Posts tagged as:

Ed Ruscha

This Week’s Must-See Art Events: Anxiety on High

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on January 16, 2017

Let’s face it—the bulk of this week’s chatter in the art world isn’t going to be about Donald Trump’s Inauguration, but Marilyn Minter and Madonna’s talk Thursday evening at the Brooklyn Museum lamenting it. And that’s as it should be. Resistance to this new presidency is essential.
Friday, we’ll be participating in the #J20 Art Strike, so no content on our website will be available but for a livestream of Rachel Mason lip synching the inauguration as FutureClown. Those seeking to participate in the art protests can head to the Whitney where Occupy Museums will be hosting a “Speak Out”.

Other than that, we’re recommending a show about soul crushing anxiety and despair at LUBOV, and a show called “Infected Foot” at Greene Naftali, because sickness also seems like an appropriate theme for the week. Sorry to be depressing. Unfortunately, there’s no other honest way to paint the events.

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Hotel Art That Makes You Feel Richer: On 21c in Durham

by Paddy Johnson on November 6, 2015

I visited the 21c hotel in Durham North Carolina, which was established by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson as a means of housing their art collection.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: A Synth Workshop for Your Fair Week

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on May 5, 2014

This week, we’ve got a Women’s Synth Workshop at the Kitchen, a Ragnar Kjartansson show at the New Museum, a new exhibition of abstract art by Jayson Musson, and more.

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Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s New Do It Video Tells You to Do It With Social Media

by Corinna Kirsch on April 29, 2014

But why should we do it?

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Wednesday Links: Guess Which Art Dealer Uses Bank of America

by Corinna Kirsch on March 19, 2014

LEFT: Patrick Cariou RIGHT: Richard Prince

After six years of court battles, Panamanian photographer Patrick Cariou has dropped his copyright case against artist Richard Prince. The two have settled outside of court. [The Art Newspaper]
Though you still can’t click on Richard Prince’s “Canal Zone” paintings up on his website. [Richard Prince]
Art gallery magnate Larry Gagosian has negotiated a $48.8 million mortgage on his Chelsea gallery. Thanks to this tabloid-y piece for letting us know that Gagosian uses Bank of America! [Commercial Observer]
Looks like an SUV drove atop the Q train this morning. [The Awl]
If you go to the Sydney Biennale, the Guardian is here to inform you that Pippilotti Rist’s installation contains the “largest uncircumcised penis you are ever likely to see in an artwork.” [The Guardian]
The Island Institute of Alaska is seeking applications for summer residencies. [Island Institute of Alaska]
Come October, Marian Goodman Gallery will open its third location worldwide, right next to London’s Picadilly Circus. [AMA]
If you’re feeling down, just remember this one song. [Imgur]
The artists are back at MOCA. Last night, MOCA announced that artist board members John Baldessari, Catherine Opie, and Barbara Kruger will rejoin the museum after leaving in July 2012. Mark Grotjahn has joined their board, effectively replacing Ed Ruscha. [The Los Angeles Times]
Art Recovery Group, a new competitor to the Art Loss Register, a private company that recovers stolen artworks, opened its offices in London this week. [Art Hostage]
This week’s proof that doge is planning to appropriate every meme. [Doge2048]

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Monday Links: Could Have Done Better Edition

by Whitney Kimball on March 17, 2014

Robert Heinecken, “John Szarkowski showing Charles Kuralt how to hold a watermelon when eating it left to right”, 1985 (Image courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography)

Happy Saint Paddy’s Day! The world is still a shitpile.

