Aaron Sandnes, “Interest of the Strong (Thrasymachus) – BLUE” (2014), neon, spray paint, neon transformer, at the Plainly to Propound exhibition at GAVLAK gallery (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)
This week, learning from Skymall’s surrealism, Berlin’s memorials, Orientalism in Montreal, BIG in DC, Renzo Piano in Paris, Japanese memes mocking ISIS, the influence of Joseph Beuys on Abramović, and more.
Skymall may be dead, but Kyle Chayka considers its impact … and its (perhaps inadvertent) surrealism:
Because SkyMall may be dead, but SkyMallism is thriving more than ever.
… SkyMall belongs to the world of surrealists. SkyMall was founded in 1990 as a same-day delivery sale system for airports and riders, but to find SkyMallism’s sources, we have to go back to the turn of the previous century. Poet Andre Breton’s “Surrealist Manifesto” of 1924 was the founding document of his movement; in it, he declaims society’s oppressive rule of rationality. “We are still living under the reign of logic,” he writes. “But in this day and age, logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.” Breton was confronting the horrors of modern warfare; our weapons and industrial factories seemed design to solve all problems of human want and need but those of the soul.
How Berlin memorializes its past and what the United States can learn from it (h/t @jmcolberg):
Even if you skip major tourist destinations like the Berlin Wall Memorial or the Holocaust monuments near the Brandenburg Gate, it’s nearly impossible to visit Berlin without feeling the city’s pain. You might hop a train at Nollendorf Platz, encountering the lone column erected for German transit workers killed during World War I, or the triangle-shaped plaque dedicated to LGBTQ people executed by the Nazi regime. Perhaps you’re shopping along Kurfürstendamm, passing by the ruined steeple of Kaiser Wilhelm Church, whose bombed-out shell has been preserved as a memorial after it was destroyed in 1943. Maybe you head to an art exhibition at Martin Gropius Bau, a few steps from the Topography of Terror, where the excavated basement of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters serves as the backing for a timeline of Nazi persecution. Or you opt for a walk along the city’s quieter residential streets, and come upon small markers placed into the sidewalk denoting the names and dates of those deported and murdered by the Third Reich.
Many Americans might see Berlin’s abundant memorials as proof of Germany’s exceptionally violent past—conveniently forgetting our own country’s history of racial terrorism, human enslavement, and systematic genocide. Yes, these crimes were also openly perpetrated by elected U.S. officials and American citizens against minority groups. And the impact of that persecution is still reverberating, with minority communities facing continued discrimination, diminished access to education and healthcare, and heightened levels of poverty and incarceration.
Robert Everett-Green, writing in The Globe and Mail, offers his praise for the new Orientalism exhibition in Montreal:
Benjamin-Constant’s art reflects a moment in the history of ideas that still resonates at a time when Western ideas about the Muslim East conform to fantasy as much as fact. For that reason alone, the MMFA’s thoughtful and spectacular exhibition is a must-see.
The museum doesn’t gloss over the ideology of the images. It even solicited contemporary Moroccan works that critique Benjamin-Constant’s passive odalisques – “pretty little animals,” as he called them, confined to wait upon the pleasure of a man.
A DC exhibition devoted to architect Bjarke Ingels is really strong, according to Kriston Capps:
When Ingels says that he approaches architecture like science fiction, he isn’t trying to elevate BIG. (Or not any more than he always is.) Ingels is grounding his work. A concept triggers the design process in the same way an idea kicks off a good post-apocalyptic short story. What if a virus made fast-moving zombies? What if building a library in the shape of a Möbius strip improved circulation?
A front and back view of Renzo Piano’s new project for the Foundation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé (via NY Review of Books)
Is the new Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé by Renzo Piano in Paris’s 13th arrondissement a “hidden” masterpiece? Martin Filler writes:
With its ingenious demonstration of how to insert a work of avant-garde architecture into a historic setting, this voluptuously swelling aluminum-and-glass-clad form — instantly likened to an armadillo — ranks among Piano’s best works.
One of the many mocking images created by Japanese users in response to the ISIS hostage crisis. (via Dazed)
After the Islamic State (aka ISIS) announced that they were holding two Japanese hostages, why did many Japanese netizens mock them with memes?
Writing for English-speaking Japanese website Tokyo Desu, Kat McDowell said: “We salute the Japanese netizens participating with the strict intent of de-powering ISIS through the power of humor.
