and Justin Petropoulos have asked Anthony Antonellis + Anthony Tognazzini to produce ‘Closer.mp4’ – a short story written by A.Tognazzini, animated by A. Antonellis and narrated by Daniel Rourke. No idea what this will look like, but we’re swinging by Transfer Friday night to check it out. [Facebook]
Another story about window dressing: billionaire real estate broker is turning the Chelsea gas station into luxury condos, and using a series of artworks to advertise the property. First up is “Sheep Station,” a grassy knoll to be occupied by the late Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s sheep sculptures. [BlouinArtinfo]
It’s been a while since we’ve been inside a Barnes & Noble. That trip can wait a little longer, thanks to Hyperallergic’s list of new fall reads. [Hyperallergic]
Russia still has artworks looted from WWII Germany. Angela Merkel tried to bring it up again at a press conference, but was stonewalled. [Art News]
Christopher Knight reviews the newly-discovered Van Gogh Sunset at Montmajour. Not the greatest, he says. [LA Times]

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Monday Links: New Developments

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on March 18, 2013

“His career as a New York City taxi driver began with a graveyard shift, a creative itch, and a brazen interpretation of privacy laws.” The New York Times’ Matt Flegenheimer follows up our story on artist Daniel Wilson’s cabby project. Described briefly: Wilson secretly recorded the conversations of his passengers and played the audio collage he made in the cab while he drove people to The Armory last week. Flegenheimer’s account includes a minor fender bender. [NY Times]
Guns sound like flutes, as we heard this morning from artist Pedro Reyes’ gun orchestra. “It’s a spread that would make a cartel boss blush,” remarks Kurt Anderson on Studio360. [Studio360]
A profile on Mike Kelley that includes his last days before committing suicide. Tragic. [WSJ] h/t [c-monstah]
Christopher Knight dubs the LA-MOCA-National Gallery of Art deal a “big, fat nothing-burger.” All this deal making is a result of MoCA being cash-strapped, a mind-boggling issue for an institution whose board includes some of the richest men in the world. [L.A.Times]
Tina Roth Eisenberg (AKA Swiss-Miss) gave a talk last week at #SXSW on her many projects, one of which includes Teux Deux, a to-do app. Roth Eisenberg expressed some frustration today over twitter about push back from users who were accustomed to using the app for free and now have to pay for it. We want her to know that her talk convinced us not only to use the app, but the importance of charging for projects you want to maintain. [Teux Deux]
In internet freedom news, the WSJ’s L. Gordon Crovitz is offending people with his piece “Aiding the Enemy Isn’t Journalism.” In it, he claims that both Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be charged for aiding the enemy with wikileaks. What? The Freedom of the Press Foundation has run a piece correcting factual errors in Crovitz’s piece. [FoPF]
If you’re behind on the Wikileaks story, “Captives of the Cloud,” part 1 and 2, is a lengthy but essential primer. [e-flux]

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More Fire at MoCA: An Art Museum Without Artists [UPDATE]

by Whitney Kimball on July 16, 2012

MoCA’s controversial forced resignation of Paul Schimmel can officially be upgraded to SOS. In a series of open letters and public resignations, MoCA board members have spent the past week letting the museum know what they think of its decision.

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Friday Links! The Barnes Matisse Hanging Outcry Edition!

by Art Fag City on May 18, 2012

Roberta Smith likes the New Barnes and believes the collection should be moved around from time to time. “Blasphemy!” say Barnes purists. Tyler Green says over Twitter that the idea that the collection wasn’t important when it was in Lower Merion is dumb. He’s right, of course, but who exactly is he arguing with? Smith never said that. [NYTimes]
Christopher Knight doesn’t like the new Barnes, but both he and Roberta believe the Matisse stairwell paintings suffer now that they’re not in a stairwell. AFC’s Will Brand noted this morning in the office that New Yorkers already have a Matisse in a stairwell. Is it really necessary to complain that much? [LATimes]
Animal New York relaunched yesterday. Fancy! [Animal]
An interview with Lorna Mills on the Triangulation Blog. In answer to the question of whether posting GIFs on Google Plus is promotion, Mills says, “I only think of promotion as posting exhibition info on G+ and Facebook. The rest of the time I’m making GIFs to throw in the G+ streams, so it doesn’t feel like promo, it just feels like participating in a community of GIF makers.” [Triangulation Blog]
The New York Public Library prepares for the future in which all library materials become available through digital devices, and decides to rip the heart out of the central research collection. #longreads [N+1]
Support El Celso’s La Luz (The Light), an installation project in Peru. He’s got under $1,500 to raise. I pledged yesterday—you can too! [Kickstarter]
If you’re swinging by Seven this weekend (it closes Saturday), then you can also catch the tail end of the inaugural group show at the new Williamsburg gallery Reverse Space. The show features work by emerging artists, including AFC friend Armando Veve. [Reverse Space]

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Missing the Point About #Don’t Follow Twitter Art

by Paddy Johnson on July 9, 2011

Hyperallergic’s Hrag Vartanian thinks my L Magazine column on Twitter Art is off the mark. As Vartanian tells it, the term itself indicts the author. It’s a cheap ploy for headlines that fails to accurately describe these artist’s practice. Also: Why oh why, did Johnson write a column about bad twitter art and then fail to discuss the most significant artists! I’m exaggerating here for effect – Hrag wasn’t nearly so dramatic — but you get the point. Vartanian believes the examples I chose weaken an already thin case against twitter art (Joy Garnett’s #lostlibrary, An Xiao’s The Artist is Kind of Present, and Man Bartlett’s #24hPort).

Vartanian’s probably right that I could have come up with a better term than “Twitter art”, though the idea that this was a traffic friendly hook used to bring together work with no real commonality is a little far fetched. The truth of the matter is, I don’t believe the pieces have anything to do with one another past their engagement with Twitter. I never made any claims that they did, though I doubt Vartanian would have interpreted much of the article as he did had I more clearly expressed why I chose each artist.

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Gauguin painting’s attacker isn’t the only crazy one | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

by Paddy Johnson on April 5, 2011

Gauguin painting’s attacker isn’t the only crazy one | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times – Christopher Knight name calls in a ridiculous post complaining about a post that appeared on the Washington City Paper’s blog that labels three works in the collection ready for the can. Lighten up. The post is pretty funny and […]

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← Previous Entries

Christopher Knight

Monday Links: New Developments

More Fire at MoCA: An Art Museum Without Artists [UPDATE]

Friday Links! The Barnes Matisse Hanging Outcry Edition!

Missing the Point About #Don’t Follow Twitter Art

Gauguin painting’s attacker isn’t the only crazy one | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

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