Posts tagged as:

Adrian Chen

Monday Links: Lady Gaga Shocks Gays With Least Controversial Halftime Show of All Time

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 6, 2017

WallUS

Finally, a border wall proposal so relatively inexpensive and easy to assemble a Republican could do it. [Dezeen]
Related: the indie video game “Papers, Please” is seeing a surge of interest as of recent weeks, unsurprisingly. The 8-bit game lets users play as a border agent in a dystopian Eastern European nation, rejecting or accepting immigrants based on suspicions they might be a smuggler or terrorist. [Humble Store]
MoMA is protesting Trump’s visa ban with a rehang of its permanent collection. They’ve interrupted the galleries’ usual art-historical arc by replacing a room of Picasso and Matisse works with pieces by artists from countries on the ban list. These include mostly artists from Iran. [The New York Times]
Meanwhile in Mexico, Samah Abdulhamid, a Syrian refugee, was greeted at the airport by a crowd with signs welcoming her to the country, including “Aquí no hay muros” (Here there are no walls). She’s the first female Syrian student to arrive via Proyecto Habesha, which is helping Syrians whose studies have been disrupted by the war attend universities in Mexico. It seems like a really great organization, especially if you’re looking to donate to something making a concrete positive impact now. [Fusion]
I can’t figure out why this Salvador Dalí painting is being described as one of the artist’s “most controversial works”, but it’s going up for auction at Bonhams. It’s an innocent-seeming portrait of his sister, painted as a gift shortly before the two had a falling-out. [Blouin Artinfo]
Ridiculous headline of the day: David Spade is suing Peter Beard, along with his wife and gallerist, over Beard’s failure to authenticate a photograph Spade bought fifteen years ago. [artnet News]
Pretty much all of the gay world just lost whatever respect we had left for Lady Gaga after she somehow managed to perform the least controversial Super Bowl Halftime Show of all time. Seriously, what the fuck? These past few months she had been a such an outspoken Trump opponent and she blew the one opportunity to have “other America” watching? Someone must’ve had a gun to her stylist’s head. [Gay Internet]
Trump is really bad at writing executive orders, but here’s a meme generator that lets you do it for him! [Executive Order]
“The definition of ‘pretension’ is somebody who elevates something that is not worthy of any kind of elevation… Brad does that quite a bit, but nothing he makes is straight-up dumb.” -Paddy Johnson is quoted several times in Adrian Chen’s profile of Brad Troemel, which has to be one of the most thorough biographies of a young artist I’ve read. [The New Yorker]

Read the full article →

One Day Into the World Without Gawker

by Paddy Johnson on August 23, 2016

For those of us who started and maintained blogs in the mid aughts, yesterday’s closure of Gawker wasn’t easy to watch. A year ago, I published a list of art blogs and magazines with Corinna Kirsch, full of headings modified with words like “active”, “not-active”, “defunct”, and “deleted”. It was already the end of an era then. Now, with the demise of the largest and arguably the most pioneering of blogs, I find myself wondering who amongst us will be left standing.

Read the full article →

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Gatekeepers Be Damned

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on February 9, 2016

During this hallmark week in which we celebrate our love for our partners, what romance is the art world serving up? Nothing we’ve listed, save for an anti-gentrification protest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this Valentine’s Day. In fact, it seems the entire week has been taken over by activists. From the Act Up—Dyke Action Machine talk at The 8th Floor to the Affordable Housing Show at Hunter, there’s plenty of discussion about how to make change.

Meanwhile, those with a sense of humor should balance all this seriousness out. Between Jayson Musson and Sean Patrick J Carney at SVA tonight to Larissa Valez-Jackson’s improv dance comedy at DANCEROULETTE this Thursday, you’ve got plenty of events to fill up your calendar.

