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Patti Smith

Friday Links: Matthew Barney’s Perineum and Alexander McQueen’s Skin

by Rhett Jones on July 22, 2016

baney_perineum_gladstone

Barbara Gladstone Gallery will recreate, “Blind Perineum,” the performance that put Matthew Barney on the map 25 years ago. Gladstone has borrowed the original elements that were used in the performance in which Barney climbed around the gallery ceiling with ice screws and a harness. The anniversary show is scheduled for September 8th. [New York Times]
Robert Irwin is just finishing up a permanent installation at Donald Judd’s Texas outpost Marfa. It will be the first new permanent work in 16 years. It’s hard to tell from the photos what exactly this project is but it will be officially unveiled to the public on July 23rd. [The Art Newspaper]
The latest artist to jump into the Trump protest fray has built a wall around the Donald’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame. I know that this election has been hard on everybody but try a little harder people. Most of the protest art has been pretty weak. [BBC]
Heads up video artists, Japan is making its final VCR this month. It might be a good time to pick one up for that retro project you wanted to do or to back up those old tapes for posterity. [Mental Floss]
The internet was freaking out, yesterday, over this sculpture of a human evolved to withstand a car crash. His name is Graham and he’s pretty gross. [Jalopnik]
Kurt Cobain’s daughter, Francis Bean, is selling her art online. All we can say is it’s … affordable. [depop]
A design student, in London, wants to make a bag out of Alexander McQueen’s skin. The proposed project would involve using stem cells from the late designer’s hair to manufacture new skin. The student, Tina Gorjanc, is actually trying to patent McQueen’s genetic information and sees this as a larger piece of social commentary. [artnet News]
A number of big name artists will be taking over the prison that caged Oscar Wilde for an exhibition entitled “Inside.” Participants include Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith, Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Steve McQueen, Jean-Michel Pancin, and Wolfgang Tillmans. [artnet News]
John Stewart gets behind Colbert’s desk and lets it all out. [YouTube]

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Tuesday Links: Waterlogged Lady Liberty

by The AFC Staff on May 31, 2016

Last week, a UNESCO report revealed that climate change could threaten some of our most well-known tourist and art historical destinations from Stonehenge and Easter Island to the ever-sinking Venice. Closer to home, the Statue of Liberty could also see significant damage, which has been foreshadowed by numerous Hollywood disaster flicks. [Gothamist]
After a long weekend, wearing pajamas 24/7 seems like a pretty smart — and comfy — concept. Artist and, as the Observer ‘s Alanna Martinez describes, “OG of not giving a fuck” Julian Schnabel has been sporting his pj’s for years as this chronology of Schnabel’s questionable fashion choices shows. [New York Observer]
What are some of the ways developers are making space for artists in Manhattan? 601 Studios, on West 149th Street, converted the basement and storage spaces of Sugar Hill Capital Partners’s prewar building into seven artist studios where one of the tenants includes Fab 5 Freddy. Then there’s 50 West Street, a Battery condo tower nearing completion that houses four artist studios in a nearby construction site, with the caveat that they provide art that will hang in the lobby. [New York Times]
Could that nouveau Meatpacking restaurant where you’re sipping overpriced cocktails be the former home of a sex club called the Toilet? Get to know the geographical history of former sites of sleaze via Michael Musto. [Paper Magazine]
AFC contributor RM Vaughan weighs in on the increasing pay gap between artists and arts administrators. A must-read, especially for gem observations such as this: “this is not about salary-shaming. However, when you make the product (the art) but the people who make so many decisions (the administrators) about the product’s fate live in another world, the artist and arts administrator ‘partnership’ looks, from the bottom up, more like a perfect case of exploitation.” [CBC Arts]
“Vagina Artist” Megumi Igarashi, otherwise known as Rokudenashiko or “Good-For-Nothing-Girl,” has published a manga memoir. Recently translated into English, What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good-For-Nothing Artist and her Pussy documents her controversial plaster molds of her vagina and the obscenity backlash against her art. [Hyperallergic]
Martin Bailey checks in on the rivalry between two competing Bosch retrospectives — the Noordbranbants Museum and the Museo Nacional del Prado — and it appears as if the Dutch scholars are throwing shade at the Madrid institution’s higher number of works due to disputing attributions. [Art Newspaper]
Klaus Biesenbach is drumming up excitement for this summer’s Rockaway! with a series of Instagram posts. While the public arts festival will feature Patti Smith and Janet Cardiff, the most exciting, according to Biesenbach’s Instagram, looks to be Berlin artist Katharina Grosse who will transform an abandoned beach house into a brightly colored, spray-paint-covered installation. [The Creator’s Project]
“I think the art world is amazing that you get to do this really really regular racist shit and say: this is art!” Eunsong Kim gives a much-needed critique of Nikki S. Lee’s “Projects”, the late 90s/early 00s durational performance series where the Korean artist “transforms” into a member of a different ethnic, queer or cultural community. You know where this goes: blackface! Brownface! Insert weary face emoji. [contemporary]
Former AFC contributor and current Yale MFA student Matthew Leifheit’s black-and-white outtakes from the Yale Daily News appear like Ivy League, Skull and Bones fantasies. Compiling his outtakes into his own version of a newspaper, Leifheit admits to i-D Magazine, “sometimes the most interesting pictures are not best for the story.” [i-D Magazine]