Unfortunately, both hostages — 47-year-old journalist Kenji Goto and 42-year-old Haruna Yukawa — are believed to have been executed by ISIS.
Richard Brody writes about how critics have failed female filmmakers:
Critical attention is all the more important for the makers of films that aren’t box-office hits, that aren’t widely advertised, and that don’t have the built-in publicity of celebrity actors. A review and some vigorous follow-ups can make clear the kind of important experience that awaits, an experience that may differ significantly from today’s mainstream but that, with the right breaks, should be tomorrow’s.
Sarah Archer deconstructs the set of the popular television series The Americans, and finds:
But if the set design of The Americans seems to be a straightforward ’80s time warp, its deeper subtext is about the complicated cultural relationship to material goods. One of the central conceits of The Americans is the nagging temptation to defect: While Elizabeth seems unshakable in her loyalty to Soviet ideals, Philip doesn’t appear to miss the USSR whatsoever.
Andrew Sullivan, one of the original “mainstream” bloggers, is calling it quits:
But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.
Writer Philippe Lançon, who survived the January 7 Charlie Hebdo massacre, wrote the following letter to readers of the French magazine Libération, which he also contributes to. It was published January 13, and it offers an account of the tragedy from a staff member of Hebdo:
It so happens that at that last meeting the subject of debate was none other than French jihadists. Tignous was by no means defending them but, true kid of the banlieues and survivor of poverty that he was, he wondered just what France had actually done to avoid creating these furious monsters, and launched into a magnificent rant on behalf of these latter-day misérables. It was as if suddenly his voice was reaching us from the time of the Paris Commune. Bernard Maris retorted that France had done plenty, had lavished tons of cash. The volume increased — at Charlie Hebdo this subject is all the more sensitive because everyone is horrified at the thought of being seen as racist or cynical — until finally someone tossed out: “What if, just to take the edge off, we talked about the looming environmental catastrophe?” Wolinski and Cabu were sketching, as always — Wolinski busy in his notebook making true-false stories that gave a comical, absurd sense to everything he saw and heard, giving them the form of fantasies made real. I think he cherished the takedown as a proof of life. He also revered the great draftsmen, the great painters. I loved leaving with him at around 11:30 am. He’d talk to me about women, of course. He loved them so!
The story of when a young Marina Abramović met Joseph Beuys in 1974 Belgrade and how it impacted her later work:
It is certain that Beuys was a supremely charismatic performer and had an influence on Abramović. Benjamin Buchloch has argued that Beuys invoked mythical forms of experience, reversing the liberation of art from ritual and cult. Certain strategies that he used to this end in his public appearances can be identified in Abramović’s work. In order to address the way Beuys problematized the notion of authority, I would like to zoom in on an earlier performance, “Der Chef” (The Boss), from 1964, in which Beuys lay for eight hours wrapped from head to foot in felt blankets, with a dead hare laid out at either end.
How “white” is the American public radio voice and do announcers who don’t fit into that category need to “code-switch” to be heard? Chenjerai Kumanyika writes:
Meanwhile — though I don’t have the statistics handy to prove this — my impression is that few of the hosts of popular narrative non-fiction podcasts and public radio programs like This American Life, Invisibilia, RadioLab, Startup, and Strangers are non-white. In short, very few of these hosts speak the way that I speak. This is one reason that some of my black and brown friends refuse to listen to some of my favorite radio shows and podcast episodes despite my most impassioned evangelical efforts.
… Before I started writing this piece, this problem seemed simpler to me than it does now. That is because I was focusing on what I heard, and what I heard were the voices of white people on most of the popular public radio shows and podcasts. I didn’t want to hear it, but it would jump out at me despite my efforts to ignore it. Often, but not always, when I hear non-white journalists they also seem to be adjusting their vocal style of narration and reporting to what has come to be understood as professional.
However, as I dug deeper into this problem, I realized how tied up this phenomenon is with the broader complexities of speech, region, identity and dominant culture.
Are the catwalks allowing penises to be seen? According to the Guardian:
The sight of men’s genitals at the Rick Owens menswear show in Paris on Thursday caused a bit of a stir on the front row.
And here is the critical theory Tumblr blog you’ve been waiting for: Saved by the Bell Hooks:
Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.