Arts news

• Is The Rise Of Post-Apocalyptic Art Telling Us Anything?

  19-12-2016 23:58 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Rather than focus on the gory details of how the world might end, post-apocalyptic art casts its gaze upon the reality of the world that follows catastrophe and persists without human beings, as nature gradually reasserts itself over the architectural remnants of society. The emerging genre is not without its critics, and many practitioners remain uncertain or divided about what affect — if any — such post-apocalyptic imagery might have on its audiences. But
  
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• Consensus: The Biggest Issues Facing Arts In The UK In 2017

  19-12-2016 23:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Brexit, for sure, as England determines how to exit the European Union. Diversity also came up as a major issue.
  
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• Underground art: the public works that are part of New York’s $100bn infrastructure plan

  19-12-2016 22:56
  
  Two weeks ahead of the opening of the Second Avenue subway in New York on 1 January, governor Andrew Cuomo outlined the role of public art in the states $100bn infrastructure plan.Speaking at the Museum of Modern Art, where he was introduced by the museums director Glenn Lowry, Cuomo linked the building boom to major building booms of the past. What made New York [into] New York was the Eerie Canal, he said, calling it one of the greatest engineering marvels ever. The canal allowed New York to
  
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• Will Progressive Foundations Come Under Attack In The Populist Trump Era?

  19-12-2016 22:24 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The question is not whether anyone has the power to truly intimidate them­—because nobody does. The question is whether foundations will allow themselves to be intimidated."
  
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• A Play That Bends Time. And Space. And Meaning

  19-12-2016 22:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The Encounter” is a one-man show—sort of—and it’s many things at once: a journey to the Amazon, a parable of time travel, a plea to secure the planet, and a head trip.
  
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• Victory for Dedalus: New York court decides former board member was not fired because she was a woman

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  The Dedalus Foundation, established by the artist Robert Motherwell, won a legal victory against its former employee and board member Joan Banach on 13 December, when the New York state court dismissed her claim that she was wrongfully fired because she was a woman. Earlier, the court had dismissed her claims that she was entitled to lifetime employment under Motherwells will and that Dedalus had dismissed her because she challenged the foundations authentication procedures and its chief execut
  
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• The very first Monuments Man

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  1793, the French Revolutions year of terror, saw, paradoxically, the creation of a museum. At that point the revolution took a radical turn, and rage against the ancien rgime flared up in the destruction of everything associated with feudal rule. The basilica of Saint-Denis, the resting place of the French kings, incurred severe damage: monuments were smashed to pieces and the treasury emptied. But a contemporary print shows a man resisting the vandalsheroically but apparently in vain. He stands
  
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• Season’s Greetings from Martin Creed (AKA work No. 2773)

  19-12-2016 22:00
  Hauser & Wirth has sent out their Seasons Greetings email with a special treat: a work of art by the British artist Martin Creed, titled Work No. 2773 'It's You' (2016). The video can also be seen in the window of their gallery on Saville Row, London.For more on this story, see Festive greetings 2016: from Its You to Fuck You
  
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• Patti Smith and Vanessa Bell in joint photography show at Dulwich Picture Gallery

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  A joint display of photographs by the maverick Bloomsbury artist Vanessa Bell and the veteran US punk musician Patti Smith is due to go on show next year at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south London. The presentation, Legacy: Photographs by Vanessa Bell and Patti Smith (8 February-4 June), includes a series of images taken by Smith at Charleston, Bells farmhouse on the Sussex Downs in southern England.
  Bell and Smith are both free spirits that challenged the times they lived in, and epitomised th
  
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• Must-see shows in February 2017

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  Merce Cunningham: Common Time
  Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 8 February-10 September
  Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 11 February-30 AprilTwo Midwestern institutions are co-presenting a broad look at the legacy of the choreographer Merce Cunningham. The Walker Art Centerwhich is leading the show and holds the Merce Cunningham Dance Company collection of more than 4,500 objects related to the companys 50-year historywill present stage decor designed by artists such as Frank Stella and Jasper
  
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• Lubaina Himid: hidden figures

  19-12-2016 22:00
  Painter, installation artist, curator, professor of contemporary art, Lubaina Himid is one of the pioneers of the Black Arts movement in Britain. Born in Zanzibar in 1954, she first came to prominence in the early 1980s, organising exhibitions of work by her peers, whom she felt were under-represented in the contemporary art scene. She also made her own distinctive paintings, prints and large-scale cutout figures arranged in intricate installations.
  Although she has spent the past three decades
  
