Australian artist Horst Kiechle uses 3-D modeling software to create anatomically correct paper sculptures of the human torso, begging the question: Why? Do-it-yourself patterns are available free online. [Wired]
U.S. paint brush manufacturers, the subject of Economist Adam Davidson’s latest column in the New York Times Magazine, have taken a hit since the economy crashed. Chinese competition has taken a chunk of their market, but these businesses have stayed alive through specialization. [The New York Times Magazine]
Charles Saatchi was caught choking his wife Nigella Lawson outside a restaurant. He voluntarily turned himself into the police for a “caution”. No charges have been pressed. [The Guardian]
New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman says the Le Corbusier show at MoMA is overwhelming thanks to its sheer size, but still finds the show riveting. Le Corbusier had some fascinating ideas, good and bad. [The New York Times]
The Metropolitan Museum of art will present Janet Cardiff’s “Forty-Part Motet” at the Cloisters this fall. This isn’t something anyone in the city should miss. [Met Museum via Brian Sholis]
Dog groomers clip, snip, and blow dry pooches for a coiffure competition, er, EXTREME ANIMAL MAKEOVER. Artful entries include poodles turned into sharks, Donald Duck, and tiger- bears. [The Guardian]
Ai Weiwei Skyped with Laurie Anderson to create art. We are linking to the video record of the performance just so that you know how uninspiring hearing Ai Weiwei chat about China over drone music really is. Starts at 13:35. [Luminato Festival, via @aiwwenglish]
Now on view at Arsenal Gallery, Benson’s collaged paintings of Central Park playgrounds depict the now out of use playgrounds of post-Robert Moses Central Park. Laura Mallonee suggests that just calling attention to these parks is a step towards repairing them, making a better New York for inner-city children. [Hyperallergic]
Like a speck of glitter in the eye, Art Basel has come and gone. Nobody can really agree on what was making some work fly off the walls, like Mickalene Thomas’ acrylic and rhinestone paintings. “Galleries bring what they know the market wants,” one dealer told Carol Vogel for The Times. Another says: “Collectors these days are looking for artists that have museum and curatorial support”. Can’t we just agree that people like shiny things? [The New York Times]
Yes, and those shiny things selling. Kelly Crow and Mary M. Lane discuss big sales with mirrored artworks, but that’s nothing new. The hook might be catchy, but we’ve spotted this art fair trend for the last several years now. [Wall Street Journal, Art F City]
“Every artist knows how cheap an effect is, and how revolutionary an experience.” Chuck Close on James Turrell’s Roden Crater. This nine-page piece sparked by Turrell’s three-museum show currently on view at LACMA, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and The Guggenheim is incredibly written, though perhaps not overly critical. One NYTimes commenter complains that Turrell’s aesthetic has moved towards the sci-fi over the years, an observation, I have found to be true. Sci-fi or no, I’d still like him to complete Roden Crader. [The New York Times]
Japanese psychology professor Shigeru Watanabe gives morphine to rats and shows them famous paintings, finding that his subjects could be conditioned to distinguish between Mondrian and Kandinsky. Why aren’t they conducting these studies on prairie dogs? We already know they can distinguish different colors. [Hyperallergic]
Over the hill child prodigy Autumn de Forest returns with her take on Jasper Johns, Grant Wood, and Andy Warhol. [Huffington Post]
Karen Rosenberg is happy The Jewish Museum picked up the Jack Goldstein exhibition after it was chopped from MOCA’s programming, but doesn’t like his paintings of meteor showers. [The New York Times]
Theaster Gates (Image courtesy of Antone, Newcity Art)
Eyebeam residency applications are due today! [Eyebeam]
Six Fairy Tales for the Modern Woman. So. Good. [The Hairpin]
Theaster Gates in Basel talking to rich people about the work he’s doing in poor Chicago neighborhoods. [NYTimes Style]
Pedro Velez talking to underpriviledged Chicago kids who can’t afford to go to the museum that houses the work Gates is making that’s supposed to be for them. [New City]
What’s it like being Work of Art’s “Next Great Artist”? Pretty much the same as usual. Hyperallergic’s Alicia Eler catches up with WOA Season Two winner Kimya Nawabi, who’s still waiting tables, and has yet to get gallery representation. She’ll be showing at Wave Hill this fall, though. [Hyperallergic]
Hyperallergic and The New Yorker reflect on David Byrne’s commencement speech for Columbia MFA students, which focused on the lack of financial prospects for students. Both blogs are upset he didn’t deliver a more uplifting message for students. Time and a place, blah blah blah, but students might as well get their first reality check at the door. It’s not like Byrne’s up there telling tales, which is what he would have been doing had he painted a bright future. [New Yorker]
