Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Photos: Jeff Koons at the Met.

By c-monster on August 29, 2008 in C-Monster, Museums, New York and Sculpture. 3 Comments

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.’

Tags: big and shiny, Jeff Koons, sculptures, The Met.

The Digest. 08.28.08.

By c-monster on August 28, 2008 in C-Monster, Graffiti and The Digest. 4 Comments

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.

Posted by C-Monster.

The Digest. 08.27.08.

By c-monster on August 27, 2008 in C-Monster, Painting and The Digest. 3 Comments

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.)

How to draw anything. (Via Kottke.)
“Visit swinging London where we make groovy shock art.”
The Day in Misplaced Art: A missing Léger at Wellesley may have gone out with the trash.
David Byrne’s bike racks will ultimately be sold through Pace/MacGill. Which means now would be the time to jack them.
Spend the Night at the Guggenheim: The museum to become a satellite branch of the Waldorf Astoria.
Jonathan Jones wants the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern to mix up their art a bit.
Rijksmuseum to help Damien Hirst with his marketing.
Jorge Pardo gives LACMA’s pre-Columbian galleries a serious makeover. The new display cases look super cool. But, “the trouble is that the pre- Columbian art gets lost in the décor,” reports the NY Times.
You, as constructivist propaganda. (Via ackackack.)
Wallace and Gromit, super models. (Via NotCot.)
Street sculpture miniaturized: The work of Slinkachu. More here.
I have no idea what the hell the Guardian is talking about: The writer in this story describes a “reverence” for preserving graffiti in NYC and offers as his examples two private murals discovered while repurposing old SoHo buildings into luxury condos. One of the murals, by Keith Haring, will be used to add an extra $100,000 to the apartment’s sale price. All of this in a city that continues to demand that building owners buff graffiti from their walls or face fines.
And speaking of reverence for graffiti. Chipotle, purveyor of crap-ass burritos, has now jumped on the band wagon.
Garden & Gun magazine. (Via PDN Pulse.)
Santiago Calatrava’s Venice bridge will not be receiving an opening party.
Preserving Modernism in New Orleans. Plus: more on the planned razing of Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School in Sarasota (via architecture.mnp). My photos of the school here.
Liking this one: A minimalist summer home—in terms of footprint and design—by architects Todd Saunders and Tommie Wilhelmsen in Norway.
The architectural renderings for a new UFO museum in Roswell. For reals. (Via Unbeige.)
It’s come to this: How to build a Modernist birdhouse. (Via Coudal.)
Your moment of monkey.

Posted by C-Monster.

Calendar. 08.26.08.

By c-monster on August 26, 2008 in C-Monster, Calendar and Museums. Closed

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.

Posted by C-Monster.

The Digest. 08.26.08.

By c-monster on August 26, 2008 in C-Monster, Street Art and The Digest. Closed

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.

Posted by C-Monster.

Co-opting graffiti: Vandal Squad edition.

By c-monster on August 25, 2008 in C-Monster, Film and Graffiti. Closed

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.

Tags: documentary, Graffiti, Infamy, NYPD Vandal Squad hearts Ass Crack.

The Digest. 08.25.08.

By c-monster on August 25, 2008 in C-Monster, Graffiti, Street Art and The Digest. 1 Comment

Oslo, Norway. August 17th, at 4:10 p.m. (Photo by Ti.mo)

Question of the Day: “Does anyone really give a shit about David Byrne’s bike racks?”
Hirst Today, Not Gone Tomorrow: As Damien Hirst prepares to takes his wares to auction (and bypass his gallerists in the process), Cristina Ruiz at the Art Newspaper reports on the more than 200 pieces that his London gallery has failed to sell. The back stock is worth in excess of £100 million (not counting the diamond-studded skull) and includes an inventory of 34 butterfly paintings, half a dozen medicine cabinets and several dead things in formaldehyde. Maybe Hirst should be selling his stuff here.
Fake Olympics, 2008: First, there was that lip-synching kid that got everyone’s panties in a knot. Now Cai Guo-Qiang has issued a statement on the fake fireworks “controversy.” Does this mean that the Students for a Free Tibet protestors were fake arrested? And then fake released? The mind reels.
Plus: Everybody’s a critic. Including the Chinese government.
Art-o-palooza begins in Denver, in time for the Democratic National Convention. Because I’m sure the first thing those caucus types are gonna do when they get into town, is don their finest donkey hats and head right to the Denver Art Museum.
The Guardian has rounded up three decades worth of quotes by Tracey Emin. Sample: Emin on journalists: “They write 500 words, put me down, get their pay packets, pay off their credit cards, pay their mortgages, shag their wives—and when they do it’s me they’re thinking of.” (Via A.O.)
Washington, D.C. types offended by underwear art.
The Jeff Koons yacht: Looking like a Cancún party boat. (Via A.O.)
Looking Around has one and two highly interesting posts that do a full body smackdown on the whole idea kicking around at the University of Iowa to sell off a Pollock to pay bills.
Was a portrait that sold at auction for $21,000 back in ’98 done by Leonardo Da Vinci?
Public art: Not as boring as it used to be, reports the NY Times. And not as public as it used to be either, reports Modern Art Notes.
An excerpt from Peter Plagens’s novel, The Art Critic, is now available on ArtNet. Here’s the sex part, so that you don’t have to go looking for it: “Arthur’s sexual predilections were well within the bounds of bedroom civility—a little oral, occasional doggy-style, once in a while all the lights left on—and he was considerate enough to get up afterward and bring a bottle of mineral water avec gaz and two glasses back to one of the night tables.”
For art lovers with a lotta dough: Private museum tours. (Via Personism.)
The type of story I would one day love to write: Alma Guillermoprieto in National Geographic on the cholitas luchadoras of Bolivia. See the photo essay.
Graff of the Day: Kislow in the Ukraine.
Tate Modern exhibit on street art gets the city of São Paulo to rethink graffiti buffing policy.
A U.S. couple—a.k.a. Ether and Dani—faces felony charges for graffiti “spree.” More here.
Frank Gehry is out as architect of Brooklyn’s Theater for a New Audience.
The Day in Vertical Lines: The Campus Universitário in Vigo, Spain, by Alfonso Penela.
Architecture’s useless vestiges. (Via Life Without Buildings.)
Brutalism: preserving the architecture nobody likes.
Your moment of junk as art.

