Posts tagged as:

public art

Tuesday Links: Let’s All Stop Guilting Each Other About the Election

by Michael Anthony Farley on July 26, 2016

Street Art

Okay, we’re not usually big on “street art” here at AFC, but this is great. Mathieu Tremblin has been painting over terrible tags around French cities and translating them to legible fonts. [design you trust]

Let’s all read this guide to how the electoral college works and spare ourselves any more Facebook/Twitter fights about how voting for a 3rd party candidate “is a vote for Trump”. The popular vote doesn’t matter (remember when most people voted for Gore but we ended up with Bush?). Statistically, most of us live in a solidly “blue” or “red” state and all of that state’s electoral votes are already going to Clinton or Trump, respectively. So stop trying to bully your friends into voting for anyone they don’t want to. But, seriously, if you live in Florida or Pennsylvania, vote very, very carefully. [How Stuff Works]

The Municipal Art Society of Baltimore is seeking proposals for a public artwork in a location that looks straight outta Hogwarts. There’s a $30,000 budget/stipend. Apply! [Baltimore Arts]

Whoa. India’s government is instituting a national “grading” system for artists and writers that groups them into the categories of “outstanding, promising, and waiting.” Is this to prioritize granting or something? As far as I can tell, it’s just to create a government-curated map of cultural assets. Or the plot of a really unsuccessful YA dystopian novel/film series aimed at the band kids. [Hindustan Times via Artforum]

Adam Andrzejewski is shocked and appalled that the VA spent $20 million on public art in the last ten years, all while providing notoriously crappy healthcare to veterans. I’d like to point out that the F-35 bomber program is $200 BILLION over budget. Pick your fucking battles dude. [Forbes]

A growing number of “YIMBYs” have become actively pro-development in cities as an attempt to combat escalating housing prices.They argue that the past several decades of activism has been aimed at stopping development and implementing ridiculous zoning regulations, which has created a huge lag between cities’ demand and supply for new housing. The problem is, we need even more new urban housing than the private sector is trying to build. But it’s a good idea, as long as it’s accompanied by housing/architectural preservation efforts. [Fast Company]

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Thursday Links: Someone Buy David Bowie’s Stereo

by Michael Anthony Farley on July 14, 2016

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David Bowie’s art and design collection is heading to Sotheby’s. This is the first time the legend’s collection has been made public, and it’s a treasure trove. Bowie collected mostly 20th century painters and designers, including Basquiat and Duchamp and a 60s stereo system from Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni (above) that looks straight out of A Clockwork Orange. [BBC News]

Dennis Cooper’s blog, which he has kept since 2002 and is considered an important piece of experimental literature, has been deleted inexplicably. Google deleted both the author’s Blogger account and Gmail, erasing over a decade of work including an incomplete animated GIF novel. It’s terrifying that corporations now control the fate of so much cultural output and can erase it on a whim. [ARTnews]

“Rendering the Unthinkable: Artists Respond to 9/11” opens September 12th at The National September 11th Memorial Museum. The exhibition will be the museum’s first foray into curating art rather than historic artifacts. [The New York Times]

Ryan Mendoza purchased two more homes in Detroit for an artwork. This time, the facades are lit with LEDs in bullet-sized holes that spell out “CLINTON” and “TRUMP.” This sounds dumb. [Detroit Free Press]

The City of Miami is considering legislation that would make developers set aside a percentage of a building’s construction budget for on-site artwork or pay into a public art fund. The city of San Francisco attempted a similar program, but recent reports indicate this has just lead to a lot of artwork in building lobbies and relatively little cash in the public trust fund. When given an option, the private sector tends to put “public” art where it has the most benefit to themselves. A mandatory contribution to neighborhood public art funds is a far better idea. Besides, do we really want developers curating what our public art looks like any more than they already do? [Miami Herald]

Yale has asked the state attorney to drop charges against Corey Menafee, a dishwasher employed by the university until he was fired for shattering a historic stained glass window depicting slaves. [artnet News]

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Friday Links: Punk’s Not Dead at Art Basel, Begs to Be Euthanized

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on June 17, 2016

Huh. For some reason, someone made a kawaii commercial for Donald Trump. [Youtube]

The DAO has been attacked. The distributed autonomous organization which had centralized in one fund over $150 million in crytocurrency was hacked early this morning, with hackers siphoning off so far over $3.5 million ether, the DAO’s digital currency. To put in perspective: ether is trading at $17.50 per coin, putting the value of the stolen currency at over $60 million. [CoinDesk]

Here’s a GIF of a grandmother (the Queen) telling her grandson (the Prince) to stand up during her 90th birthday celebration. [Indy100]

