Sometimes art comes first …
Continue Reading →Salvador Dali
As we detailed two weeks ago, Mitt Romney made it clear in a recent interview with Fortune magazine that funding the arts is not his priority. Obama and his team haven’t exactly responded with a resounding defense or promotion of the arts (Will Brand speculates on why over at the L Magazine), but last night the Obama camp did at least show that it’s got a little bit of art history under its belt.
Continue Reading →
It’s inevitable not to compare the new show at the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute to last year’s blockbuster, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, however unfair that might be. But it doesn’t matter, because Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, a pairing of two disparate designers that gives far too much precedence to the latter, falls flat, regardless of what preceded it.
Continue Reading →
Looking at the proliferating cross-pollination of fine artists and fashion design (Nan Goldin for Jimmy Choo, Terence Koh for Opening Ceremony, Ai Weiwei for W), we decided to take a look back and remember some of the truly successful collaborations within these two fields.
Continue Reading →
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.
Continue Reading →
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?
Continue Reading →
Evacuated from my Lower Manhattan apartment and hiding from Hurricane Irene, I find myself thinking about anonymous street art and what it means to art-viewing practices. Different from traditional art and even graffiti, the anonymous works that are found on construction walls, corners of the street and shop grates pose a difficult yet exciting problem for the street art or historian enthusiast that comes across them.
Continue Reading →
For the third and final installment in his series of YouTube Essays, called YouTube Archive + Anarchy, blogger and curator Brent Burket pretty much goes for broke. If this doesn’t get you pumped about YouTube, or at least disturbed enough to stop using it for a few days, there’s no hope for you. From black metal to necrophilia, surrealism and Alice Cooper, these are the YouTube videos you only find at 2 in the morning after a night of heavy drinking. Also, Jeffrey Deitch gets punched and bitches out his attackers like Woody Allen in a pink suit.
Continue Reading →
Starting Wednesday, Brooklyn blogger and curator Brent Burket will be curating a three-day YouTube retrospective that mines the insanity of the online video juggernaut to find gems and germs that are sometimes painful to watch but always entertaining. His mission was to present an array of short videos that would give us a taste of the art world there and wait till you see what he has discovered.
Paul Virilio has written extensively about how advances in technology have changed our relationship to time and space. YouTube has been supremely guilty of that crime, AND it’s allowed us to hit repeat it when necessary. Um, awesome …
Continue Reading →
