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Russia

Friday Links: Goodbye, Gawker

by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on August 19, 2016

Gender Baby

Eyebeam announces the five recipients of its 2016–2017 artist research residency. Those lucky, talented artists are…Morehshin Allahyari, Nora N. Khan, Mimi Onuoha, Macon Reed, and Karolina Sobecka. Residencies start in October. [Eyebeam]
Ask the Internet, and the winner of the “worst opening credit sequence on Netflix” goes to Orange Is the New Black. More than being annoyed by the jumpy Regina Spektor, writer Christine Elliot argues that the images of incarcerated women belong to a long line of “repressive portrait photography.” Recommended. [Dilettante Army]
On the thriving sales market for exhibition catalogs. [Los Angeles Times]
Trivia: What did Hitler describe as the “most beautiful village in the world”? Why, the 1935 Olympic Village outside Berlin. The site, the first permanent Olympic village, now serves as a museum, but local authorities plan to build 1,000 apartments there. Berlin currently faces a housing shortage, making housing issues a priority for civic officials. [Deutsche Welle]
Gawker, you will be missed. We will miss you so much. [Gawker]
The Ukranian ministry of culture is calling for an international boycott of Russian museums and other institutions that have taken art from Crimea. [The Art Newspaper]
Greenpoint is losing local icon Palace Cafe. After 83 years of hospitality, the family that owns the neighborhood dive bar has announced that it’s closing. No word on the reason why yet. [Gothamist]
As if any of us needed further proof of the decline of Western Civilization, we can now watch the Kardashians argue over a coffee table book about “Le Courvoisier, which is an architect. It’s so weird and boring, but I’m obsessed…it has words, big words.” Very tempted to find a tasteful building designed for easy access to its flat roof so I can throw myself off of it. [Dezeen]
Art dealer Fabrizio Moretti (not to be confused with Fabrizio Moretti, drummer for the Strokes), is suing David Zwirner over an editioned Jeff Koons sculpture that he claims is not number two of three, but rather numbered three in a seemingly endless edition. Yawn. Can’t rich people find something juicier to fight over? When I saw the headline I was totally hoping an art handler broke off Jeff’s dick in a “Made in Heaven” statue or something. Can you even imagine being the Manhattan judge who has to deal with shit like this all day? [artnet News]
Lisa Kuivinen, a 20-year-old School of the Art Institute of Chicago student, was killed when a truck crossed into a bike lane and collided with her. This is really tragic, and based on the photo provided, indicative of everyone’s biggest complaint about most American bike lanes: they’re painted between parked cars and the lanes for vehicle traffic. For the love of god, transportation planners, please just put the parking between a curb-adjacent bike lane and the street. We’re all so tired of people dying from bad design. [The Chicago Tribune]
Cara Ober also recalls her time at the amazing artist retreat organized by the Contemporary. We all miss the goats! [BmoreArt]
Mayor Bill de Blasio makes a convincing argument as to why City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez should’ve supported rezoning a parcel in Inwood district. Basically, the plan offered developers the option to build taller buildings if they include affordable housing. Now, Inwood is just getting stumpy luxury condos with no affordable housing. It seems like another case of knee-jerk NIMBYism getting in the way of productive compromise. [Observer]

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Friday Links: Billionaire Museums and Taco Bell Artists

by Rhett Jones on July 29, 2016

Eric Wesley’s converted Taco Bell gallery. Photo: Eric Wesley

Tomilson Hill is opening his own private museum in Chelsea on West 24th street. The Hill Art Foundation will be a two-story, 6,400-square-foot space that currently does not plan to charge admission. The collection is estimated to be worth $800 million and consists of stalwart contemporary artists like Christopher Wool and Richard Prince as well as Renaissance and Baroque bronzes. [New York Times]
Eric Wesley was looking for something in between New York and Los Angeles that would reinvigorate his art practice and allow him to use alternative space. What he found was an abandoned Taco Bell in Cahokia, Illinois. The renovated fast food joint operates as a gallery, installation and workspace.[Chicago Tribune]
Manhattan art consultant, Lacey Doyle, was arrested on Thursday. She is accused of using overseas bank accounts to hide millions of dollars she received from a family inheritance. Doyle is out on bail and faces up to six years in prison. [New York Daily News]
Stephen Hawking explains his belief that Brexit signals a need for society to change its relationship with money. He believes that we need to refocus on “cathedral projects,” meaning the type of initiatives that only serve the purpose of cultural good rather than short term profit. [The Guardian]
The original film from 1954 has long been understood to be an allegory for the birth of atomic weaponry and it looks like Godzilla is returning to its political roots. Kotaku’s man in Japan explains how the film is actually about the rise of right-wing militarization that is currently sweeping the country. Unfortunately, it seems, the film spends the bulk of its time with politicians arguing and doesn’t have enough giant lizard. [Kotaku]
The Detroit Institute of Arts is planning to better reflect the demographics of its home city by expanding its collection of African-American art. [Hyperallergic]
Following the release of a 2016 sales report that was relatively grim, three top executives have left Christie’s auction house. It’s unclear if the two events are related. [artnet News]
Leonardo da Vinci expert Mario Taddei explains why Dan Brown’s conspiracy theories about The Last Supper are probably bullshit and positions the painting as following proper traditions for the scene. Taddei says the most notable break from tradition is simply da Vinci’s choice to paint the apostles without a halo, indicating that they were just common men. [Smithsonian Magazine]
Found Art: Russian man crashes truck full of yellow paint and reconsiders his life. [YouTube]