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Friday Links: ERMAHGERD! The Internet Is Dying!

by Michael Anthony Farley on October 16, 2015

In what has to be the most thoroughly-researched article about a meme in the history of investigative journalism, Darryn King traces the strange provenance of the “ERMAHGERD GERSBERMS” image. It turns out Maggie Goldenberger (the ERMAHGERD girl herself) and her friends staged the photo as tweens in the mid-90s, replete with considerations of costuming, hair, and styling down to the now-infamous retainer. It was part of a game they would play inventing characters to document with Polaroids. Essentially, the “BERKS” girl was somewhat of a Cindy-Sherman-esque prodigy—creating a character that’s probably now more iconic than any one created by professional artists who employ the same tactics. Unfortunately, she didn’t make any Cindy-Sherman-esque money from it. [Vanity Fair]

Let’s hope that some iteration of the glorious ERMAHGERD meme is archived for posterity, because most of the internet’s content won’t be. This pretty depressing (but wholly fascinating) article paints a pretty bleak picture of how rapidly the web’s vast stores of cultural detritus and priceless, irreplaceable patrimony of knowledge alike can disappear. The internet is likened to antiquity’s Great Library of Alexandria, which is great, except we all know how successful that endeavor at preserving data turned out to be. [The Atlantic]

French critics are complaining that the Musée d’Orsay is deliberately staging “racy” exhibitions that come with content warnings in a bid to attract crowds. The latest, Splendour and Misery: Pictures of Prostitution, 1850-1910 follows a show about the influence of the Marquis de Sade’s super-NSFW writings on the arts as well as a collection of male nudes. Whoever thought present-day French art critics would have something in common with American Republican politicians from the 1980s? [Observer]

Empty galleries were a thing, and for some reason, sometimes still are. Gallery-subsuming installations are surely en vogue this year. The latest trend? Exhibitions devoted to a single artwork. [ARTnews]

This is crazy. In 1979, Patti Smith’s tour truck was stolen in Chicago. 36 years later, a fan named Noreen Bender (who had come into possession of some of the personal effects) returned the stolen items to Smith at a recent book reading, moving her to tears. [The Guardian]

Because BIG can never design a pretty, functional building that is just a pretty, functional building without having an inane new buzzword attached to it, Bjarke Ingels describes his forthcoming Kistefos Museum in Norway like this: “With the inhabited bridge, we stumbled upon our first experiment with social infrastructure – a building that serves as a bridge – or a cultural institution that serves as a piece of infrastructure.” [Dezeen]

“What art criticism needs to be is just criticism. It cannot be all praise or even cheap flattery or adulation. It cannot indiscriminately apply Western theories to reshape Chinese aesthetics or use commercial standards in place of artistic ones, completely equating art works with ordinary merchandise and embracing the belief that ‘the positiveness of a commentary is equal to the thickness of red envelopes.’” Chinese President Xi Jinping has a lot of opinions on all things related to the arts. Now, you can read all of them. [The New York Times]

Okay, I am the one gay man in the world who has never watched “Empire” but apparently it has some pretty amazing artwork decorating the sets. [The New Yorker]

In related TV news, one Staten Island mother has contacted the New York Post to complain about a “Boo Bees” Halloween T-shirt she thinks is offensive. What does this have to do with TV? Seemingly nothing, but apparently the anonymous mom is afraid the mafia will go after her because a reality TV star has something to do with the “Boo Bees” shirt and the mafia. What? [Gawker]

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Wednesday Links: Showtime Says “Yes” to Just Kids

by Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch Rea McNamara on August 12, 2015

The original music video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s RELAX was banned in 1984 because it was shot in a leather bar featuring gay men and drag queens.Here’s the restored uncensored version.

