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Painter Painter

The Walker Art Center, one of the preeminent contemporary art museums in the United States, has a show on view now (until October 27) about new developments in contemporary painting. The exhibition, “Painter Painter,” presents the work of fifteen artists from the US and Europe. Here’s a brief description:

The exhibition posits abstract painting today as a means, not an end. For these artists, painting is a generative process—one that is rooted in the studio yet open and receptive to the world. Here new languages of abstraction and eccentric methods of making are freely pursued, crossing paths with sculpture, poetry, film, music, performance, design, publishing, craft, and fashion. Thus painting becomes a conduit—a way to make contact beyond the closed frame of their formal invention.

In addition, the museum has set up a blog of “Studio Sessions” in which the participating artists discuss their work and influences.

May 23, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture | Tags: minneapolis, painting, walker art center | Leave A Comment »

THE WHITNEY: NEW IDENTITY

The Whitney, which is opening their new space near the Highline in 2015, has just unveiled their new graphic identity and it’s a fun one! Created by the design studio Experimental Jet Set, the graphic relies on what the museum describes as a “responsive W” that “literally responds to the art” and to the materials upon which it is set (Experimental Jet Set lays out their thinking and development process here on their website; it’s a fascinating read). It’s lighter and more modern than their old graphic and hints at the possibilities a new space affords any museum. The video they produced shows how the “W” becomes playful and active in different settings, dancing around paintings by Edward Hopper, Chuck Close and others (it’s short; check it out). See below:

Whitney New Graphic Identity

May 22, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Leave A Comment »

Stranger Than Paradise

A houseboat in Sausalito. Photo by Andres Gonzalez.

Adam Sachs’s recent article in T Magazine on Marin County, CA, “the most beautiful, bucolic, privileged, liberal, hippie-dippie place on the earth,” is worth a read.

An excerpt:

On the way around a dock we pass a line of big happy seals, bellies up in the sun. Some of the houseboats around here are repurposed lifeboats. The late Shel Silverstein once lived on a World War II-era balloon barge called Evil Eye. Others are mansions in miniature.

“This one used to have a heliport on the roof,” Merz says, pointing out a particularly grand example of the form. We pass the Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand’s elegant and tricked-out tug Mirene and another said to belong to the former Black Panther and mother of the late Tupac, Afeni Shakur.

Merz steers us out toward deeper water. A bearded gentleman waves to us. Informed of my purposes, he shouts across the waves: “Say hello to Abe Rosenthal!”

He rows to meet us in his own dinghy. It falls to me to break the news, gently, that Mr. Rosenthal has been dead for seven years. Unfazed, he introduces himself as Jeff, local resident of “many moons.”

“Why don’t you live out here if you really want to know about the place?” Jeff demands. “See, the issue is Sausalito. Kerouac and Cassady and all that, but they’re gone now! Now it’s about cash, and the place has become a tourist haven.”

It can be too easy to fall into conversations like this in Marin — and hard to start the ones you’d rather have.

May 22, 2013 | Categories: DIY | Leave A Comment »

Art in Protest

In Portugal, artists and protestors have been using a wide variety of political and artistic signage and design to draw attention to the escalating taxes and austerity measures in their country. Inspired by the May ’68 Paris protests, their call to action is, “It’s the people who call the shots.”

The intriguing thing about this movement lies in both the art and design itself, and the fact that it is being spread and promoted by the general population. It’s not just a small community of rebellious artists. It’s the community at large.

Ghost, an association based in Lisbon that was founded by Patrícia Almeida and David-Alexandre Guéniot has been documenting these designs and the manner in which they are displayed by the people in Portugal. Titled I Fear Nothing Because I Have Nothing, their collection aims to preserve and collect the posters and artwork that were left behind in the aftermath following these protests and moments in time.

May 21, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, DIY, Politics | Leave A Comment »

Zilia Sánchez at Artists Space

Lunar V, c. 1973, acrylic on stretched canvas

Artists Space‘s elegant retrospective of the too-little-known Cuban artist Zilia Sánchez is mesmerizing.

From AS:

Her paintings have regularly taken on a modular character, comprised of two or more abutting parts. This seriality has become a cornerstone of Sánchez’s work: she continues to rework and add to paintings begun as early as the 1970s, considering each work to be a part of a larger whole. Alongside the sensual and haptic “queering” of a hard-edged minimalism, her multi-part works bear relation to the temporal and semiotic sequencing of musical notation, as well as to the architecture of tropical modernism.

The show is on view until June 16.

May 20, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Leave A Comment »

Surf Culture in Japan

Given its geography, Japan seems a natural fit for surfing culture. But what’s interesting is the way in which it’s started to take hold again recently, which is to say they’ve put an emphasis on the culture as much as, if not more than the surfing. T Magazine recenly spoke with the co-owners of surf brand Saturdays Surf NYC about opening their Tokyo location, and discovering that the lifestyle of surfing was being embraced even by those who don’t participate in the sport. People there are making an effort to embrace the laid-back vibe, and spend their weekends outdoors and at the beach, rather than inside the city. It’s as much for good health and relaxation as it is for exercise and entertainment.

And then there’s the fashion of it. The surf shops feature the most detailed accessories and clothing related to surfing, more than just your basic boards. Even when the waves are bad, beach towns like Kamakura are lined with restaurants and bars, filled with lively and stylish visitors from the nearby cities, looking for a healthy escape.

The business partners compare it to Montauk or Malibu, only when you look up, you see Mt. Fuji in the distance.

May 17, 2013 | Categories: Random | Leave A Comment »

New Directions Poetry Pamphlets

The esteemed literary publisher New Directions has revived its series of poetry pamphlets, and the first four contributions look stellar: Eliot Weinberger, Lydia Davis, Susan Howe, and others are involved. A bit more on the series:

New Directions is happy to announce the publication of a new series of Poetry Pamphlets, a reincarnated version of the “Poet of the Month” and “Poets of the Year” series James Laughlin published in the 1940s, which brought out such eclectic hits as William Carlos Williams’s The Broken Span, Delmore Schwartz’s poetic play Shenandoah, John Donne’s Some Poems and a Devotion, and Yvor Winters’s Giant Weapon, among many others. The New Directions Poetry Pamphlets will highlight original work by writers from around the world, as well as forgotten treasures lost in the cracks of literary history.

To learn more, and to buy copies of the first four pamphlets, click here.

May 16, 2013 | Categories: Creative Culture, New York City | Leave A Comment »

The Relocation of Newtok Residents

Yesterday the Guardian published its first installment of a report on Newtok, Alaska, where an entire village is in the long process of relocating as their home becomes uninhabitable due to the affects of climate change. A report by the US Army Corps of Engineers predicted the highest point in the village will be underwater by 2017.

According to the article, more than 180 native communities in Alaska are experiencing serious flooding and erosion. As we strive to react responsibly and sensitively to those uprooted by incidents like Katrina and more recently Sandy, it is time to begin planning on how we may also accommodate entire groups of people as their land disappears. Follow the Guardian’s story here.