Tilda Swinton performs Cornelia Parker’s “The Maybe” at MoMA via BLOUIN ARTINFO
Tilda Swinton’s narcoleptic performance of Cornelia Parker’s “The Maybe” will happen spontaneously six more times this month at unannounced locations within the MoMA.
Personally, I think this sort of spontaneous napping should become a sort of critique of unimaginative or overly subjective art shows: I’m thinking of doing “The Maybe” at a few art openings here and there– and whenever I drop in to the New Museum–I’m thinking we need some flash mob maybe’s.
Perhaps we all go out to Dia Beacon and maybe it up in the midst of all that minimalist/conceptual cannonized dry-ass religiously guarded art history.
I’d like to maybe in front of every Rob Pruitt ever made in China.
• The art world was appalled by a recent decision of the Ontario Conservation Review Board which deemed that an obscure, yet academically lauded, bit of land art had no “heritage value to the ‘community” because it is out of the way and privately owned. The cultural think tanks are all on board with ways to perserve it and we predict that it will soon be properly owned and tickets will be sold to see it and coffee will be sold nearby:
Shift in heritage: Richard Serra sculpture has uncertain future: Micallef Shawn Micallef,The Star
“The closest thing southern Ontario has to Stonehenge is Shift, a sculpture by Richard Serra in a King City farmer’s field. Serra is a superstar artist whose work is worth millions of dollars but Shift remains relatively obscure. Though many places would envy our big Serra, last month the Ontario Conservation Review Board decided not to support King Township’s request that Serra’s work be protected under the Ontario Heritage Act, so its future remains uncertain.”
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• Someone wrote the crucial annual Damien Hirst/plagerism exposé:
• A new artwork by a hated person proved so unworthy of note that it got lots of angry press:
Glenn Beck Makes Really Bad “Piss Obama” Artwork hyperallergic.com
“Three years ago, New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz challenged Glenn Beck to curate two exhibitions, one of work he disapproved of, another of work he liked. Beck ignored the offer. But this …”
Glenn Beck’s Obama Pee Stunt Shows He’s Still in Populist Huckster Game Michael Moynihan,The Daily Beast
“Submerging an Obama doll in fake urine may have been a bid for attention, but out of the limelight the former Fox News host’s been building an empire that goes beyond right-wing paranoia to TV network TheBlaze, a $100 million radio deal, and 10-dollar bags of chocolate pecans.”
Yoko Ono Unveils Her Ridiculously Raunchy Opening Ceremony Menswear Line by Ann Binlot, Artinfo
“Opening Ceremony unveiled its menswear line with Yoko Ono today, based on a series of drawings she created for John Lennon as a wedding present in 1969. The items in the 52-piece collaboration, “Fashions for Men: 1969-2012,” are pretty raunchy.”
First a big drunken asshole sexually harasses her.
Rebuffed, he taunts her obscenely.
Doused with her wine, he threatens her.
Then when she strikes out in fear (um, admittedly, she punched him in the face while holding her wine glass…) she’s arrested.
Then they drum up charges based on her carrying a small scissors that, as we all know she uses for her work. (I mean, like: duh!)
Then she gets strip searched and harassed some more.
Then THEY CONVICT HER and make her wait forever for her sentencing.
Meantime she’s in a foreign country where she has no connections and does not know the rules; her english is not top-notch; they put her in holding for three days; and she can’t call anyone because she doesn’t remember anyone’s telephone number by heart.
She also could not talk to the press, could not defend her good name, could not make clear how badly she needed help, nor explain exactly what her justifications were.
Her sentencing has now been moved to November 15th.
What’s the take away? When in England, never make a huge drunk angry no matter how angry he makes you. If he threatens you, wait till he takes his weapon out and messes you up. And put your glass down; it’s all fun and games until someone puts an eye out.
Read her harrowing tale and reach out to her here.
Everybody Has a Sticker on This Banana! Graphic by Cat Weaver :)
Following up on the Velvet Underground v The Andy Warhol Foundation story, Hollywood Reporter speculates similarly to The Art Machine that the famed fruit’s copyright may belong to the record label.
Hollywood Reporters’s Eriq Gardner, wondering why the Velvet Underground hasn’t used a more fail-proof strategy of claiming the copyright for themselves (instead of opting to claim trademark protection on an image in the public domain) says,
“According to the facts in record, MGM Records paid both the band and Warhol $3,000 to furnish the image for use on the 1967 album cover. If the record label paid the money as a work-for-hire agreement, the true “author” of the image, under the law, would be the record label. We asked Universal Music Group, the seeming successor to MGM Records, to comment, but so far, we haven’t heard anything.”
