We don’t profess to be experts on Gossip Girl but we try to tune in when it collides with Planet Art. Last night featured a cameo by the artist Richard Phillips, appearing with Art Production Fund cofounder Doreen Remen, so here we go! Read More
The Bravo network has decided not to renew the art world reality show Work of Art for a third season. The producers of the show, which had aspiring artists compete in Project Runway-style challenges for fame, fortune and a show at the Brooklyn Museum, are now shopping it to other channels. Read More
Jeff Koons stopped by The Colbert Report last night to promote arts education and receive the host’s standard grilling, where his cool demeanor served him well. Read More
This evening’s Newshour will features a profile of the artist Nick Cave, who had a major show of his “Soundsuits” at Jack Shainman and Mary Boone a few months ago, by reporter Jeffrey Brown. Read More
Tonight, Art in the 21st Century, the Peabody Award-winning television series which profiles 13 artists in four hour-long episodes, premieres on PBS at 9:00 p.m. EST. This season, the show—grouped into the episodes “Change,” “Balance,” “History” and “Boundaries”—will feature performance artist Marina Abramovic, art collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus, known for its carnivalesque installations (like the one it created for a 2008 exhibition at Deitch Projects), abstract artist Lynda Benglis, whose brightly-colored sculptures in poured latex and foam were exhibited at the New Museum last year, outspoken artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei and Sarah Sze who will represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Read More
The Bravo network released a line-up of its in-development shows today along with a demo reel that features, at the top of the heap, Gallery Girls, the not-very-good-sounding reality show that follows seven girls as they strive to enter the New York art world without the slightest idea of how to go about doing that. Read More
Earlier today, man-about-town Bill Powers of Half Gallery tweeted an email he received from artist Richard Prince with the subject header, “U watch 60 min episode on art?” In the body of the email, Mr. Prince wrote, “no, but my mother did…” Though we’re sure Mr. Prince loves his mother, his email seems like a dig at Mr. Safer for being out of touch. Read More
On Sunday evening, the television journalist Morley Safer aired a follow-up to his 1993 attack on the art world on 60 Minutes. He visited the Art Basel Miami Beach fair—“an upscale flea market, a shopping mall fair,” he termed it, accurately—and walked around making glib remarks about art and the wealthy. Read More
In all the hubbub over Morley Safer’s segment on 60 Minutes in which he trashes the art world on a visit to Art Basel Miami Beach, a follow-up to his 1993 dig at the industry, one thing we haven’t heard much of, at least not from Mr. Safer, is the names of the artists he shows in his segment—like Ryan McGinley, who made the video of a scantily clad woman holding a make-shift blowtorch, or Mike Kelley, responsible for the installation of sewn stuffed animals and Jennifer Rubell, whose interactive life-size sculpture of Prince William makes an appearance. And while Mr. Safer presents these works as emblems of his confusion and dismay at what has become of the art world, we can’t help think what a thrill it is to see Paul McCarthy’s large pink sculpture of a libidinous dwarf, White Snow Dwarf (Bashful), on national broadcast television. Savoring the moment with a few more artists, here’s a breakdown of some more work we found in the segment, each one paired with one of Mr. Safer’s signature bon mots at the time of their appearance. Read More
Last night, nearly 20 years after he first attacked the contemporary art world on 60 Minutes, Morley Safer returned to the subject in an episode of his newsmagazine. The result was pretty underwhelming.
Mr. Safer shot the program last December at Art Basel Miami Beach. “This is where the art trade’s carefully constructed mask of Olympian high culture begins to crack, and the underside of a booming, cutthroat commodities market is revealed,” he says, and adds, “There’s very little sense of an aesthetic experience here.” Read More
