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Frieze London

Top Trends at Frieze London, According to Instagram

by Michael Anthony Farley on October 5, 2016

We’re not in London for the 14th Frieze art fair, which opens to the public tomorrow. But VIP preview guests have already thoroughly documented the fair via social media. Just what trends are catching the eyes of these discerning Instagrammers? Anything and everything pink, installations that harken back to the days before Brick Lane felt like a high-end high street, genitals (obviously), shelving (less obviously), and one very popular living blow-up-doll.

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Monday Links: We Want a Minority Goverment

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on October 19, 2015

Screen shot of Lorna Mills’s Election Day glitter text GIFs. Credit: Lorna Mills

It’s a big day in Canada: Election day! Voter turn out is expected to break records and the election even made the front page of the New York Times today. Canadians, you know what to do: Vote conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper out. [The Internet]
Further on the Canadian election tip, longtime Canadian arts journalist Martin Knelman weighs in on how all parties during #elxn42 campaigning avoided any focus on cultural issues, despite the fact that there are 671,000 cultural workers in Canada. (And the sector as a whole contributes $46 billion to the country’s GDP.) Let’s hope the — fingers crossed — minority government makes an effort to protect federal arts funding. [Toronto Star]
“If we don’t have artists, we don’t have art.” A report from this past weekend’s Arts Gowanus rally. [Hyperallergic]
The Daily News also reported on the protest over the mass eviction in Gowanus during GOS. [The Daily News]
During London’s Frieze week, discussion turned to the topic of gentrification and the familiar nostalgia for the cheaper, wilder years of the 1970s/1980s—an era widely represented in the work on view. How bad is London’s gentrification crisis? Within the next 5 years, a third of the capital’s artist studios are threatened. [artnet News]
“What comes after conflict? Art, I guess.” Right now, it appears as if Columbia’s Artbo is the best fair to attend in South America, thirty years after the war on drugs had engulfed the country. Despite the success of the fair, it appears that the recent devaluation of the local peso has led to fewer sales. [Amuse]
How weird does the Moscow Biennial sound? Very weird. If London and New York have too much wealth, Moscow now finds itself with too little. Squatters are back, the budget-slashed biennial is exhibiting with plywood floors and sharing a bathroom with a McDonalds, and Russia’s surreal politics complicate everything. [ARTnews]
Which brings to mind the headline “From Athens To San Juan And Detroit, The Most Beautifully Bankrupt Places To Jumpstart Your Art Career (GOLDMINE Members ONLY)” This, and other gems are available on the Tumblr ArtWet, from Artinfo’s Scott Indrisek, which is essentially The Onion for the art world. It is hilarious. [ArtWet]
Alberto Burri’s “Grande Cretto” has been completed after 30 years. The massive earthwork is a memorial to a Sicilian town that was leveled in an earthquake in the 1960s. [The Art Newspaper]
Are these really the ugliest dogs in the world? [Wired]
Sounds like it be a dream to do a residency at the former home of artist Doris McCarthy, where artists can spend a month focusing on working in isolation at her 12-acre cliffside home in Scarborough, Ontario. [Toronto Star]
Can the epic trolling that is the Renoir Sucks at Painting movement stop now? It’s getting old now. [Hyperallergic]
A long and surprisingly sweet story about antique dildos. [Lit Hub]

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Thursday Links: Everyone Loves Frieze, Hates Henry David Thoreau

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on October 15, 2015

Still from Toshio Matsumoto’s “For the Damaged Right Eye,” 1968, now on view at the Japan Society.

For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979 is on view at the Japan Society through January 10th. This looks like it will be a good show. [Blouin Artinfo]

Frieze week is being described as a test for the art market following a record-breaking spring but a tumultuous summer. The verdict? Sales seem to be off to a pretty good start. [Bloomberg]

In related news, Phillips’s auction sold out on the first day of London’s art-buying week, signifying that the art market is still strong and that the auction house might be a challenger to the supremacy of Christie’s and Sotheby’s. [Art Market Monitor]

But the best part of Frieze week is probably Misako & Rosen’s booth, where Ken Kagami is drawing personalized caricatures of fair attendees’ penises and breasts. [artnet News]

Flux Factory’s Fall Benefit Banquet has arrived. It’s a five course vegetarian meal and open bar for $85 on November 6th. Pick your tickets up. [Eventbrite]

Submissions close on Saturday for Platform Gallery’s second annual juried exhibition. I (Michael) am on the jury along with Alex Ebstein and Wickerham & Lomax. You should apply! Prizes! [Platform]

Wow. Here’s 5,000 words on how American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister,development critic, surveyor, and historian Henry David Thoreau was the biggest dick ever. [The New Yorker]

Galleria Continua, the Italian gallery that represents Anish Kapoor, is opening a location in Havana, Cuba with an exhibition by Kapoor. I wonder if other galleries are going to follow as the country’s relationship with the global community improves. [The Art Newspaper]

Today, the Detroit Institute of Arts is hosting an event to unveil a new government website that catalogs all of the art in the federal U.S. General Services Administration’s Fine Arts Collection. [ABC News]

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Wednesday Links: Totally Looks Like Lutz Bacher

by Michael Anthony Farley and Rea McNamara on October 14, 2015

Discuss.

