What Would Beethoven Do? by Jonathan Keijser. Adopt an artist, support the arts in Madrid | Culture | DW.DE | 19.06.2013. Since visiting a cramped art studio in her neighbourhood during an open house in December 2012, Teresa Navajas has been working on innovative ideas to help support contemporary artists in Madrid. What used to be a large, vacant space on top of a church in downtown Madrid is today a vibrant studio shared by seven young artists. "The artwork was fantastic. The space was magic. They were amazing," says the bubbly 30-year-old, her eyes lighting up as she describes her first impression of Studio Beneficencia. But as colorful as the place is, all the artists there are struggling to make ends meet.
"Art doesn't sell like it used to a few years ago," says Jairo Alfonso, one of the artists who works out of Studio Beneficencia. The slowdown in art sales has meant that none of the artists at Studio Beneficencia can afford to work on their art full-time. "I'll do anything that pays," Ugo Martinez Lazaro says, shaking his head. Crisis-hit creative industries Investing in the future of the arts. Art Takes Times Square - Marlos Salustiano. Art Exhibit NYC. Times Square billboards answer a high-brow calling: Art. An artsy crowd filtered into Times Square last night, bathed along with the tourists in the weird Blade Runner light of the usually baldly-consumerist electronic billboards there. But up on two large portable L.E.D. screens, and later on a couple of the giant permanent screens that light the square, art was replacing commerce, for a short while anyway, with thousands of original works submitted to Artists Wanted, a local art-outreach organization, cycling through.
As hundreds gathered, a pop-up society of art-world cool kids and Times Square hustlers took shape. Three stilt-walkers hired for the event, playing in a band, marched around the crowd, followed by a masked man carrying a cross and a sign decrying the devil, as well as another man papering the crowd with fliers advertising a local restaurant. A child with a sign advertising “Free Hugs” got takers on the outer fringe of the crowd. “It doesn’t have to be in a gallery, which can be kind of alienating for a lot of people,” he said.
Street art. 10 Artists Who Died Too Young. Occupy This Album: 99 Songs for the 99 Percent. Various Artists Occupy This Album Music for Occupy Like the '60s-era social movements that inspired the performers at Woodstock, the Occupy movement has proved an irresistible draw to musicians. Dropping in on Zuccotti Park last fall was a who's who of socially conscious music luminaries from Russell Simmons and Kanye West to Rufus Wainwright and Sean Lennon. They came out to inspire the protesters with their music or celebrity, but the inspiration apparently works both ways—judging, at least, from this new box set featuring 99 songs by A-list performers from Willie Nelson to Ladytron to Thievery Corporation. Though many of the songs were recorded before last fall, others dwell directly on Occupy Wall Street.
They don't always succeed, but an Occupy-themed track by Third Eye Blind, "If There Ever Was A Time," is a gem. (Listen below.) Over a typically catchy hook, front man Stephan Jenkins proclaims: But what the album lacks in musical cohesion, it makes up in star power.