- Reviews of the Met’s Punk show seem unilaterally negative so far. The Times, Gallerist, ArtInfo and Hyperallergic don’t like it (an understatement for Hyperallergic’s Geraldine Visco). My review comes out in the L Magazine next week.
- Gawker reporter John Cook has seen a video of a man he’s told is smoking crack cocaine. He believes that man is Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Toronto Star reporters are claiming to have seen the video too. Ford’s denies the allegations and has had his lawyers send Gawker an email threatening legal action. Gawker has responded by posting the request. [Gawker]
- Relatedly, Rob Ford is the worst mayor Toronto ever. [Wikipedia]
- Tom Moody isolates the 180-degree rule as important in an essay about GIFs as micro-cinema. “Both [Bruce Conner's] A MOVIE and these animated gifs employ some common cinematic principles. The cuts create an eyeline match, which make it appear as though the characters are looking at one another, and obey the 180-degree rule (meaning that if you draw a straight line between their eyes, our perspective stays to one side of it).” [Indiwire: warning, there’s a 15 minute static ad that pops up before the article can be read!]
- Yahoo is considering buying tumblr. [The Verge]
- AFC Alumn Julia Halperin will be moderating an ArtsTech meetup on the Art Market. If you live in New York and aren’t in Venice, you should go to this. [ArtsTech]
- Roberta Smith isn’t thrilled with the dick measuring contests going on in Chelsea between David Zwirner/Jeff Koons, Gagosian/Jeff Koons, and Hauser & Wirth/Paul McCarthy. Nonetheless, she measures, and concludes that Hauser & Wirth/Paul McCarthy has the biggest dick of them all. [NYTimes]
With the release of the Vatican’s artist list for the Venice Biennale, we finally know which artists are endorsed by God. Turns out, there’s only three.
Are you having trouble understanding artists through their art? Understand them through their STUFF instead.
Editor’s note: Contributor Luke Turner tells us about the Frieze art fair through the eyes of an art worker and writer. Here’s Turner’s list of five things he found memorable, as they relate to the ecology of last weekend’s island fair. A sample:
“Large crane flies inhabited the tent and selected lightly colored monochrome canvases and blank walls as preferred resting environments. The crane flies seemed to avoid artworks with mirrored, acrylic, or polished surfaces…”
Eric Fischl, "Woman Surrounded by Dogs", 1979-80.
- A chicken has been slaughtered in the name of art. Heads have rolled. ARTINFO’s Sky Goodden breaks down the event, the aftermath and the precedents. [ARTINFO]
- Smoking pot will give you a skinny waist. There’s probably some other factors contributing to the overall weight of pot smokers, but they’re definitely not as interesting. Now, like a make-you-feel-better pill or healthy vitamin, you can take your pot in liquid form. Sluurrrp. [The Daily Beast]
- 65 year old artist Eric Fischl tells The New York Times he’s been trying to “grow up”. He’s promoting his new memoir Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas so he’s been talking to a lot of publications lately. [NYTimes]
- Isabella Rossellini as a hamster eating her young in a new web series “Mamas,” and she is amazing at it. [Paper Mag]
- This morning Reuters journalist Felix Salmon showed up on Democracy Now for a roundtable discussion with Cooper Union board member Mark Epstein and current student Victoria Sobel. [Democracy Now, Twitter via @felixsalmon, student @VictoriaSobel]
- Hrag Vartanian produced a great GIF of Christie’s auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen last night. Also, rich people bought more contemporary art than ever before! Total sale from last night’s auction: $495 million. [Hyperallergic]
At Friday’s preview, the permanent home for Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead (a formerly vacant lot behind the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit) was behind schedule.
Lumpy-dumpiness seems to be all the rage in the emerging scene (think curdled plaster, splotchy painting, loading palettes, pinched and unglazed ceramics), to the point where the Lower East Side can feel like one big boutique. But usually, a decent show will remind you that materials are not the problem. I review an intimate show of raw painting and sculpture by Fabienne Lasserre, Luke Armitstead, and Sophie Stone, in the new Sunset Park mini-gallery So What Space.
Drumroll, please! This year’s jurors have been announced for ArtPrize, the world’s largest public art competition. You can join in on the festivities, too, through June 6th.
John Currin's portrait of Bea Arthur
- That topless Bea Arthur painting goes up to auction today. More than two decades after John Currin’s sexy homage to maturity, we still expect a few giggles will be heard across the auction room floor. [Gawker]
- Pardon us, but this week, all art news is auction news. We promise to round out the Warhol fluff with more interesting stuff, like say, the fact that, for the first time ever, a Canadian auction house will put video art up on the auction block. [The Star]
- Elizabeth Peyton joins a new club, the tiny club for female artists whose work has sold for a million or more at auction. It’s not an actual club, but if it were, she would be in it. [Twitter, via Christie’s]
- Unrelated to anything to do with art at all, a massacre in Syria has resulted in the most depraved actions yet by the Assad government. Even reading this report requires a stomach of steel. [NYTimes]
- Are Cooper Union’s Finances Fixable? Felix Salmon suggests that perhaps Cooper’s “Chrysler Building land — with its PILOTs intact — could get sold to Trinity Church, or one of New York’s big non-profit hospitals, or even possibly the Bloomberg Foundation.” It’s a fantastic piece and a must-read for anyone who’s been following this story. [Felix Salmon, Reuters]
- Now you can sleep easy at night; Paul McCarthy’s massive red balloon dog at Frieze has been sold. [ArtInfo]
- Google Street View gets turned into a highly addictive game. [Geoguessr]
- NYU Art History professor gets caught taking upskirt photos of girls in fitting rooms. Now he’s a former Art History professor charged with unlawful surveillance. [NY Post]
Opportunities for artists abound! Every month is a new chance for artists to submit their latest masterpiece and get it in front of UncommonGoods buyers. The winner will receive $500, an UncommonGoods vendor contract, and national exposure. 
