Posted inArt

After the Financial Collapse, Help Support a Fascinating New Photo Project

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

While the visual associations with Jacob Riis’s famous series How the Other Half Lives are inevitable, artist Robyn Hasty ambitious new photo essay using the wet-plate collodion process is very very different. Titled “Homeland,” Hasty’s current project aims to document grassroots efforts to rebuild and re-envision life after the collapse of the American economy a few years ago.

Don’t expect this series to be an exploration of poverty as the young artist sees great social potential in these American visionaries that live in cities, farms, and almost anywhere you can imagine.

Posted inNews

Banksy Loses Documentary Oscar to Inside Job [UPDATE]

by Kyle Chayka

As soon as the announcement came that Banksy’s documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop was nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar, a churning online rumor mill debated if he would accept the award in person or remain anonymous. No one had a chance to find out what Banksy would do, though, because last night the artist’s film lost to a documentary about banking and the financial crisis.

Posted inArt

The Quiet of Hermann Nitsch

by Lynn Maliszewski

Hermann Nitsch’s performance at Mike Weiss Gallery on February 15th and 16th was a historical moment, summoning the exuberance of his context while disintegrating the mystery shrouding his practice. After stalking Nitsch’s every movement for close to fourteen hours, the legend was humanized. Yes, this is a natural occurrence, but one may expect someone who has made slaughtering animals and organizing group blood orgies a natural part of his practice to be a little … off.

Posted inArt

My Very Personal Beat Nite in Photos, Part 2

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

… Half the night was already over and we had the daunting task of seeing the other spaces in the midst of all the buzz of Beat Nite with only a few hours left. Art hopping in Bushwick isn’t always easy. With no real density of art spots, you end up darting around the neighborhood by foot or train. Sure there are surprises along the way but all I could wonder as we wandering through seemingly abandoned blocks was “is this what Soho felt like decades ago when it was mostly abandoned buildings and industrial spaces?” On a map Bushwick always looks more compact than it feels like on the ground.

Posted inOpinion

Madrid’s (Holy) Version of the Watts Towers

by Kyle Chayka

In LA, the Watts Towers are a homemade monument by Simon Rodia, pointed cylinders of steel decorated with found objects that stretch over 99 feet tall. In Madrid, Benedictine monk Justo Martinez has constructed his own cathedral of a scale and complexity to rival Baroque architecture. Built over the past five years and rising over 131 feet, the cathedral is an enormous monument to perseverance.

Posted inNews

Ravishing Shakespeare Portrait on View in NYC

by Kyle Chayka

Even though we all think we know what Shakespeare looks like from our middle school Hamlet textbooks, only one portrait was (probably) painted in the writer’s lifetime. In this singular work now on view at New York City’s Morgan Library, Shakespeare is a total 17th century hottie with glowing skin, a stylish goatee and overwhelmingly large collar. Sexy. Unveiled in 2009, the quality and age of the portrait means it is now believed to be the original in a long line of Shakespeare portraits, the ancestors of our textbook copies.

Posted inArt

Digital Nostalgia

by Kyle Chayka

Sometime around February 14, an internet phenomenon erupted as Charles Hoey and Pete Smith announced they had found a lost game cartridge for the original Nintendo video game system (NES). This cartridge was an unlabeled video game version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famed novel The Great Gatsby. Depicted in chunky 8-bit pixels, a boomerang-hatted Nick Carraway dashes through a game world of flappers, bellhops and gangsters. It even came with a vintage advertisement and a game manual that looked straight out of the 80s. The trick? This game wasn’t found; it was made in 2010. Thus we are rushed into an era of digital nostalgia.

Posted inArt

My Very Personal Beat Nite in Photos, Part 1

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

While most people’s Beat Nite started last Friday night, mine began the night before at Norte Maar, where artist Austin Thomas had bitch slapped surprised me with the bombshell that she took the liberty of designing the Hippie Potluck tshirts without me (“I understand, Austin, really, let me just find that voodoo doll I made of you…”) and Norte Maar and Storefront co-founder Jason Andrew decided that he wanted to try and drink me under the table. Thankfully for me, the second helped blunt the pain of the first. Needless to say, things ended up blurry that night. Ok, I think I blacked out, but those are details.