art
The Pink Panther Strikes Again In Paris
Colm McAuliffe :: Friday, May 21st, 2010 12:10 pm
The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, is a noted art enthusiast. So you can imagine his disbelief when he found out that a thief had broken his way into the Musée d’Art Moderne and decided to leave with five masterpieces - a Picasso, a Matisse and a Modigliani. But instead of casigating the thief for his actions, the Mayor’s office were praising him for his stealthy beahavior - “Er, the alarm was apparently deactivated. They must have been a sophisticated bunch. The guards saw nothing,” said Christophe Girard, Mr Delanoë’s Deputy Mayor in charge of Culture. He also : “To get into the museum so fast by disassembling a window, choose five specific works and then slip out unnoticed by the guards, that is quite impressive.”
MORE »
art
Dr. Kevorkian The Artist
Nick Nicoludis :: Tuesday, May 4th, 2010 12:40 pm
I think it is safe to say that most anyone that grew up or lived in the ’90s remembers Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a.k.a. Dr. Death. But there’s another, more creative side to the infamous ex-con doctor who was convicted of helping people to kill themselves. He isn’t just a right-to-die activist and proponent of physician-assisted suicide (he claims to have assisted at least 130 “patients” in their suicides), he’s also an eerie and bone chilling artist. And guess what’s more, a gallery in Michigan is selling six signed and numbered prints of his creepy works. Click through to see some of the prints. MORE »
art
Brooklyn Avant Garde Garage Sale
Colm McAuliffe :: Friday, April 30th, 2010 1:15 pm
Buying second-hand goods from a legendary avant-garde artist is, unquestionably, the ideal way to spend a weekend. With this in mind, gender-bending avant-garde hero Genesis P-Orridge is holding his/her very own garage sale at Ridgewood/Bushwick May 1st and 2nd. Once denounced as a ‘wrecked of civilization’ by the British parliament, P-Orridge is selling his/her wares as a unique art project at Famous Accountants. One of the founding members of electronic pioneers Throbbing Gristle, he/she more recently turned his/her own body into an art project, embarking with late wife, Jacqueline Beyer, on Pandrogeny where the two surgically altered their bodies and faces to look more and more alike, adopting the same gestures and mannerisms. Unfortunately, it came to a halt in 2007 when Beyer died of cancer.
News, Shit Going On In The World, art
Even Banksy Isn’t Cool to Anti-Graffiti Group
Nick Nicoludis :: Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 1:00 pm
I think most of us can admit that about 50% of street graffiti looks like shit. It seems that most urban kids spray paint something these days, and tags are all over the place. But there’s a difference between some random name scrawled under a toilet seat and a priceless work from one of the world’s most renowned street artists Banksy. Well, an anti-graffiti group in Melbourne Australia are smacking their respective heads after they realized they painted over a priceless work by the unknown British artist; the piece (seen here) was believed to be the only work by Banksy left in the city. MORE »
News, Shit Going On In The World, art
Sotheby’s To Auction Treasure Trove of 20th-Century Art
Nick Nicoludis :: Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 3:00 pm
The story behind the momentous auction of 140 lost artistic treasures from the 20th-century plays out like a glamorous movie; rife with Nazi’s, untimely deaths, French bureaucracy and exhausting legal battles. The books, drawings, paintings and prints that are to be auctioned belonged to some of the 20th-century’s most revered artists, and have largely gone unseen for 70 years. Helena Newman, a vice-chairman of Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art department, said of the lot dubbed “Tresors du Coffre Vollard”: “It was amazing – extraordinary really. It was like a glimpse back in time because there were works here that have not been seen since 1939.” MORE »
art
Warhol’s Ghost Up for Grabs
Shannon Hassett :: Friday, April 16th, 2010 1:30 pm
Ah yes, the art world. Even in times of great economic strife, there will always be people willing to spend millions of dollars on the coveted canvases of yore. That fact is as beautiful as it is depressing, and leave it to Tom Ford, forward thinking fashion designer turned director, to lay his cards on the table. Sotheby’s will be handling the 1986 self-portrait currently owned by Ford, a black and purple painting of Andy in his fright wig so haunting it caused his dealer Anthony D’Offay to question the artist’s health (he would die unexpectedly the following year). It is one of a five-part series, with three others in museums and a red version owned privately and not expected to go up for sale. The piece is expected to sell for $10-15 million, high praise for a work that caused D’Offay to claim, “Don’t see it as a self-portrait, see it as a disaster painting. This is a ghost.”
art
Art On The Run: Homestead Gallery
Johnny Sanford :: Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 12:10 pm
When one thinks of a traditional art gallery in New York City, what comes to mind is often a sterile place, with bright lights pointed at stationary works of art. Usually there’s an air of importance; a “look at me” quality to the space in which the art is presented. Homestead Gallery aims to change all that. Instead of finding a “home base” that might gain an ounce of pretentiousness, curators Andrea Henry, Nathan Margoni and Leah Tacha have opted for a more unique approach: Finding apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan and turning them into a gallery for one night only. This past Saturday evening was even more unique: they were granted access to three stories of an apartment complex near Brooklyn St. and Pacific Ave. as a homestead for their most ambitious project to date. The result was a huge success, with packed floors and a unique art experience. I got the chance to do a small interview with co-founder Leah Tacha on their fourth exhibition, entitled “Three Rooms”. MORE »
art
Corey Haim’s Artwork
Amy Laviero :: Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 3:30 pm
Although many are familiar with Corey Haim’s acting work, few have been introduced to his art. Haim, who died at his home a few weeks ago, enjoyed painting in his spare time, creating artfully designed abstractions with bright, thickly layered acrylic paint. Seven of his creations hang in museums in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany, and one recently sold in Belgium for $7,400. Haim’s official website recently created a gallery of his artwork, which you can check out here.
