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Prince

Bathing In The Purple Rain At Sam McKinniss’ “Egyptian Violet”

by Emily Colucci on October 21, 2016

Some exhibitions raise more questions than they answer. Take Sam McKinniss’ current show Egyptian Violet at team (gallery, inc.), which presents a sense of unease and potential for violence in his fan boy paintings of celebrities and movie characters. The subject matter is thoughtfully curated and carefully painted and yet, it is still difficult to pin down McKinniss’ exact critique. Is it a general representation of our anxiety-ridden era in 2016? A statement, à la A.L. Steiner’s 30 Days of Mo:)rning, about how everything is going wrong at once? A critique of the vacuity of pop culture? A death obsession? Or is there no real social critique at all? I left the show with no clear answer.

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Monday Links: The Force Is Not With George Lucas’s Chicago Museum

by Rhett Jones on June 27, 2016

tonyFehrLinks

Well, this can’t be good. New MOCA CEO Chantal Pontbriand has left MOCA after only eight months on the job. This is nothing short of shocking news for the organization, which in the course of a year has transformed its name, mission, and location. In March, she even announced that the organization would be expanding its footprint from three to five floors in its new location as well as a building across the street. It’s unclear whether those plans will stay in tact now that she’s departed. [The Toronto Star]
For the first time, Jesus tomb is getting refurbished and will be opened for an archeological dig. [Daily Beast]
George Lucas plans for a major museum in Chicago have been foiled by a two-year legal battle and he is reportedly looking for an appropriate location in California. People involved in the tentative planning say that San Francisco will probably be the first choice. [The Art Newspaper]
For those people who didn’t already hate golf, there is now a custom hoverboard that carries players around the course. It’s called the GolfBoard. [GolfBoard]
The strategy game Civilization 5 will be used in classrooms to teach kids about diplomacy and the ways in which Ghandi was a power hungry, nuke flinging sociopath. [Motherboard]
Jenny Holzer will mount her “first site-specific” work by carving her signature “poems on cliffs, monumental boulders and on bedrock” in Ibiza. [The Art Newspaper]
Legendary street photographer Bill Cunningham has died. Of the pieces we’ve read thus far, the Washington Post has been the best. Though the Times obituary staff did a fine job. [Washington Post]
Legendary writer and journalist Michael Herr has died. [Daily Beast]
Legendary Sculptor Tony Feher has died. Paddy Johnson recalls a talk he gave at Rutgers University and explains why his work is so significant. [AFC Newletter]
A round-up of some old school video albums that pre-dated Lemonade. Before Beyonce was putting Becky with the good hair on blast, Don Johnson was rocking sleeveless shirts on Max Headroom’s soundstages. [MEL]
Douglas Coupland is looking for a model that looks just like Van Gogh and will the person who looks the most like the famed artist $5k. [The Guardian]
Beloved record shops, Other Music and Rebel Rebel, both closed their doors this weekend. This is a nice opportunity to revisit Karina Longworth’s excellent investigation into what happened to Kim’s video collection. [Brooklyn Vegan]
Prince’s “Yellow Cloud” guitar has been auctioned. The lucky bidder spent $137,500. [Vulture]

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Wednesday Links: But Some People Do Care

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on May 18, 2016

Some view Peregrine Honig’s restroom signs as insensitive.

Former Work of Art contestant Peregrine Honig’s “We Don’t Care” restroom signs—created in response to North Carolina’s discriminatory transgender bathroom laws—are sparking some heated social media debate that for once doesn’t involve the right wing. Some view the $150 signs as exploitative and dismissive, while others (mostly cisgendered people) support the artist. It’s spread to multiple threads, but in this one we get to watch AFC friend Molly Rhinestones and Jerry Saltz on opposite sides of the debate. [Facebook]

As the cost of riding the MTA continues to rise, fare evasion on the subway is now the number one cause for arrests in NYC, disproportionately affecting low income people of color. All those arrests cost the city $51 million annually. But it would only cost the city $40.5 million to offer those same 29,000 riders free metrocards instead of arrest records and a night in jail. Activists are trying to call attention to this absurd policy by giving out free metrocard swipes in low-income neighborhoods. [Elite Daily]

Hate read: this piece equates the late Tony Goldman’s art-branded gentrifications schemes with social practice and community arts. Like, not as a criticism of community arts’ vaguely colonial undertones, but as an endorsement of art as a tool for developers. Seriously? [The Huffington Post]

Related: a household now needs to earn $158,000 annually to rent a two-bedroom in New York City, according to HUD metrics. This is so unacceptable. [Curbed]

