Another dashcam to add to the carnage, this time involving hand-to-hand/car-to-beast combat with a wild boar. [YouTube via Edward Zipco on Facebook]
Rhizome has archived VVORK! This is significant not only because VVORK was a hallmark of its time (2006-2012), but also because Rhizome has solved the problem of archiving videos from third party websites. This is a huge problem for blogs that, say, embed YouTube videos in their daily posts. More on this soon. [Rhizome]
Human Rights Watch has released another damning report on labor conditions in Abu Dhabi. In the report, HRW places the blame not only at the feet of the UAE and its agencies, but the businesses this labor supports; New York University, The Louvre and The Guggenheim. [Hyperallergic]
Christian Viveros-Faune decides that MoMA’s contemporary painting survey “Forever Now” sucks. There are so many zingers in this review they are hard to count. A few: “Each of these artists’ works is the art-fair equivalent of collector catnip…Showroom-tested and market- approved, the artists in “Forever Now” don’t so much constitute an artistic style as embody so-called zombie formalism. (Critic Walter Robinson recently coined the term to describe faux-original painting that attempts to revive the “walking corpse” of Abstract Expressionism.)…Fronted by Hoptman’s abracadabra, MOMA has endorsed the 2015 painterly equivalent of Design Within Reach.” That’s just from the first page. [The Village Voice]
For what it’s worth, when I visited Abu Dhabi this year, my UAE tour guides refused to let anyone visit the construction site of the Louvre, because they claimed Western journalists would only focus on the labor conditions. These staff were convinced that journalists only found the worst, out of date cases and chose to make an example of them. When I visited a friend at NYU Abu Dhabi, and we discussed this, I was told that while the tone of some Western journalists could be off putting, the labor conditions were a real issue and most people in this person’s circles over paid any help they had to try to correct those problems. [Paddy Johnson]
Jon Stewart has announced that he’s leaving the Daily Show after seventeen years. [Wonkette]
A recap of the talk Paddy Johnson gave at YoungArts last week. [Miami New Times]
Temple Run for China looks like Final Fantasy. [The Verge]
A long debate about the virtues of having a tiny tab on your zipper pull, a leftover from the industrial process which would save thousands of man hours and dollars, but remains because it’s aesthetically unpleasing. Instead, people work eight hour shifts to assemble perfect zippers. [Bunnies Studios, via Metafilter]
Police in the Netherlands have busted an “industrial-scale” weed operation because it was the only house on the block without snow on the roof. [Gawker]
Auction world insider Josh Baer, who runs a well-known up-to-the-minute art world newsletter, broke rumors about the highest-ever art sale, a Gauguin painting, on his February 3rd newsletter:
Has the record been broken for a private art sale for a single work of art?? If its true
that the Qataris have paid $300 million for Gaugin’s “Nafea Faaipoipo”, then the wags citing low oil prices as having a big effect might have….?
The New York Times forwarded the story with a mention to Baer Faxt, but the Wall Street Journal’s Kelly Crow didn’t even give the attribution. Baer takes issue with WSJ editor Eben Shapiro and the general bad practice of ignoring the smaller outlets. [Baer Faxt newsletter 2/3/15 and 2/10/15, New York Times, Wall Street Journal]
AFC’s Panda Calendar—now on sale—makes national news! Critic Carolina Miranda of the LA Times explains why we’ve asked twelve artists to strip down while wearing panda hats, in a classical setting. She says we’ve transformed the “perfect trifecta of absurdity into a handy tool the art world can use all year long”. I’ll round that up to a two thumbs up! [The LA Times]
We got write ups in Paper (#breaktheinternet) and Artnet broke the news. Woot!
