To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. News After the arts helped catalyze the economy in the Berkshire mountains in Western Massachusetts, a report wonders what’s in store for a region where institutions like MASS MoCA—and other art museums like it—stand as “a weighty symbol of economic fragility in the coronavirus era.” [The Boston Globe] Washington Post art critic Sebastian Smee considers the 150th anniversaries of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. “We will get through this moment,” said Met president Daniel Weiss. “The institution will endure. But it is not a moment to celebrate a birthday party, that’s for sure.” [The Washington Post] Smee also offers a survey of paintings of parties to get lost in, with classics by Renoir, Manet, and more. [The Washington Post] Artists In mind of a chance for enriching home viewing, read about a new documentary about the mystical painter Hilma af Klint. [ARTnews] “As the dance went on it developed its own kind of coherence”—so goes a description of a piece by the storied choreographer Yvonne Rainer in a review of a newly republished book of hers (the very good Work 1961–73) and a couple recent performances. [The New York Review of Books] Joanna Moorhead, the biographer and relative of rediscovered Surrealist Leonara Carrington, “talks about learning to adventure creatively from the confines of home.” [The Art Newspaper] Rachel Wetzler reviewed “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All” at the Met Breuer in New York, noting how the painter’s “ruthless skepticism about the medium is matched by an unstinting commitment to it.” [Art in America] Misc. The 82-year-old photographer and artist Peter Beard is still missing after he was last seen two weeks ago around his home in Montauk, New York. [The New York Times] The Museum of Modern Art is offering free online art courses classed as “comprehensive beginner courses with corresponding readings and exercises that will take anywhere from 12 to 38 hours to complete.” [Robb Report] Get a glimpse into the spirited work-from-home arrangements for eight of the world’s top fashion designers. [The Guardian] Powered by WPeMatico The post Berkshires Arts Sector Reeling, Disquieting Anniversary for the Met, and More: Morning Links from April 14, 2020 – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2RBKTOW
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We are in the throes of a dramatic realignment of life as we know it. As we struggle to orient ourselves in relation to a global pandemic, as we feel it reverberate through all areas of daily existence, we do know one thing for certain: it is having a particularly devastating impact on the lives of artists. In the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, two developments paved the way for very tough times: the experience economy was canceled, and cultural institutions were shuttered. Suddenly, there were no more exhibition openings, performances, or concerts; no touring programs, no lectures. While it has saved countless lives, social distancing has put the arts—at least as we traditionally experience them—on hold. Related ArticlesArtists who are able to monetize their practice saw their contracts, work opportunities, and paychecks vanish. Those who work other jobs to support their art—often in the service industry, retail, or an art-adjacent field—were similarly out of work. The nexus of these two things makes it near impossible for any artist to survive. For arts philanthropists to help, we must adapt to the urgency the situation demands. We must reconsider how we do business, in real time, and be prepared for that to continue to change. In order to do so, we must create a nimble, responsive network of grassroots organizations attuned to the needs of their constituencies. By combining these efforts and scaling up, we can help artists nationwide. That’s why the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has embarked on several simultaneous efforts to provide emergency relief to artists. It has mobilized its Regional Re-granting network to make emergency grants in 16 cities across the country, and it has dedicated support to both the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Emergency Grant Covid-19 Fund and to Artist Relief, a new coalition of national grant-makers offering emergency resources to artists in need. As an artist-endowed foundation, we know that the arts begin with artists themselves. And if we don’t work fast to protect them by pooling resources, it will be too late. The economic fallout of Covid-19 has been unprecedented. Everything stopped overnight, and it’s unclear how long the closures will last. And while the CARES Act extended unemployment benefits to 1099 freelancers, the rollout has been spotty at best. One thing is for certain: a dire situation worsens with each passing day. Artist Relief developed as a coalition because no one organization could go it alone. The Academy of American Poets, Artadia, Creative Capital, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund, the National YoungArts Foundation, and United States Artists understand that to mount a