- Yes, our world continues to become more and more like a goofy sci-fi film daily. The 3RDi (pronounced “third eye”) is a headband that looks like a Livestrong bracelet with a tiny camera, documenting everything from the vantage point of the wearer’s forehead. As the image above suggests, it’s a must-have accessory for living in the dystopian police state. [PetaPixel]
- Warhol’s “Four Marilyns” fetched $32 million last night at the end of Christie’s sale, but the house had guaranteed it at $40 million. Despite the highlights — Lucio Fontana’s egg-shaped painting sold for $29.2 million, Bourgeois’s spider set an auction record at $28.5 million, Freud’s portrait of Camilla’s ex-husband Parker Bowles $35 million — the two-dale Christie’s sale saw a 41% sales drop from May’s auctions, suggesting that the estimates didn’t necessarily match the quality of artworks. [Bloomberg]
- The auction gets the equivalent of a shoulder shrug from Josh Baer who called the 20 percent sell through rate the sign of a healthy market. [Baer Faxt]
- Sotheby’s released its quarterly report yesterday, and it appears that revenue from auctions themselves is shrinking. The auction house is offsetting that with income from ancillary activities, such as financial services. This may give credence to speculation that the evening sales don’t make money. [Blouin Artinfo]
- In a climate where a 1990 Christopher Wool painting that consists entirely of the stenciled text “CATS IS BAG BAG IN RIVER” sells for $17 million and people are disappointed, it’s hard not to argue that the world is insane. Just how crazy has wealth inequality become? So crazy that apparently the super-rich are buying airfields and farms in remote locations to escape anticipated civil unrest. [The Guardian]
- David Stewart wins this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize for a group portrait featuring his daughter and her girlfriends surrounded by their smart phones and coffee takeaway cups. The London-based photographer was awarded £12,000 for the National Portrait Gallery’s signature prize. [British Journal of Photography]
- A Frank Lloyd Wright house reopens on the grounds of Alice Walton’s Bentonville, Arkansas-based private museum. Formerly located in New Jersey, the Bachman-Wilson House took 18 months and two trucks in order to make the 1,200 mile move. [The Art Newspaper]
- Wow, plans have been unveiled for a new 1,000 foot office/residential building in Downtown Brooklyn that would be taller than any New York building outside of Manhattan. While the arrival of new luxury developments is an inevitability we’ve all come to dread, I have to say this design by SHoP architects is pretty nice. The skyscraper incorporates subtle nods to the city’s gothic and art deco spires without coming across as fake-historic or bland—the two options we’re used to seeing plague the city’s architecture scene. It does, however, lend itself to some Lord of the Rings jokes we should all be expecting to hit Twitter any minute now. [Dezeen]
- Long Beach, California is getting a new art/craft fair that organizers describe as “Etsy for metalheads.” [LA Weekly]
- Artists protesting the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit at the Brooklyn Museum are trying to raise a bit of cash for signs, city permits, etc. Help them out. [Generosity]
- Deborah Kass’s sculpture OY/YO was placed in Brooklyn Bridge Park on Monday and will stand there through August. That’s right by our office, so we’ll be heading out to see the sculpture today. [The New York Times]
- Fascinating: A study by the Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia finds that residents in gentrifying neighborhoods have slightly higher mobility rates than those in non-gentrifying neighborhoods, but they do have a higher risk of moving to a lower-income neighborhood. (Isn’t this because if you’re forced to move its because your income isn’t rising at the same rate as the neighborhood median?) [Bloomberg Business]
