Pop sculpture and installation artist Claes Oldenburg celebrates his 89th birthday today. This poster is connected to Oldenburg's infamous The Store project (1961) when he decided to subvert the practice of selling art in the the traditional sp… — Pop sculpture and installation artist Claes Oldenburg celebrates his 89th birthday today. This poster is connected to Oldenburg's infamous *The Store* project (1961) when he decided to subvert the practice of selling art in the the traditional spaces of the art gallery, and instead opened his own temporary storefront on the Lower East Side of New York to sell his work. We could call him the father of the pop-art store! Archival image courtesy of MOMA

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

January 28, 2018

I have been in the mode of spring cleaning my office all week (I know, too early), and throwing away old paperwork, cleaning out digital files, prioritizing projects, and rediscovering many books, articles, and student work filed away for later reading. It has been both cathartic to let go of that which no longer serves me, and frustrating to realize I will never have the time to pursue all of the worthy research ideas that I would like to. In many ways, this blog was started eight years ago to test out and "muse" on precisely these kinds of topics. Back then, I certainly had more time to do this sort of thing, but I see now the benefit of going back to the practice of sparking and trying on some of these ideas in short posts meant to trigger and perhaps inspire others to pursue them. I hope to do more of this as I move into this year as I have enjoyed hearing back from readers (sometimes finding a post from many years ago) that they found useful. Sharing concepts in a free exchange of information is both radical and necessary in today's world. Enjoy the links and look for ways to share and spark ideas that will serve others.

"Agnes Martin, Richard Tuttle, and the Line Between"

nybooks.com

"In Puerto Rico, Artists Rebuild and Reach Out"

nytimes.com

"French Art Luminaries Reject Jeff Koons’s Flashy Gift to Paris as a ‘Cynical’ Act of ‘Product Placement’"

artnet.com

"A Documentary Lays Bare the Absurdity of the Art Market"

hyperallergic.com

"CEOs Are Going to Art School to Think More Creatively"

artsy.net

"Ancient Rome’s System of Roads Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps"

openculture.co

"If Liberalism Is Dead, What Comes Next?"

nytimes.com

"Seeing Beyond Basquiat’s Market Value"

hyperallergic.com

"Barbara Kruger: Part of the Discourse | Art21 "Extended Play" (VIDEO)"

art21

"The outsider art fair New York 2018 (VIDEO)"

jameskalmroughcuts

Google's new app has quickly topped the charts, and no one is surprised? Everybody would love to see if they have a painted doppelganger in the world's art museums.

Focus on Tech: Some Initial Thoughts on Google's Arts and Culture Portrait App

January 25, 2018

I am one of those people who have never especially liked having their photograph taken. Maybe it’s the perceived lack of control, or being a child of the analog era when photos were mostly snapshots and amateur photographers lacked access to the technology and skill set necessary to create many multiple images that could be carefully edited and touched up with nifty post-production tools. Imagine a world without visual choice, where the first image taken was the only one that would be circulated or, worse, published and archived for posterity. Wouldn’t you love to see an Instagram feed of unedited selfies taken on the first try and published without the subject’s approval?

In many ways, that is the difference between the selfie culture we see today versus the portrait culture of the past. The element of agency and being both the subject and object of an image is a very new dynamic in the world of visual culture. Admittedly, even I have warmed to taking and posting the occasional selfie. Watching how people have engaged with the new Google Arts and Culture App has been eye-opening to me in this regard. Simple in its premise, but powerful in its outcome, the app instructs users to take a selfie and then be matched (using careful algorithms matching facial dimensions, colour, and composition using a highest degree system) to painted portraits in art collections part of the Google Arts Project.

Image grab from Slate's "Your A Work of Art: Not Necessarily a Beautiful One" making the point that "This may be the app’s secret: It charms because it simultaneously appeals to and deflates our narcissism."

I first took notice of the app when my Twitter feed began to be populated with comments about how the new Google app was making users feel very humble and reflective about their appearance. Most people reluctantly accepted their first matches without much reservation. Some women were amused at how their selfie morphed into a male match, others noted a best match that focused on one over-emphasized facial feature, or worse, matched them to someone much older and/or less attractive. Over the next few days, however, I noticed an uptick in experimentation as users realized that they could generate multiple matches by manipulating the algorithm with different poses, lighting, colours in the background, or even photographing old selfies versus “live” selfies. In other words, control and agency had entered back into the equation, along with the potential for gender fluidity and cross-cultural play. This I found especially telling with younger users who simply rejected anything less than a portrait match they found pleasing.

Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston Churchill (1954) was cause for controversy and a very disapproving Churchill.

