Articles

Why are iPhone Polaroids so Popular?

  • by Kyle Chayka on June 17, 2010

  • 9 comments

by Kyle Chayka on June 17, 2010

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You may have seen it on your friend’s Facebook pages or the screen of a mobile phone, on a Twitter image service or a Tumblr blog. An aesthetic rash has been plaguing popular photography as of late, but it’s not a new one. A slew of iPhone ‘Polaroid’ applications are turning people’s visual diaries into retro, oversaturated documents of social lives, friends and lovers. But what makes these applications so popular

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Video

Work of Art Episode 2: Recap and Tweet Digest!

  • by Kyle Chayka on June 17, 2010

  • 2 comments

by Kyle Chayka on June 17, 2010

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This week on Work of Art, it’s the Garbage Project! Our artists have to make a sculpture … out of toss-offs. Wait, hasn’t this been done before? The same has been done on Project Runway and not to mention by John Chamberlain and countless others, but thankfully not Top Chef.

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Video

Bravo’s Work of Art: Recap and Tweet Digest!

  • by Kyle Chayka on June 10, 2010

  • 5 comments

by Kyle Chayka on June 10, 2010

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Last night marked a watershed moment for the art world: the first time that contemporary art was inducted in the burgeoning canon of reality TV. But the big question is: will it succeed in picking an artist the art world will accept or will the show turn out to be more of a Dadaist farce, too nonsensical to have any relevance?

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News

Tobias Wong: Designer as Conceptual Prankster

  • by Kyle Chayka on June 4, 2010

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by Kyle Chayka on June 4, 2010

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Widely exhibited and praised, the work of the late Tobias Wong forced the design (not to mention contemporary art) world to reconsider art’s relationship to mass commerce and up-to-the-minute pop culture as well as face up to its own Ivory Tower insularity. Some of his objects will live on.

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Reactor

Trees Are Artists Too!

  • by Kyle Chayka on May 7, 2010

  • 6 comments

by Kyle Chayka on May 7, 2010

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You know how everyone’s claiming to be an artist these days? Make-up technicians, hairdressers, gallerists, your kid sister, that crazy aunt who does crocheted landscapes? Yeah? Well now even plants are getting in on the game. British artist Tim Knowles attaches pens to the tips of tree branches and sets up an easel just within reach of the waving “paintbrushes.” As the tree branches sway and get blown around, the pens trace out black arcs and dots on the papered easels. There’s a minimalist poetry to the works themselves that’s pretty cool.

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Start of Something Big: Lawrence Weiner on 20×200

  • by Kyle Chayka on April 30, 2010

  • 2 comments

by Kyle Chayka on April 30, 2010

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A fan of large run prints, Kyle senses something big — maybe “revolutionary” — about the Weiner print. He writes, ” … contemporary art can be dangerous; it can quietly change lives … Here’s to hoping ‘Head Over Heels’ is an invasion of contemporary art into the most ordinary of every day life.”

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Articles

Evolving Rules: When Bloggers Battle (Paddy Johnson vs. Marc Schiller)

  • by Kyle Chayka on April 28, 2010

  • 19 comments

by Kyle Chayka on April 28, 2010

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At times, the blogosphere can feel like a miniaturized version of academia. With so many voices competing over authority and pulling readers this way and that, fights are bound to break out. Just like any serious punditry, bloggers have healthy disagreements over what they cover as well as how they cover it — the etiquette of the developing world of online media. The recent spat between online art world figures Marc Schiller and Paddy Johnson is a perfect case study.

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Articles

Art World Ikeas

  • by Kyle Chayka on April 14, 2010

  • 9 comments

by Kyle Chayka on April 14, 2010

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A new generation of websites selling prints by contemporary artists are emerging as the Ikeas of the art world — they sell editions, from large to small runs, of different kinds of work, from traditional prints to paintings and drawings. At high volume and low prices, these sites make the most of their populist position: buying art need not be hard!

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Jeff Koons, the Gay Animal Portraiteur?

  • by Kyle Chayka on March 31, 2010

  • 4 comments

by Kyle Chayka on March 31, 2010

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Your favorite New Museum curatin’, balloon dog makin’, workshop ownin’ superstar contemporary artist, Mr. Jeff Koons, has now expanded his resume to include editorial photography for the New York Times Magazine.

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Footnotes on Ai Weiwei & China’s Great Firewall

  • by Kyle Chayka on March 22, 2010

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by Kyle Chayka on March 22, 2010

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Chances are if you’ve been following art news in the past few weeks, you’ve seen the name Ai Weiwei. Ai’s been all over the place lately, having a public conversation with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, getting interviewed on CNN about the role of social media in Chinese politics, and documenting recent artist protests in Beijing. The artist was even announced as the eleventh commission for the London Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall installation series, a run of exhibitions featuring such luminaries as Doris Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread and Olafur Eliasson.

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