COURTESY CREATIVE COMMONS
High Profile
Scott Rothkopf, who curated the just-opened Laura Owens show at the Whitney Museum, holds forth with a Q&A in Garage magazine on the exhibition’s 663-page catalogue. Chief among its many interesting attributes: the cover for each one of 8,500 copies bears a unique silk-screen handmade in Owens’s studio. [Garage]
Nancy Princenthal paid a visit to disparate events during the first week of Performa for the New York Times. Among her favorites of the performance-minded biennial were a “quietly grave, thoroughly devastating” reading by Teju Cole, a piece by South African sculptor Kemang Wa Lehulere, and William Kentridge channeling the Dada expressionism of Kurt Schwitters. [The New York Times]
Judgments
Street-art enthusiasts rejoice! As reported in the Guardian, “A jury has ruled that a real estate developer broke the law by destroying a swath of graffiti art in New York City, in a verdict that could provide legal protections for street artists across the U.S.” At issue was the legendary amassing of graffiti on the 5Pointz building in Queens, which was destroyed by a developer under the cover of night. [The Guardian]
Art therapists are uncertain about the advocacy of Karen Pence, wife of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. The Indy Star reports, “Some art therapists at the annual American Art Therapy Association meeting in Albuquerque questioned whether Pence should be allowed to promote their profession, arguing that some policies of Vice President Mike Pence’s administration do not mesh with art therapy’s code of ethics.” [The Indy Star]
Shows
In Washington, D.C., a gallery show by David X Levine adapts a surprising subject to a blocky, minimalist format for a fantastic series of drawings: Giotto’s famous frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. “In this post-Renaissance firmament,” reads a Washington Post review, “everything is hard-edged and Euclidean. Yet Levine still conveys the wonder of creation.” [The Washington Post]
The Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Broad in Los Angeles is hot, hot, hot. The stars of the show are six “infinity rooms,” with mirrors reflecting the soul of a nation: “For Kusama,” Janelle Zara reports for the Guardian, “the infinite fields of light meant the dematerialization of the body becoming one with the universe; for most ticketholders, however, it’s an awesome selfie.” [The Guardian]
“Parisian art galleries aren’t renowned for their decadent party spirit, at least not on weekday afternoons,” writes the New York Times. “But the Cartier Foundation was doing its utmost to get into the groove” in the service of a Malick Sidibe show that has become a toast of this year’s Paris Photo week. [The New York Times]
Shaken, Not Stirred
William the Hippo, among the most famous hippos in the art world, will be the the subject of a 100-year anniversary fete since having been acquired by the Met in New York. Later this month a tribute weekend will feature events as well as “a William-inspired cookie and cocktail.” [The Art Newspaper]
Controversy
Not long after rising in defense of a bedeviled New York building by Philip Johnson, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne makes a case in support of preserving another postmodern landmark on the chopping block: Helmut Jahn’s 1985 Thompson Center in Chicago. “Many of the elements of this preservation drama,” Hawthorne writes, “are depressingly familiar: building by important architect approaches middle age; falls out of fashion; suffers from deferred maintenance; begins as a result of deferred maintenance to lose whatever charm or verve it once had; falls further out of fashion; becomes demolition target.” [Los Angeles Times]
The Paris Review has a story of “how Picasso bled the women in his life for art.” After tracking a litany of family troubles through different generations of the Picasso clan, Cody Delistraty, the writer, the proffers, “It is curious then that a new exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Paris . . . called ‘Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter’ is full of heartfelt wood sculptures and paper cutouts Picasso made . . .” [The Paris Review]
Hands
The Seattle Times has a brief video profile of Camille Jassny, an artist with “low vision” who makes art by touch more than sight. “My hands are becoming more of my eyes to me,” she says. [The Seattle Times]
In the Paris Review, Chris Kraus writes about a book much to her liking. “Kathy Acker was the most intentional of writers, but paradoxically, while Blood and Guts propelled her mid-1980s commercial breakthrough, it was her least intended work. She composed Blood and Guts in fragments, in her notebooks and as drawings, over five years. . .” [The Paris Review]