Looking back at art history, portraiture has long been utilized by artists to capture something beyond the sitter’s capacity to see with their own eyes. Because portraits were mostly reserved for the wealthy and elite (who could afford or have the status necessary to be painted), the images were mostly made to flatter and immortalize the subject, but they could also be met with surprise or outright disapproval when the artist took license or dared to tell the truth about the sitter. I am reminded here of a fantastic historical reenactment, on a recent episode of The Crown, of Winston Churchill having his portrait painted late in life. The English artist Graham Sutherland was commissioned by both houses of the British government to paint a portrait commemorating Churchill’s 80th birthday. Sutherland, a modern artist, took greater liberties with the task than had been expected and ended up creating a representation that many declared made the great statesman look “dim-witted” and “weak.” The Crown episode focuses squarely on Churchill’s anxiety over the young painter making the portrait, further amplified in both real and metaphorical ways through the storyline of Churchill’s suspicion of modernism and fear of losing control of his health and the Britain he loved. In the end, Churchill’s wife quietly burns the portrait in a private act of disapproval after its public presentation.

The dramatization of Churchill being painted by Sutherland was beautifully executed on a recent episode of The Crown. — The dramatization of Churchill being painted by Sutherland was beautifully executed on a recent episode of *The Crown*.

So the intersection of selfie culture with portrait culture is indeed an intriguing and potentially critical moment, and one that I am still thinking over. To be sure, the biggest criticism of the app to date has to do with its perceived diversity problem. Articles ranging from Mashable’s “The Google Arts and Culture app has a race problem” to TechCrunch’s “Why inclusion in the Google Arts and Culture selfie feature matters” and Digg’s “Is Google’s Arts and Culture App Racist?” raise important questions. The problem, however, with much of the discourse has to do with a failure to understand the role and purpose of portraiture across art history. The painted portrait was not meant to reflect a diversity of peoples, and the very nature of European art history (the largest representative source in the Google Art Project) has been one of a history of erasures and exclusions, especially an underrepresentation of people of colour and other ethnicities. This of course is the burden and difficult legacy of art history that art historians unpack and use to promote critical and engaged visual literacy in the classroom. Unlike the selfie culture of today, which is rooted in the democratization of images and image circulation, the portrait culture of the past was limited and rife with cultural, social, and political stereotypes.

My very first try (using a recent bio picture) yielded an intriguing match-- one that had me going down a rabbit hole of research into an artist I had never hear of.

So what can be gained by this trendy new app? Is it simply appealing to our vanity, or can it be a tool of discovery and engagement? In my own initial match, I was pleasantly surprised to see something in the portrait chosen for me (interestingly, a contemporary self-portrait by a Russian artist named Yulia Sopina close to me in age) that captured far more than a mimetic copy. As one friend commented, “she has your ‘tude. It’s perfect!” I am hoping to find a way to use the tool in future courses and would love to hear from others about how they have interacted with it. If nothing else, we will be reminded once again how much easier it is to manipulate our own image today while discovering a whole new world of painted portraiture from the past.

From one of my favourite new Instagram accounts, TabloidArtHistory: Kim Kardashian, North, & Kanye in their 2014 Vogue spread, and Detail of Velasquez painting Margarita Teresa, daughter of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria (who can be seen … — From one of my favourite new Instagram accounts, TabloidArtHistory: Kim Kardashian, North, & Kanye in their 2014 Vogue spread, and Detail of Velasquez painting Margarita Teresa, daughter of Philip IV and Mariana of Austria (who can be seen reflected in the mirror) in *Las Meninas* (1656).

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

January 21, 2018

Happy (late) 2018! How is it already three weeks into the new year? Like many of you, I took a much needed hiatus over the holidays and had quite an adventure on what should have been a relaxing vacation to New York and the Bahamas. As some of you know through my social media feeds, my husband and I ended up on the ill-fated Norwegian Breakaway cruise that sailed directly through a treacherous bomb cyclone winter storm on the US East coast the first week of January. For over 48 hours on our way back to NYC, we were tossed around by 25-30 foot waves and terrified that our room would take on water (as many other parts of the ship had) as the boat began to tilt wildly from side to side and people genuinely feared for their lives. Here is a video link that assembled a lot of the shared footage. Having survived that ordeal shortly after ringing in the New Year (and thank you to all of the friends and colleagues who reached out to us), I am grateful that we made it back home and determined that 2018 be one of our most memorable years ever. I have many exciting creative projects, travels, and some surprises planned on the horizon, but most importantly I do not want to take even one day on this planet for granted. Life is just too precious and unpredictable. Peace and best wishes as we start the new year! Make it the best one yet.