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Thursday Links: Selfie Statue Backlash

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on June 9, 2016

selfie statue backlash

John Seed has a tongue-in-cheek idea to boost museum attendance: advertise the value of the artwork on display. [The Huffington Post]

Biogenic tattoos are apparently a thing now. Also known as morbid ink, the originally fringe practice of mixing tattoo ink with biogenic materials like cremated ash and even carbonized hair is going mainstream, and has been embraced by biotech startups. [Motherboard]

Our friends at Platform Arts Center in Baltimore have had a break-in, where power tools and exhibition materials such as display monitors were stolen. Please consider donating to their Paypal! [Platform Arts Center]

Houston’s planned mega-suburbs have some weird public art, as Corinna Kirsch discovered in The Woodlands. Now rival enclave Sugar Land has installed a bronze sculpture of two girls taking a selfie. Predictably, the internet is losing its shit about it. [CNET]

The sacrilege of it all: conservators will likely shudder over the recent discovery that a 14th century Italian altarpiece in the collection of London’s National Gallery fell from an easel and broke in half… 27 years ago. [Art Newspaper]

Moscow’s Garage Museum just announced it will be organizing the first Russian art triennial in March 2017. [Artforum]

After seven months behind bars, Russian dissident artist Pyotr Pavlensky is free. Found guilty of setting fire to the door of Russia’s Federal Security Service headquarters as part of a conceptual art piece, the artist avoided jail time but has been fined almost 1 million rubles for damages. He’s refusing to pay the fines, and has asked his supporters not to pay either. [Observer]

Cuba’s National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana has stopped loans to the United States over fears that Cuban expats could sue to have the state-owned artworks seized as retribution for the country’s wealth re-distribution in 1959. Until this situation is resolved, the Bronx Museum’s forthcoming exhibition of contemporary Cuban artists, Wild Noise, will be postponed. [Art Newspaper]

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Thursday Links: It Sucks to Be Pyotr Pavlensky

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on May 19, 2016

If you’ve ever wanted to get up close to “The Port of Rotterdam” by Paul Signac without visiting the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, now’s your chance.

The Google Cultural Institute has begun archiving famous artworks with gigapixel images, which contain over one billion pixels. You can now zoom in on images of paintings by Van Gogh, Pissarro, and more down to the brushstrokes. Google sees these documents as a tool for conservators, and also a chance to replicate the experience of seeing an artwork “in person”. Walter Benjamin is rolling in his grave. [Google]

Art activist group “BP or Not BP” has staged an intervention at the British Museum, protesting BP’s sponsorship of the show “Sunken Cities”. Activists say that the sponsorship legitimizes the oil company as a leader of climate change. [Hyperallergic]

We haven’t listened to this podcast yet, but it sounds interesting. Museums are increasingly buying contemporary art, which some consider a gamble, as what does well on the art market might not have much cultural weight in a permanent collection in a decade or two. [Quartz]

Legendary LES squat/art space ABC No Rio will be demolished soon. The current historic building is structurally deficient, but the collective has raised funds to replace it with a new, hyper-energy-efficient structure, so all is not lost. [Curbed]

“The fragility of freedom is the simplest and deepest lesson of my life and work,” wrote Fritz Stern, a leading German Historian who died in his home in Manhattan at the age of 90. He spent a lifetime trying to understand the circumstances that lead to Nazi Germany. [The New York Times]

Arthur Fellig, A.K.A. “Weegee” was a crime reporter who captured a lot of New York’s colorful streetlife and nightlife in the twentieth century. An exhibition focused on his photos of the Bowery of yesteryear will be opening soon at Mana Contemporary, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun show. [ArtAsiaPacific]

