The Digest. 07.17.08.

Quits in Athens. (Photo by server_pics.)

• Too rad for words: The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator. (Via Art251.)
• A profile of the retired policeman who beheaded the wax Hitler on a dare.
• Andrés Serrano now into poop.
• The Forger’s Spell, a book about the 1930s Dutch artist who made lots of cash peddling fake Vermeers to buyers such as Nazi Herman Goering.
• Tracey Emin wants babies. Plus, she thinks the Chinese art market is overhyped: ““Some unknown Chinese artist who was about 30 was selling more than a Damien [Hirst]. It’s not right! If what is happening in the art market was happening anywhere else it would be called insider dealing. It is RIFE!”
• The roller derby art of Jocelyn Foye.
• Nothing upsets a policeman more than a car without an engine: Artists gets pulled over for riding a pedal car.
• Metropolis Mag profiles Eli Broad: L.A.’s self-appointed master builder. (Via A.O.)
• San Franciscans not digging the idea of Gap founder Don Fisher putting his private museum on public land.
• Sales at Christie’s up 10% during the first half, largely due to buyers from the Middle East, Russia and Asia. In related news: London art sales lackluster.
• Graff of the Day: AEC and Interezni Kazki in Kiev. More here.
• “That’s how I roll, motherfucker.” (Via Ekosystem.)
• The Guardian is tired of stupid stories about street art.
• Photos from Doze Green’s and Fefe Talavera’s show at K-Space in Amsterdam.
• NYC gummint officials wipe out a Tat’s Cru “Stop Snitching” mural—two years after it was legally commissioned and painted.
• Photos from the prefab house show at MoMA.
• Frank Gehry comments on the architectural supermarket that is Abu Dhabi: “…People choose one building by me, one by Norman Foster, one by Zaha, one by Jean Nouvel, one by Daniel Libeskind. It becomes a cabinet of horrors.”
• Get over there: Today’s the last day to see Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World at Film Forum in NYC. Update: My colleague, Mlle. Connasse, tells me that the film will open at BAM this Friday. Whew!
• John McCain is really confused. About a lot of things.
• Your moment of stuff. (Via MAN.)