COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS
Maximal
The artist Bjarne Melgaard is making plans to build a pretty insane-looking house outside of Oslo, in a spot that has courted controversy for what some say would make for an unwelcome blight on a landscape famously painted by Edvard Munch. Designed in collaboration with the architecture firm Snohetta, the house—unofficially known as “A House to Die In”—will be undergoing a permitting process soon, the New York Times reports. Should the world be fortunate enough to usher it into existence, the house will have a “drug room” and giant panthers holding it up. [The New York Times]
The big Leonardo da Vinci biography by Walter Isaacson is getting adapted into a screenplay by John Logan, who wrote the recent James Bond movies Spectre and Skyfall as well as Gladiator and The Aviator, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Leonardo DiCaprio (who played Howard Hughes in The Aviator) will star as the polymathic Renaissance master. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Disrputers
For the New York Times, Hilarie M. Sheets takes a look at six “disrupters” whose work will go show in the New Museum Triennial opening on Feb. 13. As New Museum director Lisa Phillips told the paper, the triennial “isn’t about making art stars but looking at whether there are similarities and affinities across cultures among an emerging generation of artists.” [The New York Times]
Mark Grotjahn declined an award to be given to him at a gala event for L.A. MOCA on the grounds that the list of honorees has not been diverse enough in his eyes. [Los Angeles Times]
The famed Nazca Lines in Peru, an early Land Art project created between 500 B.C. and 500 A.D., were injured with a “deep scar” after a truck driver swerved off the road and drove across them. Experts are still assessing the extent of the damage to the Unesco World Heritage Site, the New York Times reports. [The New York Times]
Minimal
For Pitchfork’s Sunday review, the music writer Marc Masters surveyed La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano, a staple of musical minimalism since the composer started performing it under the aegis of the Dia Art Foundation. [Pitchfork]
In response, the experimental-music record label Frozen Reeds unspooled a Twitter thread revisiting the artist Tony Conrad’s protests over what he called Young’s fraught relationship with notions of authorship. [Twitter]
Profiles
The Art Newspaper talked to Barbara Jatta, the director of the Vatican Museums, about “soft power and contemporary art” under the watch of Pope Francis. [The Art Newspaper]
The Guardian has a profile of Hilton Als, who rocks a serious fur coat in his author photo and holds forth on subjects including running around in the same circles as a teenager as Jean-Michel Basquiat. [The Guardian]
Misc.
In a feature called “Through Our Critics’ Eyes,” Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott writes about his “learn one thing rule”: If you don’t learn at least one thing from any exhibition, then either the exhibition has failed you, or you have failed the exhibition.” [The Washington Post]
In a press release, Andrew Kreps Gallery announced it is now representing Camille Blatrix. [Andrew Kreps]
Better than Super Bowl Sunday, the Atlantic magazine offered up Superb Owl Sunday, a photo essay devoted to birds. [The Atlantic]