Posts tagged as:

north korea

Thursday Links: Sick Pyongyang Trip, Brah!

by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on August 18, 2016

Lucia Moholy, wife of László Moholy-Nagy, is pretty much the unsung hero of the Bauhaus. While her husband taught at the school, she took gorgeous documentary photographs of everything from architecture to student-designed teacups. These negatives were left behind when she was forced to flee the Nazis, and Walter Gropius ended up using them to promote the school’s design philosophy while the campus remained occupied, first by the Nazis and then behind the Iron Curtain. She was often not credited. [99% Invisible]

Why is unnaturally (and obnoxiously) cheery travel vlogger Louis Cole now making bizarre North Korean propaganda? This batch of extremely weird vlogs look like what a British person would make if a North Korean agent forced them at gunpoint to do “hip” things…based on a North Korean perspective of what’s cool in the West, based on smuggled DVDs of South Korean media. Sick beats, bro! Skateboarding! Water parks! Dreadlocks! Human rights abuses?! [Vanity Fair]

Gary Nader and Jorge Perez are currently feuding over who gets to build a museum in Miami or who’s dick is bigger or something. [artnet News]

Curator, critic, and online-project organizer Carla Acevedo-Yates join the Broad Art Museum in Michigan as an assistant curator. [Baer-Faxt]

$9 and this Dan Graham cassette could be yours! [Primary Information]

There’s more single people than ever before, and now social scientists are trying to figure out how to start studying this previously neglected category of people. [The Science of Us]

Q: Why are academics such bad writers? A: Part I and Part II. [The Awl]

Here’s the first aerial photo of Manhattan, taken from a hot air balloon in 1906. Now that we’re so accustomed to ubiquitous crystal-clear satellite imagery it’s hard to imagine just how crazy this must’ve been just 110 years ago. [Curbed]

We’re looking forward to Chrissie Iles’s Dreamlands exhibition, a survey of immersive moving image works over the last century, opening at the Whitney this fall. In an interview with Sloan Science and Film, she gives a preview of the exhibition, and discusses the relationships between art made in Weimar-era Germany and today. Hint: it has something to do with cyborgs. [e-flux Conversations]

Photo filters have gone passé, it seems, now that augmented reality are taking over apps. Still, here comes Prism, an app that lets you apply so-called art filters like “Impression” or “Urban” to your phone pics; the app has the Mercury News speculating that “fine art may be the next career killed by the internet.” We doubt the latter on so many levels. [Mercury News]

Read the full article →

Thursday Links: Another Unarmed Black Man Shot By Police

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on July 21, 2016

Florida police shoot unarmed therapist who was attempting to c…

Cell phone video of cops shooting yet another unarmed black man is making its way around. This time, police shot Charles Kinsey, a behavioral therapist trying to calm an autistic man, while he was laying on the ground with his hands up announcing that he didn’t have a weapon. When asked why they shot him, the officer replied “I don’t know.” And then handcuffed the bleeding victim. Can we please stop handing guns to the members of the population who exhibit the least capacity for critical thinking? This is the biggest WHAT. THE. FUCK. video of them all. Utterly inexcusable. [Facebook via Shaun King]

There’s an exhibition at American University of North Korean Socialist Realism. I really want to see this. [National Geographic]

Behold: the bizarre street carnival of protesters and supporters at Trump’s surreal RNC. Hillary Clinton as Cersei Lannister, a Sikh Captain America, Chewbacca detained at the border, and plenty of Trump “fan art”… the art of the RNC looks a lot like the world’s angriest ComicCon. [The Atlantic]

Related: a map of Donald Trump’s Manhattan real estate empire. [Curbed]

Even more on the growing feud between anti-gentrification activists and art spaces in LA’s Boyle Heights. It seems like some of these spaces have been in the neighborhood for decades, but real estate speculators didn’t start moving in until after the Gold Line light rail connected the neighborhood to downtown. The cause-and-effect here is specious at best. [artnet News]

Speaking of the never-ending dance between luxury development and galleries, Robin Scher traces the long history of art spaces founding, leaving, and returning to what’s now known as “Billionaire’s Row,” a.k.a. 57th street in Manhattan. It’s a pretty interesting read. [ARTnews]

