It’s been sixty years since Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton founded The Paris Review, and the storied literary magazine is celebrating the big soixante with a fresh take on beach reading: smashing swim trunks that feature cover art from issues past. Created in collaboration with Barneys New York and Orlebar Brown, the quick-drying trunks are awash in the work of (pictured clockwise from top left) William Pène du Bois, Donald Sultan, Kim MacConnel, and Leanne Shapton. Each pair—limited edition, bien sûr—comes tucked in a Paris Review-branded, waterproof drawstring bag and includes a one-year subscription.

(Image courtesy EarthCam)

Raise your Warhol-themed bottle of Perrier, because Andy would have turned 85 today. We think the artist would have gotten a kick out of one morbid, panoptical take on a birthday party: live-streaming footage from his elaborately landscaped Pittsburgh gravesite. The footage–which is also available in high-definition 16-megapixel and pop art-style formats–is a collaboration among EarthCam, the Andy Warhol Museum, and St. John Chrystostom Byzantine Catholic Church (home to a temporary “ChurchCam” in honor of the birthday boy, who was baptized there). “I think my uncle would have been jealous. He would have said, ‘I should have been at Marilyn’s gravesite filming everything,’” said Donald Warhola, Warhol’s nephew, in a statement announcing the birthday grave webcam. “It pays homage to one of his most famous and controversial projects, the ‘Death and Disaster’ series.”

Ai Weiwei’s “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” (1995-2009)

“I did that piece ["Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn"] truly as a joke. I had three cameras that I brought back to China. And the camera could take, like, five frames every second. And, like most things, I did it quick, no plan. People think everything’s planned, but it was spontaneous. We dropped one and we didn’t get it because the photographer was paying too much attention to this valuable vase. So we had to do another one. We had two of them. Then I forgot about those photos for a while. At that time, there were no galleries, no art. I never thought I would become an artist again, you know? I started collecting old Chinese cultural relics, like jade, bronze, beautiful things. I was a top expert on Chinese antiques. Few people had my skill. That’s what I did in the ’90s. On my résumé, I don’t have a show for more than 10 years. I don’t really have any work. I did my first art show after returning to China only in 2003, in Switzerland. But now those photos have become, like, iconic in a sense. But it’s kind of kitsch, huh?”

-Artist Ai Weiwei in an interview with Christoper Bollen in the August issue of Interview

“In my project Miracles et Cie (2002) I settle my scores with the supernatural. My images are an ironic homage to the touching facet of the history of photography, which has been used to fake the presence of ghosts and spirits: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many crooks used photography’s powers of persuasion to ‘demonstrate’ their paranormal powers. But this work’s critical objective consists of an outrageous reflection on how the current whirlpool of beliefs, cults, rituals, and superstitions has set us adrift. Here, by using conjuring effects, photography becomes the document of the illusion.”

-Catalan artist Joan Fontcuberta, interviewed in Cabinets of Wonder by Christine Davenne (Abrams, 2012)

Pictured: Joan Fontcuberta, “The Miracle of Dolphinsurfing” (2002)

The artist with a study model of the Marina Abramović Institute. (Courtesy OMA)

“In the life of an artist, it’s very important to think of the future,” Marina Abramović has said. “When you die, you can’t leave anything physical—that doesn’t make any sense—but a good idea can last a long, long time.” Her good idea? Purchase a crumbling old theater in Hudson, New York (check!), get Rem Koolhaas and OMA on board for a gut reno (done!), and channel 40 years worth of pioneering performance art into the Marina Abramović Institute for the Preservation for Performance Art, a living archive-cum-laboratory that will explore “time-based and immaterial art,” including performance, dance, theater, film, video, opera, and music. To help achieve that last part, the artist has launched a Kickstarter campaign, where her goal is to raise $600,000 by August 25.

