Fountain The original version of the 1917 urinal Fountain was lost without ever being publicly displayed. He used the pseudonym R Mutt to conceal his authorship when he sent the work to an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. The show’s organisers, among them Duchamp himself, rejected the entry, which led […]
It was the exhibition that everyone seemed so eager to hate: Mega-dealer Larry Gagosian’s Lower East Side “pop-up” space, open through May 23, showcasing sculptures by Urs Fischer inside a former Chase bank on Delancey Street. (Another gallery outpost at 821 Park Avenue is hosting his massive bronze piece, “last supper.”) “How’s Gagmewithaspoon?,” my friend […]
Michael Snow is an unusual case of an artist best known for his least conventionally accessible works. Snow’s legacy will always be defined by in his groundbreaking structuralist films, especially the 1967 masterpiece Wavelength, even as opportunities to experience those works as they were meant to be seen become increasingly rare. (Snow has wryly addressed this […]
The Berlin show is vast, Ai’s largest ever, spanning 32,300 square feet in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Most of the works are new, tracing the time since his relationship with the government went sour ahead of the 2008 Olympics. They also tend to take a more personal tone, playing up (for better or worse) the celebrity status […]
A joyous celebration of ad hoc creativity fills the Duveen Galleries. The revamping of Tate Britain has produced such an atmosphere of understated elegance that one hardly dares breathe for fear of displacing a particle of dust. An air of suffocating sterility has seeped into the displays, which are so tastefully arranged that even the […]
We always knew Ai Weiwei was a fan of Marcel Duchamp. The Chinese artist’s massive bicycle sculptures made reference to both a mode of transport commonly associated with Chinese peasantry, and also Duchamp’s first readymade,Bicycle Wheel (1913), consisting of the front forks and wheel of a bike fitted into a wooden stool. Now the Chinese artist has drawn […]
“I don’t want to tell you this work is about women,” said artist Jordan Wolfson over the phone, “because I don’t think that’s true.” Wolfson, a 33-year-old artist who works in video, performance, and sculpture, was on a lunch break at a special effects studio in Los Angeles where he was developing his latest work, […]
Check out the video of cutting edge Animatronics by Jordan Wolfson at David Zwirner Gallery, NYC. No, we really mean it – check it out and watch the Video, and enlarge it!
“Do you think I’m rich?” asks a male voice. “Yes,” says a female voice. “Do you think I’m a homosexual?” “No.” That exchange is the sole dialogue in Jordan Wolfson’s 14-minute video “Raspberry Poser”, currently projected on massive wall at David Zwirner, and the only clue Wolfson offers to his intentions. That is, if it’s […]
In spite of countless false starts and snowy regressions, it is technically spring in New York now (really!), and it is therefore open season for public art. The city’s parks are quickly filling with public art as outdoor exhibitions open in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. From a reclining giant in Queens and a deconstructed duplicate […]
By 1991, Mike Kelley had emerged as a crucial artist in Los Angeles, at the head of a pack that had pushed into prominence in the previous decade. His riveting sculptures reassembled from ratty stuffed animals, crocheted dolls and other tattered children’s playthings that he scavenged from thrift shops were also generating considerable critical attention […]
From mysterious 30,000-year-old cave paintings to a ‘cathedral of the mind’ by Jackson Pollock, art critic Jonathan Jonesnames his favourite artworks of all time – and where in the world you can see them. What would make your top 10?
From sexy heels trussed and presented on a silver platter to Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde shark, a tour through some of the strangest, most shocking surrealist art around. Check it out.
2017 will mark the 100th anniversary of the day Marcel Duchamp walked into the Society of Independent Artists lugging a porcelain urinal he had purchased at 5th Avenue’s J. L. Mott Iron Works and submitted it as a “readymade” sculpture. Duchamp’s radical and audacious gesture was met, at the time, with shock and indignation—it was literally hidden away behind a screen during the […]
The American Conceptualist Dan Graham has long worn many art world hats. He has produced films and videos, drawings and prints; chronicled rock culture; and collaborated with bands like Sonic Youth and Japanther. But Mr. Graham is perhaps best known for his architectural environments and glass pavilions, which he has been designing since the 1980s. […]
Snow Day!
A Miami painter who destroyed a priceless Han dynasty vase in a “spontaneous protest” at the city’s new art museum claims he thought he was smashing a cheap garden pot. Maximo Caminero said he picked up the ancient urn from an exhibition curated by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei at the Pérez Art Museum […]
An attack on the Chinese artist’s installation in Miami has been condemned as an act of vandalism. Why is smashing art only acceptable if an acclaimed global artist does it? A “protest” at a Miami art museum raises some questions about what exactly art is, now.
David Shrigley admits it’s ridiculous to claim that a 10-metre-high thumbs up in Trafalgar Square will improve society, the economy and the weather – but he has to believe it. “As an artist you have to feel your art makes the world a better place and you have to believe that quite sincerely, otherwise why […]
Remember the kid who climbed on the Donald Judd sculpture at the Tate Modern? Well, her parents have taken to the London Evening Standard to set the record straight. They want the world to know that their daughter, Sissi Belle, was only on the sculpture for a matter of seconds and meant no harm — and that the nine-year-old […]