Coochie coochie to you, Agent Lover.
Monthly Archive for February, 2009
Can you hear me now? Detail of The Loveliest Song, 2003. (Photos by C-M.)
For a coupla years now, I’ve been seeing Hernan Bas’s work on my regular sojourns to Miami — principally at the frigid concrete warehouses that are home to the Snitzer Gallery and the Rubell Collection, where the artist had a massive solo exhibit in time for Art Basel in late 2007. But last night, I saw the paintings — which marry pop sensibilities with florid 19th century romance — completely anew in the Brooklyn Museum, where the wood floors and deft lighting gave the work an added weight and drama. In addition, someone was bright enough to put a bench in Bas’s room-sized video installation Ocean’s Symphony, which, with its floating mermaids and gently bubbling water, is one exemplary piece of stonerrific distraction.
Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection is up through May 24.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Getting Lushy: Hernan Bas at the Brooklyn Museum.’
Gulf Crossing, by Corey Arnold. (Image courtesy of Corey Arnold.)
- In NYC: Corey Arnold, FISH-WORK, at Sara Tecchia, opens today.
- In NYC: The Birth of Expressionism at the Neue Galerie, opens today. (Hrag Vartanian.)
- In NYC: Note to Self at Schroeder Romero, opens Friday.
- In NYC: Remed & 2BR at Brooklynite Gallery, opens Saturday.
- In NYC: El Mundo: Almost Baroque at Triple Candie in Harlme, through Apr. 5. (Art Fag City.)
- In NYC: Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection at the Brooklyn Museum, opens Friday.
- In NYC: Kamrooz Aram, Of Flame and Splendour, at Perry Rubinstein, opens Saturday.
- In L.A.: Christine Nguyen: Dark Matter of Fact and Kurt Franz at Angels Gate in San Pedro, opens Saturday.
- In L.A.: A screening of Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara at Royal/T in Culver City, this Sunday.
- In L.A.: Yong Sin at AndrewShire in Koreatown, through Mar. 21.
- In L.A.: Rock, Paper, Scissor, a benefit concert for the Santa Monica Museum of Art, with the Niche Makers featuring Raymond Pettibon, Ron English’s Electric Illuminati and Mike Watt + the Secondmen, Sunday at 2 p.m.
- In S.F.: Style Wars is screening daily at SFMOMA. Plus: While you’re there, check out Face of Our Time, up through Apr. 26.
- In Seattle: Matthew Picton: Postwar Landscape, an Urban History, at Howard House, opens today.
- In Seattle: Garden and Cosmos: the Royal Paintings of Jodhpur at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, through Apr. 26.
- In Munich: Gerhard Richter: Abstract Paintings at Haus der Kunst, opens tomorrow.
Simon Starling at MassMOCA, on display through Oct. 31, 2009. (Photo by Hargo.)
- Ways to be cool.
- The Oscar-nominated short I Met the Walrus. (Thanks, Bucker!)
- Illuminating nature. (Eyebeam reBlog.)
- Painting suburbia: An interview with Sarah McKenzie (whose paintings will be on view at Jen Bekman in NYC through April 4).
- The Day in Museum Cutbacks: The High Museum in Atlanta, the Walters, in Baltimore, and the Henry in Seattle.
- S.F. city officials still want former Gap head’s museum somewhere in the city, even if plans in the Presidio are not approved.
- Museum attendance figures in England. The British Museum, Tate Modern and the National Gallery take spots one through three.
- Gone fishing.
- Better than gummy worms: Sugar boogars.
- A rare, pristine copy of the 1938 Action Comics that launched Superman into the world is coming up for auction.
- Legalizing pot would help California generate more than $1 billion annually. (Coudal.)
- Today’s Graff: Roa in Belgium.
- Shepard Fairey and Mannie Garcia, the AP photographer who took the famous Obama image Fairey borrowed for his iconic poster, to go on NPR’s Fresh Air to talk about the fair-use brouhaha.
- Architectural billings index hits an all-time low.
- Ada Louise Huxtable on brutalism, Boston and New Haven editions. (Arts Journal.)
- A letter from Latin America: Wallpaper has a photo essay on architecture happenings in the lower half of our land mass.
- Monster stamps. (NotCot.)
- Your moment of Star Trek, claymation Italian opera edition. (Sound Taste.)
My mojito tribute to William Eggleston, aboard Delta Flight #38. (Photo by C-M.)
When Delta Airlines isn’t losing your luggage, cleaning out your wallet on additional “fees” or forcing you to fight your way through the Hooverville ambiance of their check-in counter at JFK, they’re undertaking an ongoing effort “to create a uniquely sophisticated, stylish and entertaining experience for customers.” (At least, that’s what the press release says.) Hence their two-year partnership with Skybar impresario Rande Gerber, a.k.a. second husband of Cindy Crawford, on a line of signature cocktails. Above, one of said drinks: the $7 mojito I imbibed en route from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta.
What’s the thing taste like? Think syrupy sweetness accented by a dash of toothpaste mintiness, landing this concoction somewhere on the flavor continuum between cough syrup and Caribbean cocktail. It didn’t taste particularly “sophisticated” or “stylish,” as the PR department pledged. But I can promise that a coupla of these babies will help dull the anguish of having to fly what has to be the country’s worst legacy carrier.
A mural by WERC and CROL, part of the La Entrada project in San Diego. (Image courtesy of La Entrada.)
- Vintage TV test cards. (ackackack.)
- MoMA’s subway ads get remixed by Poster Boy.
- Schnabel While You Eat: The pajama’d one has reportedly designed a dining room for Old Homestead Steakhouse in NYC. (Art Observed.)