Last month, Texas troubadour Guy Clark passed away. One of his final wishes, it turns out, was to have his longtime friend, singer and artist Terry Allen, make a sculpture using his ashes. “I think it was kind of like a ‘Fuck You, Terry,” joked Allen. [Glasstire, Rolling Stone]

What’s the next frontier? For Star Trek, which is marking its 50th anniversary with a new movie and TV series, turns out its unifying ts fanbase. Trekkies basically invented fandom — slash fiction, for instance, was famously coined from all the “Kirk/Spock” stories written by female fans as far back as the early 1970s — and it looks like their fan films are now competing with the official franchise productions. At the center of this is Axanar, a fan film that crowdfunded a seven-figure budget, and is now being sued by Paramount and CBS for copyright infringement. [BuzzFeed]

San Francisco poet Bill Berkson has passed away. Linked to the New York School of poets and artists, Berkson went on to become a prolific art critic, publishing reviews in Art News and Artforum. He also taught art history and critical writing at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1984 to 2008. [SF Gate]

According to this list of punk-inspired artworks for sale at Art Basel, punk’s not dead. But Jesus Christ, if it were it would be rolling in its grave. [The Art Newspaper]

Here’s good news: even if you suck at making art, the act still reduces stress hormones, according to researchers. [The Creators Project]

Sun Ping has been expelled from the official China Artists Association because, according to the CAA, Ping “ruined calligraphy at will and trampled on civilization.” Ping’s crime? A video of a woman writing calligraphy with her vagina. [artnet News]

Privately-owned “public art” can be sold or destroyed without governmental approval, in most cases. Now, Pittsburgh is trying to brainstorm ways to keep track of, and hopefully preserve, all the artwork in the public sphere that the public doesn’t actually own. [Next City]

Holland Cotter writes about the Antonio Lopez survey that just opened at El Museo del Barrio. As this show charts, Lopez created an out-gay art and helped change the ethnic profile of the fashion industry. Cotter gives the show two thumbs up, calling his art “true L.G.B.T.Q., loud and proud and unguarded.” [The New York Times]

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Friday Links: Boldly Going to the Beach

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on May 27, 2016

Just in time for summer, here’s Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform swimsuits. Just don’t plan a vacation to pleasure planet Risa, it never works out. [Geeks Are Sexy]

The Romanian hacker Guccifer, who famously leaked photographs of George Bush’s paintings and claims to have hacked Hillary Clinton’s private email server, has plead guilty to charges of identity theft and unauthorized access to protected computers. He faces 2-7 years in jail. [artnet News]

Terence Dick recommends seeing Public Studio’s ambitious show at the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto. The art-architectural duo have basically installed a giant LED advertising billboard inside the gallery, which is serving as light for a saplings nursery. Apparently the show touches on themes like video gaming, bioplan planting and the newly written Canadian version of the Rights of Nature. [Akimbo]

Just announced: British artist David Shrigley has been commissioned by Public Art Fund to create a 17-foot tall granite sculpture for the Doris C. Freedman Plaza this fall. Expanding on his 2008 work Gravestone, the tombstone will have a grocery shopping list engraved with items like “sausages”, “bread” and “pasta”, which may or may not earn the ire of gluten-free boot camp vegetarians working out in Central Park. [Press Release]

Meet the woman who was responsible for making you wear dreamy pastel nail polish in the 1990s: Dineh Mohajer, the founder of Hard Candy. Apparently, she originally made all the shades — remember Sky? — at home by mixing beauty supply store neon colors with bottles of Essie white polish. [Lenny]

Jonathan T. D. Neil’s predictions about the future art world imagine an Asia-centric market, individualism becoming obsolete in the face of artists working on production teams, art school grads decamping for China, and digital data usurping the importance of objects. He makes a convincing argument, but it’s predicated almost entirely on market forces. If there’s one thing about the majority of artists—for better or for worse—it’s that financial considerations are usually pretty low on the priority scale when making decisions. It’s hard to imagine artists moving en masse to a country with repressive censorship, even though the world’s top dealers and auctioneers might. And there will always be people making and buying physical things. [ArtReview]

OMG OMG OMG! The moment New Yorkers have been waiting for, 70+ years in the making: the MTA has added the Second Avenue Subway to the map. If it’s this satisfying to see the Q train snake up into the Upper East Side, just imagine how happy we’ll be decades from now when they add the teal T line. Also, the MTA is bringing the W train back into service, so that’s good news for Astoria. [New York Magazine]

Like most of our colleagues in the media industry, we’re disgusted by Peter Thiel’s revenge campaign against Gawker. Ever since it went public earlier this week that he was the money man behind Hulk Hogan’s $140 million-winning lawsuit, it raised all sorts of press freedom questions, not to mention the need for the privately-owned media company to sell some or all of their assets to continue fighting off the lawsuits Thiel’s adamantly bankrolling. Matthew Ingram explores a valuable question though: who would invest in a company knowing a Silicon Valley billionaire is so intent on destroying by any means necessary? [Fortune]

