Monthly Archive for December, 2008

Page 3 of 4

The Digest. 12.12.08.

By c-monster on December 12, 2008 in C-Monster, Los Angeles, Street Art and The Digest. 1 Comment

Carlton Arms, by Elbow Toe. Opening tonight, at Thinkspace, in L.A. (Image courtesy of Elbow Toe.)

Crayon sculptures.
R.I.P. Bettie Page.
Let the drama, whining and second-guessing begin!! The Whitney chooses curators for the 2010 Biennial.
Harry Belafonte withdraws Martin Luther King Jr. documents from Sotheby’s auction after King’s estate issues a statement saying that it believed that the items had been “wrongly acquired.” (Arts Journal.)
Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine. Clever. (MoMA’s Twitter.)
Art21 is talking controversy. Today’s post is all about artists stuck in various Freudian stages: chocolate Jesus, piss Christ, poo Virgins.
Late addition: Speaking of controversy: The LAT‘s Christopher Knight on the MOCA Mess on KPFK, opening up with some cattiness towards the New York Times. Mee-ow!
Anaba has a nice round-up of pix from the Marlene Dumas show at MoMA. There’s even more images on his Flickr feed. Related: La Smith’s review.
Art and mental illness: Exploring the Martín Ramírez case.
Happy holidays from Paul McCarthy. Plus: Just in time for Christmas…the alcohol calorie counter. (Flaming Pablum.)
Mad Scientist laser-etched wood blocks.
The world’s robot density is highest in Europe.
Better than fish-wrap: Recycling the New York Times into wallpaper.
Photo Essay: Art by contemporary Indian artists at the Serpentine, in London.
Cooper, the cat with his own Flickr page. Cooper has some beautiful shots (like this awesome POV, in which he’s attacking the Christmas tree), but I’m very disappointed to learn that he watches Jay Leno. Sorry, Cooper, I don’t care if you don’t have opposable thumbs and shit in a box. You have no excuse.
3-D Graff of the Day: Ovbal in Mexico.
More graff flicks from Basel. Plus: Video of a Shepard Fairey wall in Miami getting reworked.
Nothing like authoritarian diktat: China to trim tall buildings around Guangzhou in an effort to earn UNESCO World Heritage status.
A Frank Lloyd Wright chair, purportedly stolen from Johnson Wax, was almost sold on e-Bay. (The Skyline.)
The burger ring.
Your moment of Olafur Eliasson rapping.

Tags: elbow toe, thinkspace.

Calendar. 12.11.08.

By c-monster on December 11, 2008 in C-Monster, Calendar, Installation and Sculpture. 2 Comments

Buried Treasure, 2000, by Tom Kotik. (Image courtesy of Lesley Heller Gallery.)

In NYC: Tom Kotik at Lesley Heller, opens Friday.
In NYC: The SmART Brooklyn Gallery Hop, in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, this Sunday. (Hrag Vartanian.)
In NYC: Brooklyn Block Party, with Swoon, David Ellis, Elbow Toe, Judith Supine and many others, at Ad Hoc, opens Friday. Plus: C215, Junk Store, in the project room.
In Miami Beach: American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow at the Wolfsonian, through May 17.
In Indianapolis: A screening of the documentary film, Herb & Dorothy, followed by an Q&A with the Vogels at the IMA, tonight! (Richard McCoy’s Twitter.)
In L.A.: Elbow Toe and Armsrock at Thinkspace, opens Friday.
In L.A.: Ed Templeton gives a talk about his new book, Deformer, at Family, on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
In L.A.: A conversation between artist Robert Irwin and writer Lawrence Weschler at the Getty Center, this Sunday at 3 p.m.
In L.A.: From Crust to Dust: A Pie Theory Lecture and Practicum, by Joshua Beckman at Machine Project, Saturday at 8 p.m.
In L.A.: Twenty-Six: New Works by Risk at Track 16 in Santa Monica, opens Saturday.
In L.A.: Evan B. Harris, Maritime Mythology at Cerasoli LeBasse, opens Friday.
In L.A.: Raymond Pettibon at Regen Projects, through Jan. 24.

