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Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball

Monday Links: Wipe That Fucking Smirk Off Your Facebook

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]

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GIFs That Made Our Year

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on January 2, 2015

At this point, 2014 is still a wash; trending words included “asphyxiation” and “misogyny”, but the most-typed phrase was an emoji heart. Naturally, we turn to GIFs. Here are the year’s “GIF of the Day” highlights, in creative standouts, minor cultural milestones, and mostly, things we couldn’t stop thinking about because they were so weird.

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Friday Links: The Day the Calder Stood Still

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on January 2, 2015

“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]

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Wednesday Links: The Perfect Stocking Stuffer

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 31, 2014

Put this in your kids stockings.

It took us all year, but we’ve found the best link of 2014. Here’s a Play-Doh toy that looks just like a penis. Is Play-Doh play a thing now? [E!]
A shitty year, in words: the trending searchwords of 2014, from Dictionary.com, include asphyxiation, misogynistic, and sociopath. [Dictionary.com]
On the upside, according to the Global Language Monitor, the heart emoji is the most popular word of all. [the Language Monitor, via the Verge]
The story of 11-year-old Sally Horner’s abduction changed the course of 20th-century literature. Fascinating read by Sarah Weinberg on the real Lolita. [Hazzlit]
On nerd entitlement. Laurie Penny nails it. [New Statesman]
Thanks to Ben Davis for a really nice shoutout on artnet News! He listed our follow-up piece on the Gramsci Monument as one of the most important art essays of the year, along with Molly Crabapple’s Saadiyat Island reporting and Trevor Paglen’s Creative Time report. Needless to say, it’s a huge honor. [artnet News]
The MTA is finally getting rid of the subway alarms on the emergency exits, a Bloomberg era invention “to curb fare evasion”. In practice, they annoyed us all on a daily basis. [WNYC via Animal New York]
Something about this Stefan Simchowitz article reminds me of Ariel Levy’s 2007 New York Magazine article on Dash Snow. The contentiousness of its subject becomes a mythologizing force. A good read. [The New York Times Magazine]
Another government delivers an extremely harsh punishment to a fairly benign feminist artwork. Megumi Igarashi, the artist behind the vagina kayak, has been indicted with a potential two-year jail sentence for distributing “obscene” material by distributing the data which allows others to 3D print vagina kayaks. As a testament to the project’s prominence, it comes up first when you google “vagina”. [NPR, via artnet News]
One of the best editorials we’ve read from the New York Times Editorial Board ever. The subject: The NYPD. (And for the second day in a row). A good way to close out the year at The Times. [The New York Times]

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Tuesday Links: Shoot the Banker!

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 16, 2014

hello

Save the environment; rent a Christmas tree that’s still in the ground. [Treehugger]
Suzanne Mallouk was a long time lover of Basquiat’s and her stories of him are now relayed in Jennifer Clement’s book Widow Basquiat. Vulture has a few of them—we learn Basquiat never read, did drugs constantly, and loved sex. The writing is gorgeous. [SEEN]
Someone’s in trouble. [Animal Planet]
The desire to overthrow Wall Street goes back to the beginning. A comprehensive history lists a 1920 bombing, farmers starving out bankers, foreclosure enforcers beaten to a bloody pulp, and an official political slogan “Shoot the banker”. [VICE]
Bloomberg interviews Paddle8’s Founder and COO Osman Khan—it’s basically a big ol’ ad for the auction house. Not too much new information here for those who have been following the company—they specialize in work valued at $100,000 or less—though it’s always great to Khan talk. He inspires confidence. One nugget: the company grew its sales from $15 million last year in sales to $35 million this year. As Khan says, it’s just a question of how much they can scale the company. [Bloomberg]
A beautiful image of the Pullans, an all-albino Indian family. [Twitter]
New York Magazine’s feature of a kid who made $72 Million in the stock market turned out to have a few fact checking issues, namely that the kid made the whole story up. It’s author Jessica Pressler said of the error over Twitter, “In any case, it’s New York mag’s Reasons to Love issue, we’re not a financial publication.” [The New York Times]
Ben Davis analyzes the year’s art answers to the times, both problematic (like “memefied” politics) and powerful, like Yams’ “The Way Black Machine”. The art world’s political responses have, to this point, been pretty lame. But this year, Davis seems to conclude that art’s starting to do what it can. [artnet News]

