This GIF combines two of my alltime favorite things from 1993—Star Trek: The Next Generation and Haddaway’s club banger “What is Love”—by superimposing Riker, Picard, and Data onto the Night at the Roxbury guys. Amazing.
The (obviously) strange story of how these terrifying wax Star Trek figures came to the collection of The Hollywood Science Fiction Museum. [The Fresno Bee]
A kinda-ugly Normal Rockwell painting has been reunited with a family after a theft 40 years ago. Sometimes the painting is known as “Boy Asleep with Hoe”. LOL. [CNN]
Chairman Mao must be rolling in his grave. A Warhol portrait of the Communist dictator just sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $12.6 million. [Reuters]
Renzo Piano has completed new ceramic-covered galleries for the collection and exhibition programs of the Fundación Botín in Santander, Spain. The center has a lot in common with Piano’s new Whitney museum, but looks much more elegant. [Dezeen]
This is fascinating: a map of every borough’s oldest buildings and a little history blurb about each. Staten Island and Brooklyn have so many structures dating from the 1600s! [Curbed]
Paul Moorhouse, the curator of Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends at London’s National Portrait Gallery, on the late artist’s work. A good, brief read. [Apollo]
Headline of the day: “City police save Light City art installation from a watery grave”. [The Baltimore Sun]
Wow. The situation at the Met sounds like a mess. Thomas P. Campbell, the museum’s outgoing director, apparently had an “inappropriate relationship” with a female staff member in the museum’s digital department. And the board of directors seems to have very little control over the massive institution. We’ll be watching this one closesly. [The New York Times]
OMG! Star Trek: Voyager premiered 22 years ago, as of yesterday. I feel old. [Facebook]
Shepard Fairey, Jessica Sabogal and Ernesto Yerena have created a series of protest posters that are free to download in anticipation of the #J20 strike and demonstrations. Unfortunately, there are new (draconian) restrictions on bringing signs into certain parts of the capital on inauguration day. To get around this, they’re raising funds to take out full-page ads in Washington newspapers and to distribute hard copies in the District. So far they’ve raised over $1 million. [Kickstarter]
Apparently the late, great Zaha Hadid left behind a £70.8 million fortune. Unfortunately, übercapitalist dickhead Patrik Schumacher is the executor to her will (a decision I doubt she would stand behind given his recent inflammatory comments about affordable housing). The other check-writers include her niece Rana Hadid, artist Brian Clarke, and former Serpentine Gallery chairman Peter Palumbo. The have 150 years to figure out how that money gets dispersed, via the Zaha Hadid Foundation. I hope those three vote to dole it out for innovative affordable housing. [Dezeen]
As opposed to participating in the #J20 strike, many museums are offering free admission on inauguration day, with programming such as a marathon reading of Langston Hughes’s 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again” at the Brooklyn Museum. The National Museum of Women in the Arts is closing on Friday, though, but will reopen for the Women’s March on Washington the next day, offering a “nasty women” tour of its galleries. Diversity of tactics is good for resistance. Disappointingly, the Guggenheim and MoMA, among others, have offered asinine, relatively apolitical statements about their decisions to remain open. [ARTnews]
London’s gallery-sharing event Condo 2017 sounds so smart and so successful. This is the kind of cooperation that will keep brick-and-mortar arts spaces alive. [artnet News]
Are memes the key to making the art world less elitist? Probably not, but Katie Fustich thinks they might be. How is Jaimie Warren not mentioned in this article? [Salon]
Wow. The Asheville Art Museum is beginning an $18 million, 18-month demolition/reconstruction project that will see the facade of its historic home seemingly half-swallowed/penetrated by a transparent glass box. It’s hard to tell from the renderings if this can be pulled-off effectively. [abc 13 WLOS]
Two Brooklyn artists are selling their historic 11 bedroom, 5,000 square-foot-home (with wraparound deck and killer waterfront views) for the relatively low price of $1.25M. Here’s the catch: it’s an old ferry with an insane history. 11 very smart artists should form a coop and buy this immediately. It’s one way to survive gentrification and/or sea level rise in Red Hook. [Curbed]
Potsdam, just outside Berlin, is getting a private museum from billionaire Hasso Plattner. The star attraction at the new Museum Barberini is will be Edvard Munch’s “Girls on the Bridge,” which recently sold for $54.5m at Sotheby’s. It’s believed Plattner was the buyer. If you’re a Munch fan, you can see it starting January 23rd. [The Art Newspaper]
Hyunju Kim “NUBIGi, 000, 095” made from sewing-machine thread.