May the Lord have mercy on our souls: SantaCon, the all-day bar-crawl of drunken Santas, is moving its masses to Brooklyn. [ANIMAL New York]
In the most constructed form of fun we can think of, the Guggenheim tries to replicate disco, which was never cool to begin with. [Vulture]
A Metafilter post on Japanese “snow monkeys” is very informative, but the comment thread is just as good. “Japanese monkeys are assholes.” [Metafilter]
Soon you’ll be able to Snapchat money. [The Verge]
A history of vibrators, in graphic comics. The vibrator “was the fifth appliance to be electrified” and, in the early days, “[a]ds often featured beautiful women applying the vibrator to their faces.” [Oh Joy Sex Toy, via @edyoung209]
An obituary of photographer Lucien Clergue, documenter of gypsies, and Picasso, by his friend Joseph Nechvatal. [Hyperallergic]
Don’t forget, the Kitchen’s benefit is tonight! [The Kitchen]
We’re not even in L.A. and we want to ride the public transit thanks to this retro-eighties commercial promoting the metro. [Culture: High & Low]
A list of Twitter accounts most frequently followed by New York Times staff. Not a single art personality on the list. [TMF]
The Tom of Finland Foundation announces its 10th annual Emerging Artists Competition. Enter an erotic drawing by the November 3, 2014 deadline and you could win a numbered lithograph by Tom of Finland. [Tom of Finland Foundation]
Last chance to see the same balloon dogs and photorealistic kitsch paintings that have been systematically circulating around Gagosian in various combinations for the past ten years. Do not miss this rare opportunity. [Whitney Museum of American Art]
Bill O’Reilly concedes more than I thought he would in this conversation with Jon Stewart about white privilege. [Mother Jones via: The Daily Show]
Speaking of comedy, there aren’t too many more episodes of The Colbert Report left for live viewing. For those of us who don’t have time to wait in line for tickets—everybody but tourists—here’s an app that gives you real-time notifications about ticket availability. [iTunes]
There’s a new Studio Ghibli movie out! Vulture’sBilge Ebiri loves it, but the endorsement kind of goes without saying. This one is all hand-drawn. [Vulture]
Maurizio Cattelan retired after his 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim, but Carol Vogel seems to think a show of his secondary market work split between Venus Over Manhattan and Sotheby’s represents a comeback. Huh? [The New York Times]
Artist Jenny Drumgoole who’s performing/lecturing at Philly’s AUX performance space this Saturday night gets a feature in City Paper! The artist is known for crashing straight-people events like the Wing Bowl and Paula Deen’s cream cheese contest. Lately, she turned a series of surprise parties for her trash collectors into a campaign for a renewed union contract. Keep an eye on this woman. She is a force to be reckoned with. [City Paper]
Image of the “Digital Sugar Baby”, courtesy of Creative Time and Makeable
“[P]hoto bans reek of cultural snobbery and outdated thinking,” argues Business Insider’s Ben Winsor– citing an Lower East Side show (“Red Hot”, about hot redheads) that comes with Instagram tags and its own twitter account. Magda Sawon agrees; Tyler Green thinks yes, except at MoMA. If you want a look at this policy in action, go to the next Creative Time event. Every single person seemed to be looking at Kara Walker’s sugar sphynx through a cell phone. (They arranged them into 360 degree digital gallery of it). It’s democracy, but it also feels like a tourist trap when you’re there. As we linked last week, Arts Council England is discussing the idea of making a special “no photos” hour in museums, like a quiet car on a train. [Business Insider]
The New York Times Public Editor comes down hard on the Shonda Rhimes article written by TV critic Alessandra Stanley that’s been accused of racism. “Intended to be in praise of Ms. Rhimes, it delivered that message in a condescending way that was – at best – astonishingly tone-deaf and out of touch.” [The New York Times]
Click on the square that is the lighter color. It’s an easy game until it’s not—it’s certainly harder than 2048. [Color Lang via Metafilter]
Speaking of which, this Pantone color vision test is also strangely addicting. Try to arrange the boxes in a perfect spectrum. [X-Rite]
Incredible: Hyperallergic went to #FloodWallStreet, a protest that according to its press release aims to “Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis”, and provided live coverage from morning til night. They even have an interview with Martha Rosler. [Hyperallergic]
