The Digest. 08.28.08.

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.