The Paley Center for Media is hosting an exhibition of all Star-Trek-themed art from 50 artists to celebrate the show’s 50th anniversary. It looks like most of it is the kitsch you would expect, but I would totally own this thread portrait of Spock. [Space.com]
In other news surrounding futuristic interplanetary relations, here’s a breakdown of just how Elon Musk plans to transport colonists to Mars. [Space.com]
Curbed has a new map of starchitect-designed buildings coming to New York, from museums and libraries to residential high rises—and actually, more than one residential high rise that includes a museum and/or library. [Curbed]
Uh-oh. You know that pumpkin latte, pumpkin pie and pumpkin spice you’ve been consuming? It’s not pumpkin. It’s squash. This story seems on a par to learning that Hello Kitty isn’t a cat. [Food & Wine]
Here are the long-awaited results of Iggy Pop’s nude modelling session at the Brooklyn Museum. Maybe it’s the staff he’s holding, but some of these drawings kinda look like Lord of the Rings fan art. [Dazed]
Printed Web Founder Paul Soulellis talks with internationally acclaimed GIF artist Lorna Mills. I love this interview, mostly because Mills is so fucking smart. When asked about the relationship of her work to cinema, Mills replies, “I am looking for something else. In the past I’ve described this something else as the particular and peculiar expanding to universals that, at an alarming rate, contract right back to the particular and peculiar—basically, constant oscillation punctuated by the odd abrupt rhythm.” It’s the most precise description of her GIFs I can imagine. [Rhizome]
Artist Malcolm Peacock’s latest piece involves a tour of a park that was once a segregation-era pool. Today the site is marked by a somewhat-forgotten memorial from MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient Joyce J. Scott. Peacock’s work will touch on death, race, and more. We don’t know exactly what to expect, but many have speculated it will be a book. It’s not a book. [City Paper]
The Sacramento Jeff Koons debate rages on over Facebook. Tim Foster, a local writer and musician, notes that all those complaining about the philanthropic money that went to purchasing a public art work by Jeff Koons should have been spent on local artists, don’t have a history of supporting the arts themselves. Two years ago, The Crest, a 25 year old theatre known for supporting the arts, was pushed out of their home due to a landlord who hoped to make more money off the real estate. There wasn’t half the outcry. [Facebook]
Saddam Hussein’s former Basra palace has been reborn as an antiquities museum. I guess that’s one not-terrible outcome of the invasion. [artnet News]
A map charting the locations of the best Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in the US. [Curbed]
David Shrigley’s new bronze sculpture “Really Good” in Trafalgar Square lives up to its name (it’s a giant thumb’s up, appropriate among bombastic monuments). Here’s an interview with the artist about the art/design/illustration divide, the Brexit, and more. [Dezeen]
Anish Kapoor claims the repeated vandalism of his vaginal sculpture at Versailles was an “inside job.” What does that even mean? [The Art Newspaper]
Generally, cats are assholes. Apparently this is because they’re usually bored. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley want cat owners to make their pets work for their food—they suggest “food puzzles” where the cat has to solve a problem to access a snack. I feel like this is going to lead to plenty of YouTube videos that are more entertaining for humans than cats. [Gizmodo]
After 111 years of operation in the East Village, New York Central Art Supply Inc. is closing today. The store supplied Andy Warhol, Basquiat, and even De Kooning’s Hamptons studio on the weekends. If you have the time today, swing by and say goodbye/pick up some discounted paint. [The Wall Street Journal]
Nathan Lyons, influential photographer, curator, and critic, has died at the age 86. Lyons’ contributions to the field were enormously important for cementing photography’s place in the annals of contemporary art. [The New York Times]
As Rhizome turns 20, ART news looks at the organization’s history (“it’s older than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in internet years”.) From humble email list in Berlin to major cultural archive, Rhizome has done a lot. This is a long read, but a good one. [ART news]
After Ai Weiwei was excluded from the Yinchuan Biennale for “political reasons”, Anish Kapoor is now threatening to withdraw in protest. [artnet News]
The New York Times has ceased publishing local arts sections for the city’s suburbs. There will no longer be, for example, Connecticut or Westchester arts coverage for the Connecticut or Westchester editions of the paper, respectively. People are pissed. [artnet News]
MAC Cosmetics and Star Trek have teamed up for an unlikely cross-promotional marketing thing that has resulted in these YouTube makeup tutorials. They’re not particularly useful—s model does makeup “inspired” by a character and ends up looking insane every time—but they’re impossible to look away from. [YouTube]
Petr Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the Red Square in protest of Putin. Now there’s going to be a Burger King meal about it.
