The Digest. 07.03.08.

The Murakami Louis Vuitton boutique at the Brooklyn Museum. (Photo by Jason Lujan.)

• Video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded for the August issue of Vanity Fair: “It’s a smothering feeling as well as a drowning feeling.” (Via Kottke.)
• For the artspeak crowd, a little Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” (Via Eyebeam.)
• Art Video of the Day: Signs of Life by Freddie Yauner.
• Keeping the lawyers employed: The details on that mind-boggling lawsuit that some art collector filed against L.A.’s MoCA over what is essentially paperwork.
• A round-up from the London auctions, where there were some big sales, but no sell-outs. More here. Related: high art prices on the top end may disguise malaise at lower levels (via A.J.).
• The French are all worried that Jeff Koons will kitsch-ify Versailles. Um, isn’t Versailles already pretty kitschy? Doesn’t it just reek of gaudy wealth? Koons will fit in perfectly…
• MoMA buys photographs by contemporary Chinese artists.
• All Vermeer, all the time. (Via Coudal.)
• Gary Panter has a blog.
• A fascinating work by Tuur van Balen that explores all of the pharmaceuticals which end up in our water.
• Humans as sculpture.
• Some artist green-screened a Mariah Carey video so that viewers could add their own backgrounds. Sounds an awful lot like Stephen Colbert’s Make McCain Interesting Green Screen Challenge.
• Kerry James Marshall on his art.
• A round-up of photography books.
• Graff of the Day: Saner in Mexico.
• Os Gemeos in the streets of NYC. Plus: a video interview.
• Multi-colored architecture of the day: Izola housing in Slovenia.
• Calatrava’s response to changes in his WTC design.
• A visual classification of the many subspecies of douchebag. (Via Animal.)
• And just in time for the Fourth of July: Your moment of the greatest best country on the face of the Earth.