A detail of one of Anton Kusters’s images of Japanese gangs (via businessinsider.com)
Here is the linkage for this Sunday’s edition of Required Reading.
Brooklyn Rail art editor John Yau gives us some insight into this past summer’s Ai Weiwei photo show.
A photographer explores Japan’s most notorious gangs. My question is “how did he convinced them to give him access?”
Tom Chatfield writes about gaming and the aesthetics of interactive space over at The Creators Project:
It’s become an increasingly common practice in recent years to dismiss the worst and most vacuous kinds of art in other media — in cinema, on television, even in books — as “like video games.” What’s usually meant by this is a mindless kind of frenzy: anaesthetizing, undifferentiated action involving metal, muscles and guns. Some games do look like this from the outside, and the worst ones play like it, too. But this is a brand of criticism that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Boing Boing interviews William Gibson about his new book, Zero History, but they also touch upon the GOP presidential race, industrial design and his Twitterfeed.
Related: Gibson was interviewed in Scientific American about depicting cities in fact and fiction, he also published an essay in the September edition of the magazine about “Life in the Meta City” but that is only available to subscribers.
A fascinating story of the fake Guggenheims.
A helpful infographic that documents what the color of a superheros costume usually tells us about the character. h/t fanboy
There’s been a rash of art thefts in Toronto this year, so this article explores the city’s art theft underground. The article presents the following fact:
That’s not to say art theft isn’t astonishingly lucrative: It’s the fourth-largest global black market, with annual revenues that stretch easily into the billions.
Luna Park gives WNYC some spots in New York you can visit to see vintage graffiti and street art, including works by REVS, COST and Lee Quiñones.
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.
