Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Page 4 of 5

The Digest. 03.08.10.

By c-monster on March 8, 2010 in C-Monster, Installation, Sculpture and The Digest. 4 Comments

Evening Cocoon, by Kate Browne, in Cragsmoor, New York. Beginning today, Browne will be building a large cocoon in the Plaza Tlatelolco (sight of the infamous 1968 massacre) in Mexico City. It will be lit on March 21st, the first day of spring. (Image courtesy of Kate Browne.)

The Holy Land Experience.
El Museo del Barrio’s Julián Zugazagoitia to head up the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City. See a video of him talking about the move. (@museumnerd.)
Art21 interviews Alec Soth.
Five things you didn’t know about Ansel Adams. Interesting fact: he and Georgia O’Keeffe were friends, but dissed each other’s work. (@russelltrombone.)
Sea and sky.
A new book says that conflict over climate change will create a new world order: U.S. and Europe vs. China and Russia. (Cool Green Morning.)
A special multimedia feature on Jonathan LeVine’s fifth anniversary. Profile here.
Today’s Graff: Esco in Sao Paulo.
The Guardian profiles JR.
The Glass House, Maira Kalman version.
Rush Limbaugh home décor. He has a way with the baby blue.
Honest movie titles, Oscars 2010 edition.

Tags: cocoon, kate browne.

Art Yoga. And the very many cool happenings at #CLASS.

By c-monster on March 6, 2010 in C-Monster, Conceptual, Galleries, New York and Sublime ridiculosity. 2 Comments

The Art Yoga tribute to Marina Abramovic: Yoga in lab coats. Later, we sat around and stared at each other. (Screengrab taken from the live webstream.)

There’s all kinds of goodness going down at #CLASS this weekend and in the coming week, starting today with a panel on the art world’s shade of pale, organized by An Xiao, the motivational stylings of Rod Verplanck, and through the weekend, with working sessions and a contemporary art wake. This will be followed, mid-week, by balloon-popping with Man Bartlett, a feminist tea party with Suzanne Stroeb and Caitlin Rueter, a merciless Q&A with art dealer Magda Sawon of Postmasters, and a lecture, on Friday, by Yevgeniy Fiks, on Communist Modern Artists in the Art Market.

I attended Fiks’ fascinating guerrilla tour of MoMA early this week, in which he led us through a number of the works in the permanent galleries created by communists and sympathizers. (See my Tweets from that event here.) The history nerd in me (I have a thing for Cold War-era politics) was totally loving it. You can see reports on the tour at Bloggy and jameswagner.com. Fiks’ totally wonderful Russian accent just brings it all together.

Find a full schedule of events over at the official website. And I’ll see you in #CLASS.

Tags: #class, art yoga, winkleman gallery.

Enough with Art Fairs: The Top 10 Biggest Oscar Snubs in History!

By Yvonne Connasse on March 5, 2010 in Film and Yvonne Connasse. 7 Comments

The 1988 Academy Awards — when John Huston’s The Dead and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket didn’t get nominations, but Fatal Attraction did. (Photo by Alan Light.)

We love the Oscars. The glitz, the glam, the flicks, the bawling starlets and on-air fuck-ups. Even when the awards plow on, past midnight and into the next morning, we nonetheless cling to our TV sets (and our empty bottles of vodka) to see who picked up the award for Best Picture — despite the fact that this honorific has a spotty track record. To be sure, on many occasions, the Academy has gotten it right: bestowing awards on the silent movie masterpiece Sunrise, the comedy classic It Happened One Night, Gone With Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Godfather I and II, and, more recently, Schindler’s List. But sometimes, they get it horribly, horribly wrong: handing out awards to atrocious pictures, such as the stilted, early talkie Cimarron, the cloying Rain Man and Forrest Gump (which are basically the same movie), the treacly Titanic, the bus-wreck of Crash and the vastly overrated Slumdog Millionaire (which is basically a retread of Millions).

With the Academy Awards just around the corner, our esteemed chief, C-Monster, asked us to compose a list of the best classic flicks that failed to earn a Best Picture Nomination. So, we set down our martini long enough to flip through our movie memory and present you, lucky reader, with the official list of Best Movie Classics Snubbed by the Academy. Like Nixon’s Enemies List, it’s an esteemed and vivacious club, whose members include everyone from Fritz Lang to David Lynch.

Don’t forget to tune into the Oscars, this Sunday at 8pm to find out if, this year, the Academy will get it right. We’re giddily chilling our bottle[s] of Grey Goose in preparation. À Bientôt!

Find the full list of biggest Academy Award snubs (dating back to the ’20s!) after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Enough with Art Fairs: The Top 10 Biggest Oscar Snubs in History!’

