art

With Dallas awash in Shepard Fairey murals, it’s time to get ready for the next stop on your Southern U.S. street art tour! Atlanta’s High Museum of Art is now putting the finishing touches on its major KAWS exhibition. Opening next Saturday, February 18, “KAWS: Down Time” will be the beloved Brooklyn artist (né Brian Donnelly)’s largest show of new work to date and offers visitors the opportunity to watch him paint a 22-foot-high, site-specific mural in the lobby. A jazzy 24-foot-long triptych will invigorate the museum’s atrium. Meanwhile, curator Michael Rooks has marshaled an impressive gallery installation highlighted by a grid of 27 tondo paintings, like the 2011 Sponge Bob-meets-a giant flower pillow canvas that in November set a new world auction record of $188,500 for the artist at Takashi Murakami‘s “New Day: Artists for Japan” charity sale at Christie’s. The auction took place just days before the High installed KAWS’s monumental 2010 sculpture “Companion” (pictured) on its piazza. “KAWS has created a new order of American Pop,” says Rooks, who joined the High in 2010 from New York’s Haunch of Venison gallery. “His work is uncannily familiar but foreign at the same time, like in a dream, and it unites the often distant worlds of fine art and youth culture.”

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“The audience was made to suffer. At one performance the only person allowed to sit was Duchamp. He said, ‘I am very old, and I cannot stand, please let me sit down.’ I thought, ‘Maybe it’s a trick. But then again, he was very old.’ I think Duchamp went to everybody’s performances. ‘Nekropolis I’ ended with us all becoming mice, dressed in burlap bags. We crawled out into the audience slowly; we couldn’t see. Then we were supposed to just drop somewhere and not move until they went home. According to the story I wound up on the feet of Duchamp. But I couldn’t see who it was. It’s a good story, but as time goes by you wonder, ‘Did this really happen?’”

-Artist Claes Oldenburg recalls for Carol Kino what actually happened at the Happenings, in an article published in today’s New York Times. A critic writing in 1962 described “Nekropolis I” as enjoyable for “the heavy slow clamor of these bulky creatures crawling and messing around in that bulky ‘environment’ of burlap, paper, paint, and other assembled junk.” Oldenburg was singled out for having “made wonderful nondescript jungle sounds and heaved his considerable weight from mound to mound like a natural denizen.”

Pictured: Lucas Samaras, left, and Oldenburg in a scene from “Nekropolis I,” from 1962. (Photo Claes Oldenburg; All rights reserved Robert R. McElroy/VAGA, NY)

You may have considered either 2010 or 2011 to have been the year(s) that popular street artist Banksy possibly hit his career high, becoming a near-household name with his documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop and then, later, its Oscar nomination. However, with the 2012 Olympics soon arriving in his native England, some are speculating that this could be Banksy’s most prolific year. As such, spotters are on the lookout and they have recently found perhaps the first piece by the artist this year. Though it’s certainly difficult to verify such things, given that the artist is keen to maintain his mysterious recluse mystique, most it seems are considering this to be the first real deal of the year. Here are some details:

It appears to have all of the hallmarks of a real painting by the artist and would be the first new year offering by Banksy. 2012 the Olympic year is expected to be a big year for the artist as all eyes are now focused on the capital.. The stencil turned up on the corner of an office building on Oval Street in Kentish Town (near Camden Town) and many followers of the street artist have already identified the painting as a Banksy. It possesses all of the his irreverent stencil features including a distinctly political statement.

