Posted inOpinion

Chinese Artist Bleeds For Democracy [NSFW]

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

Chinese blogger Mélanie Wang has a report — with graphic photos — of an October 10th performance by artist He Yunchang (Ah Chang) where he executed his new work “One Meter Democracy” at Cao Chang Di in Beijing.

Wang describes the performance and its premise: “At the beginning, he presented his proposal … he would cut a wound on the right side of his body all the way from the clavicle down to below his knee; a wound one-meter long and 0.5-1cm deep. The whole process would be executed under the assistance of a medical doctor, yet without anesthesia.”

Posted inSponsored

Announcing the Winners of the “William Kentridge” Film/DVD Contest

by Veken Gueyikian

We received tons of entries but, sadly, there are only six prizes. So, after the contest deadline passed on Friday, we finalized the winners in our “William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible” contest and today we award three people with exclusive tickets to attend the Art21 hosted premiere Monday, October 18 at the Museum of Modern Art while three others will receive a free DVD copy of the flick. For those of you who may not know, the feature-length film tells the story of the world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge.

Posted inOpinion

“Duke Fuck List” vs. Tracey Emin

by Kyle Chayka

When a female Duke student’s “fuck list” went viral, the entire online world was exposed to her in-depth list of male conquests, a powerpoint presentation of sex that was less sexy than academic. Framed as “thesis research,” the document is so detailed that it actually reads more like research than fun at points.

As a symptom of our always-online generation and the culture of omnipresent social media, the list is another example of oversharing, aptly summed up by Urbandictionary.com as “providing more personal information than is absolutely necessary. Typically done when two or more people are conversing and details of one’s sexual life creep into the discussion.” This immediately sounded familiar. A certain Young British Artist came to mind.

Posted inOpinion

Banksy Spray Paints on Cartoon Walls

by Kyle Chayka

Establishment iconoclast Banksy just took his next step into the mainstream. The street artist, known for his pranks that stretch from painted urban walls to film, has directed the opening sequence for The Simpsons television show.

The animation is an interesting vehicle for Banksy given its massive reach, the TV equivalent of a well-placed wall tag; it’ll reach millions of viewers for sure. The question is, what can viewers take away from Banksy’s latest work?

Posted inArt

Locavoracious Minimalism

by Ian Epstein

Locavores. Slowfood. Raw Food. Whole Food. Green food. Sustainable agriculture. Permaculture. Probiotic. Craft Beer. Grass fed. Fair Trade. Grain fed. Shade grown. Free Range. Cageless. Macrobiotic. What does all this look like translated into restaurants?

These are words that hungry Americans everywhere have taken up as a cause. They are the battle cries of a pervasive back-to-the-land preoccupation with food basics, words that give voice to a collective desire to return smaller-scale sanity to food production in the age of monocultures, GMOs, agribusinesses, and food so machined that it tastes as bland as fluorescent lighting.

Posted inNews

Ai Weiwei Spreads a Sunflower Seed Carpet at Tate’s Turbine Hall

by Kyle Chayka

Ai Weiwei, internationally famed artist and chief provocateur of the Chinese art world, opened his London Turbine Hall installation today, the eleventh, and first for an Asian artist, in the Tate’s Unilever series of exhibitions.

The installation forms a gesture both classic for the artist and yet totally unexpected: a carpet of sunflower seeds now covers over 1,000 of the Turbine Hall’s 3,400 square meters of floorspace, in total over 150 tons. Photos from afar show an unmeasurable expanse of gray, a rectangular infinity that calls to mind Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s candy fields: part minimalist, part maximalist. The seed carpet is visually stunning, but beyond its striking appearance, the installation has a deep political, historical and social background.

Posted inArt

Does Park51 Architecturally “Sanitize” Islam?

by Kyle Chayka

When the topic turns to Park51, the “Ground Zero Mosque”/Islamic community center that’s been so omnipresent in the news lately, aesthetics may be the last thing that comes to mind. The building has become an icon for its political significance rather than its great accomplishments or offenses of architecture. Yet aesthetics are actually at the heart of the Park51 issue. Aisha Ghani writes that the building’s faux-contemporary varnish actually serves to downplay the fact that it remains a vehicle of Muslim religion, “sanitizing” Islam. For Park51, how does architecture serve to represent ideology?

Posted inArt

Ghosts of Disaster in New Orleans

by Ian Epstein

New Orleans — The captain’s flight-deck announcement that we were now making our final descent towards New Orleans jolted me from a very uneasy sleep. The three-hour flight was my first prolonged opportunity to get prolonged (i.e. 3-hours rest) after a late night train ride, to a later night Long Island Railroad Road ride, to a crack-of-dawn flight departure from the 24-hour nightmare microcity that is New York’s JFK airport.

Confused and groggy I peered out the window as we began our descent. With eyes as bleary as my thoughts, I decided that I was surveying Gulf waters from some 25,000 feet. What are those dark streaks? I thought. Is that oil? Oh my god, that’s oil. There’s still oil everywhere. Holy shit. Oh no. They ruined the Gulf.

Posted inNews

Art Work Attacked in Colorado Museum

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

Kathleen Folden, 56, of Kalispell, Montana, has been charged with attacking an art work by California-based artist Enrique Chagoya with a crowbar while it was on display in the Loveland Museum Gallery in Loveland, Colorado. The 12-panel lithograph, according to the artist’s statement to FoxNews, depicts “no nudity, or genitals, or explicit sexual contact” and portrays “a dressed woman, a religious icon’s head, a man showing his tongue, and a skull of a Pope in the upper right corner of the controversial page.”

Critics of the work argue that it represents Jesus Christ, who Christians believe is the son of God, as receiving oral sex from another man. FoxNews gives its own interpretation of the work and describes it as having “several images of Jesus, including one in which he appears to be receiving oral sex from a man as the word ‘orgasm’ appears beside Jesus’ head.” The attack took place last Wednesday at 4pm.

Posted inOpinion

New Gap Logo is a Generic Fail

by Kyle Chayka

Gap definitely knows how to make it viral. The question is, was the Internet scandal caused by its new logo actually worth the publicity? When the historically consistent clothing brand switched the logo on its website from the old three-letters-in-a-square to the new monstrosity, the web reaction was immediate and decisive: the logo sucks. Not only does it suck on the level of the 2012 London Olympic Games logo, unlike London, the re-design doesn’t even have the balls to be interesting.

The logo isn’t anything revolutionary. At this point, a switch to Helvetica — or Corporate A Pro Demi Condensed, News Gothic Demi or whatever it is — is about the oldest trick in the book. But what’s more surprising is that the design doesn’t seem to have anything to redeem it at all. It’s a masterpiece of ambiguity.