- Following up on our Shark Week coverage, the Discovery Channel aired their “race” of 500 time Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps swimming against a Great White Shark, and people are pissed. Obviously, they weren’t going to put Phelps in the water with a shark, but I at least thought there would be a shark. Nope. Basically, they had Phelps wear a fin to give the swimmer the same advantage the fish had, filmed him swimming alone, and then paired him with a computer animation. Lame. There were at least some good memes to come out of this whole thing though. Whomever the intern is that made this image—hire them. [The New York Times]
- Hate read: a guide to New York City’s largest mega mansions. There are typically created by rich people buying two to three buildings, kicking everyone else out, and combining them into one home so oversized it’s hard to imagine most of the space being used. The list of owners living/creating mega mansions includes Michael Bloomberg, Madonna, Larry Gagosian, and Jeff Koons. [Curbed]
- “I’m getting braver at saying the name of a sorely under-known Brazilian artist whose retrospective at the Whitney Museum, “Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium,” comes as an overdue revelation.” This is the first line of Peter Schjeldahl’s review in The New Yorker and we’re seeing grumblings on Twitter of how offensive this is. Get a grip. If you don’t know how to pronounce a name, or if it’s hard to pronounce properly for English people, it’s embarrassing. This is an admission that he’s working to learn, not that he’s revealing his implicit racism. If anyone has a right to poke fun at unpronounceable last names, it’s a guy named Schjeldahl. [Twitter, The New Yorker]
- Artist Sarah Craske found a 300 year old edition of Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” at a junk shop. She’s since cultured centuries’ worth of readers’ bacteria from over the centuries for an artwork. [The Guardian]
- Why is Condo being described as an art fair alternative? The event is an gallery-share model where galleries share their space with foreign dealers for the length of a show. Is launching exhibitions now secondary to participating in art fairs? [artnet News]
- It turns out Alice Cooper has had a Warhol “Electric Chair” painting rolled up in a tube in storage for decades. The rocker totally forgot he had it. [The Guardian]
- Microsoft is killing off its 32 year program beloved of artists, MS Paint. Well, there goes that genre of art making. [The Guardian]