Pyotr Pavlensky, the Russian protest artist who famously nailed his balls to the Red Square, has had a rough year. He’s in prison, where he alleges he was beaten by guards so severely they broke several ribs. [Artforum]

And today, Russian courts convicted Pavlensky for his involvement in protests agains the Putin regime’s invasion of the Ukraine. [ARTnews]

Cara Ober intervies Hans Haacke about art schools, the Cooper Union debacle, and institutional critique. It’s a good read. [BmoreArt]

To counter a $3 million budget deficit, director Anne Pasternak is offering Brooklyn Museum staff buyouts. The museum employs over 300 people, and is facing rises in operating expenses. [artnet News]

And in other Brooklyn controversies, social media is super pissed about news that Williamsburg’s Hasidim are receiving a disproportionate share of New York City’s Section 8 housing vouchers. This anger is largely attributed to the fact that the insular religious sect owns so much property in the city, and as landlords, are blamed for escalating rents and gentrification—particularly against people of color—all while providing low-income housing for members of their own religion who opt not to work. Here’s the exposé that started it all. [New York Daily News]

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Wednesday Links: VAGINA Is not a Dirty Word

by Michael Anthony Farley on April 27, 2016

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Moscow is filled with terrible sounding public art. Apparently there’s been a Soviet-esque shift towards the kitschy and dumbed-down as the global community has withdrawn from an increasingly hostile Russia. [The New Yorker]

In other Russia news, performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky is refusing to accept a court’s closure of a criminal case against him. I have no idea what that means, but Pavlensky is known for anti-government performances such as sewing his mouth shut, nailing his balls to the Red Square, and setting fire to the Russian Security Services building’s door. [Artforum]

Christie’s owner Francois Pinault is still really, really rich despite the auction house’s recent financial woes. So rich, he just signed a 50 year, $1 billion lease on a historic Parisian grain storage building by the Louvre at Bourse de Commerce to open a museum for his own collection. [Deutsche Welle]

Oh. My. God. Allison Wint, a Michigan substitute art teacher, was just fired for using the word “vagina” while teaching a lesson about Georgia O’Keefe. Like, VAGINA is a dirty word? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with “other America”? Now I’m on a quest to find an especially “dirty” NSFW GIF of the Hump Day to dedicate to Harper Creek Middle School principal Kim Thayer. [Detroit Free Press]

The Glendale, California City Council is debating how to select residents for units in the $30 million Glendale Arts Colony affordable housing complex. Some believe priority should be given to artists already living in Glendale. As a resident of a similar development, I have to say I wish they had offered the units to neighborhood artists first. The new wave of residents ended up changing the character of the neighborhood and displacing a lot of the people who had been living here for years. [Los Angeles Times]

Photographer Steve McCurry’s studio assistant, Bree DeStephano, has plead guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of artwork from her employer, including his famed “Afghan Girl” portrait. [artnet News]

“L.A. is one of the most fraught, anxious places that I’ve ever spent time in,” Amanda Ross-Ho on how Los Angeles informs her work, gentrification, and more. [ART News]

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Wednesday Links: What Would Bernie Say About Sarah Meyohas’ Wall Street Antics?

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on March 30, 2016

sarah meyohas

Charles Schwab has closed artist Sarah Meyohas’ account because of illegal market manipulation. Meyohas had purchased stocks and sold them in front of an audience as a performance. She then painted the fluctuations in stock prices caused in part by her transactions. [Observer]

Wow. Florence Nightingale was quite the graphic designer. The famous nurse was an avid statistician and created data visualizations to impact health policies: “to affect thro’ the Eyes what we fail to convey to the public through their word-proof ears.” [Open Culture]

A group of artists staged The Fung Wah Biennial on a bus travelling up and down the East Coast. The event was a nostalgic look back at the most infamous (and now defunct) of the Chinatown busses. [NPR]

Ian Volner wrote was has to be the most lovingly detailed account of the Met Breuer’s renovations. [New Republic]

Applications are open for the Lumen Prize, which rewards digital artists with up to $3,000 in cash and a travelling exhibition. [The Lumen Prize]

Charges against Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky, who lit the door of a government office building on fire, have been changed from “ideologically-motivated” vandalism to “damaging a cultural heritage site”. [Artforum]

Greene Naftali is opening a temporary exhibition space at 227 Leonard St in Williamsburg. They’re opening with a solo show from Lutz Bacher on April 8th. [ART News]

The Seven Best Restaurants in the world according to Vogue include two New York picks: M. Wells at PS1 MoMA (overrated IMO—too many innards) and UNTITLED at the Whitney (underrated IMO—out of this world fried chicken and carrots). The list doesn’t include one of my personal favorites, SMAK, at Malmo Konsthall. Best meringue I’ve eaten. Ever. [Vogue]

Add David Lynch to the list of celebrities supporting Bernie Sanders. [Twitter]

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Tuesday Links: Instagram Not Feeling the Bern

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on March 8, 2016

Bernie Sanders by Phillip Kremer.

