Knock Knock: Opportunities for Artists

This week’s collection of opportunities for exhibitions, residencies and grants.

Links List: Glenn Beck rails against PSU, Thomas Kinkade drank himself to death, and the British Police mess up

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  "Rediscover your radical imagination! This course will focus on creating art within Portland-based activist initiatives, such as marches, actions, and causes different grassroots community groups are working on, like the Occupy and Decolonize movements." This course is not approved by Glenn Beck.

  Surprise. Surprise. Glenn Beck is upset that the good taxpayers of Oregon are funding classes like “Art Within Activism” and “Revolutionary Marxism: Theory and Practice” at Portland State University. Another reason to move to Portlandia. [The Portland Mercury]

• Was the “Painter of Light” a drunk?  It seems as though Thomas Kinkade did not pass peacefully in his sleep, but passed out. A Santa Clara County dispatcher can be heard in a recording saying: ”Apparently he has been drinking all night and not moving.” [The Daily]
• The British Police accidentally released Lee Wildman, a prime suspect in the £2 million art heist at the Durham City Oriental Museum. [Northern Echo]

RIP Thomas Kinkade, Possibly the World’s Greatest Performance Artist

Thomas Kinkade's "Make a Wish Cottage" Was he actually a genius performance artist?

Last Friday, Thomas Kinkade, self-proclaimed “Painter of Light” died in his Los Gatos, California home at the age of 54. Art Market Monitor muses that perhaps Kinkade’s ultimate place in the canon may be beside Norman Rockwell, whose paintings that were once criticized as being kitsch have recently been re-interpreted as classic American art. There was even a Rockwell exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum last year. But I wonder if instead we’ll unearth evidence that the bucolic landscapes, reproduced as giclées, and sold on QVC, that made Kinkade America’s most-collected living artist were actually a giant performance piece that commented on the art-market, high art v low art, mass production and the business of art even more successfully than the work of Banksy/ Mr. Brainwash, Mark Kostabi, Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons.

Scene in New York

Richard Garrison's "Circular Color Scheme: Walmart, Dec 5-11, 2010, 'Save on the gifts that keep giving'
An exhibition of Garrison's work opens at RHV in Brooklyn on April 12th

This week’s collection of openings, performances and happenings. (All addresses are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted.) 

Knock Knock: Opportunities for Artists

This week’s collection of opportunities for exhibitions, residencies and papers.

Scene in New York

Alisa Baremboym's "Abundant Delicacy" opens on Wednesday, April 4th at 47 Canal

This week’s collection of openings, performances and happenings. (All addresses are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted.)

Links List: Jeffrey Deitch on CBS, Mimes in Paris, Sotheby’s Salaries

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  "Les Pierrots de la Nuit" (Night Mimes) are being deployed in Paris in an effort to use performance art to curb noise pollution from rowdy bar and club patrons.

  “Yes…. But is it art?” Jeffrey Deitch will appear on CBS’ “60 Minutes” this Sunday two decades after Morley Safer’s controversial “Yes… But is it art?” segment to speak with Safer about the contemporary art market. [LA Times]

• The mayor’s office of Paris is unleashing roving mimes to battle rowdy nightlife. [ARTINFO]
• Sotheby’s can’t seem to reach a deal with its art handlers, but CEO William F. Ruprecht is doing just fine; in 2011, he earned $7 million, up 18% from 2010. [Bloomberg]

Knock Knock: Opportunities for Artists

This week’s collection of opportunities for exhibition, residencies, grants and papers.

Draw It With Your Eyes Closed

Paper Monument, the arts journal that brought you the cheeky but amazingly useful pamphlet, I like your work: art and etiquette, has now published Draw it with your eyes closed: the art of the art assignment, a 128 page paperback with assignments, essays and anecdotes from over 85 artists, including John Baldessari, Dana Hoey, William Pope.L, Amy Sillman, and Paul Thek, whose “Teaching Notes” served as inspiration for the publication.

Assignments include:

“Take an 18 x 24 inch piece of paper and make a drawing using nothing but your car.” — Heather Heart

“Take a color walk. Give yourself at least one hour of uninterrupted time. Do not plan your walk in advance or combine it with other activities (commuting, shopping, etc.). Try not to talk or interact with other people during this time. You will not need to bring a cell phone, journal, camera, or iPod. You will not be graded or evaluated on your color walk.

You can begin your color walk anywhere. Let color be your guide. Allow yourself to become sensitized to the color in your surroundings. As you walk try to construct a color story or a narrative based on  color you observe. What are the colors that you become aware of first? What are the colors that reveal themselves more slowly? What colors do you observe that you did not expect? What color relationships do you notice? Do colors appear to change over time? We will discuss the color walks in our next class.” –Munro Galloway

“Go into your studio. Using all of the clothes you are wearing, make a work of art. Leave the studio naked.” –Anonymous

“The course RECONSTRUCTION has three assignments, to be completed in any order over the course of the semester:

a. Take something apart.
b. Make something out of something else and donate it to a thrift store.
c. Make something and bury it.” — Helen Mirra

Scene in New York

Mira Schor, "The Dreams of All of Us"
Mira Schor's Exhibition opens at Marvelli Gallery on March 29th

This week’s collection of openings, performances and happenings. (All addresses are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted.)