From the category archives:

Newswire

Shia LeBeouf Arrested, Art Teacher Suspended Over Separate Anti-Trump Video Art Incidents

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 26, 2017
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Actor-cum-performance artist Shia LeBeouf has been arrested outside the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Meanwhile in Dallas, a highschool art teacher has been suspended after posting a video to Instagram in which she squirts a projection of Trump with a water gun. Seriously?

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All the Vermeers Now on Electric Objects

by Paddy Johnson on January 25, 2017
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By now, many of us are familiar with Electric Objects (EO). The company produces electronic screens designed to display art. That art can come from the pictures you take on your phone, but it can also come from Art Club, a subscription based service that gives subscribers access to everything from classic works of art to new commissioned work made by contemporary artists.

According to EO, the goal of the product is to make art more accessible—an end they learned was desirable when their 2014 Kickstarter campaign and raised close to $800,000 of their $25,000 goal. Just how accessible does this make art? There’s no shortage of debate on that subject amongst our friends on facebook, but in our books, Art Club made a big jump in that department today.

This morning, the company launched “All the Vermeers” a collection featuring all 35 paintings from the famed 17th-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.

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Alex Da Corte: “Ivanka Trump, please get my work off of your walls. I am embarrassed to be seen with you.”

by Michael Anthony Farley on December 23, 2016
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Artists are none too happy with collector/future First Daughter Ivanka Trump. As noted in Bloomberg recently, the socialite has an impressive collection of contemporary art, including works by John Baldessari, Dan Colen, Christopher Wool, and many others. But now that the Trump family’s abhorrent politics have been made glaringly clear, many dealers and artists are facing “seller’s remorse.”

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Turbulence.org Announces It Will No Longer Shutter. Moves to Canada.

by Paddy Johnson on December 6, 2016
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Good news: Turbulence.org will stay online! Last March, the non-profit commissioning net art from the US and abroad announced it would shutter December 1st. Co-founder Helen Thorington cited the long standing issue amongst non-profits—program grants that don’t cover operational costs, and the increased costs associated with web hosting. Web hosting costs run at about $1000 per month. It was unclear whether they would be able to preserve the website.

Since they made their announcement in March, though, Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), and Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) at the University of Victoria, Canada have agreed to host the website, Turbulence.org and archive.turbulence.org into the foreseeable future.

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Wikileaks: Marina Abramović Invited Clinton Campaign Chair to Satanic Menstrual Blood & Sperm Fest?

by Michael Anthony Farley on November 4, 2016
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Halloween may be over, but this shit-show of an electoral haunted-hay-ride just got a little spookier.

Wikileaks has released an email purportedly hacked from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s inbox from none other than performance art star Marina Abramović. The email had been forwarded from his brother, lobbyist Tony Podesta last June, inviting John to join him at a “Spirit Cooking” party hosted by Abramović in New York, at the artist’s request.

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“Spirit Cooking” is an Abramović piece supposedly inspired by famous Satanist Aleister Crowley’s occultist rituals. It involves the artist painting the walls with menstrual blood, breast milk, and other bodily fluids.

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Artist Challenges Facebook With Promises of Cock Spam

by Paddy Johnson on October 27, 2016
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Is the US presidential election putting many of its citizens on edge? The daily headlines are terrible, each bringing a new revelation more shocking than the next. The stakes could not be more dire and conversation more urgent.

In reaction to these times, though, perhaps many us of block friends dissenting friends on Facebook or silence comments we don’t want to hear. Under these conditions, Facebook can seem a bit more like a police state. Prolific artist, Facebook user (and now blogger) Sean Capone speculated that this was indeed the case in an email this morning informing AFC that he’d been banned from Facebook for three days. The offending update? A picture he’d posted from a Larry Clark show at Luhring Augustine back in 2014.

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Side-By-Side Lucy Statues Look Like Faces of Meth PSA

by Michael Anthony Farley on August 10, 2016
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Lucille Ball’s hometown of Celoron, NY finally has a replacement statue for the 2009 sculpture that’s the stuff of nightmares.

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Vanessa Beecroft Continues to Prove She Doesn’t Deserve Comparison With Rachel Dolezal

by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on August 9, 2016
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We were going to write a blog post titled “Vanessa Beecroft is the Rachel Dolezal of the Art World” and then realized what an unfair comparison that is. Beecroft’s appropriations of blackness are so, so much worse. This is not a post about stupid things someone has said once, twice, or in the case of Beecroft, many, many times. This is a post about how systemic racism cannot be wished away: “If I don’t call myself white, maybe I am not,” says Beecroft in “The Bodies Artist,” a profile published online today on the Cut.

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Faulty Cottages: the Curious Case of Mill Hill’s Fired Community Artists

by Michael Anthony Farley on August 2, 2016
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Macon Georgia’s Mill Hill Arts Village is a utopian vision of inclusive planning, permanently affordable housing stock, and community arts programming. So why were resident artists Samantha Hill and Ed Woodham fired? They believe they uncovered a gentrification scheme, but the Macon Arts Alliance tells a different, incomplete story.

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Jeff Koons Lays Off Workers Amidst Reports of Unionization

by Paddy Johnson and Rhett Jones on July 18, 2016
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According to sources speaking anonymously with Art F City, Jeff Koons’ mammoth studio operation in Chelsea has laid off 14 of its night crew workers who were attempting to unionize and one day crew member who was friendly with those night crew organizers.

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