Video artists! Columbia University is hiring for a ton of production/editing positions. Good luck trying to use their employment portal—if you can figure it out, I’m sure you’re hired. [Columbia]

Thailand’s new military government sucks. But apparently that’s good news for Bangkok’s art scene. Dissatisfaction has energized artists to make more politically-engaged work, while a plethora of empty businesses have been converted to galleries or studio spaces. [Reuters]

Meanwhile in American cities, gentrification has gotten so bad that this horror-movie-set of a structure is what a $1 million house looks like in San Francisco. [SFist]

A collection of animals licking windows. They all look really funny and weird. Except for the monkey. It’s disturbing. [Sad and Useless]

Collector, billionaire, and Seattle Art Fair founder Paul Allen reportedly crashed his luxury yacht into acres and acres of endangered coral reefs off the coast of the Cayman Islands. He denies his toy was responsible for the damage, but one of his companies is paying to help “repair” the reef. How magnanimous! [artnet News]

More than 200 units of affordable housing will be built in Flushing. Monadnock Development has received the contract from the city, and promises, amongst other things, a rooftop farm, a fitness facility and what’s being described as “feng-shui-oriented” design. According to Curbed, “A chunk of the apartments will be reserved for affordable senior housing, with the rest going to families “earning between $24,200 – $72,600 annually for an individual and $34,520 – $103,560 for a family of four,” per the HPD.” [Curbed New York]

Instagram has disabled the account of artist Phillip Kremer, who makes creepy collages of presidential candidates. We’re currently locked out of our Facebook account as a result of censorship, so we sympathize. [artnet News]

Moscow just opened its 200th subway station, modeled after the paintings of Piet Mondrian. Here’s an article and slideshow about the Russian capital’s metro system art. Why can’t we have nice things? Oh right… (see below) [Deutsche Welle]

Michael Kimmelman concedes that the Santiago Calatrava World Trade Center Transportation Hub looks pretty good, but he never really gets past how much it cost to produce the thing. $4 Billion in public money for the 18th busiest train station in New York. By comparison, Grand Central cost $80 million in private funds (about half the cost of the Transportation Hub adjusting for inflation.) [The New York Times]

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Wednesday Links: Totally Looks Like Lutz Bacher

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on October 14, 2015

Discuss.

Talk amongst yourselves: Lutz Bacher’s work in Greater New York bears a striking resemblance to a set piece Daniel Arsham created for his film Future Relic. And Rhode Island is neither a road nor is it an island. Discuss. [ARTnews]
Beirut’s Sursock Museum — hailed as a vital cultural landmark of the Lebanese capital, dating back to when Beirut was the Middle East’s capital of culture — has reopened after a seven year, $15 million renovation. [Artforum]
Due to various legal battles with the United States and the European Union, the Russian government is refusing to loan artwork from state collections to museums abroad. Russia claims artwork might be seized as a strategy to force Russia to pay fines the international community has imposed on the state, though this sounds more like Russia being characteristically passive-aggressive. [The Art Newspaper]
Gargoyles depicting slain Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Cabu and Georges Wolinski were recently added to the facade of a 13th century church in France. [Artforum]
A new legacy fund in honour of the influential artist, DJ and activist Will Munro has launched. The Will Munro Fund for Queer and Trans People Living with Cancer will provide emergency relief funds to the cancer-afflicted in Toronto’s LGBTTIAQQ2S community. [The 519]
In the lead-up to the Kunsthalle Wein’s upcoming exhibition and symposium, arts writer Rosemary Heather is penning a series of blog posts exploring how contemporary art has been impacted by the rise of political populism. [Kunsthalle Wein]
Uh, this is a list of expensive artwork one might buy in London this month paired with expensive beers one might buy in London this month. [Observer]
Outset, lead sponsor of the Frieze purchase fund benefiting the Tate’s collections, has ended its sponsorship. [The Art Newspaper]
Fashion and technology seems to be the haute 2016 museum exhibition: the Museum of Fine Art’s “#techstyle” will open in March, and the Costume Institute’s “manus x machina: fashion in an age of technology” will open in May. Which means that we’ll likely see a lot of Sorayama-inspired, Courrèges throwback outfits on celebrities at the Met Gala. [New York Times]
Want to buy Edith Wharton’s sterling silver and coral baby rattle? Gifted at her christening in 1920, it can be yours for $20,000. [Abe Books via Paris Review]
Well-deserved: Jamaican writer Marlon James has won the Man Booker Prize for fiction. [The Guardian]
Christian Viveros-Fauné’s review of Greater New York is a good read. He argues that the exhibition is nostalgic for the edgier, less-gentrified city of the latter decades of the 20th century. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “If institutions like MoMA PS1 are clued in to New York’s artistic decline, it’s time to redefine cultural and political alienation in the city—one museum experience at a time.” [artnet News]
Denver! Paddy is giving a talk on the history and evolution of GIF art tonight at Redline. Here, she talks with writer Bree Davies about what she’ll be covering. (Yes, it will include the Netscape Navigator GIF icon.) [Westword]

