View the slideshow
From May 4 through 7, artists, art dealers, collectors, VIPs, and long lines of lookie-loos mingled on Randall’s Island as the first New York incarnation of London’s Frieze Art Fair finally opened to the public. The tent itself, designed by SO-IL, made wonderful use of the island’s landscape and created an enticing dialogue with the natural light; there were some marvelous outdoor installations, including a singing-sound piece tucked among the trees; and the views of Manhattan were just plain awesome. But the fee to enter the actual tent ($40/$25 reduced) was pretty steep, which certainly limited access to entrants who weren’t likely to buy anything. Luckily, we were able to get a peek inside the tent; here are the twenty most titillating things we discovered.
Filtered By:
Art
Advertising
Saltz: Why the Frieze Art Fair Could Solve the New York Art Fair Problem
By Jerry Saltz![Art - 5/3/2012 - New York City, New York - FRIEZE New York 2012 Art Fair - VIP Preview held at Randall's Island Park, NYC. Photo Credit: David X Prutting/BFAnyc/Sipa USA (Newscom TagID: sipaphotosthree573387) [Photo via Newscom]](http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/05/04/04_friezeny.o.jpg/a_190x190.jpg "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2012/05/04/04_friezeny.o.jpg/a_190x190.jpg")
New Yorkers only cross water for visual culture if the water is an ocean. The East River throws us for a huge loop. If we started going to Queens and the Bronx for visual culture, many of our rent, space, and crowding problems would be over indefinitely. MoMA and the Whitney might have huge Tate Modern–style retrofitted warehouses. Great numbers of galleries would be able to open and survive. This week's Frieze Art Fair New York, located in a gigantic 280,000 square foot white tent on Randall's Island, could help make all that happen.
Courtney Love Has a Fabulous Morning Ritual
How does Courtney Love rouse herself in the morning? Oh, just like everyone else: "Every day I have my house manager, Hershey — who I stole from the Mercer Hotel with André Balazs's blessing — wake me up with a hot washcloth for my face, a leg rub, and a plate of toast soldiers." Her entire food diary is made of wonder.
Shia LaBeouf Draws Comics Now
By Margaret LyonsShia LaBeouf is expanding his résumé beyond actor, Feist defender, gumbo enthusiast, Wall Street hanger-on, occasional director of music videos, and amateur pugilist to include comic-book author and artist. The Transformers star set up shop at a Chicago comics convention this past weekend, selling his original, self-published comic books and illustrations for the steep price of $20 a pop. And ... the work is not so great.
Advertising
James Franco Reveals How He’s So Productive
By Alexandra Peers
In June 2010, James Franco held an art exhibition in Tribeca chock full of photography, sketches, video, and sculpture. It was the type of scattershot project that has led some to call him the ultimate toe-dipper. Yet his new book, The Dangerous Book Four Boys – which is actually the exhibition catalogue from that show – indicates that it might be some form of artistic ADD, rather than dilettantism, that afflicts Franco. In the book, out next week from Rizzoli, Franco reinterprets his art show, scrawling all over the pages with notes and annotations like some cracked-out grad student. (Which he sort of is, given all the universities he’s been enrolled in recently.)
Jerry Saltz on Thomas Kinkade, 1958-2012
By Jerry Saltz
"I view art as an inspirational tool. People who put my paintings on their walls are putting their values on their walls." The words aren't those of Gerhard Richter or Joseph Beuys. They're not by Picasso, Mondrian, Malevich, or any other messianic modernist. They come from Thomas Kinkade, the epitome of sentimental, illustrational, conservative art, the self-described "painter of light," who died on Friday at 54. Kinkade, who made dreamy scenes of suburbia, classic cottages, pretty gardens, lighthouses alone on stormy shores, saccharine pictures of small villages, and Christian images celebrating Jesus, poses an interesting thought problem about kitsch and so-called "real art" to the wider art world.
Thomas Kinkade Dead at 54
By Bryan Hood
Popular painter Thomas Kinkade died of natural causes at his home in Los Gatos, California, last night, reports the L.A. Times. He was 54. The "Painter of Light," as he was called, was known for sentimental, sometimes Bible-referencing paintings that could be found in suburban homes and shopping malls across the country. Although extremely popular in middle America, Kinkade was never accepted by the art Establishment, though that never seemed to bother him all that much. According to the Times, his paintings and other products bring in some $100 million dollars a year, which lead Kinkade to call himself "the nation's most collected living artist."
