Rapper/self-awareness wormhole Kanye West gave an interview to Jon Caramanica in yesterday’s New York Times, a dialogue on West’s new album that devolved into the artist detailing his increasingly insane (or polymathic) credentials as a “creative professional.”
Kanye West
Posted inArt
Pop Music’s Love Affair with Contemporary Art
For too long there has been a large divide (whether real or imagined) between visual art and music. After all, what we came to call art most likely formed out of traditional ceremonies with music, dance, shrines, costumes, and ritual objects all working together. Now, that boundary is collapsing again.
Posted inArt
At Last Night’s Tom Sachs Opening: Kanye, Robert Irwin and Space Travel
An animated GIF tells you what you need to know from last night’s Creative Time party.
Posted inArt
The Man Who Made Kanye West Cry
Neal Medlyn has been channeling pop stars in New York galleries and theaters since the early aughts, and has built a repertoire of performances that run heavy on exhibitionism and intellectualism. His most recent show, Wicked Clown Love, which premiered at The Kitchen in February, is based on a trip to the Gathering of the Juggalos, the annual hardcore rap festival organized by the group Insane Clown Posse. Medlyn and I met at a bar in Chelsea, where he told me about how he made Kanye West cry, among other juicy tales.
Posted inOpinion
Gagosian, Basquiat…Get Shout Out From Kanye & Jay-Z
And art continues its march into mainstream pop culture … with the newly released/leaked (who can tell anymore) Kanye West track featuring Jay-Z, “That’s My Bitch,” which includes the following artful references to Basquiat, Picasso, Mona Lisa, and Larry Gagosian.
Posted inArt
YouTube Archive + Anarchy, Part 2
For the second in his series of YouTube Essays, YouTube Archive + Anarchy, blogger and curator Brent Burket selects a mix of art and music, collecting YouTube music videos, amateur documentation of video art pieces and performance art. Check out a Katy Perry introduction and feminist firecracker Karen Finley invading a Sinead O’Connor song, to disastrous and hilarious effect. Click through for the complete VJ set.
Posted inOpinion
Kanye on @#$%*ing Art Criticism
Kanye West’s intermittent tweets about art always make my day, so you can imagine my joy when I saw this tweet pop up in my feed. Click through for further commentary on Mark Rothko.
Posted inNews
Kanye’s George Condo Album Cover (Probably) Banned
In case you haven’t heard from the star’s overactive Twitter account, Kanye’s latest album is called My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and the just-released album cover art pretty much matches the title.
Following Kanye’s GOOD Friday single series which also featured the artist, the album cover is painted by none other than 1980s art world wunderkind George Condo. The image depicts a bear-like Kanye reclining on a bright blue couch, a naked human/bird hybrid with a polka-dotted (snow leopard?) tail perches on his leg and shrieks into the foreground, a classic Condo grin on her face. I would tell you this is a fine example of Fauvist coloring, but somehow it seems unnecessary.
Posted inArt
Kanye West’s Online Aesthetic Invasion
Yeah, so everyone knows Kanye West has invaded the Internet since he got on Twitter, and has been dropping songs every (GOOD) Friday. But the rap star’s presence online has done some funky things to online aesthetics as well. Just like Kanye has the supernatural ability to create a Twitter trending topic at will (see lipstick … ) and memes seem to spring fully formed from his forehead, or iPhone as it may be, he has the single-handed capacity to inspire self-replicating conceptual art moments online.
Internet artists have been taking the raw materials of Kanye’s digital output and using it as the basis for new works. Part collage, part DIY crafting project, the spinoffs are interesting studies in the creative scrapyard of the online world.
Posted inArt
Sometimes I get emotional over fonts …
If “Flickr Is the New Museum” (2008) what happens to the way we interpret art? Understand art? Live with art? We have the right and the capability to put little JPGs together that seem to make sense to us for whatever reason.