The Tate Tanks

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Today's news from around the web 6.07.12

Art

How performance art took over With the imminent opening of the Tate Tanks The Guardian’s Adrian Searle looks at the rise of performance art. Read it here 

Zhang Xiaogang and the Chinese Art Boom The Wall Street Journal posts a fascinating piece that looks at the career of popular artist Zhang Xiaogang as a case study in the Chinese art boom in which he reveals "I Just Felt Like a Machine, Forced to Work" Read it here 

Why Chuck Close took up portraiture SFMOMA posts a video in which the artist, 72 years old this week, remembers the American art scene of the 1960s, a time when sculpture ruled and many considered it "dumb to paint". Watch it here 

Marina Abramović to Teach at the MoMA PS1 Summer School Animal New York reports that  Marina Abramović, Steve Paxton, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge will be among the teachers at the Summer School lecture series at MoMA PS1. Read it here 

 

Design

__The Rite stuff __ ICON magazine carries a great story about how designers such as Karim Rashid and Studio Armadillo approach briefs surrounding ritualistic design and how to bring an aesthetic element to your chosen religion. Read it here 

Lego forest blooms in Australian outback To celebrate 50 years of the Lego brick in Australia, Creative Review blogs on how the toy brand has been 'planting' lifesize Lego forests across Australia. The latest sprang up earlier this week in the remote outback town of Broken Hill. Read it here

Don’t worry be happy September Industry takes a look at the rebranding work done by Established NYC for Laughing Man Worldwide, a charitable organisation set up by Hugh Jackman, whose first venture was to be the sale and distribution of coffee and tea. See it here 

Morrissey as you’ve never seen him before Behance Network takes a look at the illustrations for Rolling Stone magazine done by Moscow-based designer Evgeny Parfenov including illustrations of Christina Hendricks, NAS, The Dead Weather and Ryan Gosling. See them here 

 

Photography

David Bailey’s East End Huffington Post reports on David Bailey’s new exhibition at Compressor House in London's Royal Docks where audiences are shown a different side to the photographer synonymous with the Swinging Sixties. The personal collection of photographs appears as part of CREATE's summer programme. See them here 

Street photography in an iPhone age The LA Times posts an interview with Emmy-award-winning producer and two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee Richard Koci Hernandez in which he gives advice on how to shoot good street photography on smartphones. Read it here

A Japanese take on American cowboys Are Osamu Wataya’s blurred rodeo images really a closer evocation of the contemporary Wild West than any depicted by an American photographer? "As a Japanese photographer, I thought was closer to the ideal image of a cowboy" he tells the Japan Times. Read it here

 

Architecture

Has RIBA divided the architectural community? In the Architect's Journal Tom Emerson, the co-founder of emerging star practice 6a, blames RIBA for fuelling the divide between those who think architecture schools should be creative and those who say they should focus on practical skills. Read it here

World’s architects go back to basics The New Straits Times reports that Kuala Lumpur’s international architectural conference Datum KL, flies in the UK’s David Adjaye, Japan’s Takaharu Tezuka and Australia’s Iredale Pedersen Hook to discuss contemporary building design, with reference to ‘roots’. Read it here

David Chipperfield favours group think over lone innovation  “Architecture is the most collaborative process," says this year's curator of the Venice’s 13th International Architecture Biennale. (29 Aug 12 – 25 Nov 12) in an interview with The Art Newspaper.  “And this show will focus on the notion of shared ideas over individual authorship.” Read it here