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Cao Fei, UN-Cosplayers (detail), 2006
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news + headlines
feature
reviews
one to watch
interview
media
credits
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Art and Design Blogs
May 2-15, 2007
As the initial blog mania dies down, many cultural observers are expanding their websites into in-depth, magazine-style forums
with a variety of articles. Following up on our past surveys of art, design, and photography blogs, we explore some of these
megasites, such as the irreverent we make money not art and the witty Design Observer. Covering the range of art blogs, we also highlight collaborative sites VVORK and Artworld Salon and uncover new gems from Puerto Rico, Sweden, and China.
In our interview with photographer Alec Soth, we discuss his opinionated online commentary on his craft and community, and we discover new work in the non-virtual world
with reviews of Andreas Gursky's photographs in London and David Noonan's silkscreen paintings in Paris.
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A dynamic collaboration between Budweiser Select and Flavorpill, Select Flavor harnesses the talents of up-and-coming artists and designers to interpret Select — a premier hand-crafted beer — and its
iconic crown through original artwork. Expect a new kind of creativity. Expect everything.
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Calatrava's Spire Gets Go-ahead
(Architectural Record, April 20)
The Chicago Planning Commission greenlighted the fourth proposed version of Santiago Calatrava's 2,000-foot, 7-sided glass and steel spire. The Spanish architect has compared his twisting design to trees and smoke, but the building has a practical side, too —
its shape will actually help dissipate the Windy City's powerful downdrafts. The spire — which will be the tallest building
in North America — is being built on a 2.2-acre lakefront site and features a light emanating directly from the top of its
structure. In a related story, Calatrava's Bridge of Strings at Jerusalem's entrance is starting to be assembled with the hope of bearing light-rail travelers
by 2009.
Galliano Fined for Klein Plagiarism
(International Herald Tribune, April 19)
A French judge ruled that fashion designer John Galliano must pay William Klein $271,000 for plagiarizing the photographer's work in a recent ad campaign. Judge Claude Vallet found that the ad's imagery — photographic contact sheets
adorned with flashes of brilliantly colored paint — too closely resembled Klein's work. Galliano, who designs for Dior as well as for his own label, did not ask permission to use the images. Klein said that he was "hurt" over the contretemps,
adding, "I am bitter because this glaring plagiarism represents an inexplicable slap in the face to my work."
Largest US Latino Museum Opens
(USA Today, April 19)
Housed in an eye-grabbing pink-and-green building, the Museo Alameda opened its doors on April 13 in San Antonio. Developed by the nonprofit Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture, the Smithsonian-affiliated museum is designed to illustrate and examine Latino heritage. The museum is the largest of its kind in the country,
with 20,000 square feet of exhibition space spread over 11 galleries. San Antonio, the nation's seventh-largest city, has
a population that is 60% Latino, making it a logical home for the new institution. The opening-day ceremony, attended by thousands,
was punctuated by a near record-breaking performance by 557 mariachis. Those crowds are just the beginning — officials said
that they expect Museo Alameda to attract upwards of 400,000 visitors in the next year.
Nouvel's New Concert Hall
(New York Times, April 14)
After years of complaining about the lack of a premier architectural site for orchestral music, Parisians will have a new
$260 million Jean Nouvel-designed hall in which to appreciate each timpani thump and bowed string. They'll have to wait a little longer, however,
as the Philharmonie de Paris is slated to open in the Parc de la Villette in 2012. The Philharmonie's 2,400-seat auditorium will be sheathed in aluminum and topped with a 170-foot-tall sail-like
structure. Nouvel is also making waves with the "waterfall" facade he has designed for a $150 million, 23-story condo complex in New York. Using windows in a variety of sizes and tilted at various angles,
the ultraluxe building will catch light and shimmer like running water. As asking prices for the new residences reach as high
as $22 million, the view might be best afforded from the outside.