Talk amongst yourselves: Lutz Bacher’s work in Greater New York bears a striking resemblance to a set piece Daniel Arsham created for his film Future Relic. And Rhode Island is neither a road nor is it an island. Discuss. [ARTnews]
Beirut’s Sursock Museum — hailed as a vital cultural landmark of the Lebanese capital, dating back to when Beirut was the Middle East’s capital of culture — has reopened after a seven year, $15 million renovation. [Artforum]
Due to various legal battles with the United States and the European Union, the Russian government is refusing to loan artwork from state collections to museums abroad. Russia claims artwork might be seized as a strategy to force Russia to pay fines the international community has imposed on the state, though this sounds more like Russia being characteristically passive-aggressive. [The Art Newspaper]
Gargoyles depicting slain Charlie Hebdo cartoonists Cabu and Georges Wolinski were recently added to the facade of a 13th century church in France. [Artforum]
A new legacy fund in honour of the influential artist, DJ and activist Will Munro has launched. The Will Munro Fund for Queer and Trans People Living with Cancer will provide emergency relief funds to the cancer-afflicted in Toronto’s LGBTTIAQQ2S community. [The 519]
In the lead-up to the Kunsthalle Wein’s upcoming exhibition and symposium, arts writer Rosemary Heather is penning a series of blog posts exploring how contemporary art has been impacted by the rise of political populism. [Kunsthalle Wein]
Uh, this is a list of expensive artwork one might buy in London this month paired with expensive beers one might buy in London this month. [Observer]
Outset, lead sponsor of the Frieze purchase fund benefiting the Tate’s collections, has ended its sponsorship. [The Art Newspaper]
Fashion and technology seems to be the haute 2016 museum exhibition: the Museum of Fine Art’s “#techstyle” will open in March, and the Costume Institute’s “manus x machina: fashion in an age of technology” will open in May. Which means that we’ll likely see a lot of Sorayama-inspired, Courrèges throwback outfits on celebrities at the Met Gala. [New York Times]
Want to buy Edith Wharton’s sterling silver and coral baby rattle? Gifted at her christening in 1920, it can be yours for $20,000. [Abe Books via Paris Review]
Well-deserved: Jamaican writer Marlon James has won the Man Booker Prize for fiction. [The Guardian]
Christian Viveros-Fauné’s review of Greater New York is a good read. He argues that the exhibition is nostalgic for the edgier, less-gentrified city of the latter decades of the 20th century. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: “If institutions like MoMA PS1 are clued in to New York’s artistic decline, it’s time to redefine cultural and political alienation in the city—one museum experience at a time.” [artnet News]
Denver! Paddy is giving a talk on the history and evolution of GIF art tonight at Redline. Here, she talks with writer Bree Davies about what she’ll be covering. (Yes, it will include the Netscape Navigator GIF icon.) [Westword]

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Tuesday Links: Playboy Puts Their Pants On

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Rea McNamara on October 13, 2015

