12.07.2009

Bits: 12.07.09


• Posterchild proposes... fittingly taking over a Manhattan subway sign to pop the question (above).

• Ai Weiwei, recovering from an attack by police and having had his web site shut down by authorities, on why artists should engage with new media: "To use art is not enough, to describe your view, in the old traditional forms, such as painting, sculpture…as a citizen you need to express your views. Writing, blogging and giving interviews is a part of that, otherwise you will very easily be misunderstood by the establishment…as long as there is power and people there will be a struggle."

• Businessfolk weigh in on art -- and don't like it. BusinessInsider's Clusterstock says a mural at Goldman Sachs by "obscure" artist Franz Ackermann is ugly, "loud and cartoonish," and they don't like Julie Mehretu's piece much better. (Via The Awl.)

Richard Wright wins the Turner Prize.

• The Schlong War: Copulating critters and a man with a giant penis make up a vaguely Bosch-like facade on a building in Berlin. Apparently, it's part of a feud between lefty newspaper Taz and mainstream behemoth Bild.

• NEA adds linky circuitousness to sites to avoid rightwing harangues about politicization of the arts.

• After that last one, lower your blood pressure with Kimsooja.

• Highly recommended: The documentary The Cats of Mirikitani, a moving and at times enraging documentary about a homeless Japanese-American artist facing post-9/11 America.

• Just in time for the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, Art Threat looks at the exhibition Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change.

Video collage artist Craig Baldwin's The 70s Dimension.

Norman Rockwell's source photos.

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