Photograph by the Gerhard Sisters of Apache warrior Geronimo (1904) with a detail showing photographer reflected in his eye (via flickr.com/library_of_congress)
This week, Geronimo’s eye, classic New York art dealer profiles, did arts reporting save the Rose Art Museum, in defense of bare walls, Uffizi’s new iPad app, artist suppression, Frederick Law Olmstead on the US South, Marshall McLuhan speaking to high school students (circa 1960s), an amateur video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and photographs at the Library of Congress that include the photographer’s shadow.
Andrew Russeth at 16 Miles of String digs up classic New York art dealer profiles in New York magazines of yore, including Mary Boone circa 1982 and Larry Gagosian circa 1991.
The Jewish Week asks “Does Arts Reporting Matter?” because it seems to have saved the collection of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
Whitney Carpenter is fending off adulthood and in the process penned an essay titled “In Defense of Bare Walls” for Bygone Bureau:
Hard as it is to believe, my trouble hanging these photos has less to do with the vast difference in cringe-worthiness between my graduation picture and those of my sisters, and more to do with a general lack of aesthetic commitment. Blank walls may seem clinical to most folks, but I maintain that my walls are only as blank as my resolutions. It’s one thing to decide that you’re too old and too classy to maintain the ironic faux-décor of the collegiate youth … But it’s another thing altogether to realize you’re someone who takes themselves seriously enough to hang pictures on the wall, especially professional portraits. In doing that you admit that you’re settled; you’ve ascended to the kind of renting that empowers you to put holes in the walls. And after that, there’s no going back to the carefree days of mixology how-to posters.
Florence’s famed Uffizi Gallery now has an iPad app.
An essay by Antonino D’Ambrosio for The Progressive about Ai Weiwei and “artist suppression“:
I could tell, early on, that Ai possessed an innate sensibility that all great artists share: a spiky wit joined with a probing intellect. Underneath it all is Ai’s conviction that art is not a monologue, but a starting point for a new dialogue, a discussion that leads to a re-imagining of what kind of world we all want to live in. “We want to be masters of our own destiny,” Ai writes. “We need no Gods or Emperors. We do not believe in the existence of any savior. We want to be masters of the world and not instruments used by autocrats to carry out their wild ambitions. We want a modern lifestyle and democracy for the people. Freedom and happiness are our sole objectives in accomplishing modernization.”
The New York Times‘s Opinionator blog resurrects Frederick Law Olmstead’s, the great landscape designer and the genius behind New York’s Central Park, writings about the American South.
A fascinating audio recording of media thinker Marshall McLuhan’s talk with high school students. (h/t JS)
An amateur video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece Fallingwater (1936-39) in Mill Run, Pennsylvania. The tour includes looks at some of the building’s more unusual features like the basement.
The Flickrstream of the Library of Congress is always enjoyable. In addition to the image at the top of this post, the curator of the Flickrstream has one tag that I find particularly fascinating, photographer’s shadow. It is attached to all the photos they’ve uploaded and include the shadow of the individual taking the image, including one of the Wright Brothers during one of their flights. Brilliant!
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links (10 or less) to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.
