art

A Sculptural Installation That Forecasts the Weather (Oh, and Death)

Fast Company · 11/29/11 10:30PM

"I'm not afraid of death," Woody Allen famously said. "I just don't want to be there when it happens." Of course, that's the one experience we all get to share, and artists of all stripes have offered their commentary on life's impermanence. To wit: Mathieu Lehanneur, whose "Tomorrow Is Another Day" is a weather-station terminal that projects a video image of tomorrow's forecast, allowing the viewer to jump ahead in time.

'The White Ambassador:' Whiteface on the Streets of Harlem

Hamilton Nolan · 11/28/11 01:34PM

Nate Hill is the New York artist behind the Free Bouncy Rides, Death Bear, the dead body dead body, and other, sunnier projects. Hill is biracial, and his latest work has a racial theme: for the next several months, Hill, in whiteface, will travel to Harlem as "The White Ambassador," prowling the streets to talk about important issues such as how white people are or are not stank. In the video above, watch as absurd performance art turns into an earnest and heartfelt conversation with a man on the street.

Jay-Z Becomes Symbol of the 1% in Awesome Scrooge McDuck Totem Pole Sculpture

James Apsimon · 11/22/11 01:29PM

Jay-Z's Man of the Year profile in the latest GQ extols the rapper's appreciation for art. Still, he probably won't want to add sculptor Daniel Edwards' latest work to his collection. As a response to Hova's recent Occupy Wall Street Rocawear T-shirt debacle, Edwards has created this rendering of Jay-Z with a big dollar-sign medallion around his neck and the heads of Mr. Burns, Scrooge McDuck, and Richie Rich stacked on top of him.

This Might Be the Creepiest Art Project Ever

Adrian Chen · 11/16/11 04:37PM

Artists come up with some twisted stuff, but this project by Dutch visual artist Willem Popelier might be the creepiest project ever. He essentially cyberstalked two 14-year-old girls whose photos he found on a showroom laptop.

Would You Pay $4.3 Million for This Photo?

Wired.com · 11/14/11 03:17PM

Last week, auction house Christie's sold the above photo by Andreas Gursky for $4.3 million, setting the record for all-time most expensive photo (the previous record was set by Cindy Sherman's "Untitled #96," which sold for $3.89 million).

Cleaning Woman Scrubs Off Million-Dollar Work of Art

Seth Abramovitch · 11/06/11 09:55PM

A cleaning woman who really gets into her job accidentally erased part of a work of art valued at $1.1 million during her nightly duties at Berlin's Ostwall museum, the AP reports. Martin Kippenberger's "When it Starts Dripping from the Ceiling" is a multimedia sculpture that incorporates a "painted puddle beneath a rubber trough placed under a stacked tower of wooden slats." The cleaning woman thought the patina, meant to look like a patch of dried rain, was a stain, and went to work scrubbing away at it until it disappeared. The work was on loan by its owner, who instructed them to leave it where it is while insurers calculate its depreciated value.

Guy Who Live-Sketched N.Y. Marathon While Running It Is Doubly Impressive

Max Read · 11/06/11 04:08PM

Live-streaming? Boring. Live-Tweeting? Laaaame. Live-sketching is where it's at, kids! Christoph Niemann, who draws a fantastic column for The New York Times Magazine, just finished live-sketching the New York City Marathon as he ran it—meaning that he's both a more talented artist than you and in better shape. You can take a look back through his marker—and, for the last couple miles, paint—renditions at his Twitter accounts @AbstractSunday and @AbstractSunday1. Neimann didn't stop to do these drawings (though we bet he slowed down for the hard stuff)—we're told he was practicing for months to get the hang of sketching and running simultaneously. (We've been practicing for years and we can barely run, period, so we're in awe). [NYTM, @AbstractSunday]

Artsy Pol's Naked Internet Pictures Excite His Republican Foes

Lauri Apple · 11/06/11 02:06PM

Does C. Stephen Eckel's artistically rendered penis—which, until recently, one could view on his website—makes him unfit to serve Rochester, N.Y. as a county legislator? Republicans who live in his area certainly believe so! They keep all of their sepia-toned naked self-portraits to themselves.

Artists Catch Rats and Turn Them Into Stuffed Pikachus

Lauri Apple · 10/26/11 08:53AM

For their project "Super Rat," the members of the Japanese performance art collective ChimPom ran around the streets of Tokyo catching gigantic, poison-immune rats, took the rats home, then stuffed them and painted them up to look like the Pokemon character Pikachu. Art! It's a living.

Vincent van Gogh Was Maybe Murdered?

Richard Lawson · 10/14/11 03:11PM

A new biography of Vincent van Gogh, which is getting a featured segment on 60 Minutes this weekend, posits that the post-Impressionist master didn't commit suicide by shooting himself in the abdomen, as previously believed.

Arizona Town Hates Peace-Sign Park Bench

Lauri Apple · 10/14/11 07:59AM

Here's the director of parks and recreation in Prescott, Arizona (pink suit) telling college student/artistic person Kristin Anthony (brown-haired woman on the right) why she had to stop work on her senior project—a community park bench and mosaic created by park users under Anthony's supervision. It's because some of the symbols people have chosen to decorate the bench with are "un-traditional" and therefore unacceptable.

Honesty in Cereal Packaging

Hamilton Nolan · 10/12/11 12:10PM

Speaking of the laughable campaign to make breakfast cereals like Lucky Charms "healthy," here's a nice selection of revamped cereal boxes that guerrilla-ish artist Ron English left on a shelf at a grocery store in Venice, California. Kellogg's really should release "Sugar Frosted Fat."

Child to Be Literally Born Into New York Art Scene

Seth Abramovitch · 10/09/11 09:19PM

In perhaps the most exciting display of obstetrical performance art since Karen Finley birthed a yam back in the early '80s, Brooklyn-based artist Marni Kotak is letting a gallery audience observe the delivery of her first child.

Brobdingnagian Slide Will Turn Museum Into Giant Funhouse

Curbed · 10/08/11 11:50AM

The New Museum is on an inner-kid-friendly roll this year, first with worms and now with a slide. A 102-foot-long plastic tube, to be precise, connecting the fourth floor of the SANAA-designed museum to the second. Visitors can do more than touch the Carsten Höller artwork-they can suit up in helmets and pads and take the three-story slide for spin.