Who is Yusaku Maezawa, the handsome billionaire from Chiba who pretty much single-handedly rescued the market with almost $100 million in contemporary art purchases last week? He’s a fashion mogul, former musician, and philanthropist with a foundation in Tokyo and a guest house for artists in London. Dear Mr. Maezawa, please bring us to Japan to see your collection, love AFC. [Observer]

This is adorable. Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commissioner Ben Loyola is offended by the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art showing Mark Ryden, who uses Catholic imagery in subversive-cheesy ways, and “paintings of nude portraits in all positions.” He’s upset taxpayer money is funding this. Ben, if you need a theme for a party to raise awareness about your concerns, I suggest the 1980s. [WAVY]

Unsurprisingly, more powerful figures from the art world have been named in the Panama Papers. The latest are gallerist Dominique Lévy and Miami mega-collector Ella Fontanals-Cisneros. If you really need to stash assets in a non-taxable form, can’t you just buy more art for your personal museum? [artnet News]

Your animal video of the day: Panda & basket. Cleaning up leaves is a much harder job than it looks when there is a panda involved. [YouTube]

Hip-hop artist The Game commissioned a $65,000 portrait of Prince from street artist Madsteez. I want to see this on the hood of a car. [Complex]

Ben Davis thoughtfully reflects on Jordan Wolfson’s installation at David Zwirner, which focuses a human-like robot being tortured. Davis concludes that Wolfson has a violent need to command the attention of the viewer. [artnet News]

The Handicraft Building in Minneapolis, which was erected in 1907 to house women artists and craftspeople, is being partially demolished and renovated into luxury apartments. This is terrible. Dozens of artists will be displaced, in addition to artist-run galleries. This follows a pattern in downtown Minneapolis, in which small-scaled historic structures are being demolished to make way for larger developments. [City Pages]

In other real estate news, artist-run space Essex Flowers is relocating to Chinatown, where they’ll have a bigger space. [ARTnews]

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Friday Links: From My Mother’s Womb

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on April 29, 2016

Andrew Russeth loves the SFMoMA building, but reports that the initial hang is uneven and full of blue chip art by white men. [ARTnews]
This is the best Prince video I’ve seen on the net since his death. Sheila E is amazing. [Youtube]
Carolina Miranda visits the Met and reports on the museum’s annual rooftop commission, this year by the overrated artist Cornelia Parker. Parker has recreated the creepy house from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Miranda seems to have had a reasonable time, but concludes that the house Universal Studios recreated for their studio tours does the job better. [Culture: High & Low]
Good grief. Here is an astonishingly ornate carpet made of paper. [Colossal]
This is a Canadian art world listicle I can get behind: “10 Indigenous Artworks that Changed How We Imagine Ourselves.” Richard William Hill launches a monthly column based on research for a book, making a compelling argument that 1980s-1990s works by artists like Shelley Niro (see above) and others gave a much-needed contemporary dose to Indigenous representation that subverted the expectations of art audiences. I would also argue this coincided with a huge cultural equity overhaul in the Canadian institutional funding system. [Canadian Art]
Are the stolen art scandals finally catching up to Geneva? Not according to the Art Market Monitor’s Marion Maneker who takes issue with what he calls Bloomberg’s “scare mongering non-story”. The title, “Art Collectors Quite Scandal-Hit Geneva”, and content suggests that over the past six months, art collectors have been pulling their works from Geneva’s free port storage facility in response to the charges of money laundering and tax dodging. But Maneker notes that Bloomberg’s very own reporting tells us that, in fact, very few collectors have pulled their work from said storage. [Bloomberg, Art Market Monitor]
Normally, we don’t link to recipes here, but this one comes with a headline we can get behind: Best Eaten Alone With No Pants: Kimchi and Spam Fried Rice. [Serious Eats]
Oooh. Livecam season is beginning! In NYC there’s a livecam tracking two falcons on Water street that are about to hatch five baby falcons! [WNYC]
Creative Capital’s 2016 Arts Writers Grant Program is now accepting applications. Deadline is May 18th. [Artswriters]
According to new research published by the Freelands Foundation, only 25% women artists scored big solos at London’s major museums from 2014-2015. Depressing, but not surprising. It appears, however, that female philanthropist-driven initiatives are having impact, like the New Museum’s Artemis council, or London-based collector Valerie Napoleane’s Valeria Napoleane XX programme. [The Art Newspaper]
“Aren’t we beautiful? Where are you from? I hear Toronto! I hear Puerto Rico! I’m from the earth! From my mother’s womb!” A dispatch from Denver’s annual Women Grow conference, which connects and supports women in the weed business. [Jezebel]

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Friday Links: A Year of Heavy Musician Casualties

