An example of an excellent Barack Obama portrait by Pete Souza
- Blake Gopnik thinks that this photo of Barack Obama is the best piece of art in the Whitney Biennial. We were immediately applied The Philosophers’ Mail criteria for what makes a good photo, and decided Gopnik is wrong. [Blake Gopnik]
- Howard Halle’s review of the Whitney Biennial is the best we’ve read yet. [Timeout]
- If the Whitney Biennial is the art world’s Oscars, an attention-demanding spectacle that never messes with its safe brand, then its product is star-making power. Another Biennial profile, this of ceramicist Shio Kusaka. [Architectural Digest]
- The biennial has also led the New York Times to discover a trend, “The Growing Transgender Presence in Pop Culture”. A piece on transgender artists Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker is used to launch into a profile of three totally unrelated transgender people who have recently gotten famous. [New York Times]
- Those of you who can’t wait for the new Lars von Trier film should read David Edelstein’s satisfying review of Nymphomaniac: Volume I. [Vulture]
- President Obama has apologized University of Texas Professor Ann Collins Johns, who was offended when he told workers at at GE plant, “folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.” [Politico]
- OnBuzzfeed, sharing increases as people spend more time “reading”. [@peretti]
- Production studio Fiction has made light paintings with drones and photoshop. Why not just use photoshop? Because then you can’t use the word drone in a headline. [Huffington Post]
- More crap: Here’s what paint pigment in water looks like! [Mashable]
- Hip hop influencers like Afrika Bambaataa plan to open The Universal Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory. They’ll have to compete with the National Museum of Hip Hop, who say they’re in talks with developers in Harlem. [New York Times]
