C-MONSTER.net

Devotion is a thing that demands motives, painting by Timothy Buckwalter.

I’ve been having some server problems with Yahoo webhosting, so if things look funny or are loading awful slow, please be patient. I’m trying to get it resolved. xox, C.

• Juan Sánchez Cotán, in one and two parts. Interesting fact: There may be only seven of his paintings in existence, because “Cotán entered the Carthusian order and pretty much stopped painting still-lifes.”
• Hong Kong publisher rips off blogger’s content for a book.
• Graff of the Day: Claudio and Ethos in São Paulo.
• Dan Witz has a new set of trompe l’oeil sticks up in Brooklyn: Ugly New Buildings 2008. (Thanks for the link, Luna Park!)
• An interview with the directors of Bomb It.
• A Skewville gallery grows in Brooklyn.
• A cryptic Q&A with the Date Farmers.
• Murakami on his sci-fi inspirations: “I loved Galaxy Express 999. When I saw the scene depicting Planet Maetel’s collapse, I was moved from the bottom of my heart, and made the decision to work in the field of anime. Also, the amount of influence that the appearance of Star Wars exerted on my generation is tremendous. I felt sympathetic to the revolution that George Lucas started, and my work has become a re-enactment of that sort of revolution in the art scene.”
• In a related story: Drunk Vader goes postal on Jedi fanboy. (Thanks, Alex.)
• Photos from the opening of the Joshua Liner Gallery, which featured works by Futura, Crash One, Ron English and others.
• The art vases of John Michael Gill.
• Is death art? Is art death? Good question.
• Photo Essay: The paintings of Maria Lassnig.
• Art Musical Chairs: Denver Museum picks up a work by Thomas Eakins from the Philadelphia Museum.
• In Seattle, the Henry tackles war.
• Chicago gets ready for art fair nomads who will temporarily set up an expensive encampment with shiny wares for sale.
• NYC art fair reports are in.
• Make It Moody: Tony Blair’s official portrait unveiled.
• Attention art lemmings: Saatchi is buying Middle Eastern.
• Japanese packaging, including matches with faces on them. (Via NotCot.)
• The photographs of Tod Papageorge.
• A gallery of pale, nekkid people at the Galería Clave in Murcia.
• The day in honeycomb-inspired architecture: Paseo Altamirano in Valparaíso, Chile.
• Renzo Piano set to blandify Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp chapel with a visitor’s center.
• Unbuilt Chicago skyscraper designed by Calatrava may be in financial trouble.
• Trippy house on the Mexican coast, designed by Cadaval & Sola-Morales. Kinda looks like a remix of Rudolph Schindler’s Lovell house in Balboa, Calif.
• Make It Brutal: Mammoth Soviet buildings of the ‘70s and ’80s.
• Yoko Ono trying to block release of footage of John Lennon smoking pot and saying he wanted to spike Nixon’s tea with acid.
• Your moment of cat butt.