Hey Folks:
Had to make an unexpected journey. The Digest will be back in a few…
xox, C.
Monthly Archive for October, 2008
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Patroclus, 1780, by Jacques-Louis David. (Image courtesy of lyceo hispanico.)
- Curiouser and curiouser: my doppelgangers at the L.A. Times have linked to C-Mon — without mentioning my nom de blog.
- I heart Hopey.
- NYC’s chashama is having a benefit masquerade party next week, on Tuesday, October 28th. Get your costume and pick up some tickets to help support subsidized studio and gallery spaces for emerging artists in New York!
- Art sells at Frieze. But the fair wasn’t the buy-a-thon of previous years. More here and here.
- Museums brace for lean days. Except for the Harvard Art Museum, which just gotta wad cash and 31 major works of art, including three Picassos.
- Whitewashed David Alfaro Siqueiros mural on Olvera Street in L.A. may be restored and unveiled by 2010.
- How contemporary Colombian artists have covered the issue of violence.
- Because the world needs more artspeak: The Serpentine asks artists to pen manifestos. (Via A.J.)
- When narcissists meet, Vanessa Beecroft/Kanye West edition.
- Breasts in art.
- A park as beating heart. Literally.
- UBS’s financial woes is gonna mean a much quieter Art Basel. (Via AFC.)
- Mel Chin’s Safehouse.
- Today’s Graff: a truck by Revok in San Francisco.
- Santiago Calatrava stops work on Chicago Spire until somebody shows him the money.
- The architecture industry, like the rest of the economy, in the toilet.
- Princess Zaha’s giant clam arrives in Central Park.
- Dubai, swimming in its own shit. Literally.
- The Day in Horizontal Lines: David Chipperfield’s America’s Cup Building in Valencia, Spain.
- Frank Lloyd Wright House in California is up for sale. For only $2.7 million!
- Your moment of Amy Poehler rapping about Sarah Palin.
I’m buried under a little paperwork today. The Digest will be back on Monday.
(Photo by Walter Parenteau.)
Doze Green. (Image courtesy of Jonathan LeVine Gallery.)
- In NYC: Doze Green and Blek Le Rat at Jonathan LeVine, opens Saturday.
- In NYC: Dain, Various and Gould at the Brooklynite Gallery in Bed-Stuy, opens Saturday.
- In NYC: Tinyvices: Vol. 1-5 at Aperture Gallery, opens today at 6:00 p.m.
- In NYC: Leon Golub at Ronald Feldman, opens today.
- In NYC: Meat After Meat Joy at Daneyal Mahmood, opens today.
- In NYC: Ben Butler at Plane Space, opens Saturday. (Via AFC.)
- In NYC: Annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour in Brooklyn, Sat. and Sun. from 1-6 p.m.
- In Detroit: From Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art, at the Detroit Institute of Arts, through Jan. 18th.
- In St. Louis: Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American art, 1940-1976, at the St. Louis Art Museum, opens Sunday.
- In Denver: Daniel Richter at the Denver Art Museum, through Jan. 11th.
- In Austin: Lisa Hein and Bob Seng, Nimbuslingus, at 1305 Position, opens Saturday at 6 p.m.
- In Westlake Village, Ca.: Horror Business, with Alex Pardee, Eyeone, Dennis McNett and Others at Tradition, opens Sat.
- In L.A.: A screening of The Garden, about the South Central Farm, at MAK, tonight at 7:15 p.m.
- In L.A.: Robbie Conal, No Kidding, No Spitting, at Track 16 in Santa Monica, opens Saturday.
- In London: Cold War Modern Design: 1945-1970 at the Victoria & Albert, through Jan.11th.
- In London: Revok, Crime in the City, at Grenade Gallery, opens today.
- In Paris: John “Crash” Matos and Aaron “Sharp” Goodstone at Galerie Onega, opens tonight.
Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, at sunrise. (Photo courtesy of The Modern.)
- PalinAsPresident.com. Run your mouse over the drapes.
- Everything you need to know about last night’s debate.
- The Day in Flag Art: Juan Capistran’s Do You Want New Wave or do you Want the Truth?
- Frieze celebrity sightings: Gwyneth Paltrow, Charles Saatchi and George Michael (outside of a bathroom). Plus: curators from the Tate bought $215,000 worth of art at the fair. Most buyers, however, were very cautious. Photo essay here.
- There’s gonna be container art in NYC starting today.
- Why Las Vegas’s Neon Museum is the best museum in America.
- The most expensive artists, living and dead.
- Ten antiquities withdrawn from Bonhams sale after Italy intervenes. Looting Matters has the auction house’s statement.
- Picasso sketches seized at Swiss customs. (Via A.J.)
- The drawings of Alfred Kubin.