The Durst Organization has commissioned Stephen Glassman to create a 32,000 pound steel sculpture inspired by the Hudson. The piece will adorn the main entrance of The Bjarke Ingels-designed tetrahedron, Via 57 West, and is supposed to look like the river. [Curbed]

Alan G Brake visits The Hills on Governors Island, a major landscape intervention/earthwork by the firm West 8. Brake argues that the new vantage point afforded by The Hills allows us to recenter our psychogeographical map of the city. From there, it’s easier to conceive of the metropolis as an archipelago, with views toward the island of Manhattan, Liberty Island, Staten Island, and the boroughs on Long Island. [Dezeen]

In a brief essay titled “The creepiest work of public art ever,” Howard Halle claims that Union Square’s 1999 “Metronome” from Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel “looks and functions like an asshole.” [Time Out New York]

In an all-too-common case, international retailer Zara has been ripping off designs from independent artist Tuesday Bassen for years. Apparently the fast-fashion chain can’t come up with its own shit as fast as sweatshops can churn it out. [Refinery29]

Read the full article →

Thursday Links: At The Corner of Bill Cunningham and 5th

by Rhett Jones on July 7, 2016

bill_cunningham_corner

The corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue is temporarily being renamed “Bill Cunningham Corner.” The Mayor is allowed to rename a street for a week, in order to make it permanent, the change would have to be approved by the city council. [DNAinfo]
ArtList, an app startup for anonymous secondary market sales of art has shut down. Artnet News spoke with art advisor Todd Levin about the startup’s downfall. His view is that internet-based platforms aren’t ready for high-end work and can only hope for “momentarily younger hotter artists like Parker Ito, Kour Pour, and Ibrahim Mahama, who don’t always stand up to the test of time.” [artnet News]
Under the Sun, the documentary about North Korea has been released and currently has an 83% score on Metacritic. The film was controversially pulled from MoMA’s Doc Fortnight Festival over fears of retaliation from North Korea. That decision resulted in longtime assistant curator, Sally Berger, being fired. [Metacritic]
Young Thug says there is no such thing as gender. While no one should hurt themselves trying to pat him on the back, homophobia is a rampant problem in the hip-hop world and it’s kind of a big deal that those words are coming from the most-hyped rapper around. [Dazed]
A reminder that you do not have to enter a police station to ‘catch ’em all’ in the new Pokemon augmented reality game. [Polygon]
28 years later, Anthony Haden-Guest explains how he did NOT kill Jean-Michel Basquiat.[artnet News]
Vice has bought a majority stake in Garage magazine, a Russian oligarch’s wife’s “art, architecture, fashion and design” publication. Having never read Garage we can’t speak to the quality of the art coverage. But, they have an app where you can check out issues and if you use it to scan Kendall Jenner’s photo at the following link you’ll “bring her to life.” [Recode]
You have exactly one extra second to get those grant applications in this year. [Phys.org]

Read the full article →

What is Going on at Art Basel Hong Kong?

by Michael Anthony Farley on March 24, 2016

If you ask someone how the art market is doing in Hong Kong, get ready for an earful. We’re unfortunately not in town for Art Basel, so we can’t speak to that topic first-hand. But as a person with internet access, I’ve been bombarded with more contradictory facts and opinions (let’s be honest, mostly opinions) about the state of the unstable Chinese economy, the tastes of the Asian art market, and the manic-depressive cycles of art fair outlooks than I ever thought I’d need to know.

Below, we’ve aggregated some of the uneven reporting on Art Basel Hong Kong, including some quotes from director Adeline Ooi and other industry experts, to get a better idea of just what China’s market troubles mean for the art world:

Read the full article →

Tuesday Links: Performance Art Starter Pack

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on January 26, 2016

Via @ladysimonnyc

Steve McQueen finally weighs in on #OscarsSoWhite, calling it a “watershed moment”, but notes how there’s also a lack of diversity among film set crews: “It’s like Johannesburg in 1976, if you go behind the scenes … I made two British movies [Hunger and Shame] and I never met one person of color in any below-the-line situations. Not one. No black, no Asian, no one. Like, hello? What’s going on here? Very odd.” [artnet News]

Carolina A. Miranda profiles the stARTup Art Fair, the “new kid” at LA’s art fair weekend. The year-old San Francisco fair focuses on artists without representation, and will be taking over rooms in Hollywood’s Highland Gardens Hotel. [Los Angeles Time]