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• Flurry of Fluxus snowflakes

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  As New York prepares to brave the grey winter, the Pavel Zoubok Gallery presents an exhibition of colourful snowflake collages by the late feminist and mail artist May Wilson (until 14 January 2017). The show includes 16 vibrant paper collages created between the 1950s and 1960s that form kaleidoscopic patterns where images from gay physique journals, girlie magazines and abstract patterns and landscapes peek through the background. All made to be mailed to a network of Fluxus artists participa
  
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• Festive greetings 2016: from It’s You to Fuck You

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  Being resolutely analogue by nature, I am instinctively averse to digital Christmas cards. Yes, I know e-cards are more environmentally friendly, but you cant prop them on your mantelpiece (unless you print them out, which rather defeats the purpose). However, this year, honourable exemption from my e-aversion must be granted to Hauser & Wirth, whose digital festive missive has so far brought me infinitely more cheer than anything arriving through the letterbox.This is because H&Ws seas
  
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• Crowning achievements: how artists imagined Henrietta Maria of France

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  Erin Griffeys On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the Stuart Court makes an important contribution to the wider study of Early Modern visual and material culture, the concept of magnificence, and the place of queens consort within these debates. As the author says, a monarch was always on display, quite literally omnipresent throughout the court. While recognising that a monarchs power and magnificence were communicated through court ceremonial, as well as withi
  
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• Court decides former Dedalus Foundation board member was not fired for being a woman

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  The Dedalus Foundation, established by the artist Robert Motherwell, won a legal victory against its former employee and board member Joan Banach on 13 December, when the New York state court dismissed her claim that she was wrongfully fired because she was a woman. Earlier, the court had dismissed her claims that she was entitled to lifetime employment under Motherwells will and that Dedalus had dismissed her because she challenged the foundations authentication procedures and its chief execut
  
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• Court decides former Dedalus Foundation board member was not fired because she was a woman

  19-12-2016 22:00
  
  The Dedalus Foundation, established by the artist Robert Motherwell, won a legal victory against its former employee and board member Joan Banach on 13 December, when the New York state court dismissed her claim that she was wrongfully fired because she was a woman. Earlier, the court had dismissed her claims that she was entitled to lifetime employment under Motherwells will and that Dedalus had dismissed her because she challenged the foundations authentication procedures and its chief execut
  
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• ArtTable to Honor Lowery Stokes Sims and Lauren Cornell With Distinguished Service and New Leadership Awards

  19-12-2016 21:52 via artnews.com
  ArtTable, an organization focused on the advancement of women’s leadership in the visual arts, announced today that it will honor Lowery Stokes Sims at its 24th annual benefit and award ceremony in April 2017. Sims—whose work as a curator at the Museum of … Read More
  
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• The Year in, and Beyond, the Galleries of New York: A Relatively Concise Chronicle of Highlights and a Top 10 List

  19-12-2016 21:49 via artnews.com
  NOT SO LONG AGO, it seemed that new galleries would keep sprouting up forever in New York, and that existing ones would keep on expanding. Over the past 12 months, though, some have closed. Growth has slowed, sales are down, and … Read More
  
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• Play It Again Rag: Icelandic Artist Ragnar Kjartansson Thrives on Repetition and Playful Melancholy

  19-12-2016 21:45 via artnews.com
  At Luhring Augustine in Chelsea and Buschwick through December 22, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. through January 8 Read More
  
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• Why Is Brutalist Architecture Suddenly Popular?

  19-12-2016 21:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The postmillennial comeback of Brutalism is not surprising, given today’s worldwide vogue for strenuously exhibitionistic architecture enabled by computer design, which has resulted in grotesque behemoths far stranger than anything achievable through the relatively low-tech means of concrete construction. Some older observers will see this fascination with grandiosity and ugliness as the return of the repressed, a reminder of why Brutalism fell into disfavor and disrepute in the first pla
  
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• Hollywood's Record Box Office Year Masks Formidable Problems

  19-12-2016 21:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  "Higher costs of making and marketing big movies, as well as plummeting home video revenue, have dragged down studio profits. Once-bankable home entertainment sales — including DVDs and video on demand — have dropped more than 30% since 2010, according to Digital Entertainment Group."
  
