Screen shot of Liam Gillick and Nate Silver’s “Either We Inspire or We Expire” (2012), a web-based work that’s part of their “First Look: New Work Online” monthly series currently running as the splash page for the new Rhizome.
- Rhizome has relaunched its website. It looks like art. Plus side to this: it’s their mission to support art. Down side: navigation is hard to get used to. We haven’t had a chance to really dig into the site, but Tom Moody has expressed some discontent with changes on the site. Some of these complaints appear to have been worked out already. Comment threads, for example, look fine now, whereas they did not last night. Searching the artbase still proves to be an issue, though. [Tom Moody]
- Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips are locked in an insane competition to woo estates ahead of this month’s auctions. Sotheby’s offered to take a “mere” $1 million commission on a collection that includes a Van Gogh valued at $50 million. Others are offering exorbitant guarantees, such as $40 million to the seller of a Warhol Marilyn. It seems as if they might’ve just screwed themselves in an attempt to screw each other. [The Wall Street Journal]
- But maybe the auction houses have good reason to be confident: yesterday Sotheby’s sold Carl Kahler’s 1891 painting “My Wife’s Lovers” (the famous cat lady painting) for $826,000, more than double its $300,000 estimate. [artnet News]
- So, this is insane: 30% of artists’ studios in London are projected to disappear in the next five years. This probably explains why a proposal from Assemble, the Turner Prize-nominated architecture collective, to convert a south London car park into artist studios is gaining support. The proposal would convert the park into 800 “ultra-affordable” studios, charging £150 per month for rent. Unfortunately, you’d only have the space for five years—the park is slated to be demolished by then. [The Art Newspaper]
- Vancouver is widely known as one of the most “Asian” cities outside of Asia, where half of its residents are of Asian descent. So it makes sense then that the Vancouver Art Gallery would create a new seven-member advisory “Asian Art Council” to help them increase their engagement with Asian art. And VAG isn’t alone—other institutions like UBC’s Museum of Anthropology are going in the same direction, with Asian-themed exhibitions planned in the new year. [Vancouver Sun]
- 19 year old Instagram model Essena O’Neill has quit the social media site after becoming disenchanted with it. She became obsessed with likes and obsessively staged poses. The Washington Post notes that artist Ben Grosser came to the same conclusion after building a plug-in called Facebook Demetricator. The tool removes the “likes” from all Facebook posts. Grosser posted the user results in 2014 following two years of study: people felt less stressed and performative using Facebook without seeing their likes or friend counts. They also felt less compelled to use the service at all. [Washington Post]
- Yes, this really did happen: last weekend, a fight broke out in Innisfil, Ontario, leaving a man dressed as the Tin Man with injuries sustained by his friend, the Scarecrow. The police report then concluded that the “the Scarecrow didn’t have the brains to stick around, and ran away with the Cowardly Lion.” On top of that, witnesses included Dorothy and Glinda the Good Witch. [National Post]
- Art Handler Magazine has launched a support page. Become a donor. [Art Handler]
- Art collective Chim↑Pom on opening a new gallery in what sounds like an amazing Tokyo neighborhood (their neighbors are anarchists and experimental fashion designers) as well as their exhibition Don’t Follow the Wind. The show was installed in the radioactive Fukushima evacuation zone and is accessible to viewers only via a “non-visitor center”. [Blouin Artinfo]
- Good news: Toronto’s Power Plant is renewing its emerging curators programme for another two years thanks to additional funding from its funder the RBC Foundation. [Power Plant]