Posted by C-Monster.

The annals of television: Morning show edition.

By c-monster on August 22, 2008 in C-Monster, Rant and TV. Closed

Wishful, by Kevin Steele. From a set called tv garbage.

Last week, in a not terribly outdated issue of the New Yorker, I happened to read a remarkable essay by Charles Van Doren about his role in the 1950s quiz show scandals. While learning about Van Doren’s personal history was fascinating, more fascinating was this bit I found mid-way through the piece. In it, he talks about being a contributor to NBC’s Today Show in the late ’50s:

. . . before long Dave [Garroway, the first host of the show] gave me a daily five-minute spot at the top of the hour in which to report on cultural and literary events; I read a great poem or two every Friday morning and talked about its author.

Flash forward half a century. Here is the type of cultural and literary coverage the Today Show is doing these days. And thank goodness. Because nothing will prepare Americans for their new place in the world like being able to say “beach volleyball” in Chinese.

Posted by C-Monster.

Tags: Charles Van Doren, NBC, New Yorker, sweet god help us, television, Today Show, TV.

Calendar. 08.21.08.

By c-monster on August 21, 2008 in C-Monster, Calendar and Painting. Closed

Rob Sato at Giant Robot in S.F. (Image courtesy of Giant Robot.)

In S.F.: You Only Exist Because of Us: The Art of Imbeciles at GRSF, through Sept. 17th.
In L.A.: MAK Center Artists and Architects present their final projects in ReadyFasterBurnsLonger at the Schindler House, through Aug. 24^th.
In L.A.: The Voussoir Cloud at SCI-Arc, through Sept. 14^th.
In L.A.: In Black and White, at the El Camino College Art Gallery, in Torrance, opens Monday.
In Boston: Buildmore, Darkcloud, Celso, Kenji Nakamaya, Nineta and many others in Paint it Now, in the Distillery Gallery in South Boston, opens tonight at 7pm. Catch a sneak peek of the gallery here.
In Philadelphia: Nandalal Bose at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, through Sept. 1^st. Photo essay here.
In Poughkeepsie: Impassioned Images: German Expressionist Prints at Vassar College, through Oct. 26th.
In NYC: The farm at P.S. 1, through Sept. 6^th.
In NYC: Deth P. Sun at Giant Robot NY, opens Saturday.
In NYC: A Matter of Time, a documentary about Richard Serra, at Film Forum, through Sept. 2^nd.
In Washington, D.C.: Diebenkorn in New Mexico at the Philips, through Sept. 7^th.
In Washington, D.C.: Eero Saarinen, Shaping the Future, at the National Building Museum, through Sunday.

Posted by C-Monster.

The Digest. 08.21.08.

By c-monster on August 21, 2008 in C-Monster, Painting and The Digest. 2 Comments

Opera, 1922, by Ricardo Urgell, at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. (Photo by C-M.)

Beautiful animated video: Where do all the balloons go? (Via Fecal Face.)
Nature, in Technicolor: The world of toxic nudibranchs. (Via ackackack.)
The booming micro-industry of Obama art. See the latest, by David Choe, here.
The political conventions are spawning full-blown art-o-paloozas (via Fimoculous). See the update, with photos, here. (Loooove the bear, btw.)
Oh, to party with those art-loving Russian oligarchs. (How come no one refers to hyper-rich Americans who buy art as oligarchs? I think I’m gonna have to start…)
An overview piece on the restitution case involving the heir of a German-Jewish banker who is demanding that MoMA and the Guggenheim in NYC return two Picassos that belonged to his great uncle. (Via A.J.)
So much for the New York/Paris/London trifecta: Sotheby’s to hold preview of Damien Hirst work in the Hamptons and New Delhi.
Photographer William Eggleston to get a retrospective at the Whitney this November.
The can spirals of Robert Zverina.
More lovely lovely photos of NYC at Flaming Pablum.
Graff of the Day: Kenor in Barcelona. More here.
More Laws that Won’t Stop Graffiti: L.A. parents could be busted if their kids are caught tagging. Related: carrying spray paint is now a fine-able offense in Melbourne.
A profile of Poster Boy, the guy mashing up all those NYC subway ads.
Design-conscious doggie paddling: Jean Nouvel’s aquatic complex in Le Havre, France.
Concrete infused with glass fiber lets the light shine through.
Your moment of balloon dancing.

Posted by C-Monster.

Monthly Archive for August, 2008

Photos: Jeff Koons at the Met.

The Digest. 08.28.08.

The Digest. 08.27.08.

Calendar. 08.26.08.

The Digest. 08.26.08.

Co-opting graffiti: Vandal Squad edition.

The Digest. 08.25.08.

The annals of television: Morning show edition.

Calendar. 08.21.08.

The Digest. 08.21.08.

Recent Posts

Categories

Get Hand-Crafted C-Mon Merch

Greatest Hits

Linkage