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Dan Cameron leaves New Museum for New Orleans post more »
Pompidou reopens permanent collection more »
Japanese market booms at auction more »
Lebanese artist seeks peace through an installation inspired by war more »
Art Miami reschedules to coincide with Miami Basel more »
P.S.1's anti-market show is a bit of a mess more »
Subway art rises from the underground more »
Animal-rights controversy shuts down animal installation in Vancouver more »
Art Cologne returns strong amidst Germany's art-fair throng more »
Wei Dong mixes sex, politics, pop culture, and old masters more »
André Saraiva provides parties for the smart-art set more »
Japanese author explains her country's contemporary art to outsiders more »
Greenhouse technology to house Documenta 12 more »
Scottish collective pulls together to provide affordable studio space more »
New photography and video from Israel on display at the Jewish Museum more »
Olga Garay to head LA's Department for Cultural Affairs more »
The couple that designs together, stays together more »
Real-estate realities mean getting rid of historic graffiti more »
More praise for Holl's Nelson-Atkins Museum more »
Cara McCarty to be new director of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum more »
Munch thieves receive prison sentences more »
Note: Some online publications require registration
to access the articles. If you encounter a
registration screen, try akreader1 as the username
and password.
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[
Art Blogs
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VVORK / Gravestmor / MuseoPropaganda / Art Fag City
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As the art blogosphere continues its rapid expansion, a heterogeneous array of creative and critical perspectives is reaching
audiences worldwide. Whether locally or globally focused, individually or collaboratively authored, mono or multilingual,
the art blogs of the moment are eclipsing traditional forms of commentary, exploiting the boundlessness of cyberspace to diversify
our notions of art and the art world.
Providing the lowdown on local happenings, city- and country-specific art blogs serve as insider guides. The Puerto Rico-based
Rotund World combines scene-setting imagery with humorously detailed reports of goings-on within the country, while Detroitarts surveys the Midwestern metropolis, covering gallery shows, student exhibitions, and everything in-between. London is well-represented
by the Guardian's art and architecture blog, while signandsight.com covers the European scene by translating cultural highlights from foreign newspapers into English. Paddy Johnson holds down
the New York fort with Art Fag City, posting "art news, reviews, and gossip" by the hour.
Globally generated, Artworld Salon began as an email chain between three art enthusiasts based in Zurich, Beijing, and New York and has since developed into
an intercontinental "think tank" that critically appraises the art world. The collaborative impulse also runs through the
ANP Quarterly magazine blog, which splices together posts on art in LA and throughout the US by founders Brendan Fowler, Aaron Rose, and Ed Templeton. Although the authors of MuseoPropaganda and the Vienna-based VVORK remain enigmatic, their blogs espouse the collective spirit via provocative juxtapositions of photographs, video, digital
images, and installation shots by named and anonymous artists.
Taking a more personal stance, Russian-born artist Slava Mogutin's radical blog rails against censorship and other forms of oppression, retaliating with explicit imagery and tips on gallery
shows, often by seminal gay artists. Artist and songwriter Momus couples intimate, catty musings with full-on critiques of artistic trends. Journalists and writers have their say as well;
CultureGrrl features the life and art-related opinions of seasoned cultural critic Lee Rosenbaum, while DC's Grammar.police foregrounds the cerebrally witty anecdotes of writer/editor Kriston Capps.
There's something for everyone in the blogosphere. Specialty blogs such as Swapatorium allow ephemera addicts to congregate virtually, while others like Minus Space, which focuses exclusively on minimal art, or Gravestmor, a Sydney-based architectural digest, hinge on genre. So does Streetsy; its mission is to amass the "largest curated street-art site on the web," and the blog boasts daily uploads of work from
Santiago to Reykjavik.
For those who don't speak the language, pictures can approximate the story. Among the most illustrative non-English art blogs
are those of Beijing-based artist and feminist Cao Fei, Amateur D'Art "Par Lunettes Rouges" out of Paris, and Lars Vilks, whose blog is written from the artistic, allegedly independent country of Ladonia in southern Sweden. (SK)
Check out the complete list of our favorite art, architecture, design, photography, and new media blogs.
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Anne Zahalka: Hall of Mirrors
Melbourne
Centre for Contemporary Photography
Now through May 12
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Melbourne's Centre for Contemporary Photography presents a retrospective of Anne Zahalka's portraits, which are rich in saturated color and historical reference. The Cleaner, an early work, epitomizes the artist's style: performance artist Marianne Redpath, dressed in work rags, sits at a wooden
table covered in a still life of vibrantly colored fruit, with a Northern Renaissance portrait hanging on the wall behind
her. While the scene could be straight out of a 17th-century Dutch painting, headphones wrapped around Redpath's neck return the viewer to the present in a witty and impressive update of the art canon. (AG)
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Andrew Guenther: Standing in water up to the shins, your foot looks at a minnow and says, "look what I have become!"