Jerry Saltz on Morley Safer’s Facile 60 Minutes Art-World Screed
By Jerry Saltz
Art is for anyone. It just isn't for everyone. Still, over the past decade, its audience has hugely grown, and that’s irked those outside the art world, who get irritated at things like incomprehensibility or money. That's when easy hit jobs on art's bad values appear in mainstream media. A harmless garden-variety example aired tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes (I didn't know it was on anymore), as Morley Safer went into high snark. Never mind that he did virtually the same piece in 1993, beating up on institutions like the Whitney and mentioning some of the same names with the same pseudo-knowingness. (I think he's got an art bromance brewing with Jeff Koons. This time, at least, he has nice things to say about Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker.) As with that 1993 piece — which he brought up repeatedly, crowing about its notoriety — Safer was on about art fairs, artspeak, high prices, collecting as conspicuous consumption, Russian oligarchs who throw money around, and the ugliness of the market: endemic stuff we all know about and dislike.
Deborah Solomon on the Cuddly Side of Hilton Kramer (1928-2012)
By Deborah Solomon
Other girls loved Paul McCartney or John Lennon, but when I was in high school, I loved Hilton Kramer. Kramer — who died today at age 84 — was, of course, the art critic of the New York Times, and one of the few critics in the (relatively short) history of art criticism to command a national reputation. His prose was crystalline and conveyed a deep knowledge of modern art, not to mention a propensity for outrage that seemed in keeping with the inflamed tone of sixties dissent. His detractors dismissed him as a grump and an ideologue, and in later years he was both. But he did, in truth, achieve something genuine: He infused American journalism with a sense that contemporary art matters hugely, and he brought everyone into the debate.
L.A. Museum’s ‘Levitated Mass’ Boulder to Be Subject of Documentary
The famous rock is gaining momentum now. On Saturday, the 340-ton boulder was hauled 60 miles from a quarry atop a 196-wheel transporter to Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it will be on display as Levitated Mass under the direction of California sculptor Michael Heizer. And soon, the Hollywood Reporter writes, footage from the enormous stone's trek to LACMA will be featured in the documentary The Boulder, directed by Doug Pray (Art & Copy, Surfwise) and produced by Jamie Patricof (Blue Valentine, Half Nelson). “The film will be about what LACMA and the artist are endeavoring to create, and how they’re going about it," Pray said. "But it’s also about how people are reacting to it — some people find it gorgeous, and others are annoyed. There are a lot of haters: ‘This is stupid; it’s just a rock.’” But some are just ticked that in a city with miserable traffic, a boulder got a caravan.
Jerry Saltz Gets an Autograph From a Very Naked Rob Pruitt
By Jerry Saltz
This past Saturday, I walked into Karma Book on New York's Downing Street to find neo-pop artist Rob Pruitt, the one who made that wonderful shiny statue of Warhol now in Union Square, sitting completely naked except for a small panda in his lap; he was signing his book Pop Touched Me — or anything else you might bring in. I had New York Magazine's Nicki Minaj cover from a few weeks back, and he quickly panda-ized her — or maybe Mickey Moused her. I loved Pruitt's nerve to do this — I mean, to sit naked. So openly and guilelessly. I've always thought art is a way for artists to dance naked in public. Pruitt literalizes this, keeping it poetic and pathos-filled in the process: being the butt of jokes that day, from "Is that a Panda in your pocket?" to "Your Panda has shrinkage," while smiling blithely, signing away all day. Ah, the art world.
Keep Up With Vulture
Masthead
- Entertainment Editor
- Josh Wolk
- Deputy Entertainment Editor
- Willa Paskin
- West Coast Editor
- Josef Adalian
- West Coast Editor
- Claude Brodesser-Akner
- Movie Editor
- Kyle Buchanan
- Associate Editor
- Patricia Greco
- Associate Editor
- Margaret Lyons
- Associate Editor
- Amanda Dobbins
- Assistant Editor
- Eliot Glazer
- Producer
- Jillian Goodman
-
Party Lines Slideshow: Benjamin Walker, Hugh Dancy, and More on Vibrators and Sex Shops
-
Susan Sarandon, Jason Segel, Ed Helms, and More at a Screening of Jeff Who Lives at Home
-
Judd Apatow, Kristen Wiig, Mandy Patinkin, and More at the Writers Guild Awards East
-
Party Lines Slideshow: Megan Hilty, Anjelica Huston, Katharine McPhee, and More at the Premiere of Smash
-
Party Lines Slideshow: Michael Fassbender, Viola Davis, George Clooney, and More at the National Board of Review Awards
