Artlog in focus / Currents
Highlighting the latest news, reviews and information culled from the web and selections from Artlog users blogs, artworks, videos and recordings.
An Olympic Protest Pre-Empted, Artist Detained - The group Students for a Free Tibet has been among the most active in organizing small, symbolic protest actions across Beijing during the Olympics, from hanging “Free Tibet” banners from lampposts near the Bird’s Nest stadium to staging “die-ins” on Tiananmen Square. Despite the widespread perception of all-encompassing state surveillance system in China, authorities didn’t seem to be trying to preempt these actions ahead of time. At least, that was until James Powderly came along. The American graffiti and laser artist was planning to debut a new “laser stencil” in Beijing that would have beamed words and images up to three stories high onto large flat surfaces such as billboards and building facades.
artlog / 7 minutes ago / Bookmark / Flag
Body Art Blunders at the Olympics - Today the Guardian is showcasing Olympians marked in indelible ink. Michael Phelps has two tattoos peeking out of his trunks - one of the Olympic rings, the other an M for his home state, Maryland
Nish / about 24 hours ago / Bookmark / Flag
Swoon's Floating City With Junkyard Roots - The project, “Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea,” Swoon’s latest large-scale work, is part floating artwork, part performance, part mobile utopia and seemingly part summer camp for grown-up artsy kids. For the work Swoon, 30, collaborated with musicians from the Minneapolis band Dark Dark Dark; the writer Lisa D’Amour, who contributed a play to be performed at stops along the way; the musician Sxip Shirey; and a host of others.
artlog / 1 day ago / Bookmark / Flag
Edward Colver's art remains punk - If not for Edward Colver's poking in and out of hot, dank punk clubs across the Southland, a whole bigchunk of L.A.'s early hardcore scene of the '70s and early '80s would have hurtled -- visually -- out of memory.
artlog / 2 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Priming for Burning Man, Flames in Hand - The annual Burning Man art festival-rave-love-in takes place the week before Labor Day. About 48,000 people are expected to haul everything they need to survive — tents, water, fake-fur costumes — for this experiment in commerce-free, creatively wild community.
jeffbez / 5 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Stolen art uncovered, is it yours? appeals FBI - Wanted: the owners of up to 137 art works discovered in an apartment in Manhattan, suspected stolen. The FBI is appealing for owners to come forward to claim the paintings and sculptures that were discovered in the Upper East Side in one of the more unusual mysteries to fall to federal investigators. The artworks belonged to an occasional art writer and genealogist William M.V. Kingsland.
Nish / 6 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Art begins to flourish in Kashmir - After nearly two decades of devastating conflict, of violence made more horrific by the achingly lovely natural surroundings, times are better now in Kashmir, the Himalayan region fought over by India and Pakistan. The two countries are engaged in a peace process, and the arts here are slowly coming back to life. Over the last two or three years, Kashmiri painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets and playwrights have again started plowing ground that had lain fallow for so long. Their cautious reemergence comes at a time when civil society as a whole is beginning to reclaim the space formerly monopolized by the Indian army and Pakistani-backed militants, whose confrontations have left more than 60,000 people dead since 1989.
Nish / 6 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Economic Realities Press on Artists’ Outdoor Eden - When the artist Laddie John Dill fenced in a part of the railroad easement behind his studio in the dilapidated beach community of Venice nearly three decades ago, it was less to stake a claim to an otherwise unwanted parcel of real estate than to keep at bay, he said, a growing coterie of drug dealers, prostitutes and vagrants who were encroaching on his work space. He was soon joined by the painter Ed Ruscha, and together they have toiled for 25 years in the open-air studio, which is still ringed with the detritus of homeless people who camp in the dirt alley outside the fence. The City of Los Angeles wants to tear down the fence, pave the space and, yes, put up a parking lot.
