What's Cookin': The Art21ndex

What’s Cookin at the Art21 Blog: A Weekly Index

"Thriller Kitty Impresses", Source: https://icanhascheezburger.com/

"Thriller Kitty Impresses", Source: icanhascheezburger.com

  • What are your manners? Where and how did you learn them? According to Ben Street’s most recent letter to us contemporary art and the Mannerist Movement could be holding hands at the table. What do you see? Peter Schjeldahl, in his review at the new exhibition of Bronzino’s drawings at the Met says, “Mannerism, the most commonly despised period in Western art history…[is] the one that best befits creative culture today. We are mostly Mannerists now…” Jerry Saltz calls Mannerism calls Bronzino, “sixteenth-century Italy’s Joey Ramone”. There’s a lot to consider here: READ this post.
  • Is art your friend? Why not, it should be. John Menil says: “Art: Take it off its marble pedestal and show it as a daily companion, refreshing, human and rich: witness of its time and prophet of times to come.”For more check out this post on The Menil Collection.
  • Art is Murder. Scary. But Insightful.
  • Teaching with Contemporary Art is taking a break this week in order to complete special two-part interview with Esopus editor, Tod Lippy, which will be published here on the Art21 blog starting next Wednesday. Stay tuned for this unique look into a very, very distinct art magazine that has wonderful potential for art educators.
  • This President’s Day roundup begins with a hotly debated exhibition and ends with a divine duo in this week’s Round-Up.
  • How do you conserve a work of art that is fleeting in time? Richard McCoy speaks to Jeff Martin in this post Collaborations in Conservation: A Conversation and A Colloquium
  • Do you know how to argue responsibly? How does the recent thoughts shared between Jerry Saltz and  John Yau measure up? In this week’s, FLASHPOINTS: Must art be ethical? |The Puppy Wars, Catherine Wagley writes, there are unethical ways of arguing. It’s a critic’s responsibility to try to glance past his own worldview—not to escape it (that would be impossible and uninteresting)—and invite conversation about more than what he thinks. Writing that settles for voluptuous, only half-substantiated opinion-making, however, does break the rules.
  • This past Tuesday  an event at UCLA’s Hammer Museum dealt with death in a way that was less discriminating than blogger Catherine Wagley would have liked. The Museum joined forces with PEN USA to present a reading titled, “I Am Neda.” The event promised to bring together dissident poets and to celebrate freedom fighters in Iran. I went because, like so many others, I found the video of Neda Agha-Soltan, the unknown makers of which just received a George Polk Award for Videography, emotionally searing. I also went because the Neda phenomenon seems so heavily visual that I wanted to see how poetry could claim her image….READ more here.
  • What better way to soundtrack an art and pop culture event than to invite an in-tune-with-pop-culture artist to curate a selection of their favorite music? Check out Culture Wars: Trivial Tunes with Mary Heilmann and Mark your calendars: The next Culture Wars night is on Wednesday, March 24, at the 92YTribeca.
  • Grand Canyon Journal 4: Critique as a Destruction of Joy…”CityCenter is the biggest thing to happen to art in Las Vegas since Steve Wynn put his finger through a Picasso. The mixed-use, residential, gambling, fine dining, clubbing, high-end retail, luxury hotel behemoth opened in December with the explosive fanfare usually reserved for the demolition of buildings in Vegas.”
  • VIDEO EXCLUSIVE | William Kentridge’s “Return”; Shot in his Johannesburg studio in South Africa, William Kentridge reveals the process and unusual presentation of the video work Return — a component of the larger project (REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo (2008) — which had its debut on the fire screen of Teatro La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy.
  • Raiding, Mining and Resurrecting: Maurizo Cattelan at the Menil Collection
  • Why art school? Why now? Why does it matter? | Art21 is seeking Graduate Student Writers for Open Enrollment