- “If I think about the art world as a coalition, as a moral and political economy that I’m in, then it all makes sense. It is not my home. It is a place where I do the work I need to do. The work I feel I need to do.” Artist Martine Syms shares her portfolio, which includes motivational text messages, tweets by an academic on Twitter and a Wells Fargo debit card. Great stuff. [Frieze]
- University of Toronto currently has an exhibition on at Robarts Library exploring Canada’s prostitution Laws. Organized by history professor Laurie K. Bertram, the show comes through old photos, zines and even issues of the Body Politic (one of Toronto’s first gay newspaper) to show how these laws were used to regulate non-normative sexuality. [Toronto Star]
- A fascinating interview between L.A. Times writer Carolina A. Miranda and writer and critic Nancy Princentha. Princentha is the author of Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art. The first full-length biography of the artist, published last year to wide acclaim, is aptly-timed: later this month, LACMA’s Martin retrospective opens. [Los Angeles Times]
- Ahmed Naji weighs in on Egypt’s sudden embrace of the Egyptian Surrealist movement, even though it comes sixty years too late. The interest, however, is largely spurred by two competing surveys this fall organized by the Centre Pompidou and Sharjah Biennale, with little input from Egypt’s Ministry of Culture. [The Cairo Review of Global Affairs]
- The Philadelphia Antiques and Art Show, considered a tentpole in the Americana market, opens this weekend. And for the first time in the show’s 54 year history, dealers will be allowed to show contemporary art. [Huffington Post]
- London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona are co-organizing a major survey of Picasso’s portraiture this fall. [The Art Newspaper]
- Jason Foumberg reports on why art schools embrace failure. Lots of different answers to this question, but most of them have to do with developing strategies that make students more willing to experiment in the studio. [Chicago Mag]
- A new tree of life has been unveiled, in the ongoing effort visualize and track the evolution of all living things. The diagram looks more like a fan or a flower than a tree and to at least one viewer—yours truly—is all but indecipherable. It’s all bacteria, though apparently humans are at the lower right of the graphic. I never could find them. [The New York Times]
- Experimental filmmaker and musician Tony Conrad died of prostate cancer over the weekend. I (Paddy) met Conrad just once, at an annual birthday party fellow drone musician Phill Niblock threw for himself. I can’t remember if I told him I liked “Yellow Movie”, canvases with black-bordered white screens that, over time, would eventually turn yellow. At the time, it was the only work of his I’d seen. Mostly, we spoke with his friend about her work. [The New York Times]