“I feel like I’ve become a brand, like Coca-Cola,” said Abramović of her decision to name the institute after herself. “When you hear ‘Marina Abramović,’ you know it’s not about painting. It’s about performing art, and it’s about hardcore performing art.” Hardcore donors to her Kickstarter effort (those who pledge $500 or more) can receive thank-you gifts such as a tour of the MAI and OMA offices, an eye-gazing experience via webcam, and lunch with the artist, but there’s something for everyone, including an 8-bit Pippin Barr video game version of the institute ($5 donation) and access to live-stream demos of Abramović Method exercises ($25). Our favorite performative bonus is reserved for those who pony up $10,000 or more. They’ll be treated to a life event called “Nothing”: “Marina will do nothing. You will do nothing,” notes the website. “You will not be publicly acknowledged.”
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“Everybody has yellow inside. For us it’s a very spiritual color. It’s something that happens very naturally when we work in the studio, when we are drawing. Everyday we go to work in the room and it’s yellow because of the lights that come in the window. Sometimes in the house of my mother, we take one room and use it as our studio. All our drawings from this time are orange, yellow, red, hot. The night is too cold outside. All the colors you see are how we feel. When you feel the night knocking on your window, you need to be yellow, keep yellow. All the colors you see are improvised, everything we do is improvised. We never know which color we going to put on the clothes or character, it just happens.”

-Brazilian artists Os Gêmeos in an interview with Paper

What’s better than making sandcastles? Watching artists make sandcastles while enjoying summery snacks and refreshments! Our friends at Creative Time are heading back out to Far Rockaway, Queens on Friday, August 9th to host the organization’s second annual artist sandcastle competition. A group of selected artists and their teams will gather on the sand near the Beach 86th Street boardwalk to battle it out for special prizes from esteemed judges. The free-and-open-to-the-public day of fun will kick off at noon, with castle-building starting at 2:00 p.m. A post-awards party is planned for that evening at Rippers.

While you have your calendar out, circle October 25th and 26th, the dates of this year’s Creative Time Summit at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. The freshly expanded conference, titled “Art, Place, and Dislocation in the 21st-Century City,” will bring together artists, activists, students, critics, curators, and other culture vultures for more than 30 presentations by the likes of Vito Acconci, Lucy Lippard, Rick Lowe, and Rebecca Solnit (and maybe you?) as well as on-stage debates, short films, and regional reports by leading curators. A new “pay-what-you-choose” ticket pricing structure ensures that the event will fit your budget. Read more

When the good people at David Zwirner e-mailed us with news of the New York gallery’s fourth annual summer pop-up bookstore, we briefly considered keeping the news to ourselves, so great is our obsession with admiration for many artists in the Zwirner stable (Luc Tuymans! Marlene Dumas! Lisa Yuskavage!). Somehow, we’ve managed to suppress our selfish impulses to let you know that for two weeks only—Monday, July 22 through Friday, August 2—Zwirner will offer up deals galore on a selection of rare and out-of-print books, signed artist catalogues, DVDs, and more. The David Zwirner Pop-Up Bookstore, hosted with ARTBOOK | D.A.P., will be open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and you know we’ll be there bright and early to ensure first dibs on anything and everything related to Michaël Borremans. OK, and we’ll probably hoard all the Neo Rauch stuff, too. Because all’s fair in love and pop-up bookstores.

What would a plastic lawn chair do? That’s the big question for Bert Löschner. The Munich-based artist infuses this bland yet globally ubiquitous piece of outdoor furniture —officially known as the Monobloc—with personality by contorting it into poses that include that of caped crusader (“Superchair“), eager-to-serve butler (“valet“), and hitchhiker. “Like other everyday objects, the Monobloc chair is something we have in mind. A certain un-removable picture,” Löschner has said. “This picture can be used as a canvas.” His work includes a chair on a swing, 24 stacked to resemble a human spinal column, and a meta-moment in which one reclines in Gaetano Pesce‘s famed “Donna” chair. We like the look of “The Dudes” (2011, pictured), a chair pair that may have the makings of a loveseat.

Alexander Calder and Jean Prouvé get a joint close-up in an exhibition at Gagosian Paris. Organized with Galerie Patrick Seguin, “Calder | Prouvé” mixes the biomorphic mobiles and stabiles of the former with the smooth yet strong furniture and architectural projects of the latter. Born three years and an ocean apart, the two met in the early 1950s, became pen pals (although we’re pretty sure they didn’t use that term), and later collaborated on the steel base of “La Spirale,” Calder’s mega-mobile for UNESCO HQ in Paris. Gagosian has created this virtual tour of the exhibtion, on view at its Le Bourget space through November 2: