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, […]
Dolphin Spotted Near Art Museum, Could Be Kahlo Fan
DAILY NEWS: The dolphin was following the fish and the police were following the dolphin – until they lost it near Philadelphia International Airport. Authorities think that the dolphin is not hurt, just hungry. It apparently followed a school of herring that was swimming up the Delaware to spawn and veered off into the Schuylkill, where it was spotted yesterday by the police Marine Unit near the Art Museum, said marine unit officer Anthony Kowalski. The falls at the Art Museum proved too much for the dolphin, so it turned around and headed back downstream, Kowalski said. The cops figure […]
ARTSY: No Sleep ‘Til Jerusalem!
Most def City Paper photographer and friend of Phawker Michael T. Regan shows off his gorgeous silver gelatin prints of snaps from a recent trip to Israel.
Frida’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose
Miro Dance Theatre invites audiences to a behind-the-scenes look at Self-Portrait, Miro’s newest work which will premiere at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on May 2. Commissioned by Art After 5 in conjunction with the Museum’s Frida Kahlo retrospective, Self-Portrait is a solo dance work celebrating Kahlo’s life and art. The performance, deeply inspired by Kahlo’s paintings and diary, reflects on the artist’s struggles with illness and her penchant for self-expression. Performed by Miro’s Amanda Miller, the multi-dimensional “living performance sculpture” combines dance, live animation, elaborate set design, and video. As part of this Open Studio, guest artist Julia Zagar […]
PAYA THE ELEPHANT: Self-Portrait
I know we said that Olympic torch vid was INSANE, but this is blowing our frickin’ mind: An elephant painting his self-portrait! We shit you not. You can see the real-time version here, minus the pumping house music. We had our doubts up until we saw this. Is this the end of art as we now know it? What about First Friday? It seems so pointless now.
TONITE: PHAWKER’S FIRST FRIDAY GUIDE
BY TIFFANY YOON LIVING ARTS CORRESPONDENT Every First Friday of the month, galleries around the city graciously open their doors and bottles of wine for both the local hipster Great Unwashed looking to get buzzed cheap and beret-clad tourista Philistines from suburbs in search of a little BMW boho-edge. Local merchants and busking musicians line the sidewalks, creating a de facto slalom of hand-made bric-a-brac and subterranean homesick blues. Yes, cynics may bitch, but First Friday is nothing short of an embarrassment of riches and we are not afraid to say so. Having long-since outgrown the gentrified confines of Old […]
ARTSY: Now Hanging On A Bus Stop Near You
UPDATE: Thanks for all those who bought the print in support of OBEY and OBAMA. Unfortunately, the print is sold out and we do not plan on producing another edition. The edition was released earlier today with great response. The PROGRESS screenprint was exclusively available through OBEY and the HOPE offset print will be distributed by the OBAMA Camp as an awareness campaign. I believe with great conviction that Barack Obama should be the next President. I have been paying close attention to him since the Democratic convention in 2004. I feel that he is more a statesman than a […]
ARTSY: The Lost Photos Of Diane Arbus
First Person Arts presents Now or Never: The Lost Photos of Diane Arbus Exclusive One-Day Excursion to NYC, Apr. 5 WHAT: First Person Arts announces an exclusive one-day excursion from Philadelphia to NYC to view the work of legendary photographer, Diane Arbus and hear the story of the discovery of vintage Arbus prints. On April 5th, a collection of Arbus photographs that have been missing since the 1960s will be exhibited for the first – and possibly last – time, after which they will be sold at auction by Phillips du Pury in NY. The First Person group will travel by […]
TONITE: PHAWKER’S FIRST FRIDAY USER’S GUIDE
BY TIFFANY YOON LIVING ARTS CORRESPONDENT Every First Friday of the month, galleries around the city graciously open their doors and bottles of wine for both the local hipster Great Unwashed looking to get buzzed cheap and beret-clad tourista Philistines from suburbs in search of a little BMW boho-edge. Local merchants and busking musicians line the sidewalks, creating a de facto slalom of hand-made bric-a-brac and subterranean homesick blues. Yes, cynics may bitch, but First Friday is nothing short of an embarrassment of riches and we are not afraid to say so. Having long-since outgrown the gentrified confines of Old […]
ARTSY: Losing My Religion
This curious illustration has been indelibly etched on our hard-drive ever since we first saw it on the back of an REM tour program in 1984 (Tower Theater, DBs opened if memory serves). Ostensibly, it’s an old-timey ad for a bicycle maker, but what is that monkey doing with that parrot? And what the hell were they doing up on that mountaintop? Back in 1984, when we were convinced that Michael Stipe was some kind of latter-day Delphic oracle in thrift-store rags, we were sure there was some mystical significance encrypted in this surrealistic tableau. Ah, teenagers.