Tags: academy awards, best picture snubs.

The Digest. 03.05.10.

By c-monster on March 5, 2010 in C-Monster, Installation, San Francisco, Sculpture and The Digest. 2 Comments

Anti-Mass, 2005 by Cornelia Parker a the DeYoung Museum of Art in 2008. (Photo by C-M.)

Today is Art Yoga with C-Mon Day at Ed Winkleman. You can participate via the live web stream at the official #CLASS website, starting at 2pm ET.

A history of blackouts.
Roberta Smith tears the New Museum’s Skin Fruit a new one. In the lead graf: “The project did not sound like a good idea when it was announced last fall. Seeing it up close does not change that.”
Me me me, on my three favorite pieces at the Armory Show over at WNYC. Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win a Jen Bekman art fair survival kit, which includes this print by William Powhida.)
Art21 explores the ethics of using live animals in art.
The Smithsonian rejects O.J. Simpson’s acquittal suit. (World’s Best Ever.)
Artwork from Michael Crichton’s collection, including pieces by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, is going on sale.
Snow art censored in Jersey. Hilarious.
The trippy sculptures of Andrea Myers.
Hrag Vartanian is looking for art industry secrets.
Ostrich egg shell fragments reveal 60,000 year old graphic design tradition. (Hyperallergic.)
Marina Abramovic and her big ass homes.
Customized Eames chairs.
Will it be truly possible to have wild bison repopulate the American plains?
The Big Picture: Chile, three days after the quake.
The Art of Graffiti Beefs: Banksy versus Robbo versus Banksy versus Robbo versus… (Arts Journal.)
Today’s Street Art: Lister in Brooklyn.
Slideshow: Contemplating the Void at the Guggenheim. My favorite here. On a totally unrelated note, thinking about the Gugg’s void for some reason gets me thinking about the Pizza Cone.)
The police stations of Georgia, as in the former Soviet republic. (@thornburgh.)
Herzog & de Meuron do a parking structure in Miami Beach.
Asian carp threaten Chicago architecture tours.
In case somebody wants to build me a writing studio, here’s some inspiration.

Tags: anti-mass, cornelia parker, DeYoung Museum.

Art installations with mirrors are handy…

By c-monster on March 4, 2010 in C-Monster, Photography and Sublime ridiculosity. Closed

…’cuz you can fix your hair in them. (Photo by C-M.)

Tags: chelsea, stefan bruggemann, yvon lambert.

Calendar. 03.04.10.

By c-monster on March 4, 2010 in C-Monster, Calendar, Museums, New York and Photography. Closed

Camera No. 1 by Miroslav Tichý. Photo by Roman Buxbaum. Part of the exhibit Tichý, at the International Center of Photography in NYC, through May 9. (Image courtesy of ICP.)

In NYC: A month-long screening of Helen Leavitt’s 15-minute film, In the Street, on the anniversary of her death, at Laurence Miller Gallery, starting today.
In NYC: Boris Hoppek and Alex Diamond: Damage Control at Factory Fresh, opens Friday at 8pm.
In Philly: Dead Flowers, a group show, at Vox Populi, opens Friday at 6pm.
In Portland, Ore.: Melody Owen, Letters from Switzerland, at Elizabeth Leach, opens Thursday at 6pm.
In L.A.: Ali Prosh, Travelers’ Suite, at The Company, opens Saturday at 6pm.
In L.A.: Rachel Whiteread: Drawings, at the Hammer Museum, through April 25.
In L.A.: A signing with Uglydoll creators David Horvath and Sun-min Kim, at Giant Robot, this Saturday at 3pm.
In Toronto: Ryan Dineen and Jacques Oule, Cityscrapes, at Show & Tell Gallery, opens Friday.

Tags: icp, miroslav tichy.

Bow to the Art Industry: Art Yoga with C-Mon, this Friday at 2pm.

By c-monster on March 3, 2010 in C-Monster, Galleries, New York, Performance art and Sublime ridiculosity. Closed

Bend over backwards for the sake of your budding career. (Photo by gadgetgirl.)

If you are in desperate need of a yoga class and a few art gags, please join me this Friday, March 5th at 2pm at the Winkleman Gallery for the first (and probably only) session of Art Yoga With C-Mon, part of #CLASS.

Get body and mind ready to navigate the spiritual and physical hazards of working in the art industry with this 75 minute yoga class geared at those who want to re-contextualize the nature of liminal space while doing core-strengthening exercises that will keep them lithe enough to be considered for art/fashion spreads in T Magazine. We will begin with sun salutations to performance artist Marina Abramovic and do spiritual readings from the pages of ArtForum.

