The Digest.
Artists Jake and Dinos Chapman redecorate some currency at Frieze. Photo by Simon Crerar
- From the Department of I-Did-That-First: British street artist D*Face is super pissed that Jake and Dinos Chapman at the Frieze fair in London are defacing currency because defacing currency is his idea. Memo to D*Face: There’s no such thing as an original idea, especially in art. (Via ArtForum.)
- ArtReview has devoted itself to that most meaningful act of modern journalism: the list. Today, the mag revealed the 100 most powerful people in the art industry. What you need to know: Damien Hirst is up, Jeff Koons is down, Charles Saatchi is flat. And C-Monster? Nowhere to be seen.
- In a related story: Hirst’s shark-in-formaldehyde sculpture has landed at NY’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Some advice: never look at a Hirst sculpture while nursing a hangover.)
- Newsflash: Art fairs like Frieze aren’t for the general public, they’re for rich people.
- When art mimics geopolitics: At Frieze, Chinese art values soared. Western art values dropped. (Though Banksy managed to make a few gains for Old Britannia.)
- SeaFair founder David Lester: Champagne wishes and caviar dreams.
- Visual Nuggets: Cardboard sculptures by Chris Gilmore—including renderings of a Fiat, a moped and a church made out of discarded condom boxes. (Just follow the link.)
- War from a photographer’s perspective (the un-embedded kind): a 3-part video doc about VII, a group of photojournalists who have covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
- Murakami commercial tornado soon to touch down in L.A.
- Graff of the Day: CES53 in the Netherlands.
- New Trends in Architecture: Roller Coasters.
- Art Dump wants to trade a zine with you.
- The plants at Seattle’s sculpture park aren’t doing all that well.
- Cell phones that smell.
- Your moment of zen.
Posted by C-Monster

October 19th, 2007 at 5:27 am
File under: Things I learned in Beijing
Chinese artists are under market pressure to produce identifiably Chinese art.