national, multi-disciplinary relief campaign at the level of urgency that this situation demands requires grassroots responsiveness and the ability to adjust course. We’re grateful to them for this foresight, and are excited to see the outpouring of support from across the philanthropic community. We’re particularly grateful to see this generous support—from the artist endowed foundations especially—doubled by a $5 million contribution from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The initial $10 million fund will be enough to fund 100 artists per week from now through September. That is roughly 2,000 artists. While valiant, that effort will only help a mere fraction of the community—a recent survey by the National Endowment for the Arts found that there are 2.5 million artists living and working in the United States. The task at hand is emergency relief—to help as many artists as possible, as quickly as we can. That is why the $10 million fund is only the beginning. As the effort grows, we hope to fund far more than the initial 2,000. I’m calling on my colleagues in philanthropy to join in this effort, to consider each artist as the namesake of a future foundation, and to stake our own livelihoods—as well as the country’s cultural wellbeing—on the ability of each and every artist to secure food, housing, medicine, and childcare. Throughout history, artists have helped us through dark times. They’re our soothsayers, our guides, our organizers, and our truthtellers. But how can they be any of these things if they’re not alive and well? It’s our job to ensure that they’re taken care of, so that we come out of this the way we went in: together. We hope you’ll join us. Please go to artistrelief.org for more information. Joel Wachs is president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Powered by WPeMatico The post Art Begins With Artists, and We Need to Help Them Now – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2K9Wi4d Monday, April 13 Getty Postpones All Public Programming Through August 31 Related ArticlesRoberts Projects Now Represents Wangari Mathenge Berlin’s Humboldt Forum Assesses Damage After Fire Last Week Portland Art Museum Places 168 Staff Members on Unpaid Leave Powered by WPeMatico The post ARTnews in Brief: Getty Postpones All Public Programming Through August—and More from April 13, 2020 – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3cfeYM7 $4.5 billion: that’s the estimated financial toll of the coronavirus outbreak on the US cultural sector to date, calculated based on data from an ongoing survey by Americans for the Arts (AFTA). To put the figure in perspective, it is 22.5 times the combined $200 million allocated to the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services in the stimulus bill passed by Congress two weeks ago. Gathering responses from 11,004 arts organizations as of this writing, AFTA’s survey looks not simply at dollars lost, but at other important indicators of the sector’s health, such as attendance. Economic impact is measured via three categories: loss of admissions revenue (ticket sales, memberships); loss of non-admissions revenue (gift shop sales, contributions); and unexpected expenses (including spending on cleaning and disinfecting protocols, new technologies, and cancelation fees for postponed events.) Organizations were asked to estimate responses going back to when the first coronavirus case was reported in the US, on January 20, 2020. The survey was opened to respondents on March 13. Among the survey’s findings thus far, 94% of organizations reported having to cancel events since the crisis began, suffering a total drop in attendance of more than 55 million people. More than a third have had to dip into their financial reserves, to make up for revenue shortfalls and cover costs incurred during the pandemic. Even more jarring are respondents’ projections for the future. Nation-wide, more than three-quarters of organizations surveyed said a temporary or permanent reduction in staff would be at least somewhat likely, with 27% considering it would be extremely likely. (Nearly a quarter of respondents said they have already reduced staff, around the same fraction of which has cut salaries.) An interactive dashboard on AFTA’s website allows users to click through a map of the country or narrow findings by filters such as city, zip code, discipline, and budget. In New York, for instance, where 427 organizations contributed answers, the reported financial impact totals $6.8 million so far, an average of $14,251 per respondent. That number may increase, however. AFTA notes that data from organizations who participated in the survey but could not yet provide an estimate of their financial losses was not factored into the current results. As those losses become evident over the next few weeks, organizations are encouraged to return to the survey and report them. One survey response is less grim: 54% of respondents across the country said they had increased their online presence. The recent flood of online exhibitions, live-streamed performances, and digital resources, overwhelming as it may be, evinces the sector’s high