Hello darkness my old friend. (Photo by peter.charbonnier.)
I’m enjoying everything that America’s air transportation systems have to offer, so there will be no Digest. I can, however, leave you with this, a little somethin’ somethin’ from my colleague, Yvonne Connasse, who is totally the real deal.
xox, C.
Drawing into the Sky, 2003, by Kawashima Shigeo at the Japan Society. (Image courtesy of Japan Society.)
- In NYC: Bamboo art at the Japan Society, opens Saturday.
- In NYC: Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now at Exit Art, through Nov. 22nd.
- In Denver: Walter Drewes at Emmanuel Gallery, through Oct. 25th.
- In L.A.: Black Chrome, a history of African-Americans and motorcycling, at the California African American Museum, through April 12th, 2009. (Via.)
- In L.A.: Raymond Pettibon early works at Regen Projects, through Oct. 18th.
- In L.A.: Design is One – Milano 2008: A SCI-Arc student installation at SCI-Arc, opens Friday at 6 p.m.
- In London: Turner Prize winners at the Tate Britain, opens today. Analysis here and here and here.
Pizza not Polaroids is poison to pepper. (Photo by Robyn Von Swank. Image courtesy of the one and only Agent Lover!)
Update: Sorry folks. I’m a burnout. Today is Sept. 30th, not the 29th. And the year is 2008, not 2009. (Boy, am I out of it.) Anyhow, I’ve corrected the header above. Thanks for your patience with my wicked, wicked ways. xox, C.
- Best science images of 2008. I’m lovin’ the squid suckers. (Via NotCot.)
- Corrupt the kiddies: A book of monochromatic images for babies by artists such as Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami and Julian Opie. (Via A.O.)
- And because the world needs more Damien Hirst: the ah-tist is set to open two London shops.
- The highest paid museum directors. Sort of related: The Contemporary Art Museum in Honolulu cuts budgets and lays of 25.
- A stolen Renoir is found after 33 years. (Via A.J.)
- Laying claim to the works of Martín Ramírez, an artist who spent much of his life in a California mental institution.
- More Pollocks that could be Pollocks. Or not.
- A “Rothkography” contest.
- Wordless art criticism, redux.
- An interview with James Kalm, of the D.I.Y. online art video series, The Kalm Report.
- Painting Seattle’s suburbs.
- Today’s graff: Onio, Matheus and Grim in Brazil.
- JR redoes London. (Via World’s Best.)
- Gettin’ Imelda: Kaws collaborates with Marc Jacobs on a limited edition run of ladies shoes.
- Dumpster hot tub.
- An almost-underground tennis stadium by Shuhei Endo in Hyogo, Japan.
- As a Le Corbusier retrospective prepares to open in London, the Independent looks at his legacy. Plus, the possibility that he was afraid of sex. Juicy! (Via Unbeige.)
- “Flying from the Air France Terminal at LAX…and arriving in Paris at Terminal 2E is like moving from a basement into a penthouse apartment.“
- Office bitch.
- Your moment of You Don’t Own Me, for my friends at the L.A. Times, courtesy of Yvonne Connasse.
Momo and El Tono installing kinetic sculptures in the waterways around Manhattan. (Image courtesy of Momo.)
Two of street art’s more cerebral practitioners — El Tono (who is based in Spain) and Momo (NYC) — have an exhibit up at the brand spankin’ new Anonymous Gallery that combines kinetic sculpture with geometric abstraction with incandescent colors, stirred up by a little randomness to keep things interesting. The pieces on show include a wall full of geometric prints that were randomly generated by computer code (El Tono has some behind-the-scenes), a series of assemblages produced by throwing shapes into the water around Manhattan to see what turned up, as well as numerous prototypes of the kinetic sculptures depicted in the photo above. The sculptures have been attached to the many remnants of old piers that dot the waters around New York City and are designed to make a clock-like movement with the incoming tide. (Momo has a great video of the latter on his site.)
Because I’m a burn-out, I forgot to take pictures of the kinetic sculpture prototypes. (I got distracted by the marching band.) But there’s still plenty of opportunity to see ‘em for yourself. The show is up through Oct. 10th.
More images after the jump. Click on pix to supersize.
Continue reading ‘Photos: El Tono and Momo at Anonymous in NYC.’
Advice for biters. (Photo by otherthings.)
Yes, I’m still steamed at the Milli Vanillis at the L.A. Times: Super gracias to Time’s Richard Lacayo for the kind words. Also, many, many thanks to Freese, Small Drawings, Hrag Vartanian, ‘Bout What I Sees and Making a Mark for drawing attention to this ridiculosity. In the meantime, if anyone would like to help me help the Times come up with a new name for their blog, please leave your suggestions here. xox, C.
- Become an artist. Make money while doing nothing.
- Palin-palooza: The Sarah Palin baby name generator (via Marc John’s Twitter), Tina Fey as Palin and the AP reports that Palin got all sorts of freebies as Wasilla’s mayor. Juicy!!
- Related: Hatchets and Skewers has a post about right-wing art. And the Museum of the Moving Image has an online archive of presidential campaign commercials.
- 6 yellow bags. (Via Eyebeam.)
- “The umbrella of post-modernism is wearing thin.” (Via Hrag.)
