The Ecstasy of St Teresa, Bernini (left), & Lindsay Lohan (right) [via Twitter user @Furmadamadam]
- Singapore just turned fifty. And what the relatively tiny nation’s art scene lacks in terms of freedom of speech, it seems to be making up for with robust arts funding. Singapore (population roughly 5.4 million) increased its budget for the arts from $202.6 million (USD) in 2010 to a whopping $308.6 million in 2013. [CNN]
- Pierre Huyghe’s “Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt)” is presently installed in MoMA’s sculpture garden. The sculpture consists of a reclining nude whose face is obscured by a living bee colony. Miraculously, it seems that no visitors have been stung yet and the bees seem content to gather pollen from Midtown’s scattered parks. [NY Post]
- In related “living sculptures that produce edible sweet things” news, artist Sam Van Aken has been making grafted trees that bear 40 varieties of fruit. [CNN]
- Although it includes no delicious agricultural projects, John Latham’s London home has been called a work of “living sculpture” too. Unfortunately, Flat Time House is slated to close next year due to a budget shortfall. [The Art Newspaper]
- For clarification, Wikipedia very authoritatively defines Living sculpture as “any type of sculpture that is created with living, growing grasses, vines, plants or trees. It can be functional and/or ornamental.” [Wikipedia]
- DJ Robin Skouteris and video editor Panos T. have created the biggest guilty pleasure of 2015: a surreal mashup of Madonna’s “Living for Love” with Haddaway’s 90s classic “What is Love?” [Youtube via DJ Vodkatrina]
- Derrick Carter, Chicago house legend, offers the penultimate definition of “basic bitches.” [Twitter]
- In yet another example of anti-piracy giving big studios carte blanche with ridiculous copyright takedowns, Columbia Pictures has gone on a rampage, targeting independent films hosted on Vimeo for using the word “pixels.” The efforts, coinciding with the studio’s recent release of Adam Sandlers’s “terrible” video game film Pixels, does little to earn the benevolence of nerds everywhere. [CNET]
- Jonathan Ollivier, the lead ballet dancer in Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man at London’s Sadler Wells, tragically died in a motorbike accident just hours before his final performance. [BBC News]
- The Liverpool Biennial is looking to hire an assistant curator. [Liverpool Biennial]
- For those of us car-free city folk, this itinerary of epic, art-centric summer roadtrip ideas is frustratingly tempting. [The Wall Street Journal]
- Was the Bard a pothead? Forensic testing of 400-year-old tobacco pipes found in William Shakespeare’s gardens were found to contain the lingering residue of cannabis. Also: “Sonnet 76” was totally about weed. [Telegraph]
- Seph Rodney has a thought-provoking look at the ephemeral place-less-ness of the Google Earth memorial to Michael Brown. [Hyperallergic]
- The Spanish national synchronized swimming team performing to Led Zeppelin is probably one of the best things you can watch on the Internet today. [Little Things]
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