Salon.com > Art http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 03:47:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Send her your sexts http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/send_her_your_sexts/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/send_her_your_sexts/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 21:16:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287973 If you've ever sent a nudie pic to your significant other, and you've wondered what the grainy image would look like in the hands of a master portraitist -- a da Vinci, say, or a Caravaggio -- performance artist Karen Finley is about to make your kinky art history nerd dreams come true. From May 23 to May 26, the artist is asking the public to send her their personal sexts, which she will reproduce as a series of paintings in an installation at the New Museum.

The process works like this: for a fee ($200 for a work on paper, $500 for an oil on canvas), the exhibitionistically inclined can arrange brief private sittings with Finley. They'll be given the artist's private phone number and can snap away. Once Finley has received the photos, she'll translate them into a series of paintings to be publicly displayed in the New Museum lobby. After the exhibition closes on May 26, the subjects can take home their work to be stored as a memento of free-spirited youth, or hung in the living room to the chagrin of friends and family.

Finley, a professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, has never shied away from controversy. In 1990, she was one of four artists whose NEA grants were revoked on the grounds that their work was obscene. "Sext Me If You Can" is presented by NE 4 In Residence, which revisits the four grant recipients' work.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/send_her_your_sexts/feed/ 1 Google Earth as art http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 18:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13287895 Hyperallergic

 

OAK PARK, Illinois — You’re driving to a suburb that you don’t know well, and you whip out your iPhone to quickly punch an address into Google Maps. In this case, that address is 704 Highland Avenue, home of Sabina Ott and John Paulett, who run Terrain Exhibitions, a once-a-month-ish, home-turned-cozy gallery experience. Every artist who shows work here must wrap it around the concept of the artist-writer couple’s home.

Jeroen Nelemans, Higher Definition - QR Code

Jeroen Nelemans, Higher Definition – QR Code (all photos by the writer unless otherwise noted)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/higher_definition_brings_google_earth_into_chicago_living_room_partner/feed/ 0 Does painting still matter? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/does_painting_still_matter_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/does_painting_still_matter_partner/#comments Sun, 28 Apr 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13283103 Hyperallergic

 

Three months ago I attended a discussion at Hunter College called “…towards meaning in a plural painting world.” The panel sought to examine today’s multiplicity of painting styles and determine if this is a positive or dilutive development for painting’s meaning as a whole. Last Wednesday, the Pratt Institute took on similar subject with a panel titled Painting Matters Now: a Conversation.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/does_painting_still_matter_partner/feed/ 4 When maps are art http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/when_maps_are_art_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/when_maps_are_art_partner/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:40:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13281820 Hyperallergic
When I was a kid, my father kept a dog-eared street map of the Dallas metroplex in his truck’s glove compartment. As a contractor who spent hours driving each day, this atlas was his North Star — a point of reference for navigating the city’s chaotic, concrete sprawl. Today, the cartographic tradition that his homely map belonged to — spanning millenniums from the early Phoenicians to Amerigo Vespucci and Lewis and Clark — is rapidly changing. I now find my way through New York by following a tiny, triangular point on an iPhone screen. In an age of new technology, information, and globalization, maps are no longer mere objects, and they increasingly represent immaterial worlds. This shifting understanding of time and space is reflected in Contemporary Cartographies, a group show at CUNY’s Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/when_maps_are_art_partner/feed/ 1 New Yorkers’ newest opportunity to step all over you http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/french_street_artist_pastes_tourists_faces_all_over_times_square_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/french_street_artist_pastes_tourists_faces_all_over_times_square_partner/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:39:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13280091 Hyperallergic In an attempt to show the faces of the New Yorkers and tourists who swiftly move through Times Square at an unrelenting 24-hour pace, French street artist JR has set up a photo booth right in its center. Inside Out New York City, which started last night as part of the Times Square Arts public arts program, is a continuation of JR’s Inside Out Project, where the faces of the people who live in a place are made visible on its structure.

JR in Times Square
Pasting new posters
JR in Times SquareJR’s photo booth truck

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/french_street_artist_pastes_tourists_faces_all_over_times_square_partner/feed/ 0 When we all smelled like teen spirit http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/smells_like_teen_spirit_nyc_1993_at_the_new_museum_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/smells_like_teen_spirit_nyc_1993_at_the_new_museum_partner/#comments Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13276464 The WeeklingsRIGHT NOW ON the Bowery you can step into a time machine. It will carry you back to 1993 or thereabouts. It spreads over five floors in a great gleaming building, and to first acclimate you, a line of boxy Samsung televisions broadcast highlights from the year. This was before TVs were flat-screen or LCD or HD, when the initials that stood for high-tech – or any tech – in home entertainment were VHS. Here was a moment before the Internet was big, the World Wide Web did not exist yet (not really), AIDS was still “uncured,” Clinton had just been inaugurated, and it was a watershed moment for art.