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on April 22, 2016

Prince

The Guggenheim just went public with its new website. Gone is the top navigation bar, and the cluttered four column information architecture. The navigation has shifted to a static top left box that floats as you scroll through the content. An improvement, I guess, but now it looks like a Martha Stewart website circa 2009. Too much teal. [Guggenheim]
“Stay Purple.” Yesterday’s unexpected death of Prince saw its share of tributes, like Prince St station suddenly getting a P line, and Minneapolis’s First Avenue hosting an all-night street dance party in honor of the purple one. It’s been great seeing previous tributes — like Questlove discussing why Prince was hip hop, or Hilton Als on his black queer sexuality — get re-discovered. [The Internet]
And in other tragic deaths, Richard Lyons, the founder of Negativland died at 57. Cancer sucks. [Rolling Stone]
Damien Hirst is back with Gagosian. [New York Times]
When I was visiting Lisbon last fall, I was blown away by the opulence and kitsch of its palaces — specifically, the Palácio da Pena, this insane mock-Manueline Disneyland former summer residence of the Portuguese royal family. So it’s cool to see documentation of the Lisbon-based art and architecture collective Os Espacialistas’s intervention at the Marquis of Pombal Palace in Oeiras. [Hyperallergic]
Why is it, that whenever we read about a museum increasing their focus on contemporary art, it involves the purchase of a new building? You’d think the two were inextricably linked, when in fact, these projects are not always needed. Keep that in mind when reading “A Story of Two Worlds: Flush MoMA, Struggling Met”. The Met has plenty of amazing space to play around with—they didn’t need to the Breuer building to achieve that. [The New York Times]
This year New Yorkers will spend two thirds of their income on rent. The Manhattan market, though, is softening. [Curbed]

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Wednesday Links: Miami Hating

by Rea McNamara on November 25, 2015

Yep, this is coming. Credit: Miami New Times

“Here’s a moron deal: private by-the-seat plane/heli will take you to Miami AFTER the fair opening.” [@MagdaSawon]
Related Twitter Miami hating: “Cool response to someone telling u they going to Basel is ‘Oh why?’” [@nobody_stop_me]
Chancellor George Osbourne delivered the UK’s Spending Review, and it looks like more money is finally going to arts and culture. Beyond scraping tax credit cuts, the Arts Council is seeing only a 5% cut to their overall budget. Apparently the arts council and the UK’s museums and galleries will see a cash increase in the next five years, and the British Museum, Science Museum and V&A will get new storage facilities. [BBC]
End of the year listicles on nigh. Ben Davis gives an overview of 2015’s most memorable museum shows, name checking the New Museum’s Triennial and the Whitney’s “Greatest Hits”. [artnet News]
A $3 million donation from the Niarchos Foundations to Athens’s National Museum of Contemporary—crucial to the completion of a major renovation—has been withdrawn because the institution “failed to meet the agreed terms”. [Artforum]
British artist Sonia Boyce is creating the first database of black artists held in the UK’s public collections, and will likely set the record straight on the influence African artists had on modernism. [The Art Newspaper]
Well, that was quick: Paul Allen’s new Seattle-based nonprofit arts organization, which is set to open in 11 days, will apparently close in March and become a gallery. This is what happens when billionaire collectors try to do something in the arts—it sometimes falls apart because it was only a passing investment interest. [The Stranger]
Nigerian musicians have remade Prince’s Purple Rain. [The Guardian]
Yet another Paris Art Fair has been cancelled in light of the terror attacks. This time it’s Also Known as Africa, a new fair focusing on contemporary African art. It’s now been postponed to 2016. [The Art Newspaper]
An anonymous buyer has bought the sole copy of Wu-Tang’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin… concept album for an “undisclosed figure in the millions.” [Art News]
Fans of SoftBank’s Pepper have launched an online store selling accessories and clothing for the humanoid robot. [Wall Street Journal]
The secret histories of patterns: pre-Kusama, polka dots once signaled disease, and circa Medieval times, stripes were originally only worn by prostitutes and prisoners. [Quartz]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: So Many Romantic Loners

by The AFC Staff on April 15, 2015

This week, the art world plays punk teen-fantasy dress-up: feminist CD-ROMs, soap-opera karaoke, protest discussions, and DIY costumes. Whee!

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Must Like Loud: Neal Medlyn’s Explosive Seven Part Opus

by Paddy Johnson on February 2, 2015

When a performer spends several nights grinding his dick in your face for art, you want to find something good to say about the performance. It takes a lot of guts to put your junk out there, let alone create a seven part opus. That’s especially true in the case Neal Medlyn’s uneven performance marathon “Pop Star Series: The 2015 Emerald Edition,” which ran over the course of three days at the American Realness festival. Throughout the course of his pop-star based series, I watched Medlyn’s dick fly out of beaded candy briefs, hump a staircase, and air grind through saggy white underwear.

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Prince

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