Thorton Dial, the self-taught artist best known for his assemblages, has died. After years working as a metal worker for the Pullman Standard boxcar factory, Dial was “discovered” by artist Lonnie Holley and then collector William Arnett in the late 1980s. He was the subject of a 2011-2012 retrospective at the High Museum of Art, and his work is owned by institutions like the MoMA, the Whitney and the Smithsonian. [Atlantic Journal-Constitution via Artforum]

Catherine Opie’s portrait project of Elizabeth Taylor’s home finally opened at the MOCA Pacific Design Center last weekend, which means more photos have been released via the ongoing media coverage, including a detail of Taylor’s cowboy boots collection and touchingly her large pile of diamond and crystal-encrusted AIDS red ribbon brooches. [Slate]

Open call alert: Queens Museum is now accepting applications for the Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship Program for Emerging Artists. The fellowship awards three emerging NYC-based emerging artists a $20,000 grant each, as well as professional development and curatorial support. The fellowship begins this March and culminates in an exhibition at the Museum in March 2017. Deadline is Feb 1. [Queens Museum]

“But where cringing celebrity optimization meets big money, can there be serious art?” Here’s the expected critical lambast of Ai Weiwei’s installation for Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche’s display windows in Paris. [Hyperallergic]

Mansudae, the North Korean art factory (the world’s largest!), has been quietly exporting its own brand of Socialist Realism to dictatorships the world over. They have a gallery in Beijing’s arts district, across the street from Pace! [The New York Times]

There’s concern that Istanbul contemporary art center SALT has been forced to close one of its locations due to pressure from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s increasingly conservative government. SALT director Vasif Kortun claims the closure is the result of missing building permits. Anyone in Istanbul know what’s going on? [artnet News]

We’ve talked a lot about Sarah Meyohas’ residency in 303 Gallery, where she’s been trading stocks and translating the results into paintings. Now, those paintings are done. I (Michael) think they’re pretty anticlimactic/obvious. But they’re selling and got featured on a cable news finance segment, so mission accomplished? [CNBC]

Andrew Nunes reflects on Lucy + Jorge Orta’s exhibition Antarctica at Jane Lombard Gallery. The show is the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of research and utopian-minded projects on the icy continent, beginning with 2007’s The End of the World Biennale. This looks fun. [The Creator’s Project]

Read the full article →

Johnny Rogers on Pyongyang Apple Store

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 6, 2016

Artist Johnny Rogers has turned to social media for product development ideas. These crowd-sourced designs will be unveiled next month at his bootleg “Pyongyang Apple Store” inside Current Gallery.

Read the full article →

Monday Links: Goth Carni-Bus Edition

by Michael Anthony Farley on December 14, 2015

The new Cloaque video is out! Like the exquisite corpse tumblr, this year’s video builds on the years before it. Artists include Sabrina Ratté, Akihiko Taniguchi, Pascual Sisto, Geoffrey Lillemon and Joe Hamilton. Music by Dylan Galletly. [YouTube]

Rebecca Marino shot some film photos of The Artist-Run at SATELLITE which have a very nostalgic air—exactly how we’re feeling! Can we all go back? [Conflict of Interest]

Our installation at the Artist-Run, F.A.G. Bar also get’s a shout-out in Cool Hunting’s recap! [Cool Hunting]

This is terrible. The bodies of artist Hema Upadhyay and her lawyer have been found bound and murdered in a Mumbai suburb. Her installations were internationally acclaimed depictions of sprawl and displacement in rapidly-urbanizing India. [Times of India]

Indian police have several suspects in Upadhyay’s murder, including one in custody. [The Indian Express]

Is the capacity to induce boredom one of art’s strengths? [NPR]

Artist and gallerist Jared Madere exchanged his Bed-Stuy apartment for an RV he now lives in and runs a gallery out of. The truck/gallery is called “Bed-Stuy Love Affair” and is described by Madere as “a goth carni bus.” for its black exterior and chaining metal fences over the windows. [New York Magazine]

Dushko Petrovich explores the trend of deceased artists being included in contemporary art surveys. Visitors to Greater New York or The Whitney Biennial should be familiar with this concept. [ARTnews]

