September 2009 Archives

Cyrus R. K. Patell and Bryan Waterman announced the lineup for their conference Lost New York, 1609-2009, being held at NYU October 2nd and 3rd, 2009.

Lost New York marks the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage for the Dutch and the 200th anniversary of Washington Irving's legendary reimagining of this New World encounter in his Knickerbocker's History of New York.

A wide array of conference participants, including neighborhood bloggers Bowery Boogie, Ephemeral New York, Flaming Pablum, and Lost City, will explore the dynamics of creativity and destruction, nostalgia and invention, that have for centuries marked efforts to "Do New York," as Henry James advised Edith Wharton. Lectures and panels will address the relationships between literary imagination and the archives, between migrations and displacements, between loss and remembrance, and between preservation and development in the long and storied history of one of the world's greatest cities.

A complete schedule can be found on their website, A History of New York.

Courtney Love at Narciso Rodriguez on Tuesday night. Getty Images

In her trademark gatling-gun styled writing, Courtney Love took to her Twitter account to announced she was attacked on Greene Street Wednesday night. After leaving a party at the Standard Hotel's Boom Boom Room, Love was accosted by a man on Greene Street who snatched her purse, dumped it on the sidewalk, and stomped on the contents. He then grabbed Love by the throat, lifted her off the ground, and said, "Courtney, you better f*cking keep your f*cking mouth shut." He tossed her on the sidewalk, kicking her and screaming, "48 f*cking hours you f*cking whore, no more from you shut your f*cking face from now on," she wrote on Twitter.

There are several theories floating around as to why Love was attacked. Tuesday night she attended a Narciso Rodriguez fashion show at which she allegedly annoyed everyone sitting around her with her running commentary and inability to sit still. Courtney has also been Tweeting non-stop for months about identity thieves using her late husband's social security number to finance and re-finance non-existent property all over the country. Love has named ex-boyfriend Jim Barber and his account Lisa Ferguson among other conspirators.

Courtney Love Attacked in New York [Glorious Noise]

Todd Schorr

• Artist park - Lent Space - opens at Varick and Canal Streets [L Magazine]
• Tania Bruguera offers her audience some blow, cops less than thrilled [Artnet]
• Logan Hicks' new time-lapse video from Nuart'09 [Wooster Collective]
• Kehinde Wiley's hip-hop portraits at Deitch Projects [Village Voice]
• Juxtapoz 15th Anniversary Art Auction featuring Todd Schorr [Juxtapoz]
  

"Blood Head" - Marc Quinn

• 'Re-Exploding Plastic Inevitable'  - Music from 'The Factory' days
• Quinn's $500,000 frozen blood head self-portrait goes on show [Bloomberg]
• NEA reassigns former communications director [ArtReview]
• Philippe Starck begins reality television series [Artforum]
  
• Hirst pencils worth more when left unsharpened [Art Fag City]

Princess Hijab

• New work by Princess Hijab [Wooster Collective]
• Nick Cave on The Death of Bunny Munro tonight @ Upstairs at the Square
• Punk Rock icon and author, Jim Carroll dies at 60 [NME]
• Kanye West makes an ass of himself, again, at VMA's [NY Post]
• Hirst and Mandelson: unlikely allies? [Art Review]
• Memories of daily life in empty storefronts [EV Grieve]
  

"Jonas (Glow Falls)" - Ryan McGinley

• Ryan McGinley's new exhibit of cave photographs opens in London [Vice]
• Yoko Ono's latest called "album of her career" [The Stool Pigeon]
• Fox News bullies NEA into reassigning its communications director [FOX]
• At Last, Artists Harness the Internet [NYT]
• Port Authority seeking proposals for temporary mural at WTC site [NYCDOT]
  

Photographers interested in crazy amounts of exposure need to enter Jen Bekman Projects' international photo competition, Hey, Hot Shot! Hey, Hot Shot! offers the unique opportunity to photographers at all stages of their careers to be evaluated by industry pros as well as the opportunity for unprecedented exposure including the popular Hey, Hot Shot! blog.

All artists are given the chance to have their work viewed by a panel that includes Jen Bekman, photography book evangelist and publisher Darius Himes, Aperture Foundation publisher Lesley A. Martin, former Creative Director of Colors magazine and photographer Stefan Ruiz, and Chronicle Books chairman and CEO Nion McEvoy.

Five winners will receive a $500.00 honorarium and will be included in a two week exhibit at New York's Jen Bekman Gallery as well as inclusion in the online endeavor 20x 200.  In addition, two winners will be selected at the end of the year for two week solo shows at the gallery in 2010.

The entry deadline is Friday October 23 at 8:00PM.  Artists are asked to submit three photographs from a body of work along with a S60.00 handling fee. Full details are available on their website.

"Widespread 2" - Xu Zhen

• Franklin Evans - 2008/2009 < 2009/2010 [Sue Scott Gallery]
• Mark Bradford / Kara Walker [Sikkema Jenkins & Co.]
• Alessandro Pessoli [Anton Kern Gallery]
• Xu Zhen - Lonely Miracle: Middle East Contemporary Art [James Cohen Gallery]

Post-punk pioneers of late '70s No Wave movement, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, will be performing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on October 3rd. The band was founded by Lydia Lunch and James Chance and though short-lived, was one of the most influential underground bands to come out of New York City at the time. Their live shows lasted ten minutes and consisted of thirty-second songs that aimed to destroy what Lunch referred to as the "traditionalism" of punk rock music. Their music was dark, nihilistic and emitted in short, violent blasts of what Rolling Stone referred to as "utterly unendurable" music, while tastemaker critics like Lester Bangs held Lydia and company up as pure genius and a complete deconstruction of the safe cruise control punk and new wave had settled into.

