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Film

The Year in Film: The 25 Best Movies of 2012

By Jason Bailey on

2012’s finest films reflected ambition, risk, and advocacy. They boldly redrew the maps of genre, freshly examined the creative process, and dared us to contemplate our own mortality. And, in more traditional terms, they made us laugh, and cry, and feel alive. These are the best films of… Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. As predicted, this was the best Thanksgiving box office weekend ever. Was it because the slate of films was a lot better than it usually is, or just the diversity of the the offerings? [via Buzzfeed]

2. That’s one way not to be invited back to China: Elton John dedicated the show… Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we practiced the art of the out of office email. We found out how many balloons it would take to lift our apartments into the air. We wished everyone a happy Thanksgiving, Twin Peaks-style, and then we imagined a Breaking Bad Thanksgiving. We watched … Read More

News

The Morning's Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Earlier today Tina Brown announced that after 80 years as a print publication, Newsweek will move to an all-digital format beginning next year. The new incarnation of the magazine, Newsweek Global, will be available to readers through a paid subscription model. [via Media Decoder]

2. There’s not a whole lot to see… Read More

Art

10 Contemporary Artists Who Use Furniture as a Medium

By Matthew Bower on

With the rise of such colossal icons of 20th century modernist style as Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and Frank Gehry, the boundary between design and art became blurred, especially for everyday objects like furniture. The form and function of furniture design garnered recognition as an important aesthetic factor of built space. Wright was sometimes so meticulous in his architectural designs that they not only included accompanying site-specific furniture, but custom-designed clothing to match the look and feel of the building as well.

Consequently, this modernist obsession with elevating industrial design to an art form has also led to an explosion of movements and styles that find artistic meaning and expression through design’s functionality. Below is a list of 10 interesting contemporary artists creating sculptures that either make use of or play on the idea of furniture, provoking us to think about the relationship between habitable space, industrial design, and art. … Read More

Art

10 Famous Artists Who Should Have Their Own Reality TV Show

By Judy Berman on

“For the past three years I’ve been an intern at Eli Klein Fine Art,” says one of the characters on Bravo’s Gallery Girls by way of introduction. This should give you a good idea of what the reality series, which premieres Monday at 10 pm, entails: a handful of pretty young women trying to make their way in the New York art world despite multiple indications that it may not be the best path for them. Pitting the blonde Upper East Siders with fabulously wealthy parents and apparently permanent internships against Brooklyn brunettes on the verge of opening their own gallery/boutique (also with the help of family money), its relationship to art is roughly the same as The Hills’ was to journalism.

In other words, if you like to watch rich girls pick fights with each other and call their dads while soaking in a bubble bath (really), Gallery Girls is for you. But its lack of actual art world relevance got us thinking about what kinds of art-related reality shows we’d rather see — along with Bravo’s fun competition series, Work of Art, of course. It occurred to us that there is no shortage of fascinating, entertaining, and controversial personalities in contemporary art, so we hope you’ll excuse us for mixing the highbrow with the low in this list of famous artists who would make great reality stars. … Read More

Film

Is Ai Weiwei’s Twitter More Important Than His Art?

By Marina Galperina on

“Twitter is the most important medium of our time,” Ai Weiwei proclaims in Alison Klayman’s new documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, and he demonstrates this repeatedly over the course of the next 91 minutes. He is China’s most famous contemporary artist, the most displeasing to its authorities, and the most accessible to the international public, both through his art and… on Twitter.

When Ai Weiwei infamously disappeared in 2011, the documentary, which Klayman first began work on as a favor to a friend, was already completed. Only the final portion of the film, edited after the fact, includes the 80 days Ai Weiwei spent under the arrest at an undisclosed location in solitary confinement, his convoluted, demonstratively suspect investigation, and the censorship and surveillance forced upon him after his eventual release — most importantly, Ai’s compulsory Twitter self-censorship… for a second there. … Read More

Architecture

The Most Beautiful Olympic Stadiums Ever Built

By Claire Cottrell on

The 2012 London Summer Olympics kicks off today, and all eyes are on the capital of tea and toast for Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s three-hour opening ceremony extravaganza that includes, according to our friends at HuffPost, Paul McCartney, cricket, and sheep. After reading a fascinating article about the Architecture Olympics, explaining International Olympic Committee founder Baron de Coubertin’s vision for “a global event that incorporated not only athletics but also art competitions, giving equal importance to works of architecture, painting, music, sculpture and literature,” we felt compelled to take an in-depth look at the stunning design afforded by the biannual competition.

Starting with a look at the most stunning stadiums constructed for this year’s events, and then going back in time to the striking simplicity of the first stadium in Greece, click through to check out the most beautiful Olympic architecture ever built. Then, nominate your favorite stadium in the comments below! … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Last night on the Late Show, Alec Baldwin discussed his fists’ recent run-in with New York Daily News photographer Marcus Santos. He also dropped his pants.

2. Katy Perry is planning to launch her own record label. “I’m preparing for it now,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “And when this record… Read More

Art

Mind-Blowing Text Portraits of Famous Musicians and Artists

By Caroline Stanley on

Thanks to My Modern Met, here’s a late addition to the roundup readable art that we posted over the weekend: the lovely text portraits of German photographer Ralph Ueltzhoeffer. Using biographical information about his subjects that’s readily available thanks to the Internet and sites like Wikipedia, he layers white typeface on a black background to recreate their likenesses — a visual nod at the old school DOS input mode. Click through to check out a selection of his surprisingly-detailed (and readable!) portraits of cultural icons like Patti Smith, Ai Weiwei, and David Bowie. … Read More