Read the full article →

The Best 25 Shows of 2015

by The AFC Staff on December 31, 2015

2015 was great for art. For all the bitching that went on about art fairs, the dominance of the market, and sub-par museum shows (cough, cough Björk), I saw more great shows than I have in my ten years working as a critic in New York. Rather than try to whittle our picks down to a few select shows, we wrote up every show we thought was truly exemplary.

Read the full article →

Friday Links: Dollar Store Chocolate Santa Penis

by Paddy Johnson and Rea McNamara on December 18, 2015

Dollar store chocolate Santa turns out to be a huge penis. [CityNews]
Bad hire: Ben Genocchio, Artnet News’ editor-in-chief, has been named the new executive director of the Armory Show. Who knew writing an eyeroll-inducing clickbait listicle on the ways in which the artworld could change for the better would lead to an executive level position at an art fair? [The Art Newspaper]
But! Hiring a media type to run a major fair then inspires other trade publications to dig up past dumb art fair quotes (sample: “most art fairs bore me”) for traffic purposes. [Art Market Monitor]
Most professors use Academia.edu to publish their papers online, but concerns have been raised whether its wise to make a for-profit website the repository for open-source research. After all, if the website is reliant on venture capital, when the money dries up, how will the site be mined for profit? [The Atlantic]
Handmade ceramics are hot. The newspaper’s got a point, but I wish they had identified artists as well as artisans. Christina Schou Christensen is a favorite (though not exactly local.) [The New York Times]
In somewhat related news, an anonymous professor complains about a group of students denied extensions initiating a flyer campaign tapped to his office door demanding “respect seeing as I pay you £9,000 a year”. The suggestion that universities need customer service departments isn’t a bad one. [The Guardian]
Ayahuasca tourism is now veering into Fight Club territory—a Canadian man killed a Briton in self-defence during a ceremony in the Peruvian Amazon. [The Guardian]
Inuit filmmaker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril discusses documentary filmmaking and screening ethics, specifically in light of that racist Quebec documentary on inuit life: “I’m so fucking tired of having to take our two minutes of opportunity, of airtime, to say, ‘I’m not a drunk.’” [Art Threat]
Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens tonight and the reviews are good! [The New York Times]
Hate read: a list of major art collectors who are also big Republican donors. Why is this so surprising? After all, the big news from Miami was all the presidential candidates hanging around the pop-up parties because they were chasing after campaign cash. [artnet News]
An oldie, but a goodie by Adrian Chen: Best gifts under 5 cents. [Gawker]
Speaking of Chen, here’s another great moment from the past:
pic.twitter.com/JweHxqNDD4

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) May 7, 2015

Read the full article →

Friday Links: Opportunities Edition

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on September 25, 2015

Detail of a photo by Louis-Ernest Barrias via Installator

We linked to this yesterday in our Interview with Clynton Lowry at Art Handler Magazine, but the Installator tumblr is truly astonishing. The beauty and spectacle of an install pictured perfectly; the copper statue, La Defense, dangling from a crane, the shiny La Grande Madre by Jeff Koons, wrapped and unwrapped, workers deconstructing Art Basel Miami Beach. [Installator]

The Buy Art Fair has just launched in Manchester. Frank Cohen, the “Manchester Medici”, offers advice on buying art. He has some pretty obvious recommendations like “buy what you like” but also encourages new collectors to go for more inexpensive options such as prints. [BBC]

The artist-run space Field Projects has put out an open call for their November 2015 exhibition, curated by Lauren Haynes of the Studio Museum in Harlem. It’s a good opportunity to show in Chelsea or at least make curators aware of your work. [Field Projects]

Endless lawsuits related to art authentication have caused many to avoid offering the service to collectors and dealers altogether. The Andy Warhol Foundation dissolved its authentication board; “One year our legal bill ran up $7 million,” according to director Joel Wachs, “we got tired of giving money to lawyers. We’d rather be giving it to artists.” [Forbes]

For $50, Harvard students living in campus housing can rent prints from the Harvard Art Museums’ collection—including originals from Picasso and Warhol. [NBC News]

