How many urinals by Marcel Duchamp are there? Turns out there are at least 17. Greg Allen of Greg.org points out that fact and takes the piss [sorry, couldn’t resist] out of Washington Post critic Blake Gopnik for his recent review of “Stolen Pieces” (1995-97) at Postmasters’ Reality is Overrated show by Eva and Franco Mattes. It’s amazing that Duchamp’s “original” idea continues to inspire artists and discussion.
Opinion
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What Does SCOTUS Nominee Elena Kagan Have Against Art?
Kagan can appreciate opera but not visual art? Let’s hope that’s not true, because as MJ Andersen blogs, “A discerning eye does more than keep a judge well-rounded. It keeps her responsive to what she beholds, and to all that resists interpretation.”
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Olympia Lambert Makes The Case for “Escape From New York”
The Village Voice interviewed art blogger-turned-curator Olympia Lambert about her big exhibition in Paterson, New Jersey, which opens today.
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Trees Are Artists Too!
You know how everyone’s claiming to be an artist these days? Make-up technicians, hairdressers, gallerists, your kid sister, that crazy aunt who does crocheted landscapes? Yeah? Well now even plants are getting in on the game. British artist Tim Knowles attaches pens to the tips of tree branches and sets up an easel just within reach of the waving “paintbrushes.” As the tree branches sway and get blown around, the pens trace out black arcs and dots on the papered easels. There’s a minimalist poetry to the works themselves that’s pretty cool.
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Lady Gaga & Klaus Biesenbach Spotted Together at MoMA
This story keeps getting better and better … first, PS1 chief curator Klaus Biesenbach told David Byrne that Lady Gaga wasn’t an artist, then Byrne retracted the quote, and now today, tweeter @JackRicofficial spotted Biesenbach giving what appears to be a tour of the Museum of Modern Art to Lady Gaga.
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Another Artist Unofficially “Quoted” By W Magazine
After our post about one image in Mauricio Cattelan’s W Magazine portfolio, which bares an uncanny resemblance to the work of artist Matthieu Lavancy, we discovered that that this may not be the first time the fashion magazine poached ideas from the art world. You be the judge.
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Maurizio Cattelan, W(TF?) Magazine & Artist Matthieu Lavanchy
Imitation may be the highest form of flattery but artist Mauricio Cattelan’s recent photo shoot for W Magazine has an obvious — and unattributed — reference to the work of another artist, Matthieu Lavanchy. We’re curious how that happened.
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Battle for the Seal of Virginia: Sanity 1, Fundamentalism 0
Remember that insane story about the Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli handing out new lapel pins to staff with the state seal covered up with an armored breastplate? Arts writer Tyler Green dreams up a snarky scenario where the Virginia attorney general’s disdain for female nudity reaches the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.
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Why You Should Always Caption Your Photos & Videos Properly
Online we encounter more information than ever, but we also lose a hell of a lot. On May 3, the blog WeLoveViral posted a photos and a video titled “Swimming Pool Illusion.” The YouTube video embedded in the post is titled “Amazing Japanese Fake Pool” and has been viewed (as of today) 6,211,210 times!
The problem is that the pool is question is neither a pool, nor Japanese. In fact, it is an artwork by Argentinean artist Leandro Erlich titled “Swimming Pool” (2008).
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Superheroes & the Modern City
Star Wars Modern has posted an extensive essay on the evolution of American superheroes, particularly Batman and Superman, and their relationship to modernity and urbanism. His post incorporates many figures that loom large in the 20th C. American urban imagination and he focuses mainly on pop culture as a barometer of changing public attitudes. The essay, titled “The Urbanism of Superheroes,” careens across many ideas and suggests there is more that binds these seemingly disparate things than may be evident at first glance.
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Start of Something Big: Lawrence Weiner on 20×200
A fan of large run prints, Kyle senses something big — maybe “revolutionary” — about the Weiner print. He writes, ” … contemporary art can be dangerous; it can quietly change lives … Here’s to hoping ‘Head Over Heels’ is an invasion of contemporary art into the most ordinary of every day life.”
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Germain Greer Reminds Us Landscape Painting is “a concept … it exists only in the mind.”
Who knew the Australian landscape painting world could be a hot bed of scandal. Earlier this month, the Wynne Prize was awarded to Australian painter Sam Leach. Normally bestowed on “the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours … ” this year it was revealed that the painting wasn’t exactly based on an Australian scene but an image the artist found on the Internet. The horror! Veteran feminist and public intellectual Germaine Greer has jumped to Leach’s defense.
