This week, China announces that this week, “it’s time to sell out.” Because no one has “sold out” by going on a reality show, right? Anyways, the challenge is to create art to sell in the street and also display in the gallery. Art and commerce! The challenge rules are a little different: everyone works in teams of two, and they have five hours to combine shopping and studio time.
Weekly Art Rx
After a whirlwind of parties, events and an overwhelming amount of art at Art Basel Miami, we have just what you need to settle back into the New York swing of things. This week’s Art Rx is a mixed bag of shows and events around the city that include some of the last performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at BAM, a discussion about the legality of appropriation art and documentary photographs of old Manhattan by a group of young radicals.
Artist Makes Enviro Art That Helps Urbanites Eat Better
The ingeniousness of the Windowfarms Project is that from the beginning Britta Riley didn’t keep it to herself. It’s easy to imagine a parallel story in another universe: the mad scientist toiling away, alone in a laboratory, striving to build the invention that will change the world.
The Latest in Italian Renaissance Art News and Gossip
What would the Renaissance be without its mysteries and tantalizing gossip? In the spirit of Georgio Vasari’s original Renaissance tabloid, The Lives of the Artist, we’ve compiled a list of the latest controversies, headlines and other voci (rumors), as the Italians say, in Renaissance art.
A Tale of a Miami Art Fair Virgin
So the whole point of Miami Art Basel is the parties. Wait, no it’s not, it’s the ton-o-fairs available to man or beast. Before I even arrived I was totally confused.
Valentino’s Virtual Museum Puts Fashion at Your Fingertips
It’s a testament to the time in which we live to be able to walk through the brilliant halls of a white-walled, glass ceilinged exhibition hall, quietly perusing couture from one of the masters of modern fashion, Valentino Garavani, all in front of a computer screen.
District 9 Movie Prop As African Fetish Object
MIAMI — With all the visual overload and glimpses between suited shoulders it’s hard to find something that resonates amongst the Lego blocks of art fair booths at the main fair of Art Basel Miami Beach. With over 260 galleries and over 2,000 artists of which I probably saw half and absorbed a twentieth, it feels like an accomplishment to come away with an artwork that truly resonates days after.
EXCLUSIVE: Video of a Secret Meeting of Jerry Saltz & Charles Saatchi in a Sauna
Our crackpot team of researchers has uncovered this video of a secret meeting between Jerry “I hate relational aesthetics today” Saltz and Charles “people are vulgar now that I’m not king” Saatchi in a Finnish sauna.
Will Next Year’s ArtPrize Be Different?
Today, ArtPrize, which bills itself as the most “radically open, international art competition and social experiment,” announced it will be rejiggering its financial offerings to competitors with a more robust juried prize and less (but still) spectacular populist award.
Politics and Art Meet on World AIDS Day
In the New York zeitgeist, you can’t have art without politics — especially not lately. As we enter the holiday season, strikes and marches continue throughout the city. Local and global politics are stoking creativity’s flames, and art has been a necessary backbone to supporting the Occupy movement. Last week’s lineup of art shows around the city made this marriage very clear, with the closing of MIXploratorium and the opening of War Is Trauma at Booklyn.
Pharma-Cultural Landscapes
During a brief two-week run, Storefront for Art and Architecture was transformed into a laboratory by the creative team of Harrison Atelier (HAt) in their latest iteration of dance-installation titled Pharmacophore: Architectural Placebo. Conceived, dramaturged, directed and designed by the husband and wife team of Seth Harrison and Ariane Lourie Harrison the project explores “the cultural and philosophical economy that surrounds medicine, technology, and the human prospect.” Quite a heady agenda.
A View from the Easel
CHICAGO — In the last two years I have interviewed more than thirty artists, writers and other creative people for my own blog, Praeterita. The creative process was a part of every discussion, so I thought I would invite these interviewees to submit a photo and a short description of their workspace to an ongoing series called A View from the Easel.