Tags: lesley heller gallery, tom kotik.

The Digest. 12.11.08.

By c-monster on December 11, 2008 in C-Monster, Photography and The Digest. 2 Comments

Number 44, from the Silent series, by Muge, a photographer based in Chen Du. (Image courtesy of Muge.)

The Hello Kitty maternity ward. (Coudal.)
Paper fashion.
How the University of Iowa saved its art—including Jackson Pollock’s Mural—during this summer’s floods. (Modern Art Notes.)
Mexico City’s new contemporary art museum.
How I wish I’d been there. Photos of the MoMA jumps. (Mattress Factory’s Twitter.)
Slideshow: Netherlandish paintings of the 15th century.
Cemeteries surrounded by parking lots.
In Sweden: Giving tobacco earnings away in the name of art.
How to draw in 3-D, ‘80s style.
Portraits of dogs and portraits of desks.
An 8,000 year-old giraffe petroglyph.
“Seven Things We Learned at Art Basel in Miami,” from New York Magazine. Number 7? “Dubai is the new Miami.” (Unbeige.)
The Seventh Letter Crew at Miami Basel, including murals by Ewok, Saber, Sever, Augor, Risk, Retna & the Mac.
Today’s Street Art: Alexandros Vasmoulakis in Greece.
OMG, I need, I want, I have to have…a no graffiti T-shirt.
¡Architecture criticism smackdown! Ada Louise Huxtable on Brad Cloepfil’s redo of the Museum of Arts and Design, who writes that “criticism of the structure has been alarmingly out of proportion and flagrantly out of control.” (CultureGrrl.)
Alternatives to Don Fisher’s original design for a private museum in San Francisco’s Presidio. More on the Fisher story here.
Judith Regan’s firing from HarperCollins cost $10.75 million. Dear HarperCollins: Please feel free to fire me any time. I’ll give you a discount rate of one million. Oh, who am I kidding? I’d take fifty thou…
Your moment of black holes.

Tags: china, muge, silent.

Garish: Narchitecture and its offspring.

By c-monster on December 10, 2008 in Architecture, C-Monster, Ivory Tower, Narchitecture and Sublime ridiculosity. Closed

Good gaudy: Narchitecture reinterpreted. Love the gold. (Photos courtesy of John Jackson.)

Just in case anyone is wondering what makes the staff here at C-Monster.net feel good in funny places: it’s knowing that every once in a while we inspire a reader to use their powers for evil instead of good. Such is the case of John Jackson, an MFA student in Exhibition, Design and Museum Planning at the University of the Arts in Philly. For a recent assignment, Jackson had to choose a word and use it as inspiration for a model. Being a wise man, Jackson chose “narchitecture,” a term coined by my super wicked collaborator, San Suzie, and employed in a post that went up as part of our incisive coverage of Miami during last year’s Art Basel. Narchitecture, as long-time readers will know, is architecture that looks as if it was commissioned by drug traffickers.

Jackson reports that the goal of his assignment “was to make a representation of the word in visual form. It was meant to be a purely affective experience — no text panels or anything else didactic.” So, for his project, titled Garish, he created a set that employed “marble” columns made out of wooden dowels and foam core, custom-made fleur-de-lys wallpaper, and “carpet” fashioned from a thrift-store jacket. Symbols of garishness were also liberally applied, including portraits of Li’l Kim, Tammy Faye Bakker and Nancy Reagan in a power suit. In keeping with the tenets of narchitecture, it is spectacularly tasteless. Though if Jackson had had several more lifetimes to produce the thing, I woulda suggested several hundred Italianate balustrades. You can never go wrong with those. Either way, this imaginative project gets a gold star from us!

In sort-of related news: I am pleased to report that someone (not us) posted “narchitecture” as a word on Urban Dictionary. Please feel free to click through and give the entry a “thumbs up.” We won’t rest until Merriam-Webster comes calling.

