Look up on Bowery today (and for the rest of the month) and check out Marilyn Minter’s “RESIST FLAG”. It’s the first of many coming to Creative Time’s headquarters.
After Anish Kapoor secured the exclusive rights to light-absorbing pigment Vantablack, artist Stuart Semple created “The World’s Pinkest Pink,” which is available to everyone except Kapoor. Kapoor responded to this dig with the above Instagram photo, wherein his middle finger is dipped in Semple’s pigment. This seems like the kind of drama one wouldn’t expect Kapoor to have time for. [artnet News]
Beginning with David Bowie, J. Kelly Nestruck looks back at artists who died in 2016 and the ways in which they “performed” their deaths. [The Globe and Mail]
George Michael died this weekend. Here’s a look at why he mattered beyond the music. Think making gayness more interesting and less threatening, and erasing the barrier between who should and should not sing a soul song. [The New York Times]
Photographer Wing Shya’s aesthetic emerged about two decades ago, while working as an on-set photographer for filmmaker Wong Kar Wai during Hong Kong cinema’s golden age. Today, his gorgeous photos maintain a cinematic quality, even as the city’s culture and economy stagnate under mainland Chinese rule. [CNN]
Famed minimalist and art critic Donald Judd amassed a tomb of writing over his life, but never used a typewriter. This news comes in a profile by Randy Kennedy on a new collection of the artist’s writings and his children’s role in shepherding the project. [The New York Times]
Best new architecture in NYC. In a surprise to no one, Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus makes the list, but not without some heavy caveating. (Late opening, political tomfoolery, shopping mall effect, etc.) [Curbed]
The Denver Art Museum’s upcoming renovation proclaims to be fairly sensitive to the existing facilities. Nevertheless, there’s apparently some controversy over relocating Edgar Heap of Birds’ outdoor sculpture “Wheel”. This editorial doesn’t really explain what that controversy is, though. [Denver Post]
Great. The GOP is connecting Democratic senate candidates in New York to Mayor de Blasio and corruption wherever possible. And of course, it’s an easy attack to launch because the administration has been plagued by corruption. [Politico]
Fingers-crossed, the long-overdue Second Avenue Subway will open on New Years Day. But we can preview the city’s newest public artworks—from Chuck Close, Vik Muniz, Sara Sze, and Jean Shin—thanks to photos from inside the construction site.
So far, the work looks better than one would expect…
Artnews SA, the Polish Company that briefly owned ARTnews and Art in America, has filed for bankruptcy and will be liquidating all its assets. The bankruptcy was filed just two weeks after Peter Brant assumed all the assets for both publications, and announced that Brant Publications has become their legal owner. [artnet News]
“‘The Present in Drag’ errs by so uniformly investing in the corporate gaze that any radical vision of emancipation from this aesthetic comes off as puritanical. Consumer options are tragically offered as real options. How do we reconcile this corporate violence — which reduces our bodies, wants and needs to data with such cruel effect — with its embodiment by artists, however self-aware?” Karen Archey reviews DIS’s curation of the Berlin Biennale. [Frieze]
Anti-ISIS hacktivists have hit the Internet Archive. The open-access digital library and host of the WayBack Machine were hit with a DDoS attack yesterday because they inadvertently host user-uploaded ISIS propaganda materials. [Motherboard]
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz has a show at Mauritshuis in The Hague showcasing life-sized models of the flip-sides of famous paintings. Expectedly, the details are mundane — ”Mona Lisa” has a written message that says “this way up”, while Matisse’s “Red Studio” is covered in chicken wire. “The back reflects the artist’s studio, it has nails, it has hardware and is always changing. It shows the museum’s role as conservator, too,” says Muniz. [Guardian]
A long-list Gauguin floral still life has been rediscovered in a Connecticut auction house. [Art Newspaper]
Half of the Corcoran art school’s full-time faculty were laid off last month. To put in perspective, out of 19 full-time faculty, only 9 are coming back in the fall.The loss coincides with the school’s class of 2016 graduation ceremony, but also comes at a time of budget cuts, a shrinking student body, and the school’s integration into George Washington University. The latter has become a growing concern for the historical art school’s community, who have felt that the ongoing merger has had a lack of transparency in its proceedings. [Hyperallergic]
Diana Y. Chou has been hired by the San Diego Museum of Art as its new associate curator of East Asian art. Chou has organized museum shows in the United States and Taiwan for the past 15 years, and consulted with the Carnegie when it was reinstalling its Asian art galleries. At the San Diego Museum, she’ll be overseeing a collection containing 7,000 works, organizing shows and being involved with its acquisitions. [Artforum]
Former MoMA film curator Lawrence Kardish weighs in on the institution’s controversial firing of long-time assistant curator of film Sally Berger: “I no longer understand what goes on in my old stomping grounds… Doesn’t a curator have the right to pick and choose what is to be shown under his/her auspices?” Berger’s firing last week was tied with the wrongful cancellation of “Under the Sun”, a documentary about North Korea from February’s Doc Fortnight festival. [Indiewire]
We’ve been looking forward to this all year: it’s Captain Picard Day, so here’s all the Earl Grey recipes you ever needed. [Nerdist]
Heather Kravas, a quartet, 2013. Performance view, January 2014, The Kitchen, New York. Liz Santoro, Oren Barnoy, Jennifer Kjos, and Cecilia Eliceche. Photo: Paula Lobo. Image via: ArtForum
Hedge fund managers manipulate the art market. This WSJ article does a reasonable job of informing readers on who the key players are, but doesn’t release the kind of juicy issues former art market journalist Sarah Thornton was known for reporting. Read the WSJ article and then Art Market Monitor for analysis. [Art Market Monitor]
Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, Sarah Sze and Jean Shin have been commissioned by the MTA to beautify the 2nd Ave subway. No Vik Muniz rendering has been released but we’re unhappy with him regardless since he’s been making bad work since forever. We’re also unsure that Chuck Close was the right man for this commission. Who wants to look at a giant anonymous baby head during their commute? [In the Air]
The reviews for the Guggenheim’s Carrie Mae Weems show (opening today) have begun to roll in. Holland Cotter is upset the show wasn’t larger, and half heartedly gives curators Kathryn E. Delmez at the Frist Center and Jennifer Blessing and Susan Thompson at the Guggenheim a pat on the back for doing a good job working within the restrictions. [The New York Times]
Claudia LaRocco on the weeklong experience of APAP: Mild. I very much appreciated the observation that the pop song is still an ironic or at least knowing structural device in dance. [ArtForum]
The Kiev Biennial will take place for a second time. Really? This is not a city of great stability at the moment. The launch of any exhibition of that size there will be daunting task for curators and artists. [The Art Newspaper]
Corin Sworn has won the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. [In the Air]
Good news for those of you who couldn’t get tickets to Performa’s blockbusters! There are still free and open Performa events (a 24-hour group performance, a screening by the Gay Cable Network archive) and non-Performa exhibitions of puppets, comics, animation, and a queer experimental film festival.
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