degree of adaptability. The estimated nearly $5 billion in losses across the cultural sector, however, does not reflect the experience of individuals in the arts — about three quarters of respondents were nonprofit arts and culture organizations, with the balance being commercial arts businesses and only a few individual artists. A separate effort will be dedicated to measuring the impact on individuals. In its role as research partner for Artist Relief, a direct-to-artist aid initiative launched last week by a coalition of seven national arts funders, AFTA has created an impact survey for creative workers. The results will be summarized in a similar dashboard, with the aims of reaching and informing policy-makers in charge of deciding and distributing aid. The COVID-19 Impact Survey will remain open indefinitely; organizations interested in reporting their experiences can do so here. AFTA recommends respondents re-report every three to four weeks to accurately capture the growing impact of coronavirus. Meanwhile, individuals can fill out the related COVID-19 Impact Survey for Artists and Creative Workers, here. Powered by WPeMatico The post Survey of US Arts Organizations Points to Devastating Losses During Pandemic appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3cbJyWS Dear Cleo and Perilla, I heard that your home, the Philbrook Museum, is kind of a lonesome place to be right now. It seems to me that when even cats are getting lonely, that’s when we know we’re in dire straits. I’ve been lonely for weeks, but I’m an extrovert! I hope this letter helps, and that you’re getting lots of other notes from your fans across the country. I also hope that the US Postal Service gets the government support it needs, so it can survive and you can get all your letters delivered. Also because it is a 245-year-old service that is absolutely essential to life in our country … But now I’m rambling! What is your routine like right now, while all the visitors and museum staff are stuck at home? Do you two hang out together for most of the day? Or do you have long stretches of alone time and then reunite for dinner and an episode of Seinfeld before bedtime? That’s what my boyfriend and I have been doing. You’ve got to maintain your independence at a time like this. But I doubt you have any problems with that — I’ve always admired feline autonomy. I’ve never visited the Philbrook but the photos I’ve seen of the gardens are beautiful. What a nice place to live! I hope when all this craziness is over I can come and meet you in person. For now, I hope you are staying healthy and safe, and finding ways to entertain yourselves. Maybe you should stop by the Sharon Louden exhibition — the mirrored aluminum will make it look like there are thousands of other cats keeping you company! Sending my gentlest belly scratches, Ellie Powered by WPeMatico The post Let’s All Paws to Write Letters to the Lonely Garden Cats of a Museum appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2XCochk To receive Morning Links in your inbox every weekday, sign up for our Breakfast with ARTnews newsletter. News The Guggenheim Museum in New York said that it will furlough 92 employees due to the financial toll of the pandemic. As an added measure, staff members earning more than $80,000 will take salary reductions. [ARTnews] Among the highlights of Sotheby’s upcoming design sale in Paris is a set of bronze hippopotamus fixtures designed by the late François-Xavier Lalanne. [Art Market Monitor] The Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, an art center in Bordeaux, France, will offer €2,000 grants to 20 individual artists amid the coronavirus crisis. [The Art Newspaper] Collectors Here’s a Q&A with collector and artist Francie Bishop Good, who, with her husband David Horvitz, has amassed a collection prominently featuring works by women and artists of color. “I’m such a junkie,” Good said. “I’m trying not to collect that much anymore because I’m so old, but it’s hard.” [The New York Times] Artists In an interview with the Financial Times, Cecily Brown discussed, among other subjects, her views of the market today: “I think it’s sick. It’s out of control. It’s about big-dick contests and it’s about all the wrong things.” [Financial Times] With her solo exhibition at the Contemporary Austin postponed, Deborah Roberts is using this period of social distancing to create new works for the show. “It just gives me time to be greater, to really flesh out this work,” she said. [The New York Times] Here’s how painter Joyce Heimer has been impacted by the pandemic and why she’s now spending eight hours per day drawing. [The Wall Street Journal] Galleries A look at the histories of Brockman Gallery, Gallery 32, and JAM, which were early champions of artists including Senga Nengudi, David Hammons, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, Timothy Washington, and others. [T: The New York Times Style Magazine] Installation Behold artist Jonathan Jones’s untitled (maraong manaouwi), an installation on view earlier this year at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney, Australia. “Curators often assume there is no