More images from Jackson’s project after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Garish: Narchitecture and its offspring.’

Tags: garish, Narchitecture.

The Digest. 12.10.08.

By c-monster on December 10, 2008 in C-Monster and Photography. Closed

Untitled (Bondi Baths, Sydney, Australia) by Carlo Van de Roer. (Image courtesy of Jen Bekman.)

The Dread Pirate Roberts action figure. (NotCot.)
The Slog has some great pix from Miami Basel, including some fantastic fish-eye shots of Jonah Freeman’s and Justin Lowe’s Hello Meth Lab with a View at The Station. Plus: a shot of Augor’s Miami mural.
Ruminating on the MOCA mess: former board member Dean Valentine, LAT critic Christopher Knight, OCMA director Dennis Szakacs and artist Lari Pittman on KCRW’s The Politics of Culture. On a side note, I just love how it’s a LACMA advert that bookends the segment. (Modern Art Notes.)
Peru sues Yale over Machu Picchu artifacts. More here.
Carl Sagan on pot. (Hrag Vartanian.)
An uncharacteristically animated Charlie Kaufman on Colbert.
A sweet stop motion animation made from books. (NotCot.)
The new Star Trek movie site is pretty bad-ass. Full screen is best.
Seattle’s BLVD Gallery to close.
There are now—get this—street art awards. (Arts Journal via Dazed Digital.)
Todays’ Street Art: Ozmo, M-City, Run and Ancona in Italy.
Vintage ad from the Village Voice of early NYC graff.
The Day in Art Merch: José Parlá T-shirt for the Standard Hotel and a Shepard Fairey wine label for Kenwood Vineyard’s 2004 cabernet. Plus: Artsy wallpapers for your iPhone from KungFoox.
A Q&A with photographer Martha Cooper (with lots of pix): “I tried to develop a decent looking tag but failed miserably. It never looked cool. I found out how hard it was to repeatedly write with style.”
Does anyone really buy the idea that LL Cool J uses Old Spice?
Vintage alien landscapes.
Like the Bird’s Nest, deconstructed: Madrid’s Caja Vital by Mozas Aguirre Arquitectos.
Plus: a seriously rad fish market in Istanbul.
The maquette for Frank Gehry’s new offices. (Culture Monster.)
S&M Legos.
Your moment of Mr. Pitiful. Love the on-set graphics…

Tags: carlo van de roer, jen bekman.

Calendar. 12.09.08.

By c-monster on December 9, 2008 in C-Monster, Calendar and Painting. Closed

Tilt, by Amy Casey, at Zg Gallery, in Chicago. (Image courtesy of Zg.)

In Chicago: Amy Casey, Sarah McKenzie and Anna Jóelsdóttir, Infrastructure, at Zg Gallery, through Jan. 3rd.
In NYC: Daniel Guzmán at Harris Lieberman, through Jan. 10. See a slideshow.
In NYC: Peter Callesen, Folded Thoughts, at Perry Rubinstein, opens Thursday.
In NYC: Hiroshi Sugimoto, 7 Days/7 Nights, at Gagosian, through March 7.
In L.A.: Hearst the Collector at LACMA, through Feb. 1.
In L.A.: Maeghan Reid at Chun King project, through Dec. 20.

Tags: amy casey, zg gallery.

The Digest. 12.09.08.

By c-monster on December 9, 2008 in C-Monster, Drawing and The Digest. Closed

Clockwork Atomics x302 by Scott Wilson. See the series. (Image courtesy of Scott Wilson.)