Holland Cotter pays a visit to El Museo del Barrio’s Bienal 2013. He wonders whether a Barnett Newman reference still reads as a Barnett Newman reference, since the show, and the museum itself, speaks so immediately to community. [New York Times]
Idris Khan and Sarah Warsop "Lying in Wait," 2008. Featured in Art and Auction's 50 Most Collectable list
Jesus Christ. Nine pages of fawning Turrell profile in the New York Times this morning. Can’t we at least spacetheseout? [New York Times]
Each of Artinfo’s “50 Under 50” most collectible emerging artists ends in a price range. I’ve never seen so many dollar signs in an artist list. Unsurprisingly, painters are high. [ArtInfo]
Jerry Saltz raves over the Met’s big in-house reorganization, going so far as to suggest that creating space for 45 extra rooms (once used for rotating exhibitions) may alter the course of art. He notes, “I especially appreciate that the Met did this not by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on some newfangled, architecturally driven, funny-shaped ark of a building with traffic patterns that force you to smell food while looking at art.” [Vulture]
Rhizome’s Gene McHugh believes artist Peter Van Riper has not yet received the recognition he deserves for his sound or holographic work. The essay is mostly dedicated to exploring his art; Van Riper made some of the earliest holographic images and could be recognized for that alone (he’s better known for his musical work).[Rhizome]
3D TV is going out with a fizzle. ESPN 3D, like a handful of others, emerged in 2010 soon after the release of “Avatar”. The lack of popularity, we assume, has something to do with needing to wear those clunky 3D glasses. [Wall Street Journal]
Josh Baer says Art Basel in Switzerland is the best fair in quality and range of material and laments that more Americans don’t visit. Our thoughts? This year, the fair was spaced two weeks apart from Venice though, so it’s not quite as convenient as it has been previously. [Baer Faxt]
For those following Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his associated scandals, police raided the apartment of two suspected drug dealers he was pictured with. I know this sounds terrible, but I hope they find something that incriminates Ford. He’s a destructive mayor. [The Toronto Star]
Oh, god. Not another art and punk rock pairing. MOCAtv just launched a new series “The Art of Punk”. The first episode interviews artist Raymond Pettibon about how he came up with the band’s ubiquitous four bar logo. He stands around his studio holding a puppy in his arms while pointing to “that motherfucking thing” [the logo]. June 18th will see the launch of “Art and the Dead Kennedy’s”. [MOCAtv]
Roughly 22 percent of Damien Hirst’s spot paintings were on display during Gagosian’s firehouse sale 2011 retrospective of that body of work. Figuring out how many of those works were for sale, might have given the Times’ Graham Bowley a better news hook than whatever he’s working with here. This is a story about catalogue of Hirst’s spot paintings that was announced months ago, and won’t be released until September. I’m not convinced that a book that identifies which paintings were done by Hirst and which were done by an assistant is going to affect his market all that much (though having an accurate count of them all will likely help). [NYTimes]
Bloomberg is reporting a bullish Basel preview. The bulk of the piece is dedicating to recounting what art sold and for how much, but there’s also a tidbit from Art Advisor Todd Levin, about how art is a good tax shelter. I keep seeing this explanation for the current art boom. Felix Salmon, how true is this claim? [Bloomberg]
Life makeover! Basquiat The Musical is not only happening, but it is going full Broadway. The project is to be directed by Paul Stancato, of The Lion King, The Wedding Singer, and Hairspray. At least after Basquiat, The Movie, the bar on that story is pretty low. [HuffPo]
“Are you an American, and does your patriot’s sense of charity extend to providing free labor to the misunderstood gentle giant of our federal government, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)?” If so, Hyperallergic’s Mostafa Heddaya has found an opportunity for arts professionals to fill special and undisclosed needs, unpaid, of course. Executive-level applicants only. [Hyperallergic]
This map of America’s museums makes it look like every town in America has at least one, which may be a slight exaggeration with a few home addresses (Brooklyn, for example). [Atlantic Cities, via Artinfo]
Notorious union busting firm Jackson Lewis just got an Alfred P. Sloan Award for its “exemplary workplace practices.” from the non-profit When Work Works. [Jackson Lewis]
This is annoying. Apparently ten percent of the City Bike docks don’t work. WNYC laments that it’s had to run its own studies on the failure of these docks because the city has refused to answer questions about the number of down stations, customer complaints, call wait times, etc. They seem pissed. [WNYC]
