# 09 March, 2013 12:27

What I liked at the 2013 Armory Show

I usually ignore the Armory show. It’s expensive and pretentious and a big part of the art-might-as-well-be-the-stock-market side of things. They publish stuff like this with a straight face in their little daily newspaper:

But inspired by a few press reviews and Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Instagram coverage, I decided to go this year. There is a lot of good art! Much more than you’re likely to encounter in a day wandering the galleries.

I only had time for Pier 94 (“Contemporary”), so I missed whatever treasures were on Pier 92 (“Modern”, meaning old). If you go, you probably need 4-5 hours if you really like to look at stuff. I did not have that long, but I missed a lot.

Three things of extra special note:

1. Duke Riley has a piece where you can make your own wax rubbing print of his image, on pre-signed and numbered sheets. It’s pretty great (like pretty much everything Duke Riley does).

2. James Capper was hanging around his wonderful destruction machines and I pressured him into giving a demo even though he was clearly exhausted from lifting the heavy things. I took a video:

3. Hiroshige Fukuhara was there drawing on the wall next to his framed pieces. It was really nice to see this in person!

Here’s a giant list of all the artists whose work I liked. It’s surely a fickle list—dependent on my mood, how much of a hurry I was in, what I noticed and failed to notice, etc. There was work there from artists I otherwise like, but if I didn’t like anything I saw of theirs at the Armory, they’re not here. Likewise, I might hate everything else by someone I do list, but I enjoyed seeing their work at this show. And many of these folks had multiple pieces in the show and I may not have liked them all. Or maybe I did! And some of these people are so famous it’s silly to list them at all (does anyone not like Alice Neel or Gordon Parks?). Is this list better than nothing at all?

Artists are listed in the order they ended up out in my text doc. I often resumed note-taking at random points in the middle of the list, so these are unlikely to be in any helpful order.

They all link to a Google image search of the name plus “armory 2013”; kind of a crapshoot as to how that works out.

Oh also the furniture was nice, in the various sitting areas. Good job whoever did that.

# 01 March, 2013 17:52

Delighted! I love it!

# 26 February, 2013 15:37

has like a dashboard

# 23 February, 2013 16:10

Best thing to come out of #nounproject #hackshackers #iconathon #stackopancakes

# 29 January, 2013 20:24

Just one, I guess.

# 24 January, 2013 23:19

Jer Thorp at Hacks/Hackers NYC

I just got home from a presentation by artist and data-visualization-famous-person Jer Thorp. It was called “Algorithms, Art and Authorship” and was hosted by the NYC chapter of Hacks/Hackers. I liked it. I made this sketch of Jer doing his talk:

Jason Das

What I liked at the 2013 Armory Show

Jer Thorp at Hacks/Hackers NYC

I'm Jason Das.