NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Banksy goes to the bank

Speaking of Banksy...
via Artnet News, 9/13/06 :

BUSY WEEK FOR BANKSY
Things moved from the ridiculous to the sublime this weekend for U.K. graffiti artist and cultural guerilla Banksy. First, he placed some 500 copies of a doctored version of Paris Hilton’s new CD on record shelves in the U.K., with the CD cover depicting a topless (though credible) version of the socialite-cum-reality-TV star, and featuring Banksy’s own remixes of her songs, given titles such as "Why Am I Famous?" and "What Am I For?" The stunt may have been largely harmless to the unstoppable Hilton -- but copies of the doctored CDs are now being auctioned on Ebay for £300 or more.

The jet-setting Banksy then seems to have crossed the pond to Los Angeles, where he marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York by placing a replica of a hooded and chained Guantanamo Bay detainee in an orange jumpsuit in the "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad" ride at Disneyland. The dummy was on view for more than an hour before the ride was closed to remove it. Banksy is also scheduled to host a "three-day vandalized warehouse extravaganza" in L.A., Sept. 15-17, 2006 -- though details aren’t yet available. For the exact location, check www.banksy.co.uk on Friday.

Taking the Flavorpill

Jeff Mermelstein for The New York Times

David Byrne, top, was among those who attended the "Flavorpilled" book party for Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" at TriBeCa Cinemas in July.

via NYTimes:
Virtually Cool
By CHIP BROWN
Published: September 10, 2006

If you're not reading this on a screen, if you don't have a blog, if your phone is still leashed to a wall, if time has cruelly removed you from the 25-to-34-year-old age bracket beloved by advertisers, you probably missed the book party at the TriBeCa Cinemas in July. The author of the hour was Chris Anderson, who after the drinks entertained the crowd with a simulcast PowerPoint lecture on the topic of his new best seller, "The Long Tail," which describes how the chokehold of mass culture is being loosened by the new Internet-enabled economics of niche culture and niche commerce.

The party was sponsored in part by a small SoHo-based new-media company called Flavorpill, which produces free e-mail magazines and weekly event guides for New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and London. (Soon to come are editions for Austin, Miami, Seattle and Boston.) Flavorpill's number of subscribers has been doubling annually since the company started in New York six years ago, and now its family of 10 digital publications has 355,000 readers and projected revenues of $3.5 million this year. Such is Flavorpill's trend-setting street cred that in some quarters its seal of approval is considered the equivalent of a papal blessing.

"We've been called the Condé Nast of e-mail," says Sascha Lewis, a co-founder.

To whisk up the mood after Anderson's economics seminar, Flavorpill brought in dance-punk disk jockeys, and from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. there was live music from bands your mother has never heard of, unless her iPod is unaccountably stuffed with booty rap by Spank Rock. Flavorpill also put together a "Tap the Tail" promotional CD of cutting-edge tunes, which staff members were handing out at the door — a far cry from the early days when the company's brand-extension missionaries used to chalk the logo on the sidewalks of Union Square.

More than 1,300 people showed up at TriBeCa Cinemas; because the event had been "Flavorpilled" — that is, listed in Flavorpill's New York City e-mail issue No. 318 — a lot of them were what Lewis and his partner, Mark Mangan, call "urban influencers."

Anderson is such a creature himself — a regular reader of Flavorpill San Francisco, the city where he lives and works as the editor in chief of Wired magazine.

"It resonates with me," he said when I asked why he likes it. "Why does anybody read anything?"

On one hand it makes perfect sense that Flavorpill would want to fete a book focused on a component of the company's success. The efficiency with which information can be assembled and distributed on the Internet is the foundation of every digital-content company. Flavorpill created an audience by deftly exploiting a new medium. "In many ways," Mark Mangan says, "what we're doing with the events we list is the same as what Time Out New York, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice and other publications are doing. But if you can't click to a map of where the event is, if you can't forward it to your friends, if you can't send it to your cellphone, is it really that useful?"

On the other hand, part of Anderson's Long Tail thesis is that the Internet is removing bottlenecks between supply and demand and establishing a market where "everything becomes available to everyone." Unlike with archetypal Long Tail businesses like iTunes or eBay, the success of Flavorpill's weekly e-mails has less to do with new digital efficiencies than with the classic distinctions of sensibility. [read on...]

