Michael Anthony Farley continues his L.A. tour. Artist Megan Gordon shows him around Chinatown, a champagne bus strands him at the beach, and drag queens get patriotic.
Ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico, the Museo Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City (which has a program of artworks and exhibitions about war, genocide, racism, etc…) has been posting messages to him on their social media accounts. My favorite: “FOR YOU IT’S FREE.” [Instagram]
The Italian government, which likes to think of itself as a preservation expert, really didn’t want Venice to go on UNESCO’s list of endangered sites. But Venice is pretty endangered, largely from an out-of-control tourism industry. [The Art Newspaper]
Ramin Shokrizade used the economic model of a multiplayer online game to figure out what’s wrong with our IRL economy, years before the recession hit. Basically, property taxes should be higher to keep speculation in check. In the game, factories sat idle because players bought them up with the idea that they would be worth more “money” as the game progressed. In the real world, speculators snatch up real estate and land bank it as well—most of the “abandoned” buildings you see in East Coast cities are actually owned by investors who don’t put them to use because they’re waiting for a higher return on their investment. Taxing the hell out of vacant real estate would incentivize them to put all that inventory back on the market and force a housing/commercial real estate price correction. [Gamasutra]
The First International Contemporary Art Biennial of South America is seeking proposals from artists through September [BIENALSUR]
Is a museum show really the best and most logical capstone for an art award? Amber Eve Anderson makes a convincing argument that it’s not, based on the Baker Artist Awards exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. I agree with her—after seeing the show I thought “this is it?” All but one of the artists would have been better served with programming such as film screenings or performances. [Bmore Art]
In other Baltimore museum news, The Walters is presenting the tour “Drinking Our Way Through History” with local beers and a focus on art-historical imbibing. This looks like fun. [Facebook]
United Talent Agency is opening an art space in LA’s Boyle Heights. But the agency, which represents celebrity artists, claims it won’t function like a typical gallery. Instead, they’ll partner with out-of-town galleries who want to expand their collector base to Los Angeles and use the space for their artists to “experiment”. [The New York Times]
Huh. Dublin painter Kevin Sharkey has been homeless, arrested for destroying artwork, and collected by celebrities including Courtney Love. Now he’s running for president of Ireland. Somebody give this guy an HBO biopic. [artnet News]
Good Lord. Brooklyn Museum Chief Curator Nancy Spector gets up at 3 AM to write, because that’s the time she can find the quiet and solitude she needs to do it. That is drive. An interview with her at New York Magazine—she is intense. [New York Magazine]
The L Train’s planned disruption in services are more than three years away, and companies are scrambling now to profit off it. Uber has proposed a temporary deregulation of their services that would allow commuters to use a car pool app. We’re not sure how to feel about this. It may well be useful during that time, but it also will compete with the city’s own bus services, which as seen in other cities, has the effect lof eroding those services and creating class systems. Once we have this app will we be able to get rid of it? [Politico]
The Artist Studio Affordability Project known as ASAP needs a mere $600 to make the organization official. Main initiatives include building a coalition between artists and people with similar issues. It’s the single most important step to getting artists’ issues recognized. DONATE. [ioby]
Finally, you can order an asshole! Assholes on Demand offers a service for assholes to help you confront daily offenders like, say, your cable company. We expect they’ll need lots of volunteers. [Assholes on Demand]
A brief history of the artist from solitary genius, to artisan to creative entrepreneur. Puke. [The Atlantic]
A stepping stone to electric cars? A doofy looking but very high-tech electric scooter comes with rechargeable battery stations and an app that can change its color. [Tech Crunch]
New York City will measure the diversity of its institutions audience. [The Wall Street Journal]
It’s cold, and it’s gonna snow. [Weather]
Based on psychological studies, the people who general enjoy horror movies are unempathetic thrill-seeking men attracted to cowering women. Cops? [The New Republic]
A bizarre piece on the detriments of under-sharing on Facebook. This article begins with the idea that it’s bad that people don’t share their marital fights and that this imbalanced perception inspires other ill-suited couples to tie the knot. Then we learn that people hold back too much on issues that matter—Ferguson for example—and that’s the real problem, not the lack of personal tiffs on Facebook. Way to build an argument. [The New Republic]
Not a bad idea: Mark Zuckerberg started a book club on Facebook with discussion in the comment threads. Go figure, though, that he has selected “The End of Power”, about people in power. From the description: “Those in power today are more constrained in what they can do with it and more at risk of losing it than ever before.” This from somebody whose business model is based on aggregating our personal information. Can’t wait for the comments to roll in. [Facebook]