This five-story teleportation device is an exhibit at the New Museum called “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star.” Ignore the subtitle. It’s from a Sonic Youth album that doesn’t appear in the show and was, in fact, released in 1994. Though, I’ve read some pretty baroque interpretations of why it fits with such a close textual analysis they veer on New Criticism.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/21/smells_like_teen_spirit_nyc_1993_at_the_new_museum_partner/feed/ 1 Bush on his paintings: Some people are surprised I can even read http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/george_w_bush_on_paintings_i_take_great_delight_in_bursting_stereotypes/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/george_w_bush_on_paintings_i_take_great_delight_in_bursting_stereotypes/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13271015 Prolific artist George W. Bush has opened up about his paintings, which first surfaced earlier this year when hacker Guccifer released emails containing W.'s nude portraits. Since then, the world has been blessed with the former president's paintings of dogs, shells, cats, dogs, landscapes and more dogs.

In an exclusive interview with the Dallas Morning News this weekend, Bush opened up about his new hobby.

“People are surprised,” he said. “Of course, some people are surprised I can even read.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/george_w_bush_on_paintings_i_take_great_delight_in_bursting_stereotypes/feed/ 23 Fed up Louvre staff strikes over roving bands of pickpockets http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/louvre_staff_strikes_against_roving_bands_of_pickpockets_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/louvre_staff_strikes_against_roving_bands_of_pickpockets_partner/#comments Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:48:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13268973 Hyperallergic

Tens of thousands of the visitors who mob the Louvre each day drawn by those sirens the slightly smiling Mona Lisa, the amputated beauty the Venus de Milo, and the windswept Winged Victory of Samothrace had their hopes dashed like ships against the rocks by a staff strike in response to pickpocketing. Adding to France’s storied history of disruptive strikes of questionable impact, the Paris museum was shut down Wednesday with a 200 member staff walkout, the AFP reports. Reportedly, there have been roving bands of pickpockets of up to 30 members strong, swaggering through the stately galleries, infiltrating the crowds that stop to balk at the priceless works of art, twirling mustaches no doubt as they eye the hapless tourists taking photos with iPads or rummaging through their purses jumbled with passports and multiple types of currency. These gangs even sometimes include children (taking advantage of the museum’s free admission for the young, like sly Oliver Twists).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/louvre_staff_strikes_against_roving_bands_of_pickpockets_partner/feed/ 4 Irish coin commemorating James Joyce misquotes “Ulysses” http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/irish_coin_commemorating_james_joyce_misquotes_ulysses/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/irish_coin_commemorating_james_joyce_misquotes_ulysses/#comments Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:56:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13269088 Ireland's central bank has issued a new silver €10 coin to commemorate James Joyce, which features an illustration of the modernist writer and a quote from his celebrated work "Ulysses." Except that the quote, taken from the book's third chapter, has been misquoted on the coin.

From the Guardian:

The quote comes from a scene when one of the two main characters, Stephen Dedalus, is walking along Sandymount Strand in the writer's native Dublin.

Joyce wrote: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read."

However, on the €10 (£8.50) coin the extra word "that" is inserted into the second sentence.

The bank responded on Thursday, admitting that the misquotation is an "error," but calls it "artistic representation" and not "literal representation":

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/irish_coin_commemorating_james_joyce_misquotes_ulysses/feed/ 15 Why do we love to look at strangers’ family photographs? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/why_do_we_love_to_look_at_strangers_family_photographs_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/why_do_we_love_to_look_at_strangers_family_photographs_partner/#comments Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:58:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13268060 ONE OF NEW YORK’s most sophisticated galleries of interactive art used to be on St. Mark’s Place. And I do mean on St. Mark’s, out on the sidewalk. Itinerant street vendors would set up tables piled with the detritus of anonymous lives, cast off books, earrings, scarves, toy trucks, every item compressed under the weight of a small sadness. It almost seemed unkind to look, as if you were staring at a stranger weeping in private grief. But the collection of black-and-white photographs shoved under a table practically sang out its conspiratorial invitation: Complete me.
The Weeklings

I’ll never forget the moment when, after fishing blindly in this box of a thousand dead memories, I pulled out a work of art.  It had not been intended as one; it was just a snapshot.  But it was aesthetically bewitched.  The time it took for a shutter to open and close in, oh, I don’t know—a sheared-off sliver of one second in Depression-struck 1932?—was the exact amount of time it took the eye to remake it. A picture of a picture, this time taken by the beholder.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/11/why_do_we_love_to_look_at_strangers_family_photographs_partner/feed/ 2 Outsider art invades Paris http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/traveling_exhibition_of_overlooked_art_makes_its_stop_in_paris_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/traveling_exhibition_of_overlooked_art_makes_its_stop_in_paris_partner/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:36:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13260137 Hyperallergic

