Posted inArt

Who Is The Artist? Thoughts on Anonymous Street Art

Evacuated from my Lower Manhattan apartment and hiding from Hurricane Irene, I find myself thinking about anonymous street art and what it means to art-viewing practices. Different from traditional art and even graffiti, the anonymous works that are found on construction walls, corners of the street and shop grates pose a difficult yet exciting problem for the street art or historian enthusiast that comes across them.

Posted inNews

New Energy Among Art Handlers As They Continue to Fight Sotheby’s Lock Out

Hurricane Irene may be fast approaching, but there was another type of storm in full force yesterday in front of the Sotheby’s auction house on 72nd and York Avenue in Manhattan. Art handlers of the Teamsters Local 814 union, who were locked out of their jobs at Sotheby’s earlier this month,doubled their efforts to make their anger heard. Hundreds of workers and supporters took over the usually staid streets of the Upper East Side in front of the Sotheby’s offices, shouting for union rights.

Posted inArt

An Adventure at Best, An Art Project At Worst

Biking down the boardwalk in the Rockaways, Queens, I glanced behind me at the storm clouds approaching fast. Thunder ripped loudly, and lightning began to flash with increasing regularity. My friend and I had been riding for 15 miles already. We were on our way to Boggsville Boatel and Boat-In Theater, part of art collective Flux Factory’s summer-long extravaganza, Sea Worthy. The show features artists making work “about, around and on the waterways of New York City,” and includes water excursions, processions and boat-building workshops.

Posted inArt

Why So Serious? A Marriage of Theory and Commerce

So, I have to be honest, I don’t know if I am totally sold on the whole group show thing. It makes sense within the scope of the art center, alternative space or museum, but I sometimes question its benefits in the commercial art world. I think the point of the theoretical, thematic or art historical exhibition, should ideally, be just that, an end into itself. What I am suspicious of are the sorts of “group show” exhibitions that serve as a thinly veiled gathering of gallery stable artists.