Aboriginal history in a site like this,” Jones said of the location for the project, which examines the legacy of colonialism in the country. [Financial Times] R.I.P. Filmmaker Bruce Baillie, a pioneering figure in avant-garde film on the West Coast, has died at age 88. [The New York Times] Art of the Pandemic An online series of still-life images by Shirin Neshat, Boychild, Rade Petrasevic, and others aims to capture the surreal moment we find ourselves in. [Vogue] And finally, here is a compilation of art memes addressing the health crisis and its impacts on daily life. Works by Vermeer, Michelangelo, Frida Kahlo, and more marquee names figure in the round-up. [The Washington Post] Powered by WPeMatico The post Guggenheim Furloughs 92 Employees, Art Memes Tailored for a Pandemic, and More: Morning Links from April 13, 2020 – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2yXkS6h Last week, Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum in New York, decided that her institution needed to apply for federal aid to buoy losses resulting from the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In an email to staff, she explained that in addition to lost revenue from its temporary closure, the museum’s endowment had diminished by 15 percent, “reducing our ability to support our operations in the long run.” There was a hiring freeze put in place, and she had taken a 25 percent pay cut. The Brooklyn Museum’s endowment, which is invested in the stock market, stood at $108 million at the end of March, losing nearly $19 million because of the stock market’s crash. Add to this the $4 million in income that Pasternak said she expects for the museum to lose while it is closed indefinitely. “We have always prided ourselves for punching above our weight,” Pasternak, whose museum employs more than 400 employees, told ARTnews, “but this is a particularly huge challenge as we already run a very lean operation with one of the smallest operating budgets, endowments, and staff of any major museums in the nation.” The financial turmoil could prove insurmountable—unless the museum gets support from the U.S. government. The Brooklyn Museum is just one major institution seeking access to the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), which provides government funds for costs including salaries, wages, commissions, benefits, and taxes. Relief is capped at $100,000 per each employee, and it is anticipated that no more than a quarter of any forgiven amount may be for non-payroll costs. Independent contractors and self-employed people are also welcome to apply. Several major New York arts organizations—including the Jewish Museum and the Rubin Museum of Art—as well as Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum told ARTnews that they have already applied for federal assistance. Commercial galleries like Yancey Richardson in Chelsea have also filed for relief, as have the nonprofits Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA), Artists Space, and Eyebeam. “Assuming I receive the loan, the funds will be used to help pay my fantastic employees while the gallery is closed,” said dealer Yancey Richardson, explaining that payroll and rent at her namesake gallery can burn through cash reserves fast without the influx of additional funds. “I have a great staff and don’t want to be forced to furlough or lay anyone off during the crisis.” Over the last month, arts organizations have laid off thousands of employees as the coronavirus pandemic eviscerated revenues and canceled fundraisers, including the Whitney Museum, the New Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. “Cultural institutions are making difficult choices, and it is incredibly important for museums to receive funding to keep our futures viable,” said Claudia Gould, the Jewish Museum’s director. But with the passage of a record $2.2 trillion stimulus package for the American economy, those efforts to prevent bankruptcy by eliminating salary costs may have backfired. In order to gain access to funds granted through the stimulus package, these museums would technically have to rehire those lost employees. Named the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), the federal package that includes PPP and appropriates nearly $350 billion in funds to payroll protection for small businesses, provided that companies keep workers employed or rehire previously laid-off staff. Museums, galleries, and nonprofits that would have otherwise been eligible for the forgivable loans program are now scrambling to reverse course, in what one New York museum administrator described as a human resources disaster. PPP aid could greatly help museums and galleries. But among nonprofit executives, there is a persistent fear that the program will leave most charities with unsalvageable losses. David Thompson, vice president for public policy at the National Council of Nonprofits, recently told the Chronicle of Philanthropy that some banks were not allowing small nonprofits to apply until later dates, arguing that the loan program could run out of money quickly as a rush of applications flood the system. “We are facing an existential