Miami
David Castillo Gallery
Now through May 5
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Andrew Guenther flaunts a rich, multihued aesthetic in his new large-scale paintings with an unabashed use of bright colors, blinding light,
and supernatural glows. With the eye of a zany anthropologist, Guenther constructs a strange, primeval world where humanoid
creatures struggle to cohabitate. Some of these beings are relegated to isolation; the painting Falling Back juxtaposes a large, totemic face filling half of the foreground against a lonely figure sitting in a background corner. Elsewhere,
the artist blends in elements of humor — tacking tiny, cast-bronze raisins on a canvas to capriciously denote a shriveled
scrotum. (OS)
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Shinique Smith & Mickalene Thomas: Prime Time
New York
Caren Golden Fine Art
Now through May 12
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Prime Time presents 12 works by Brooklyn-based artists Mickalene Thomas and Shinique Smith, who offer disparate perspectives on contemporary consumer culture but both employ brightly colored cloth in their works.
Thomas' staged photographs and rhinestone-decorated paintings depict self-confident black women in '70s-inspired interiors filled with richly patterned pillows and sofas. Referencing
pinup magazines and pop-culture marketing, her works simultaneously celebrate and critique the eroticized African-American
female identity. Smith's abstract sculptural assemblages of discarded consumer goods successfully beautify the leftovers of
the city. Binding together clothing, a wood stool, a sword, and a trophy, Smith's Crone-Huntress suggests a divinity for urban excess. (ES)
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Andreas Gursky
London
White Cube
Now through May 5
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When viewed from a distance, German photographer Andreas Gursky's monumentally scaled images are astonishing compositions of form and color, but upon closer inspection, they reveal miniscule
figures, boats, and smiling faces. For his first show at White Cube Mason's Yard, Gursky presents his recent Pyongyang series focusing on North Korea's annual Arirang Festival, which features 50,000 participants performing synchronized routines honoring late leader Kim Il Sung. These aerial shots of row upon row of colorfully costumed participants reflect the event's spectacular precision. However,
the panoramic F1 Boxenstopp images are the most striking works in exhibition. More than six meters long, these color-coded pictures of racecar mechanics
have been digitally manipulated to convey the frenzy of Grand Prix pits. (LCD)
Andreas Gursky has concurrent exhibitions in London at Monika Sprüth
Philomene Magers through May 12 and in Munich at the Haus der Kunst through May 13. A new show of his photography opens at
New York's Matthew Marks Gallery on May 3.
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David Noonan
Paris
Palais de Tokyo
Now through May 6
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Australian artist David Noonan's Paris debut centers on his large, monotone silkscreens of layered historical photographs of stage performers, masks, flowers, graphic
fragments, and props. In one image, a group of actors stretch out relaxing; their bodies become patterns both accentuated
and obscured by the addition of circular and thatched graphic lines. Another series of smaller collages show children and adults in arts and crafts classes pondering the white page, hanging newspaper from a clothesline, or scribbling on the
floor. Noonan's fragmented layering offers no narrative or explanation, though the works' sepia tones allude to artifice and memory, while their dark grounds
accentuate the obscure and emotional process of recalling the past. (EC)
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[
Design Observer
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Design Observer
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More online magazine than blog, Design Observer publishes intelligent commentary on eclectic design topics, such as Rem Koolhaas' latest architectural fantasy, Allan McCollum's shape-shifting geometry, and Hitler's obsession with triangles. The thoughtful, well-researched articles often generate reams of comments, thereby creating a
rare combination of blog interactivity and intellectual discourse.
Started in 2003, Design Observer embodies the quirky interests of its founders: Michael Bierut designs for the multidisciplinary Pentagram firm; William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand run the design studio Winterhouse; and Rick Poyner is a design scholar and critic. With four additional contributing writers and occasional "guest observers," the site produces
two or three lengthy articles a week. The subject matter is unbounded — recurring topics include architecture, product design,
typography, and design history — but the emphasis is on unique phenomena that exemplify cultural change.