- Assume Vivid Astro Focus collages the cover of the NYT Style Magazine.
- Arctic Circle. (Coudal.)
- The 25 Most Valuable Blogs. (ackackack.)
- Oh-so-cheesy.
- Candy Darling archive goes to Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
- The Day in Economic Suckage: Philly Museum and Detroit Institute of Arts make some bloody cuts. Plus: two Denver museums to merge. (Arts Journal.)
- I want, I need, I have to have…a $28 million arm chair: Yves Saint Laurent auction continues to set records. Art Observed has the comprehensive link dump.
- Own a Francis Bacon rug.
- Remember the salad days of 2008 when Banksy’s doodles used to fetch a quarter million pounds at auction? No longer. (World’s Best Ever.)
- Today’s Graff: David de la Mano in Spain.
- A trailer for Stacy Peralta’s Made in America, a doc about the history of L.A.’s Crips and Bloods — along with a list of preview screenings in various U.S. cities.
- SANAA, designers of the New Museum, to build the summer pavilion at London’s Serpentine Gallery.
- Green architecture for low-income families. (architecture.mnp.)
- Jonathan Jones of the Guardian selects his favorite album covers.
- Your moment of skateboarding dog.
Beast, in Miami. Saw this building-sized bomb while standing in line at Enriqueta’s for their super succulent pollo a la plancha. (Photo by C-M.)
- Vicodin earrings.
- Photographs of Oscar contenders prior to the Oscars. Makes me wish I could spend a whole day photographing Mickey Rourke.
- Congrats!! The Times of London picks the 100 best blogs in the blathersphere! On the list, art and architecture sites such as BLDGBLOG, Art Fag City and Modern Art Obsession. (The arts websites start here.) C-Mon on a separate list, of the 100 best blogs for wasting time.
- D.I.Y. paparazzi: Celebrities Twitter their lives away. (Art Fag City.)
- SFMOMA pairs art with music. Nice idea, but the whole exercise leaves me wondering: Do any brown people make music in the Bay Area? (Modern Art Notes.)
- The Free Store. (Eyebeam reBlog.)
- When times are bad, rich people hock their art. C-Monster hocks her guns.
- Recession? What Recession? Yves Sain Laurent’s Duchamp perfume pulls in $11 million at auction. More on the auction here. (Arts Journal.)
- The Met downsizes and the Las Vegas Museum of Art shuts down. And, unbelievably, on the verge of collapse, Long Island’s Vanderbilt Museum unearths a treasure buried in its walls.
- Must-read: A wonderful post by Eyeteeth’s Paul Schmelzer on art as protest over at Art21.
- Republicans happy to fund art in Iraq, but not in the U.S. Plus: more on the Iraq National Museum’s reopening.
- Small wonders.
- Contemporary art is “almost fraud” says some European dealer. And let’s keep it that way, people, because what else would I write about if it wasn’t? (Hrag Vartanian.)
- From the Department of WTF: Where else to park a train but between a doe-eyed manga girl’s legs? (Gracias, Big Papi G.)
- Speaking of Japan, if I had kids, I’d want to raise them there so that they could grow up watching stuff like this. DO NOT MISS the guitar-playing machine at the 2:45 mark.
- Today’s Graff: Le Dorian in Chile.
- The 10 Best Songs About Architecture. (architecture.mnp.)
- A blog that looks at the U.S./Mexico border wall as architecture. (ArchiDose.)
- Your moment of artspeak, Woody Allen style. (Mercy, Yvonne!)
Stikmen make you happy. (Crappy photo by C-M.)
Through a trusted intermediary (my Stikman dealer), I’ve managed to secure three mini-Stikmen (each roughly 1.5 inches tall) for a giveway on da blog! The pieces are pocket-sized wood cut-outs produced by the notoriously reclusive street artist, who I understand lives somewhere in the vicinity of the Eastern seaboard.
Leave a comment below, with a valid e-mail, to sign up and these cute little guys could be yours for desk decoration or street enhancement. The giveaway is open to all. The winner will be announced next Monday.
Stroll Again, 2008, by Alexandre Arrechea. (Image courtesy of Alexandre Arrechea.)
- Jaydiohead. (elbowtoe.)
- A Flickr set of vintage packaging. (marcjohns.)
- Photographing foreclosure.
- Is the art market less ethical than the stock market? Considering it’s mostly the same people who operate in both, it shouldn’t be surprising if it was.
- The demented superheroes of Peruvian painter Fernando “Huanchaco” Gutierrez.
- Photo Essay: Justine Cooper’s behind-the-scenes shots at the Museum of Natural History. My favorite is #19. (Eco Art Blog.)
- Images from vintage anatomy books.
- Kerry James Marshall takes on a coupla presidents in his new murals at SFMOMA. SF Chronicle story here. (Modern Art Notes.)
- Because too much make-up is never enough: The Rodeo Queens of Stefan Ruiz.
- The Obamas said to be on a contemporary art hunt for the White House. Among the possibilities: Rauschenberg and Ruscha. (Personism.)
- The Whitney has withdrawn its four Madison Avenue brownstones from the real estate market.
- A carbon dioxide map of the U.S. (Eyebeam reBlog.)
- Kaws get (breathlessly) profiled in the L.A. Times.
- Today’s Graff: Sweet Tooth in London.
- Miss Van poupée pins.
- A visual riff on the Oscars and architecture.
- The recession might be good for the architecture of affordable housing.
- The revamped Alice Tully hall better integrates itself into the streets of NYC, reports Looking Around. Plus: reviews from the NY Times and NY Mag.
- Cities of sugar.
- R.I.P. Marvin Rand, architectural photographer.
- Your moment of rodents of unusual size. (Art Fag City.)