In related Boston news, there’s been a lot of social media speculation about the “mystery man” who appeared on the facade of the former Hancock Building. It turns out the vinyl mural is the work of French street artist JR. [The Boston Globe]

This is great. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation is offering grants for artists to address racial injustice in the US prison system. Applications for the Artist as Activist Fellowship are due December 7th. [The Art Newspaper]

Brooklyn artist Tina Trachtenburg has immortalized the internet-famous “Pizza Rat” in soft sculpture. For $80, you can own one of the artist’s plush rats, but the pizza isn’t included. That’s an additional $20. [Artnet News]

Useless Press is a new publishing collective edited by Sam Lavigne, Adrian Chen and Alix Rule that creates eclectic internet things. So far, they’ve found a data set of decapitated animals and issued a call for proposals to work with this material and published “Call to Wait” a phone line that puts callers on hold for seven years. “Call to Wait” is described as a “long term project”. Anyway, this is brilliant. Here’s a story on another project, Data Drive, which is a paper Facebook. [Flavorwire]

Have an X-Men fantasy to live out? Find your inner Dazzler at a London exhibition by conceptual artist Marcus Lyall, composer Rob Thomas, and designer Alex Anpilogov; where a viewer’s brain waves control lasers. [The Creator’s Project]

Read the full article →

Wednesday Links: Children Love Pee Spray?

by Paddy Johnson Michael Anthony Farley Corinna Kirsch on June 3, 2015

What is going on in this video of a giant puppet’s detached genitalia dancing with children and spraying audience members with pee? Apparently, this a piece entitled “Everybody” by the Australian collective [Snuff Puppets].
Adrian Chen writes a story on Russian troll farms only to find himself caught up in their web. Note to self: Never sit down with a source’s brother who looks like a neo-Nazi skin head. [The New York Times Magazine]
David Byrne on contemporary society’s obsession with all things curatorial: “Why this insistent emphasis on choices and filtering now? It’s obvious: when everything is available, within reach, accessible, the problem becomes not one of scarcity but of abundance.” [New Statesman]
Harry Beck’s original London Underground map is one of the most iconic, successful, and influential diagrams in the history of graphic design. But as London grows, has the once-elegant design gotten too cluttered? Between a mess of fare zones and the addition of new services such as light rail, the Overground, and even a cable car critics claim the map is starting to lose legibility. Londoners, if you want to fall back in love with your tube map, spend a day staring at NYC’s. [City Lab]
The New York Botanical Garden’s Frida Kahlo exhibition will soon include light projections by Jenny Holzer. What? We assume the greenery was good enough on its own. (AFC’s Michael Anthony Farley has the review of Kahlo’s show, minus the Holzer.) [Observer]
Wow, MoMA has some gall. In the midst of fundraising enormous sums of money for an atrium no one but their board members likes, they hope to cut employee health benefits. Ew. [Hyperallergic]
The Art Law Report brings a lawyer’s clarity to the Richard Prince/Suicide Girls debate on “copyright.” Guess what? Copyright is not the same as public domain. “Instagram photos are not in the public domain. The public domain applies to works over which no copyright exists. The ease with which something can be copied has nothing to do with whether it is in the public domain. If what Prince is doing is acceptable it is as a fair use under the statute, not because of a lack of copyright in the first instance.” [Art Law Report]
Did anyone else find Gawker’s post on Fusion’s traffic numbers, “More People Work at Fusion Than Are Reading Its Most Popular Post,” a bit confusing? The fact that 32 people are viewing a single post is brought up, but without saying if that’s how many people are viewing a post at a single second, minute, or hour. [Gawker]
Florida man’s conceptual art piece has his neighbors confused and angry. Piotr Janowsky has wrapped his house and several surrounding trees in aluminum foil. People are not happy about it. [Orlando Weekly via Bmore Art]

