[contextly_auto_sidebar id="4kKdYZoxCdDYt0tlY8PDmS0mVgEBCQX8"] The Brooklyn Academy of Music will soon host an odd hybrid performance recently put on at UCLA's Royce Hall, Exposed: Songs for Unseen Warhol Films. Curated by my friend Dean Wareham, the show, which included legendary guitarist Tom Verlaine and Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and others, was mixed-to-brilliant, depending on who was … [Read more...]
David Byrne: Big Money is Killing Art
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="3o2cCBB8Yl5GOjG7dvH1Nruy0D97g8pq"] THE ravages of the one percent -- and what their surge has done to culture -- is one of my abiding concerns on the blog. Now the Talking Heads frontman, who's been quite outspoken lately on the politics of culture, weighs in on what the plutocracy has done to visual art. A New York Times post looks at his complaint as well as the … [Read more...]
How Artists Do (and Don’t) Make a Living
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="1O7lUANtRWwF1iIA86MpOYppo1xNtR5Y"] A NEW study is starting to draw attention, and it confirms some of what we've suspected: That despite the rise of university programs to educate artists, the employment market for the fine arts continues to tighten. So we're left with more and more people stranded, often with significant amounts of student-loan debt. And the number … [Read more...]
What Do Brunch and Jeff Koons Have in Common?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="R4kldjR8qVAyVN11JBzIOTVFaYGRTE3D"] THE current backlash against mimosa-drenched Sunday meals is not a central concern of this blog. But I cannot resist posting part of a New York Times story (already denounced by some in my circle) which connects the rise of brunch with skyrocketing rents and the rise of the 1 percent. (Both, incidentally, major concerns … [Read more...]
Do Artists Embrace or Resist Technology?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="YYQ5BrKAlLhK2VSvLagOYij5KMvYrB2z"] WELL, both, and neither, I can hear someone out there growling. But what I mostly hear in the culture at large is that we -- citizens, worker bee, student, scribe -- need to "adjust" to the brave new world of digital technology. Some of us do. But as someone who's been to numerous exhibits and conferences on "art and tech," I've … [Read more...]
The Big Lie of Jeff Koons
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vgKZ6xRHRblYrS2DIdm6RSmRakPmvRv4"] IS it possible that the most characteristic artist of our time could also be almost entirely full of b.s.? From what I can tell, that's exactly what we've got. Over the last week or so I've been underlining lines from Jed Perl's New York Review of Books piece on the art world's Gilded boy, thinking and talking about Perl's argument, … [Read more...]
The Death of Art’s Third Place
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="m8KE0CbwCulzkRvRmJL6ZGSvuY8h2kLD"] DAVE Hickey has long been one of the orneriest and most original voices in the art world -- his book Air Guitar is a revelation -- and he recently posted something that hits me almost literally where I live. He's talking about the disappearance of a discourse around visual art that is neither grounded in academia or the marketplace. … [Read more...]
“An Arts District without artists?”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="sm1yCVkC5n9okJnqnTpzTSDYpQTHApRe"] WE'VE heard this before, but it's always painful when it happens: The visual artists who have helped tame downtown Los Angeles and given it a hip sheen are now being forced out by gentrification and rising rents. The process is just starting, but it seems destined to pick up speed quite soon. A new story in the Los Angeles Times … [Read more...]
Art for the Uber-rich
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9cukHwn37jIza9qSYJkcWoPfxa124uvq"] DESPITE the struggles of many visual artists, not to mention the stagnant middle class in the Anglo-American world, art's auction market continues to boom. The latest story from the New York Times, on the London auction season, has some interesting details. “The sleepy days of collecting are over,” said Amy Cappellazzo, the … [Read more...]
Eric Fischl and Steve Martin
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Z2ToD122mPHrUfvrPjk39l1JB9c1LnKn"] THE artist and comedian will speak tonight at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, part of what's shaping up to a strong series called The Un-Private Collection. Fischl's memoir, Bad Boy: My Life on and Off the Canvas, is fascinating not only about the path of an artist, but about the strange cultural spot we find ourselves now. Here's … [Read more...]