1. Last night, Jay-Z hosted an exclusive advance listening session for Watch the Throne, his collaborative album with Kanye West — which we now know includes two songs featuring Odd Future’s Frank Ocean and one (“Life Off”) with guest vocals by Beyoncé. Hova still wouldn’t disclose a release date but promised fans would hear the material “soon.” [via MTV]
2. Emma Watson was so overcome with emotion at last night’s London premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part II that she broken down and cried. Watch the very sweet video at Vulture.
3. Britain’s News of the Worldsaga continues: The tabloid’s former royal editor, Clive Goodman, was arrested this morning on corruption charges. This isn’t his first time in jail; Goodman did four months for phone hacking in 2007. [via Telegraph]
4. Less than a week after we learned that Vinny “The Boring One” Guadagnino had left the Jersey Shorehouse comes news that Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino may also be on his way out. Is the show coming apart at the seams? We can only hope so! [via TMZ]
5. In more vaguely embarrassing New Jersey news, Mark Lugo of Hoboken has been arrested for stealing the Picasso drawing “Tete de Femme” from a San Francisco gallery. [via AP]
In an interview about his newest film, Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen declared, “I wanted to show the city emotionally, the way I felt about it. It didn’t matter to me how real it was. I wanted it to be Paris through my eyes.” Inspired by the king of fantasy destination films (Vicky Christina Barcelona anyone?), we’ve created a highly subjective list — not of art that is necessarily directly representative of a specific city, nor art that is necessarily created in that city (though there are a few of each on our list), but of art that feels like our favorite cities to us, that calls up the same responses and urges, the same colors and sense memories. Please feel free to chime in with your own choices, feelings and ruminations in the comments!
In the wake of last night’s midterm elections, we imagine many of our readers have turned to drink (or plan to, come five o’clock). Allow us to help you out with that. Inspired by HTMLGiant’s wonderful list of Writer Cocktails, we bring you 10 brand-new Artist Cocktails, meant to embody everyone from Rothko and van Gogh to Jeff Koons and Pipilotti Rist. As you might have guessed, some of them are disgusting.
Known for her lively paintings and works on paper of ladies of leisure, Delia Brown wields a deft brush to present herself and her female pals in stylish settings. Mixing illustration with appropriation art, the talented Ms. Brown places her subjects in familiar situations from art history, print media, and film. She’s painted self-portraits à la Picasso and Gainsborough and captured her friends in the roles of distracted socialites. And, in her current series of works, Brown envisions herself and her mates as Frida Kahlo look-alikes lounging around gardens and fireplaces in a spirit of camaraderie.
Is it just us, or is nail art — from geeky to stylish to just plain weird — everywhere these days? While we’re not usually motivated to go above and beyond our customary, single-color home manicures, we have great respect for those who take the time (or enlist a pro) to do something different. In fact, nail artists the world over — especially the folks at London’s WAH Nails and participants in NAILS magazine‘s Mini-Masterpiece contest — are recreating high-art masterpieces, using fingertips and acrylics alike as a tiny canvas. After the jump, we round up some of our favorite designs, from Picasso’s Desmoiselles d’Avignon to Munch’s The Scream.
Controversial Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is infamous for his sculptural portrayals of Pope John Paul II being felled by a meteorite and a childlike Hitler kneeling and praying, as well as a performance piece at the Museum of Modern Art, where he hadan actor don a giant Picasso head and engage visitors. Although it’s been seven years since the 50-year-old Pop-conceptualist has had a solo show in America, Cattelan has been busy in Europe, as witnessed by the survey show of recent works at the Menil Collection in Houston. Integrated by the artist into the museum’s collection of medieval and modernist works, the show presents a dialogue between the present and the past that ironically comments on religion, politics, and art history.
On name recognition alone* — not to mention a prolific career spanning roughly seven decades — Pablo Picasso is arguably the most famous artist throughout history. He is estimated to have produced a staggering 50,000+ artworks, including the auction record-breaking Boy With a Pipe, which once sold for $104 million at Sotheby’s. Picasso has two stand-alone museums dedicated to his legacy (one in Paris, one in his birthplace of Málaga, Spain) and during his lifetime collaborated with artists and thinkers on the cutting edge of literature, philosophy, dance, painting, theater, and poetry. There’s no denying that Picasso’s star still burns bright, and rightfully so, but what’s with the three — count ‘em, three! — majormuseumexhibitions hitting the East Coast this spring? And how are those aforementioned institutions saving a buck by featuring the artist?
*Fun fact: His full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Chew on that! 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.
Apparently having one of the most iconic museum buildings in the world and a cultural influence so strong it’s spawned its own cute phrase (the “Bilbao effect”) isn’t enough for the Spanish outpost of the Guggenheim juggernaut. The Museo Guggenheim Bilbao has just announced plans for a satellite expansion a scant 40 km from its existing Gehry-designed command center. The proposed site is located in the Basque region near Guernica, itself a cynosure for art historians after Picasso’s rendition of the 1937 bombing massacre there during the Spanish Civil War.
Which begs the question: blight on or much-needed economic catalyst to a pristine but underdeveloped coastal region? We break down the numbers after the jump. Read More »
Taking a page from the Big Brother playbook, COOPER UNION, an art school in New York’s East Village, took down a giant copy of PICASSO’s infamous drawing of JOSEPH STALIN after the Buildings Department complained. The mustachioed dictator was part of STALIN BY PICASSO, OR PORTRAIT OF WOMAN WITH MUSTACHE, an installation by Norwegian artist LENE BERG, who is making the virtual rounds to express her discontent with the decision.
“They took it down before I even had a chance to know what was going on,” she told the NEW YORK TIMES. “In a sense, I think it’s self-censorship on their part.”
On closer review, the removal appears to have been prompted by complaints from the neighborhood’s historic Ukrainian community, which we thought moved to Queens around the same time that Comrade Joe kicked the bucket in 1953.
Our advice? Relax! Picasso’s drawing was seen as slander by French Communists, who thought that the Man of Steel looked too much like a youthful walrus.
After the jump, the official statement from Cooper Union.
