US politicians are notoriously stingy about arts funding, but it turns out they’ve been dropping tens of thousands of dollars on commissioned portraits for decades! Why are we not surprised?
June 2013
Posted inNews
My Two-Minute Interview With Cooper Union’s President
I was walking around the East Village this morning, as is my wont, and happened upon a familiar face. The kindly visage in question belonged to not-quite-mediagenic Jamshed Bharucha, president of Cooper Union, “the embattled New York college” (Art in America).
Posted inArt
The Cubist Cowboy Rodeo
OKLAHOMA CITY — Both Cubism and the cowboy rodeo rose to prominence in the early 20th century, and their wrangling of energy into one clashing place is a shared kinetic spirit. Yet Wayne White’s massive mechanical puppets may be the first art to really embrace their kindred energy.
Posted inComics
The Artist Formerly Known as Curly
Looks like Kanye has run out of artists to do his album art. Maybe I’ll nab the next one with this name khange.
Posted inArt
The Gentle Tension of Abstraction
LOS ANGELES — Time slows within the work of Spanish painter Juan Usle. Though he fits stylistically within the realm of Abstract Expressionism, he shows us again that not all brush strokes need to jump off the canvas, as if caught in a nervous seizure, that there is something to be said for pace, time, and pausing to hear one’s own rhythm.
Posted inArt
How to Become Queerly Mentored
CHICAGO — While New York may be the American epicenter of all things art, continually battling it out with the fantasyland that is Los Angeles, the opportunity to work with an older, possibly queerer mentor (queerer in the sense that they’re older than you and have been there, done that) doesn’t often just present itself out of nowhere. The Queer Art Mentorship program seeks to remedy what is otherwise a purely mystical, random connection between artist and mentor by serving as the matchmaker, or yenta, if you will.
Posted inArt
What Is James Turrell Doing in a Las Vegas Louis Vuitton Store?
SAN FRANCISCO — On a hot desert afternoon nothing sounds better than the arctic blast of a shopping center. Yes, it is a “dry heat,” but at 110 degrees, the relevance of humidity levels dissipates. So what store should you go to? If it were me, I’d call Louis Vuitton at City Center and make an appointment to see the new James Turrell! Number one: yes, you read that right — there is a permanent installation by Turrell at Louis Vuitton City Center. Number two: yes, you read that right — you will have to make an appointment to see the work.
Posted inArt
Visions of Light at the Guggenheim
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York is one of the most famous contemporary art institutions in the world, and yet part of that fame, lending the place a kind of quasi-notoriety, is the idea that the building itself isn’t actually a great venue for showing art. Or as architecture Paul Goldberger wrote a few years ago in The New Yorker, “the charge that the building upstages the art has become part of its legend.” In my experiences at the Guggenheim, I’ve found that the legend often holds true — the perpetually sloping spirals of the space make for excellent wandering but distracted art viewing. In a new work by Light and Space artist James Turrell, however, the building may have finally found its match.
Posted inArt
Art Books 4 Cheap at Phaidon’s Flash Sale
Like any other merchant dealing in mercurial consumer tastes and dead trees, art book publishers occasionally find their supply outpacing demand, and the usual response involves lurid discounts. Phaidon is in the middle of one such purge.
Posted inFilm
Four Documentaries That Capture the Globalization of Street Art
As an ever-increasing amount of street art documentaries appear online, along with pleas for Kickstarter donations to prospective films, I, a longtime street art enthusiast, find it near impossible and entirely overwhelming to try to watch all of these films. With the recent release of yet another street art documentary, Las Calles Hablan (2013), I took a look at four fascinating films documenting the global street art movement, with the hope of easing the decision-making process for wishy-washy observers like me.
Posted inArt
Cruise Through Urban Decay in New Explorable Photographic Map
New York has a lot of urban ruins for a city so constantly developing, but they can be easy to miss in the sprawl. Now a new map of photographs takes you into some of these hidden places.
