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…”
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.
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.
Why are artist-curators being recruited by New York museums? With all the artist-curated shows currently on view, the artist’s viewpoint may never have been represented so strongly.
"Quizoola!," Image courtesy of Agnieszka Gratza and Frieze
A review of Quizoola!, a performance by the experimental theatre company Forced Entertainment, begins thusly: “It’s 4am and I’m struggling to stay awake while two people made up as clowns throw questions and answers each other’s way. ‘How do spark plugs and three-prong plugs work?’ I try to process this but it’s more than my battered brain can handle at this hour. The show began practically on the stroke of midnight and I’ve got 20 more hours to get through.” Here’s hoping they end up at Performa. [Frieze]
Finally, a bidding war we can get behind. Leonardo DiCaprio hosted a free-for-all, celebrity-packed auction last night at Christie’s for his environmental charity, which pulled in nearly $31.7 million. Artists donating get a tax write-off [on materials], Leo gets his tiger painting, dicks are measured, and the planet sees another day. Everyone came out on top it seems, even Dan Duray, who emerged with some very juicy sound bytes. [Gallerist]
Josh Baer’s heard that Christie’s has withdrawn a group of approximately 10 works from their upcoming Latin American sale under questions of authenticity. [Baer Faxt]
Hyperallergic’s been killing it lately. A nice longread from Alexis Clements on self marketing as an artist and the NEA 4. [Hyperallergic]
Angelina Jolie has had a double mastectomy. Her op-ed about the procedure runs in the Times today. [NYTimes]
Critic Michael Kimmelman discusses MoMA’s plans to demolish the former Folk Art Museum, and their stepping back from said plans. He also aptly their describes the transformation of MoMA over the last decade. “Not so long ago, [MoMA] was the art museum New Yorkers loved and identified with; it seemed familial, its scale personal. It had a special place in the city’s heart. The Met was the big pompous, bureaucratic machine. Now the tables have turned, and even while it has grown, the Met has come to seem the nimble, venturesome one, more intimately loved.” [NYTimes]
Elizabeth Spiers on the loaded question: What do you do? Only one stone left unturned in this essay: Is there proper etiquette for asking the question amongst a crowd where the question might seem garish? Sometimes you want to know, and “What are your interests?” feels a little forced. [The Medium]
Museums are starting to open their permanent collections up to photography. Nice coinage by Jorge Colberg in this piece about how constantly taking photos of ourselves is an act of “compulsive looking”. [Artnews]
I could care less about who owns the rights of use to what image, but for those following the Supreme lawsuit, it seems they only filed for a federal trademark March 6th. This is significant, because they filed a suit against Leah McSweeney in the amount of 10 million dollars for copyright infringement without the trademark, just one month later. [Animal NY]
A revised version of Space Oddity recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station. It’s ridiculously good. [youtube]
A great interactive “Then and now” piece about hip-hop in brooklyn. [NYTimes via: c-monstah]
Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director
