DAILYSESSION

By Simon Romero – NewYork Times

CARACAS, Venezuela — Of all the murals and graffiti that adorn this anarchic city’s trash-strewn center, one creation by the street artist Carlos Zerpa fills him with special pride: a stenciled reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath,” in which a warrior grasps the severed head of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Zerpa, 26, a slightly built painter sporting a few days of stubble, shrugged at the possibility that American visitors to Caracas — or Mrs. Clinton for that matter — might find the mural offensive. “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated,” he said nonchalantly in an interview. “My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas.” [Read More]

By William Grims – NewYork Times

Malcolm McLaren, an impresario, recording artist and fashion designer who as manager of the Sex Pistols played a decisive role in creating the British punk movement, died on Thursday in Switzerland. He was 64.

The cause was mesothelioma, a cancer of the linings around organs, said Young Kim, his companion of many years. She said he had been under treatment at a Swiss hospital. He lived in Paris and New York. [Read More]

By James Gavin – NewYork Times

Most of the lingering images of the disco era aren’t pretty: strobe-lit suburbanites doing the hustle, John Travolta’s white polyester suit and campy preening in “Saturday Night Fever,” mobs pushing and screaming to get into Studio 54. The music itself is easy to snicker at. Set to a clockwork thump, it ordered you to boogie-oogie-oogie or to shake, shake, shake your booty. Disco stormed the charts from 1973 through 1979, but many critics see it as the soundtrack of a vapid decade — a time in which self-indulgence replaced the lofty striving of the ’60s. [Read More]

By David Browne – NY Magazine

When Sharon Jones arrives at a midtown studio to record a song for a new album by soul legend Booker T., she gets a big hug from Questlove of the Roots, who will be playing drums. The 53-year-old Jones, packed tightly into jeans and a denim jacket, is singing a duet with Matt Berninger, of indie-rockers the National. She steps behind the mike, and after three tries, it’s plain to see who’s the veteran. While Berninger keeps tweaking the phrasing and redoing lines, Jones—her voice half-gospel shout, half–Soul Train silkiness—nails her part every time. “Wow—you sing three octaves,” Berninger tells her deferentially. After the last take, Booker T. and the engineers applaud. [Read More]

By Jerry Saltz – NY Magazine

If I were the New Museum, I’d have whiplash by now. Since opening its spiffy new Bowery building in 2007, the place has gone from being champion of the underdog and advocate of the experimental to starstruck promoter of A-list artists and international cool hunter. With “Skin Fruit: Selections From the Dakis Joannou Collection,” curated by the artist Jeff Koons, this much beloved yet deeply frustrating institution has crossed some invisible line, its already-thin credibility stretched to the breaking point. [Read More]

By Stephanie Murg – Unbeige

Tis the season for institutions of higher education to announce their commencement speakers, and Pratt Institute rarely disappoints. The art and design school has signed up musician and poet Patti Smith, whose Just Kids we’ve already read thrice, to speak at its 121st commencement, during which approximately 2,000 graduates will receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees.  [Read More]

By Stephanie Murg – Unbeige

Before Jeffrey Deitch officially takes over as director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in June, his New York gallery Deitch Projects will go out with a bang—and by bang, we mean visual crack created by Shepard Fairey. [Read More]