iconophilia » READING, LOOKING, LEAKING, MOPPING UP

only in California…

Nigel — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:07:39 +0000

…would you Occupy Oakland with your iPad! Occupy Silican Valley, maybe… This from Mark Murrman’s coverage at MoJo.

on “transformative use” and the postmodern

Nigel — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:04:18 +0000

Here’s part one of Cat Weaver’s update on the ongoing Richard Prince case at Hyperallergic. And here’s some more by Julia Halperin at ArtInfo.

On Damien Hirst’s Spots

Nigel — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:02:09 +0000

…are at their best on shoes, seen here on the Met’s blog. Or on skateboards, apparently. And so, facing the global onslaught at Gagosian galleries everywhere, Will Brand at AFC has declared: “So I’m going to lay this down, just to clarify, so that nobody from the future gets confused: we hate this shit. Everyone hates this shit. These spots reflect nothing about how we live, see, or think, they’re just some weird meme for the impossibly rich that nobody knows how to stop.”

(PS. And, if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can win a print if you visit all eleven exhibitions. Seriously).

(PPS. This quote was spotted first on ArtInfo).

(PPPS. Hennessy Youngman also has something to say about it).

(PPPPS. And it has triggered his obituary at the Village Voice).

(PPPPPs. And there’s more! Hrag Vartanian at Hyperallergic flicks some more links…

readymade and fruity

Nigel — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:54:02 +0000

Aren’t you amazed at how some curators juggle ideas? Here’s MoMA curator Sarah Meister: “You can’t look at Duchamp the same way after seeing that Watkins picture.” Whatkins? And when you’ve read the full (formalist) rationale to see how such arguments are made by transhistorical visual conjunctions alone, you’re left with what Tyler Green, at ArtInfo, calls curatorial “rhyming”. And hence, another illicit visual “argument” is created, (this time, suggesting that you can find proto-modernist, or even proto-avant-gardist roots in Western naturalism) which messes with history, and creates yet another “history”, annoyingly. And so, following ArtInfo quoting the NYT, if “the word ‘curate,’ lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting,” (as wrote the New York Times in 2009), now, apparently, it’s the “culling and selecting” of the historical narrative that remains the elevated domain of museum “curation”. So, it seems, history is all there’s left to ~~mess with~~ curate.

Architecture in China

Nigel — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:01:17 +0000

read this blistering review/interview with Meinhard von Gerkan in Spiegel Online. And then read the Banhof court case reference here in The Guardian.

war art in Syria

Nigel — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:28:27 +0000

See. Read. At Hyperallergic here.

art without artists

Nigel — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:46:42 +0000

…not the way Anton Vidokle writes about it in e-flux. Or the fascination with the Outsider/Insider. If you’re still with me, see here for those who are simply anonymous.

more Art Guff: if you’re old and/or indigenous, or just a “colourist”, ignore…

Nigel — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:07:28 +0000

Thanks to Marika Clemow: “Gabori only began painting at the age of 80 when she wandered into the Mornington Island arts and crafts centre in Queensland and picked up a brush out of curiosity. She had probably never been to an art gallery or seen the work of abstract painters from around the world but innately knew how to put colours together.”

Kiefer’s (also) over it…

Nigel — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:45:43 +0000

in The Guardian

more Jerry Saltz on the top 0.1% and the art market…

Nigel — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:19:36 +0000

Here’s a sizzling read…