The Digest. 12.3.07

AXMR in Miami. (Photo by C-M.)

• Art Basel, it’s, like, totally huge.
• And I Quote: “…the whole thing is like a sophisticated, grown-up spring break!” Yeah, except for the “sophisticated” and “grown-up” parts.
• The new Miami Art Museum could be “astounding,” reports the Herald. Provided someone comes up with the cash to get the damn thing built. (See a photo essay here.)
• For the procrastinators: You still might be able to get a hotel for Basel, reports ArtInfo. Just pay through the nose or stay at the No-Tell Motel.
• Banksy=Picasso, reports Bloomberg News.
• Private galleries are so turn of the millennium. Now it’s all about art caves.
• Visual nuggets: The photography of Maxim Ryazansky.
• Saving the planet, one do-gooder celebrity at a time: Brad Pitt commissions green home designs for New Orleans’s Ninth Ward.
• Painting: Not dead yet, reports the L.A. Times.
• Art spam.
• Russians now rich enough to buy their own art back. They’re buying everyone else’s art, too.
• Graff of the Day: Lem in Roubaix, France.
• From the Department of I-Said-it-First: The new Gehry-designed art museum is a “staggering success,” reports The Globe and Mail, even though the museum is still a year away from opening. (Via Arts Journal.)
• For the relics who still read dead-tree media: ArtForum is running ads that show coochie. (Wait ‘til C-Monster starts accepting ads. It’s gonna be full monty 24-7.)
• World’s Worst Book Cover.
• Jerry Saltz on the New Museum: Not big enough. (Plus: an accompanying round-up on destination museums.)
• In related news: The L.A. Times describes the building as “fuzzy.” (And not in a teddy bear kinda way.) And Ghost on the Aisle likens it to “Wal-Mart lighting in a warehouse.”
• The N.Y. Times building: “a stolid lump,” says NY Mag.
• But does the hot naked chick come with the lamp?
• The Day in Velvet Paintings.
• In Miami: Jorge Pardo at MoCA.
• In N.Y.: Multiple Interpretations at the N.Y. Public Library.
• In Honolulu: Vladimir Ossipoff at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
• In Barcelona: Art for the number crunchers: a video game, by Derivart, in which players can shoot real-time real estate bubbles on-screen.
• In Bethlehem (not the Pennsylvania version): Santa’s Ghetto in a former chicken shop.
• Your moment of socklessness.