Street artist Curly has a thought about American elections (via flickr.com/staycurly)
This week’s edition of Required Reading comes a little later than usual, but aren’t all good things worth the wait? We’ll be back to our morning publishing schedule next Sunday. Enjoy the linkage.
Something more people should know about is the National Gallery of Art’s Andrew W. Mellon lectures, which are available online here. Among the featured art historians are Michael Fried speaking about Caravaggio in 2002 and TJ Clark on Picasso and truth in 2009
In case you missed it, Phong Bui has an interesting interview with Richard Serra from the summer issue that came out in early July. I’m no big fan of Serra, but I do enjoy a good Q&A that references obscure artists I like, even if it’s only in passing. In this case, it’s Rico Lebrun.
Paddy Johnson considers how the art world sees new media art. Her post has lots of great links.
Studio 360 looks at the culture around the Libyan Revolution, including the hip-hop music. (h/t C-Monster)
Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for … an Abstract Expressionist robot.
The New York Observer‘s Maika Pollack writes about the Blinky Palermo retrospective in upstate New York:
Palermo’s unique brand of Modernism is about how similar forms can have very different cultural meanings. His work simulates the forms and shapes — the very style — of triumphal American Minimalism, but without the swagger. Palermo’s wobbly edges and imprecise lines speak to the impossibility of escaping your origins.
Related to the above link, Andrew Russeth (also at New York Observer) looks at the economic impact of Dia:Beacon. It appears to bring in $12.5 million to the surrounding region.
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek on the meaning of the London riots:
The protesters, though underprivileged and de facto socially excluded, weren’t living on the edge of starvation. People in much worse material straits, let alone conditions of physical and ideological oppression, have been able to organise themselves into political forces with clear agendas. The fact that the rioters have no programme is therefore itself a fact to be interpreted: it tells us a great deal about our ideological-political predicament and about the kind of society we inhabit, a society which celebrates choice but in which the only available alternative to enforced democratic consensus is a blind acting out.
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.
