BlackBook

Twenty-five years ago, a man by the name of Steve Wilhite, a programmer at CompuServe, wanted to devise a way that companies could display color weather maps online. To accomplish this, he created something called the Graphics Interchange Format, or the GIF. The GIF, despite being around longer than most people who actively use it, has had a hell of a couple of years, inspiring blogs, being used as a legitimate (at least in some camps) storytelling device for media outlets and inspiring Moving the Still, an Art Basel show completely dedicated to the art of the GIF. 

Weddings can be really hard, you guys! They’re hard when you’re the person planning them, but often can be just as trying is merely attending the affair. There’s the out-of-town arrangements, the booking of hotels and flights and rental cars because they decided to get married on a ranch in East Jesus Nowhere, Georgia, the nagging cognitive dissonance that comes with supporting the worst parts of the wedding-industrial complex and, of course, trying to coordinate with a date, if you’ve got that going on.  

Sometimes, the best places to look for what’s great and new in the art world can be found in your own backyard, or in your own neighborhood. Street art and mural tours popping up in neighborhoods in cities all over the world, but you don’t want to be part of those totally commercial tourist traps. You’d rather travel and explore on your own. Now you can, for free, with the new app from San Francisco’s First Amendment Gallery, 1AM Mobile.

It's already on the lips of all those who tend to pontificate on such things: the Lower East Side is the new (insert last hot art neighborhood here). Even the French--who have this terrible habit of reminding us that they "invented" modern art (Manet, schmanet)--have gotten wind of it. And so Paris' four-years-young and somewhat surreally-titled cutlog art fair (founded by Bruno Hadjadj and Guy Reziciner) arrives in Gotham this weekend amidst the media-and-celebrity din surrounding Frieze New York.

Likely every Tumblr user on the planet was excited by the announcement of Babblr, a Google Chrome plug-in designed to let you chat in real time with all your BBFs (Best Blog Friends). Finally, a way to waste time while you’re wasting time! So far in the rollout, however, we’ve gotten only a stream of irate posts about how the damn thing won’t function, period.

Up in New England’s storied Berkshire mountains, a lot of art happens. There’s Tanglewood for music, Mass MoCA for visual art, and Jacob’s Pillow for dance. Williamstown Theatre Festival puts up quite a few plays, but they’re mostly geared for the octogenarian set—revivals of Anything Goes, etc. This July, happily, marks the first annual Mass Live Arts Festival, which aims to bring an experimental edge to an otherwise overly safe season.

We here at BlackBook love fine art from many eras, and we also love Beyoncé. And as often happens with these things, some genius on the Internet has decided to marry the two at last. There are plenty of image macro mashup blogs dedicated to pop music’s reigning queen, among them the fantastic Downton Abbeyoncé, but Beyoncé Art History works particularly well, as there’s a wealth of material on both sides of the equation and can pull from enough different eras and works—both from Bey and the art world—to keep things fresh, or at least as fresh as a meme can possibly last.

Sunday may be a "wan, stuff shadow of a robust Saturday" or a day of "forced leisure for folks who have no aptitude for leisure," according to Tom Robbins, but Mondays will always take the cake for the most dismal day of the week. And as we all crawl into the work week, let's at least take comfort in knowing once the end of the day rolls around, there are plenty of fantastic things to do this week in New York to satisfy any interest. From staring wistfully at a collection of melancholic and beautiful photographs by Dennis Hopper to bathing in the sounds of Jim Jarmusch to showing off your Twin Peaks knowledge, this week is packed with pleasures to take part in before Friday even rolls around. Peruse our list and ease into your week a little bit easier with the promise of fun.