Nish / 7 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
David Byrne, Cultural Omnivore, Raises Cycling Rack to an Art Form - The NYC Department of Transportation asked David Byrne to help judge a design competition for the city’s new bike racks, he eagerly agreed — so eagerly, in fact, that he sent in his own designs as well. On Friday nine racks made from his own whimsical designs were installed around the city: a dollar sign for Wall Street; an electric guitar for Williamsburg, Brooklyn; a car — “The Jersey” — for the area near the Lincoln Tunnel
Nish / 10 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Photos of Beijing Opening Ceremony Performances - Photo taken on Aug. 8, 2008 shows the art performance of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, titled "Beautiful Olympics", in the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, in north Beijing, China
Nish / 11 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Valentino's Art Collection - For 45 years, the Italian designer Valentino has dressed some of the world’s most famous women. Over the past decade many of his collections have shown the influence of modern and contemporary art: Warhol’s flowers, Basquiat’s colours, the abstract shapes of De Kooning and Twombly’s neutral tones. “If I was inspired by great artists, it is because I own works by them. I used to draw at night, with my mind full of what I had been contemplating during the day,” says Valentino.
Nish / 13 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Vanity Fair's Masters of Photography: Mark Seliger - In another era, Seliger might have followed the path of one of the photographers he admires, someone such as Walker Evans, who did such memorable work documenting America during the Depression. Then again, maybe Seliger is his own kind of social documentarian, of a moment when the audience’s hunger for images of its stars—rising and fallen—is insatiable.
artlog / 13 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Olympic Stadium With a Design to Remember - Designed by the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the Beijing Olympic Stadium lives up to its aspiration as a global landmark. Its elliptical latticework shell, which has earned it the nickname the Bird’s Nest, has an intoxicating beauty that lingers in the imagination. Its allure is only likely to deepen once the enormous crowds disperse and the Olympic Games fade into memory. The stadium will be used for track and field, and the opening and closing ceremonies.
Nish / 14 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
20 of the World’s Most Awesome Art Cars - Art cars have long been a popular way for enthusiasts to show off their creative ingenuity. “Cartists”, as they’re sometimes called, are usually ordinary people with no artistic training, though some are metalworkers or sculptors.
Nish / 15 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
China Art Scene 'Makes Chelsea Look Provincial' - "I think the new art in China is much more exciting than the new art in New York or London or Germany," Arnold Glimcher of PaceWildenstein said Saturday as he unveiled the 22,000-square-foot gallery in a booming Beijing art enclave known as the 798 District. "The true art in the international world of real significance is coming from China," he said.
Nish / 15 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
A Textbook Example of Ranking Artworks - Ask David Galenson to name the single greatest work of art from the 20th century, and he unhesitatingly answers “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a 1907 painting by Picasso. He can then tell you with certainty Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, as well. Mr. Galenson is an economist at the University of Chicago who initially specialized in colonial America. But during the past 10 years he has turned his attention to artists and creativity, convinced that the type of economic analysis that explains the $4-plus gas at the pump can also explain the greatest artists of the last 100 or so years.
Nish / 16 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Art entrepreneur makes his way into a new realm - the art world - At 33, Brian Donnelly is enjoying a successful art career. Working out of a studio in Brooklyn, he has sold paintings to Pharrell Williams, the rapper and producer; Nigo, the designer-entrepreneur; and Takashi Murakami, the international art star, among others. He has also created a variety of products including toys, apparel and even pillows — and indeed he has his own store, Original Fake, in Tokyo. He has also been widely known in the “street art” world for years; one of his early altered-phone-booth-ad posters recently traded hands on eBay for $22,000. One thing Donnelly had not done until lately, however, is forge a relationship with a dealer or art gallery. This wasn’t because he shunned or had a problem with the traditional gallery system. He says it’s just that “nobody asked.”
Nish / 16 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Oil-rich Gulf sheikhs lure art-lovers with glittering new museums - That wealth and good taste do not always go together is nowhere better illustrated than in the Middle East. There, oil-slicked rulers have built gaudy monuments to their billions. But now the gold-plated palaces, revolving skyscrapers and seven-star underwater hotels have a tasteful challenger. The Museum of Islamic Art, in Doha, the new national symbol of Qatar, is an understated Gulf icon. And it might just be the best new museum or gallery building anywhere
Nish / 16 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Christoph Niemann: The Boys and the Subway - The illustrator Christoph Niemann gives his visual take on the city he calls home. Niemann's work has appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration.
Nish / 18 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Alexander Calder's Jewelry Gets Its Due, Finally - In 1930, Alexander Calder sent his mother a birthday present: a necklace, fashioned from brass wire, string and bits of broken pottery. His note said, "I have been making wire jewelry — and think I'll really do something with it, eventually." And he did. On this, the 110th anniversary of Calder's birth, an exhibition of his jewelry is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Nov. 2. It then travels to the Met.
Nish / 19 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
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