"Meme Your Monet"

slate.com

"The Case for Spending an Hour with One Work of Art"

artsy.net

"Hashtag Art: In Conversation with Tabloid Art History"

culturised.co.uk

"I Love the New Artforum"

vulture.com

"Visually speaking: 14 podcasts that draw out the history of art"

slate.com

Smarthistory-- Conceptual Art: An Introduction

smarthistory

"The Cosmic Utopianism of Two Fin-de-Siècle Collectives"

hyperallergic.com

"The Outsider Fair Once More Confirms That Art Is Everywhere"

nytimes.com

"Art Explainer 1: The Power to Look (VIDEO"

Chicagoartinstitute

"Whitney Stories: Dread Scott on Badlands Unlimited (VIDEO)"

whitneymuseum

Unknown photographer, Andy Warhol and his Christmas tree in the Factory (1964). — Unknown photographer, *Andy Warhol and his Christmas tree in the Factory* (1964).

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

December 24, 2017

Wishing everyone a peaceful and very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! We will be spending the next couple of days eating, drinking, and being merry (while binge watching The Wire—it is time once again—and catching several new films: The Disaster Artist, Molly’s Game, All the Money In the World and I, Tonya are at the top of my list), and then traveling to New York to take in the sights, sounds, and many art exhibitions that the season has to offer before cruising down to the Bahamas to ring in 2018. Enjoy the links and the make sure to leave some room in your holiday schedule for some art-going and creative pursuits!

"An Illustrated Guide to Arthur Danto’s “The End of Art”"

hyperallergic.com

"13 Artists Give Advice to Their Younger Selves"

artsy.net

"‘Like’ Art: 7 Masterpieces of Social Media Art That Will Make It Into the History Books"

artnet.com

"Showing Balthus at the Met Isn’t About Voyeurism, It’s About the Right to Unsettle"

frieze.com

"J. Paul Getty is a monster beyond belief in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World"

artnewspaper.com

"7 Books That Might Become Your Next Favorite Movie"

vanityfair.com

"A Woman Now Leads the Vatican Museums. And She’s Shaking Things Up"

nytimes.com

"The 50 Best Podcasts of 2017"

theatlantic.com

"Club 57 | HOW TO SEE the 1970s countercultural art scene with Frank Holliday (VIDEO)"

moma

"Brooklyn Museum Artist Talk: Robert Longo and Hal Foster (VIDEO)"

brooklynmuseum

Ed Ruscha, Pay Nothing Until April (2003). Ruscha celebrated his birthday this week, and the Tate Modern (where this holiday-themed work is housed) describes the painting as expressing "a cool, detached world-view in keeping with Ruscha’s conce… — Ed Ruscha, *Pay Nothing Until April* (2003). Ruscha celebrated his birthday this week, and the Tate Modern (where this holiday-themed work is housed) describes the painting as expressing "a cool, detached world-view in keeping with Ruscha’s conceptual works such as his photo-book *(Every Building On) The Sunset Strip* 1966. Roughly the size of a poster that might be displayed in a shop window, the picture’s alpine setting and eye-grabbing lettering call to mind an advertisement for a bargain ski holiday."

Weekly Flipboard Links and Media Round Up

December 17, 2017

As end-of-the-year reflections, inventories, and other assorted lists begin to circulate, along with end-of-semester sighs of relief and a turn to planning for 2018 take hold, I have had several conversations with students (past and present) this week about the value of the intensity and accompanying release that characterizes the end of the term. For academics, the natural cycle of our work life mirrors that of our earlier life as students-- three to four months of highly structured and planned lectures, assignments, exams, deadlines, and grading, followed by two to three weeks of rest and recovery. Rinse and repeat for spring with a longer period of research and individual projects through the summer.

For students, this intensive schedule can feel especially onerous and stressful while in the midst of a term, but what many come to realize is the sweet and satisfying feeling of accomplishment that comes at the end of the semester. I am convinced the pursuit of that feeling is why many of my colleagues choose to stay in the game and essentially build their professional lives around the academic calendar. That feeling is also the one that instills confidence and is hard-won after much sacrifice and perseverance, not only contributing to personal growth, but in many ways necessary for happiness and self-actualization. Unfortunately, however, many students will depart university never fully valuing that fact, and will later find themselves wishing they had learned to appreciate and embrace the hardest aspects of their educational journey. So for those of you slowly recovering from the slog of another semester and clearing the decks for another one on the horizon-- congratulations!-- take a moment to seriously reflect on all of the work and effort you put into your term, and remember that opportunities to push yourself in this way are precious and incredibly important. Enjoy the links, and have a restful week of celebration!