And for something wholly unrelated to art: The ethics of crowdsourcing organ donors! [Toronto Life]

This is exciting: The Whitney is going to be taking full advantage of its new column-free digs with a program known as Open Plan. Beginning in February 2016, we can look forward to full-floor installations from Michael Heizer, Andrea Fraser, Steve McQueen, Lucy Dodd and Cecil Taylor. [The Art Newspaper]

North Korea’s official “girl band” Moranbong Band has been mysteriously recalled from their planned tour of China. The group is known for glamorous outfits, synthesizers, and militaristic imagery. Check out the video of the group performing in front of 3D renderings of North Korean missiles exploding. [The Washington Post]

The inside story on the Paris climate change deal: making sure it Republican- proofed. [The Guardian]

Read the full article →

Friday Links: Displaced Histories

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on December 11, 2015

Guillermo Gomez-Peńa, Rebecca Belmore and other famous indigenous performance artists gathered last week in Santa Fe for ACTING OUT, a two-day symposium exploring performance in contemporary and traditional native arts. Some of the performances—like Belmore’s The Theatre of the Brave, which closed the symposium—are recapped, alongside the shared common struggles of artists forced to contend with their works being situated in Eurocentric traditions. [Artsy]
A deal on the contentious plan to redevelop the Brooklyn Heights library has finally been settled. Under the new plan, which will likely be approved by the city council, the library be shrunk in size, but not the miniscule size first proposed and will now offer below market rates to lower income residents. Don’t get too excited—lower income means those who make 80 percent of the median income in the area. The report makes it sound like the developer made a ton of concessions, but it’s hard to believe any of them will make a difference to those who are really struggling in the city. [Capital New York]
Using data from 2014, StreetEasy calculated that in all of New York City, there were only 575 apartments “affordable” to minimum wage earners who worked full time and spent 40% of their incomes on rent. In order for a renter to afford the city’s median rent of $2,700 a month (using the same dismal math as above) a full-time worker would need to make $38.80/hour. That’s more than 4x the minimum wage. [Curbed]
Germany’s Center for Persecuted Art has finally opened in the Kunstmuseum Solingen. The exhibition spaces and library will be devoted to artists banned or censored by the Nazi and GDR regimes. [artnet News]
This is so cool. Ancient sculptures at the Walters Art Museum inspired hairdresser Janet Stephens to investigate women’s coiffing rituals in the Roman empire—a topic that’s mostly absent from history. Now, she’s presenting at archeology conferences and giving Roman beauty tutorials on Youtube. [New York Magazine]
Ken Johnson wants everyone to go to Philadelphia because the art on view is amazing right now. What gets a nod: Norman Lewis at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, two centuries worth of still life paintings and sculptures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ornamental antique wrought iron at the Barnes Foundation and Christopher Knowles at the Institute of Contemporary Art. [The New York Times]
The future of a valuable art collection amassed by Maurice Alain Amon is uncertain due to dramatic divorce proceedings with his soon-to-be-ex-wife,Tracey Hejailan-Amon. This is the couple who made headlines after Maurice’s art consultants tried to remove a Basquiat from their 5th Avenue penthouse. It all comes down to which courts have jurisdiction, as the pair own homes across the globe and filed for divorce in Monaco. [Vanity Fair]
The community debate surrounding the turnaround on a racially-charged University of Kentucky mural—it was going to be removed, but now the campus faculty has voted in favour of contextualizing its depiction of history—brings up the interesting point about the movement afoot for a national slavery museum. [Hyperallergic]
North Korea’s state-run art/propaganda factory has increasingly been exporting foreign commissions to dictatorships who lack their own sculptors and painters. Now, they’re opening an entire museum of artwork inspired by life in pre-colonial Khmer at Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat. [Global Post]
Finally: MoMA, which has made recent strides in its conceptualism acquisitions, has just announced it’ll be mounting a full retrospective on Adrian Piper. [New York Times]
Tokyo’s onto something: their police force now has a fleet of “interceptor” drones that will go after spying private drones, ensnaring them mid-air in large nets. Now patiently awaiting the artist working in surveillance culture to co-opt this. [The Telegraph]

Read the full article →

Thursday Links: A Haunted Basquiat?

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on July 9, 2015

Close-up of Sarah Charlesworth, “Goat,” 1985.