Vintage Playboy Vargas print. Credit: The Museum of Movie Posters

Playboy magazine has announced they will drop nudity as the Internet has filled that void. Not to worry, though, they promise to still run photographs of women in provocative poses. [The New York Times]
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, so let’s recognize her OG status as a female mathematician in the 1800s who recognized the potential of computers before they even existed. [Motherboard]
Ben Davis weighs in on the new “trés Brooklyn” Rumney Guggenheim gallery, and as expected from a 23-year old French trustafarian, has opened with a bad street art show. “There is no way that Rumney Guggenheim gallery is anything other than a vanity project.” Ouch. [ARTnet News]
Up until recently, the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach only permitted artists who lived and worked in Latin America to be shown. Basically, they had a “no Chicanos” policy. Stuart Ashman, who has served as MOLAA’s president and CEO since 2011, worked with the museum’s board to change this policy. Carolina Miranda has the story. [Culture: High & Low]
We’re not in London for Frieze week, but if you are, this guide to all the happenings might come in handy. [artnet News]
Eric Fischl is now vouching for DNA-based art authenticating. Forgery concerns regarding his legacy and estate compelled him to throw his support behind the system, which would let artists sign their works with specks of synthetic DNA. Developed by the Global Center for Innovation at the State University of New York at Albany — who recently scored a $2 million funding grant from the ARIS Title Insurance Corporation — the method has already come under fire as being invalid unless Fischl can mark every work he’s created and sold with the new technology. [New York Times, Art Market Monitor]
This seems like an odd argument: are video games art? This seems like it was written by someone who has more experience with the world of commercial video games than contemporary art; I’ve been to plenty of galleries showing artist-made games and never given it a second thought. This is a good quote though: “Not all games deserve the title of art or high art. But, to be fair, we also sell terrible paintings and trashy books.” [Forbes]
In the latest from the cultural institution fundraising race, the Hirshhorn set a new record in receiving a $2 million gift from a trustee, the largest gift from an individual ever made to the Smithsonian museum. The donation comes at the end of their 40th anniversary year, and a campaign focusing on private fundraising in an era of tighter federal funding. [Washington Post]
Of everything that’s ever been written about selfies—which is really too much—this brief piece by Sam Anderson on the work of Alec Soth is probably the most pleasurable and worthwhile read. [The New York Times]
Yet another sign that Silicon Valley’s tech bubble is going to burst? Twitter is laying off 336 employees. The layoffs come with the just-announced return of co-founder Jack Dorsey as permanent CEO, and a year of struggling to attract new users and incurring financial losses. [Fusion]
Marc Fischer has been documenting the bland, middle-class suburban houses where hardcore punk was created using contact information from 80s zines and Google Street View. [ARTnews]
The New York Times has discovered the Fisher Landau Center in Long Island City. It’s been open to the public since 2003, but hey, better late than never. [The New York Times]
By far, the nerdiest YouTube we have ever seen: a Hungarian folk dance that demonstrates how a quick-sort algorithm works. [YouTube]

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Thursday Links: Deli Sandwiches are Getting a Huge BJ

by Paddy Johnson Whitney Kimball and Matthew Leifheit on October 17, 2013

203 Houston, the site of Katz's new art gallery "The Space" (Image courtesy of Bowery Boogie)

Good news for pro-bush advocates! Marilyn Minter’s been posting pics of bushes on Facebook, in protest of all the baldness. [AnimalNY]
The Times has run two stories on William Kentridge. He’s closing an opera at the Metropolitan Opera, and opening a show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I get that these are big institutions, but with so many artists working in the city without coverage, couldn’t they have rolled this into one feature? (His show opens Tuesday.) [The New York Times, (Opera), The New York Times, (The Met)]
Let the Frieze reports begin. Take one: Jonathan Jones is upset that Frieze Masters takes “the entire history of art and turns it into an elitist shopping mall.” He then complains that the fair turns art into congealed money. To complain that an art fair is just for the rich is to fail to understand the point of an art fair, which is to sell art to rich people. But the actual review, which discusses fakes, substandard Brueghels, bad medieval paintings is more substantive than the usual crap Jones churns out. [The Guardian]
Adrian Searle thinks Frieze has better lighting and wider aisles this year, and while the art hasn’t improved much he says galleries seem to be trying harder. (Not sure how “trying harder” was determined, but okay.) Oh, and Jennifer Rubell continues to make bad art. [The Guardian]
Frieze gets a blow job from the Times: The fair has a non-profit foundation! (and has since its inception). The fawning profile on this year’s program here —-> [The New York Times]
Architecture critic Michael Kimmelman gives the city’s mayor a to-do list. [The New York Times]
Fred Amisen revives Ian Rubbish, his punk character from SNL, to play with actual members of the Clash. [Salon]
On the topic of punk, a 1989 interview with Dee Dee Ramone right after he quit the band was just released by Punk Magazine’s original “resident punk”, Legs McNeill. [Please Kill Me]
TIME Lightbox is into selfies. First, Elizabeth Avedon and John Maloof are interviewed about Vivian Maier’s graceful reflections captured with a Rolleiflex. Then, Marina Galperina and Kyle Chayka are interviewed about their National #Selfie portrait gallery. [TIME]
Lucky for Banksy, it’s a pretty slow news cycle. The New York Post is going to call the cops, because we’re having an “art attack.” [NY Post] Presumably that’s because Bloomberg’s casting himself as the authority figure to Banksy’s felon-on-the-run, so now we’ve got a David and Goliath narrative starting to emerge. Stay tuned. [Politicker]
A new memoir on Lucian Freud by Geordie Grieg has a dishy portrait of the painter’s complicated relationship with his daughter, including painting her nude at age 14. Freud sounds like a jerk. [Vanity Fair]
OMG. Katz’s Delicatessen is turning the nextdoor space into an art gallery for deli-inspired art. [Bowery Boogie, via Artinfo]

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