Art & Money

Christo Puts the Wraps on Next Door

There is always time to take time out for trivia. Today’s non-event is Christo’s law suit against 433 Broadway Co. for putting up a 6-story building that ruins his view. Okay, I made up that reason. Officially, Christo—sole proprietor of Depaul Realty Corp., which owns 48 Howard Street, his studio since the 1960s—has taken 433 Broadway to County Court because, since March of this year, his new neighbor “has caused and/or permitted gravely unsafe construction activity to take place at 433 Broadway.” Continue Reading
The Artist as Self-Booster

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT make your way through comment threads, or click through to off-site links, here is the comment by Banksy referred to earlier by reader Sam at the end of a comment thread: // // Whether you agree with it or not, you have to admit it is a bit rich coming from a product of high hype like Banksy. His own work is notable more for its location—on walls or the façades of buildings—than its content.  Continue Reading
Post-Bollocks

Randy Pausch gave good advice to his computer science students at Carnegie Mellon: When you know you are in pissing contest it, get out of it as fast as you can. So in the Pauschian spirit, I offer this delicious cartoon, sent by Mr. Eyeballs as both a free gift and a chastisement. The previous post grew, in some curious way, out of Arty Bollocks, the earlier waltz over artistic pretension. Just how things sidled into corporate greed, is a bit murky. Continue Reading
Art Institutes, Debt & Education

The Art Institutes, the largest collegiate system for design education in the world, began in 1921. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh was the flagship school, a model for the complex which has grown to some 45 schools in North America. It specializes in design: graphic, industrial, game, and related applied art fields that have a chance of leading to—wait for it!—employment. That seems to stick in the craw of some readers. There are dark hints that something unsavory is afoot if [1] it is a for-profit system and [2] Goldman Sachs owns a controlling share in it. Continue Reading
Not Failed, Just Unrealized

BEING AN ARTIST MEANS you never have to say, “I failed.” Think of the advantage that gives artists over the rest of the plodding classes. Artists never have to admit the lack of wit, talent, or stamina needed to conceive of work, realize it and see it through. All they have to do is rummage through their junk pile and declare everything in it “unrealized.” At least that is the drift of “A call for unrealized projects” broadcast by the Agency for Unrealized Projects (AUP), a conceptual scheme devised by artists Julieta Aranda, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Peyton-Jones, and Anton Vidokle in collaboration with London’s Serpentine Gallery. Continue Reading