PARIS — For a brief time, a former Catholic seminary on Paris’ classy Boulevard Raspail was overtaken with a psychoanalyst’s jubilee of art from self-taught creators who worked in secret or seclusion, in mental asylums or hospitals, or just from their own particular perspective of the world. The Museum of Everything is a traveling exhibition started by British filmmaker James Brett in 2009 that’s been widely successful in its unique curation of overlooked art, having now collaborated with the Tate Modern and the Missoni fashion house. Its Exhibition #1.1 popped up from October 2012 to March 2013 in the Saint-Germain space of the Chalet Society, a project of Marc-Oliver Wahler, the former director and chief curator of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. I was lucky enough to catch it in its last days, and it was one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had of viewing “outsider” art, as it’s usually classified, from the sheer overwhelming density of the work to the truly talented, and truly bizarre, artists corralled into one alternative arts space.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/traveling_exhibition_of_overlooked_art_makes_its_stop_in_paris_partner/feed/ 0 “Flickering Light” illuminates the history of neon http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/flickering_light_illuminates_the_history_of_neon_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/flickering_light_illuminates_the_history_of_neon_partner/#comments Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13255896 “What, in the end, makes advertisements so superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon sign says — but the fiery pool reflecting it in the asphalt.”  

— Walter Benjamin

BEHIND A PLYWOOD PARTITION in Clifton’s Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles, a neon light has flickered unseen since the Great Depression. Purchased by Clifford Clinton in 1935, the cafeteria is governed by “Clifton’s Golden Rule,” a precept that ensures that everyone who enters can eat, even those unable to pay in full. Clinton transformed what was formerly Boos Brothers’ Cafeteria into a space that reflects time he spent in the Santa Cruz mountains as a child. A cascade of water spills into a handmade stream that winds its way through plastic redwood trees; on the walls, numerous paintings of forest scenes lit by neon emphasize the idea and its artifice.
Los Angeles Review of Books

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/flickering_light_illuminates_the_history_of_neon_partner/feed/ 1 Marcel Duchamp, chess master http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/marcel_duchamp_chess_player_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/marcel_duchamp_chess_player_partner/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:21:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13253734 Hyperallergic BRIGHTON, UK — Swapping out pieces in a game of chess is only a smart move provided you hold the most on the board, or at least the strongest position. But a new show at the Barbican in London suggests chess could be a “metaphor of exchange” between the artists it lines up. According to the theory, Duchamp swaps ideas with acolytes: John Cage, Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. And yet the Frenchman, superb chess player that he was, came out conceptually on top by the time of his death in 1968.

As things stood by then, Duchamp had relatively few pieces on the board. The Barbican exhibition collects most of the best known: his bottle rack, his urinal, his bicycle wheel, and his large glass. They are all here in replica form, a gesture that calls to mind a proliferation of chess pieces, the symmetry of left and right, of white and black on the board. Curator and artist Philippe Parreno has set them out right across a two-floor space in the Barbican’s Brutalist main building. Also in the space, two prepared pianos stand in opposition to each other and offer ghostly recitals by Cage while in the center is a dancefloor, also visible from the galleries on the upper floor, much like a board ready for chess.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/27/marcel_duchamp_chess_player_partner/feed/ 0 Wild horses gallop into Grand Central http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/giddyup_nick_cave_and_his_wild_horses_gallop_into_grand_central_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/giddyup_nick_cave_and_his_wild_horses_gallop_into_grand_central_partner/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:32:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13252362 Before Nick Cave’s “Heard•NY” galloped off into its first performance of its week-long installation in Grand Central Terminal, the soundsuit artist explained that he wanted to “produce a piece that brought us back to a dream state.” The 60 dancers from the Alvin Ailey School definitely gave the 30 fringed horse costumes a strange sort of life, as they changed into the horses and then out again into a frenzied dance of movement. There was a packed crowd around each of the sides of Vanderbilt Hall where the horses are corralled both during the performances that occur twice daily and when they are “inactive” (draped across what look like saddle racks). If the uncontrollable giggling of the man next to me and the mesmerized faces of the children watching the swishing and swaying stallions were any indication, “Heard•NY” seems to be off to a crowd-pleasing success.
Hyperallergic

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/giddyup_nick_cave_and_his_wild_horses_gallop_into_grand_central_partner/feed/ 0 No, George W. Bush’s paintings tell us nothing about Iraq http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/no_george_w_bushs_paintings_tell_us_nothing_about_iraq/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/no_george_w_bushs_paintings_tell_us_nothing_about_iraq/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:01:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13251175 "When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject."
-- Winston Churchill

George W. Bush's art teacher believes in his passion. “His whole heart was in it,” said Bonnie Flood, a Georgia-based artist who reportedly spent one month -- six hours a day -- teaching the former president to paint.