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Tuesday Links: Even Animals Are Pissed-Off About Gentrification

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on September 29, 2015

[jwplayer mediaid=”74886″]

I’m not sure exactly what this awesome creature is (a goat?) but I do know how he feels. [Facebook]

Gentrification tensions in Bushwick have been running at a seemingly all-time high after neighborhood newcomer London Kaye and Bushwick Flea owner Rob Abner installed a pretty heinous crochet mural inspired by Wes Anderson on a longtime resident’s home without her permission. This Saturday, the anarchist group Brooklyn Solidarity Network staged an anti-gentrification protest at the market, which led to one very-illegal sounding fake arrest by NYPD Officer Bin-Safar. [Gothamist]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, British anarchist group Class War has been organizing “Fuck Parades” to protest London gentrification. In their latest action, hundreds of masked protesters descended upon a novelty cafe that sells £3.20 (~$5) bowls of breakfast cereal on Brick Lane—once a major center for the city’s working class immigrant communities that has seen huge rent increases. [The Telegraph]

And in a softer approach to confronting gentrification in London, Lucy Sparrow has created Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium, a sex shop with all hand-stitched fabric replicas of everything from porn to condom wrappers. The project is a commentary on Soho’s transformation from a “seedy” area to one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the capital. [Dezeen]

This is so well-deserved: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Ta-Nehishi Coates are 2015 MacArthur Fellows. [Artforum]

Amazing: Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation will be housing Frankie Knuckles’s record collection in its Stony Island Arts Bank. [Chicago Reader]

Dia has scrapped plans for a new building in Chelsea. The proposed building, headed by previous director Philippe Vergne, promised to give the Foundation a major presence in New York, and would be situated on the footprint of two of its three existing sites in the city. It was also Vergne’s big banner project, but since moving on to MOCA, has obviously been scuttled by new director Jessica Morgan, who wants to bring “equilibrium” to all of Dia’s spaces. [Art Newspaper]

Leftover bruschetta ham and eggplant tortellini: turns out you can eat pretty gourmet if you dumpster dive in the Upper West side. [VICE]

Jerry Saltz weighs in on Dana Schutz and Katherine Bernhardt, and the frustratingly protracted careers of female bad-boy painters. [New York Magazine]

Listen to this interview with Simon Denny, the Berlin-based artist who used leaked NSA PowerPoint presentations for the installation “Secret Power,” New Zealand’s Venice Biennale Pavilion. He also used Behance to track down David Darchicourt, the former NSA creative director of defense intelligence. He commissioned the graphic designer to the spies to create maps of Denny’s native New Zealand. So smart. [Marketplace]

Lydia Cash, a painter who participated in last weekend’s Edgewater Fall Art Fair, had a large number of her paintings stolen. But she left her tent completely open and had her paintings still in view. According to the organizer’s statement, “she had done the same when she participated in our Art Fair last year.” As much as I want to have one tear streaming down my face for Cash’s plight, I think I agree with one of the story’s commenters: “don’t feel sorry for her — she left her stuff in an open tent.” [NBC Chicago]

The Moscow Biennial faces a double whammy of a devalued Ruble and a political climate that’s not particularly friendly to contemporary art. This year’s curators Bart de Baere, Dafne Ayas, and Nicolaus Schafhausen used their shoestring budget to trim any excesses designed to cater to the market—no shipping of huge expensive artworks, for example—and focused on providing space for artists to produce new work, showing easier-to-insure photographs, and hosting small-scale interactive performances. [artnet News]

In other Moscow news, the nonprofit art space Red Square Gallery has closed following police intimidation over an exhibition of photographs of LGBT teenagers. [The Art Newspaper]

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