Every single problem with One World Trade Center, from its “over-decorated javelin” to its relatively visible bunker. From the tags: “AN ACT OF TERRORISM IS THE ONLY THING THAT WILL REDEEM THIS BUILDING AND EVEN THEN IT’S A LONG SHOT.” Lordy, those are fighting words! [The Awl]
Do you fear having to move out because of gentrification? The San Francisco Arts Commission is seeking information from artists (and musicians) facing displacement, and all you need to do is fill out a five-minute survey. [SF Weekly]
Who knew people were starving for $5-plus chicken sandwiches? One day after releasing its first-ever chicken-on-a-bun, Shake Shack has run out. The chicken sandwich will return to Shake Shack on July 16. [Grub Street]
Bitcoin: the currency might not be so great, but its blockchain technology, that’s a winner. [Forbes]
Readers who hate audiobooks, you are not alone! But have you ever considered that it’s due to your face-blindess? Regardless, just a nice read on being a writer with eye issues. [The Toast]
Students who choose to study art typically come from rich families. “Kids from lower-income families tend toward ‘useful’ majors, such as computer science, math, and physics. Those whose parents make more money flock to history, English, and performing arts.” [The Atlantic]
The chief architect of North Korea may have been executed last year because dictator Kim Jong Un was unhappy with the initial design of the new new Pyongyang Airport. [Daily Mail via Hyperallergic]
The Grossmalerman! Show is not for everyone, but maybe for you. Vomit within the first five minutes of the show? Check. Haunted Basquiat painting? Check. Lots of talk about the gallery system, and how “having a show” is not the same thing as being given “representation.” The show’s got that, too. [Vimeo]

Read the full article →

Thursday Links: Occupational Hazards

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on December 18, 2014

Screen Shot 2014-12-18 at 9.02.27 AM

There’s so much non-art news today, it’s a little crazy: U.S. relations with Cuba thaw. New York state bans fracking. Vladimir Putin gives his annual address, and it is completely delusional. Just read The Times. [The New York Times]
“A Pessimist’s Guide to the World in 2015.” [Bloomberg]
We’re fans of the “1987” series on Comic Book Resources; columnist Matt Derman reviews comics from 1987 just because that’s the year he was born. P.S. Would like to do an art version of this. [Comic Book Resources]
THE LAST EPISODE OF SERIAL DROPS TODAY, NERDS. [Serial]
One notable topic to bring out from an interview with Toshio Hara, director of the Hara Museum, is that Japanese collectors are more inclined to “keep a low profile” than ones in the States. [Japan Times]
Incredibly timely reporting: Alanna Martinez asks El Museo del Barrio’s Executive Director Jorge Daniel Veneciano what renewed U.S.-Cuban relations might mean for the museum. Veneciano didn’t seem too excited; he told Martinez “that essentially not much would change for U.S. museums.” [New York Observer]
Giving in to hacker pressure, Sony has now announced that there are no further plans to release The Interview, not even on DVD. [Vanity Fair via Variety]
And for those who don’t think North Korea’s terrorism is real, read this account of a former North Korean spy. [The Globe and Mail]
Jason Kottke aggregates links to four of the best 2014 book-cover lists. Of the four he chose, The Casual Optimist’s list wins with us. Of all the covers listed, our favorite is The Silent History. [Kottke]
Christie’s Fine Art Storage Services asked AFC’s Corinna Kirsch what art worlders really “need” for Christmas. Hint: You need some sleep. [Tumblr]
The Hammer Museum announces that Chicago’s Hamza Walker will co-curate the 2016 Made in L.A. biennial with Hammer staff. Yay for Chicago! [Los Angeles Times]
An interview with Hal Foster. When asks what he regrets, he recounts a cutting line that he later learned devastated an artist. Most critics have a regret like that. Occupational hazard, I guess. [Interview]
Frieze Editor Dan Fox puts together his year end review. Topping the list is W.A.G.E. and CITIZENFOUR. [Frieze]
Are we all in agreement that “Santa Baby” is the most annoying Christmas song? If not, you will be after watching this animated cat-robot toy’s karaoke version. [YouTube]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

north korea

Get Our Newsletter!

Like Us On Facebook!

Follow Art F City

What is Art F City?