The Digest. 11.17.08.

The Hollyhock House, (mostly) by Frank Lloyd Wright. (Photo by C-M.)

• Because what the world needs now is a Damien Hirst-directed music video. Plus: Damien Hirst jeans. Which makes me wish someone would make Judy Chicago thong underwear.
• Thomas Kinkade, the movie.
• Architecture versus art smackdown: The Art Institute of Chicago will be installing benches in its new wing so that you can look at the art. Not so you can stare at the nice views. So there.
• Some Chelsea galleries need to learn a thing or two about a concept called service.
• 16 photos of German brothels. I love the outdoorsy décor of #10.
• How auction houses sex up their financial results. In related news: sales have been in the crapper. And Tony Shafrazi doesn’t mind.
• A really good idea or a really bad one: Emmanuel Perrotin starts up art investment company to finance expensive new works.
• Looking Around interviews MASS MoCA director Joe Thompson about the museum’s totally trippy Sol Lewitt drawings, in one and two parts. He also has a nice piece about Lewitt’s work here. In a related photo essay: Edward Lifson has pix of the installation process.
• Ai Weiwei’s bicycles.
• R.I.P. Grace Hartigan.
• The newly-revamped Fountainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach (originally designed by Morris Lapidus) has reopened – with works by James Turrell and Robert Rauschenberg.
• A nice art world comeback to Prop. 8 in Culver City.
• Pfizer using graffiti in an ad campaign. And it’s not for boner drugs. (Ekosystem.)
• Today’s Graff: Highraff in Brazil.
• New York Mag says that what the U.S. needs now is a new WPA. And some bridges by Santiago Calatrava.
• VirtualTourist names the Top 10 Ugliest Buildings. Boston’s brutalist City Hall comes in at Number One. Also on the list: Paris’s Montparnasse Tower and Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral, which I kind of appreciate for its take-me-to-your-leader qualities. (Merci, Yvonne.)
• The NY Times is really digging Gehry’s new Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
• Coop Himmelb(l)au’s L.A. High School #9: Also looks like an Olympic diving platform. Edward, back to you…
• When bricks resemble lace. (Scroll all the way to the bottom. That last photo is a trip.) A similar visual meme can be found here.
• Your moment of white-guy rasta.