AFC Editor-in-Chief Will Brand is a Brooklyn-based writer, programmer, and artist, who joined Art Fag City in the fall of 2010 after finishing his MSc in Art History at the University of Edinburgh. His main interests lie in net art and criticism, but he does a bit of everything around a blog (a sad consequence of web development skills). He’s also written for The L and CityArts, and his work has been republished in Junk Jet and on The Creators Project.
Ai Weiwei told the Guardian yesterday that the Chinese government is closing down his company, Fake Cultural Development, for failing to meet “annual registration requirements.” Ai is using the occasion to claim victory over his tax case, since the roughly $2.4 million fine was levied on the firm, rather than the artist personally; we don’t have an in-house Chinese liability law expert, but that sounds good to us. He still can’t travel. [Guardian]
Tyler Green’s reporting from ArtPrize is excellent and spot-on. [Modern Art Notes]
According to Brian Boucher at Art in America, Merchandise Mart has put the Armory Show, Volta, and Art Platform Los Angeles up for sale. We say: Good. [Art in America]
Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times, doesn’t like the new Stedelijk Museum building. [Los Angeles Times]
Farhad Manjoo’s opinion piece on the evils of pagination got a lot of ‘Yup’s from us. [Slate]
The 2012 MacArthur Fellows have been announced. The ones you’ve heard of: photographers An-My Lê and Uta Barth. [Los Angeles Times]
Apparently Google Street View’s mapping the West Bank now. [+972]
This week at the L Magazine, I find my center and spread the gospel. There’s some net art out there that talks more about the soul than about the iPhone. I call it good.
This week at The L Magazine, I go to bat for Claire Bishop’s much-maligned Artforum essay,”Digital Divide”. Did she forget about the existence of every net artist? Did she not notice she’d written a sentence specifically excluding the art she was looking for? No. You just can’t read good.
Henry Wyndham, the European Chairman of Sotheby’s, was shot in the face last Monday in a grouse-hunting accident. As has been established, that’s a funny thing to happen to a person. Fortunately, he’s been released from the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. [Daily Mail]
Read Hyperallergic’s Jillian Steinhauer on Mitt Romney’s plans to cut art funding. Her words: “Romney is simply following in a long line of Republicans who have used claims of cutting arts funding as a diversionary tactic, a way to appeal to conservative voters without having to talk about what a smaller government would actually look like.” [Hyperallergic]
AFC likes Randy Kennedy’s survey of art bookshops and art-book shops. [NY Times]
Tony Scott, the director and producer who created “Top Gun”, “The Good Wife”, and “Enemy of the State”, jumped off a bridge Sunday. Many people wish he hadn’t. [L.A. Times]
This week at the L Magazine, I review “Ghosts in the Machine,” an exhibition spanning twenty-five years of machine-related art, from outsider art to Op art to sci-fi.
This is all the information we have: at a hospital fundraiser in Memphis Monday night, former President George W. Bush mentioned his new hobby, oil painting. He told the crowd he’s “kinda stuck” to painting dogs. Tragically, there are no pictures. [The Daily Beast]
Relatedly, we’ll totally pay you if you find pictures of George W. Bush’s dog paintings. [Me]
Ben Davis looks at the rhetoric of the LA MOCA situation in light of both the institution’s history and our recent economic past. His appraisal is one of the best things we’ve seen this week. [ArtINFO]
The Chinese government has arrested two senior art handlers in Beijing for allegedly undervaluing works at customs, and has not yet set a trial date. The Times has the story, and it’s good. [NY Times]
Souvenir shops across London are filling up with Olympics-related junk. [Gagosian]
The walls of the academy stand firm: Alec Soth got rejected from the Minnesota State Fair. [Tumblr]
This week at The L Magazine, I wonder what will happen to indescribable art in an age of tags. A sample of that wondering, and a single unit of art, within.
While I had YouTube set to Denise René Commemorative Mode last night, I came across this 1965 CBS documentary about MoMA’s Op Art group show, The Responsive Eye. This isn’t Morley Safer’s CBS; as Greg Allen points out, this comes from a time when CBS’s founder was MoMA’s president, so this is actually an informative, considered piece of television. It moves smoothly from talking with people on the street to talking with Responsive Eye curator William C. Seitz, and gets people to say an awful lot of things that are still true today.
