It seems like every month Pittsburgh gets name-checked on one hot list or another.
Pittsburgh
Posted inArt
Andy Warhol’s Self-Conscious and Perfect Bodies
My Perfect Body makes plain Warhol’s self-conscious relationship to his own body and fascination with others.
Posted inArt
A Three-Story Web Ensnares an Abandoned Building’s Past Lives
PITTSBURGH — Inside 516 Sampsonia Way, a 19th-century row house in the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, there no longer appear to be any 90-degree angles.
Posted inArt
Photographing the Acceleration of Modernity Through a Privileged Lens
PITTSBURGH — The work of Jacques Henri Lartigue melds today’s concepts of the autobiographical with street, fine art, action, and fashion photography.
Posted inArt
Carnegie Museum of Art Makes its Provenance Accessible and Interactive
Label text rarely describes the life of a painting before it arrived at a museum, yet there’s a whole narrative of ownership in a painting’s journey from an artist’s studio to a static place on the wall.
Posted inSponsored
Ten Days of Free Music and Art at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Arts Festival
500,000 visitors. 1,000 artists. 10 days. Unlimited possibilities.
Posted inNews
Conflict Kitchen’s Palestinian Programming Under Siege
Conflict Kitchen, the social practice eatery in Pittsburgh, has come under fire from the Israel advocacy organization B’nai B’rith International over its current programming on Palestine.
Posted inArt
Holding Up Selfies
Pittsburgh-based artist Francis Crisafio’s ongoing project HOLDUP in the HOOD extends the definition of the selfie, bringing in a directorial component similar to the one seen in Oli Rodriguez’s rendition. For more than a decade, Crisafio has been documenting an after-school arts program called FACES / a children’s arts collaborative, which works with inner-city youth from the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Manchester. Here, uncovering the self and the selfie requires understanding implications of race, class, and gender at a very young age.
Posted inArt
Mail Art Bulletin: An Enveloped-sized Pittsburgh House
Tim McCool let us know that when he saw this building in his hometown of Pittsburgh he thought it would be a perfect fit for a standard envelope … and mail art.
Posted inOpinion
Warhol Goes App-y
Word is that the Warhol Museum is releasing a new Warhol app (iPhone only for way) that allows users to transform photos into silkscreens that create their own versions of art that resemble the Pop master. But you don’t have to wait for the official version since there are many unofficial ones already on the market, including Warhol FX and myPhotoBooth (both for iPhone) … and there’s much more Warhol for your smartphone.
Posted inArt
Pittsburgh: The Great Deceiver (Part Two)
The next morning I took the T (aka, the trolley) into the city, and walked across the bridge to The Warhol. I love The Warhol. (Hate the NO PHOTOS policy though.) It never lets me down. Feels a bit like Mecca to me. Even when I know what’s on, I always come across surprises. The first one greeted me in the 1st floor museum intro room. For the first time, I saw the “Album of a Mat Queen” (1962), Warhol’s silkscreen of the writer and painter Rosalyn Drexler from her days as a professional wrestler. (SORRY. NO PHOTOS.) A huge fan of Drexler, I had only read about this image. This is standard operating procedure at The Warhol. Surprises from their deep collection around every corner. (SORRY. NO PHOTOS.)
Posted inArt
Pittsburgh: The Great Deceiver (Part One)
On April 29, 1974, the prog rock masters King Crimson played a famously furious gig at the Stanley Warner theatre in Pittsburgh, later immortalized as part of the band’s towering 4-disc live set, The Great Deceiver. In 1974, the steel industry was wheezing its way out of town, and the city was careening toward a difficult decade filled with a shifting economy and populace. The malleability of the Crimson dinosaur was exactly what the city was going to need to recover. And they have, thanks to the medical and tech industries (And ROBOTS!).
In the 70’s, out of the ashes and soot of the crumble came something extraordinary for the art world. In 1977, Barbara Luderowski founded The Mattress Factory, an installation space that is the highlight and anchor of every visit I make to the city. Yet, too many people I know still think of Pittsburgh as it was in the famous painting by Aaron Henry Gorson pictured here. Let’s work on that. Starting with the fact that a visit to the ‘Burgh is almost always a galvanizing one.