Posted by Sam Kalidi on Thursday, July 2, 2015

The original video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” never made it to the air. Why? It’s set in a gay bar populated by leather daddies and drag queens gyrating in a bondage orgy. It’s 1000x better than the version that made it to MTV. This is what a mashup of Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith films would have looked like in the year 1984—an unfortunately bleak time for homophobic censorship. [via @JMGpix]
The man responsible for controversially putting the Guggenheim on the map is in expansion mode. Thomas Krens, former director of the Guggenheim, is proposing a new 160,000-square-foot museum, the Global Contemporary Collection and Museum, on North Adams’ Harriman-West Airport ground. Krens, who famously came up with the concept of Mass MoCA 30 years ago when he was director of the Williams College Museum of Contemporary Art, has entered lease negotiations with the Airport Commission, and is envisioning a massive for-profit museum with a collection of 400 works. It will cost an estimated ten to fifteen million dollars to build. [Artforum]
Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe during New York’s “Drop Dead” epochal era, is becoming a Showtime miniseries. Smith is on board as a producer and will co-write the script; no word yet on casting or when it’ll drop. (Don’t worry — we’ll make sure to let you know when there’s a casting call.) [artnet News]
In today’s weird “we live in the future” news, Björn Borg’s Spring/Summer 2016 collection, which will be unveiled at Stockholm Fashion Week, is inspired by the real-life plan for human colonization of Mars. [Mars One]
Why is Apple hiring so many fashion execs? While it seems as if it’s an attempt to push wearable tech, it’s more likely the post-Steve Jobs recasting of the company as a “lifestyle experience brand.” [The Business of Fashion]
“Rosé and Beyoncé: two pillars of modern womanhood that we could pack into a time capsule for future generations to unwrap, alongside an iPhone, maybe.” A so-called critical case history of the rosé, and how it transcended its basic roots to become the blushing wine of choice. [Vanity Fair]
Were you a teen on the Internet? Do you have some stuff online that you kinda-sorta want to delete, but just can’t? That’s where “Delete Your Account! Live” comes in—submit your past self to an open call devoted to performances, readings, and any or all media. Hurry, because the event takes place on August 26. [Delete Your Account Live via @willak]
Questionable quote of the morning: “If you go to Germany, every mechanic will have an opinion on contemporary art, whereas here people are afraid of looking uninformed, so they refrain from expressing their opinions.” Berliners, got some opinions on this? [Domain]
It’s that time again, when all your Twitter friends be like vote for me—it’s SXSW PanelPicker voting season. [SXSW]
Want to see that Perseid meteor shower tonight? Your viewing station will suck, according to this article, unless you’re in the countryside. Good luck, New York! [Business Insider]
The bust of Edward Snowden that was illegally installed and subsequently removed from a Brooklyn memorial earlier this year is on display at Little Italy’s LoMan Art Festival. [RT]
“Things That Anarchists Say to Me in Private But Never Repeat Publicly” is an anonymously submitted look at how leftist organizing becomes dysfunctional due to infighting and a set of impossible expectations for activists. Let’s just say that the author made a good call by choosing to remain anonymous—the think-pieces about privilege this could inspire would probably result in total ostracization from the cool kids. [Infoshop News]

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Rockaway!: A Celebrity-Filled Rockaway Tribute, With Heart

by Whitney Kimball on July 2, 2014

Rockaway!, the Klaus Biesenbach-conceived Rockaways art festival, is about 50% art tourism and 50% deep sentiment.

