The Digest. 04.18.08.

Detail: Portrait of Henry Geldzahler by Alice Neel, 1967, at the Met. (Photo by C-M.)

• Hot shit on a platter! I’m quoted in the Wall Street Journal on the subject of coma-inducing artspeak. What will I do with all this newfound mainstream credibility? Squander it senselessly, of course. There’s more on impenetrable artspeak at Hrag Vartanian. (Via AJ.)
• Art Fag City has a wonderful post titled “This is why people hate contemporary art.” Add this to the list.
• When artists abandon their gallerists for even bigger gallerists. In somewhat related news: Winkleman covers what it’s like to have to cut back on artists. (Not easy.)
• A gallery of Moleskine art. (Via ackackack.)
• The official papal skateboard, for when skaters want a little G.O.D. with their 360. (Via Animal.)
• Bush to Environment: Drop Dead.
• A research team from Peru says that Yale took more than 40,000 artifacts from Machu Picchu.
• George Lois’s Esquire covers go on exhibit at MoMA later this month. (Via PDN.)
• Cai Guo-Qiang at both the Guggenheim and the Seattle Art Museum. Which one’s fake and which one’s real?
• Photos of Roxy Paine’s conjoined trees at the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth.
• Real Art Reality TV, as proposed by The Brooklyn Days.
• Anselm Kiefer goes to church in L.A.
• Stoner ‘net art video of the day.
• Olafur Eliasson at MoMA and P.S. 1. See the photo essay.
• R.I.P. Joseph Solman, painter.
• Darwin’s papers now online. (Via Eyebeam reBlog.)
• Super cool architectural installation by Arne Quinze at Galerie Pierre Bergé in Brussels.
• More architecture that never was.
• More on NY Mag’s “New York Canon”: AFC reports that it’s missing Nam June Paik. Also still missing: graffiti. What could possibly more New York than graffiti? Why isn’t someone—Blade, Dondi, Lee Quiñones, Zephyr, Futura—on this frackin’ list? Plus: Last night I finally got around to reading the architecture section of this list and all I have to say is: Battery Park City? A bland, lifeless, scourge of a development that wouldn’t be out of place in Orange County, California? C’mon dudes, you’re killing me.
• In sort of related news: Build that damn Nouvel tower on 53^rd street already, says NY Mag’s Justin Davidson. It would be an “ecstatic reproach to Manhattan’s regularity.”
• Renzo Piano on the subject of using glass in architecture in the days of Code Orange: “From the point of view of [combating] terrorism, my feeling is that glass is better than anything else because of visibility. I believe transparency is safer than opacity.“
• The Day in Tornadic Imagery: Project Or by Christopher Klemmt in Milan.
• Storm Troopin’. (Via Coudal.)
• Graff of the Day: Highraff in São Paulo. Many more here.
• Insa in Dublin.
• The Guardian discovers light graffiti.
• Brooklyn Street Art benefit auction next week.
• Japanese shadow pictures.
• The Simpsons on the end of print journalism. (Via Art to Go.)
• Hot gay statues, courtesy of Paris Bureau Chieftess Yvonne Connasse.
• Your moment of fast food heists.