It is an interesting speculation and one we may wonder about: is MGM silently planning its own little coup? And, if so, was it inspired by the Velvet’s bold but transparent strategies, or by press speculation about the Warhol graphic being a “work for hire?”
Or, maybe MGM has secret plans prompted by questions from sites like Hollywood Reporter asking them questions about the graphic? How meta would that be?
“Sources” told the New York Post that the Metropolitan museum of art is housing, somewhere in it’s dark nether chambers, some not-so-great works that they’d rather the world didn’t see. Awkward.
So how’d it get there?
Well, Carrie Rebora Barratt, the Met’s associate director for collections and administration told the Post that the museum will sometimes take lesser works from donors, in order to secure a work they want. But she intimated that the donors would be made to understand that the “unsolicited” works “may have to go into storage.”
I believe this is common practice, actually, and hope to unearth some more info on these and other hidden treasures real soon.
There are those, who, like the ever gracious Matthew Collings, think that street art is for punks:
“Do you like adolescent entertainment? Do you have the mentality of a teenager? Do you find Cézanne a bit overrated? If the answer is yes, yes and yes, then I don’t know what to do with you. You are a childish philistine literalist. Get down to Bonhams (one of the world’s oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques) next Tuesday for their first-ever dedicated sale of “street art” – this is the experience for you.”
~ Matthew Collings
And then there are those who agree.
Also there are those who don’t give a shit.
Hanksy, who’s debut show at the Krause Gallery was, according to the gallery, a great success says,
“The internet and the general public know me as Hanksy. Some call me a street artist, others call me a bad pun. I take iconic images from the UK street artist Banksy and mash it up with a reference from Academy Award winning actor, Tom Hanks.”
Joshua Harker seems like a sweet guy, so I’m glad his Kickstarter project, Crania Anatomica Filigre: Me to You, got 77,000 dollars worth of “backing” —but, honestly, he beat the system.
Kickstarter is supposed to fund “projects” and is therefore not to be used for “for profit” business endeavors. Yet one of it’s most successful “projects” to date is, in all honesty, just a store.
This “3rd most funded Arts project ever” was touted as a way “to help get [the arist’s]work seen & collected by more people.”
“The idea is to offer my work for a limited amount of time directly without the extraneous exhibition costs & markups…a sort of pre-release.”
“Backers” received sculptures in return for, money.
Heart on his sleeve, collector, writer, and entrepreneur Adam Lindemann tells Sotheby’s Alex Rotter, that, although he sold it for a timely world-wide record price of almost $24 million dollars, he “misses the hanging heart.”
In 1966, when, then producer and manager, Andy Warhol created and signed the now famous banana graphic for the Velvet Underground’s debut album, copyright laws were different. An unregistered copyright could result in a loss of copy rights. Apparently by the time the album, The Velvet Underground & Nico appeared in 1977, Andy Warhol who never did register the logo, did not hold intellectual property rights to it.
What is more, he was paid for the design by the record label, which can mean that the banana was actually a work for hire. In that case, the copyright would have belonged to the Velvet Undergound’s label. But they never registered it either.
Although they disbanded in 1972, Lou Reed and John Cale say they have continuously used Warhol’s banana in marketing and promotion for various VU brand items and to promote their 1989 re-union tour and record, Songs for Drella, (their tribute to Warhol). This means that they may hold a common law trademark.
Indeed, Reed/Cale claim the image is indelibly attached to the band’s brand and is instantly recognized by the public to be an imprimatur of the Velvet Underground.
According to the band:
“The symbol has become so identified with The Velvet Underground … that members of the public, particularly those who listen to rock music, immediately recognize the banana design as the symbol of The Velvet Underground”
Their current trademark and unfair competition lawsuit against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts (AWF), filed on Jan 11, 2012, accuses them of illegally leveraging copy rights to the image by licensing it to third parties (Apple, for one) “in a manner likely to cause confusion or mistake as to the association of Velvet Underground with the goods sold in commerce by such third parties.”
The AWF never registered the banana either. And since they have published the image many times without any official right to it, Reed/Cale claim that the AWF have “no copyright interest” in the banana, and that it is, in fact, in the public domain.
Suggesting that, with so many graphics to choose from, The Andy Warhol Foundation can only be using the banana to capitalize on its association with The Velvet Underground, the band is seeking an injunction against the AWF, to force them to cease licensing it to third parties. Reed/Cale are also demanding “unspecified damages” and a share of the profits made by the AWF from any past or ongoing licensing deals.
The suit also demands a declaration that the Warhol Foundation has no copyright interest in the banana.
The Art Machine 