C-MONSTER.net

Los Reyes del Mambo in Madrid. (Photo courtesy of SpY.)

• Zak Smith’s daily sketchbook.
• But will he be biting himself? Vito Acconci to deliver New School commencement address.
• New York mag has an excerpt of the De Kooning bio, An American Master, in which Rauschenberg swings by and asks to erase one of his drawings. (Via MAN.)
• Photo Essay: Robert Rauschenberg’s Time covers.
• Plus: Art to Go looks back at moments in pretty recent history when Rauschenberg wasn’t so popular, while NPR has audio of an interview with the artist, as well as a bit of music he composed, as part of his obit profile.
• I’d like you to meet your cellmate, “Tiny”: Asian antiquities expert arrested on fraud charges, stemming from SoCal museum raids this past January.
• Artlog.net Artlog.com has a brand spanking new function on their site that could serve as a good hub for organizations doing open calls for artists. If you’re an organization doing an open call, put your stuff up there…and if you’re an artist, check it out…
• The Brooklyn Museum has a super rad, comprehensive online exhibit of Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
• When museums rent their art for money. Yeah, they’re talkin’ about you, Louvre.
• Staff cuts at the Getty.
• Harvard Art Museums to unveil new Renzo Piano designs for a new building this weekend.
• Robert Storr in Frieze magazine, on the power of patrons: “Eli Broad’s plan for sharing his collection with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art while holding onto it in perpetuity is a glaring example of ‘what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine’ deal-making in the philanthropic domain.” (Via Eyebeam.)
• The Telegraph’s Richard Dorment on the Turner Prize nominees: “For the first time in many years, the Turner Prize shortlist looks to me like a dud. First, the four shortlisted artists struck me as unusually - and irritatingly - similar.” And, the kicker: “It’s the kind of modern art that pundits pay deference to and that deep down nobody really likes.” Plus: Bloomberg and the Guardian help sort out who is who.
• More on Susan Dessel getting censored by the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences in N.J.: Heart as Arena and Winkleman.
• When paintings cost more than houses: Lucian Freud painting sells for $33.6 million at Christie’s and sets price record for a work by a living artist (via AJ). The Kaufmann Desert House sells for $15 million.
• Graff of the Day: A Flickr set of the Schmitz Park Bridge in Seattle.
• Ad Deville of Skewville and Ali Ha will open the doors on their Factory Fresh gallery in Brooklyn in early June.
• Marty caps Shepard Fairey on Houston Street in NYC in broad daylight.
• Daze released in Scotland.
• Architectural billings are flaccid.
• National Geographic has a photo essay on architecture in China.
• Charles and Ray Eames introduce their new lounge chair on NBC in 1956.
• A White Forest in a Grey Field by Junya Ishigami in Tokyo.
• Here’s what that fancy hotel yuck-ifying Manhattan’s Lower East Side looks like from the inside.
• The day in graffiti merch: Graffiti’d furniture and graffiti’d dishware.
• More street art as advertising, this time for Vespa in Montreal. Creepy-looking photos here.
• Me love: Nico Nico animated gifs.
• Your moment of bad ideas.