Virginia Overton, “Untitled (Mirrors for Randall’s Island)” (2012) at Frieze New York. (Instagram pic by the author for Hyperallergic)
This week, occupy design, Seven on Seven, Mr. Brainwash copyright case, brutalism’s savior, literary New York, Damien Hirst in London and more.
“Sometimes, the key to political change isn’t designing a logo or poster. It’s simply having the courage to show up and make your voice heard, no matter what the cause —and no matter what the risk.”
“Now artists, whether they know it or not, are worker bees in an art-industrial hive. Directed by dealers and collectors who dress like stylish accountants, they turn out predictable product for high-profile, high-volume fairs like Frieze.”
“Rudolph buildings are like Mondrian paintings turned into space, and when you walk into them, if you can get beyond the fact that they are not warm and cuddly, they can thrill you and, at their best, ennoble you.”
“The California obscenity statute defines ‘prurience’ as ‘a morbid, degrading, unhealthy interest in sex.’ But this sells all sexual minorities down the river.”
(h/t @Clancco_ArtLaw)
“An Italian court has upheld an order for the seizure of a masterpiece of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s antiquities collection, finding that the bronze statue of a victorious athlete was illegally exported from Italy before the museum purchased it for $4 million in 1976.”
“But to step inside Tate Modern is to let economics make way for palpable, walk-roundable phenomena. Instead of sums with multiple zeros, we encounter physical objects with demonstrable holes. The question about the middle-aged Damien Hirst becomes once again the question that visitors to his now legendary undergraduate exhibition ‘Freeze’ had to ask themselves: the basic, default question, in fact, about art. Someone is urging me that these items are interesting to look at. But do I feel that they are interesting to look at?”
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning EST, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts or photo essays worth a second look.