Posted inArt

Happy Darwin Day! Signs that the Art World is Evolving, or Devolving

Celebrating what would be (if he was not in fact a mortal and evolved human) Charle’s Darwin’s 204th birthday, today’s Darwin Day is an international extravaganza with events around the world. If you’re not lucky enough to be near a party serving primordial soup (a recipe with open interpretation based on the mixing of molecules to form life on earth) or a heated reenactment of the were-people-ever-monkeys Scopes Trial, you can celebrate Darwin Day with us by looking at signs that the art world is evolving into a glorious techno-future or devolving into prehistoric simplicity.

Posted inOpinion

Required Reading

This week on Required Reading … William Powhida has devised a new power axis of art world affirmation … New York Observer explains the thing called the “professional collector” … at Idiom they ask an important question “Can an art experience be authentic even if the status of the work of art remains questionable?” … the NEA leaders gives signs that there will be cutting in the arts … Phong Bui chats with Joe Bradley … some mediations on Black History on Art:21 … and Iceland is digitizing ALL its literature …

Posted inOpinion

Required Reading

This weekend’s Required Reading brings us up to speed on the situation of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, plus catches up on some of the things we missed while breaking the news, from movies demystifying the myth of the artist to video games histories and questions of morality and happiness.

Posted inArt

The Next New Thing? 2010 Greenpoint Open Studios

It was a beautiful day last Saturday and I took the opportunity to wander the post-industrial warehouses of north Brooklyn with the mission to explore the studios taking part in the 2010 Greenpoint Open Studios. During my afternoon of wandering I only managed to visit 30% of the studios but I, nonetheless, saw a great range of work that gave me a feel for the area — painters appear to dominate the artistic life of this corner of Brooklyn.

While I came eager to see new work by new names, I also encountered some established figures, and I even came across a large white work by artist Joe Bradley leaned up against a wall — the work was on its way to the New Jersey Museum of Contemporary Art (NJMoCA) in Asbury Park, New Jersey, which is slated to open this month. During my visit to one sculptor’s studio, Stacy Fisher, I was told that recently the world-renowned playwright Edward Albee — of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” fame — showed up a few weeks earlier to buy one of her Hydrocal, wood, hardware and latex paint sculptures … a sign of things to come for this neighborhood with infamously bad public transportation options?