The new book Social Medium: Artists Writing, 2000–2015 over-relies on art institutions to vet a very uneven selection of writings by 75 artists.
Greg Allen
Posted inArt
A Digital Reboot of Félix González-Torres’s Memorial to Victims of Gun Violence
Artworld polymath Greg Allen has made an odd, ritualistic, perhaps metaphorical memorial.
Posted inArt
Spring/Break, a Sprawling Alternative Art Fair that Delivers
On Tuesday, at the preview of the Spring/Break Art Show, a writer I know told me she’d been sent there on an assignment to cover the “little” fairs surrounding the Armory Show.
Posted inArt
Star Search: Heaven’s Map for Getting Lost
“Billions and billions of stars.” Carl Sagan’s awestruck if indeterminate census of the universe became a comic catchphrase in the wake of his 1980s PBS series Cosmos. Johnny Carson would intone the line, exaggerating the astrophysicist’s sing-songish repetition of billions and we’d laugh. Not because Sagan’s estimate was so low (estimates currently put the figure at between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion), but in part because the mere idea of billions of suns and consequent solar systems like our own is a patently impossible notion to comprehend. Contemplating god (as a bearded chap on a throne or some vague organizing “force) is water off a duck compared to the mental rearrangements required by the proposition that everyone alive and who has ever lived amounts to nothing more than a mote of cosmic dust. Now that’s hilarious.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, Damien Hirst’s global spot challenge, TJ Clark on Leonardo, Cairo’s art scene, Green & Knight on PST, de Kooning conversation, Queer theory, vandalism as art criticism, imagining a drunk gay Jenny Holzer twitterfeed and an Abby Road spoof.
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week’s Required Reading has links to the garb needed to paint in the arctic, Jasper Johns and orgies, an interview with artist Sharon Hayes, a handwritten transcript by Diego Rivera, artist Cao Fei on the unsung factory workers of the Pearl River Delta and Japanese shut-ins.
Posted inArt
Why Ed Winkleman Did #Rank at the Seven Miami Art Fair
How many of the estimated 46,000 artists, dealers, collectors, and lookyloos that checked in at Art Basel Miami Beach actually made the 35-minute car trip from the stunning South Beach to industrial Wynwood for the Seven Art Fair is still unclear.
Seven was to Basel what Independent New York was to the Armory Show. An art fair (ok fine, temporary exhibition forum), yes, but set up as a museum-like display rather than sales booths, more concerned with theme and content than commodity object. Curatorial considerations made intelligent relationships between artists from different galleries, instead of an “art world greatest hits.” Because of the elimination of sales booths, the pressure was off. Here, dealers seemed to be interested in discussing ideas.
Posted inOpinion
What Did You Think About #Rank?
We’re collecting reactions to last week’s #Rank event at the Seven Art Fair. Did you attend? Lead an event? Stumble upon it? Watch the livestream or follow it via Twitter? Which ever way you noticed it or tuned in, I want you to share your comments or story for a post later this week as we reflect on what it was all about.
SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTARY HERE
Posted inArt
5 Intriguing Projects From Dalton and Powhida’s #Rank in Miami
If you, like so many art-worlders, are heading to the Miami art fairs next week, chances are you may be feeling a little grimy. Why? Not because of the humidity, but maybe because of the exploitative economic interactions and hierarchies on display at US’s biggest art shopping mall. The antidote to all this is #Rank, an event organized by artists William Powhida and Jen Dalton in collaboration with the Edward Winkleman Gallery, which will be park at the Seven art fair. #Rank will critique the blatant displays of wealth and status and the stratification of the art world through panels, artist projects and lectures. The details of #Rank were until recently unclear aside from a call for proposals, but now Powhida and Dalton have started announcing their artist projects, and they sound great. Here’s a preview of 5 projects that I find particularly interesting.
Posted inOpinion
Warhol’s Cock (Drawing) on the Moon?
Did a tiny ceramic chip covered with original drawing by artists Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, John Chamberlain, and Forrest Myers travel to the moon with the Apollo 12 lunar module in November 1969. PBS’ History Detectives investigates …
Posted inArt
MoMA’s Abramović Ends With a Bang
The last day of the Marina Abramović’s “The Artist Is Present” at MoMA was marked by a frenzy of activity both IRL and online. The veteran performance artist has proven that her art form has come of age and it can hypnotize a whole city — and art world — into believing or “unbelieving” that she’s the biggest game in town.