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Monday Links: Squirmy Eyeball Worms

by The AFC Staff on November 4, 2013

George W. Bush: still a painter. He plans to move beyond the dog, landscape, and self-portrait genres; he now wants to paint “world leaders.” [The New York Times]
A website that recreates the Super Mario Bros. video game from open-source software has been taken down; Nintendo wants the site taken down, it must “protect against infringement of our intellectual property rights.” [The Washington Post]
According to a new formal complaint by former Knoedler & Company gallery clients, an artist going by the nickname of “Tommy Cha Cha” may have been the first “known purveyor in forged art” to do business with the gallery. [The New York Times]
President Obama, now a blogger on HuffPo. Well, kinda. He penned an op-ed urging congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. [Politico]
Patti Smith eulogizes Lou Reed, calling him “our generation’s New York poet, championing its misfits as Whitman had championed its workingman and Lorca its persecuted.” [The New Yorker]
Leonardo DiCaprio, will you please come to our benefit? Another DiCaprio-attended fundraiser nets millions! This time for LACMA. [The L.A. Times]
Africa’s tallest apartment building looks a lot like the prison from Batman. [The Verge]
Wrong digital art biennale, thank thee for gifting the world with the presence of Claudia Mate’s squirmy eyeball-worms. [The Eternal Internet Otherhood]
In case you missed it, MATTE magazine received a beautiful write-up in the New Yorker. [The New Yorker]

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Stephen Koch on Peter Hujar: “If you’re Vincent, you’ve got to have your Theo.”

by Matthew Leifheit on October 15, 2013

Stephen Koch is the author of The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop, The Breaking Point and Stargazer: The Life, World and Films of Andy Warhol. He is also an educator and owns and manages the archive of the tortured, downtown photographer Peter Hujar. We spoke at length about Hujar’s life—his friendship with Fran Lebowitz, Susan Sontag, his relationships with Paul Thek and David Wojnarowicz, and even his strained relation with Robert Mapplethorpe. The interview touches on the work Koch has done over the past twenty-five years, raising the late underground hero from self-imposed obscurity to widespread recognition.

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Our Take On “The Cat Show” at White Columns—With Kitty Pics!

by Corinna Kirsch on June 20, 2013

The Cat Show at White Columns has everything and nothing to do with cats. Everything, because most of the 134 artworks show cats or cat-related ephemera—like litter boxes, scratching posts, or yarn. Nothing, because the themes of many of these works aren’t about cats at all.

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Friday Links: On, About, Inside the Artist

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on June 7, 2013

Richard Artschwager, Photo: Rachel Chandler, Courtesy David Nolan Gallery (Image courtesy of ayearofpositivethinking.com)

Richard Artschwager’s last major work was a design for four elevators for the new Whitney Museum. They’re based on six motifs which appear often in his work: door, window, table, basket, mirror, and rug. “When visitors enter they will find themselves standing under a table, on a rug or in front of a mirror,” writes the Times. “[T]hey will also be opposite a door, next to a window or floating in a giant woven basket.” [NYTimes]
Vogel also reports that Maryland’s Glenstone Museum has begun a major expansion. [NYTimes]
Amanda V. Wagner tells young artists not to move to New York City until the time is right. There’s a picture of me alongside Patti Smith, which is possibly the most flattering juxtaposition this author’s ever been graced with. (PJ) [Art Attack]
LACMA’s twice failed to raise sufficient funds for their reconstruction and expansion efforts, but as their Director Michael Govan tells it, this time’s different, because their new design’s “worth it”. And maybe it is. According to reporter Carolina Miranda, Peter Zumthor’s proposal is a radical departure from traditional museum design. There’s no grand staircase or main entrance, so no single type of art takes priority. Sounds like a building that responds to increasingly multidisciplinary practice. [Architect]
Not sure what Andrew Goldstein actually thinks of the Tino Sehgal Golden Lion win at the Venice Biennale. His analysis is mostly description. He seems to like the silver Lion winner, Camille Henrot, and National Pavilion winner, Angola, which showed the work of Edson Chagas and we agree with him on both. [Artspace]
Hyperallergic got an interview with Karen Finley, who was the face of the NEA Four scandal in the nineties. They discuss how her work relates to celebrity and sexuality. [Hyperallergic]
Artinfo introduces Travess Smalley. [ArtINFO]
VICE got a tour of Richard Prince’s house, which, it turns out, is a pretty normal experience of a rural town where there’s nothing to do. “There’s not much to do in this town,” we’re reminded repeatedly. “I’ve always liked this road,” he tells us on the road. He walks us through his drawing process. No surprises there. [VICE]

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