Prada has teamed with two of its favorite collaborators to present an ephemeral museum experience in Paris. Puckish Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli and AMO, the architectural think tank-cum-consulting arm of Rem Koolhaas‘s OMA, are the minds behind “24 h Museum,” which opens Tuesday, January 24—and closes 1,440 minutes later. The project will transiently commandeer the Palais d’Iéna. Designed by Auguste Perret between 1936 and 1946, it currently houses the French Conseil Économique, Social, et Environnemental. What Vezzoli and AMO have in store for the historic property remains anyone’s guess, but they’ve picked a fetching Pepto-Bismol pink for the identity of their pop-up “architectural intervention,” which now has official Facebook and Twitter accounts. According to Vezzoli, who has worked with everyone from Gore Vidal to Lady Gaga on a string of genre-straddling meta-spectacles, the art in 24 h Museum “will dangerously resemble advertising tools.” Meanwhile, AMO is fresh from another Prada project. The OMA offshoot designed the palatial-mod sets for the house’s fall 2012 menswear show, held Sunday in Milan. Audience members surrounded a grand expanse of carpeting, a woolly collage of red, white, and black piles dotted with geometric flower shapes. Above them hung a half dozen massive chandeliers, illuminated by 300 neon tubes.

We’re sorry to start your morning out on a gloomy note, but sometimes the news just plays out that way. Yesterday, Georgetown University‘s Center on Education and the Workforce published a report entitled “Hard Times,” a look at the employment prospects, or lack there of, college and graduate school students face upon graduation. While there’s been plenty of talk about the national 9% unemployment rate across the board among all graduates, the study breaks down the data by a variety of majors, analyzing just how difficult a time they’ll have finding a job and how much, on average, they’ll wind up making. It’s a fascinating report, though if you are a student in any sort of creative field, the news is, as expected, much more bleak. When broken down by majors in the arts, those seeking a major in design face an 11.8% unemployment rate. That’s eclipsed by fine arts majors (12.6%) and those in film, video and photography programs (12.9%), but it gets particularly grim when it comes to architecture, which ranks at the top for unemployment, coming in at a staggering 13.9%. Granted, none of that’s new, as we’ve been writing about students rethinking architecture programs since 2008, and about how impossible the post-school prospects have been in the proceeding years. You’d expect and/or hope that things had gradually improved at least a little over these long four years, but apparently that just isn’t the case yet. Here’s a bit from the report:

…majors that are closely aligned with occupations and industries in low demand can misfire. For example, unemployment rates for recent college graduates who majored in Architecture start high at 13.9 percent and due to its strong alignment with the collapse in construction and housing, unemployment remains high even for experienced college graduates at 9.2 percent.

You can read the full report, here (pdf).

Stimulation is always in store with the Guggenheim’s annual Hilla Rebay lecture, an endowed program named for the Strasbourg-born baroness and artist who made her mark as Solomon Guggenheim’s art advisor and curator. The twenty-fourth annual lecture is set for the evening of January 11 (admission is free, but get there early to stake out a seat) and has a distinct design angle, as Tom McDonough, associate professor and chair of art history at Binghamton University, will discuss the prominent role of typography in contemporary art. “The Artist as Typographer” will highlight the work of artists such as Dexter Sinister (the design and publishing collaborative’s 2010 unpronounceable glyph, “A skeleton, a script, or a good idea in advance of its realization,” is pictured at right) Shannon Ebner, and Janice Kerbel. Learn more here.

We hope you had a nice long holiday weekend, but now it seems time to get back to normal (or at least a slower version of normal until things really get back to cooking next week). To help you adjust, here’s some miscellany to catch you back up on what’s been going on of late:

Ivanka Trump was likely saved some negative buzz by having a controversy pop up right before the weekend. Designer Derek Lam has accused Trump of stealing the design for one of his wedge shoes for her own line of wedges, issuing a cease-and-desist in the process. The designer says it’s a flat out copy, but Trump has fired back, arguing that the style has been used across brands for years and isn’t Lam’s sole (puns!) creation. “There is nothing iconic about the appearance of the Lam sandal,” a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. Now it’s time for the lawyers to duke it out.

On a sad note, the famous architect who helped popularize modernism and prefabricated housing, Andrew Geller, passed away on Christmas Day, reportedly of kidney failure. He was 87. The NY Times obituary is a good summary of Mr. Geller’s storied career, but if you have the time, we highly recommend reading Alastair Gordon‘s touching piece about the life and work of his close friend.

