December 31, 2016

December 31, 2016

 Chinese Year of the Rooster begins January 28th.

But was there ever anyone more of a rooster than this?


A statue of a giant rooster bearing a striking resemblance to the Trumpster has been erected outside a shopping mall in the northern Chinese city of Taiyuanl.  Note the hairdo and hand gestures.  Designed by Seattle-based Casey Latiolais, the twenty-three foot tall fiberglass sculpture was commissioned by a Beijing real estate company.


More Roosters of the World

Another giant cock will be shown in Beijing, this one coming via Lisbon where the over thirty-foot high creation of Joana Vaconcelos has been on display for the past month. 


Originally meant to be unveiled in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympic Games, the project was postponed due to the "political climate" in Brazil.  After Beijing, the rooster will go to Shanghai before returning home to Portugal

Here is another Portuguese Rooster.  This one by Rui Miragaia for the Martim Moniz park Lisbon.


This one is in Singapore:


And one last rooster at the Harbin Snow Festival.
 


December 27, 2016

December 27, 2016


Sculptor Kenneth Snelson, best known for his kinetic sculptures consisting of networks of stainless steel cables and aluminum tubes, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan at the age of eighty-nine, William Grimes of the New York Times reports.



The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced that it will partner with the US Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies - a global program that fosters public diplomacy through the visual arts. Together the institutions will develop exhibitions, artist residencies, and programming.

The first event organized by the two institutions will be a public discussion featuring artists Nick Cave, Imran Qureshi, and Pat Steir at the Hirshhorn’s Ring Auditorium on January 11, 2017. Further details about the partnership will be announced in the spring.



Art Newspaper reports that the vice president of one of Serbia’s leading political parties has spoken out against the decision to build a monument to Andy Warhol in the capital of Belgrade.

The Democratic Party of Serbia’s Uros Jankovic issued his statement on December 19, which declared that the planned tribute to Warhol represented “an inferiority complex in relation to the West.” Furthermore, he said, “Even abroad, Andy Warhol and Pop art are not recognized as great art but as a fad, and testifying to this is the fact there are only two monuments to Warhol, while this would make Belgrade only the third city in the world to recognize him in this way.” He believes that the city should honor more local artists: “consider the possibility of the Serbian capital paying its debt of gratitude […] to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Sava Sumanovic, Mica Popovic, and others.”

The two monuments to Warhol which Jankovic references are a silver statue that was installed in New York by Rob Pruitt, and another tribute to the artist in Miková, Slovakia, where Warhol’s family hailed from.





https://www.6sqft.com/louise-bourgeois-son-gifts-4m-west-village-townhouse-to-native-american-tribe/#.WFx-22aBVbc.twitter



6sqft had an article about Louise Bourgeois’s son is giving her West Village townhouse to a nonprofit run by the Native American Lenape tribe. It may become a patahmaniikan—prayer house.  Click on pic for more.


Dates for Documenta 14 (every 5 years): 
In Athens: April 8-June 16.  In Kassel, Germany - June 10-Sept 17, www.documenta.de
Dates for Art Brussels 2017: April 20-13, www.artbrussels.com/

Dates for the first Honolulu Biennial: March 8- May 8, www.honolulubiennial.org/





ArtNews lists "4 Art Events to Attend in NYC This Week." Three of the 4 events are films.  Two of them are screenings of commercial films.  The other "is a poignant glimpse into the complexities of masculinity, the Miami drug trade, family, race and sexuality."  Must be art.