And in front page news, America and five Arab allies strike ISIS targets in Syria. [The New York Times]
Blondie’s 40th anniversary will be celebrated in a week long exhibition curated by Jeffrey Deitch at the Chelsea Hotel’s Storefront Gallery and will include photographs taken by the band’s co-founder Chris Stein and band memorabilia. [T Magazine]
ARGGHGHHhghghghrghghgh. There will be no global climate agreement at the UN Summit, now, or possibly, ever. Instead, humanity must hope for bilateral agreements between the US and China, or the US and Brazil. “[W]e might be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together with that kind of a plan B,” says Michael Jenkins of Forest Trends. Fuck. [NPR]
Finally, a review of State of the Art, the massive survey show of contemporary art at Crystal Bridges in Arkansas. It’s generally positive and remarks on how nice it is to see a show that isn’t full of bets on the market. Read the comment section for a bit of fun—it’s full of praise in one turn, and provincial complaints on the other. [Glasstire]
Celebrities continue to come up with dumb performance art ideas, and museums seem to have no choice but to cater to their every whim. [artnet News]
Actor John Malkovich and photographer Sandro Miller have teamed up to recreate famous photographs, each now starring Malkovich. The new photographs are mildly disturbing and say what exactly? [Peta Pixel]
Who wants to puke and shit in a bucket and watch all of your life’s most traumatic experiences unfold before your eyes for what feels like days on end? This is what Ayahuasca did to VICE’s Conor Creighton, who would do it all again. [VICE]
We have now received leaked email correspondence between the Guggenheim and Crabapple while she was working on “Slaves of Happiness Island,” a firsthand report of slave-like worker conditions on Saadiyat Island.
Oh, shit. Go inside an exhibition about toilets with a turd on your head. [ARTWEEKLY]
Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, who is participating in the Here and Elsewhere show at the New Museum and a solo show at Whitebox Art Center, was denied exit by the Israeli government. [Hyperallergic]
Forge your way to success: John Myatt, a 69-year-old painter who served 12 months in prison for making counterfeit paintings, now has a solo show in London of obviously forged paintings. The price for a painting mimicking Monet? $66,000. [Artnet]
“It’s time to acknowledge and learn from the genius of Germany.” The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones may as well throw his U.K. citizenship out the window; he believes that Germans aren’t just better than the rest of the world at soccer, but art, too. At least he didn’t pledge his allegiance to the Übermensch. [The Guardian]
The Guggenheim is on a worldwide building rampage, and it’s agitating the host countries. After reports that Abu Dhabi is being built by slaves, polls have shown that a majority of Helsinki residents are opposed to shouldering all the costs of the $177 million museum in their city. [New York Times]
8-bit lovers, put this one on your calendar: the International Teletext Art Festival opens in Berlin on August 14. [Kill Screen]
It’s not often that you see the word “ass” in Artforum. I assume it’s not in their style guide, but here we go with Nathaniel Lee’s review of Emily Mae Smith’s show at Junior Projects where Lee asks, “Are we all really so obtuse and ass-hungry?” [Artforum]
The douchey Wall Street art speculator stereotype is real. Data shows that about a quarter of the world’s top art collectors are in the “investment” industry; thanks to Hyperallergic’s Claire Voon for the visual breakdown with pie charts. [Hyperallergic]
“[I]t’s not always easy to get flush Wall Streeters to art openings, particularly in Bushwick.” That’s a shame, since Claudia Maté’s show at Transfer Gallery is made about them. [Opening Ceremony]
New York Times Style section wizens up to net art, profiles Ryder Ripps. Naturally Adrian Chen writes the feature. From Ripps, “The Internet is just a ton of different people,” he said. “So, being good at knowing how to equally access these people to speak to them is being good at the Internet.” [New York Times]
Bill Davenport has made a listicle of the top ten painters in Houston, noting “how few really good painters there are in this city…” Let’s see if he gets any challengers. Davenport also introduces us to a new painting term, “new-nothing abstractionists”. [Glasstire]