Art:War

Dear Readers: NEWSgrist will be on hold for at least a week while I'm away for a small workshop at the Tate called Art:War...

Artists have always engaged with issues of conflict, whether in an 'official' capacity (e.g. war artists like John Keane) or through more subversive aesthetics (e.g. Banksy's Withus Oragainstus in the Natural History Museum). While scholars have always studied issues of war and peace in relation to their respective disciplines, from International Relations to art history, recent events have given a new urgency to interdisciplinary research in this field. While these intellectual communities share many theoretical and ethical concerns, it is rare that artists and academics are able to debate the issues that arise in the intersection of art and war. With this in mind, the 'Art and Politics' sub-group of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and the Political Studies Association (PSA) are hosting a small workshop entitled Art:War on 15th September, 2006 at Tate Modern in London...

Robert Blanchon Book Launch @ Artists Space

reblogged from Visual AIDS >blog (9/8/06):

Please join Visual AIDS and the Estate of Robert Blanchon for the book launch of Robert Blanchon.

Tuesday September 26, 2006 from 6-8 PM
Artists Space
38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY

Panel will begin at 6:30PM
Gregg Bordowitz
Mary Ellen Carroll
Sasha Archibald

Robert Blanchon (1965-1999) was a conceptual artist whose decade-long exhibition history is marked by a witty, insightful treatment of loss, memory and mortality, and mischievousness concerning the pretenses of the art world and an original treatment of the construction of identity.  Blanchon's interest in the photography - specifically, the materiality of the photograph – did not preclude works in sculpture, video, mail art, text and performance.  Like his predecessors, Paul Thek, David Wojnarowicz, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Blanchon sought relevance beyond the poetics of queer culture.  Indeed, the vulnerability, pathos and humor of Blanchons's oeuvre resonate with anyone who has felt the fragility of being human.  He died at a moment of increasing exhibition opportunities and growing critical acclaim. Blanchon was feverishly productive in his condensed life span and left behind a body of work with unusually lucid themes.

The Robert Blanchon catalogue includes 76 color plates; essays by Gregg Bordowitz and Sasha Archibald; an annotated color checklist of the Robert Blanchon archive; selections of his written art projects and pedagogical works; and a special insert inspired by Blanchon's Untitled (sympathy) series. Published by Visual AIDS and distributed by D.A.P.

The Robert Blanchon Estate Project has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Judith Rothschild Foundation, and The Norton Family Foundation.

In 2003, Visual AIDS, in partnership with the estate of Robert Blanchon, began archiving the work that comprises the Robert Blanchon catalogue. The presentation of Robert's work is rooted in Visual AIDS' mission to ensure the legacy of visual artists with HIV and work to secure their place in art history. Robert, who died in 1999 after working prodigiously as an artist, professor, arts administrator, and provocateur, has always been at the center of those artists whose work was influential, timely, important, and threatened to be forgotten. We present this catalog so that his wide-ranging practice might be contemplated anew. 

For more information, contact Visual AIDS at (212) 627-9855 / info@visualAIDS.org

To view more images by Robert Blanchon visit the Web Gallery.

Please join Visual AIDS and the Estate of Robert Blanchon for the book launch of Robert Blanchon.

Tuesday September 26, 2006 from 6-8 PM
Artists Space
38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY

Panel will begin at 6:30PM
Gregg Bordowitz
Mary Ellen Carroll
Sasha Archibald

Robert Blanchon (1965-1999) was a conceptual artist whose decade-long exhibition history is marked by a witty, insightful treatment of loss, memory and mortality, and mischievousness concerning the pretenses of the art world and an original treatment of the construction of identity.  Blanchon's interest in the photography - specifically, the materiality of the photograph – did not preclude works in sculpture, video, mail art, text and performance.  Like his predecessors, Paul Thek, David Wojnarowicz, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Blanchon sought relevance beyond the poetics of queer culture.  Indeed, the vulnerability, pathos and humor of Blanchons's oeuvre resonate with anyone who has felt the fragility of being human.  He died at a moment of increasing exhibition opportunities and growing critical acclaim. Blanchon was feverishly productive in his condensed life span and left behind a body of work with unusually lucid themes.

