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.
India's Groundbreaking Contemporary Art Museum - Spread over two floors and 7,500 square feet in an office tower, the Devi Art Foundation, as it is called, is due to open on Saturday, with an inaugural show of photography and video called “Still Moving Image.” It features the work of 25 artists, a fraction of the roughly 2,000 contemporary pieces that make up Mr. Anupam Poddar’s collection, along with an estimated 5,000 folk and tribal pieces, which are his mother’s passion
Nish / 2 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Seductive Maidens, Lush Flowers Recall Art Nouveau's Bling Look - Art Nouveau jewelry, with its seductive and dramatic images of long-haired nude nymphs, winged serpents and lush orchids, is on rare display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. ``Imperishable Beauty'' celebrates this radical, wearable art movement from 100 years ago with 126 necklaces, brooches, hair combs and other items on loan from an
Nish / 3 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Public Art, Eyesore to Eye Candy - ART adores a vacuum. That’s why styles, genres and mediums left for dead by one generation are often revived by subsequent ones. In the 1960s and ’70s public sculpture was contemporary art’s foremost fatality — deader than painting actually. But over the past 15 years public sculpture — that is, static, often figurative objects of varying sizes in outdoor public spaces — has become one of contemporary art’s more exciting areas of endeavor and certainly its most dramatically improved one.
Nish / 4 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Denver’s Unconventional Art, Ready for the Convention - Denver is hoping to declare its emerging artistic identity to the world next week when the gaze of the global news media and political power turns on the city. Audio tours of public artworks like “The Yearling,” gallery show invitations packed into delegates’ welcome bags, and convention business meetings at the Denver Art Museum are cornerstones of the effort. With that declaration comes a kind of unveiling of the city itself and its still young culture of antic playfulness, abundant sunshine and active outdoor life. The art that has matured in such a place might well have a message and lots to say, city artists say, but there’s no sense getting all sturm und drang about it.
Nish / 6 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Hercules Hits the Metropolitan - Pure fortuity has brought two artists named Cornelis into the same gallery of the Metropolitan Museum. They are Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem (Haarlem, 1562-1638) and Cornelis van Poelenburch (Utrecht, 1594-1667). "Hercules and Achelous" (1590), by the former, and "A Rocky Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs near Ruins" (1630-35), by the latter, are now up at the Met on short-term loan. Both artists embodied a decidedly Italianate strain in Dutch culture during its so-called Golden Age (the 17th century)
Nish / 7 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Architecture School documentary on Sundance Channel - The documentary follows a group of fourth- and fifth-year architecture students as they design and build an affordable three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,200-square-foot house in New Orleans that will eventually be put up for sale. In an often blistering critique session, the students field tough questions from professors about their designs. The students themselves ultimately vote on which plan to pursue.
artlog / 8 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
Richard Serra Film Opens at Film Forum thru Sept 2 - Listening to Richard Serra talk about sculpture is like listening to Russell Crowe talk about acting: after a while you feel you’re either in the presence of genius or the victim of an elaborate con. Fortunately for both, their work speaks for itself. “Richard Serra: Thinking on Your Feet” follows the construction and 2005 installation of “The Matter of Time,” the sculptor’s gigantic, eight-piece commission for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain. (No rush: it’s guaranteed to be there for at least another 22 years.) As static and unadorned as the sculptures themselves, the movie gazes with rapt attention as Mr. Serra expounds on his love of steel mills (“Like bakeries that have gone into alchemy”) and as he maps the complex layout of each piece with tape measure and paper templates. Perhaps he distrusts 3-D computer software? (NY TIMES: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/movies/20serr.html)
artlog / 8 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
A Bear Market for Art Giving? - With markets in turmoil and banks taking huge losses, the art world is wondering if crucial sponsorships will vanish. As repo men and vulture investors circle, a question has been rippling: Will banks jettison their investments in the art world—their sponsorship of major events, institutions large and small? At stake are tens of millions of dollars in funding.
artlog / 8 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
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 / 8 days 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 / 9 days 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 / 10 days 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 / 10 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 / 14 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 / 15 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 / 15 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 / 16 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 / 19 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 / 20 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 / 21 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 / 22 days ago / Bookmark / Flag
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