Elite Fixtures, bringing the lamps to the masses. [Elite Fixtures]
If you can come up with a catchy URL, artist Rafaël Rozendaal will turn it into art. This summer, he’s collaborating with MOCAtv to create a new website, with the title chosen from YouTube commenters. Submissions will be accepted through June 15th. [MOCAtv]
In more west coast news, Carolina A. Miranda gets a sneak peak of Peter Zumthor’s redesign for LACMA. She likes it. We’re unsure how LACMA’s going to pull off raising $650 million for the project, but from the sounds of it, the “black flower” with seven “pods” could be compelling enough to persuade funders.[ARCHITECT]
The Wire’s David Simon wrote last week that we shouldn’t be too upset about the news that the Government has been collecting emails and phone calls made by everyone in the country. Yesterday, he sat down with Alec Baldwin for a chat. [Here’s the Thing]
George Orwell’s 1984 surges up Amazon’s bestseller list by 6,021 percent since yesterday. Everyone’s trying to fact-check reality to see if we’re already in an Orwellian state. [NPR]
Two billion dollars worth of art is available for purchase at Art Basel in Switzerland. Apparently, the mood is “buoyant” [Businessweek]
The Art Newspaper agrees that spirits are high, but questions how long the “art fair marathon” will last. From one interviewee: “We’re keeping up with the fairs, auctions and private sales opportunities, but we’re not necessarily making more money.” [The Art Newspaper]
Walter Robinson notes that our deepest hatred seems to be reserved for successful male artists. That seems accurate but only because successful male artists tend to be richer. [ArtSpace]
Comedian Louis C.K. was doing his bit in the 90’s to keep art stereotypes alive. Here he is, playing a swirling-paint-in-toilet-bowl-photographer, addressing his critics and stating his goals. [Gizmodo]
Big news this weekend: the United States government is spying on everyone, and social media companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook are providing the bulk of the information. Whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a bevy of National Security Agency (NSA) documents to The Guardian, who interviewed him while he’s holed up in a Hong Kong hotel. Gawker has a great guide to knowing the extent of what was leaked, and uncloaking the legalese of Facebook’s response. [The Guardian, Gawker]
Here’s a dose of future shock: Cisco and iRobot have developed a 5’5” robot with a video conferencing monitor in place of a head. At a $70,000 price tag, it’s being developed for companies with employees who work from home. Not only will this make working from home less fun, it means you’ll never be alone again. [TechCrunch]
A message from Michigan State House of Representatives: We’d like to make sure that a law is passed that will keep the city of Detroit from selling off the museum’s assets, but first things first. Vacation ‘til the fall! [Hyperallergic]
Here’s a video by Richard Prince burning one of his disputed Canal Zone paintings. [Gallerist]
The Hirshhorn’s plans to construct an architectural bubble have been scrapped, but that won’t stop the museum’s resigning director Richard Koshalek from keeping his dream alive. The Los Angeles Times reports that Koshalek wants to move back to California at the end of the year, and hopes to shop around a version of the “tech tent” bubble to an institution out there. Just like a traveling salesman. [Los Angeles Times]
Tyler Green has been to see Richard Serra’s Shift in Ontario, Canada! He’s written about the contested piece in depth, and explains its significance in a mix of reporting and criticism. Read this. [MAN]
The Whitney just restored Douglas Davis’ The World’s First Collaborative Sentence (1995), the museum’s first digital acquisition. Nobody’s really sure of the best way to restore online works, the Whitney included. Speaking to this, there’s versions on the Whitney’s site: one that’s new and functional, and then another, “historic” one with broken links. [The New York Times]
Richard Artschwager, Photo: Rachel Chandler, Courtesy David Nolan Gallery (Image courtesy of ayearofpositivethinking.com)
Richard Artschwager’s last major work was a design for four elevators for the new Whitney Museum. They’re based on six motifs which appear often in his work: door, window, table, basket, mirror, and rug. “When visitors enter they will find themselves standing under a table, on a rug or in front of a mirror,” writes the Times. “[T]hey will also be opposite a door, next to a window or floating in a giant woven basket.” [NYTimes]
Vogel also reports that Maryland’s Glenstone Museum has begun a major expansion. [NYTimes]
Amanda V. Wagner tells young artists not to move to New York City until the time is right. There’s a picture of me alongside Patti Smith, which is possibly the most flattering juxtaposition this author’s ever been graced with. (PJ) [Art Attack]