The Robert Blanchon catalogue includes 76 color plates; essays by Gregg Bordowitz and Sasha Archibald; an annotated color checklist of the Robert Blanchon archive; selections of his written art projects and pedagogical works; and a special insert inspired by Blanchon's Untitled (sympathy) series. Published by Visual AIDS and distributed by D.A.P.

The Robert Blanchon Estate Project has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Judith Rothschild Foundation, and The Norton Family Foundation.

In 2003, Visual AIDS, in partnership with the estate of Robert Blanchon, began archiving the work that comprises the Robert Blanchon catalogue. The presentation of Robert's work is rooted in Visual AIDS' mission to ensure the legacy of visual artists with HIV and work to secure their place in art history. Robert, who died in 1999 after working prodigiously as an artist, professor, arts administrator, and provocateur, has always been at the center of those artists whose work was influential, timely, important, and threatened to be forgotten. We present this catalog so that his wide-ranging practice might be contemplated anew. 

For more information, contact Visual AIDS at (212) 627-9855 / info@visualAIDS.org

To view more images by Robert Blanchon visit the Web Gallery.

Investing in Creativity...

via Artnet News, 9/6/06:
$50,000 GRANTS FROM "UNITED STATES ARTISTS"

Does the art world trust bureaucrats bearing gifts? You bet it does. A new Los Angeles-based organization called United States Artists has been formed to hand out 50 grants of $50,000 each (totaling $2.5 million), with the winners to be announced on Dec. 4, 2006. It sounds fishy, but it seems to be real -- the organization is underwritten by the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Prudential Foundation and the Anchorage-based Rasmuson Foundation. Executive director is Katherine DeShaw, who formerly headed the Nimoy Foundation's grant program, and program director is Amada Cruz. Only insiders need apply -- the fellowship winners are selected from a secret list of candidates supplied by a secret list of nominators. The program is designed to foster "innovation, ingenuity, creativity and analysis" to help the U.S. retain its "competitive edge." For further details, see www.unitedstatesartists.org.

via United States Artists:
"We have ignition"

Welcome to United States Artists (USA). We are a new organization dedicated to the support of America's finest living artists. After decades of dwindling public support, artists now have a home where they may find significant private funding to ignite the creativity that makes this country great.

USA was launched in the September 2005 with $20 million in seed funding provided by a coalition of leading foundations—Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson—in an act of unprecedented private investment in individual artists and the creative potential of America. Their initial investment enables our organization to pilot the USA Fellows program, awarding unrestricted $50,000 grants to fifty artists each year beginning in 2006.

USA's long-term vision is to create an organization dedicated to the unlimited promise of our finest artists. Our horizon line is not three, five, or 25 years, but rather 100 years and beyond. Building on our base of private funding, our aspiration is to be permanently endowed. [...]

via NYTimes:
New Charity to Start Plan for $50,000 Artists' Grants
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: September 5, 2006

[...] This new charity was spurred in part by a 2003 Urban Institute study, "Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for U.S. Artists," that documented the plight of artists since the mid-1990's, when the federal government abolished many of the grants that the National Endowment to the Arts had made to individual artists amid controversies over works involving nudity, sexuality and other provocative themes.

State and local financing of the arts had also declined, as had foundation support, trends that have started to reverse only in the last year or so.

In any case, most public money goes to arts institutions, not to artists directly. "The chance for an artist to get money through an individual grant is something extremely rare," said Barbara Kruger, an artist working in New York, Los Angeles and, increasingly, abroad.

There is no precise measure of how many grant programs directly support artists. The New York Foundation for the Arts, which itself makes such grants, maintains a database of about 2,900 such programs. The Urban Institute study found that more than $91 million was available to artists, but that two-thirds of cash grants that could be quantified were of less than $5,000. Only 21 percent of grants were of $10,000 or more.

Ms. Gund said the grants from the new charity come at a critical time, when basic costs of living like health costs and rent are rising and public support continues to ebb. "It's a myth that most artists make money," she said. "Most of them don't even get a chance to show, and even if they do, they don't make enough with sales to meet their needs and still have to work teaching or waiting tables or at another kind of job." [read on...]