Monthly Archive for March, 2009

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Do not miss: Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures at LACMA.

By c-monster on March 23, 2009 in Art, C-Monster, Los Angeles, Mixed Media, Museums and Painting. Closed

Detail of Nibelungen (Nibelung), a triptych by Lutz Dammbeck. (Image courtesy of LACMA.)

Take a culture. Fill it with the desire to build empire. Then put it through a vicious trench war. Follow this with a period of cultural openness and decadence. Afterwards, hand control over to a bunch of genocidal maniacs. Bomb it to a rubble. Divide it between East and West. Then put it back together. That, in an oversimplified nutshell, is the history of Germany in the 20th century. We are all familiar with the political implications of this back-and-forth. But what kind of art is produced by a nation that is built and destroyed and built again, each time in a somewhat different guise? The answer to that question lies in the jaw-dropping exhibit, The Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, at LACMA, in Los Angeles.

This sprawling show, curated by Stephanie Barron, covers 44 years of 20th century German history, from 1945-1989. It begins in the immediate aftermath of World War II, taking viewers through the eras of the Nuremberg trials, its Solomonic split, as well as the subsequent periods of tumult and soul-searching. There are artists famous (George Baselitz, Gerhard Richter, Martin Kippenberger, et al.) and unknown (Hermann Glockner) — many of them struggling to come to terms with who and what they represent. It is heart-breaking, appalling and totally edifying all at the same time.

This will be the exhibit’s only U.S. showing (it travels to Germany afterwards), so if you are anywhere near the L.A. area, it would be a crying shame to miss it. You’ve got ’til April 19.

As always, a few extras:

A historic timeline related to the exhibit.
An interview with Stephanie Barron.
Christopher Knight’s review in the L.A. Times. (He thinks the giant chocolate sculpture was nauseating. I think it smelled kinda good…)
And because I will never lose an opportunity to link to a video that shows Teutons prancing around in lederhosen.

Tags: art of two germanys, cold war cultures, LACMA, lutz dammbeck, nibelungen, stephanie barron.

Because any Monday is better with a little Celia.

By c-monster on March 23, 2009 in C-Monster, Music, Video and Yvonne Connasse. 1 Comment

Mercy, Mlle. Connasse.

Tags: celia cruz, guantanamera.

The Digest. 03.23.09.

By c-monster on March 23, 2009 in C-Monster, Photography and The Digest. Closed

A photo of a former prisoner named Hermanus. Part of the series Umjiegwana, of ex-prisoners in South Africa, by Mikhael Subotzky. (Image courtesy of Mikhael Subotzky. Thanks to Big Papi G for the heads up.)

Congrats to Greg from Tucson for winning the C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza, IMA edition!

Get your blog on Kindle.
Art consultant Kelly Wright will be helping Lehman Bros. dispose of its $30 million art collection: “Art is ultimately a commodity, just like any investment tool, and when it’s high, it’s high, and when it’s low, it’s low.”
The Saltz-master on the state of art in the city.
Photos of the Meredith Monk performance at the Guggenheim make me wish I could do the Soul Train line down the entire length of that Frank Lloyd Wright-designed ramp.
Tate landscapes paired with Google street views.
The V&A is opening up a bookstore.
Awesomeness: The Cleveland Museum of Art buys up Omer Fast’s The Casting.
Zoe Strauss is having a photo exhibit and sale under I-95 in South Philly (at Front & Mifflin Streets) this Sunday from 1-4 p.m.
Stuff to do based on where your IP address originates.
Facebook in the 1750s.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!: A profile of Art Spiegelman.
Israeli pot culture. (They’ve even got medicinal weed.)
The data auralizing news organ.
Today’s Graff: Faust in NYC.
Half built Frank Gehry tower in downtown Manhattan is put on hold 38 floors short of its original 76-story design. (Skyline.)
A Japanese glass house.
Paul Goldberger on Andrea Palladio, designer of 16th century McMansions.
Your moment of Star Wars cantina, harp edition. (Thank you, Alex!!)

Tags: hermanus, mikhael subotzky, photojournalism, prisoners, south africa.

Father Guido Sarducci on being an artist.

By c-monster on March 20, 2009 in Art, C-Monster, Sublime ridiculosity and Video. 1 Comment

Via Right Some Good.

Tags: being an artist, father guido sarducci, right some good.

The Digest. 03.20.09.

By c-monster on March 20, 2009 in C-Monster, Sculpture and The Digest. Closed

Mating Dogs from Colima, Mexico, 300 BC to AD 300, at the de Young, in S.F. (Photo by C-M.)

