Hasta La Ideas

James Rosenquist’s “The Richest Person Gazing at the Universe Through a Hubcap” (2011), one of 26 works donated to the Artists for Haiti auction (Photo: David Zwirner)

Earlier this year, actor Ben Stiller and gallerist extraordinaire David Zwirner teamed up to organize Artists for Haiti, an art auction to benefit huminatiarian efforts in the wake of the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake that took 230,000 lives. Months of work on the project have paid off in the form of a jaw-dropping selection of 26 pieces—most created specifically for the sale—that will go on the block at Christie’s on the evening of Thursday, September 22, in New York. Artists including Jasper Johns, Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Cecily Brown, and Raymond Pettibon have donated works, and they’re not standard benefit-auction fare. Mamma Andersson has contributed a haunting oil called “Night Train” (2011), and Neo Rauch is represented by a breathtaking new canvas of alienated souls poised to break into song in a technicolored forest. In “Le juif errant” (2011), Francis Alÿs depicts a figure traversing a map while carrying the built world on his shoulders. The canvas could function as a new identity for Architecture for Humanity, one of several nonprofits and NGOs that all of the proceeds from the Artists for Haiti auction will support. Learn more about the auction and check out all of the works in person at David Zwirner (September 6-14) or at Christie’s (September 17-20). Click here to watch Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer, who has written a text in the Artists for Haiti auction catalogue, discuss the situation in Haiti during his recent appearance on Charlie Rose.

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After saying the rumors were completely unfounded, architect Will Alsop recently once again pulled a 180 and did exactly what the rumors had foretold, specifically that he was leaving the massive Scottish firm RMJM to start his own new practice. Now Building Design has learned a few specifics of the new venture, which he’s launched with his longtime business partner, Scott Lawrie, who has been working with Alsop since their days toiling for Norman Foster. The new company will be called ALL Design and will call South London its home. Here’s a bit more about it from BD:

Up to 15 staff will be transferring across from previous practice Will Alsop at RMJM and will be based in the same Battersea studio which has been Alsop’s home through a number of incarnations. In all, the new firm will have 20 staff.

…“We are very happy to work on anything from a tea spoon to a city, sometimes in collaboration with designers from other fields,” Lawrie added.

The site also reports that Alsop will continue working with his now-former employer on several projects that were ongoing at the time of his exit.

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The last time we called the New Yorker‘s office and asked how much they’d charge to hire out architecture critic Paul Goldberger for the day to show us around the city a bit, they hung up on us and blocked our number. Jokes on them though because now we can download the magazine’s new Goings On app for that very same phone we made that call from. Not only is it free but it features a guided audio tour through the High Line by Goldberger himself. Too bad, because on top of the fee we would have paid him, we probably would have even sprung for a hot dog too.

In something completely unrelated to both that last tidbit and really anything at all in general, artist Daniel Edwards, made (in)famous for his sculpture of a nude Britney Spears giving birth on a bear rug and later another featuring Oprah in a sarcophagus, has struck again. This time he’s captured tween-idols Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez in a piece called “Justin and Selena as One,” which features the pair conjoined, nude, and cast in bronze. If Thomas Kinkade is the “Painter of Light,” then Daniel Edwards is the “Sculptor of Things That Get Lots of Mentions on Twitter, Celebrity News Blogs, and as the Short Joke Piece That Will Close Out Your Local Nightly News.”

Finally in this cavalcade of randomness: since Barbie gets her own new AIA member-designed house, then it’s only fair that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. should get his own Hot Wheels. Granted, we understand the logical fallacy there, with Earnhardt being a real person and all, but let’s just go with it, shall we? The newly-released toy car from the famous NASCAR driver is called the “Hammerhead,” reportedly one of his childhood nicknames, and “features classic ’50s hot rod meets ’60s muscle car styling.” You can watch a selection of the design process, wherein Earnhardt himself helped, which resulted in this unintentionally sort-of funny video. It’s definitely much more funny than this branded short film for Hot Wheels featuring Jeremy Piven.

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Time-lapse footage of the BMW Guggenheim Lab construction in New York City.

The highly anticipated BMW Guggenheim Lab has kicked off its six-year, nine-city world tour. First stop: New York’s East Village, inside a 2,200-square-foot mobile structure designed by Tokyo-based Atelier Bow-Wow. Envisioned as a think tank, public forum, and community center, the BMW Guggenheim Lab is offering an astounding array of free programs—including a talk this Friday by Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (see also: High Line, The), a scavenger hunt for sounds of the city, a large-scale interactive group game called Urbanology (play online here), and the rather intimidating “South Bronx Toxicity Tour“—that explore the challenges of urban life. The inaugural Lab, located at at First Park (Houston at 2nd Avenue), is open free of charge Wednesdays to Sundays, through October 16. The Lab will leave its temporary NYC home with some permanent improvements (stabilization and paving of the site, fresh sidewalks, and new wrought-iron fencing and gates) before heading to Berlin next spring, where it will be presented in collaboration with the ANCB Metropolitan Laboratory in Pfefferberg, and then it’s onto Mumbai. “The Guggenheim is taking its commitment to education, scholarship, and design innovation one step further. We’re taking it on the road,” said Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, in a statement issued by the museum. “From New York to Berlin to Mumbai and beyond, we will address the enormously important issues our major cities are facing today and engage others along the way.”

Photos in video, superstructure, and installation: NUSSLI Group, Switzerland/USA. Site preparation and construction management: Sciame Construction Co. Edited by Veena Rao. Inset photo by Paul Warchol. Video and photo © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

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