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Stuart Semple

Friday Links: Inside the Pigment War

by Michael Anthony Farley on June 23, 2017

Stuart Semple’s Black 2.0 pigment accomplishes some of the optical trickery of Vantablack.

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know (or not) about the beef between British artists Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple over Kapoor’s exclusive rights to Vantablack. The story basically ends with Semple making his own ultra-black pigment that’s available for everyone and far more affordable. [Wired]
The Tate Britain has placed work from Khadija Saye on view in their memorial gallery. Saye died in the Grenfell Tower fire last week. [BuzzFeed]
Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery is expanding, following last year’s huge donation of $42.5 million from billionaire Jeffrey Gundlach. The plan, from OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu, will allow the museum to display more of its collection while maintaining the Olmstead parkland in which it sits. They’ll accomplish this by expanding underground and burying the existing parking lot. [WIVB 4]
As skyrocketing rents make expansion in major art capitals impossible, many mid-tier galleries are opening locations in smaller cities or vacation towns. Or giving up permanent brick-and-mortar locations altogether and just doing pop-ups and art fairs. [Financial Times]
Head to the Oculus at the World Trade Center sometime in the next month. Up Close: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel features nearly-life-sized reproductions of the famous frescoes in great detail. [artnet News]
Stop plucking now: the Dallas Museum of Art is hoping to set a world record for most Frida Kahlo impersonators gathered in the same place. The event will take place on July 6th, what would have been the artist’s 110th birthday. [Star Telegram]
Some of the brains behind the Highline have created a website, Highline Network, to share ideas with other similar park projects. A lot of the impetus actually seems to be a cautionary tale—most don’t want to replicate the out-of-control gentrification that accompanied the park’s arrival. [Dezeen]

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Tuesday Links: Anish Kapoor Gives “Exclusive” Pigment the Finger

by Paddy Johnson and Michael Anthony Farley on December 27, 2016

anish-kapoor

After Anish Kapoor secured the exclusive rights to light-absorbing pigment Vantablack, artist Stuart Semple created “The World’s Pinkest Pink,” which is available to everyone except Kapoor. Kapoor responded to this dig with the above Instagram photo, wherein his middle finger is dipped in Semple’s pigment. This seems like the kind of drama one wouldn’t expect Kapoor to have time for. [artnet News]

Beginning with David Bowie, J. Kelly Nestruck looks back at artists who died in 2016 and the ways in which they “performed” their deaths. [The Globe and Mail]

George Michael died this weekend. Here’s a look at why he mattered beyond the music. Think making gayness more interesting and less threatening, and erasing the barrier between who should and should not sing a soul song. [The New York Times]

Last week we previewed the new artworks in the Second Avenue Subway. It didn’t occur to me though, that Vik Muniz’s “Perfect Strangers” mosaic features what appears to be New York City’s first depiction of a gay couple in a permanent, non-political piece of public art. [AP]

Photographer Wing Shya’s aesthetic emerged about two decades ago, while working as an on-set photographer for filmmaker Wong Kar Wai during Hong Kong cinema’s golden age. Today, his gorgeous photos maintain a cinematic quality, even as the city’s culture and economy stagnate under mainland Chinese rule. [CNN]

Famed minimalist and art critic Donald Judd amassed a tomb of writing over his life, but never used a typewriter. This news comes in a profile by Randy Kennedy on a new collection of the artist’s writings and his children’s role in shepherding the project. [The New York Times]

Best new architecture in NYC. In a surprise to no one, Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus makes the list, but not without some heavy caveating. (Late opening, political tomfoolery, shopping mall effect, etc.) [Curbed]

The Denver Art Museum’s upcoming renovation proclaims to be fairly sensitive to the existing facilities. Nevertheless, there’s apparently some controversy over relocating Edgar Heap of Birds’ outdoor sculpture “Wheel”. This editorial doesn’t really explain what that controversy is, though. [Denver Post]

Great. The GOP is connecting Democratic senate candidates in New York to Mayor de Blasio and corruption wherever possible. And of course, it’s an easy attack to launch because the administration has been plagued by corruption. [Politico]

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President’s Day Links: Famous People Edition

by Paddy Johnson on February 18, 2013

Making the rounds this week: The Wall Street Journal’s profile of Venice Biennale curator Massimiliano Gioni. “Lately,” he says, “people just think that contemporary art is something there to pass the time of the wealthy, or because everybody else is doing it or because openings are cool and fashionable.” Gioni, by contrast, sees art not as the exclusive domain of the hip and the well-to-do, but as a kind of mental playground for the masses.
“We need to remind ourselves that contemporary art is first of all a form of conceptual gymnastics, in which we learn to coexist with what we don’t understand,” he says.That’s some Gioni gloss on an actual problem, though, to be fair, there is some truth to what he says about coexisting in the context of class. The middle class isn’t always friendly with those from the upper class and visa versa.

Meanwhile, want to know what drives Gioni? “That’s ultimately my interest,” the curator tells the journal “to get the artwork to tell stories.” [WSJ]
British artist Stuart Semple has signed a contract for worldwide representation with the fashion agency Next Management. Oh goodie; the art world was sufficiently lacking people whose job description is to make demands. Now we have a whole new group of icky people to make the field more annoying. [The Art Newspaper]
Jillian Steinhauer visited the archives of the American Folk Art Museum and got a chance to look at some of Darger’s writing. He wrote a 15,000 page novel. [Hyperallergic]
Artist Jayson Musson is responsible for a line in that Harlem Shake meme that’s been going around. Background on that, from Animal. [AnimalNY]
President Roosevelt was no fan of the Armory Show, Duchamp or Cubism. Highlights from his scathing review courtesy of Benjamin Sutton. [In The Air]

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Stuart Semple

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