crisis,” Jane Stephenson, executive director of EFA, told ARTnews in early March. “People should be aware that art organizations are going to face difficulties if we don’t get some relief.” Stephenson, who is now applying for PPP aid, doubts if the relief will be enough. She added, “It looks like a too little, too late situation.” Powered by WPeMatico The post After Losing $19 M., Brooklyn Museum Joins Other Arts Organizations in Applying for Federal Aid – ARTnews appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3b62AOf And we’re back. Welcome to the second edition of our ongoing interview series Meet the NYC Art Community, which profiles a different artist or art worker every three weeks. This week, I spoke with Constantina Zavitsanos, an artist who works in sculpture, performance, text, and sound. Zavitsanos’s practice hones in what is perceived as invaluable, on the re/production of debt, dependency, and means beyond measure. In New York, Zavitsanos has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum, Artists Space, the Kitchen, and Participant Inc. With Park McArthur, they co-authored “Other Forms of Conviviality” for Women and Performance (Routledge, 2013), and “The Guild of the Brave Poor Things” in Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017). Zavitsanos lives in New York and teaches at the New School. 1. Where do you consider home? Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and anywhere else I can spread out in that brotherly love. 2. What brought you to New York/what has made you stay? I came to New York ten years ago for love and I’m only going to stay for love too. 3. Tell me about your first memory of art. Painting pet rocks, building mazes and houses out of legos and cardboard or whatever else we could find with my friends, making clouds in a bottle, my Gram’s paintings, my Uncle’s wood carvings, my Yiayia hand tatting my lace dowry and stretching phyllo dough across my father’s empty bed that she used just for making dough, drawing all the icons in her home, trying to draw a horse friend of mine at the track where my Dad worked and just getting so hung up on the nostrils not working out right – holes are like so impossible still… Drawing tattoos for all my neighbors, working by commission to draw on classmate’s folders. Does pretending to be Rocky on the art museum steps count? If not, the Duchamp wing at the PMA. 4. How would you describe your practice? As desire meeting desire, where both are needs; debt and dependency in the best of ways; take aways, give aways, no ways, only means. Where abundance and scarcity are different but not opposites; where the entanglement of disability and impossibility is the (under)ground of possibility. Where the incapacity to produce induces the invaluable. The thing is, it’s really hard for me to describe my practice because that would mean separating from it or drawing that life and art line somewhere distinct, rather than just enjoying the blur and moving with or getting stuck in the co-constitutive transduction of life and art. I’m really just trying to have some fun in these conditions, and hoping to also, you know, recondition them or decommission them. I just do things for love. My practice is epistolary; I’m just trying to heal enough [so] that I can love better or at least write a better letter. I just keep messing up so I’m stuck having to make more. Idk a hole in a hole maybe? It’s hazy. Maybe ask again later. 5. What are you working on currently? Trying to not die and collaborating with people in that same practice — right now I’m mainly chipping in with scheduling care, deliveries, and raising funds for disabled and immunocompromised people, teaching online, sleeping a ton, and making some reflection holograms at home that are a continuation of my work from my solo show at Participant Inc. I want to work with infrared and maybe those observatory things that listen to space but seems a bit out of reach at the moment so really I’m just looking at pictures and data of cosmic background radiation and listening to Blind tours online. 6. Creatively speaking, what keeps you up at night and what makes you get out of bed in the morning? I don’t do that — creatively speaking, sleep is a fundamental part of my practice; I make my best work in bed one way or another and much of it asleep or somewhere in between waking and dreaming. My bed is a key component in my practice in so many ways — for both production and reproduction, creatively and recreatively speaking. 