But what exactly was Bush's heart in? The preening assertion by his once and former mentor that he will “[go] down in history as a great painter,” if not a great president, is plain flattery. Talent isn't at issue here. Divine or profane, his is painting on faith: direct, observational subject matter — dogs, cats, fruit, sunsets, and himself in the bathroom — imbued with an otherworldly ambiguity through the botched certainty of its execution.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/no_george_w_bushs_paintings_tell_us_nothing_about_iraq/feed/ 59 World’s first LEGO museum is coming http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/danish_architecture_firm_tapped_to_design_worlds_first_lego_museum_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/danish_architecture_firm_tapped_to_design_worlds_first_lego_museum_partner/#comments Sun, 24 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249371 HyperallergicThe Bjarke Ingels Group (or BIG), the Danish architecture firm helmed by its namesake, is getting even bigger. New plans to create a LEGO museum and rethink the campus of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., signal that the buzzed-about firm is on the cusp of becoming the world’s next big starchitecture outlet.

BIG's Storefront LEGO installation (Image via good.is)

BIG’s Storefront LEGO installation (Image via good.is)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/danish_architecture_firm_tapped_to_design_worlds_first_lego_museum_partner/feed/ 1 Check out Christo’s latest installation http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/want_to_know_what_its_like_to_live_in_a_giant_balloon_check_out_christos_latest_installation_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/want_to_know_what_its_like_to_live_in_a_giant_balloon_check_out_christos_latest_installation_partner/#comments Sun, 24 Mar 2013 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249639 Big Air Package

Construction of Christo’s “Big Air Package” at the Gasometer Oberhausen, Germany. February 2013. (Unless indicated, all photographs by Wolfgang Volz & courtesy of Christo.)

HyperallergicChristo’s latest project, an awe-inspiring installation in an industrial relic in Germany, looks more like a captured dirigible than much of the previous fabric-based work he’s created with his late wife Jeanne-Claude. In fact, a balloon-building company was involved in engineering the “Big Air Package,” a towering installation recently constructed in the Gasometer in Oberhausen, Germany.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/24/want_to_know_what_its_like_to_live_in_a_giant_balloon_check_out_christos_latest_installation_partner/feed/ 1 5 artists who’ve sent their work into outer space http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/five_artists_whove_sent_mission_patches_into_space_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/five_artists_whove_sent_mission_patches_into_space_partner/#comments Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13249614 HyperallergicNow that street artist Shepard Fairey has designed a mission patch that will travel to the International Space Station, will other artists be drawn to this extraterrestrial exhibition opportunity? Fairey created the neon blue and green patch with Fiction, the design firm contracted for the patch for the ARK1 research mission of the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) that will launch into the stars later this year. All space missions have had patches, going back to military traditions, and NASA’s space program in particular is an interesting one to look at. Sometimes the collaborations between an artist and crew resulted in some sweet sci-fi success, and some were just galactic failures.

Apollo 11 Mission Patch (via NASA)

Apollo 11 Mission Patch (via NASA)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/five_artists_whove_sent_mission_patches_into_space_partner/feed/ 0 Hacker releases more paintings by George W. Bush http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/hacker_releases_more_paintings_by_george_w_bush/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/hacker_releases_more_paintings_by_george_w_bush/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13247815 Guccifer, the notorious hacker who shared George W. Bush's magnificent nude portraits with the rest of the world, is at it again, having released six more paintings in Bush's seemingly expanding collection. Since images of the paintings first surfaced, the nation has learned that the former president is also an accomplished dog painter, having painted more than 50 dogs.

But Bush's artistry goes beyond nudity and dogs. He paints cats, landscapes and more. Gawker, who first obtained the six previously unpublished artworks, explains:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/hacker_releases_more_paintings_by_george_w_bush/feed/ 24 Police probe the death of David Hockney’s assistant http://www.salon.com/2013/03/18/police_probe_the_death_of_david_hockneys_assistant/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/18/police_probe_the_death_of_david_hockneys_assistant/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:35:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13244365

Dominic Elliott, the 23-year-old personal assistant of the renowned British painter David Hockney has died, after after turning up at the artist's home in Bridlington gravely ill, reports the London Evening Standard. Elliott was rushed to Scarborough Hospital in North Yorkshire at around 6 a.m. yesterday by a friend, and listed in “serious condition,” after being found unwell at the artist’s house in Bridlington — he was pronounced dead shortly after arrival.

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