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• L’Opéra de Montréal Works With Homeless To Make Art

  19-12-2016 20:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  “The goal of this is not to sell tickets,” OM spokesman Pierre Vachon says. Engaging with a marginalized population can only help the company clarify its purpose within the larger community, he says, while ideally reducing prejudice about the homeless. “What is the meaning of art in our time, how important is it? That’s the discussion we’re having now.”
  
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• Guan Xiao at K11 Art Foundation, Shanghai

  19-12-2016 20:03 via artnews.com
  Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday Read More
  
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• J. Paul Getty Trust Adds Ronald Lauder to Board of Trustees

  19-12-2016 20:02 via artnews.com
  Ronald Lauder, the art collector and cosmetics heir who founded the Neue Galerie in New York, has been named to the board of trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, the organization announced in a press release. “We are thrilled … Read More
  
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• A Neuroscientist Explains How Our Brains Grapple With Abstract Art

  19-12-2016 20:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  "The mind-bending point that Eric Kandel makes is that abstract art, which strips away the narrative, the real-life, expected visuals, requires active problem-solving. We instinctively search for patterns, recognizable shapes, formal figures within the abstraction. We want to impose a rational explanation onto the work, and abstract and minimalist art resists this. It makes our brains work in a different, harder, way at a subconscious level. Though we don’t articulate it as such, perhaps t
  
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• Rambo Takes A Pass On Running The NEA

  19-12-2016 19:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  The actor said he's "incredibly flattered to have been suggested to be involved with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)," but he'd be better suited for a role helping veterans. "I believe I could be more effective by bringing national attention to returning military personnel in an effort to find gainful employment, suitable housing and financial assistance these heroes respectfully deserve."
  
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• Russian ambassador dies after being shot at art centre in Turkey

  19-12-2016 19:22
  
  The Russian ambassador to Turkey has died after being shot at a contemporary art centre in the capital of Ankara today, 19 December. Andrei Karlov was shot in the back as he was giving a speech at the opening of a photography exhibition sponsored by the embassy.
  The attack is thought to be a protest against Russias military intervention in Syria. A video of the incident shows a man in a suit and tie wielding a gun, shouting: Dont forget about Aleppo, don't forget about Syria. The gunman can als
  
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• Fast-Selling, Best-Selling, And Literary Success (Explained)

  19-12-2016 19:02 via feedproxy.google.com
  Bestsellers are different from fast sellers, cult favourites or the brand known as “instant classics”. They bear no relation to those books we call “the canon”, such as Pride and Prejudice – which became a “bestseller” relatively recently, when it was remodelled as chick lit. The term has become a slippery one and is often used to describe the thing it’s not. Most of the books promoted by Waterstones as bestsellers are nothing of the sort. They don
  
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• Hometown boy Hockney gets a gallery in Bradford

  19-12-2016 18:48
  
  The city of Bradford is honouring its most famous artist son, David Hockney, by opening  a permanent gallery dedicated to the veteran practitioner in Cartwright Hall. According to the BBC, the new space is due to open 7 July next year, two days before Hockneys 80th birthday. The artist studied at Bradford Art school between the ages of 16 and 20, before moving to London in 1959. The David Hockney Gallery will house a permanent display of the unrivalled collection of early work owned by the
  
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• It Wasn't Too Long Ago That Indie Bookstores Were Dying. The Best Of These Are Now Thriving

  19-12-2016 18:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  "While browsing shelf after shelf of interesting finds is the foundation of an inspiring bookstore experience, it takes a secret sauce of qualities to make the best of the indies: a charming ambience complete with homey touches—think cool and comfy seating plus resident four-legged friends; a welcoming and shockingly knowledgeable staff, the quirkier the better; and a dedication to cultivating a community of book lovers, whether of the local or traveling variety."
  
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• How George Orwell's "1984" Became An Iconic Work

  19-12-2016 18:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  Television lives by viewing figures. Those for Nineteen Eighty-Four were, for a live drama, unprecedented. The tally (seven million) was exceeded only by that for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the previous year. “Big Brother is watching you.”’ “doublethink,” “thought- crime” and the “two-minute hate” became catchphrases. They still are. The 1954 televization jump-started Orwell’s upward progress to his present status as the Cassand
  
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• The best photography books of 2016

  19-12-2016 17:34
  
  From amateur Chinese aeronauts to geriatric Finnish athletes, the best of this year’s photobooks blended intimacy with universal themesSean O’Hagan’s top 10 photography exhibitions of 2016
  More on the best culture of 2016Halpern spent six years working on ZZYZX, often travelling to locations in California he picked at random from Google Maps. Named after a village on the edge of the Mojave desert in San Bernardino County, ZZYZX heightens the sense of unreality outsiders often d
  
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• The Best New Buildings Of 2016

  19-12-2016 17:34 via feedproxy.google.com
  The Architect's Newspaper chooses the best new buildings of the year. Jurors' judgments were based "on evidence of innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability, strength of presentation, and, most importantly, great design."
  