Jokes aside: This will be an honest-to-goodness hatha vinyasa yoga class (yoga with flow) — with plenty of artsy twists. (I am a trained yoga teacher: Om Yoga Center, 2003.) So, if you’re a starving artist type and want a FREE, fun yoga class (or you simply want to cleanse your mind and body after attending all those dirty art fairs), please come!!

Please arrive promptly at 2pm. Bring a mat and wear comfortable exercise clothes. This class is open to all levels. First come, first served.

Art Yoga With C-Mon
#Class
Winkleman Gallery
621 W. 27th Street (btwn 11th & 12th Aves)
NYC
Friday, March 5th @ 2pm sharp

#CLASS is organized by William Powhida and Jen Dalton.

Tags: #class, art yoga with c-mon, edward winkleman gallery.

Black Sun.

By c-monster on March 3, 2010 in C-Monster, New York and Video. Closed

A video by Alexandre Arrechea on the NASDAQ building in Times Square, playing through March 8. (Photo by C-M.)

Tags: alexandre arrechea, black sun, times square.

The Digest. 03.03.10.

By c-monster on March 3, 2010 in Architecture, C-Monster and Photography. 1 Comment

14671. (Photo by C-M.)

Tune into U-Stream today from 2pm-4pm to catch Celso, my partner-in-crime, getting shreddy at #CLASS. I’ll be wandering around the room… Just look for the big hair.

Funny: Classic paintings get the music video treatment.
In which I reconsider Tino Sehgal at the Gugg under real-life conditions.
MoMA has its own font: MoMA Gothic.
Drama at P.S 1: Was a performance censored? AFC has much more in one, two and three parts. Plus: a report on the museum’s response.
The Day in Art Merch: The Whitney Biennial Tote.
Related to the Biennial: A George Condo slideshow. (WNYC.)
Roman Polanski, the museum show.
An overview of Berlin’s gallery district. Plus: Off-the-beaten path Brooklyn museums. (@russelltrombone.)
I find it interesting that Arts Journal will link to The Onion, but barely ever links to independent arts and culture blogs.
Audio Slideshow: Wayne Liu’s Sketches of China — set to music by John Cage.
Molly Dilworth’s paintings for satellites. (Intelligent Travel.)
The arch of Snooki.
Painted signs.
Super Groovy: Robert Kennedy’s last Christmas card.
How to build an artificial glacier. Plus: a fake tornado. Duuuuude.
The Day in Stonerrific Animated Videos that Totally Channel Tetris: Grindin’. Oh yes.
Sorta related…today’s graff: Optical illusions by Mach505 in Italy.
Ask a Graffiti Artist, with Lee Quiñones. (@hragv.)
Mies van der Rohe’s restored Lake Shore Drive apartments in Chicago.
Mountain cannibalism.

Tags: 14671, suburban architecture.

How galleries are like hospitals. Or what I learned in #CLASS.

By c-monster on March 2, 2010 in C-Monster, Galleries, New York and Sublime ridiculosity. 6 Comments

Spotted during the #CLASS tour of Chelsea with William Powhida. (Photo by C-M.)

Last Saturday, I joined a merciless gang of art nerds for a gallery tour of Chelsea led by artist William Powhida as part of the month-long series of events known as #CLASS at Winkleman Gallery. For the course of a couple of hours on a chilly afternoon, we inspected galleries all over Chelsea, looking not at the art, but at the galleries themselves. We studied spaces where the owner sat front and center, and others where management retreated to private offices beyond a partially-hidden elevator. Some galleries seemed downright residential (hello, couch art!), others felt like palatial mini-museums. We also analyzed how easily information was made available to the general public: as in, were price lists, press releases and artist statements front and center? Was there wall text? Or did viewers need to go begging for crumbs of information from a disaffected-looking gallerina? It was a fascinating anthropological expedition.

Afterwards, as I chatted with my fellow #CLASSmates (thank you, Barry), I realised that galleries bear an uncanny resemblance to an institutional space of a different nature: hospitals. The likeness, in fact, is downright unnerving.

Galleries and hospitals both…

…have lots of blank walls occasionally dotted with art of a questionable nature.
…are staffed by front desk employees who are willfully unhelpful until they’ve determined your ability to pay.
…are populated by individuals who look nervous and unsettled.
…are filled with unforgiving bright lights.
…feature dour-looking people in austere uniforms.
…are bare to the point of frigidity.
…have waiting areas stocked with odd magazines.
…smell funny.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a visual comparison:

From left: Hospital, gallery. (Images courtesy of pol ubeda and Marshall Astor.)

Tags: #class, gallery, hospital, please don't take me into a gallery, william powhida, winkleman gallery.