Weirdest art news we’ve read in awhile: fast food giant Burger King is making a series of burgers inspired by Russian performance artist Petr Pavlensky for its Saint Petersburg location. Pavlensky is famous for nailing his balls to Moscow’s Red Square, setting fire to a government office building, and sewing his mouth shut to protest the arrest of Pussy Riot. He’s not exactly the type of political figure usually associated with international corporate junk food. [BBC News]
“Of the 40 galleries and nonprofits that took part in the first edition of the NADA fair, only 13 remain in business—Derek Eller Gallery, Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, James Fuentes, Galerie Zink, Inman Gallery, Moniquemeloche, Momenta Art, Taro Nasu Gallery, Participant Inc, Peres Projects, Kavi Gupta, Hiromi Yoshii, and ZieherSmith.” ARTnews tracks down what became of the first class of NADA, and the results are depressing. [ARTnews]
The news above makes us ask: what is the average lifespan of a gallery? Does it map to what gallerist and art fair founder Edward Winkleman once described as the average length of time an emerging artist’s work remains profitable for a gallery—seven years? [Art F City]
In other NADA news, the fair’s Miami Beach iteration is moving back to the Deauville this year. Thank God. Fontainebleau sucked the life out of NADA. [ARTnews]
Star Trek Beyond’s weird/desperate cross-promotion with Rihanna was pretty terrible. But for the film’s Chinese release, they replaced her with pop star Zhang Jie and an even more terrible track. His song sounds a bit like it was written by an algorithm in 15 minutes, which at least makes it a little more interesting that the U.S. brand of schlock. [Fansided]
People in one South Carolina apartment complex have convinced the local police that clowns are in the woods offering money to children and flashing laser pointers. The Atlantic seems to be the only publication wondering if some kids just made this bizarre story up. [The Atlantic]
Lisa Crossman discusses the state and importance of art criticism in Boston. It sounds like institutions get most of the mainstream press coverage, and the criticism that emerges from those institutions tends to focus on its own bubble. It’s a great read about the need for criticism in general. [Big Red & Shiny]
Starchitect Renzo Piano will lead the cleanup effort in Italy after their major earthquake. Amongst other buildings Piano designed the new Whitney building in New York’s meatpacking district. [The Guardian]
Can cities be too tall? According to most Londoners they answer is yes. Residents associate tall buildings with rich people and are increasingly voicing their opinion that cities should not be so dense. The anti-density movement is heating up. [Curbed]
An interview with artist, activist and Arts Advocacy Project Program Associate Joy Garnett from the Arts Advocacy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship. She discusses Artist Rights, a new online resource that informs artists on their rights and what is and isn’t protected under the first amendment. [Creative Capital]
The “Trolley Dilemma” is the internet’s most philosophical meme, of course able to update and mutate given a user/creator’s sensitivities. [New York Magazine]
Joseph DeLappe, Malath Abbas, Tom Demajo and Albert Elwin developed Killbox, a video game that allows players to assume the roles of drone pilot or villager. It’s pretty depressing. [AJ+]
The Walker Art Center is offering a two-year fellowship for curators focused on intermedia artworks and performance. [The Walker Art Center]
But here’s an even cooler opportunity: Lisa fucking Frank is hiring digital artists!!! Please, someone take this job and make AFC some psychedelic panda stationery for the office. [Facebook]
This is the last week for artist-run spaces and nonprofits to apply for the Satellite Art Fair in Miami Beach. We had a great time last year! This year, the format is a little different and booths are pricier, but it’s still the cheapest art fair in Miami and now has a super-central South Beach location. [Satellite]
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has a guide for advocates of architecture from our recent past—meaning modernism from civic buildings to googie diners. This is so important right now! [Saving Places]
Let’s all remember that time Clyfford Still sent Emily Genauer a pair of rubber underpants in the mail because she wrote a bad review of his work. They’re now in the Smithsonian. [Hyperallergic]
Jala Wahid’s collection of inspiring images about the body is one of my favorite short image essays I’ve seen in awhile. Ancient mythology, the Borg from Star Trek, Ripley destroying her clones in Alien Resurrection, and a photo of her parents in a refugee camp all totally make strange sense together through her associative logic. [Frieze]
Sometimes I think there’s an unexpected value in relating to pop culture on a wholly personal level. For example, there are pretty much just two things from the past 50 years of media that shaped my ethics and worldview: the anti-capitalist, but otherwise almost entirely separate, phenomena of Star Trek and punk.
The above GIF shows the brief few seconds when those worlds improbably collided in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The story was conceived of and directed by Leonard Nimoy (RIP) and involves the protagonists travelling back in time to then-present-day San Francisco to rescue whales, who had been hunted to extinction. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Spock (played by Nimoy) gives a Vulcan nerve pinch to a punk who is loudly playing music from a boom box on the bus. It’s exactly the kind of camp 80s-era Star Trek pulled off so well.
