In Jean-Philippe Delhomme's illustrated world, captions speak as loudly as his expressive paintings of people on the verge of crisis. He being French, perhaps these crises are an existential thing. But this is a new brand of existentialism for sure, custom-made for our consumer society. Delhomme's droll satire exposes the aspirations of highly mobile people looking for just a little something more: To be … Read the full Story >>
On my way to see the Good Design show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) today, I was stopped in my tracks by another show whose space is defined by whorehouse pink walls. Stepping off the elevators onto the third floor, I came face to face with a quartet of famously aggressive posters by graphic designer James Victore; videos of work by … Read the full Story >>
Above: Slide from Walking Piece, 1966. Slide projection, dimensions variable. Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London; Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo; and Yayoi Kusama Studio. © Yayoi Kusama. 24 Photos by Eikoh Hosoe. © Eikoh Hosoe. From Yayoi Kusama, opening Thursday at theWhitney Museum of American Art. Tuesday, July 10 Summer Block Party, 6-9 pm with participating galleries: Anton Kern Gallery, Bortolami Gallery, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Hansel and Gretel Picture Garden, JackShainman Gallery, Zieher Smith Gallery. With music, food trucks and refreshments. … Read the full Story >>
Special Events June 5-9 Magnum Square Print Sale. Signed or estate-stamped, museum-quality, 6x6 inch prints for $100 from over 70 photographers. Online. Info June 7-August 6 Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Ai Weiwei | Hansel and Gretel/Public Space in the Era of Surveillance. Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, NY, NY Info June 7-August 12 16th Annual Celebrate Brooklyn! Opening night: Lake Street Drive, … Read the full Story >>
Looking ahead: In October, The Morgan Library & Museum will open the exhibition, David Hockney: Drawing from Life. The show will focus on his portraits on paper as well as an exploration of his drawing practice. Featuring about 100 drawings, the exhibition will trace a trajectory from Hockney’s early works as a student, to his Ingres-like portraits of the 1970s, and his return to … Read the full Story >>
The Norman Rockwell Museum's Distinguished Illustrator Series opened the winter season with Istvan Banyai: Stranger in a Strange Land, running through May 5, 2013, in Stockbridge, Mass. This weekend Istvan will give a talk about his life and work. To mark the exhibition's opening, Steve Heller wrote, Istvan Banyai is mad. Not angry or despondent, but mad in the transcendent sense—in a perpetual state of creative lunacy … Read the full Story >>
Everyone found it completely pointless, grotesque—practically immoral—to try coupling a cold, inhuman machine with something so profoundly human, which we call ‘art.—Vera Molnar Born in Hungary in 1924, Vera Molnar is one of the first artists to use computers in her practice. Classically trained, she studied art history and aesthetics at the Budapest College of Fine Arts and moved to Paris in 1947, … Read the full Story >>
On Tuesday night MoMA hosted a panel discussion, Charlie Hebdo, Zero Tolerance, and Freedom of Speech. The panelists were journalist, author, and former editor of the Sunday Times Sir Harold Evans as moderator; artist Kader Attia; artist Sharon Hayes; actor and Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi; VICE News editor-in-chief Jason Mojica; author and historian Simon Schama; and commentator, satirist, and architect Karl Sharro. … Read the full Story >>
Satirical artist and commentator Steve Brodner, whose beat is politics, has probably heard or read every statement by the many candidates in this presidential election. This week he gives the lowdown on the Republican nominee Donald J. Trump. Q: Last week, columnist and former speechwriter Michael A. Cohen said that Trump’s speeches are peppered with statements that reflect ideas that exist only in his head. … Read the full Story >>
In an interview for It’s Nice That, Christoph Niemann (1970) said, “A drawing is like when you describe something to a reader in three sentences.” In a few words, the artist/author/animator, who mainly works from Berlin, captured the essence of what is illustration at its best. On Thursday, February 29, he will be in New York for an exhibition of his Photo Graphics at Janet … Read the full Story >>
What is home? Is it a place? An Idea? A state of mind? Ask around and you’ll probably get into the most interesting conversations of your week. Pauline Vermare, curator at Magnum Photos, had the rare opportunity to explore this complex subject through the eyes and minds of 16 photographers who dug deeply into their experiences to convey the inherently intimate and introspective sentiments … Read the full Story >>
On Monday, a 50-foot-long mural in a distinctively Subway Graffiti style was unveiled at Walton Street and East 150th Street in the East Tremont section of the Bronx. If you were to catch sight of it on the fly, you’d think that you had slipped into a time warp. It has the authenticity of the spray-can graffiti that literally subsumed most of New York … Read the full Story >>
How does a “resurgence of interest” get underway? Take Herb Lubalin, for example. During the 1970s and ‘80s, Lubalin, who previously was part of the “mad men” decades in advertising, formed a design consultancy through which he celebrated a vernacular approach to typography. You could say that his anti-Helvetic stance eliminated many design pitfalls that might have sidetracked him in what seems … Read the full Story >>
Q: Originally from [where?] what are some of your favorite things about living and working in [your current locale]? A: I was born in Cologne, studied in different places (Istanbul; at the Bauhaus in Weimar; Linz, Austria) and now live in Passau, South Germany, with my girlfriend and son in a house where I also have my studio. Three rivers, including the … Read the full Story >>
In the summer of 2004, Simon Roberts began a year-long journey across Russia, covering more than 47,000 miles, crossing eleven time zones, and making pictures in over 200 locations. The result is Motherland, a book published this year, and an exhibition opening tonight at Klompching Gallery, in DUMBO. He began in Russia's Far East, in the arctic region of Murmansk, and on the … Read the full Story >>
An exhibition of New York photographs by Christopher Thomas is on view at Steven Kasher Gallery until the end of this week. The Munich-based photographer began shooting his adopted hometown in 2001 and has made extended visits since. Like Alexix de Tocqueville in America during the 1830s, Thomas saw his subject with new eyes, and found majesty in the commonplace, glamor in the mundane … Read the full Story >>
"What happens when a professional is simply at play, free of assignments and left to their own creative whims? In the case of the legendary late designer and SVA faculty member Ivan Chermayeff, the answer is everything from finger paintings to mixed-media collages filled with a wondrously wacky assortment of collected and found objects". SVA archivist Beth Kleber asks this question as she takes a closer look at … Read the full Story >>
Q: What are some of your favorite things about living and working in San Francisco? A: I’m from NYC but currently living in San Francisco. A great thing about San Francisco is that it’s pretty quiet (boring), so it’s easier to stay in and work than it is in NYC. Frankly, I will always be a New Yorker! Q: How and when did you … Read the full Story >>
Opening February 1: The Black Index at CUNY The artists featured in The Black Index build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Using drawing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, they question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and understanding. Their works offer an alternative practice—a Black index—that … Read the full Story >>
In Forest Defenders: The Confrontational American Landscape, photographer Christopher LaMarca has profiled the hidden reality of logging on public lands. An Oregonian with a degree in environmental studies and biology, he spent five years documenting protests against illegal logging in Forest Service-protected wilderness areas. When La Marca learned that the Bush administration had rescinded the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, allowing the U.S. Forest … Read the full Story >>
