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Van Gogh

Monday Links: The Force Is Not With George Lucas’s Chicago Museum

by Rhett Jones on June 27, 2016

tonyFehrLinks

Well, this can’t be good. New MOCA CEO Chantal Pontbriand has left MOCA after only eight months on the job. This is nothing short of shocking news for the organization, which in the course of a year has transformed its name, mission, and location. In March, she even announced that the organization would be expanding its footprint from three to five floors in its new location as well as a building across the street. It’s unclear whether those plans will stay in tact now that she’s departed. [The Toronto Star]
For the first time, Jesus tomb is getting refurbished and will be opened for an archeological dig. [Daily Beast]
George Lucas plans for a major museum in Chicago have been foiled by a two-year legal battle and he is reportedly looking for an appropriate location in California. People involved in the tentative planning say that San Francisco will probably be the first choice. [The Art Newspaper]
For those people who didn’t already hate golf, there is now a custom hoverboard that carries players around the course. It’s called the GolfBoard. [GolfBoard]
The strategy game Civilization 5 will be used in classrooms to teach kids about diplomacy and the ways in which Ghandi was a power hungry, nuke flinging sociopath. [Motherboard]
Jenny Holzer will mount her “first site-specific” work by carving her signature “poems on cliffs, monumental boulders and on bedrock” in Ibiza. [The Art Newspaper]
Legendary street photographer Bill Cunningham has died. Of the pieces we’ve read thus far, the Washington Post has been the best. Though the Times obituary staff did a fine job. [Washington Post]
Legendary writer and journalist Michael Herr has died. [Daily Beast]
Legendary Sculptor Tony Feher has died. Paddy Johnson recalls a talk he gave at Rutgers University and explains why his work is so significant. [AFC Newletter]
A round-up of some old school video albums that pre-dated Lemonade. Before Beyonce was putting Becky with the good hair on blast, Don Johnson was rocking sleeveless shirts on Max Headroom’s soundstages. [MEL]
Douglas Coupland is looking for a model that looks just like Van Gogh and will the person who looks the most like the famed artist $5k. [The Guardian]
Beloved record shops, Other Music and Rebel Rebel, both closed their doors this weekend. This is a nice opportunity to revisit Karina Longworth’s excellent investigation into what happened to Kim’s video collection. [Brooklyn Vegan]
Prince’s “Yellow Cloud” guitar has been auctioned. The lucky bidder spent $137,500. [Vulture]

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Wednesday Links: Yes to Dancing, No to Meat

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on June 24, 2015

Don’t eat Chinese meat. 100,000 tons of meat, some from the 1970s, have been seized across China. [Sinosphere]
Feminist artist Miriam Schapiro—and one of the first artists to make art with a computer—passed away at the age of 91. [ARTnews]
If you feel like escaping New York this weekend, there’s always Wilco’s three-day music festival at MASS MoCA. [MASS MoCA]
Don Featherstone, a sculptor and inventor of the pink plastic flamingo, has died at the age of 79. [The New York Times]
A new study finds that creative-sector jobs—those in fields like acting, design, and fine art—grew in New York City within the last decade. This, despite rising rental costs and mounting student debt. And, of course, Manhattan is on the outs: Brooklyn’s creative class rose by 60%, compared with just 10% in Manhattan. [Crain’s New York Business]
Um, get ready to giggle at some overstatement in this article about how “the role of the starving artist is quickly dying.” It begins with the story of artist Ashley Longshore—who owns a Luis Vuitton handbag! [Forbes]
According to Peter Malone at Hyperallergic, Ohad Meromi’s “Sunbather,” the sculpture commissioned by the Percent for Art program that Long Island City residents all hate, is only the second artwork to spark outrage in the PFA’s history, which includes over 300 commissioned works. John Ahearn’s bronze figures in the Bronx were deemed racist and demeaning and ultimately removed. [Hyperallergic]
Japan’s “no dancing” law has finally been lifted. [The Independent]
Christian Viveros-Faune reviews four Vincent van Gogh floral still lifes at the Met. He really likes them, and proposes that van Gogh’s personal history of mental illness distracts the public from the genius of his paintings. Really? We thought that history served as additional evidence of his “genius”? Plus, as Corinna Kirsch pointed out in the office today, all anyone has to do is look at the paintings to know that he’s doing something extraordinary with his brushwork. [The Village Voice]

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Wednesday Links: Runway Jedis

by Paddy Johnson Andrew Wagner Whitney Kimball on August 13, 2014

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]