- Lacayo on Francis Bacon at the Tate: “It brings almost five decades of Bacons together into a kind of collective cry, one that makes you realize how rare it is to see contemporary art that attempts, much less achieves, a genuine tragic dimension.”
- LACMA continues its architectural path towards fine art mall: they’re getting another pavilion. More here.
- The art industrial average is low.
- And what the world needs now is another hole in the head a new art fair: Art Asia will debut during Miami Basel.
- A round-up of those works-on-paper that Lehman CEO Dick Fuld and his wife are putting up for auction. Related: Yves Saint Laurent’s collection to go up for sale in Paris next year.
- Flop sweat: Urban art auction in London is a stinker, part of which may have had to do with the fact that Banksy refused to authenticate some of the works (via A.J.). Part of which may have had to do with people not wanting to buy overpriced art in this economy. More here. Plus: Stop the presses, Banksy is in SoHo.
- MoMA’s Glenn Lowry tops the pay list for nonprofit arts chiefs, with a salary that checks in at $1.7 million.
- Something strange is afoot in that show on terrorism that the Chelsea Museum cancelled. AFC reports in one and two parts.
- A gnarly slideshow of Tara Donovan’s sculptures.
- An interview with S.F. Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker in one and two parts.
- The Guardian has a round-up of damage suffered by art at the National Gallery, the Tate and the V&A. The best one: Someone upchucked on Carl Andre’s Venus Forge in 2007.
- Todays’ graff: Aorta and Banjaluka in Bosnia.
- NYT architecture critic Nicolai Ourosoff wants to tear down a bunch of stuff, including the newly revamped Lollipop Building.
- MoMA is getting into real estate: two of the homes from the pre-fab show are up for sale. (Via A.O.)
- Herzog & de Meuron unveil a design for a triangular tower in Paris, a schematic that bears an uncanny resemblance to North Korea’s “Hotel of Doom.”
- R.I.P. Paul Newman.
- Your moment of…a little ditty for my colleagues at the L.A. Times, courtesy of the irrepressible Yvonne Conasse.
Detail of a canvas by Conor Harrington. (All photos by C-M.)
Last night was the preview extravaganza of London’s Lazarides Gallery street artsy show in downtown Manhattan. And everything was in (stereo)typical working order: Nice canvases hung in a “gritty” urban setting? Check. Line of attractive hipsters stretching around the corner? Check. DJ pumping beats? Check. Galleristas handing out price lists? Check. (And whoa, nelly what a price list! The Faile piece was going for $150K!! Which means I’ll be able to afford it sometime… never.) The naked commerce was good fun, but so was the art (there are interesting pieces by Conor Harrington, Bast, David Choe and Blu). So get over there (282 Bowery at Houston) before the encampment leaves town on Oct. 12th.
Click on images to supersize. Way more after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: Outsiders NY at Lazarides in NYC.’
Milk and Cheese! by Evan Dorkin. (Image courtesy of eskarina8.)
Baring It All: We’ve seen guys like this on the subway a million times. (All photos by San Suzie.)
George Baselitz kicked off the Rome gallery season at Gagosian with a bunch of new paintings that looked a lot like his old paintings and half the pieces we saw at last year’s Art Basel (which was big on skulls). In addition to the giant skulls, Baselitz’s paintings and drawings all featured expressionistically rendered male figures playing with members that can only be described as wishful thinking. (One of the painted schlongs was a whopping 22 inches. We measured.) The show, which kicked off Gagosian’s second season in Rome, was gagosianissimo in almost every sense of the word: cavernous exhibit spaces, suited security guards hovering by the paintings, crowds of fashionistas clamoring to get in. No wine, alas. But you can get that for cheap at any of a dozen nearby trattorias. Which is exactly where we headed directly after posing in front of all the boners.
Click on images to supersize. Many more boners after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: Baselitz’s Skulls + Boners at Gagosian in Rome.’
Here’s a story you’ll never see on C-Monster. And thank god.
If you’ve been reading C-Mon for the last 24 hours, you know that the L.A. Times just debuted a brand spankin’ new arts and architecture blog called Culture Monster, which needless to say, smarts. In thinking about the whole ridiculous situation this morning, I realised that either one of two things happened:
- The L.A. Times is trying to achieve some measure of blog credibility by coming up with a name that echoes my ridiculous online enterprise. If they were really smart, however, they woulda ripped off the names of blogs who have been doing this way longer and way better than me: AFC, Looking Around, MAN, Art to Go, Winkleman, to name but a few…
- The L.A. Times didn’t know that C-Monster.net existed when they decided it would be a good idea to have an arts blog. Which leads me to believe that finances are so bad at the Times that their reporters don’t have access to the Internet.
In the interest of helping the Times fix this terrible oversight, which I’m sure they will remedy very soon (as in any minute), I’m hoping that everyone can pitch in and help them come up with a new name for their blog. C-Monster.net Rome correspondent San Suzie has already come up with a couple of suggestions:
- LALApalooza
- Culture Impostor
My two cents: anything that doesn’t involve the letter “C” closely followed by the word “Monster.”
Post your ideas in the comments section below. I’ll make sure that my colleagues at the Times hear all about ‘em.
xox, C.