Damien Hirst threatens to sue 16-year-old. (Arts Journal.)
Newsflash! The Economist has discovered that low people enjoy high culture and vice versa. Seriously, print this out and read it on the train ride home. It’s quite good. (Thank you veddy veddy much, Big Papi G.)
Girls in art: Art21 gives Cindy Sherman a thumbs up and Richard Prince, a thumbs down.
Like a Turrell sky space, but not.
Neuroscientists can measure abstract art’s emotional resonance.
Plastic bags as artful headdress.
The Day in Round-Ups: The Top 10 magazine covers and museum shows according to Time, and 11 unusual Christmas album covers from Grotesk over at 12 oz. Prophet (World’s Best Ever).
Artist Mark Ryden releases a $6,000 print to benefit MOCA.
SFMOMA director David Ross is tweeting ten cultural policies that he thinks Obama should adopt.
The Tate Britain has a Christmas tree that operates on pedal power. (Eco Art Blog.)
This year Miami Basel was less about money and more about art, reports the Herald.
AFC has a slew of good links today, among them: A NYT story about the media’s sky-is-falling syndrome and an op-ed that asks that publishers not waste any more money on book deals for celebutards.
Good news for my remaining brain cells: Red wine and pot may help ward off Alzheimer’s.
The Day in Art Merch: Graffiti highboys. Awesome.
Today’s Street Art: Lister.
The NYT may borrow $225 million against its Renzo Piano building to prevent a cash crunch. (Culture Monster.)
Balancing form and function: NPR reports on Daniel Libeskind’s San Francisco and Denver museums.
Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, gingerbread edition. (Unbeige.)
Schematics for Morphosis’s new pharmaceutical campus outside of Shanghai.
The 20 Stupidest G.I. Joe vehicles ever. (Coudal.)
Your moment of How to Hide an Unwanted Erection. (Mercy, Mlle. Connasse.)

Tags: napkin, scott wilson.

Wasted at Nautical Waste in Rome.

By SanSuzie on December 8, 2008 in Events, Italy, Performance art and San Suzie. 2 Comments

Ready to get the party started: Artist Marie Lorenz Holds Fast at the American Academy in Rome. (Photos by San Suzie.)

Just after Thanksgiving, we were fortunate to attend the first international celebration of Nautical Waste, the smelliest art concept party — or any party, for that matter — we’ve ever been to. There was a sculpture made of rotting mussels and other sea detritus. (Pungent!) And the whole party ended with a re-enactment of the Roman sea victory at the Battle of Mylae…in a fountain.

Now in its sixth year, Nautical Waste is an annual seafaring celebration that takes place on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving. Started in Brooklyn by artists Marie Lorenz, the creator of the New York Tide and Current Taxi, Matt Lorenz and Melissa Brown, the event is part performance, part exhibit, and a great excuse to trawl your local coastline for stinky crap — then spend an evening building stuff with it while drinking grog, quoting Melville and wearing a pirate’s hat. This year the flotsam and jetsam washed up in three separate venues: Brooklyn, Banff, and the American Academy in Rome, where Lorenz is a fellow in the visual arts.

Stay tuned for more waterlogged adventures, because next spring, we will accompany Lorenz down the Tiber in a homemade boat, hopefully after getting nautically wasted.

Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Wasted at Nautical Waste in Rome.’

Tags: american academy in rome, marie lorenz, nautical waste, pirates.

The Digest. 12.08.08.

By c-monster on December 8, 2008 in C-Monster, Installation, Painting, Sculpture and The Digest. 2 Comments

Ben Godward at the Laundromat Gallery in Brooklyn. (Photo by Yvonne Connasse.)