AFC senior editor Rea McNamara interviews Toronto-based painter Rajni Perera, who after years struggling in the city’s conservative commercial gallery world, is finding a lot of success in the emerging Southeast Asian art market with her fantastical, third culture perspective embellished photography. This is what the commercial gallery hustle looks like if you don’t live in a traditional art capital or make beige landscapes for all-white homes. [FADER]

Austin, Texas is booming in population, but its black residents are being pushed out to the suburbs at an alarming rate. It’s such an extreme case of displacement-by-gentrification that the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin exhaustively studied the issue. Their findings are one more warning sign of the impending crisis of slumburbia. The nation’s suburbs were never built to be good places for low-income residents, but that’s where they’re heading as cities get too expensive. [Grist]

Lucinda Barnes, UC Berkeley Art Museum’s chief curator, is stepping down. Barnes has been with the museum and film archive since 2001, and curated shows by Joan Jonas and Hans Hoffmann. She’ll retire next month. [Artforum]

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There’s So Much Giant Single-Word Public Artwork in New York City

by Michael Anthony Farley on April 20, 2016

Next month, Public Art Fund is installing a giant text piece by Martin Creed in Brooklyn Bridge Park. This will be one of three text-based sculptures in the area when it opens. What is up with New York’s love of big, single words?

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Friday Links: Hey Girl, Did You Get that Eviction Notice?

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on August 21, 2015

Bay Area queers take on the techie-led gentrification of San Francisco in the above music video “Google Google Apps Apps”. Can someone on the East Coast please write us an equally amazing anthem? [Youtube]

After much speculation, it turns out Banksy is behind the subversive amusement park “Dismaland” in a small British town after all. The temporary attraction offers sculptures by other artists including Damien Hirst, a performance by Pussy Riot, and typical theme-park tourist traps tweaked to offer a bleak look at late capitalism. [Colossal]

An office building renovation near Bryant Park has revealed a mid-century modern tesserae mural by Max Spivak. It’s being restored and will be on display and accessible to the public soon. [The New York Times]

The privately-owned Academy of Art University has translated millions of dollars of federally-subsidized student loans into a real estate empire for one San Francisco family. Beyond the cost to taxpayers, the school has an abysmal dropout rate and the few students who do graduate are faced with mountains of debt and few job prospects. Its abysmal graduation rates—32%—have put its accreditation in jeopardy. This sounds like a very, very good thing. [Forbes]

Hedge fund manager Bruce Berkowitz has been trying to build a private art museum with offices for his firm in Miami. Earlier this year, it looked like the city had rejected plans for the bunker-like building, which would house massive Richard Serra sculptures, a Basquiat, and other works from Berkowitz’s collection. Now, the project seems to be moving forward. [The Art Newspaper]

“Going to a sports art gallery is a lot cooler than it sounds” Sports Illustrated gets into the art criticism game. [Sports Illustrated]

How can you spot a fake painting? A breakdown of tricks and anecdotes. [Salon]

Kingston, in the Hudson River Valley, has converted an old mill into 55 units of affordable artist housing and exhibition space—one more potential lure in the exodus of city artists seeking more space for less money upstate. [Mid Hudson News]

Here’s a GIF of a Delta aircraft getting hit by lightning in Houston. It’s oddly satisfying to watch. [Gawker]

In architecture, postmodernism’s aesthetic triumphs and failures aren’t unique—to some extent, almost all buildings are victims or successes of fickle fashion. What’s truly the defining, problematic legacy of the movement is its impact on public housing. As the Thatcher/Reagan years eviscerated the English-speaking world’s social services, postmodern architectural thinking used modernist architecture as a scapegoat for the resulting problems. It was a diversion that somehow is still accepted widely. [Dezeen]

Life lessons from the older and wiser to the younger. A little cutesy, but fun nonetheless. [CBC]

Artist Daniel Buren is considering legal action against the city of Lyon, France over lack of maintenance of his 1994 Place des Terreaux public artwork. [artnet News]

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Monday Links: Eat a Waterbed

by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on July 6, 2015

The strange world of sunburn stock photography. Ow.

