Good morning, class. This morning we present to you a supercut of clichéd “mirror scares” from horror films of yesteryear, courtesy of Four Four. The takeaway: Sarah Michelle Gellar has faced down a mirror demon or two in her time as reigning horror movie queen of the 90s, while Poltergeist is still scary as all get out, even in the midst of campy slasher flicks with similar scenes. Perhaps the funniest part, starting around 3:07, is the highlight reel of dramatic bathroom mirror scenes with no spooks in the background — it’s as if set designers all shop in the cabinetry aisle at the same Home Depot. Video after the jump. Read More »

Even if you haven’t wandered up to 86th Street recently, chances are you’ve heard whispers of something unusual afoot. That something is courtesy of performance artist Tino Sehgal, whose ephemeral pieces rely on empty space and spectator involvement. One such piece in his current solo show at the Guggenheim, titled “The Kiss,” involves a couple embracing on the floor of the rotunda in a “changing, slow-motion, amorous” entanglement. We at Flavorpill love staging elaborate photo shoots in museums and decided to reinterpret Sehgal’s performance piece in five New York City art institutions: The Metropolitan Museum, New Museum, Rubin Museum, P.S.1, and the Brooklyn Museum. Could we choreograph the same magic?

Play voyeur and peep our exclusive slideshow after the jump.

Read More »

Yep, that’s a real title. A real title for a fictional shipwreck from which Damien Hirst plans to “excavate” “objects” and then paint them in “still lifes.” The Era of Formaldehyde (two decades, to be precise, starting with the Charles Saatchi-commissioned shark in 1991) is declared dead in the water, according to a Bloomberg interview with the artist on the eve of his latest Gagosian exhibition. That show, aptly titled End of an Era, includes a pickled bull’s head with gilded horns and blinged-out wunderkabinet filled with 27,888 manufactured diamonds.

Peep the undercover Babelgum video of the Gagosian opening after the jump, plus some priceless quotes from the Hirster himself.

Read More »

Magnum Photos, the cooperative photography agency established in 1947, has a blue-chip pedigree (founders included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson) and a gigantic scope (a photojournalism collection amassed from across the globe in the 20th century). The archive comprises more than 180,000 images known as press prints, physical copies once circulated to newspapers and magazines before the digital age. Now the organization is moving forward with a one-two punch: after selling its entire photo archive to a collector, Magnum is recreating itself as an authoritative media entity online. After the jump, view an exclusive slideshow of eight photos from the archive.

Read More »

Spotlighting the work of New York-based artists P.S.1’s new Studio Visit website provides an interactive, online peek into creative studios throughout the city.

The 459 (and counting) studios featured on the site will be displayed for a minimum of one month each, acting as temporary portals into the practices of emerging artists. The project is community-inspired and supported, with any professional artist in the five boroughs invited to submit photos and video of his or her space.

Read More »

Last night at the Sotheby’s London evening sale, a mystery telephone buyer placed the winning bid for Alberto Giacometti’s 1961 Walking Man I for a record-setting $104.3 million. That’s a whole $200K higher than the previous record holder, Picasso’s Boy With a Pipe, which sold at the Sotheby’s New York branch in 2004.* What’s even wilder about a bronze sculpture with Existentialist themes setting the new benchmark for absurdly priced artwork is that the estimate on the piece was only (ha) $19.2 million to $28.8 million.

Read More »

What do you get when you mix an architect, a photographer, a deep freeze, and the leading foreclosure rate in the nation? A web project called Ice House Detroit. Gregory Holm (aforementioned photographer) has teamed up with Matthew Radune (the architect in question) to document an architectural installation they’ve undertaken in the city of Detroit, a quickly fading urban center with approximately 80,000 abandoned houses. Their focus is social change: in exchange for the use of an abandoned house for the Ice House Detroit art project, the pair raised enough money on Kickstarter to pay back taxes on a different foreclosed house, allowing a local family to move in. And oh, the pictures.

Read More »

Ever wanted to learn the art of mushroom foraging but running your own LLC has left you strapped for cash? Trade School is a pop-up workshop concept run by OurGoods.org from the Lower East Side revolving storefront Grand Opening. The community-fueled programming capitalizes on skill sets, bartering tutorials (composting, swing dancing, feltmaking, staging a play) instead of currency. From now until February 28, the choices are limitless.

Just don’t call them hipsters.

Read More »

Gallery exhibitions may be sexier, and museum patrons may be wealthier, but the government-backed National Endowment for the Arts is still alive and begging for your arts attention. The 2011 budget for the NEA was just proposed by President Obama at $161.3 million for the fiscal year, the same goal he set for 2010, which was ultimately increased by Congress to $167.5 million. (Some perspective: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is slotted for $470 million, international disaster assistance for $860 million, and proposed military construction will net a staggering $18.18 billion.) What else is new?

Read More »

Directing duo Impactist is more than just a pretty face with a slate and a megaphone — they’ve worked for brands like Nike, Intel, and the Peace Corps and been nominated for a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award. The team just released a music EP with a dandy stop motion visual to match, asserting that “You can make more words with your face than with your mouth, so you’ll hear more with your eyes than you can see with your ears.” Though we’re not entirely sure what that means, we’re pretty won over by Kelly Meador and Daniel Elwing’s blog and their band’s promotional video, reposted after the jump.

Read More »