
Sweet like candy: Balloon Dog Yellow by Jeff Koons. (Photos by C-M.)
There are days a girl wants art that’s big and shiny, art that can be admired while sipping a frozen margarita and getting a tan. Until some Caribbean resort decides to do a sculptural installation (probably not that far off), there is always the roof of the Met, where you can currently catch the sight of some over-sized pieces by Jeff Koons. (I admit: I dig the balloon dog.) It’s good clean fun, in an Ibiza foam party kind of way.
The show is up until October 26th.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: Jeff Koons at the Met.’

Vino, Foxy Lady and Drank in Florence, Italy. (Photo by 18K.)
Hey Folks: As you’ll notice, C-Monster has a new look. After tinkering with buggy layouts that were inserting spam code for boner drugs in my page (the nerve!!), I should hopefully be rocking and rolling. Or at least humming my favorite lite music favorites. xox, C.
- Way to elevate the discourse: Simon & Schuster, with the aid of Mary Matalin, is funding a writer who has referred to Hillary Clinton as a “lesbo” and Muslims as “ragheads.”
- Crucified frog sculpture is blasphemous, says Pope. And fugly, says C-Monster.
- Damien Hirst’s London dealer denies they have a “mountain” of unsold works. Most puzzling quote in the story: Robert Sandelson, a London dealer who, in the past, has sold Hirst’s works on the secondary market: “Sotheby’s auction is payback time for Damien…He’s saying to the dealers, ‘If you can’t sell these pieces, I’ll find someone who can.’” Um, payback for what? He’s already one of the richest artists on the planet. More here.
- That would be a thumbs down: Lucian Freud portrait destroyed by man who didn’t like his double chin (via A.O.). Because you know you want to read more.
- Alfredo Jaar on culture as a prison.
- The Day in Art Forgery: Looking Around reviews a coupla tomes on those fake Vermeers.
- Selling to the Oligarchs: Larry Gagosian is planning a big show - featuring pieces by Giacometti, Lichtenstein and De Kooning - in an old chocolate factory in Moscow.
- In unrelated news: Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, a state-owned museum, is in talks with the city government to build a new space for its collection of modern and contemporary art.
- Fallout from the trashed Léger at Wellesley: Some lady wants her shit back.
- The New Yorker visits with Kehinde Wiley. A photo essay of his work can be found here.
- James Powderly, of Graffiti Research Lab, talks about his time in the Beijing big house. See some of his China pix here.
- An outdoor advertising company in Minneapolis is freaked out by Suzanne Opton’s artful photos of American soldiers.
- C-Monster en Español: Este link está de requeteputamadre.
- Hurricane of Hype: Banksy is doing New Orleans.
- The Wall Street Journal on why urban planning at NYC’s Ground Zero has been a “fiasco.” Sample line: “What went wrong, in the broadest sense, is that everything meant to turn the area into a symbol of rebirth and regeneration was subverted by political weakness or opportunism and New York’s bottom-line, top-dollar mentality; what we have at Ground Zero is an awful marriage of deals and death… Everything that would have enriched and enlivened the area is gone…”
- Paul Rudolph’s Yale School of Architecture gets a renovation by Charles Gwathmey.
- Drunk architecture: A trippy residential development in Norway’s Tromsø Straight by 70º Arkitektur.
- Moving Richard Neutra’s Maxwell House from one L.A. neighborhood to another.
- Sexy people. (Via Coudal.)
- Your moment of musical porn.
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Detail of El Retaule de l’amor, 1910, by Julio Romero de Torres at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. (Photo by C-M.)
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The Denver Art Museum at night. (Photo by MicheKerr.)
- In Denver: The Denver Art Museum has rearranged the furniture, just in time for the convention.
- In Denver: Dialog: City, various art events around the city, begin this week.
- In Pittsfield, Mass.: Sergei Isupov, Androgny, at the Ferrin Gallery, through Oct. 4th.
- In Miami: 20th Century Works on Paper at the Bass, through Nov. 2nd.
- In NYC: Erick Lyle and Josh MacPhee will talk about their new books at Community Space in Brooklyn, Thursday, at 8:30 p.m.
- In Chicago: Matthew Rich at the Suburban, through Aug. 28th.
- In L.A.: Index: Conceptualism in California from the Permanent Collection at MoCA Geffen Contemporary, through Dec. 15th.
- In L.A.: Beautiful Losers, the documentary, at Nuart in Santa Monica, plays for one week starting Friday.
- In London: Banksy’s Cans Festival, Part 2.
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Judith Supine in New York. (Photo by Jake Dobkin.)
- Animal has an interview with one of the Free Tibet activists recently arrested in and deported from China.
- Cooler than David Byrne’s Playing the Building: Artist David van Tieghem playing New York City.
- The joy of vinyl.
- Bigger than a hurtling SUV, taller than a towering McMansion: Behemoth public art, courtesy of Arup and Anish Kapoor.
- Only in the Dead-Tree Edition: An insightful Q&A with video artist Kalup Linzy can be found in the summer issue of Bomb.
- The Devi Art Foundation, a museum of contemporary art, is set to open in New Delhi this Saturday.
- Liu Bolin’s Camouflage series. (Via NotCot.)
- Catching Up: R.I.P. John Russell, art critic and Manny Farber, film critic.
- The music of chairs.
- The Art Industrial Average is down. A Sotheby’s auction in Melbourne sold just 49 percent of its total works. (Via A.J.)
- Better than Performance Art: Kottke reports that the doc, Hands on a Hardbody, can now be watched on Google Video.
- The New York Times has a link blog. It’s no C-Monster. (Via Fimoculous.)
- Whose is bigger? Comparing podium design at the conventions.
- Graff Truck of the Day: Bue, Uri and Resto in Barcelona.
- Wired wants photos of your geek tattoos.
- JetBlue’s new JFK food court. And not a moment too soon, because I don’t think I coulda handled another meal at “Mex and the City.”
- A video profile of Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza and the buildings he designed for the architecture school in Porto.
- L.A. Star Maps, Architecture Edition.
- Your moment of Muppet death metal.
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Artist unknown: desktop wallpaper on a Vandal Squad computer. (Photo by C-M.)
The NYPD Vandal Squad may be out to bust graffiti artists, but they aren’t above co-opting the imagery for their own purposes. This is a screen grab (aka a photo of my TV) from the graff documentary Infamy. In the film, the producers interview a member of New York City’s Vandal Squad and pan to his computer, revealing the above desktop wallpaper. (The lowrider pants showing off a smidgen of booty crack are a nice touch.)
In the meantime, if you’re at all into graffiti, definitely check out the film (now out on DVD), which is well made, features some excellent footage, and has interesting interviews with artists such as Earsnot, Claw, Saber and Jase. There are also some spectacular moments with “graffiti guerilla” Joe Connolly, L.A.’s single-minded, self-appointed, one-man buff team.
Posted by C-Monster.