LACMA’s twice failed to raise sufficient funds for their reconstruction and expansion efforts, but as their Director Michael Govan tells it, this time’s different, because their new design’s “worth it”. And maybe it is. According to reporter Carolina Miranda, Peter Zumthor’s proposal is a radical departure from traditional museum design. There’s no grand staircase or main entrance, so no single type of art takes priority. Sounds like a building that responds to increasingly multidisciplinary practice. [Architect]
Not sure what Andrew Goldstein actually thinks of the Tino Sehgal Golden Lion win at the Venice Biennale. His analysis is mostly description. He seems to like the silver Lion winner, Camille Henrot, and National Pavilion winner, Angola, which showed the work of Edson Chagas and we agree with him on both. [Artspace]
Hyperallergic got an interview with Karen Finley, who was the face of the NEA Four scandal in the nineties. They discuss how her work relates to celebrity and sexuality. [Hyperallergic]
VICE got a tour of Richard Prince’s house, which, it turns out, is a pretty normal experience of a rural town where there’s nothing to do. “There’s not much to do in this town,” we’re reminded repeatedly. “I’ve always liked this road,” he tells us on the road. He walks us through his drawing process. No surprises there. [VICE]
Mona Lisa finally gets shown as Da Vinci intended: under a custom Toshiba lamp with 34 individual bulbs. Congratulations all around. “We have completed one of the most daunting tasks we have faced, innovating the lighting of a world-famous painting,” says Toshiba senior executive vice president Hidejiro Shimomitsu. [Gizmodo]
Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe will transform Marlborough Chelsea’s booth at Art Basel in Switzerland into several fractured spaces all surrounding a printmaking lab titled, “Artichoke Underground.” No idea what this is gonna look like. [ArtINFO]
From yesterday’s ArtFCity twitter: If only I could find fresh succulent Belgium truffles in the shape of a butt model’s anus. Oh wait… [Laughing Squid]
Two days after launch, the Marina Abramovic Institute responds to speculation that the artist is building a cult. [Twitter]
Terry Gross interviews Mitch Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development. This has nothing to do with art, but he’s a really interesting writer. [NPR]
Good news for net artists. [s]editions expanded their platform yesterday to allow artists working in digital tech to upload their work and sell it. [Hyperallergic]
Art in America has some crazy good interviews with previous Venice Biennale curators. An example:
Francesco Bonami, ’03What did you lose in the process of curating? What did you gain?
I lost some weight and my marriage. I gained the idea that if you believe in what you are doing it is impossible to fail, even if you dive from a plane without a parachute. Which is basically what I did.
Robert Storr, ’07What was the harshest criticism you faced?
Read Artforum’s gangbanging reviews, if you want to know. I am not about to repeat or recycle their diatribes and slander. [Art in America]
Holland Cotter dubs the Venice Biennale a quiet success. [NYT]
There will soon be a lot more Flavins in the world. The Dan Flavin Estate has reversed its position on the production of posthumous versions of the artist’s fluorescent light sculptures. The artist had over 1,000 unrealised sculptures when he died. [The Art Newspaper]
“I probably use more paint than anyone in the history of art,” says Artist Holton Rower proudly. “50 gallons!” he tells us, multiple times. He then explains that with the paint used to produce one of his works, you could paint a house inside and out 10 times. Did Rower mention how much paint it takes to make his work? [Tips]
Ed Winkleman and Elizabeth Dee will be speaking in Art Basel on the role of mid-level galleries. Here’s a preview of their talk, in interview form. [Winkleman Blog]
Art dealer Matthew Marks and curator Jack Bankowsky’s West Village townhouse is up for sale. For $17.5 million, you, too, can own ceilings made for large-scale art, seven fireplaces, powder room, and basement gym. [Curbed New York]
Frieze has been killing it on the Biennale coverage. Dan Fox has a few afterthoughts on the Venice Biennale. I particularly like his rebuttal to this year’s biennale critics. [Frieze]
Also, Amy Sherlock on the Biennale winners. [Frieze]
We could have predicted this one, but the Pratt art store is finally closing. The art school’s film and video department will move into the building. [DNAinfo]
“Art in Transmission”, an article about how looking at art on a phone affects how we perceive and value it, has sparked a bit of conversation on Twitter this morning. The article indulges in some unfortunate generalizations—art is no longer discovered in biennials and fairs and magazines, but on the phone—being high up there for me, but it’s worth a look regardless. Set a bit of time aside for this—it’s written in academic-ese. [Artforum via:Andrew Russeth, Tyler Green, Kriston Capps]