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• 5 Events to Attend in New York City This Week

  19-12-2016 17:19 via artnews.com
  Because of the upcoming holidays it is a somewhat quiet week on the art front in New York City, and yet there are still a handful of wonderful events on offer.MONDAY, DECEMBER 19Screening: “Slides and Mirrors Plays” at Microscope Gallery This two-part expanded cinema … Read More
  
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• A Dancer's Journey From The Syrian Civil War To The Dutch National Ballet

  19-12-2016 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  He took dance lessons in secret, was beaten by his father when he was discovered, and persisted - dancing among ruins in Damascus, practicing on the roof of his building while gun battles erupted nearby, letting a Dutch team film him. Now Ahmad Joudeh is about to make his debut in Coppelia with the Dutch National Ballet.
  
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• The Story Behind That Huge New York Times Crossword Puzzle

  19-12-2016 16:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  It's all fun and game, of course, but the point is larger: "The goal of these special sections is to reimagine the possibilities of print."
  
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• The Battle For The Heart And Soul Of The Bay Area

  19-12-2016 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The basics: "While one group of recyclers is valorized and financially rewarded for their efforts, another constituency is criminalized and harassed for simply trying to live. Where do we draw the line between art and trash, between good recycling and bad? The answer to this question is at the core of the battle being fought for the soul of the region."
  
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• Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture Names New Governors and Trustees

  19-12-2016 15:47 via artnews.com
  Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in New York announced today that artists Donald Moffett and Claire Moyer will now be on its board of governors, as chair and vice chair, respectively. They begin their new positions next month. Both … Read More
  
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• Morning Links: Artificial Intelligence Edition

  19-12-2016 15:12 via artnews.com
  Must-read stories from around the world Read More
  
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• Major shows in Venice and Paris to map Boetti’s monumental spectrum

  19-12-2016 13:21
  
  Alighiero Boetti (1940-94), the post-war Italian conceptual artist whose star has been in the ascendancy in recent years, will be the subject of major exhibitions in Venice and Paris.
   
  Coinciding with the opening week of the Venice Biennale (8-13 May), an ambitious survey of Boettis work will bring together his largest and smallest pieces from 11 of his most important cycles of work, including his well-known airplane series, maps and embroideries. The Cini Foundation, on the island of San
  
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• Major shows in Venice and Paris to map Alighiero Boetti’s monumental spectrum

  19-12-2016 13:21
  
  Alighiero Boetti (1940-94), the post-war Italian conceptual artist whose star has been in the ascendancy in recent years, will be the subject of major exhibitions in Venice and Paris.
   
  Coinciding with the opening week of the Venice Biennale (8-13 May), an ambitious survey of Boettis work will bring together his largest and smallest pieces from 11 of his most important cycles of work, including his well-known airplane series, maps and embroideries. The Cini Foundation, on the island of San
  
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• Icom issues Red List to counter trade in looted West African antiquities

  19-12-2016 12:53
  
  A Red List of West African antiquities is being published by the Paris-based International Council on Museums (Icom) in an attempt to reduce illicit trading in them. The list was unveiled on 16 December at the Muse National in Bamako, the capital of Mali, where heritage has suffered from attacks by Islamic extremists. In 2012 rebels seized control of the Malian city of Timbuktu, burning ancient manuscripts and smashing historic religious shrines during a nine-month occupation.
   
  The list i
  
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• Dig deep to put the finishing touch to Vasari’s spectacular ceiling

  19-12-2016 11:27
  
  The Italian Ministry of Culture and the charities Venice in Peril and Venetian Heritage are joining forces to raise 400,000 to buy a ceiling panel that Giorgio Vasari painted for the Palazzo Corner Spinelli. The Allegory of Hope (1541-42) is the final missing panel from the Triumph of Virtues cycle the Tuscan artist made for the Corner (or Cornaro) familys 15th-century palace in the San Marco area of Venice. It was owned by the British publisher Lord Weidenfeld, who died in January, and has bee
  
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