Required Reading
This week, Marina Abramović fesses up, the art economy (kinda) explained, online artists and the viral tendency, violence against women in a magazine editorial, the economic insanity of art fairs, top 10 books that were lost to time, Kenyan street artists strike at corrupt politicians and more.
This week, Marina Abramović fesses up, the art economy (kinda) explained, online artists and the viral tendency, violence against women in a magazine editorial, the economic insanity of art fairs, top 10 books that were lost to time, Kenyan street artists strike at corrupt politicians and more.
A New York Times interview with Marina Abramović reveals a number of interesting and quirky facts about her major MoMA retrospective and life, including:
- she was paid an honorarium of $100,000 for the 2010 show,
- before the show she sent an email to MoMA director Glenn Lowry that read, “It was so nice of you to come to dinner last night. You look in good shape and totally sexy,”
- her mother “edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph [in her art catalogues] where … [Abramović was] naked,
- at age 29, the artist lived at home and had a 10pm curfew, and
- her decision to have an elaborately planned funeral in there locations was inspired by the low key funeral of writer Susan Sontag.
Last week, we posted about a number of art writers who are ringing alarm bells about a possible art market bubble. One of those writers, Charlie Finch, has elaborated on his thoughts using a (kinda) fictional art collector couple, the Horbells. He makes some provocative points:
The Horbells can thus use their collection, at maximum value, as collateral for short-term loans to pay their carrying costs and even finance their lifestyles (much of which is “comped” by dealers and art-fair big shots, anyway), and, here’s the beauty part, due to the low interest rates which screw the rest of us, the Horbells, like the big banks from the Federal Reserve, can get this money, essentially, for free!
How important is “viral” to the online artist? Kyle Chayka discusses the issue over at The Creators Project:
“Artists working online are forced to confront this attention economy and are responding to it in different ways.”
Hollywood big wig Aaron Sorkin is working on a screenplay about Steve Jobs — he’s the same writer/director who tackled Facebook in The Social Network — and designer Khoi Vinh has some thoughts on what is sure to be a highly criticized and contentious the project.
Editorial art gone too far? Mashable reports:
An online magazine editorial, portraying female victims of violence, is receiving a huge backlash on the Internet. Online Bulgarian magazine 12‘s latest beauty editorial called “Victim of Beauty” shows photos of models with a black eye, slit throat, severe burn and torn flesh.
Be warned, the images are VERY disturbing.
The sluggish economy, and economic trouble in Europe, don’t appear to have impacted the art collecting class at this year’s Basel art fair, which is the blue chip of blue chip art fairs:
While there were only three main art fairs in 1970 (of which Basel was one), the number of potential competitors today has exploded to almost 200 worldwide. Dealers and collectors at this year’s fair overwhelmingly say that Art Basel need not worry about the younger pretenders. “This is the most established fair, and it shows. It’s not trying to do anything new — it’s just trying to do something well,” says Timothy Taylor, the owner of the eponymous London gallery (2.0/A9), which sold works by artists including Susan Hiller and Sean Scully.
Another “the art world doesn’t function the way the rest of the world functions” story … banks are still lending against art and still sponsoring art fairs:
The bankers are out in force at Art Basel this year; UBS, the fair’s main sponsor, is due to host a dinner for around 100 clients in the Art Unlimited exhibition. During Frieze New York, Deutsche Bank hosted a dinner at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, gave a speech. The bank is not entertaining as extravagantly in Basel, but Alistair Hicks, the senior curator of its collection, is in town. “Fairs have become a useful way to entertain clients and try to promote what we do,” he says. “[Art Basel] enables us to give something back to clients who are interested in art,” says Irene Zortea, the head of the UBS Art Collection.
Top 10 books that were lost to time, including Homer’s Margites, Shakespeare’s Cardenio and Jane Austen’s Sanditon … all lost and never found. (h/t to our Facebook commenter who pointed this out in response to our digital conversation post last week.)
Kenyan graffiti artists are targeting local politicians with their art and portraying them as corrupt vultures:
“I believe in the power of visual art and so photography was my tool but it can only do so much. But in graffiti there is enough space to play around with images and words and pictures that don’t exist.”
He met up talented graffiti taggers working in Nairobi. At the time they were spraying images of Michael Jackson and Tupac. That has definitely changed.
And finally, can “ethical fashion” every be fashionable? Business of Fashion chimes in:
Fashion is driven by desire. But ethical fashion has been driven by — well, what exactly?