- Hiroshima in drawings. (Via NotCot.)
- More on the Jorge Pardo-ized pre-Columbian galleries at LACMA.
- Tree huts remind me of bird hovels. More on the hovels here.
- Art Video of the Day: Slow Dancing by David Michalek. (Via MWCapacity.)
- Photo Gallery: José Parla’s graffiti-inspired canvases at Elms Lesters in London.
- Today’s Graff: a trailer by Aarhus in Denmark.
- A rundown on architecture-related programming at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
- Gossip: It helps bond our society. At least that’s my excuse. (Via ackackack.)
- Your moment of Blancmange.
San Pedro, Self-Built, 2008, c-print by Lia Halloran. (Courtesy of Mark Moore Gallery.)
A couple of years back, when I was a not-so-young scrub at Time, I had the opportunity to work on an article about skatepark design with Richard Lacayo. In reporting the story, the designers we spoke with talked a lot about “lines.” Not just the lines of their designs, but the lines that skaters take as they carve their way through a half pipe or bowl. Being a non-skater, I was left to imagine these possible trajectories. Not anymore.
Last week, I stumbled into the photographs of Lia Halloran at Mark Moore in Santa Monica. Halloran takes long exposure pictures of herself working her way through a variety of parks at night, with a flashlight or some other light source strapped on. No need to imagine lines here. They’re etched in light, right into the photo. It was an incredible way to see these concrete monuments come to life. Above is a shot from the skater-built park under the 110 Freeway in San Pedro, south of L.A.
The photos at Mark Moore are on display as part of the group show Ultrasonic International, through October 25th. If you’re in Miami, some of her photos just went on display at Fredric Snitzer, and they’ll be up through November 10th. You can see many more pix on her website, here. (Though it’s no replacement for seeing them live.)
Because I’m feeling sporty this week: Ring of Honor, by Seattle artist John Schuh. See it large. (Image courtesy of Schuh.)
- When product placement fails. Miserably. (Via Steve Lambert.)
- Today is Election Day. In Canada.
- The Walker Center has some rad politically-inspired buttons. Oh, to be in Minneapolis. Sort of related: Hitchens endorses Obama.
- Stuff to do in London during Frieze. Besides buy, buy, buy. Related: ArtInfo wonders what’s happened to all those satellite fairs.
- Forget the Tate’s Turbine Hall, says Jonathan Jones at the Guardian. If you want real inspiration, go see Richard Serra at Gagosian.
- What a K-Hole: Victoria Miro gallery in London is turned into a gay nightclub.
- **Sublime Art Story of the Week:** Pieter Hugo photograph causes racial kerfuffle at Hollywood talent agency.
- L.A.’s Chinatown galleries are in flux.
- Curators as models. For reals.
- CultureGrrl reports on the estrogen-fest going on in American museums. Just don’t call the phenomenon “girly,” she says. Well, what about grrly?
- TEXTile, 2006 by Jean Shin. (Via NotCot.)
- Strangely, the whole thing works: Photos of Jeff Koons at Versailles. (Via Marshall Astor.)
- The National Art Museum of China is to get a big-ass new building next to the Bird’s Nest.
- The Day in Neon: Robert Irwin’s Light and Space III at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. (I took the hint from Richard McCoy’s Twitter.)
- Take a poll to decide whether Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls “sucked big time” or were “the best thing ever.” (Via Hrag Vartanian.)
- Monsters from 19th century Japanese newsprints.
- Today’s Graff: The latest from Blu.
- Chicago’s Humanities Festival to examine 100 years of Chicago’s urban plan and global cities of the future in two separate panels on Nov. 2nd.
- The pendulum continues to swing against starchitecture. (Via A.J.)
- A house within a house within…: House N by Sou Fujimoto Architects in Oita, Japan.
- Your moment of Bang Bang. (Thank you, Yvonne!)
Kimberly Weiss at the Paper Boat in Milwaukee. (Image courtesy of Paper Boat.)
- In Milwaukee: Kimberly Weiss and Joe Rizzo at the Paper Boat, opens Friday.
- In NYC: Bill Henson at Robert Miller, opens Thursday.
- In NYC: Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton at the New Museum, through Jan. 1st. More here.
- In NYC: Tulou: Affordable Housing for China at the Cooper-Hewitt, through Apr. 5th, 2009.
- In Middletown, Ct.: Framing and Being Framed: The Uses of Documentary Photography at the Wesleyan University gallery.
- In Wilmington, Del.: Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks at the Delaware Art Museum, through Jan. 4, 2009.
- In Miami: Ruben Torres Llorca at Praxis in Wynwood, through Nov. 8th.
- In Denver: Damien Hirst at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through August 2009.
- In S.F.: Mike Giant at White Walls, through Nov. 1st.
