Today at Flavorpill, we celebrated the summer solstice with Murakami’s adorable Google Doodle. We looked at Bon Iver’s new album by the numbers. We found some filthy jokes hiding in these ancient works of art. We had some of our lingering questions about Columbia House’s mail-order music club (namely, was it legal?) answered by our friends at Mental Floss. We were strangely excited to hear that Conan O’Brien will appear as a background extra in an upcoming episode of How I Met Your Mother. We went inside of the Momofuku Kitchen Lab, a top secret location where David Chang performs his culinary experiments. We learned about the origin of the Good Humor bar. We watched the worlds of Peanuts and Doctor Whovisually collide. And finally, we wondered if that Wet Hot American Summer prequel that David Wain’s still talking about is such a good idea. Outside of the salaries issue, we think it would be almost impossible to replicate the magic that made the comedy a cult classic.
Mike Leavitt has a giant Art Army. Hand-crafted from scratch out of 20 to 30 custom-made parts, each lil famous artist busts out with physical likeness and personal aesthetic sensibility. His grinning Jeff Koons is karmically turning into a big balloon animal. Matthew Barney is in full-on Cremaster Cycle mode, Takashi Murakami is mid-metamorphosis into a psychotic Kawaii toon, and Julian Schnabel comes with a removable ceramic plate halo. And those are just his freshest four!
The Seattle-based proud Pratt drop-out is having a solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery later this year. Meanwhile, enjoy Ron English a-clowning, Banksy a-pranking, and Damien Hirst getting sliced.
Ever dreamed of owning your very own Richard Prince? Or your own work of irreverent detritus by a Young British Artist? Dream on. They are for the most part priced astronomically out of reach for most people. On the other hand, if you take your dream down a notch, you can. The YBAs, as well as some other famed artists, have engaged at one time or another in creating unique artist’s editions and regular consumer items within a reasonably-priced range that you can hang on your wall, if you want, or just use and abuse to your heart’s content. Whether created individually or in collaboration with other artists and designers, here is a sampling of some of our favorite artist editions and objects by artists we love, and/or love to hate.
Italian artist Laurina Paperina has been killing her idols for the last four years in a series of drawings titled How to Kill the Artists. Banksy’s rat takes a hit out on him, Bjork drives a chainsaw into Matthew Barney, and Marina Abramovic runs into her lover one too many times. But Paperina, whose real name Laura Scottini, slays her art world heroes more as an homage than anything malicious, and with each crime scene comes a witty nod to art history. Holed up in her bedroom in the small Italian town of Mori, Paperina infuses her clever videos, paintings, installations and illustrations with pop culture references, political commentary, and American humor culled from the internet. We caught up with her for a brief Q&A and a sampling of her best art murders after the jump.
From David Hockney’s iPad drawings of freshly cut flowers to Szabolcs Veres’ nightmarish canvases of grotesque characters, 2010 saw established and emerging artists utilizing new technologies and ancient means to express their inner realms and comment on the ever-changing world around them. Takashi Murakami transformed the Château of Versailles into a manga-inspired fantasyland; Ryan McGinley shot thousands of pictures of youthful nudes on seamless paper; and Edward Burtynsky documented the BP oil spill from an aerial point of view to reveal both the horror and beauty of manmade disasters. After the jump, click through to learn more about these exhibitions, as well as shows by Catherine Opie, Erik Parker, Pieter Hugo, and others that complete our top ten art picks of the year.
Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami danced down Broadway yesterday in a furry flower costume atop a small float decorated with jellyfish eyes and skulls as his signature anime characters, Kaikai and Kiki, hovered overhead in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Earlier this week, the artist told the New York Times the characters “represent the aesthetic philosophy behind my work. They are cute yet fearsome modern and yet connected to the past. They embody eccentric beauty.”
Every fall since 2002, ArtReview magazine has compiled a list of the most powerful people in the world of the arts. Criteria is based on “a combination of influence over the production of art internationally, sheer financial clout… and activity in the previous 12 months.” Interestingly, artists tend to make up only 20% to 30% of the list’s occupants — as opposed to curators, collectors, etc. We’ve combed through this year’s list and found the top 10 most powerful artists of 2010. You might be surprised to see where some of your favorites landed.
For the inaugural installment of YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video, a curatorial team from the Guggenheim weeded through more than 23,000 submissions from 91 countries to come up with the 125 videos on the shortlist (which you can view now on the YouTube Play channel). “We focused on works that really were conceived from the start for an online medium, so not necessarily works that were to be projected in a museum space or works that simply documented a performance,” explains Joan Young, associate curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim. “The idea really is working with the medium.”
Beginning today, their selections will play at the various Guggenheim museums around the world; a jury that includes Darren Aronofsky, Animal Collective, and Takashi Murakami will narrow down the list to 20 videos that will be presented at a special celebration the Guggenheim in New York on October 21. These finalists will be on view to the public October 22 through the 24th, as well as online. Click through to check out our top picks.
Following on the heels of celebrated exhibitions by Jeff Koons and Xavier Veilhan, Japanese Pop artist Takashi Murakami is taking the Château of Versailles by storm with a show of manga-inspired sculptures opening today. Grandiose in scope and scale and seductive in the masterful use of materials, Murakami’s comical cast of characters is perfectly matched with the rooms and gardens of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette’s ornate palace.
Although not everyone is happy to see the controversial artist’s work displayed in the French national treasure, particularly the country’s conservatives, Murakami seems thrilled with the historical mash-up. “I am The Cheshire Cat who greets Alice in Wonderland with his devilish grin, and chatters on as she wanders around the Château,” says the artist, in reference to one of his works on view. And then, sounding a bit like Walt Disney hyping his amusement park in a 1960s commercial, he adds, “With my playful smile, I invite you all to the Wonderland of Versailles.”
Think America is the only country where conservatives pitch a hissyfit every time they don’t like an art exhibit? Well, we’re not. In fact, the French right is so incensed about a Takashi Murakami show that opens September 14th at the Palace of Versailles that they’ve started several online petitions against it and have already gathered thousands of signatures. Their beef? Some of Murakami’s work, such as a statue of an anime-inspired girl jumping rope with her own breast milk and a cowboy who, um, uses his ejaculate as a lasso, is explicit and has “no place in the royal apartments.” (How dare they disgrace the memory of Marie Antoinette!) The funny thing, as Marina Galperina at Animal New York points out, is that the pieces protesters are angry about don’t even appear in the Versailles show.