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Thursday Links: Madoff’s Secret Office Art

by Paddy Johnson Henry Kaye Corinna Kirsch on June 5, 2014

Nick Keyegan’s contribution to GIFbites

Paddy Johnson writes about an animated GIF exhibition shown online and in Iran that has some real highs and lows. [Artnet]
In today’s edition of word vomit, Vladimir Putin ends up making sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton. [Daily Intelligencer]
Google Glass releases a $1,620 designer line by Diane von Fürstenburg. Yet again we are reminded that “Glass is a class divide on your face.” [Motherboard]
This roundtable seeks to debunk the stereotype that contemporary Latin American art is all about geometric abstraction. [Collecion Cisneros]
Job change! Curator Robin Nicholson leaves the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to direct the Pittsburgh Frick. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]
How do we create a market for digital artworks? We’d like to have a constructive discussion about this with the author of “From Mail Art to Tumblr.” The article supposes that online works are abstract manifestations: “What does it mean to own an artwork if the piece is not a self-contained object but rather an abstract manifestation?” writes author Willa Koerner. But what about the many websites, files, and code that are physically there? [Art21]
At the ZMK Media Museum in Germany, visitors can now whisper into the disembodied, 3-D printed “ear” of Van Gogh. This strange artifact is partially replicated from the painter’s genome. [The New York Times]
Manhattan art dealer Helly Nahmad is being charged with hiding a $13 million Modigliani stolen during World War II. The story has all the makings of a solid scandal: Money, an enigmatic, villainous corporation, and the Nazis. [The New York Post]
A whirlwind trip through the art loot collected by the world’s richest financiers: “Bernie Madoff’s prized piece of office art was a four-foot sculpture of a screw that he frequently dusted off himself…A defense lawyer pleaded for the valued object to be photoshopped out of court documents.” [The Baffler]
After two of his works were barred from being displayed in two separate Chinese cities this month, artist and dissonant Ai Weiwei writes an appeal to the Chinese government in Bloomberg: “Censorship has in effect neutered society, transforming it into a damaged, irrational and purposeless creature.” [Bloomberg View]

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Tuesday Links: It’s All Unbelievable

by Corinna Kirsch on December 10, 2013

Stay inside, New York. There are many ways to die by snow today. [The Awl]
Attendance at the Frick has more than doubled now that they’re borrowing Vermeer’s “Girl With the Pearl Earring.” Frick staff lets on that over 100,000 visitors have made their way into the collection since the October opening of Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals. [Real Clear Arts]
Can the art world ever recover from the influence of celebrity and entertainment on art? “No way,” remarked one curator at the Centre Pompidou-Metz. “And why would we, with such crossover programming in the upcoming year like Paparzzi! Photographers, Stars, and Artists?”* (*NOT A REAL QUOTE, BUT THIS IS A REAL EXHIBITION.) [e-flux]
Residents and business owners in the LES and and East Village want to keep SantaCon’s drunken hordes out of their streets. Let the protests begin. [Bowery Boogie]
Wow. Larry Gagosian has some harsh words for the new breed of collectors and partiers coming out to Miami. “Two years ago, the audience was a little more interesting from the perspective of the galleries that come here.” [Women’s Wear Daily, Alain Servais]
Bored much? Try cat petting, the computer game. [@PixelatedCowboy]
Ah! LACMA is starting up its Art and Technology program again—the very same one from the 1960s. They sent Claes Oldenburg to do research at Disney; John Chamberlain to Rand Corporation; Richard Serra to Kaiser Steel. Now it’s different; mostly, the program gives office space at the museum. [The New York Times]
Happy Birthday, Michael Snow! [@tylergreendc]
Missed this one last week, but the Van Gogh Museum is authorizing 3-D reproductions of Van Gogh’s masterworks. $35,000 for Starry Night, y’all. The first round will debut in January, at the L.A. Art Show. [Los Angeles Times]
Do subjective end-of-year lists not make you angry? Then go ahead, read Complex’s 25 Most Important Artists of 2013 list. Francis Bacon, who just sold the world’s most expensive painting at auction barely scrapes by in the 22nd slot; Robert Indiana is just a nudge ahead of him at 21. Top artists include those who have collaborated with Lady Gaga (#10: Inez and Vinoodh) and Pharrell (#5: Daniel Arsham, #8: JR). Celebrity art collaborations ≠ Most Important Artists. [Complex]

