François-Xavier Lalanne, The Sheep Station, 2013, featured in Margaret Atwood’s essay on climate change
In her riveting new essay, “It’s Not Climate Change—It’s Everything Change,” Margaret Atwood namechecks art historian Barry Lord, whose book Art & Energy: How Culture Changes (The AAM Press, 2014) argues that “the kind of art a society makes and values is joined at the hip with the kind of energy that society depends on to keep itself going” (in Atwood’s words): Coal brought a culture of production, while oil and gas fostered a culture of consumption. “The next culture will be a culture of ‘stewardship,’ the energy driving it will be renewables, and the art it produces will be quite different from the art favored by production and consumption cultures.” Lord shares more of his thinking on the topic in a companion piece at Medium.
- Ingrid Sischy—dubbed “A Girl of the Zeitgeist” by the New Yorker in 1986—has passed away from breast cancer at age 63. Starting out her career as Artforum editor in 1979 at age 27, she went on to edit Interview from 1990 to 2008 and wrote for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. In 2012, she reflected on her time at Artforum: “The idea that an art magazine could be an object that could do something nothing else could do: That was what drove us. Somewhere in there, I think, was an intuitive understanding of what, eventually, would become the role of the Internet. But by making a magazine into a kind of object that gave you primary art, that gave you sound—well, I’m nervous to say it because I don’t want it to sound sentimental, but it was a real love letter to what an art magazine is.”
- Long known for incorporating cooking into his art, Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija has finally opened his first commercial endeavor—a part-time cafe serving locally sourced fare (and one free menu item) in Hancock, New York. A three-hour drive from Manhattan, the venue Unclebrother is a partnership with New York gallerist Gavin Brown, who, like Tiravanija, has a summer house in the area.
- “Today, I picked up my passport,” wrote Ai Weiwei in captioning a new Instagram selfie last Wednesday. Authorities have for more than four years barred the dissident artist from leaving China, forcing Ai to work with global collaborators through virtual means. Now that he can travel again, where’s he headed? First to Germany to visit his son, then to London for a survey of his work at the Royal Academy of Arts that opens September 19.
- “The acceptance in the world of women working in sculpture is maybe the most distant place you can be, in terms of the center of the art world, and the center of what’s acceptable. Women are allowed to do drawings and paintings, but still that idea of physical engagement is a bit far off.” Joining Tyler Green on the Modern Art Notes Podcast, Arlene Shechet, whose first museum survey is now on view at ICA Boston, discusses women in sculpture and her 20-year career.
- Kalup Linzy, Jaimie Warren, and Eve Sussman/Simon Lee are among 95 awardees of 2015 fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. This year the foundation is giving $642,000 to New York artists to further their work.
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