Dugpa1: Spacemen 3 And Strange Animation Part 3
FBI Offers $10,000 Reward For $1 Million Painting
INQUIRER: On June 23, workers at the Philadelphia Park Systems at 15th and Arch Streets discovered a piece of art that had long hung on an office wall “was no longer there,” said Jerri Williams, an FBI spokeswoman. Though other art was on display, only the Water Works had gone missing. The Mona Lisa it ain’t. Politely, it could be described as a picturesque view of a group of colonaded buildings on a river. Some might discount it as a dull architectural rendering. Painted in 1842 by John A. Woodside, the canvas shows the famed Water Works before the construction […]
ARTSY: The Blizzard Of OZ
DAILY NEWS: COULD NORTH PHILLY be the homeland of OZ? Of course we’re not talking about the Wonderful Wizard from the movie classic. We’re talking about “OZ,” the prolific and pesky graffiti vandal who has scrawled his “tag” on structures all over Philadelphia for more than 20 years, costing the city thousands of dollars to clean up. So who is OZ — this person who prowls the city at night armed with an arsenal of aerosol cans? OZ, much like the movie character, might turn out to be just an ordinary man. Like, say, a 37-year-old who works at a […]
DEVOLUTION FOR DUMMIES: Q&A With Mark Mothersbaugh, Composer, Painter, DEVO-lutionist
[As told to JONATHAN VALANIA/Illustration by Alex Fine] Phawker: Let’s start with ancient history, I want to know about the evolution of the Devo idea, I’ve read conflicting things — that it was started sort of as a joke in the late 60s and then the shootings at Kent State radicalized you guys, tell me about that whole time. Mark Mothersbaugh: OK, I don’t know what you read, but I’m sure there’s plenty of people putting false information out there and this is the true story: The band happened, when I met Gerald Casale at Kent State, we were both […]
AD BUST: City Cracks Down On Malt ‘Murketing’
NBC10: Philadelphia is famous for its mural arts program. But some groups said that some specific murals need to be scrubbed out. Philly’s “Mural Arts Program” has painted 2,700 murals. But while most of the murals are about life, energy and color, some murals in Fishtown are all about malt liquor, Colt 45. Pabst Beer paid local businesses for some of their wall space. But the city said the quasi-murals are illegal because a permit is needed. NBC 10 called Pabst and they are not commenting on the issue. The city is still trying to see if any local advertising […]
BY POPULAR DEMAND: Men Who Wear Speedos
via SCRAPPLE TV RELATED: WTF Is Darren Finizio?
ART BRUT: The Sudden Death and Heroic Life Of Ann d’Harnoncourt, Director Of Philadelphia Museum Of Art
NEW YORK TIMES: By any measure, Anne d’Harnoncourt’s tenure as director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, cut short by her sudden death on Sunday at 64, was distinguished. It shone forth in major acquisitions, successful fund drives, vast gallery renovations, a marvelous rehang of the collection and, above all, her refusal to let the museum become a three-ring circus. Having seen the Philadelphia museum — or at least its steps — become a destination after the 1976 film “Rocky,” she did not succumb to showy architecture; the new wing being planned at the time of her death has been […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR Scott McClellan, a former spokesman for the Bush White House rocked the capital last week with a provocative memoir. He joins Terry Gross to talk about the book — titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception — about what prompted him to go public, and about the torrent of response from both sides of the partisan aisle. Also: Excerpts from some of the more contentious press conferences from McClellan’s days as White House press secretary. Listen Now ALSO, Jenna Fischer is probably best known for her role on NBC’s comedy series The […]
THE PEARLY GATES: The Moon Is Waiting
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is my new old band, for those keeping score at home. [Hat tip to YANIM STUDIOS for loaning us this beautiful piece of animation & THE WOOKIFIED CREW for the assemblage]
ARSTY: The Audacity Of Shepard Fairey
WASHINGTON POST: LOS ANGELES — When the street artist and guerrilla marketer Shepard Fairey got word from the Obama people that they would welcome his contribution to the campaign, he knew what he wanted to create: a phenomenon. All political art is propaganda (that is the point), but most political posters are bland, forgettable, wallpaper, like Fred Thompson on an off day. Fairey wanted something more iconic — aspirational, inspirational — and cool. In other words, he wanted to make posters that the cool cats would want. The 2008 Democratic primary season equivalent of the Che poster (with all that […]
20th Century Art Titan Robert Rauschenberg Dead At 82
NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82. A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked. Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, […]
ARTSY: The Filth & The Fury
THE INDEPENDENT: John Currin is a shooting star of American figurative painting whose trajectory to fame and riches peaked gloriously five years ago with a retrospective at three major world museums. But he has some explaining to do. The 46-year-old has since controversially switched galleries, performed a curious vanishing trick and now… well, his latest flesh-on-canvas efforts would make Hugh Hefner blush. Indeed, he now acknowledges that several factors contributed to what was indeed a long dry period after the retrospective – a time when, he says, he was also depressed and experiencing a disconcerting “impotence with the brush.” Currin […]
Q&A: It’s Too Late To Fall In Love With Sharon Tate
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Meet Roza Frykowska, 26, a recent emigre from Lodz, Poland. She is a barista at Cafe Ole in Old City. She is also an up and coming photographer, and recently started shooting for Suicide Girls. All of that would make her interview-worthy in and of itself in our book, but wait, it gets better, or worse, actually. Roza’s grandfather, the filmmaker Wojtech Frykowski, came to America in the late ’60s to establish a career in Hollywood, at the behest of his dear friend, Roman Polanski. Wojtech and his then-girlfriend, Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, […]