A Seattle art show by David Hoang to be based entirely on Tweets. (See the artist’s Twitter feed here.)
Polishing the Walker’s cherry. Does that sound dirty or what?
Todd Eberle’s America.
Sharon Butler talks to Regina Hackett, formerly of the Seattle P-I, and now of Another Bouncing Ball, about how blogging changed her life.
Friends and neighbors: Fascinating photo essay by Zoe Strauss. (Modern Art Notes.)
Ai Weiwei’s blog. I don’t understand a word of it, but I love the weird bunny thingthat appears whenever you drag your pointer to the upper right hand corner. (@artnetdotcom)
Museums and rising entry fees, in one and two parts.
Squirrel empanadas. (reBlog.)
But does it have a taco stand? The Smithsonian’s Latino Center has inaugurated a folk-drenched “Latino Virtual Museum” in Second Life, complete with a “placita” and a room full of musical instruments. (Because, in case you didn’t know, my people love to dance.) Woulda been waaaaay cooler if they’d gotten Los Bros. Hernandez to design the thing. (Thanks to Sound Taste for the cabeza arriba.)
Photographing the end of days. (ackackack)
“Graffiti infuriates homeowners, degrades streets and undercuts civil pride.” (Juxtapoz.)
Today’s Street Art, pixilated shark edition: r8bit in Russia.
For the graffiti artist who likes to play it extra safe: The Walls Notebook.
Trippy tea house. (reBlog.)
Redesigning Paris. (Arts Journal.)
Architecture is in the crapper in the U.K.
Not sure how this would work, but it sounds intriguing: Affordable housing units that harvest human body heat to maintain temperature. (architecture.mnp.)
Your moment of Twitter rap. (Huffington Post via reBlog.)

Tags: colima, de young, mating dogs, Mexico.

The C-Mon Q&A: ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ director Paul H-O.

By c-monster on March 19, 2009 in C-Monster, Film and Q&A. 1 Comment

Incisive Reportage: Gallery Beat host Paul H-O interviews Cindy Sherman. (Image courtesy of Guest of Cindy Sherman.)

In 1993, Paul H-O (short for Hasegawa-Overacker), along with a few comrades in arms, launched an arts-focused public access program in New York City called Gallery Beat. For 160 half-hour episodes, H-O and his esteemed colleagues — Walter Robinson, now of ArtNet, Spencer Tunick, of nekkid people fame, and Cathy Lebowitz, of Art in America — crash landed at gallery openings all over Manhattan, armed with nothing but a TV camera, a microphone and probing questions such as, What is it? “Admittedly, half of those episodes are shit and should have never been made,” says H-O. “But there’s some great moments with people in galleries.” Including one with a lot of vagina.

H-O is working on putting the old shows online (a couple currently reside on YouTube), as well as resuscitating Gallery Beat for an internet audience. “There’s a recession going on, which means it’s time for me to come back,” he quips. His priority these days, however, is the theatrical release of his film, Guest of Cindy Sherman, which he co-directed with Tom Donohue, and which will premiere next week at Cinema Village in NYC and the Film Center in Santa Fe. The highly intriguing doc, which chronicles the rise and fall of Gallery Beat alongside the rise and fall of H-O’s romantic relationship with Sherman (expect to see rare footage of her at work), has been making its way through the festival circuit since last spring and is now set for a broad public airing. The footage of H-O & Co. at an early Vanessa Beecroft performance at Deitch is worth the price of admission alone.

To shill the flick, H-O proved willing to submit himself to our pat interrogation methods, revealing who he’d like to see in an artist girl-fight and why he thinks a tube sock and a tin can represent mankind.

C-M: What’s the biggest stereotype about art?
H-O: That tremendous macho attitude that someone like Picasso embodied. Martin Kippenberger established a certain style for himself that way, too. Then there’s Schnabel. People don’t think I like Julian Schnabel, but, in fact, I adore him. He’s given me great material. He is that larger-than-life figure. He adopts the attitude of being Picasso, and since he’s such a visible figure, Hollywood people see him and say, “Here’s an artist!”

Continue reading ‘The C-Mon Q&A: ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman’ director Paul H-O.’

Tags: gallery beat, guest of cindy sherman, paul h-o.

Calendar. 03.19.09.

By c-monster on March 19, 2009 in C-Monster, Calendar, Drawing and Galleries. 2 Comments

Affordable Housing, by Ross Jones. (Image courtesy of William Angel Gallery.)

