Hrag Vartanian

Critic, Curator, Editor-in-chief and co-founder, Hyperallergic

Critic, Curator, Editor-in-chief and co-founder, Hyperallergic

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Caught My Eye

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  • WashPost – ‘Golden Seams: The Japanese Art of Mending Ceramics’ at Freer by Blake Gopnik
    File this under things I learned today:
    • “The story of kintsugi may have begun in the late 15th century, when the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a damaged Chinese tea bowl back to China to be fixed. It returned held together with ugly metal staples, launching Japanese craftsmen on a quest for a new form of repair that could make a broken piece look as good as new, or better. Japanese collectors developed such a taste for kintsugi that some were accused of deliberately breaking prized ceramics, just to have them mended in gold.”
  • BushwickBK – NYT’s Sad Little Copycat Art Scene Article
    BushwickBK cries foul as the NY Times writes an article very much like one that already appeared on the Bushwick blog:”Aren’t newspapermen known lately for snarkily defending their relevance by claiming that blogs just repackage the content they dig up? It seems the opposite has happened here.”

    Though I have to say that as a blogger who has had my “ideas” swiped, you can’t always cry foul since all ideas have a life of their own when you release them into the ether, but Jeremy does have a very good point.

  • Just Seeds – ‘Which Side are We On?’ Opening
    This anti-capitalist installation looks amazing and seems to fall in line with the best tradition of installation art.
  • Fanboy.com – If THE WATCHMEN Was a Saturday Morning TV Show…
    Perfect mix of parody & tribute, there are references to a slew of bad 80s Saturday morning cartoons.
  • William Powhida – Buck Naked of “How’s My Dealing?” Unmasked? Nah…
    “…an interview with Buck Naked of How’s My Dealing by a writer named Qi Peng published on examiner.com out of Salt Lake City, Utah. The terse interview makes a couple of things clear. I’m not Buck Naked and it is indeed an art project.”
  • anaba – Sarah Braman at the Armory Show
    Some lovely work from an artist who continuously comes across as fresh and inventive.