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Monday Links: Cheeseburger Is the New Cheezburger

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 15, 2014

In theartblog’s weekly art comics, Bananazz on hairstyling [theartblog]
A think piece on the Internet meme known as “snackwave”. To generalize, these are pictures of virtually anything unhealthy; pizzas, burritos, cheetos, burgers etc. [The Hairpin]
Forgery news is pretty dependable content for art pubs, but this one’s for the ages: Employees of the nearly hundred-year-old Uzbek State Art Museum have been caught selling art from the collection and replacing them with forgeries. Chief curator Mirfayz Usmonov has received a nine-year sentence, the Guardian reports. Do people ever successfully get away with this? [The Guardian]
The old Art Moving Projects space has been filled with another art gallery. It’s called Moiety and it’s run by co-founders Joshua Schwartz and Kyle Smith. [Hyperallergic]
The Smithsonian has digitized more than 40,000 works of art from their Asian collection and will make them available to the public in the new year. [The Art Newspaper]
Here’s hoping the hostage situation in Sydney gets resolved without any lost lives. Last night an armed man took over a coffee shop and put up a black sign with white script. The message appeared to be the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. [The New York Times]
Photos of Christmas decorations in depressing places. Pretty great. [VICE]
$67 million project to democratize the Louvre. This means signs, wall text and renovations to make the museum more tourist friendly. [The New York Times]
Diane von Furstenberg is one of the moguls behind Manhattan’s new floating park. [New York Magazine]
Animal New York’s latest “Artist’s Notebook” features Rachel Mason, who spent 8 years working on a televisual opera “The Lives of Hamilton Fish”. Research has led her through photographs, newspaper clippings, and correspondence with her subjects’ descendants and a convicted murderer. And tons and tons of notes. [Animal New York]

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Friday Links: Go to the March

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 12, 2014

An August march protesting the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner (Image courtesy of NPR)

On Saturday, in protest of Eric Garner’s death, there will be a million man march starting in Washington Square Park in New York City at 2 PM. There will also be one in Washington. [Twitter; Newsday]
News rolls in about rats’ sexual preferences. Guy rats prefer girl rats wearing bras– ie, a kind of velcro Band-Aid wrapped around their chests. [Daily Mail]
Speaking of rats, Conde Nast battles infestation; looses. Particularly titillating is the image of Anna Wintour refusing to enter the building for fear of rats, and their feces. [New York Magazine]
Speaking of animals, Pope Francis opened up the gates of heaven yesterday when told a little boy that his dog will go to heaven. [The New York Times]
Fuck it: after a lifetime of shitty photos, I’m finally going to follow clickbait’s advice on selfie guidelines. As it turns out, natural smiling has been a major pitfall. NO NATURAL SMILES. [Answers.com]
Timeout London lists best new art. Yeah that pretty much looks like Chelsea. [Timeout]
A much-needed trip down memory lane: ANIMAL New York reminds us of George W. Bush’s torture legacy by commissioning a series of paintings, in the style of Bush’s dog paintings which helped to whitewash his administration’s atrocities. Bush passively allowed the CIA to commit horrendous acts of torture. Remember? [ANIMAL New York]
Thieves broke into a commercial gallery near Museo del Prado and stole 50 paintings overnight. The loot is worth approximately €400,000. They did so by punching through the adjacent wall of a former bar. [artnet News]
Roberta Smith watches HBO. [Twitter]
The Brits know how to protest. Outraged by new restrictions on online porn content, which forbid “face-sitting” people have come out to sit on each others’ faces and sing the Monty Python song “Sit on My Face”. This is wonderful. [Guardian]
Canadian Heritage Minister Shelly Glover and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada’s National Art Center will get $110 million for renovations. Glover praised Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his commitment to the arts, which is the biggest load of horseshit we’ve ever heard. This is the guy who complained government sponsored art events were all shrimp platters and limos. The reason the museum is getting money is because it’s been lumped into a larger program that provides renovations for defense buildings. Who ever it was who managed to arts organizations on that funding package needs to be thanked. [The Globe and Mail]
The damage from Sony Pictures hacked email just keeps going. The latest revaluation reveals Maureen Dowd showed her column to a Sony Exec prior to publishing. In many publications this is cause for firing – let’s hope that finally happens. Did Thomas Friedman and Mark Bittman send any incriminating emails too? Anything to force a little house cleaning on The Times abysmal op ed section. [Buzzfeed]
Benjamin Sutton writes a news story about a stolen Kinkade bronze bust of Jesus using the structure of “It Was The Night Before Christmas”. <3. [Hyperallergic]
Marina Galperina writes about what artists are doing with Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. [Baku]

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Every Event We’ve Listed Today Has a Penis

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 8, 2014

Because what this blog needs is more dicks.