Mass jumping at MoMA tonight!!! Beginning at 6:30 p.m. (MoMA’s Twitter.)
The MOCA Mess: Roberta Smith says everyone needs to step to the plate, including rich artists (“you know who you are,” she writes) and not-so-rich folks, who might be able to donate $100 or $1,000. Plus: L.A.T. columnist Tim Rutten calls for a house cleaning. (Modern Art Notes.)
Francis Bacon’s dying wish.
Art21’s blog is exploring the topic of controversy in contemporary art this month. (The video at the bottom of this piece, in which students discuss the work of Kara Walker, is fascinating.) There are other posts, too: on self-consciousness and controversy, and willful controversy (which addresses the Turner Prize and the YBAs).
Relational aesthetics, Flickr edition.
Video: Takashi Murakami on money, success and art.
Jeff Koons, thespian.
I’m curious to see how this experiment fares: The Brooklyn Museum is creating a subscription-only Twitter art feed called 1stfans. Cost: $20. The incentive: 1stfans who turn out for the museum’s First Saturday event on Jan. 3 can get a free Swoon print, just B.Y.O paper. (Hrag Vartanian.) Related: Museums and Twitter.
National Academy sells paintings to pay the light bill. More here.
At the Basel Frazzle: An informal Herald survey reveals that sales mostly dropped or were flat. Sort of related: At CIFO Art Space, the art was in the interrogation. And a report on the fair’s largest piece, which in case you’re wondering, was a bell. Plus: because what Miami needs is another private museum, this time from real estate developer Craig Robins.
The Moment talks to Dorothy Vogel.
Nirvana baby now a Shepard Fairey intern.
Today’s Graff: Roa in Pasadena.
WYSE and NEKST seriously redo a WK Interact mural in Miami.
Street art as puzzle: El Autotono. (Ekosystem.)
Christopher Hawthorne on L.A. Live, the city’s latest crap-ass megadevelopment project: “…their architecture is fundamentally not really architecture at all but an extensive series of armatures on which the developer and its tenants can hang logos, video screens and a sophisticated range of lighting effects.”
David Chipperfield addition for the St. Louis Museum of Art is on hold due to the economic downturn.
Felt architecture.
The Skyline looks at how design and infrastructure upgrades will intersect under the incoming Obama administration. My personal plea to Obama: Please start with the nation’s airports. They are an embarrassment.
Stormtroopers at the beach. (Coudal.)
Your moment of New York, I love you, but you’re freaking me out.

Tags: Ben Godward.

The Digest. 12.05.08.

By c-monster on December 5, 2008 in C-Monster, Los Angeles and Sublime ridiculosity. Closed

The Fun Finder: Spotted in front of LACMA, Nov. 19, 2008. (Photo by C-M.)

Art industry condolence cards.
From the Basel Frazzle: The economic downturn is forcing some dealers to actually use their manners: “We can’t be as rude [to clients] as we’ve been for the past three years.” Plus: AFC has photos from the 30 Americans show at the Rubell Collection. (Review here.) And the Herald has a cheat sheet on the best booths.
The best Basel-related photo I’ve seen so far: Marilyn Manson and his paintings. Plus: Paper pieces at Design Miami.
The NYT weighs in on the L.A. MOCA mess. Says former trustee Susan Nimoy: “My main complaint to the board was that none of you would run your household budget the way this institution is run. I think every one of those trustees should resign and [director] Jeremy [Strick] should resign.” Related: NPR reports on Eli Broad’s rescue effort. (Interesting fact: Koons’ balloon bunny makes him “smile.”)
Art museum toilets.
Following third quarter losses, Sotheby’s has laid people off.
Roger Ebert Rants! The Associated Press sucks.
Lots of Bush.
Drink like Lebowski. Don’t miss the video. (Thanks, Erik!)
Tyler Green at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, talking about all the stuff he hates. Interesting fact: he doesn’t like Jackson Pollock—or Brooklyn (the nerve). And he admits to being a “museum slut.” Juicy!
Knitted art draws the attention of Stephen Colbert … and the Border Patrol.
Art titles.
The God of Spring, a new novel based on the painting of Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa. (holartbooks’ Twitter.)
The Day in Art Merch: A shower curtain by Sam Flores. The staff here at C-Monster is waiting for an artist to make a fluffy toilet lid cover. Our pooper is cold. (Juxtapoz.)
Today’s Graff: Graphic Surgery in Amsterdam. More here.
A picture preview of a Faile show in London.
Andrés Duany, designer of Seaside, Fla. (one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been to), spanks British architecture for being ego-driven and “heedless of technical and social dysfunction.”
Why architects wear black.
How to build an igloo. (ackackack.)
Your moment of aerobic poodles.

Tags: LACMA, Los Angeles, the fun finder.