From the Editors

Press and publicity gave the now-standard one-month show a potentially profitable afterlife, and regular exhibits—in Omaha, Rio, and Beijing—gave art magazines conveniently punctual subject matter: A mutually beneficial schedule was arranged.

But eventually the nature of the format distorted, and then nearly eliminated, the content. An exasperated friend explained it to us: “They’re trying to put the history of the soul on the news cycle!”

New York Must End
Christopher Hsu

New York embraces one half of the general truth, or truism, of life—that it is lived once and cannot be repeated—while turning its back on the other, that any given life is infinitely repeated by others, everywhere, in its most excruciating details, before, after, and usually simultaneously. New York takes the most pleasure in considering its own uniqueness, watching itself day by day grow more exceptional, but even in its vigilant self-awareness, the city is miming. In us, such an unfinished vision of life breeds vanity first, and then anxiety, quickly leading to despair and the desire to do away with ourselves. In New York, it has created the Meatpacking District.

Clocking Out
J.D. Daniels

I do not perceive much difference between science-fiction dystopias in which loudspeakers on every corner remind me that Everything Is Under Control and this present dystopia in which Kelly Clarkson reminds me, in every shop, bar, and restaurant, that since I’ve been gone, she can breathe for the first time; but we’ve known for a while that there’s no such thing as science fiction any more.

The Painting of Triumph
Dushko Petrovich

Some people thought I would be happy if a painter got the Turner Prize, and the morning after Tomma Abts was declared the winner, I bumped into some art students who even congratulated me on a “victory for Painting.” As we sipped our coffee and vigorously debated the prize’s merits, they mentioned that they hadn’t seen the exhibition.

I did see it. I intentionally saw it on the last day before the prize announcement, so as to savor the drama. I gathered from fellow museumgoers’ chatter that most people attended the show grudgingly, which was a shame: if I was going to watch an art prize, I wanted everyone to go along with it. I wanted it to be like a sporting event.

Peter Nagy from New Delhi
Katie Sonnenborn

He also noticed a refreshing difference between the two cities: while the “alternative” scene in New York had become institutionalized and redundant, in Delhi it felt vital. In a culture that looked to the visual arts for a poetic assertion of traditional values, the interrogation of those values still had the capacity to shock.

The Price of Nothing
Jason Murison

From the moment we signed our lease we suspected our landlord had a plan for the property. Mickey was no patron of the arts. For him, the studios were the easiest way to collect rent without having to maintain the building. We represented an important stage in the life cycle of the property: our presence made it both less and more valuable.

A New England Diary
David Kearns

Again hello,

You would be somewhat kindred to the work of Philip Guston. Google would bring him up lots of times. Keep on painting.
Sincerely,
Jane of VCAM Space

Dear Jane,
what’s google?

A.P.
Roger White

In addition to being an art lover, the collector was also an avid boatsman and kept an eighty-foot yacht that he used to entertain friends and business contacts. It had occurred to him that his newest purchases would go well on the boat. His advisers, as well as the horror-stricken auction house, forbade the installation on the grounds that humidity and salt air didn’t promote the proper conservation of paintings. The replicas were a compromise: one set of paintings for the house, one set for the yacht. The paintings were made and sent to Florida, where they embarked on their endless voyage.

What Will the Community Think?
James Bae

In London, I Want Kids caused a minor scandal under the suspicion of glorifying pedophilia. Whether the artist had such transgression in mind (very doubtful), or a culture’s furtive interest in taboos, desublimated into moral outrage, found a target for release (in a porn-in-your-daily-newspaper England sort of way, more than probable), Schnitger’s practice is ultimately one that works to desexualize society’s fixation with dirty thoughts, as black mirrors reflect an internal construct of a more perverted, cloistered social reality: Who’s the sex-crazed bitch now, old sport?

Emotional Minimalism
Megan Heuer

Yvonne Rainer’s life is like the gospel to anyone who longs for the glory days of the downtown scene. Her art is more elusive; now, it exists mostly in documentation, like so much performance art of that moment. And these days, it gets harder and harder to imagine what “that moment” must have felt like.

She Say Breck I Say Dreck
Naomi Fry

Now that mainstream magazine covers regularly depict artfully bedraggled artistes, placing their scruffily covetable lives among instructive advertisements, what can remain of the spirit of Semina? Rather than view the show as yet another opportunity to lament the loss of a counterculture, we can extract from it a lesson about the continued importance of seeking alternatives—the vital moment when lament becomes critique. While Semina’s practices might now seem quaint, they still manage to remind us of the radical distinction between a life and a lifestyle.

Filming the End of Film
Brian Sholis

There is no establishing shot. Kodak begins with an image of four elegantly
curved metal ducts, from which extend cables sheathed in accordion-fold
sleeves. The film unfurls from there.