7. What are you reading currently? Right now I’m mainly reading or rereading the following: an ephemeris of the 1770s, old horse Racing Forms from the 1990s, a handful of science papers on allele frequencies and protein binding, stuff on how to do quantum mechanics at home, random closed captioning on Youtube, recipes for this acorn squash my housemate brought home, Wikipedia entries on the potato and on locusts, Polynesian navigation charts and a bunch of stuff on waves of all kinds, Sean D Henry-Smith’s poetry, Cameron Rowland’s ICA show website, Geelia Ronkina’s text on Park McArthur, Carolyn Lazard’s writing, Jota Mombaça’s writings, Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism, and a wide range of text messages from friends, loved ones, and three strangers, one who I met on Craigslist years ago — I think — and one who I’m pretty sure is a bot. 8. What is your favorite way of experiencing art? Touch, however noncontiguously, and usually through another, preferably with or through someone I love. And I prefer to actually be in love with the art I’m taking in or it just kind of isn’t worth the experience — same for the maker, but you know: take and take/give and give. I’m happy to work for it and don’t mind begging or even just being a bit lost. I like to be moved, to have to feel things through, to be too close to even see it, [be] confused, maybe even dumbfounded, struck, caught up. I don’t really like when things are too clear unless that one-liner is a one-two punch type of deal where there’s dually veilled valences to the work — where there’s levels to the thing, multiple reads, ambiguity, and clarity simultaneously. I love work that trolls hard but comes with real feel. I like corny, sappy, seriously sincere stuff. And works that scale from the whole wide world or word to the artist’s almost boring take or allow for the viewer/participant’s absurd idiosyncratic wanderings alongside serious edge. 9. Favorite exhibition you’ve seen in the last year? Jason Hirata’s Sometimes You’re Both solo(ish) situation at 80 WSE. Like literally my hero. He turns out the entanglement of dependency and labor so hard and so softly in this sincere service that’s so far beyond critique but uses that criticality as a material means rather than its own ends. It’s my favorite Hannah Black piece in my favorite Jason Hirata show. I just, ugh —they, he, Hirata is just so smooth and in my opinion the most slept-on artist in New York after a few of the guards at the New Museum – especially Julio [Davila] (his wood engravings are gorgeous). If you didn’t see it, it’s fine — you’re seeing his work in all kinds of places already anyway. I saw it and still missed it, I’m sure. Wow, I really miss that show. Thanks for asking. 10. In the creative circles you’re part of, what questions do you want to see more people asking? I want to see more artists ask how to reveal the world (or destroy the world as we know it) by helping mystic truths, so to speak. I want artists to ask to be paid more and more often, in acknowledgement of knowing what we want is free sometimes, and toward the destruction of the wage altogether. I want the im/material worlds we’re making to ask more about how to serve in and beyond the frame of what this over-vetted little gated community deems art. I want us to ask in and beyond the geeking out on form and critique and politics, what aesthetics really shape and deform and elaborate. I want us to ask to serve and care for one another and IDGAF how silly that sounds. I want us to ask all of our questions more from, and in, love and life — however militant or cool or dark or sweet or deep or beautifully, absurdly weird and messy that must render. I want everyone to ask about what’s actually invaluable. I want us to ask the trees and seas for some clues right now. And I want the Earth itself to answer. Powered by WPeMatico The post Meet the NYC Art Community: Constantina Zavitsanos Wants Us to “Care for One Another and IDGAF How Silly That Sounds” appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/2V89htT Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, is by all accounts the man of the hour. While facing threats to his safety from rightwing elements, he is also being showered with praise and admiration, sometimes uncomfortably, as he became the most recognized voice in the United States on the coronavirus pandemic. On social media, Fauci is being celebrated with thousands of artistic tributes, from admiring portraits and cartoons to tattoos, sock puppets, and saint icons bearing his image. One of the most intricate tributes to Fauci belongs to Andy Andersen, an illustrator based outside of Los Angeles. His illustration depicts the famed doctor as the late-medieval Saint Pantaleon the healer. “Saint Fauci” holds a box of medicine, flanked by angels of death and spikey coronaviruses. “I based it on some of the classic saint iconography that exists,” Andersen explained to Hyperallergic in an email. “The pose, the composition, the elements all reference those iconic images, but updated with references to the virus.” “To me, Fauci is the calming, reassuring voice during this confusing and unpredictable time,” Andersen wrote. “He reminds me of a grandfather who assures you that everything will be ok. It will be hard, it will most likely suck, and sh#!t will happen, but in the end, everything will be ok. The silver lining is that humanity has such a competent, intellectual powerhouse on its side.” Several other fans also elevated Fauci to saintdom. One of them created a “Saint Fauci” votive candle with the caption: “Not all heroes wear capes! ” One of the most famous public images of Fauci captures him facepalming as President Trump was making a joke about the “Deep State Department” during a coronavirus briefing at the White House. For many Americans, the