MoMA’s retrospective of the California-based artist Robert Heinecken should have come sooner, says Christopher Knight. Heinecken’s lack of recognition to this point could have a little something to do with his criticism of MoMA’s powerful photography curator John Szarkowski, and a general New York-centrism. [LA Times]
Holland Cotter reviews Neue Galerie’s “Degenerate Art”, which demonstrates how Hitler used art to demonize the Jews and promote his official agenda. [New York Times]
“At this year’s [South by Southwest] festival, historically a place of artistic idiosyncrasy, music labels were an afterthought and big brands owned the joint.” [New York Times]
Some in Cincinnati are upset about Todd Pavlisko’s piece “Docent”, which required having a sharpshooter shooting inside the Cincinnati Art Museum’s key gallery on a day when the museum was closed. Shareholder Stewart Maxwell complains that the piece shows disrespect to the museum’s most treasured work. [Cincinnati.com, h/t Benjamin Sutton]
In an interview with City Beat, Pavlisko says the piece is a form of institutional critique, which will make visitors think differently about the gallery every time they visit it. The gun has nothing to do with gun violence, but is simply an “art-making tool”. [City Beat]
Ed Ruscha sure picked a safe bet for his upcoming, year-long High Line mural, with “Honey, I Twisted Through More Damn Traffic Today” (though it does describe the feeling of being on the High Line). Marina Galperina has some better suggestions. [ANIMAL]
Syria claims that foreigners, mostly from Turkey, have used the war to systematically loot its artifacts. [TAN]
Speaking of looters: A very thorough and rightly-outraged reminder of why the bluechip art market is a complete distraction from capitalism’s larger and devastating class disparity. “Whenever I see a Rothko I think of Madoff, and how the afterlife of modern art is now yoked to the pissing matches performed by the big swinging SHLONGS of Wall Street,” writes Rhonda Lieberman. She also thinks that the Detroit Institute of Arts spectacle– with the possibility of selling its treasures to pay off creditors– spells a dark future ahead. [The Baffler, h/t @GiovanniGF]
Ben Davis has spelled out a lot of these problems in his book. His list of “9.5 Theses” is a manifesto for how art can function in this landscape. [9.5 Theses on Art and Class]

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Monday Links: More Russian Censorship, and the Blackberry Death Spiral

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on September 23, 2013

“Are you the person that we can ask questions? Or are you just a guard?” The New York Times interviews a security guard at the Guggenheim’s James Turrell exhibition. [The New York Times]
The Metropolitan Opera won’t bow to protesters who’d like to see the opera take a stance on the Russian government’s controversial gay rights laws, and also the government’s denial of Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” premiered as the opera’s season opener last night. [Bloomberg]
The Art Loss Register has used some rather questionable methods to track lost art work. For example, the Register led a collector to believe a painting was not stolen, when in fact it was, so that he would buy it and unwittingly help the company collect a fee for its retrieval. [The New York Times]
Did Russia censor all 26,439 Squarespace sites over a satirical gay art PDF? So reads the headline of an article reporting on Loo.ch, the New York-based art, technology, criticism, and travel website run by Ukrainian expats Natasha Masharova and Anatoli Ulyanov since 2010. They believe two pieces criticizing Russia’s new anti-gay propaganda laws caused the block. Sounds plausible, but could more than one of these 26,439 other sites have published a few critical words on the law? [Animal]
Blackberry is in a “death spiral.” They laid off forty percent of their workforce and report a second quarter loss of one billion on 1.6 billion in revenues. Queue the think pieces. [Washington Post]
Art collector Peter Brant, also owner of the Greenwich Polo Club, introduced a Groupon to a recent weekend event. In addition to the polo match, VIPs were given a tour of Brant’s art center; the rest watched the horses. [Boston.com]
Carolina Miranda interviewed Ed Ruscha for NPR. [NPR]

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Friday Links: Fiefdoms and Outrage

by Paddy Johnson on August 16, 2013

Ed Ruscha, "That Was Then This Is Now #1", 1989, acrylic on canvas 32 H x 46 W (inches)

It’s probably best not to trust a site that can’t figure out how to spell MOCA properly and cites a source that seems to think board member responsibilities include curation. Still, the bitchy speculation is enjoyable. This site claims Brad Pitt isn’t “smart enough” to join MOCA’s board. [ShowbizSpy]
Ed Ruscha joins SFMoMA’s board one year after he departs from MoCA. SFMoMA should be very pleased. [L.A. Times]
Yesterday, a corner of the internet got really upset about gmail’s privacy policies. It turns out no one had read the court filings people that had caused all the fuss in the first place. [The Verge]
An art-world feud map by William Powhida and Jade Townsend. [ArtNews]
Is trouble brewing in the north? Russians are developing the Northeast passage even though much of that land is Canadian owned. [The Globe and Mail]
Still more details have been released in the ongoing case against Glafira Rosales, a little known dealer from Long Island who sold 40 allegedly counterfeit works through Knoedler & Company. Now we know how the paintings were made. [The New York Times]
Jasper Johns’s ex-assistant has been charged with selling 22 works he stole from the artist’s studio, according to New York State court documents. [Bloomberg]
Nice to see a review of a show at N.Y.U. in the Times. Roberta Smith lauds the enormous paintings of Hale Woodruff (two are 20 feet in diameter). [The New York Times]