Politics

  • NYC art fairs seeking PR help from city

    From today’s newyorkbusiness.com:

    Art fairs seek more city marketing aid

    Some organizers of the upcoming art fairs running Feb. 22-26 say the city could do more to promote the event.

    The two main fairs, The Art Show and The Armory Show, recently scheduled their events at the same time, in an effort to create a major art week in the city. A number of smaller fairs will take place as well. Executives at the Art Show are trying to get Mayor Bloomberg to open their show at the very least.

    “In the art world, things are more event driven then ever before and New York needs to be promoted now that we have so much competition from London and Miami and Switzerland,” says Linda Blumberg, executive director of the Art Show. “It’s really important that the city take on ownership of this.”

    The city did help The Armory Show secure its new venue at Pier 94 for that week. And NYC & Co. banners advertising The Armory Show and a smaller fair called Scope, will go up this week.

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  • Michael Rakowitz at Lombard-Freid Projects

    michael-rakowitz-figure.jpg

    Michael Rakowitz
    Headless Male Figure (Kh. IV 112) (Recovered, Missing, Stolen Series), 2007
    middle eastern packaging and newspapers, glue
    9.65 × 4.72 × 2.76 inches

     

    Michael Rakowitz’s latest show, at Lombard-Freid Projects, deals with the destruction of Iraq’s cultural treasures. Part of the project is an attempt to reconstruct the archaeological artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in the aftermath of the American invasion in April 2003. They are made from Middle Eastern food packaging and Arabic newspapers found in Arab communities in America, I believe primarily in New York and Chicago.

    It also has information about the story of Donny George, the former Director General of the Museum. New York Magazine has a profile of him in the latest issue. He now lives on Long Island and teaches at Stony Brook. He moved after his children received death threats. Two of his children, Marian, 21, a medical student, and Steven, 23, a computer scientist, are in Damascus, as the US government wouldn’t give them papers to come to America.

    The University of Chicago has more information including a complete database of the Museum’s holdings before 2003.

    I first heard of Michael Rakowitz via his paraSITE project for providing temporary shelter for homeless people.

    [photo from the gallery’s website

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  • Official portraits

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    Chancellor Schröder’s portrait by Jörg Immendorff

    simmie-knox-clinton.jpg

    Bill Clinton’s portrait by Simmie Knox

    I think we can argue that the Germans are a bit more adventurous when it comes to official portraits. Chancellor Schröder’s portrait is by Jörg Immendorff. This English translation of an article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes it.

    Niklas Maak has had a look at at Jörg Immendorff’s official portrait of ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The portrait, executed by the ailing artist with the help of assistants (see our features on Immendorff here and here), has Schröder looking gold-plated: “Never has a chancellor’s portrait looked so emperor-like, so Bismarckian, and immensely powerful as in Immendorff’s Schröder. Schröder issued in new policies and new images, the portrait announces, showing not the man but the icon, the iron media chancellor, the ruler transformed as image. Yet the picture has some peculiar elements and an unparalleled iconographic programme, as if Schröder’s chancellorship needed explaning. A horde of monkeys cavort round his shoulders. Immendorff says he painted them as an homage to the chancellor, who ‘did a lot for artists.’”

    [Schröder image from faz.net and Clinton image from simmieknox.com

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  • Pelosi bans smoking near House floor

    This story reminds me of this video.

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  • Mixing art and politics

    Art_Insurgency.jpg

     

    The website Daily Kos is one of the most influential political blogs / communities on the ‘net. Their second convention, called YearlyKos will take place in Chicago August 2-5, 2007.

    There is a new way for artists to get involved with this year’s convention.

    Calling all artists, poets, performers, musicians and art lovers at DailyKos to check a new Yahoo group, ArtKos, which has been formed to develop and plan some arts and politics related activities and events for this year’s Ykos in Chicago. The idea was spawned recently in KingOneEye’s diary Join the Art Insurgency This groupsite is also a place to make connections, share art related political news, events, exhibitions, websites, and whatever strikes people’s interest, not to mention discussion and inspiration!  This group and our plans are not officially affiliated with or endorsed by the Ykos organization, though they have been informed of our existence and our ideas.

    [image from Join the Art Insurgency]

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  • The GOP: What a freakin’ criminal enterprise

    Cheney reminds us why we need to impeach Bush before anyone starts indicting members of his administration.

    Cheney Hails Ford’s Pardon of Nixon

    The nation honored Gerald R. Ford in funeral ceremonies Saturday that recalled the touchstones of his life, from combat in the Pacific to a career he cherished in Congress to a presidency he did not seek. He was remembered as the man called to heal the country from the trauma of Watergate.

    Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon, so divisive at the time that it probably cost him the 1976 election, was dealt with squarely in his funeral services by his old chief of staff, Vice President Dick Cheney.

    “It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe,” said Cheney, speaking in the Capitol Rotunda where Ford’s body rested. “Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon.”

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  • Wait, we’ll come up with a reason soon

    concrete liberty hurdles

    “concrete liberty hurdles” at Madison Square Garden
    August 31, 2004
    photo by James Wagner

    From today’s New York Times:

    City Fights Efforts to Release 2004 Convention Arrest Records

    Faced with lawsuits from hundreds of people arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention, the Bloomberg administration is fighting to keep secret a vast array of records, testimony and videotapes collected that week.

    The city contends the materials could be embarrassing to people who were arrested, disclose police intelligence, or reveal environmental conditions that may hurt commercial development on the West Side waterfront or be useful to terrorists.

    In addition, the city lawyers said that medical reports from police officers who complained of getting sick after working at a temporary holding pen were “unreliable” and “likely to contain misinformation.”

    They’re just throwing out excuses hoping one will stick. Given that a huge number of people were arrested just for walking down neighborhood streets at the wrong time (many of them not protesters), the city has big payouts coming. Perhaps someone can ask Bloomberg to donate some of his money instead of making the taxpayers of New York pay for his attempt to cozy up to the Republicans and their convention.

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  • James Hyde at Mehr (Midtown) Gallery

    jameshyde_mehr01.jpg

    Dark (Davis), 2006
    Acrylic and paper on digital print
    24 × 27 inches

    I really love James Hyde‘s work. You really can’t tell, without standing up close to this and looking at it from different angles, which part is painted and which is part of the digital print. The “(Davis)” in the title refers to Stuart Davis.

    This is one of a couple of works by James Hyde in The Thaw, the second exhibition at Lital Mehr’s new gallery on 18th Street.

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  • Why do people think McCain is reasonable?

    I can’t stand how many times I see him described as moderate or reasonable. He is very right-wing. The latest reminder? He says he is a “federalist” when it comes to abortion — let the states decide — but he votes for federal laws against abortion. Now he also says he supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade. Does that sound like someone we trust to be President?

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  • SNL actually does something funny

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