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Wednesday Links: The Pits

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on September 11, 2013

Roberta Smith explains why selling art works from the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection is shortsighted and damaging to the city’s future. “If the United States aims to produce more and import less, it needs designers and inventors of things to be produced. Such skills require just the kind of imagination and ingenuity that are nourished by art training from an early age and by museums.” [The New York Times]
Holy shit. The New York City Opera will be cancelling its current season, and the next, unless it can raise $20 million by the end of the year. [BlouinArtinfo]
Edward Winkleman thinks artists can do more good for the world if they’re well-known, so it’s okay to be a bit selfish in the studio. It’s true, of course, but fame won’t be the path or even the goal for every artist. [Edward Winkleman]
Carla Gannis and Justin Petropoulos have asked Anthony Antonellis + Anthony Tognazzini to produce ‘Closer.mp4’ – a short story written by A.Tognazzini, animated by A. Antonellis and narrated by Daniel Rourke. No idea what this will look like, but we’re swinging by Transfer Friday night to check it out. [Facebook]
Another story about window dressing: billionaire real estate broker is turning the Chelsea gas station into luxury condos, and using a series of artworks to advertise the property. First up is “Sheep Station,” a grassy knoll to be occupied by the late Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s sheep sculptures. [BlouinArtinfo]
It’s been a while since we’ve been inside a Barnes & Noble. That trip can wait a little longer, thanks to Hyperallergic’s list of new fall reads. [Hyperallergic]
Russia still has artworks looted from WWII Germany. Angela Merkel tried to bring it up again at a press conference, but was stonewalled. [Art News]
Christopher Knight reviews the newly-discovered Van Gogh Sunset at Montmajour. Not the greatest, he says. [LA Times]

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Tuesday Links: Sext Me If You Can

by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch on April 30, 2013

So, the New Museum is hosting a residency program for the NEA 4. It’s hard to pin down what, exactly, this residency will look like; from what we know so far, all four artists’ projects will be concerned with how to fund performance art. Sadly, Karen Finley’s project shows how to do that, but only by getting away from performance altogether. In “Sext Me if You Can”, Finley will ask audience members to send her sexts, which she’ll then make into paintings to sell at the New Museum. Here’s my preliminary review: Not brilliant. [New Museum]
Latvia just opened the Mark Rothko Center. Pro: This is the first time any Rothko paintings have made their way to Eastern Europe. Con: The museum only has six of them. [Financial Times]
The Saudi conceptual artist Abdulnasser Gharem plans to set up the Arab state’s first artist-run foundation in Riyadh. [The Art Newspaper]
Women: shitting at the workplace should feel empowering. It’s okay to take a dump in a stall. [New York Mag]
Richard Prince made a composite of all of Jerry Seinfeld’s girlfriends. [Animal]
The planned alliance of Philadelphia’s rare-book collectors’ mecca, the Rosenbach Museum and Library, with the Free Library of Philadelphia could mean greater access to literary treasures. The editorial here suggests the merger will be less messy than the Barnes move. [Philly.com]
There’s a war brewing with literary critics, and it’s because, no surprise here, book lovers don’t always get bloggers. Literary critics are whining about The New York Times Book Review because the old school publication’s new editor Pamela Paul has “no writerly or literary credentials”. That’s not exactly true, but that doesn’t stop The Guardian’s Michael Wolff from deriding Paul for working “two years as a blogger at the Huffington Post, which, it doesn’t seem entirely churlish to point out, is not a job.” Unfortunately, that’s the best he can come up with. [The Guardian]
Canada’s National Film Board gets props from The New Yorker blog for supporting radical filmmaking. [The New Yorker]
A recent New Yorker piece on Depression journalism has an unnamed New York Times editor calling poor people losers, according to ex-Times writer Charlie LeDuff. [The New Yorker, behind the paywall]
The oil company Shell bankrolled an eight-year scientific analysis of van Gogh’s true palette. It reveals that his colors were originally more naturalistic. [The New York Times]

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Lists About Art Taste Like Gummy Bears and Cure the Blues

by Reid Singer on November 4, 2011

The only offensive thing about Halle’s list is that it might give people the impression that they’ve actually learned something. I really hope commenters were being ironic when they applauded the “art history” lesson available from the slideshow captions; apparently some people can’t imagine how real art history might differ from a brief paragraph with some fun facts. This list is too brief, too arbitrary, and too thin to gather anyone’s attention for more than a few minutes. It is a tremendous success.

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Occupy Museums Confronts The One Percent

by Paddy Johnson on October 28, 2011

Rain did not deter this week’s Occupy Museums General Assembly, the second in what is an ongoing series of protests. Joined this week by the Art Handlers’ Union, Teamsters Local 814, a group of roughly 60 people collected on the steps of MoMA to protest a system they say has a funding structure and relationship to the market that “disempowers artists, and alienates art from the 99%”. From the museums, they traveled across town to join the picket lines at Sotheby’s just before the launch of their evening Prints sale.

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