Posted inOpinion

Purple’s Olivier Zahm Just Really Loves Women, Bro

by Kyle Chayka

Reports hold that Purple Magazine editor Olivier Zahm, widely known for being a skeezy dude who documents his love sex life obsessively online on Purple’s Diary, is just super into the ladies. Says Rachel Chandler, a Purple contributor, “A lot of people think he’s a sexist pig… What they don’t get is that he really loves women. Like, more than any man I’ve ever met.” A New York Times profile has the details.

Posted inOpinion

Art Teachers Rock!

Avatar photo by Hrag Vartanian

I came across this wonderful story in the Hackensack Chronicle and my heart melted. Art teachers are the heart and soul of the visual arts but they often don’t get the recognition they deserve. I was happy to hear that this small group of teachers in Hackensack was recognized by the Art Educators of New Jersey for their service.

I have personally benefited immensely from great art teachers and I’ve been fortunate enough to have quite a few along the way. The one who made the biggest impression on me was Toronto painter Ron Satok, who is famous for having painted a prominent mural at the original Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Incredibly, Satok is blind.

Posted inArt

What To Do At Prospect 1.5’s Comeback Opening

by Kyle Chayka

Prospect.1 New Orleans was the biggest biennial ever staged on US soil, and that’s the least of the accomplishments of Dan Cameron’s 2008 exhibition. The show brought attention to what continues to be an area badly damaged by disaster and in danger of falling out of the public eye. Prospect 1.0 was a symbol of the resurgence of the city and the ability of contemporary art to provoke, possibly the height of the current biennial miracle vogue. The exhibition collected an international crew of artists and brought them to New Orleans to create projects that reacted to a local context. But two years later, what’s on for the show’s next incarnation?

Posted inBooks

Reading New Museum’s “Free” Catalogue

by Kyle Chayka

The New Museum’s “Free” exhibition is based on the freedom of cultural exchange that has followed the advent of the internet and digital technology. Following up on that emphasis on online activity, the exhibition’s catalogue is entirely digital as well, a website-hosted document that’s somewhere between an online PDF and an interactive vertical blog.

If you’re wondering why I’m reviewing a digital catalogue as a book, it’s because this is a book — it’s just online.

Posted inArt

Anselm Kiefer Talks Religion, Politics, Ruins at 92Y

by Kyle Chayka

When Anselm Kiefer took the stage at 92nd Street Y last night, it wasn’t as the artistic-political bad boy the artist became famous as in the 60s and 70s, nor was it the epic mythologist of the 80s and 90s. Now, Kiefer cuts a figure of mischievous respect, a patrician of the contemporary art world whose work, unlike most of his peers, has actually retained its vitality and provocative nature over the years.

Kiefer’s conversation covered everything from the influence of religion on his work to the inspiration of ruins, the artist’s birth in a cave during World War II, and his opinion that all art produced during the Third Reich is “shit.”

Posted inOpinion

Artist Pads We’d Like To Hang Out In

by Kyle Chayka

With the news of Jeff Koons new mansion rising on the Upper East Side comes the tantalizing thought of what it would be like to hang out in some other superstar artists’ homes. Studios are cool and all, but the real fun would come with the art-installation living rooms and the nursery that looks more like a biomorphic amusement park. The possibilities are endless, though we wouldn’t want to be stuck at a Richard Serra tea party.

Posted inArt

Cutting the 2011 Venice Biennale Jargon

by Kyle Chayka

Curated by Bice Curiger, best known as the editor-in-chief and co-founder of the respected art magazine Parkett, the 2011 Venice Biennale will be titled ILLUMInations, in a play on words and typography that now comes standard for big deal exhibitions. The name is a combo of “illuminate” and “nations,” terms that Curiger uses to refer to the “dissemination” of the “current developments in international art.”

In other words, the Biennale will take as its theme the spread of ideas and artistic currents beyond the limitations of national boundaries and identities, taking on culture at the international level rather than on a country-to-country basis. Yet the Biennale is known for its use of national pavilions to stage exhibitions as something akin to national artistic showcases. How do you go post-national with a nationally and politically charged event?

Posted inArt

New Museum’s “Free” Isn’t Just About the Money

by Kyle Chayka

To see the New Museum’s Free exhibition, you’ll have to fork over at least enough dough to make the $12 admission fee. For an exhibition that’s all about the limitless dispersion of culture quickly, easily and cheaply through the internet, the title presents an unmissable irony.

Despite the joke, Free represents a rare chance of looking at the visual and information cultures of the internet in a controlled context rather than in the anarchy of their native habitat. The New Museum is presenting a chance for removal, a step back from the computer screen and onto the wall. Not so much an escape from commodity or currency culture, Free pushes the boundaries of how we look at the flow of cultural artifacts themselves.

Posted inOpinion

Palazzo Koons Rises on the Upper East Side

by Kyle Chayka

It seems as though all those hanging hearts, flower puppies and porn paintings are finally paying off for Jeff Koons, as the superstar artist has begun to plan the renovation of two enormous Upper East Side townhouses into one giant SUPERMANSION! The artist purchased 11 East 67th Street in 2009 for a cool $12 million while its neighboring 13 East 67th Street came in at $20 million. Now, architecture firm Ennead Architects is requesting permits for a $5 million renovation that will make the two buildings one, Curbed reports.