- In Seattle: Fanatic: A Group Show of Excessive Enthusiasm at BLVD, through Nov. 8th.
- In London: The Frieze Art fair, opens Thursday.
- In London: Scope London, opens Thursday, at Lords Cricket Ground.
- In London: Cildo Meireles retrospective at the Tate Modern, opens today.
- In the Netherlands: Artu Zmijewski: The Social Studio, a project in which he recreates the Stanford Prison Experiment, at BAK.
- In Beijing: Mark Swarek’s virtual apocalypse program, Children of Arcadia, at the city’s new Sunshine Museum, through Oct. 30th.
Get me rewrite! (Image courtesy of Olivander.)
Regular readers of C-Monster.net will know that I’ve spent the last couple of weeks directing evil thought waves at the L.A. Times. This is because roughly a fortnight ago, the paper where I held my first media job (features department assistant — the glamour!), had debuted an arts and culture blog called Culture Monster, which, needless to say, hits a bit close to home. After a couple of rather hysterical posts on the subject, I decided that the best course of action was to write the L.A. Times a very nice letter, asking them to reconsider their blog’s name. Crazy. I know. But I figured that even though I haven’t been part of the blogosphere since its paleolithic days (1998), I have managed to get linked to by one or two well-known arts sites over the course of my short and senseless existence. Besides if there’s one thing I can claim in all of this, it’s my name. Because how “monstrous” is a newspaper arts blog ever truly going to get?
Anyhow, after sending my note (to a battalion of arts editors, writers and even the reader representatives), all I heard for roughly a week was crickets. (Though the reader reps were kind enough to send me a mass-produced form letter thanking me for my thoughts.) Then I got a nice response back from a blog editor saying that my e-mail was being considered and that someone would get back to me with a decision. And ever since then all I’ve heard are more crickets. Last week, I reached a point where I was worn out enough to let the matter quietly drop. But then I figured it’d be far better to go out in a kamikaze blaze. Either that, or I was gonna have to challenge Christopher Knight to a Jell-o wrestling match. (I think I could take him.)
Anyhow, this is all a long way of saying that I’m posting my letter to the Times. (Read it after the jump.) Please forgive the first paragraph, where I talk about how important I am. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the art industry, it’s that being a gasbag usually gets you waaaaaay farther than humility.
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Stikman in NYC. (Photo by EssG.)
- AFC compiles a list of the Top Ten Music Videos made by artists.
- When modern-day political billboards imitate racist World War II propaganda posters.
- Sort of related: Pollster James Zogby calls McCain out on how he handled the Osama-is-an-Arab remark at a recent rally.
- In honor of Election ’08, Modern Art Notes is looking for flag art.
- And, because I’ve got politics on the brain: Hockey mom is booed at hockey game. (Via Edward Champion.)
- Photos of the sun.
- Art Review publishes its list of the 100 most powerful people in the art world. Hirst is #1, Gagosian checks in at #2, Eli Broad at #10, Jeff Koons at #11, Saatchi at #14, Murakami at #28 and Banksy is at #63, ahead of Emmanuel Perrotin, Lucien Freud and Cai Guo Qiang. And, at #100, painter of light Thomas Kinkade!! Sadly, C-Monster is nowhere to be seen. I guess there’s always next year (via World’s Best). More here.
- A video interview with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster about her Turbine Hall installation: she sees her piece as a work of science fiction.
- A dozen artists, including Yoko Ono, Francis Picabia and Robert Smithson, to get single-work presentations at Art Basel in Miami Beach.
- The Wall Street Journal wonders what’s gonna happen to all those corporate art collections now that corporations are imploding. (Via A.J.)
- Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins is looking for ways to save money. It has started by cutting public hours on Tuesdays. (Via A.J.)
- Street Art of the Day: Koralie and Fafi in Brooklyn.
- The Week in Knock-Offs: Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster has inspired 84 different imitators. (Via ackackack.)
- KCET interviews L.A.’s billboard makeover graffiti artist Augor. (Via Juxtapoz.)
- So much for sustainability: The Guardian gives a rundown of the worst CO2 emitting buildings. It turns out that contemporary structures by the Dark Lord Foster and Daniel Libeskind are as big offenders as some of England’s 91-year-old buildings. (Via architecture.mnp.)
- Lost Louis Sullivan façade uncovered and restored in Chicago.
- Gehry’s Princeton library.
- Thom Mayne criticizes Dubai architecture for giving little thought to urban planning. (Via architecture.mnp.)
- Speaking of which…Jonas Bendiksen’s photos of sprawl.
- Your moment of Rita Moreno has Fever, Muppets edition. (This incredible video has been brought to you by the irrepressible Mlle. Yvonne Connasse.)