The Digest. 12.21.09.

Th3 Violinist annd h3r Window of Opportunity, by NohJColey. (Image courtesy of NohJColey and Brooklyn Street Art.)

• Alec Soth’s Glass Jars.
• The art world is a like a “high school cafeteria.” Then who’s the lunch lady?
• Grant Mandarino at ArtNet reads all those ArtForum Top 10 lists so you don’t have to. Sentence I wish I’d written: “Nobody dresses up the fecophiliac antics of young Italian aristocrats with quite the same sonority.” Awesome.
• Plus, More Obligatory Year-End Coverage: Christopher Knight of the L.A. Times does his end-of-decade round-up, includes references to gigantism and New-York-isn’t-the-center-of-the-universe declarations. Plus: his ’09 top exhibits listicle. Excited to see LACMA’s super-awesome Art of Two Germanys on the rundown.
• And: Jonathan Jones of the Guardian apologises to all the artists he’s insulted. Except Damien Hirst.
• The art industrial average is in a coma: Sotheby’s Christie’s sales of contemporary art plummet 75 percent after the auction houses abandon price guarantees. (Arts Journal.)
• “Look, to me it was white, beautiful white, and then the white was shrieking for the green, and the little triangle created a force field. People see very sexy things — dirty minds! — but to me sex is sex, and triangles are triangles.” — Carmen Herrera.
• Jenny Holzer loves doing laundry.
• Eggs.
• Surrealist sketchbooks.
• Larry Sultan talking to NPR, back in 1989.
• In Paris, art and commerce go together like…art and commerce!
• Ramón Coronado’s Mercado Negro. Great use of a shopping cart.
• Help support art in schools: Support Modern Art Notes‘ 2009 DonorsChoose.org drive.
• Plus: Art Fag City is having a fundraiser to help support her blogging work. Donations, made through Nurture Art, are tax deductible. C’mon folks, help a blogga out.
• Measuring that old book smell. (IIC.)
• Nuclear reactor wall charts.
• Today’s Graff: Teck in the Ukraine.
• Fascinating: The architecture of megalomania, focused on, of course, the Burj Dubai. See the photo essay. (BLDGBLOG.)
• Spock is a badass.