MoMA

 Senga Nengudi performing Air Propo at Just Above Midtown, 1981. Courtesy: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi performing Air Propo at Just Above Midtown, 1981. Courtesy: Senga Nengudi

MoMA looks back on the New York gallery Just Above Midtown (1974–86), a hub for Black abstract and conceptual artists long omitted from the canon.

 Martin Wong Attorney Street (Handball Court with Autobiographical Poem by Piñero), 1982–84 Oil on canvas

Martin Wong
Attorney Street (Handball Court with Autobiographical Poem by Piñero),
1982–84
Oil on canvas

Jennifer Krasinski gives us her highlights from New York.

 Art Club 2000, Untitled (Times Square / Gap Grunge 1), 1992-1993, C-Print  

Art Club 2000, Untitled (Times Square / Gap Grunge 1), 1992-1993, C-Print

 

Rrose Sélavy, Vern Blosum, John Dogg: Why do artists create alter egos or hide as collectives behind made-up characters? Martin Herbert traces the figure of the fictional artist over the last hundred years and discovers a reflection of the art world’s changing face. Sometimes one identity just isn’t enough.

 Photo: G etty Images

Photo: Getty Images

The buzz in the build-up had all been about Caitlyn Jenner — attending, or possibly walking the catwalk. In the end she didn't come to the show — this Givenchy show, where fashion and art would celebrate their latest reunion. The BFF‘s Marina Abramović and designer Ricardo Tisci constructed a favela-inspired setting to combine runway show and art performance. Our writer Dean Kissick was not amused.

 The Dadaists audience: themselves,  Berlin 1920 Opening with Hannah Höch, Otto Schmalhausen, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield mit Kind, Otto Burchard, Margarete und Wieland Herzfelde, Rudolf Schlichter, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (?), Unbekannt und Johannes Baader

The Dadaists audience: themselves, Berlin 1920

Opening with Hannah Höch, Otto Schmalhausen, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield mit Kind, Otto Burchard, Margarete und Wieland Herzfelde, Rudolf Schlichter, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (?), Unbekannt und Johannes Baader

The field of art is considered to be free, open and accessible to everyone. In reality, no outsiders have been spotted here for a long time. Does “art audience” today really only mean people who have an (economic) interest in the art world? Is anyone immune to the half-drunk advances of its warped social economy? Are we all alone? With these questions in mind, our reporter Elvia Wilk went from Berlin to Venice to the hotspots of this summer's art viewing and asked people.

 Jesse James (1939), Henry Fonda, 20th Century Fox

Jesse James (1939), Henry Fonda, 20th Century Fox
Back in the days, when bank robbers carried guns instead of cameras

Filmmaker Joe Gibbons robbed a bank. That was just a performance, he said after his arrest. Now he is going to prison. The question remains: Was this a very bad robbery or really good art?

Yesterday we published an interview in which Marina Abramović accuses the rapper Jay-Z of breaking an agreement. Abramović gave Jay-Z permission to adapt her piece “The Artist is Present” (originally performed as part of her 2010 retrospective at MoMA) for a music video of

Crystal Cinema I, Marina Abramovic

It was one of the biggest meetings of art and pop culture in the last ten years. But was it also a game changer? And what were the consequences for the participants? When Jay-Z adapted Marina Abramović's performance "The Artist is Present" (2010) for his video "Picasso Baby" at New York's Pace Gallery in 2013, many wondered: how did Abramović end up here? New York’s art scene was the audience, with Abramović herself as the star. Looking back, Marina wonders this too. At her recent retrospective at SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, she openly discussed the drawbacks of having replaced the physical, face-to-face encounter with the camera, and having become a brand.

 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Philipp Harth, Pablo Picasso; © bpk / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Philipp Harth, Pablo Picasso; © bpk / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv

Are the origins of the museum of contemporary art perhaps to be found in Berlin?