Hrag Vartanian

Article includes an interview with Isabella Içöz, an adviser to Sotheby's on Turkish contemporary art, who tries to explain what makes defines Turkish art:

"What's interesting about Turkish art is that international collectors tend to initially think of it as Middle Eastern but its really not. It's much more European, much more Western in its outlook. Turkish contemporary art definitely deals with issues of the day, be it Turkish domestic issues such as Turkey's problems with the PKK, Turkey's problem with the EU, problems of urbanization, Turkey's relationship with Europe."

Part of me wonders if this isn't entirely accurate. There has long been an understanding that there is a big divide between Istanbul and the rest of Turkey and from what I have seen Turkish contemporary art is really mostly centered in Istanbul so her comments are about that social milieu.

A interesting exhibition concept from one of New York's risk-taking spaces:

Négritude, an experimental multi-disciplinary exhibition at Exit Art, explores the visionary 20th century political and artistic movement of the same name — coined by the Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire in the 1930s — which flourished among Black intellectuals in post-World War I Paris and later spread to Africa, the United States and the Caribbean.

This exhibition seeks to define Négritude as an “archipelago”, with many “islands”, or perspectives. Négritude is an idea that developed in distinct ways in different countries due, in part, to language, culture, and the political climate. Exit Art — to reflect this diversity and to offer varying perspectives — invited four other individuals to organize this project in collaboration.

(via AkaCocoLopez)

According to Paddy: "Acconci describe the transition from his early 'idealistic' ideas about forcing the gallery system out of business to one which included defining 'self' as working within a social system. Almost everyone transitions to these ideas as they reach their thirties, but it’s nice to hear even the biggest intellects have to go through the same maturing process as the rest of us."

The HUGE Shuga Records mural by Broken Crow and Over Under is nearly complete…check out some images…video to follow.

Seems that the Montclair Art Museum hit a bump in the deaccessioning road when a descendant of the family who donated the portrait of William B. Dickinson by William Merritt Chase got wind of the institutions money-lust.

Turns out he’s “pissed" and in an interview said: "The portrait was donated to the Montclair Art Museum by my mother, Helen Burd Dickson Ware, and her sibilings. Mr. Dickson was one of the founders of the Museum and an important part of the history of Montclair. It was the intent of the family that the portrait would be thus preserved for the citizens of Montclair; it was never intended to be considered as a 'monetary asset.'"

Turns out the "truth" in these controversial ads that highlighted that the US invasion of Iraq killed three times more people that Saddam Hussein's regime or that the number of deaths at Pearl Harbor (2,378) were minuscule compared to the deaths at Hiroshima (170,000) were not "real" but ad experiments. Shame.