The song was actually written by the film’s associate producer Kirk Thatcher, who recorded the song with the band Edge of Etiquette, which was formed specifically to make this music for the movie. Thatcher also played the punk guy. In the context of a movie about time travel to reverse an ecological disaster, the lyrics are actually pretty smart:
Just where is our future, the things we’ve done and said! Let’s just push the button, we’d be better off dead! ‘Cause I hate you! And I berate you! And I can’t wait to get to you!
The sins of all our fathers, being dumped on us – the sons. The only choice we’re given is how many megatons? And I eschew you! And I say, screw you! And I hope you’re blue, too.
So when I watch a film like Star Trek: Beyond (which was directed by the guy who made The Fast and the Furious movies about cars exploding, and began production before a script was actually written) I find myself asking “Just where is our future?” For those who haven’t seen the film, don’t bother. The “plot” involves a bunch of sexy rebooted characters blasting The Beastie Boys to somehow blow up CGI aliens in order to save Space Dubai. It’s probably the dumbest possible encore “punk” could make in the Star Trek universe. Don’t even get me started on that horrible Rihanna marketing shtick…
JJ Abrams, Justin Lin, and all others responsible for the desecration of Star Trek, I have one message for you:
Do you believe the children are the future? What about their future pasts? At Maryland Art Place we checked in on Young Blood, a survey of recent area MFA grads, including DIY Star Trek and paintings corrupted like future JPEGs. Upstairs at Terrault Contemporary, Kaita Niwa time travels with the magic of CGI and a creepy child avatar.
Yet another art app no one asked for: Google Arts & Culture. It seems to do many of the same things as Artsy with an eye cast more toward art history. And users can visit architectural wonders using Google Cardboard. And of course, search for artwork by color. I’d try it myself, but my phone has limited space thanks to all the immovable, self-updating “bloatware” apps Google has already snuck on there. [The Next Web]
In other Google news, the tech giant asked artists Marina Esmeraldo and Mallory Heyer to make a mural using the dreaded Google Sheets app, seemingly to make accounting look cool? Congratulations Google, there’s now a wall in Brooklyn that looks like a Miami juice bar/Zumba studio, thanks to the fun magic of spreadsheets. [The Next Web]
Sales reports from the first half of the year are down for Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Both auction houses are seeing sales in the ultra high-end collapse, with Christie’s latest total down 37.5%. Contemporary art sales took a staggering 45% hit, totalling substantially less than a billion. The surprising news, according to Marion Maneker is that Europe nudged ahead of the US in terms of buyers. Also interesting: new buyers account for 25 percent of all sales at Christie’s. In any event, The Wall Street Journal is describing the report as bad news for the top end of the market and health in the middle market. Meanwhile the Art Market Monitor has used the statistic of new buyers to predict growth, and perhaps even a flashier market going forward. [The Art Market Monitor]
Queen is really pissed that the Republican National Convention used “We Are The Champions” on stage… especially after they already publically criticized Trump for using their music in his campaign. Though after Hillary’s AIDS comments earlier this year, it’s probably not a good idea for her to try to channel Freddie Mercury either. [CNN]
Here’s some music Trump can probably secure the rights to, but might not want to: his daughter Tiffany’s awful foray into auto-tuned trash pop. Listen now (if you dare) before the campaign gets this scrubbed from the internet. [Youtube h/t Mieke Gentis]
Erik Satie was really, really weird. But he might have invented performance art, and spent 8 days in jail for it. [Flypaper]
Concept art has been revealed for the upcoming Blade Runner sequel. Please, god, do not let them turn this into a CGI clusterfuck that looks like a video game. The original was so, so good precisely because of its practical special effect that still hold up compared to contemporary movies. [Shortlist]
Related: in this tribute to Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin, it’s revealed that they started making the latest of the terrible, terrible JJ Abrams reboots before having actually written a script. This film is directed by the same guy who brought us The Fast and the Furious…. A subtle joke from 30 Rock about a movie from that franchised being advertised as “Written by No One” now seems tragi-comically prescient. [Fox News]
An old Bronx courthouse has been scouted as the site for a new hip hop museum. [Curbed]
Larry Gagosian has finally agreed to pony-up $4.3 Million in unpaid sales taxes, including interest and penalties, after an investigation by the New York Attorney General. Given the scope of his art empire, it’s frankly surprising that number isn’t higher. [The Wall Street Journal]
Fiercely Independent. New York art news, reviews and culture commentary. Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director Michael Anthony Farley, Senior Editor Whitney Kimball, IMG MGMT Editor
Contact us at: paddyATartfcity.com
Paddy Johnson, Editorial Director
