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This Means Nothing, by Le Bijoutier.

The other day I picked up this recently-released photographic tome on NYC street art to check out what got featured. There’s some good stuff in here, pieces - like Skewville’s Ride or Die sculpture (see it after the jump) - that have long been lost to the real estate developers glassifying downtown. There are a number of spots featured in the book that at some point or another, I’ve photographed myself, so I figured I’d do a small round-up. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pick up the book. Le Bijoutier has waaaaay more stuff than I feature here and it’s all very nicely showcased: just photos, and like the title implies, no long-winded essays about the meaning of it all.

Click to supersize. Images after the jump.

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Eli Baxter at the The Contemporary Museum Biennial of Hawaii Artists in Honolulu, through August 17. (Image courtesy of Baxter.)

Hey Kids: As we enter the summer I’m gonna cut back on Digest-ing. Starting next week, it’s Monday through Thursday only, leaving Friday open for very important posts about goodies like chocolate Boteros. xox, C.

• The hat-twirling GIF. (Via HV.)
• Preserving art that isn’t built to last. (Via AJ.)
• Jake and Dinos Chapman vandalize Hitler paintings and are now trying to sell them (via AJ). The Guardian has an image of one of the works here. They also ask: Is this all “a bit silly?” The answer: yes.
• Rich Russians buying art at the Moscow World Fine Art Fair. Plus: The Times looks at those Russian millionaires and billionaires that Western millionaires and billionaires are being all condescending about.
• Contemporary art prices are trending downward says curator Todd Levin.
• The Woodstock Museum. Groovy fact: Richard Lacayo went to Woodstock. Rock on!!
• Jeff Wall discusses five of his pics and how they came about (via AFC). That staged battle scene kinda reminds me in its ethos to those melodramatic, staged battle scenes that Meissonier liked to paint in the 19^th century.
• Artist killed during peace pilgrimage.
• A profile of street artiste and Fulbright scholar Steve Powers, aka ESPO, in the New York Times. See the photo essay.
• Tobias Wolff’s short story Bullet in the Brain, about an art critic taking some hot lead to the head.
• A Portrait of Silvia Elena, a collaborative installation by Swoon and Tennessee Jane Watson, at the Honey Space in NYC. The piece honors one of the countless women killed in the Mexican border town of Juárez, whose murders have gone largely uninvestigated and unsolved.
• “Street art is gone…but I’m still here.”
• Book: Lost: Graffiti in the City of Angels, a compilation of ten years worth of graffiti photography in L.A.
• Enter the drawing to win a Skewville crate, covered in real, 100% authentic New York City grime!
• Our President is a douche. The Daily Show’s take here.
• Container-like, but modern: The Nomadhome by Gerold Peham.
• Keeping the footprint small: The Marfa 10 x 10 Lightbox House, which takes up only 320 square feet of land. (Via NotCot.)
• Little People. (Thanks again, TT!)
• Your moment of procrastination. (Thanks again, TT.)

Mine, 2008.

Photos from Remembering to Forget, Charles Browning’s show at Schroeder Romero in NYC. A friend of mine described the work as “ironic Romanticism.” It seems an adept label. The show runs through June 21st.

Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.

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A piece of Greg Lynn’s Blobwall. (Photo by virtual.architect.)

• In L.A.: Greg Lynn’s Blobwall Pavilion at SCI-Arc, opens tomorrow.
• In L.A.: Four, a group show at Corey Helford in Culver City, opens tomorrow.
• In S.F.: Eve Sussman’s Rape of the Sabine Women to screen on Fridays through June at S.F. MoMA.
• In Orange County, Calif.: Terracotta Warriors at the Bowers Museum (via O.C. Art Blog). Looking Around dissects warrior types.
• In Chicago: Jeff Koons at the Museum of Contemporary Art, opens Saturday.
• In NYC: David Byrne turns the Battery Maritime Building into a giant organ in Playing the Building, in lower Manhattan, opens this Saturday.
• In NYC: Emergence, on Governor’s Island, this Saturday.
• In NYC: Graffiti Research Lab, tagging the Peter Sharp building at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, tonight and Saturday.
• In NYC: Louise Lawler at Metro Pictures, through June 7^th.
• In São Paulo: Cena7, Emol, Nick e, GEN and JoaoH at Qaz Urban Art.
• In Glasgow: Birth Rites at the Glasgow Science Centre.
• In London: Psycho Buildings: Artists Take On Architecture at the Hayward. (The best line from this story… Adrian Searle on Ernesto Neto: “The result is a sort of chill-out zone of swollen glands and dangling testicular bulges.”) More on the show here.
• In Liverpool: Speaking of testicular bulges, Gustav Klimt is now on view at the Tate Liverpool. More here.

Tribute to the Best Mom in the World, 2008, by Andrew Sexton at Oliver Kamm, in NYC. Opening night featured an ice cream boar’s head that was quite delicious. Hopefully I won’t find out later that it contained the artist’s spit. The exhibit runs until June 21st. (Photo by C-M.)

• Jerry Saltz writes an elegy to the East Village’s Tower of Toys: “It wasn’t beautiful, but it was beautifully eccentric, part of a folk-art tradition put together from the detritus and wreckage of once-raggedy neighborhoods by individuals working on the edge of society.”
• Jake and Dinos Chapman are making a movie and it’s rumored to be about the art world.
• From the Department of No Duh: Coochie-covered chairs designed for a London park by painter Jonathan Yeo are rejected for being too pornographic.
• The Day in Art Merch: Alex Katz beach towels and Glass House Moleskine notebooks.
• Photos and Video: Josiah McElheny talks about Conceptual Drawings for a Chandelier.
• Art Basel shifts schedule to accommodate soccer tourney in Switzerland. Also part of the story: Gallerists beseeching various supernatural forces that collectors will still be dropping big bucks on contemporary art when the fair opens next week.
• Photo essay: Sony’s photographic archive, including pics of Dylan, Sly Stone, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.
• The urban architecture of the upcoming Frank Miller flick, The Spirit.
• Video of Andy Warhol’s photos at Cal State Fullerton.
• Graff of the Day: Sums in Bristol.
• Photos from the Electric Windows show in Beacon, N.Y.
• CNN covers the story of KRink. (Via Supertouch.)
• Photo Essay: The Architecture of Authority.
• RIBA names the best buildings in Britain. The list includes buildings by Richard Rogers, David Adjaye, Norman Foster and David Chipperfield.
• It’s What’s For Breakfast: Renderings of the Egg Building in Mumbai.
• Richard Meier talks green. (Via Unbeige.)
• A lecture by Juan Freire at the Medialab Prado on the issue of managing public space. (Set aside some time for this one. It’s long, but worth it.)
• A giant wooden cactus. (If you live in L.A., you can see this on Friday: Info here.)
• Your moment of Fresh Prince, in Italian.

Sixeart and JR on the side of the Tate. (Photo by Neloboix.)

The Tate Modern’s street art show went up in London last week, with pieces by Sixeart, JR, Blu, Faile Nunca, and Os Gemeos. The London Evening Standard wonders why the exhibit doesn’t include Banksy. It woulda been kinda funny to see a giganto rat on the side of this venerable institution.

See more pix by Neloboix on Flickr. See video of some of the installation here. The show is up until August 25th.

Posted by C-Monster.