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Monday Links: How to Stay Out of Jail

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 8, 2014

Our calendar launch and signing party takes place tomorrow night at Sargent’s Daughters, 6-8 pm. Join us! [Art F City]
All satire was lost on the titler of Ben Davis’s Art Basel report. “Art Basel in Miami Beach 2014 is a Rip-Roaring Success” is a tongue-in-cheek Hunter S. Thompson-like view of the fair and its inanities. Referring to the fair as “the Maze,” Davis asks, “Who are these people? They wander in a distracted state, and appear happily lost in the space. Though the Maze experience seems to be the main draw, there is also a huge and growing market for Maze memorabilia, as these people buy up the puzzles from the Maze, to recreate part of the experience in their own homes for friends or mates.” This whole fair is a cultural vacuum, and nobody should be expected to come up with things to say about it. [Artnet News]
Punching a hole through an £8 million Monet will get you jailed. Don’t do it! [Metro]
Galapagos Art Space is moving to Detroit. “A white-hot real estate market is burning through the affordable cultural habitat,” said Robert Elmes, the space’s executive director. “And it’s no longer a crisis, it’s a conclusion.” [New York Times]
Jerry Saltz is the Jonathan Swift of social media? Puh-leeze. That was a week long spoiled middle school rant. [Wall Street Journal]
Chlorine Gas Leak in Chicago Disrupts “Furries” Convention. [NPR]
An actual headline from Vanity Fair: Everything You Need to Know to Prepare for Kate Middleton and Prince William’s New York City Trip. [No link]
“It’s a problem that I work in a profession that capitalizes on how cool it is to be black until it’s not cool to be black. If Kehinde Wiley decided to make black men killed by #damngoodcops the subject of his next portrait series, the art world would care.Wiley’s dealers would rightfully sell his works as the important documents of our time — and they’d make a pretty penny. Curators and critics would praise the series as an important reflection of this turbulent moment in American history. My colleagues would tell the media that an exhibition of his work is the most important statement about racism today. Unfortunately, racism doesn’t only exist when white people want to acknowledge and benefit from it.” [Hyperallergic]

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Thursday Links: Invisible Graves and Empty Culture

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on December 4, 2014

James Franco, Seth Rogen and Kim Jong Un in “The Interview”

Carol Vogel, the Times lead art reporter is leaving her position. She took a voluntary buyout. Vogel had been the source of some negative press recently—a report she wrote this summer borrowed liberally from a wikipedia entry—but most reporters who leave won’t have that background. Artnews can barely contain their glee about Vogel’s departure. (No link.) Meanwhile, The Times shrinking paper should be a cause of concern. [The Baer Faxt]
Last night, New Yorkers took to the streets again to protest the police officer who killed Eric Garner. The horrifying video couldn’t make the crime clearer. [Animal New York, @RhettJones, @kainazamaria, @dianabhaktul, New York Times, the whole Internet]
Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will go ahead with its civil rights investigation of Eric Garner’s death. [NPR]
Private jet pilots picket Art Basel, Hyperallergic reports. [Hyperallergic]
Minutes after Art Basel opened, a tweeter claimed that protesters shut down Art Basel. Wishful thinking. [@okamax]
Thanks to Jeffrey Deitch, Miley Cyrus performed last night at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach. Cyrus wore a silver metallic Cleopatra wig and bright turquoise eye-shadow, sang duet of Super Freak with a topless woman, and a bunch of covers. [AP]
Deborah Solomon’s Rockwell biography makes the New York Times’s notable book list. It appears to be the only art book. [New York Times]
“The Interview”, a movie about James Franco and Seth Rogen partying with Kim Jong Un, looks like the most tone-deaf bullshit ever. People are starving. [LA Times]

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