How popular are different art businesses globally, according to Facebook likes? Apparently Americans like Christie’s more than Sotheby’s. [ARTnews]
Don’t do “sunburn art”! (As if this were a “real” trend….) [Standard Daily]
Australia’s art funding is facing “dark days” due to budget cuts. [The Guardian]
Also facing a budget crisis: Chicago public schools. The city is cutting the schools’ budget by $200 million. [Marketplace]
An insightful article on the former sources of performance art. The author wonders about some outsider sources as well, from Oofty Goofty, a feral man-beast covered in tar, to Mr. Eat It All, a guy who tried to eat a waterbed for a promotional event. [Glasstire]
This is not surprising: art is really popular among the mega-wealthy. JJ Charlesworth talks about the rise of the prices in relation to the new global elite and the concept of scarcity as value. [artnet News]
“Incredibly fast and easy loans against your artworks. 4% Monthly, No Fees. Money tomorrow.” The mega-wealthy can now receive low-interest loans from ArtRank by leveraging their art collection as collateral. [Observer]
The Studio Museum in Harlem has just announced that David Adjaye is designing a $122 million new home for the institution. Unfortunately, it looks like this means the current building, which dates from 1914, will be joining the list of historic structures in Harlem that have been demolished in the past few years. [The New York Times]
Horror fans and art-school students, rejoice! This Halloween, you’ll be able to feast your eyes on Art School of Horrors, a Roger Corman production, where “bad art wants revenge.” [IMDB]
Baltimore has awesome bars and creative people—who actually want to be friends with you. [The New York Times]
In China, the exhibition ban on Ai Weiwei has been lifted. The artist remains unable to travel outside the country. [The Art Newspaper]
A piece of public art in Liverpool has been destroyed by vandals. The sculpture was a brass bird with electronics that played recordings of city residents talking about their hopes and dreams. Everyone’s a critic. [Liverpool Echo]
Hello, bears! It’s bear-cam season. [Explore]

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Found! A Tom Otterness Sculpture in a Suburban Mall

by Corinna Kirsch on June 18, 2015

I found some weird-ass public art in The Woodlands.

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This Week’s Must-see Art Events: Strange Monuments

by The AFC Staff on April 21, 2015

A laundry list of things happening this week: an outdoor exhibition about nature-kind-of waves goodbye to the ever-receding sublime, a building sorely in need of repair becomes its own cut-up colossus, artworks act like love letters to monuments, and people celebrate places made significant by other people. Last, but certainly not least: Giant. Dollhouse.

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Monday Links: Jimmy Van Bramer, Protector of the Realm

by The AFC Staff on March 30, 2015

Image courtesy of Jimmy Van Bramer

Jimmy Van Bramer, one of New York City’s most active council members, is due to submit a bill that will allow for community feedback on public art commissions. Van Bramer envisions town-hall-style meetings early on in the design process—this is necessary. Re: Public outcry against the Jeff Koons statue in California and here, in Long Island City, Ohad Meromi’s pink-man sculpture. [New York Times]
In Bangladesh, a blogger was knifed to death on a busy street in Dhaka. According to local sources, he had been targeted before because of “anti-Islamic writing.” This incident marks the second writer-related killing in Bangladesh this month. [BBC News]
“To brutally summarize a lot of scholarly texts: contemporary art is made possible by neoliberal capital plus the internet, biennials, art fairs, parallel pop-up histories, growing income inequality. Let’s add asymmetric warfare—as one of the reasons for the vast redistribution of wealth—real estate speculation, tax evasion, money laundering, and deregulated financial markets to this list.” [e-flux Journal]
Either selfies are evil, or people are. Over the weekend, Instagram was filled with people smiling for selfies against the backdrop of the East Village fire. [New York Post]
In related news, both Coachella and Lollapalooza are banning selfie sticks this year. (Coachella reps calls them “narcissistics,” lol.) [Stereogum]
Best read of the week, and possibly the month: “The Rise of the Cryptopticon.” Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies and law professor at the University of Virginia, tracks the legal history of privacy and surveillance in the United States, from the 20th century to our digital age. [The Hedgehog Review via Alexis Madrigal]
Finally! Macaroni salad and plain Jello are cool again. Drop that kale and get yourself to a Denny’s because normcore food is a thing now. Supposedly. [The Awl]
Yep, art by famous artists = still really expensive. Roy Lichtenstein’s “The Ring (Engagement)” is expected to fetch around $50 million at auction at the Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 12. [Huffington Post]
You too can get laid like a Lannister. British sex toy company Bondera released their “Game of Bones” product line, a Game of Thrones-themed lineup of dildos and bondage gear for sci-fi/fantasy and cheesy innuendo lovers everywhere. God, their copywriters are so lucky. [Flavorwire via Mashable]
Chicago jack-of-all-art-trades Shannon Stratton named the new chief curator of the Museum of Arts and Design. You’re welcome, New York. [The Observer]
Meet Jon Stewart’s replacement, South-African comedian and guy who seems way young—but hey, we’re rooting for you—Trevor Noah. [New York Daily News]

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