Am I disappointed? In a sense, ish? I am glad this catalogue exists, truly, but I am still waiting for a real artbook of previously unreleased material in hq big artbook format.

Mural Barcelona R.I.P.

"After all the artist’s struggles, all the critical quarrels, all the millions paid for grand works—after all that, how long will a museum visitor typically stand before a masterpiece? About twenty-eight seconds, according to a recent scholarly study. This average has held steady during the past fifteen years, though the behavior of museum visitors has changed. Today many aren’t there just to gaze; they’ve come for selfies. [..] a museum that people come to and look at, spend time in, to a museum that opens its doors to collaboration, conversation, and participation.” This is already evident in a floor plan of the extension: a majority of the ten new levels won’t contain art at all. There’s a panoramic viewing floor at the top, a level for the restaurant, another for learning and events, and one for the bar and shop, leaving the art to three floors, in addition to repurposed oil tanks in the basement for performances and installations. [..] The success of an expansion, or of any single exhibition, is often judged by visitor numbers, but there are other markers of success: the degree to which an exhibition illuminates and moves and changes its viewers, or the power a collection has to inspire local artists. Such outcomes provide no data. Therefore, attendance figures weigh on museum directors; their jobs may be at stake. And perhaps crowd-pleasing should be the priority. Those who advocate a more traditional, contemplative museum sound outmoded, élitist, and narrow-minded—precisely the attitude that museums are running from. [..] “Another reason for this embrace of performance events is that they are thought to activate the viewer, who is thereby assumed, wrongly, to be passive to begin with,” he writes. “Museums today can’t seem to leave us alone; they prompt and prod us as many of us do our children.” [..] viewing art as eating food. Some people “sample” (just a glance at the artwork); others “consume” (that twenty-eight second eyeful); a few “savor” (perusing for a minute or more). A selfie allows visitors to “consume” without troubling to engage, they observe. Yet the rewards of art derive from engagement, attention, effort. When museum directors speak of “interactivity” and “participatory spaces” and “the site-specific app,” it must sound hip in the boardroom. It can also sound like pandering: that art should be easier, more laid-back, more like online entertainment. [..] the metaphor of democracy is false regarding culture. This isn’t the citizenry selecting a leader to govern for a set term; it’s wherever crowds happen to converge, often prodded into position by a marketing team. Consider the movies gaining the most votes of late. Their elected representatives would include an awful lot of superheroes with abs of steel. Were those the best pictures? Tate Modern should be commended for attending to the diverse art scenes flourishing around the globe today; for embracing thrilling works of experiential art; for reconsidering the history of modernist creativity to include the worthy but unfamiliar. Art should include the alien, the weirdly individual—it ought to confront us with strangers’ visions that are distinctly notour own (and are unlikely to be improved by inserting our faces for a selfie). Art isn’t always about participation and popularity and relating everything back to us. Museums shouldn’t be, either."

There is embroidery, and then there's this #embroideryart #sewing #art #artboom #portraits

http://www.artboomfestival.pl/pl/80/5/45/Pierwsza-Krakowska-Aukcja-Street-Artu

TEREN PRYWATNY/PRIVATE LAND, 2015 Błonia krakowskie, Artboom Festival The Private Land project takes up the subject of the agrarian revolution in Central and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Traditional agriculture changed into modern agriculture, and rich landowners took farms and lands from peasants, which they enclosed and turned into pastures for sheep. This process had a huge impact on the subsequent development and industrialisation of cities. In our times, however, the enclosure process acquired a completely different meaning. Currently we enclose housing estates, buildings and even rubbish bins in a desperate attempt to control public space. Consequently, such a process often leads to the displacement of social life by way of extreme segregation – a division into the better and the worse. http://www.artboomfestival.pl/ http://metrocafe.pl/metrocafe/1,145523,18941631,krakowskie-blonia-tajemniczo-ogrodzone-to-deweloper-czy-siostry.html http://lovekrakow.pl/aktualnosci/teren-prywatny-ogrodzili-fragment-blon_10395.html

Marek Firek's #DogSunday we shared with you yesterday wasn't just for dogs! #ArtBoom #artboom2015 #cats #dogs #art #cat #Krakow #Poland

The ARTBOOM Festival in Krakow is happening now! (via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU3RuwjhNF8)