Just as we would like to see the Guggenheim put a woman in its rotunda for once, Carolina Miranda would like to see the Whitney or the New Museum finally put on a show of Puerto Rican/Nuyorican art. [twitter]
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome is at risk of closing due to budget cuts. [Artnet]
Brooklyn artists might want to put Pittsburgh on their list of potential next destinations. The Pittsburgh Biennial is expanding and trying to raise awareness about their city as an art hub. They’ve got the Andy Warhol Museum, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh Glass Center, Carnegie Museum, and the Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PCA). [The Art Newspaper]
What do the men who pick up the stuff we drop in the subway find? A stuffed rabbit, for one. [Animal New York]
Somebody’s putting pink donation boxes on the streets, possibly for donations and possibly for plunder. [Bowery Boogie]
New York Times Dining Critic Pete Wells ruminates on the aesthetics of plating and how it’s influencing cuisine. Stunt dishes are on the rise (the burger with a length of bone embedded in the patty; the chicken Parmesan on a pizza stand), as is camera cuisine (people who study food movements through pictures alone). My favorite bit in this piece, though, is the account of how food nerds attack if you post anything less than a beautiful picture.
I got a taste of this shutter-shaming myself when I tweeted a picture of a trout a restaurant had served me. My point was that the dish was a mess, as carefully presented as a basket of dirty laundry. Never mind that: Twitter reacted to the ugliness of the image, not the broken tail of the trout. One person asked if I’d been taking pointers from Ms. Stewart. Whether you’re on Twitter, Instagram or your own blog, the message is clear: Don’t take pictures in a restaurant if you aren’t going to make the place look good. [New York Times]
All this week, the Art Market Monitor has been churning out doomsday scenarios for the collectoratti. The Italian art market is dying, and “Sadly, The Picasso Ceramics Market Isn’t For the Entry-Level Collector Anymore.” [The Art Market Monitor]
This week at artnet Paddy Johnson interviews Nicholas O’Brien, a co-curator of the exhibition The New Romantics, currently on view at Eyebeam. [artnet news]
More horrific news of bodies piling up in Chicago, aka, Chiraq. [The Daily Beast]
The broken down World’s Fair towers in Flushing Meadows now have National Treasure status. There’s even talk of fixing them up! [New York Times]
New York Magazine features a whole bunch of Internet celebrities, and that’s gotta be a boon for their site. We only knew a couple of them, but Eckhaus Latta got a shoutout from Mike the Ruler. [New York Magazine]
100 new emojis on Vine. The only way you can see any of them is to pause the video. Nicely done! [Vine]
Peter Schjeldahl, with his tender prose and passionate research, is hard to leave, but it’s finally time to walk away. Enough with the MoMA and Guggenheim retrospectives! [The New Yorker]
For whatever reason, Roberta Smith ended up reviewing James Franco’s exhibition at Pace. She’s written about the actor-artist a lot. Thankfully, with this exhibition, she shows no mercy. Franco, she writes, seems informed by “confused desperation” and an “entitled narcissism.” She ends her piece with a death knell: “It’s hard not to feel some sympathy for him, while also wishing that someone or something would make him stop.” This is what we’ve all been thinking—that he needs to stop—and now she should never write about him again! [The New York Times]
Start-ups beware of the Red Herring Award. The company informs nominees of their opportunity and then charges them $3,820 for the privilege. This article was written in 2013, but as the awards are coming up again, it seemed a good time to issue the reminder that this resembles a scheme. [TechCrunch]
Judy Chicago is celebrating her 75th birthday with an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. During the press preview, she tells Village Voice reporter Lilly Lampe about her first meeting with critic Harold Rosenberg. “She brought her slides; he brought a hard-on.” [The Village Voice]
A quiz to end all Buzzfeed quizzes: the New Inquiry’s darkly sarcastic “What briefcase full of money are you?” [New Inquiry]
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com
Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director
