Some women in front of de Kooning’s women paintings at the MoMA exhibition (photo by the author)
This week’s edition focuses on the de Kooning retrospective at MoMA, some essays on the 9/11 Museum, an endangered mural in Manhattan, the timeline design of Facebook and Instagram as art.
Everyone in New York is talking about the Willem de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. We have yet to chime in on the topic here at Hyperallergic, but until then, enjoy these links to various discussions of the art work:
And two interviews with the curator, John Elderfield, one with Dan Duray at New York Observer, and another with Kyle Chayka at Artinfo.
Hal Foster writes about the “struggle for the American soul” at Ground Zero in the London Review of Books. He discusses the work of Catalan artist Francesc Torres, who was commissioned by the 9/11 Museum to photograph the 80,000 square-foot interior of the Hangar 17 every day in April 2009. The hangar, located at JFK, was where roughly 1,200 pieces of steel and other objects from the World Trade Center site were warehoused.
Martin Filler reviews the 9/11 Memorial in the New York Review of Books:
It is generally held that great architecture requires the participation of a great client, but just how this stunning result emerged from such a fraught and contentious process will take some time for critics and historians to sort out.
If someone forks over $70,000, it looks like a gigantic mural by the Canadian-Mexican painter Arnold Belkin can be saved. The 39 year-old mural in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood (located in the May Mathews/Alexandra Palmer Park). Some believe it may be the only outdoor work that Belkin. It is titled “Against Domestic Colonialism” (1972).
Infographic designer extraordinaire Nick Felton was hired by Facebook a little while back, well, here is a description of his influence on the Facebook timeline (h/t @fmerlino):
If Timeline is successful, it could alter how people absorb data not just on Facebook, but also on the rest of the Internet (making a lot of money in the process). How? Simply by turning everyone into Nicholas Felton.
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.
From 1968 to 1973, the Nihon Documentarist Union did radical documentary work in Japan. They made two films in Okinawa before, during, and after its reversion.
Every corner and crevice of Columbia University’s MFA Thesis show feels lived in, reflecting not just artists’ experience quarantining with their work, but also that of re-entering society.
Curated by Clare Dolan, this solo exhibition in Frenchtown, NJ contains new and unearthed paintings, sculptures, and prints selected from the organization’s 60-year history.
Sprawling across the Joshua Tree region, nine site-specific works consider the ways in which people have relocated to the desert, destroying what came before them, and cultivating new life.
Conversations with Leslie Barlow, Mary Griep, Alexa Horochowski, Joe Sinness, Melvin R. Smith, and Tetsuya Yamada will be accessible online or in person at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Now on view in Pasadena, this exhibition explores how four artists challenged the limitations of gestural abstraction by exploiting the resonance of figural forms.
The artist couple shared creativity and mutual devotion reflecting a period of light and joy that came after considerable darkness in their early lives.