A humorous quote from the Chief Executive at SpaceX, a company hoping to build a commercial rocket ship. “We’ve been able to soft-land the rocket booster in horror movies the ocean twice so far,” Elon Musk said. “Unfortunately, it sort of sat there for several seconds, then tipped over and exploded. It’s quite difficult to reuse at that point.” [The New York Times]
I can now add another reason never to swim at Coney Island, in addition to the open fucking and public shitting which I’ve personally witnessed on previous trips: a bloated human hand has been found floating in its waters. Police are investigating. [Animal New York]
Everything about these tech world predictions is spot on. Brilliantly snarky too. On the predicted success of Uber, “Nobody will care about all the bad behavior anymore because money talks and bullshit walks, as Goethe once wrote.” [Valleywag]
Collector and dealer Stefan Simchowitz spent his vacation on facebook talking about his New York Times profile. Read the threads on Paddy Johnson’s facebook page and elsewhere. [Facebook]
“Mulata Que Sera”, Fernando Salicrup, 2005 (Image courtesy of Warnock Fine Arts)
Artist Fernando Salicrup, a cultural force in El Barrio and founder of the Puerto Rican nonprofit art space Taller Boricua, has died. [Facebook]
Roberta Smith writes about “Mr. Turner”, “Tim’s Vermeer”, and other movies about art from the perspective of an art critic. A wonderful reflection. [The New York Times]
Perhaps those upset about Uber’s recent booking fee to hail yellow cabs should just be thankful they aren’t taking a Pedicab? Animal reports a tourist who was charged $165 for a 15 block ride. [Animal New York]
Why does Penn Station only have six bathrooms? The Village Voice seeks answers from a swath of employees and frustrated travelers, to no avail. It just sucks. [Village Voice via Curbed]
Cuba artist Tania Bruguera was detained and released multiple times for staging a performance on the 30th in Havana in which she invited people to speak with a microphone on a podium, without censorship. The last update on the story is that Bruguera has been released, but can not leave the country for 3 months and is facing charges of “charges of resistance and disruption of public order.” [Hyperallergic]
Like everything else on Capitol Hill, a giant Calder sculpture has malfunctioned, ceased to rotate, and now hangs motionless in the Hart Senate office building. A Connecticut senator is fighting to get this piece moving again. Good luck with that. [artnet News]
Notes from a poverty jetset. If you’re in the art world, you are intimately familiar with the life described. [Momus]
How Britain sought to protect its art from nuclear war in the 1980’s. [Bloomberg]
The 2014 “best and worst” reader poll results are in over at Baer Faxt. I guess they tell us something about the average readership over there. Only the biggest galleries and museums get named. For example: Best US Gallery Show: Picasso at Gagosian, Worst US Gallery Show: Dan Colen at Gagosian. [The Baer Faxt]
Image of Douglas Gordon’s giant pool at the Armory (via Vogue.com)
Douglas Gordon has installed a massive pool with pianos in the Armory. Christian Viveros-Faune finds very little beyond that and wonders about the project budget. The idea sounds like the worst of Armory shows, banking on awe factor in order to hide a thin premise (read: Ann Hamilton’s curtain). [artnet News]
Everyone is coming out with sexy 2015 calendars. We’re not the only ones in the art world doing so; we found this New York City Freelance Art Handlers calendar that popped up on Etsy. [Etsy]
Lonely Planet declares Queens, New York the number one vacation spot in the U.S. All across the Internet you can hear cries of “Noooooooo!” shouted by Queens residents. [Lonely Planet]
The rich people hobby of building museums gets another participant: Norma and Irma Braman plan to single-handedly fund the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Braman told the Times “Whatever the cost is, we will be building it, period.” [New York Times]
Sally Kohn writes a great piece about some of the wrong headed feminism that has made headlines recently. This includes the feminist response to Mark Zuckerberg’s comment that he wears grey t-shirts because he doesn’t want vanity to distract him from his job—some thought this statement was meant to invalidate a woman’s choice to dress nicely. Also on the list was the latest Lena Dunham dust up over her memoir wherein she describes looking at her little sister’s vagina at the age of seven and masturbates near her in the same bed. This resulted in an uproar over whether this was natural and a campaign to get Planned Parenthood to drop Dunham as their spokesperson complete with the twitter hashtag #DropDunham. [The New Republic]
Speaking of Lena Dunham’s memoir, another point of contention seems to be an account of her sexual assault. She makes clear that she used a pseudonym to describe the person who assaulted her—it seems some reporters have been making someone else’s life hell—and talks about her decision not to open a criminal investigation. [Buzzfeed]
A woman sexually harassed by an Uber driver receives $31 in compensation from the company. [Jezebel]
Baer Faxt: Art book publisher TASCHEN will open the TASCHEN Gallery in Los Angeles this Saturday with “It’s Just a Shot Away: The Rolling Stones in Photographs”, bringing together almost 100 photographic prints tracing the band’s history.
