Chasing Mavericks on 7th Ave
Supposedly this wave is “actual size.” Chasing Mavericks opens on October 26.
Robert Adams, On Any Given Day in Spring (I)
Don’t miss this show at Matthew Marks Gallery, which is on view until November 3. Adams’s traveling retrospective is also currently at the Yale University Art Gallery, until October 28. From a recent interview: I’ve been asked why I didn’t keep making pictures in the suburbs. I think the answer is that, at some level, I hoped early […]
NYC Surf Film Festival
The fifth annual New York Surf Film Festival starts next week at Nitehawk in Williamsburg. Check out this year’s lineup and get your tickets while you can.
30 Variations and a Microphone
Glenn Gould has little to do with surf culture; even when it was warm, he wore “an overcoat, a beret, a scarf and gloves.” Nonetheless, the publication of an essay about Gould’s 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations merits your attention, not least because its author is Paul Elie, who published a wonderful prosopography of American […]
The New Yorker on Mud Wrestling in the Rockaways
Move over New York Times, now the New Yorker seems to have a beat reporter in the Rockaways. Have a look at this article by Mary Norris on mud wrestling at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club. An excerpt: The Rockaway Beach Surf Club is on the premises of a former chop shop at Beach Eighty-seventh Street, under […]
Bushwick on the Beach
The New York Times is apparently in love with Rockaway Beach. Several articles this summer have celebrated our new “Bushwick on the Beach,” such as “Boardwalk? Try Catwalk” by Guy Trebay in June. Just a few weeks ago there was this riveting article about what happens when the sun goes down: As the sun dips below the […]
Timothy “Speed” Levitch and the Art of Guiding a Tour
None who have seen the 1998 documentary The Cruise can forget its funny, eccentric, chattermouth star, Timothy “Speed” Levitch. He was a Gray Line tour guide in New York City who elevated the job to a form of avant-garde art, and his romantic monologues on art and sex and violence and depression in the big city […]
Surfland Revisited
Last chance to see these beautiful portraits by Joni Sternbach at Rick Wester Fine Art in NYC. Exhibit closes tomorrow, August 10.
Party People
Join Origin Magazine and Eyebeam on July 26th at 7PM for a discussion hosted by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky) dedicated to exploring hidden architectures and their capacity to influence the evolution of cities and the well-being of their inhabitants. Panelists Daniel Barasch, Kenji Williams and Christopher Kieran will discuss strategies for utilizing these […]
Learning to Surf in Queens
Some New Yorkers have long known there are good surf spots within the city limits. Now that knowledge is spreading, and the New York Times reports on surf lessons at Rockaway Beach, a small corner of Queens that has also become something of a hipster summer hangout. I knew people surfed in the Rockaways; I just […]
Sgrafo vs. Fat Lava
A taste from a not-to-be-missed show of ceramics and porcelains made in West Germany, ca. 1960-1980. Curated by Nicolas Trembley at Alex Zachary Peter Currie in NYC. Closes Saturday! The installation views.
Rineke Dijkstra
A nice retrospective of this Dutch artist’s portraits at the Guggenheim in NYC until October 8.
5 Beekman Street
A peek inside the famed 5 Beekman Street building, the “Grey Gardens of downtown NYC.” According to Curbed.com, it sold for $64 million in April.
Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings
One of the foremost artists of our day, Ellsworth Kelly (American, b. 1923) may be best known for his rigorous abstract painting, but he has made figurative drawings throughout his career, creating an extraordinary body of work that now spans six decades. There has never been a major museum exhibition dedicated exclusively to the plant […]
Shops for Urban Surfers in New York
My last post mentioned the new surf-themed exhibition at Partners & Spade, a shop in New York’s Nolita neighborhood. Yesterday, the New York Times‘ “Critical Shopper” column browsed Saturdays Surf NYC and Pilgrim Surf + Supply, two surf stories in the Big Apple. Surferesqueness was the order of the day, for staff and customer and […]
Constantin Brancusi, The Golden Bird
In other images Brancusi underscores his attachment to his works as almost living spirits, multiplying and animating their forms with shadows or double exposures, or arranging them in suggestive tableaus. In an especially tender image his sculpture “Little French Girl†seems to sidle up to a cuplike sculpture resting on an “Endless Column†fragment as […]
M.Nii at Partners & Spade, New York
Partners & Spade, a shop in New York City, regularly hosts exhibitions. “M.Nii” has just opened, featuring found pieces and art by Mark Cunningham. It’s all about the culture of surfing, and features surfboard fins, vintage surf books, barnacled watches, swim trunks, and the like. See more pictures at the blog The Fox Is […]
Countdown to Bike Sharing in NYC
New York City’s massive new bike share program is inching ever closer to its July debut. To that end, the city has announced not only the name of the program’s $41 million sponsor (Citibank) but also the program’s official name (CitiBike, of course) and, most important of all, the exact pricing for the program. And if you were […]
Cindy Sherman at the MoMA
If you planned to go but haven’t made it yet, get a move on. The MoMA‘s Cindy Sherman retrospective will be gone in a week, on June 11th.
Thad Ziolkowski: “April Is the Gnarliest Month”
From a very nice piece from the New York Times by Thad Ziolkowski: When I began surfing in New York in the mid 1990s, it was a seasonal sport, something done from late May until around Thanksgiving. Bowing to the cold each fall was hard, especially since the waves are often best at that time of […]
Shattered Debris, Sheer Transformation
Creating domestic environments from found objects, resin, latex, lights, and her unique expressionistic process of shattering and re-forming glass, artist Hu Bing’s site-specific installation ‘Shattered Debris, Sheer Transformation’ is now on display at the Flatiron Prow Art Space on the ground floor of the Flatiron Building.
Fred Sandback, Conceptual Constructions
A highlight from this weekend’s Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island, from David Zwirner‘s booth: Thanks to Katie Holten for the image.
Brice Marden, Joined
Reflecting the light and landscape of Greece, these paintings feature vibrant colors and geometric compositions, which subtly incorporate each piece of marble’s natural variations. Marden’s earlier series of paintings on marble, completed over a six-year period between 1981 and 1987, played a principal role in the transition from his early monochromatic paintings to the later […]
Frank Stella – Black Paintings
Perhaps this is to be expected. Art is not a science; it does not proceed in a neat, linear progression. Artists often circle back, picking up ideas that their predecessors left undeveloped and trying to push them further…The titles tend toward exotic if not downright flashy. ‘Averroes’ and ‘Avicenna’ are named for Arab philosophers (of […]