Read the full article →

Monday Links: Holes

by Corinna Kirsch on March 16, 2015

The problem with sinkholes? Too many homeless kittens! [Mother Jones via the New Orleans Times Picayune]
A fond farewell to “What Am I Looking At?” (WAILA), a web series that follows comedian Ali Clayton and guests to Chicago art openings. For the show’s final episode, Clayton, and the show’s producer, artist Patrick Bobilin, talk about art without fear, or fear of repercussions. It’s a show where you’ll hear comments like “That just reminds me of really stretched-out nutsacks” and “But did you like the emotion, or did you like the coolness?”. Patrick, you’re more than welcome to hang out and do a “We Went to” with us when you’re in New York next. [YouTube]
“Why Do Severed Goat Heads Keep Turning Up in Brooklyn?” asks writer Adrian Chen, as he goes full detective mode, putting on his best Peter Sellers moustache for the investigation. Hint: Minority groups point fingers at each other for the goat-head slaughter. [Daily Intelligencer]
Sotheby’s appoints Tad Smith as president and chief executive officer. Tad—who has one of the preppiest names out there—has previously served as president of the Madison Square Garden Company and Cablevision. He also likes to spend his time teaching; he’s an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. [Sotheby’s, Business Insider]
A history of grits, written by me. [Ordinary Objects]
Press release: “Art Basel and BMW have launched the BMW Art Journey, a first-of-its-kind award that enables selected artists to design a journey of creative discovery to a destination of their choice. Inspired by travel and the boundless diversity of places, encounters and experiences, artists will have the chance to conduct research, discover new ideas and themes, and create new work.” Translation: BMW will pay for artists travel. Vrooom! [BMW Art Journey]

Read the full article →

Out of the Blog Mines and into the IRL Club

by Whitney Kimball on February 11, 2015

A night of beer, jokes, and bonding over the best of the web.

Read the full article →

Friday Links: “J” Is for Jesus

by Corinna Kirsch and Whitney Kimball on December 19, 2014

Get into the spirit of the season with creepy, overly capitalistic Christmas commercials from the 1980s. “Taste all the ways butter helps your holidays throughout the year!” [YouTube]
On the history of classical Roman torture in Hollywood film. [The Awl]
Adrian Chen follows Swedish journalist Robert Aschberg, whose TV show Troll Hunter confronts Internet trolls IRL. The point, according to Aschberg: “The agenda is to raise hell about all the hate on the Net.” [Technology Review]
Sound art 101: Know what a “gremlin” is. [Leonardo Music Journal]
Good news for the ICA: Political activist Barbara Lee has gifted the museum with over 40 artworks, many by female, international, and politically active artists. [Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston]
Mo’ money for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has decided to start charging admission. [Hyperallergic]
A little history lesson on the Shanghai art scene in the 1980s: “[a]rt from the end of the Cultural Revolution through to the mid-1990s was insufficiently modern, fashionable, and avant-garde, and was at best expressing rebellion against a restrictive social environment.” [LEAP]
David Carr goes on WBUR to discuss the massive blow visited upon American freedom because, following terrorist threats, movie theaters unanimously decided not to show The Interview. Barely mentioned is the fact that trailers present the film as a buddy movie about a dictator who is STARVING PEOPLE, sending them to labor camps, and killing all who try to escape. Or the fact that this was not a case of government censorship but decisions made by private theaters who chose not to sell this product. But we as a nation suffer, because our comedies have been jeopardized. If the premise weren’t so ignorant, I’d put it on par with hate speech. We are a nation of assholes. [WBUR]
Jerry Saltz complains about not getting paid. This, from the man who just weeks ago, told artists to “[g]row up. Stop feeling deprived. You will never have enough money. You will never get enough love.” [Twitter]
A history of the candy cane reveals that they are not a “J” for Jesus, but the result of a fortuitous manufacturing malfunction. [The Smithsonian, via Metafilter]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Adrian Chen

Get Our Newsletter!

Like Us On Facebook!

Follow Art F City

What is Art F City?