Imagine strolling through clean, bright halls, surrounded by immaculate display cases filled with baubles and trinkets, the steam-polished precious metals and gems coruscating in the glare of spotlights. Hear your feet clacking on the white floors, stopping to look closer at the jewelry on display, but not close enough to stir the ire of the security guard peering over your shoulder. Imagine wanting everything you see, from diamond diadems to neon-tubed necklaces. No, you’re not in Tiffany’s or Cartier, you’re in the Museum of Arts and Design, gazing at their new show, Picasso to Koons: The Artist as Jeweler.
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In the 1960s, Paco Rabanne subverted traditional dressmaking techniques in his fashions, eschewing the needle and thread for pliers and wire and replacing fabric with metallic discs and panels. The so-called “space age” dresses constructed solely of inflexible paillettes revolutionized how women could adorn their bodies. Now, Etsy-extraordinaire Hally McGehean continues the trajectory of this alternative dress style in her work, with some über-conceptual 21st Century touches.
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On average, we probably encounter magazines more frequently than art. To equate them, though, isn’t common practice. Is a New Yorker cartoon just a quirky little illustration, or is it a defining style of both humor and drawing that has become iconic not just of the weekly, but of the history of cartooning? Is a fashion spread in Harper’s Bazaar just luscious eye candy coxing consumers to buy clothes, or is it the collaborative result of aesthetic visionaries in the demanding creative fields of photography, creative direction and fashion? Are magazines glossy periodicals filled with ads, or are they works of art with revolutionary potential?
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Museums are turning more, and with more creativity, to their own permanent collections. Is necessity the mother of invention once again, or is there a real interest among museums to breathe new life into their own holdings? (Or both?) Either way, the public is reaping the benefits. Today viewers have more opportunities to see important works recontextualized by enterprising curators who are themselves reexamining the ways we construct and perceive our art histories.
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The artist t-shirt is a development we’ve known here at Hyperallergic for some time, but we thought it’d be good to let our readers explore it further. The blurry line demarcating art and fashion is obfuscated when artists have a hand in designing clothes. Is it just a cheap ploy to stock the gift shop full of more merchandise? Probably. But bearing an artist’s creation in your personal presentation potentially imbues clothing with a lot of meaning.
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If LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art thought street art was a panacea to all its attendance wooes they may want to think again. Sure, there were often lines around the block for the show but the LA Times‘s Culture Monster blog crunched the numbers and came up with this …
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This week’s Required Reading … Banksy on UK phone-tapping scandal, Hirst-a-palooza at Gagosian Galleries worldwide, affordable Warhols, what do you do with a stolen art work, Sam Maloof, Hans Hoffmann as art teacher, how the “Mona Lisa”‘s became famous and the problem with “minorities.”
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Drawn by an over-900 people attending Facebook events page and a plug on GAYLETTER two months ago, I wandered into the opening of :) by FriendsWithYou at The Hole and left feeling a mixture of what Dr. Hunter S. Thompson described as “fear and loathing.” Now, a few days before the exhibition’s closing, I revisited :) to see if my opinion of the art would change without the unseasonable near 100 degree heat, crowded gallery and drunkenness. It didn’t.
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Andy Warhol’s death left us wondering how the quintessential Pop artist would have reacted, or shaped, a society that fulfilled his prophesy of universal, albeit short-lived, fame. But aside from wondering what the artist would have thought of Rebecca Black, his passing left a hole in New York City Nightlife. Thomas Kiedrowski’s new book “Andy Warhol’s New York City” and a series of new “screen tests” by Conrad Ventur speak to the nostalgia this generation feels for the days of Superstars and silver clouds.
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David Lachapelle has returned to his career. Much like the similarly-named Dave Chapelle, Lachapelle retreated to a farm after his documentary Rize flopped. But evidently nature wasn’t quite thrilling enough for him, and so he’s back in New York, with a retrospective at the Michelman Gallery and a show of new work at Lever House. I attended Lachapelle’s talk on his new exhibition at the Michelman Gallery, a retrospective of early works from the 1980s. Lachapelle spoke thoughtfully, choosing his words slowly and with great care for how each phrase would be perceived (a good choice, given the reaction to his recent New York Times profile). He was gracious, soft-spoken and polite. The gallery’s tiny audience hung on to his every word. I did not. I fell asleep.
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