Recent posts include an analysis of the iPod advertisements bombarding Boston's South Station and a review of Vier5's typography for the digital age. Bierut posts about the new documentary Helvetica, which examines design culture through the history of a font, and shares personal revelations about growing up artistic.
Complementing the longer articles are design news headlines, book recommendations, and the hidden gems of the site — curated
slideshows, which display oddities such as Bertrand Russell's illustrated alphabet and photographs of handcrafted prison weapons. (BR)
Design Observer was nominated for a 2007 Webby Award.
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[ Alec Soth ] |
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Jill Greenberg / Alec Soth / Phillip Carpenter / Richard Heins
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| Crossing the boundary between editorial and fine art photography, Alec Soth creates uncanny photographs, ranging from images of honeymooners in Niagara Falls to views of difficult living in Colombia.
One of the leading photographers of our time, his work is continuously commissioned by magazines, repeatedly embraced by book
publishers, and regularly exhibited by galleries and museums. Artkrush editor Paul Laster talks to Soth about his blog and its relationship to — and influence on — his photographic work. |
AK: Why did you start a blog, and how much time do you dedicate to it?
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AS: My first post was last September; I had a new baby and doubted I'd be leaving the house much. I wanted a place for a certain kind of talk. Business chatter on prices, shipping,
invoicing, and so forth consumes much of my time as an artist, so I wanted a place to mull over creative issues.
I once had a chance to visit a private arts club in New York. One of its members, Stephen Shore, had a little table where he was showing other members some of his digital books. It seemed like such a great place to exchange
ideas. I later learned that one of the rules of the club is that you aren't allowed to talk business.
A lot of artists are hungry for that kind of interaction. We read about the Cedar Tavern, and it sounds so romantic. But what if you live in Minneapolis with two kids? The blog is as close as I get to the Cedar
Tavern.
As for time, well, I guess I spend a lot of time at the virtual bar — but it's by my choosing. I never want it to feel like
work, and I do take breaks. When I'm traveling and shooting, the blog goes quiet.
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AK: While your blog mainly discusses photography, you also post on topics like poetry and politics. How would you describe your voice?
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AS: As a photographer, I've tried not to be limited to a single subject. I want to mix portraiture with landscape and still life.
I want to be loose. The same is true for the blog. I don't have an agenda other than to keep following my eye.
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AK: You frequently mention other bloggers and their commentary in your posts. Who do you read, and why?
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we make money not art
Régine Debatty
Initiated by Régine Debatty, a Berlin-based Belgian media consultant, we make money not art covers art, design, and technology. Although it began as a traditional blog, WMMNA has evolved into an online magazine with
comprehensive interviews, articles, and reviews exploring a range of topics — from advertising and architecture to games and
robots. The globetrotting Debatty pens most of the posts, but has a little help from her friends: Danish designer and artist Sascha Pohflepp, who maintains
the blog Plugimi, and Japanese computer scientist Shin'ichii Konomi, the editor of RFID in Japan. Recent WMMNA entries include a review of a book about Japanese toys, an interview with Information Arts author Stephen Wilson, and a look at Erwin Wurm's whimsical retrospective in Hamburg. While browsing the site, be sure to check out the "Trailer of the moment," currently
a preview of Lynn Hershman Leeson's film Strange Culture; the curated list of links, including the curious sexblo.gs; and the flickr site with extended photo galleries from featured events. (PL)
WMMNA received the Webby Award for Best Culture/Personal Blog in 2006 and 2007.
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Cover
Art
Cao Fei
UN-Cosplayers,
2006
C-print
30 x 40 in. / 76 x 102 cm
Courtesy Cao Fei's Blog
All Rights
Reserved
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Editor
Paul Laster
News Editor
Greg Zinman
Reviews Editor
Andrew Maerkle
Production Editor
Bryony Roberts
Contributing Editors
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Allison Kave
Sarah Kessler
Doug Levy
H.G. Masters
Marlyne Sahakian
Peter Stepek
Contributors
Erin Cowgill
Lucy C. Davies
Anthony Gardner
Omar Sommereyns
Elna Svenle
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Production
Anjuli Ayer
Morgan Croney
Teel Lassiter
Lauren McKee
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Andrew Steinmetz
Mailer Design
Jessica Bauer-Greene
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