Prospect in New Orleans will now be a triennial rather than a biennial. After visiting this year’s edition, Paddy concluded that this year’s edition did not live up to previous biennials. Given another three years, we hope Prospect will have a chance to up its game. [Baer Faxt]
Say hello to the new anti-Tindr, Hinge, which connects you only with people who have mutual friends on Facebook. [Wired]
Author Chris Kraus admits she doesn’t make much money off of her writing passions. “I realized early on that the kind of writing and art I was most drawn to was not the most highly rewarded, so I made other plans. I teach on a visiting basis as much for the contact as for the income. I live mostly off rents.” Is she a landlord? Does she Airbnb? We are left to ponder the meaning of “rents.” [Full Stop]
Hurricane season is upon us. California prepares for the most powerful storm in five years. [CBS News]
Theartblog picks gifts for the holiday season, from design philosophy to Ad Reinhard’s “How to Look” series. [part one; part two]
Comics execs are threatened by female cosplayers, who dominate the industry. “Cosplay combines comics with the stereotypically feminized world of fashion,” writes Noah Berlatsky. “It’s a way for folks to combine a love of Batman or Thor with a love of fabric and sewing and dressing up.” [The Atlantic]
The Pope’s New Year address will advise against buying products made by slave labor. [Agence France-Presse]
A decade and a half of Phillip Niemeyer’s “100 Years of Food”
In honor of the holiday, designer Phillip Niemeyer continues his “100 years of…” series with “100 years of food.” I love these. For the whole century, go to the Globe. [The Boston Globe]
Protests continue across the country in solidarity with Ferguson. [BBC]
Will Ferrell has been surprisingly vocal about his outrage over Twitter. We share this, because it’s unexpected. [Twitter]
Pitchfork just ClickHoled itself with these 2015 album reviews. [Pitchfork]
New York is going to get its first cat cafe on December 15, 2014. What does “cat cafe” mean? Eater interviews Christina Ha, co-founder of Meow Parlour. [Eater]
Can you separate Travis Kalanick, Uber founder, from his douchey comments, like that one time he told GQ he can get ladies as quickly as he can call an Uber—“yeah, we call that Boob-er”. [Modern Luxury]
Another paragon for the Caity Weaver canon: a lyrical analysis of Ariana Grande’s new song “Santa Tell Me,” which is about wanting to bone Santa. [Gawker]
There will officially be a sequel to Blade Runner, co-developed by Ridley Scott and Hampton Fancher. This is news to us. [Vulture]
Oh New York. “Alt” turkey dinners take turkey for a little spin. [Village Voice]
Trigger warning: this might make you throw up all over Thanksgiving. VICE covers British animals who are force fed meat, like this police horse. “[I]f there’s one thing that makes this great country peerless among our European counterparts, it’s our noble history of feeding shaking, industrially reared animals the reconstituted carcasses of their animal cousins.” [VICE]
The New York Times Editorial Board writes the best summary on this Ferguson bullshit and why we should be depressed. [The New York Times]
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