A runway jedi by Konstantin Kakanias. Image courtesy of T Magazine.
- Apparently, we can look forward to seeing Jedis on the runway this fall. [T-Magazine]
- Baltimore’s City Paper spotted Pussy Riot in Baltimore, shooting for the next season of House of Cards. [City Paper]
- A well of linkage here from Carolina Miranda on the history of a largely-unseen 1992 war photo of an Iraqi man burnt to a crisp trying to escape his truck on the “Highway of Death”. She couches it in the history of painting and photography, shows that war photos are an essential piece in art, and that “there’s something a little weird about a culture that revels in…the blood-spurting, limb-chopping, brain-eating horror of “The Walking Dead” but can’t handle it when a dead guy shows up on the news.” The essay reminds me of the final scene in John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, which argues that in placing ads next to stories of war “one can only say this culture is mad.” [The LA Times]
- Here’s proof that, for two days, a secret noise festival happened in a basement in the Rockaways. “At the Burning Fleshtival, ‘Hey, man, can you help me out?’ really means ‘Hey, man, check this rock chained around my balls for me?’” Marina Galperina chronicles Burning Fleshtival. [Animal New York]
- The Washington Post profiles Save the Corcoran, a group of students, staff, and faculty who have filed a lawsuit as a last-ditch effort to stop the Corcoran’s merger with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. (The story runs with a very, very, very, very, very dramatic photo of the group). If the deal goes ahead, then the National Gallery would take the collection– dissolving one of the oldest museums in the country– and George Washington University would absorb the art school. The judge will rule on August 20th. [The Washington Post]
- If you’re having trouble understanding why a merger would be such a disaster, then read Philip Kennicott’s very convincing argument against it. He makes this sound like another Cooper Union case, of a willfully neglectful board that will be rewarded for failing the institution they’ve been appointed to protect. [The Washington Post]
- Two German artists have taken responsibility for those white flags that replaced the American ones on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. They attribute the project only as a celebration of “the beauty of public space” and the German-born engineer John Roebling, who designed the bridge. [New York Times]
- A Fox News pundit suggested that we shouldn’t be taking nutritional advice from Michelle Obama, because the First Lady “needs to drop a few.” [Politico]
- Film noir actress Lauren Bacall has died. She was awesome at playing a bitch. The Hairpin has pulled some choice quotes from her Vanity Fair profile, like “I wasn’t put on earth to be liked.” Can the Internet please give us more people like this? [The Hairpin, Vanity Fair]
- The Frick made an app to “engage with youth.” Should we expect video tours of the collection with rappers next? [ARTnews]
- The National Portrait Gallery has installed a photo of Robin Williams. Also, Artnet news has a story about how Williams agreed to play the genie in Aladdin, as long as his voice wouldn’t be used to sell merchandising. Disney obviously violated that agreement, so they gave him a Picasso self-portrait as an apology. But the painting didn’t go with anything in the house. [Artnet]
- The Met is displaying all 17 of its van Goghs for the first time in a decade, and in response, Peter Schjedahl has written about how he learned to love the crowd-pleasing painter. “What makes van Gogh so magnetic? Picasso nailed it: “The drama of the man,” he said.” [The New Yorker]
