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lars von trier

Thursday Links: What Makes a Good Picture?

by Paddy Johnson and Whitney Kimball on March 13, 2014

An example of an excellent Barack Obama portrait by Pete Souza

Blake Gopnik thinks that this photo of Barack Obama is the best piece of art in the Whitney Biennial. We were immediately applied The Philosophers’ Mail criteria for what makes a good photo, and decided Gopnik is wrong. [Blake Gopnik]
Howard Halle’s review of the Whitney Biennial is the best we’ve read yet. [Timeout]
If the Whitney Biennial is the art world’s Oscars, an attention-demanding spectacle that never messes with its safe brand, then its product is star-making power. Another Biennial profile, this of ceramicist Shio Kusaka. [Architectural Digest]
The biennial has also led the New York Times to discover a trend, “The Growing Transgender Presence in Pop Culture”. A piece on transgender artists Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker is used to launch into a profile of three totally unrelated transgender people who have recently gotten famous. [New York Times]
Those of you who can’t wait for the new Lars von Trier film should read David Edelstein’s satisfying review of Nymphomaniac: Volume I. [Vulture]
President Obama has apologized University of Texas Professor Ann Collins Johns, who was offended when he told workers at at GE plant, “folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.” [Politico]
OnBuzzfeed, sharing increases as people spend more time “reading”. [@peretti]
Production studio Fiction has made light paintings with drones and photoshop. Why not just use photoshop? Because then you can’t use the word drone in a headline. [Huffington Post]
More crap: Here’s what paint pigment in water looks like! [Mashable]
Hip hop influencers like Afrika Bambaataa plan to open The Universal Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory. They’ll have to compete with the National Museum of Hip Hop, who say they’re in talks with developers in Harlem. [New York Times]

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Monday Links: So Many Opening Ceremonies

by Anthony Hicks Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch on February 10, 2014

Palestinian fisherman finds a long-lost Greek statue of Apollo, Hamas police officials confiscate it once they notice it’s up for sale on eBay. [The Guardian]
Artist Chuck Close who suffers from face blindness (that is to say, prosopagnosia), was hired by Vanity Fair to take photos of celebs without makeup because, you know, he is the ultimate least judge-y person in the world and does not care that ScarJo has an oily face. We assume it’s up to Vanity Fair readers to decide who’s hot or not, without gobs of eyeliner. [Dlisted]
Artist Tony Matelli responds to criticism that his “Sleepwalker” sculpture should be removed from the Wellesley College campus. It sounds like he doesn’t care too much about the removal: “I don’t think they’ll make that decision, but if they make that decision, that’s fine with me.” [CBS News]
The opening of “Dumb Starbucks” is an art project. We’ll see how long fair-use law will let this parody business last—especially since they’re not even serving their own pastries. Ruh roh! [LAist]
“San Franciscans Wait Two Hours in the Rain for Day-Old New York Bagels.” [Uptown Almanac]
In case you missed the Olympics opening ceremony, the Cirque du Soleil-inspired performance pays tribute to Russian artists like Kazimir Malevich. [The Washington Post]
Plus-size dog clothing is on the rise. [Reuters]
The Broad Museum of Art will not open until 2015. [The New York Times]
The theatrics that seem to accompany the release of a new Lars Von Trier film are in full swing: Shia LaBeouf wore a bag on his head and Von Trier was ostentatiously silent at the Nymphomaniac opening in Berlin. [The Guardian]