Tickets for the show are $20 and can be purchased through their website.

"Bad Trip" - Karin Crona

• Wounds and Weaknesses by Karin Crona [JPG]
• Artist provides literary makeover for NYC phonebooths [Wooster Collective]
• Paint It Black Panther: Emory Douglas at the New Museum [Village Voice]
• Gagosian to open art book shop on Madison Avenue [Art Review]
• Cost-cutting exhibition strategy: one painting [Artnet]
• Leibovitz in frantic race against debt [NY Post]
  

Iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz could lose her entire portfolio if she fails to meet a deadline to pay back a $24 million loan she owes. Last year she put up her portfolio and several pieces of real estate - including three townhouses in New York City - as collateral in efforts to consolidate her debt. The money, loaned by Art Capital, is due today. It is unclear if she will pay it off, file an extension, or declare bankruptcy.

Leibovitz began her career in the '70s working as a staff photographer for Rolling Stone Magazine which she left in '83 for a job at Vanity Fair Magazine. She has photographed a naked John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the day of his death, a very pregnant Demi Moore, and Queen Elizabeth II. More recently she has taken controversial photos of "topless" pop-tart Miley Cyrus. Spokespeople for both sides had no comment today.

Annie Leibovitz Faces a Loan Deadline [NYT]

We are very excited to learn that next month the new Six By Six Gallery will open at 531 East 13th Street between Avenues A and B. The art gallery is dedicated to small format 6"x6" original works of art and welcomes anyone to contribute. Gallery Submission Packages are for sale at the gallery's website.

The concept of Six By Six is inspired by a yearly event held at their sister gallery in Chelsea, Charmingwall, in which they ask their artists to create original pieces in a 6"x6" format for "The Tiny Art Show."  An all inclusive art gallery is a much needed breath of fresh air in a neighborhood drowning in bars and nail salons.

Today kicks off downtown's annual Howl! Festival under the direction of FEVA, the Federation of East Village Artists. The three day festival, named in honor of the poem by Allen Ginsberg, is a celebration of New York City's East Village and Lower East Side art scene. Though at times the festival seems like a homage to the frenetic, creative energy of the '80s, it's a much needed relief to the frat bar atmosphere of the current East Village scene. Events include Art Around the Park at which Tompkins Square Park gets wrapped in canvas and painted by local artists Saturday and Sunday.

The festival begins this weekend though Howl! Festival sponsored events are scheduled throughout the month. Check their website for scheduled events or get your hands on the Howl! Program Calendar at East Village Howler.

Tonight Anthology Film Archives is screening Jim Heneghan's documentary KISS I Love You. For ten years the filmmaker followed Kiss fans capturing all the idol-worship, disappointments, and rivalries between various fans and tribute bands, and emerged with a film that treats its subject remarkably even-handedly.

It reveals the band who've always said they put their fans first as cold and profit-hungry, but more importantly shows a remarkable devotion among fans to the self-proclaimed "hottest band in the land". It's an affectionate portrait of some of the faithful who turned fandom into a lifestyle, even a career - and of the not always gratifying consequences when the worshipers and the worshiped cross paths.

If you are one of the few people left in the city this weekend check out the final viewing of Joshua Liner Gallery's Summer Group Exhibition which runs through September 5, 2009. The exhibition showcases 24 artists including gallery regulars and emerging artists. Artists include:

Candice Tripp, Chloe Early, Cleon Peterson, Damon Soule, Dave Kinsey, Evan Hecox, Greg Simkins, James Roper, Joe Sorren, Jud Bergeron, Kenji Hirata, Pat Rocha, Robert Hardgrave, Ryan McLennan, Shawn Barber, Stanley Donwood, Stella Im Hultberg, SUB (Tony Curanaj), Sylvia Ji, Tat Ito, Tiffany Bozic, Travis Louie, Tristram Lansdowne and ZAnPon.

In his continual effort to trade a benign, white-washed version of New York City for tourist dollars, Mayor Bloomberg took the liberty of removing graffiti from the buildings that surround the newly refurbished High Line park. In November of 2008, a NYC based conceptual artist hand-painted a 7'x5' mural of his take on the iconic 'I ♥ New York' symbol to celebrate the refurbished High Line. He writes on his website:

"This painting was at once homage to Highline's graffiti and street art as a protest to the rumored erasure to come before the public opening of the Highline Park."

The mural and all nearby graffiti were painted over in the Spring of 2009 despite the wishes of an architect associated with the project to keep it. An article earlier this year on Gothamist quoted him as saying:

"An architect associated with the Highline rehabilitation tells our source, 'We fought to save it but the mayor and the Parks authority have a zero tolerance policy. Really really sucks...I just heard from the director of planning at the Friends of the Highline. He says that the Highline organization does not consider itself responsible for protecting the historic graffiti that adorns the buildings adjacent to the highline. He also said that the mayor's office made private decisions with the property owners without consulting the public.This unilateral decision is troublesome. I hope you agree with me that they should have run public conversations about whether to preserve any of this stuff.'"

Of course the graffiti and street artists aren't the only ones who have to worry about offending the High Line crowd. A billboard advertisement for Armani Exchange featuring a woman clawing at a 30-foot crotch was quickly replaced after the park's opening. And we won't even get into the porno-riffic Standard Hotel.

The original 'I ♥ New York' piece along with some then and now photos of the High Line park can be viewed on the artist's website.