In London: Ross Jones at William Angel Gallery, opens Friday.
In Oakland: Marina Vendrell Renaut, Flaming Furbelows, at Johansson Projects, opens Saturday at 4 p.m.
In L.A.: Steve Burtch and Meeson Pae Yang: Refraction at Lawrence Asher, in the Fairfax District, through Saturday.
In L.A.: Eyeone and Patrick Martinez at Tradition, in Westlake Village, opens Saturday.
In S.F.: Pablo Guardiola and Haden Nicholl at the Little Tree Gallery, opens Saturday. (Sadly, this will be the gallery’s last show.)
In Chicago: Paul Chan: My Laws Are My Whores at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, through April 12. (Interesting: You can download Chan-designed computer fonts here.)
In Chicago: Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through June 21. Plus: Next month, visitors to Art Chicago will be able to walk inside one of Fuller’s domes.
In Miami: Recent Acquisitions at the Miami Art Museum, through Oct. 11.
In Fort Lauderdale: A workshop on creating and using your own pinhole camera, led by artist Courtney Johnson, at Girls Club, this Saturday at noon. (Cost: $60.)
In NYC: A book party for Vandal Squad: Inside the New York City Transit Police Department, at powerHouse books, today at 7 p.m.
In NYC: Alfredo Jaar, The Sound of Silence, at Galerie Lelong, through May 2. (Art21.)
In NYC: Dan Witz at Tattoo Culture, opens Friday.
In NYC: Ellsworth Kelly, Paintings and Drawings, at Matthew Marks, through April 11.
In NYC: The Women of the Photo League, opens today at 6 p.m.
In NYC: Michael Leavitt, Don’t Stop Object Shopping, at Fuse Gallery, opens Saturday.
In NYC: Mark Jenkins, The Golden Ass and Other Stories, at Stricola Contemporary, opens Saturday.
In NYC: Aakash Nihalani, Ellis Gallagher and Poster Boy, Neo-Con, at 17 Frost Gallery, opens Saturday.

Tags: ross jones, william angel gallery.

The sublime point where sheep and LEDs intersect.

By c-monster on March 19, 2009 in Art for stoners, C-Monster, Performance art and Video. 1 Comment

Via Juxtapoz.

Tags: baaa studs, leds, sheep.

The Digest. 03.19.09.

By c-monster on March 19, 2009 in C-Monster, Photography and The Digest. Closed

Eric and Jakie, part of Kissing the Ceiling, a 2008 photographic series by Fred Muram. (Image courtesy of Fred Muram.)

Malls R Us.
Art openings, subway style. (Mercy, Mlle. Connasse.)
Video of an underwater volcano exploding in Tonga. (NotCot.)
The New York Times’s special Museums section. Including a story about all the crazy things museums are doing to attract audiences, including yoga at MoMA. Up next: Tae-bo at the Whitney.
NPR revisits the Gardner Museum heist, the largest unsolved art heist in history.
At Maastricht, “Old Masters are better than buying gold nuggets.”
Vandalize your favorite websites with meteors and floods. (Thanks, Michele!)
Artists: How not to approach a gallery, in one and two parts.
The Twitterview, artist edition and McCain/Stephanopoulos edition.
Mothers and children.
Oh, yes: Bad at Sports interviews Chris Ware. (Art Fag City.)
Today’s Graff: Krik in Poland.
A design history of the Playboy bunny.
Brit Insurance Design award winners: Shepard Fairey, Make Magazine and the Indonesian makers of a wood radio.
What to do with all that brutalism.
Shanty town architecture.
In New Zealand: A tree house that resembles an onion. Another better shot here.
Your moment of computer screen cleaning. (Thanks for making my day, San Suzie.)

Tags: eric and jakie, fred muram, kissing the ceiling.

C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza: Indianapolis Museum of Art edition.

By c-monster on March 18, 2009 in C-Monster, Food and Giveaway. 29 Comments

Wholesome goodness. Except for the Twinkie. (Photo by C-M.)

The kind folks over at the Indianapolis Museum of Art were kind enough to send me a little gift pack for giveaway purposes, which includes an all-cotton Indy Museum T-Shirt (size L), a Rubik’s cube (special easy-to-solve version, courtesy of the IMA blog), as well as three super-cool mini-books — including one by David Hockney on Picasso (added to the package by my Twitter bud Richard McCoy). The package also comes with an invite to Artbabble.org, the museum’s new site dedicated to video content about art. (Right now it’s in the beta stage, so the only way to see it is to get an invite…)

Special bonus prize: Because this package was getting a little too wholesome and informative in its content, I’ve added a Twinkie, in honor of Pace Wildenstein’s Twinkie plate at the Armory Show, to the mix. It’s slightly deformed from having been carried around in my purse for a few days, but I can promise you that its taste, texture and chemical composition remain the same as always.

Leave a comment below to register for the drawing and this sensational package could be yours to keep!

Tags: indianapolis museum of art, mini-books, twinkie.