Artnet Bulletin
Will Philly Protect Its Beloved Keith Haring? And Other Art World Matters
Also in today's Artnet Bulletin: art history's great Penelopes, a museum built in 'Doom,' and more.
Also in today's Artnet Bulletin: art history's great Penelopes, a museum built in 'Doom,' and more.
Ben Davis ShareShare This Article
The Artnet Bulletin is our new daily digest of five items from around the art world that are worth knowing. A different writer will do it every morning. This is Ben, so my taste runs to public art, art history, and experimental institutions.
On Wednesday, the Philadelphia Historical Commission will vote on whether to preserve the exuberant We the Youth mural by Keith Haring as part of its Register of Historic Places. Amazingly, it’s not a sure shot. We the Youth is the only one of Haring’s collaborative murals that is still at its original site… and if you want to brighten your day, watch this video showing Haring and kids from the neighborhood paint it together back in ’87.
The Guardian’s interview with New York sculptor Sergio Furnari, who invested $100K of his own money to make a goony life-sized bronze statue of slain far-right provocateur Charlie Kirk sporting a mic and a T-shirt that says “Freedom,” hoping to take it to Times Square and earn “millions” in support, only to see people threaten to pee on it and have a crowd-funding attempt flop. I’d like to titter, too—but seeing the grisly murder of a bigot inspire a grift that inspires a meme just makes me depressed about the downward spiral we’re in.
With Christopher Nolan‘s mega-blockbuster spin on Homer‘s tale drawing crowds (I saw it! I liked it!), Apollo senior editor Sophie Barling offers thoughts on art history’s treatment of Penelope, long-suffering wife of Odysseus. Barling even analyzes a favorite: Dora Wheeler‘s clever textile Penelope Unraveling Her Work at Night (1886) from the Met collection.
Courtesy New Crits, artist Ajay Kurian‘s very cool alt-art school project: some simple advice for artists starting out and trying to figure out how to think about a first show, how to price work, and how to talk to dealers and buyers. The dealer Lucy Liu, of Rachel Uffner Gallery, is quoted saying the gallery uses a formula for pricing paintings: “height plus width, times a factor that the gallery sets based on the state of the market.” I had never heard that.
The online artist known as Chariot Rider has just unveiled an art museum made as a mod of the seminal 1993 first person shooter Doom. It is both an actual art show and a loving homage to Doom‘s legendarily robust culture of modders, with Rider curating 86 artists whose work comments on the themes of Doom—“hell, surreal space, violence, etc.”—into the virtual building, where you can gaze at them over the barrel of your Space Marine’s pistol. The trailer, below.
See you tomorrow, when my colleague Min Chen will be at the helm.