The battle between Federal Emergency Management Agency and the University of Iowa over buildings that were destroyed during a 2008 flood (including a depressingly now-unusable Steven Holl structure), continues unabated. The university wants to use FEMA’s rebuilding funds to move their art museum to higher ground, both to keep the art safe and to allow them to get said art insured, whereas FEMA only wants to provide funding to rehab the damaged museum (which would render insurance on the art collection impossible). In this latest round, the university has provided FEMA with more information and now is preparing itself for another long wait to hear back.

Finally, Frank Lloyd Wright‘s Fallingwater has now entered the iPad age, with the launch of its own app, offering visitors or architecture fans from afar, to tour the house and learn all its many facts and figures. Here’s the promo video:

There are some documentaries that seem to benefit from what suddenly happened to their already-interesting subject matter during the time the film was being shot. We’re thinking Wilco’s unexpected break-up while I’m Trying to Break Your Heart was being made, or Julius Shulman passing away at the same time as the releasee of Visual Acoustics. This time, it just happened to be director Alison Klayman being at the right place at the right time in making a documentary about artist Ai Weiwei, just as he was entering a very difficult 2011, which also turned him into a household name. The first trailer for Klayman’s documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, has now just been released:

There are plenty of interesting bits and pieces going on outside of architecture as well so far this week, so let’s commence:

After four months of a lockout of unionized art handlers at Sotheby’s, things still don’t seem to be progressing toward stability. According to a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the lockout has now cost the auction house $2.4 million in fees ranging from temporary employees to extra security. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the company just gave its CEO, William Ruprecht, a $3 million raise. Union representatives for the art handlers are quick to point out that their entire contract dispute totals $3.3 million.

In Washington DC, the Smithsonian has reportedly hired Wolff Olins to help in a major rebranding. The main thrust of that effort is set to be the roll out of a new tagline next year: “Seriously Amazing.” The Washington Post reports that the organization has thus far paid $1 million “for research and creation of the slogan.”

Speaking of rebranding efforts, the always great Brand New blog has filed its own year end list, starting with their picks for the very worst identity changes in 2011. Unfortunately, it seems to have been written before State Farm unveiled their new logo.

And finally: so much for the potential of the Tate possible eschewing corporate sponsorship from British Petroleum following a full year of protests (and now likely more to come in 2012). The museum has renewed their contract with BP, telling the BBC, “The fact that they had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.”

Shortly after watching a flock of ten epoxy stone and patinated bronze sheep designed by François-Xavier Lalanne rocket to a new auction record of $7.5 million (that’s $6.6 million, plus commissions) on Saturday afternoon at Christie’s in New York, we were sure it had all been a dream—an ill-timed seasonal mix of dodgy eggnog, the Rockefeller Center tourist mob, and pre-nap sheep counting ($1 million, $2 million, $3 million…). But the auction house and our trusty notebook have confirmed that it actually happened, with the ovine sculptures accounting for a good chunk of the $11.3 million total for Christie’s sale of 20th century decorative art and design.

A trio of Lalanne lots came late in the sale, immediately following a Ron Arad table and a Greg Lynn blobwall for which there were no takers. In the saleroom, private dealer Guy Bennett, bidding on behalf of someone on the other end of his cell phone who he referred to only as “Sir,” beat out phone bidders for a single Lalanne lamb, paying $122,500 (all prices include commissions) for the 1997 work, which was estimated to sell for between $20,000 and $30,000. A patinated bronze bird didn’t fly past it’s high estimate when a phone bidder snapped it up for $170,500. And then came the sheep. As representatives of the seller, Japan’s Tateshina Open Air Museum, looked on gleefully, Bennett (in constant communication with the aforementioned Sir) and a phone bidder gave the room—and auctioneer Philippe Garner—a tennis match, as their bidding war quickly sent the price beyond the $900,000 high estimate to $2 million (awed silence), $4 million (raised eyebrows), and $6 million (audible gasps), until Bennett won the flock for a hammer price of $6.6 million. He promptly tucked his paddle under his arm and left the room, having ensured a good night’s sleep for one deep-pocketed collector.