Posted inBooks

9/11 in Miniature

Scott Blake’s rectangular, black two-inch wide and one-inch tall flipbook looks pretty harmless. It’s small enough to fit in a pocket and has two normal, plastic covers bound by staples. The shock comes on the first flip through the book: it presents a moving image of the airplane hitting the second of the Twin Towers on 9/11, followed by the beginnings of the building’s explosion and collapse. This might sound like a project aiming for shock value, provoking audiences by trivializing a serious, historically significant event that has come to define the beginning of a new century. Yet the flipbook itself doesn’t feel sarcastic.

Posted inArt

Art for the Goth in You

Anyone who attended high school in the Western world during the last few decades knows what Goth culture is. The one-room contemporary Flemish show in Andrea Rosen’s Gallery2 space, Flemish Masters, That’s Life, instantly transported me back to high school and my run-ins with the weirdly morose tribe of Siouxsie and the Banshees fans, who loved all things black, medieval and Renaissance — I wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to realize that they weren’t the same thing.

Posted inArt

Dancing to the Beat of the Bushwick Nite

The Bushwick art community celebrated Beat Nite last Friday, and the all-night event was a great way to showcase all the good things going on in this burgeoning region of Brooklyn. Ten art spaces, ranging from more formal gallery spaces to converted living rooms, all stayed open late to welcome the roving bands of art fans interested in seeing a variety of visuals with a healthy mix of music, food and surprisingly mild weather.

Posted inOpinion

Watch Sassy Louise Bourgeois Mess With an Interviewer

YouTube video

Painter, sculptor and all-around legendary artist Louise Bourgeois lived through most of the important moments in the development of modern art before she died at age 98 in 2010. This means that she had a long time to figure out how to interact with prodding members of the press. In this video, watch Bourgeois as she shuts down an interviewer by turning on a band-saw in her studio.

Posted inArt

Weaving the Book of Revelations from the Koran

Meg Hitchcock spent 135 hours gluing letters on the wall, floor and ceiling of the Famous Accountants gallery in Bushwick. She adhered them one-by one and side-by-side. They form a cord that twists around and eventually intertwines, it weaves itself into a thick rope of words, which spells out the entire Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian New Testament, with letters cut out from an English translation of the Koran, the Islamic holy book. However, one also encounters a few insertions like a Hindu chant to Shiva, excerpts from the Koran, and other verbal flares. This rich and evocative pastiche draws attention to what all religions have in common — using words as portals into a mystical and uplifting subjective experience.

Posted inNews

Iowa’s Major Pollock is Saved!

Peggy Guggenheim’s gift to Iowa has been saved (for now), according to the Daily Iowan … On Monday, Rep. Scott Raecker, R-Urbandale, the head of the Iowa House Appropriations Committee, withdrew the controversial proposal, which would have forced the University of Iowa Museum of Art to sell the $140 million painting “Mural,” by Jackson Pollock …

Posted inSponsored

[Sponsor] APAA Presents Public/Private: For and Against the Private Collector Museum

The Association of Professional Art Advisors (APAA) presents Public/Private: For and Against the Private Collector Museum, moderated by Lindsay Pollock with speakers Sam Keller, Raymond Learsy, Allan Schwartzman and Mary Zlot.

Public/Private is hosted by Phillips de Pury & Company, at 450 Park Avenue, New York, 10022. The panel will take place in conjunction with The Armory Show on Friday, March 4, and will run from 9:30 am to 11:30 am.

Posted inOpinion

Required Reading

This week on Required Reading … Thornton Dial is getting ready for a major show in Indianapolis, Spy magazine is posted online by Google, thinking about animated GIFs as art, is the US military creating a fake online “army,” visualizing art thefts, Linda Benglis profiled in the New York Times