Haim passed away from an enlarged heart and fluid filled lungs on March 10th, though the official cause of death will not be determined until the toxicology report is complete. Investigators subpoenaed nearly twenty doctors who may have provided Haim with unnecessary prescription drugs.
art
Death Star Watermelon
Adam Kearney :: Monday, March 22nd, 2010 3:30 pm
It’s officially Spring, so it’s time to get those new picnic tablecloths and brush off the barbecues. And if you’re a complete Star Wars fanatic, you should appreciate the genius behind this galactic-class creation, courtesy of Make, Craft, and Flikr user Silverisdead.
art
Smoking Kills, With Style
Adam Kearney :: Monday, March 22nd, 2010 3:00 pm
Now I think it’s strange when I see some actor in an ’80s movie puffing on a cig like it’s no big deal. You have Ray Stanz in Ghostbusters for instance, lighting ‘em up like they were $1.00 a pack. He was the rolemodel for a whole generation of kids, hell I was pretending to be Ray on the playground in kindergarten, smoking what appear to be Marlboro Reds and nobody batted an eye. Now we are bombarded by public-funded advertisements depicting the horrible deaths all of us smokers will statistically succumb to. The worst of these, I believe, is that poor woman who had her fingers removed from smoking-related circulation problems, and whose images graced the advertisements of nearly every subway station in NYC last year. But for some real artistic advertisements, the ones I would much rather see tax dollars spent on, check out the “50 Most Creative Anti-Smoking Advertisements.”
News, art
Spencer Tunick’s Latest Project Met with Mixed Reactions
Amy Laviero :: Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 12:50 pm
During his latest photo-shoot, art photographer Spencer Tunick enlisted 5,200 volunteers to strip down in front of Sydney’s famed Opera House. The installation is the latest of over 100 Tunick has organized and was commissioned by Austrailia’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which began last Saturday and which is one of the world’s largest and most flamboyant. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is being met with mixed reactions. MORE »
art
MGMT Unveil Album Cover for Congratulations
Amy Laviero :: Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 5:10 pm
Last week we posted the track listing for MGMT’s upcoming album, Congratulations, and today we give you the spectacular album cover which was unveiled earlier today.
The duo commissioned artist Anthony Ausgang, who is known for his “lowbrow” artwork depicting cartoon characters. They gave him a short description of what they were looking for, but left it up to him to create the piece. Some blogs are referring to it as the worst album cover they’ve ever seen, but I kind of love it.
Thoughts?
Boingboing recently conducted an interview with Ausgang where he addresses his thoughts on Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism art, and explains how he met up with MGMT. MORE »
Celebrities, art
Review: Patti Smith and Steven Sebring: “Objects of Life”
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Friday, February 12th, 2010 1:15 pm
Last week, I caught the last day of the eye-popping, intricate Josh Dorman exhibit curated by the writer Paul Auster at the Mary Ryan Gallery. The pieces were so incredibly detailed that as I stood in front of them and examined each one, I still felt like I wasn’t able to see every part of each one. There was so much going on - it was almost visually exhausting, but it was the kind of exhaustion that comes with an accomplishment, like the pleasant ache of climbing a mountain or finishing something else one works hard on. Maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to see anything else after being so engaged by Dorman’s artwork, but when I saw that the most recent exhibit of Patti Smith’s artwork was directly across the street at the Robert Miller Gallery, I knew I had to go. Smith is one of my favorite musicians, and up to that point, I hadn’t really seen any of her visual art, and I was interested in seeing what she had put together.
Books, art
Calvin And Hobbes Creator And Comic (Strip) Genius Bill Watterson’s First Interview In 20 Years
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 2:50 pm
For me and so many others, the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” has always been essential reading. I obsessively collected the anthologies as a kid. I still have most of them today, which is the only reason I haven’t purchased the beautiful collection of every strip, from beginning to end, which was released in recent years. When I lived with my boyfriend last winter, we would joke about the fact that there was a “Calvin and Hobbes” book (sometimes two) in every room of the apartment at all times, which we neither planned nor minded one bit. We’d read them in the kitchen as we waited for things to come out of the oven, on the couch in the living room, or on our stomachs on the bed. They were always freshly funny and often poignant, despite how many times during the course of our lives we had read them.
art
Josh Dorman Turns Maps Into Dream Landscapes
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 5:20 pm
Josh Dorman’s current exhibition at Mary Ryan Gallery in the West Village consists of gorgeous drawings and paintings on old maps and dark (in the figurative and literal sense) graphite drawings of whales and a nautilus. It’s hard not to think of time when you look at them. I was struck by the elaborateness of every piece and was stuck imagining the artist at work for long, long stretches. More than this, though, I loved the juxtaposition of the antiquated maps and the wholly contemporary artwork inflicted upon them. What would the cartographers think?
I highly recommend checking the exhibition out. The works seem muted online; it’s tough to see the textures of the maps and the color of the fresh paint against them. Despite this, they’re still stunning when you visit them at the website above. The work is strange, intriguing, and oddly beautiful - everything that I believe that an exhibition should be.