image highlighted Fauci as a voice of reason in contrast with Trump’s political ramblings. But for others, it made him an enemy. Brad Albright, an artist and an illustrator based in Texas, decided to perpetuate Fauci’s facepalm with a sticker. “Somebody get this man some (more) medals, honors and awards!!! Seriously. He’s a saint,” he wrote in the caption. In addition, there are myriad admiring portraits of Fauci online, from pencil sketches to paintings and GIFs. One such artwork, titled “The Explainer in Chief,” captures Fauci explaining the disease to the press cameras. The artist, Phil Bateman, writes in the caption: “Who else but Anthony Fauci could tell you terrifying things and yet whose terrifying explanations made you feel better because you believed only him among all the voices[?]” How does this intense level of attention affect Fauci himself? When asked in an interview with CBS’s Gayle King if he feels personal pressure he calmly answered, “It’s my job. This is the life I’ve chosen and I’m doing it.” Powered by WPeMatico The post Artists Across the Internet Make Tributes to Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3b6ksZu There are other ways to think of virality besides the biological. The other day I asked myself what makes entertainment media go viral, in particular music videos such as PSY’s “Gangnam Style,” Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” and Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” that when they explode for a time seem like they are everywhere. These motion picture productions do something to us, often in less than five minutes. They connect with some ideal, or fantasy, or unconscious identification with others. These videos call up some feeling of want or remembrance and then millions of people (or perhaps billions) reach for them on YouTube again. They sing , chant, share, dance to these videos, and write about them. Looking at what are said to be the most popular music videos ever, there are discernible patterns, motifs, and tropes that make us want to tune in again and again. The most enthralling videos subtly imply that celebrities are like the rest of us, and thus, they suggest that we too might be celebrities one day. For example, Enrique Iglesias’s “Bailando” video starts out with Iglesias in an apartment just having fun with his boys: one is playing guitar, two of them are dancing; he plays with a soccer ball. (Iglesias teamed up here with musicians Descemer Bueno, and Gente De Zona.) They go outside, and the fun extends to the city. The view shifts and they appear on a stage, singing and dancing; choreography blossoms everywhere. Women in long formal gowns dance a hybrid sequence of steps that seems to have elements of the tango, as people in street clothes also dance a complex series of movements, as if battling. Like most videos these days, there are several scene changes, but the camera often returns to images of a dark-haired woman who is beautiful in the traditional sense: curvaceous with symmetrical features, and flawless skin. Every so often, an extra enjoys a few seconds of exclusive camera time and they become a star for a moment. Very much the same thing happens with the current most popular music video in the world, “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee, at 6.7 billion views. One difference though is the environments Fonsi leads the viewer through — magnificently colorful and displayed in sweeping shots taken from an airplane or drone hovering above the landscape of Puerto Rico (where Fonsi and Yankee are both from). And in this video, there is a good deal more attention paid to a mysterious woman (who, again, by standard measures, is striking). She stares seductively into the camera as she strolls through an urban district, innocently plays with a little boy she encounters, and exchanges gazes with the lead singer. The song is essentially a masculinist, heteronormative seduction (sample translated lyric: “Let me trespass your danger zones until I make you scream and you forget your last name”) in which the woman is an object to be “won.” So, it follows that the woman, who never speaks or sings, is gazed at longingly. Teams of heterosexual couples dance suggestively and sensually (lots of hips and bums popping and arching) around her. She is positioned as the catalyst for a sexual chain reaction, amplified by the music. But the men who have more screen time are the real protagonists of the drama, Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, who, like Enrique Iglesias are traditionally handsome and framed as seductive. It is Fonsi’s desire for her that sets off a scene in which (heterosexual) sexuality and seduction are performed in an atmosphere of competition to achieve a moment in the camera’s focus. I suspect that what makes the videos so powerfully attractive to popular imagination is that combination of aspirational and heterosexual play, the idea that the public presentation of our desire can ignite the wick of desire in other people. In other words, that we can be consequential by giving voice and elegant motion to a courtship ritual, and if do it well enough we might achieve not only the desired person, but also a kind of stardom. One can see this play out in Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of you” video in which the singer stars as a boxer in training who (again) meets an alluring woman. Here the ritual is different — it’s about physical training rather than courtship — but [the desired object serves a similar function in compelling the real focal point of the story a similar romantic dynamic drives Sheeran’s character to become better than himself, to become someone who can change his world. Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk,” featuring Bruno Mars also uses the concept of a man hanging with his male friends as a story or feeling. In this case though, women are only fleeting objects, visible solely as legs and torsos (no faces). The camera focuses almost exclusively on the musicians who eventually move from the street to the stage where their status as stars is affirmed. Both “Shape of You” and “Uptown Funk” have elements that are meant to be funny and absurd, such as Sheeran’s character being placed in a “fat” suit to fight a sumo wrestler in the former, and Ronson and Mars singing with their hair done up in rollers in a beauty salon. But the absurdity reaches its peak in Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” where the status and lifestyle of wealthy inhabitants of Seoul’s Gangnam district is ruthlessly mocked. Psy wears a suit while dancing in a pen of horses, and then a tuxedo while dancing in a tornado of trash; he dances with various people on a merry-go-round, on a boat, even in an elevator. The visual gags are many and include scenes where he appears to be sunning himself while almost fully clothed on a beach, which is then revealed to be a playground. But while the ridiculousness of Psy’s frolicking make the video hilariously amusing, there is a way in which Psy says something more profound about wealth. He suggests the notion that if one is a wealthy male, there may be no place that can’t be made your stage to perform. In contrast, the most popular videos starring women tell very different stories. Katy Perry’s “Roar,” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off,” don’t engage in courtship rituals or begin with a group of friends hanging out. The first starts with Perry in a scene in which she and her boyfriend have crashed in a remote jungle. After the boyfriend is hauled off by a tiger, Perry sings as she makes a home for herself, fashioning hunting tools, making clothing and constructing a shelter. The lyrics of the song echo the care she shows herself with her actions: “You held me down, but I got up / Get ready ’cause I had enough / I see it all, I see it now / I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter.” Essentially, Perry takes on the persona of a tiger and in the ultimate showdown with the animal her roar obliterates him. The visual effects are sophisticated and alluring, but the story of the song is one of self-actualization through meeting the challenge of a romantic relationship. Similarly Swift’s video, both the song lyrics and the action of the video convey a narrative of self-realization. Swift is shown among ballet dancers, hip-hop dancers, underwear models, and gymnasts. In each clique she plays up her not quite belonging. She moves awkwardly, at one point gazing in amazement at the syncopated rear-ends of a troupe of women dancers who are bopping to the music. And she finds self-empowerment in accepting that she can’t quite do what these professionals can: “I’m dancing on my own (dancing on my own), I’ll make the moves up as I go (moves up as I go) / And that’s what they don’t know mmm mmm, that’s what they don’t know mmm mmm” For both of these songs the message is one of women’s empowerment (albeit modeled by white, straight women), through realizing their own powers despite the pressure to belong to a particular group or be with a particular romantic partner. This is to say that these are songs and stories about women becoming aware of and fulfilling their potentials as full human beings. So it is disheartening to find that what makes these particular videos go viral has everything to do with the gendered roles that we imagine we must play. (The women do point to a way out, but it’s a rather solipsistic route). These aren’t necessarily representative of the only ways we think of ourselves in the world, but they are representative of some of the most popular ways of looking at ourselves. I imagined before I began my research that these music videos might serve as spaces for adventure (like this video from the late 1990s) where the combined energy of singers, writers, producers and their behind-the-scenes workers could be harnessed to make a place where we can act for free, instead of acting out inherited patriarchal scripts. Especially in popular culture where we come together to watch each other and we learn to imitate each other, we need to learn to act for free. Powered by WPeMatico The post Disappointed in the World’s Most Viral Video appeared first on OriginalArt. via OriginalArt https://ift.tt/3ee9DGL |
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