Thursday, April 8, 2010

R.I.P.


Malcolm McLaren, the impresario, promoter, and self-promoter who once claimed to have invented punk rock, and who assembled and managed the youthful, unruly members of the Sex Pistols, the breakthrough British punk band, has died. He was sixty-four. His companion of many years, Young Kim, confirmed that McLaren died on Thursday, and said that he died of mesothelioma at a hospital in Switzerland, the New York Times’s Dave Itzkoff reports.
In the 1970s, McLaren returned to his native London from New York, where he had briefly managed the New York Dolls in the waning days of that band’s career. With his business partner and girlfriend at the time, Vivienne Westwood, they renamed their clothing shop Sex, and McLaren set about putting together his own rock act of untested British youth, which became the Sex Pistols.
Fronted by John Lydon—whose repugnant appearance and Irish background earned him the stage name Johnny Rotten—with Steve Jones (guitar), Paul Cook (drums), and Sid Vicious (a bassist who replaced original member Glen Matlock), the Sex Pistols terrified traditional music sensibilities with songs like “Anarchy in the UK” and “God Save the Queen,” and fueled McLaren’s flair for over-the-top spectacle: He arranged for the band to sign its contract with A&M Records outside Buckingham Palace, and organized a private boat performance of their “God Save the Queen” on the Thames that was quickly shut down by the police, cementing the group’s rebellious reputation.
As a solo artist, McLaren released genre-defying albums like Duck Rock in 1983 and Waltz Darling in 1989, and remained a perennial presence in the worlds of art and fashion. Greil Marcus wrote on McLaren’s most recent video work, Paris: Capital of the XXIst Century, in the March issue of Artforum.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

HAVERFORD COLLEGE CURATORIAL CONFERENCE



Each participant will present a manifesto of curatorial practice. These presentations will be followed by an open conversation among the four presenters and audience members, considering the role of the curator in cultivating visual culture across disciplinary boundaries; the institutional elements necessary to integrate the display of art objects within a wider programmatic framework of interdisciplinary inquiry, experimentation, critique, or activism; and the purpose(s) of exhibitions in this contemporary moment of media dissemination, social networking, and other “ethereal” forms.

10 AM - 12:30 PM, Stokes 102, Haverford College

Speakers:
Ian Berry Curator, The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
Julie Joyce Curator of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Aaron Levy Executive Director and Chief Curator, Slought Foundation
Ingrid Schaffner Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

Free and open to the public; lunch to follow in the Center For Peace & Global Citizenship (CPGC) Café, Stokes 104.

ART WEEK



Art week, Nov. 25 - Dec. 1, 1940 : Buy American art.New York : New York City W.P.A. Art Project, 1940.

EXHIBITION TALK: PAINTERS/PAINTING



In conjunction with the exhibition Don't Piss on Me and Tell Me it's Raining, apexart presents:

Tom Sanford will moderate a panel of five other painters who will talk about painting, including: Kamrooz Aram, Holly Coulis, David Humphrey, Dike Blair and Deborah Kass.

Wednesday, April 28: 6 pm

Painter and Bad at Sports NYC correspondent Tom Sanford will moderate a panel of five other painters in a discussion about painting. Kamrooz Aram, Holly Coulis, David Humphrey, Dike Blair, and Deborah Kass, representing various generations of New York painters, are all prominent voices among their cohort who enlist a wide variety of approaches to the medium. These "Painters of Painting" will discuss the current concerns in painting as well as painting's enduring relevance as a humanistic and idiosyncratic antidote to the prevailing corporate culture of consensus and commoditization.

And, if you are not familiar with the podcast Bad at Sports – definitely check it out.