This is a GIF of Pussy Riot doing their thing by illustrator Edith Carron. It’s cute and colorful but a little rough, just like their brand of punk. The color palette reminds me of my favorite Pussy Riot music video (actually, probably one of my favorite songs of all time) Kropotkin Vodka:
In the video, the band attacks businesses owned/patronized by the Moscow elite who support Putin and turns them into guerrilla concerts. It’s pretty fucking badass. Every time I think “wow! I’m sure taking a stand by boycotting Apple products!” I like to remind myself that Pussy Riot lit a fashion show on fire with the threat of Russian prison (or likely, worse) hanging over their heads. Rock on, and stay un-arrested you fabulous queens!
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]
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]
The boss was on TV! We’ll have a post on this soon, but you can watch Paddy Johnson on ArtPrize finalists, here. [WoodTV]
Documenta’s going to Athens in 2017. In all likelihood, this has no bearing on our travel plans. [artnet News]
Debbie Harry on Blondie T-shirts. Not much to say here, but she does give a shoutout to a superfan who’s been drawing cartoons of her for 25 years. [Vulture]
For his birthday, Vladimir Putin gets an art exhibition depicting him as Hercules. The Sochi Olympics is one of his twelve labors. Also, shooting down French war planes with a bow and arrow. [New York Magazine]
You don’t have to tweet all the time to be a good journalist, just like you don’t have to cover court cases and police activity, says New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet to Steve Buttry. [Steve Buttry via @brianstelter]
McKenzie Wark continues his comparison of artists to hackers. [e-flux]
In one of history’s surprises, the Marcos family has returned to the good graces of the Philippines government. Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos allegedly used stolen funds to amass an art collection, and now the government is hunting down the location of those works. So stolen money used to buy art that ends up being stolen. [Al Jazeera America]
Abdel Kader Haidara, the head of Timbuktu’s privately-funded Mamma Haidara Memorial Library, has received the German Africa Prize for putting his life at risk to save nearly half a million ancient manuscripts from Islamic extremists. He rescued those documents “for all of humanity”, he says, because the knowledge contained therein can never be recovered. [Deutsche Welle via Metafilter]
Woman gives birth with donated womb!!!!!!! A 35-year-old woman with a congenital absence of a uterus has given birth with a womb donated from a 61-year-old woman, according to a paper published by The Lancet. [The Lancet via Metafilter]
Startup investors like Snoop Dogg and Jared Leto (really) gave Reddit $50 million in funding. The barebones, community-oriented site won’t have ads. [Marketplace Tech]
Will two previously incarcerated Pussy Riot members, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, be able to get compensation from the Russian Government, despite a lack of support from the Russian public?
Drones: Now delivering pizza. What else will we think of doing with our military technology? [GOOD]
Despite wars flaring up in the Middle East, ex-Mayor Bloomberg tells everyone to calm down. He’s taking an El Al flight to Tel Aviv, just to protest the FAA’s decision not to let U.S. flights in or out of the country. GOOD. LUCK. [New York Magazine]
After more attacks on Palestine, Nobel laureates, artists, and public intellectuals are calling for a military embargo. On the list are names like Alice Walker, Brian Eno, and Ismail Coovadia, the former South African ambassador to Israel. [Algérie Résistance]
The term “Normcore,” which started out as Brad Troemel’s tongue-in-cheek reference to DIS Magazine fodder (office casual, IKEA, Under Armour) now seems to have extended to plastic surgery. The “New New Face” is a surgical tactic to round out and normalize older women’s faces, and naturally, an artist is mining it. Amalia Ulman is getting plastic surgery to grow as close as possible to blandness.
The author voices the same problem I have with the jogging and have had all along with Normcore “détournement”: “I just wonder if capitalism is so inescapable that there is no radical alternative left to us other than performing it?” Again: an artist is chopping up her body, in order to comment on Normcore. [Bullet Magazine]
Reproductive rights advocates are turning to the states to get around the Supreme Court’s decision to allow religious companies like Hobby Lobby to drop birth control from its employees’ health care. [Slate]
Which artists are going to shake President Obama’s hand this year? The National Medal of Arts award nominees are out and the only visual artist on the list is James Turrell. The Brooklyn Academy of Music has also been nominated. The ceremony will happen this coming Monday, July 28. [NEA]
A petition to “Save the Corcoran” has successfully stalled the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s merger. Due to financial problems, the Corcoran Gallery of Art plans to cede control of its collection to the National Gallery and operate the College of Art and Design under George Washington University. [The Art Newspaper]
Baynard Woods, editor for Baltimore’s City Paper tries, however unsuccessfully, to get Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to talk about her views on art. “Of course I like art, I went to goddamn Oberlin,” she told Woods.[City Paper]
Seems like the polls were right. Detroit pensioners vote to back the Grand Bargain, which is a huge step forward in the city’s effort to protect the DIA’s collection. [Detroit Free Press]
Day two in stories about giant amphibious art in China: Yesterday in Guiyang City a giant inflatable duck disappeared. Today, Chinese censors are banning Internet reports about a giant inflatable toad floating in Beijing Park. Why? Because people are comparing it to ex-President Jiang Zemin. [BBC News]
Plans for New York’s as-yet-to-be built Museum of African Art have been shelved for more modest ones. What would have been a $135 million project has now been cut by $40 million. It seems that younger institutions, though they may want to fight for the right to make mega-million-dollar institutions (like Whitney, MoMA, Lincoln Center) just don’t have the backing. [The New York Times]
Not art-related, but terrifying: Newsweek has a cover profile on Vladimir Putin and his life of “an endless procession of gilded rooms.” He does not like or understand the Internet. He’s referred to by his inner circle as the “Tsar.” He loves dogs. He is emotionless. He views ceding power as the greatest criminal act. [Newsweek]
“Are you the person that we can ask questions? Or are you just a guard?” The New York Times interviews a security guard at the Guggenheim’s James Turrell exhibition. [The New York Times]
The Metropolitan Opera won’t bow to protesters who’d like to see the opera take a stance on the Russian government’s controversial gay rights laws, and also the government’s denial of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” premiered as the opera’s season opener last night. [Bloomberg]
The Art Loss Register has used some rather questionable methods to track lost art work. For example, the Register led a collector to believe a painting was not stolen, when in fact it was, so that he would buy it and unwittingly help the company collect a fee for its retrieval. [The New York Times]
Did Russia censor all 26,439 Squarespace sites over a satirical gay art PDF? So reads the headline of an article reporting on Loo.ch, the New York-based art, technology, criticism, and travel website run by Ukrainian expats Natasha Masharova and Anatoli Ulyanov since 2010. They believe two pieces criticizing Russia’s new anti-gay propaganda laws caused the block. Sounds plausible, but could more than one of these 26,439 other sites have published a few critical words on the law? [Animal]
Blackberry is in a “death spiral.” They laid off forty percent of their workforce and report a second quarter loss of one billion on 1.6 billion in revenues. Queue the think pieces. [Washington Post]
Art collector Peter Brant, also owner of the Greenwich Polo Club, introduced a Groupon to a recent weekend event. In addition to the polo match, VIPs were given a tour of Brant’s art center; the rest watched the horses. [Boston.com]
Carolina Miranda interviewed Ed Ruscha for NPR. [NPR]
Russian art collective and punk band Pussy Riot is this week’s target in Putin’s general, persistent crackdown on everything. Three of the collective’s ten members defended themselves against state charges of “hooliganism” when the case went on trial Monday, July 30th.
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com
Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director
This is a GIF of Pussy Riot doing their thing by illustrator 
