xox, C-Mon + Celso (with apologies to William Holden)
Monthly Archive for May, 2010
Arlo Gelteko, Training, Clairton, Pa., by Ross Mantle. Part of the series In the Wake of the American Dream. (Image courtesy of Mantle.)
- What we are travel writing about: an arbitrary statshot.
- Because the oil spill isn’t enough: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an “active to extremely active” hurricane season this fall.
- Where Deer and Tiger Heads are Stored: A photo essay on the storage vault containing property confiscated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I have to confess, if I could, I’d break all manner of international conservation treaties for one of those caiman ashtrays (#9). (Gracias Big Papi G.)
- The Burning Season: A book about New York when it was wrecked.
- Creating an uplifting — but not too uplifting — Holocaust memorial.
- Can’t breathe.
- Cell Phone Stories, a narrative for mobile phone, by LACMA.
- Late addition: Me, me, me…on staying up late at the Whitney.
- Apparently Jean Rohatyn told a contestant on Bravo’s Work of Art that they give performance art “a bad name.” Because performance art doesn’t have a bad name already. Plus: El Saltzino on being a reality TV show judge. (Art Fag City.)
- Paddy Johnson on Dump.fm, a site in which people “communicate” entirely in images. And flashing cartoony thingies that are liable to give you seizures.
- Spaces for sex: Bordello photographs by Juergen Chill. See his full site here. (Coudal.)
- A buncha good links from Eyeteeth.
- Darpa robot video. This shit is crazy.
- Blu and Os Gemeos take over a building in Lisbon.
- Today’s Street Art: Rub gets trippy geometric in Rome. Very cool.
- Plus, an essay, with photos from Ben Davis: Is Street Art Over? Interesting, but my answer is: perhaps (or I hope?) hype-y street art is over. But it’s certainly not going away. (@artnetdotcom.)
- Trying to fit office furniture into a triangular space: On working in the Flatiron Building. (Arts Journal.)
- Firm selected to build cottages near Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
- Sexy pictures of Bernard Tschumi’s Acropolis Museum.
- Like trailers gone crazy.
- So a dog walks into a bar in Havana…
Or, more accurately, I’m over at Gallerina, at WNYC. (In case you’re interested, you can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed right here.)
Andy Warhol’s self-portrait silkscreen on wallpaper. Part of an installation for the upcoming exhibit, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade, at the Brooklyn Museum, opening in three weeks. (Image courtesy of Marcus Romero and the Brooklyn Museum.)
- Looking for the most beautiful Tweet ever written. (The Book Bench.)
- Journalist Charles Bowden says that women in Juárez are killed at the same rate as in the rest of Mexico. The problem, he says, isn’t specifically violence against women, it’s the violence generated by extreme poverty and a failed state.
- The World Touristiness Map. (Coudal.)
- A jaw-droppingly wonderful choreography containing crutches, braces and boobies. Has to be seen to be believed.
- A performance artist on re-performing Abramovic.
- Where oh where is Carmen San Diego? Er, I mean, where oh where is Eli Broad planning on building his museum? For now, the conjecture points to downtown L.A. More here.
- The Art Industrial Average is Down: Lay-offs at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Arts Journal.)
- The Art Industrial Average Is Up: Whitney Museum board okays construction — and a move to — downtown Manhattan space. Boy, was I seriously wrong in thinking it was all conjecture.
- Well done: An artistic photo essay that takes its cues from the disaster in the Gulf. (The Jonathan Monk piece, #11, is an excellent use of a car hood.)
- Man Bartlett on what it was like to repeat people’s Tweets for 24 hours, as part of his work, #24Echo. I think this is the first time in my life I’ve been referred to as inspirational. From now on, call me Oprah.
- Fragments of stolen art come together to form another artwork by Eva and Franco Mattes.
- Do curators have too much power?
- Painted typewriters by Tauba Auerbach. (Coudal.)
- Zombie meat.
- A digital graffiti wall. (@GOOD.)
- Today’s Street Art: Lucho and quillo’s wrecked car in Santiago, Chile.
- Artist Molly Dilworth to turn Times Square into a river.
- In Paris: A door that leads to nowhere.
- Not even remotely related: The Champs Elysées is turned into a giant garden. (Cool Green Science.)
- Best. News Lede. Ever. (@russelltrombone.)
Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Texas, 1947 by Ansel Adams. Part of the exhibit Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light, at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. (Image courtesy of the Amon Carter.)
- Oakland, Calif.: Rune Olsen, If Only…, at Johansson Projects, opens Thursday. Opening reception on Friday, June 4, at 5pm.
- L.A.: Mary Reid Kelly at Susanne Vielmetter Projects, through June 12.
- L.A.: Jose Bedía, Faces in the Landscape, at Latin American Masters, through June 12.
- Pasadena: Stitches, at the Armory Center for the Arts, through June 6.
- Austin: Matisse as Printmaker at the Blanton Museum of Art, through Aug. 22.
- San Antonio: On the Road, at Artpace Gallery, through Sept. 5.
- Washington, D.C.: Yves Klein at the Hirshhorn, through Sept. 12. (The Art Newspaper.)
- NYC: Seven Easy Steps: Spiritual Ecstacies at Horton Gallery, opens today.
- NYC: Provocateurs of Japanese Photography, at Kathleen Cullen Fine Art, opens Wednesday at 6pm.
- NYC: Artlog’s Summer Art Guide Party and Benefit, at The Gates, this Wednesday at 8pm.
- NYC: Oil and Water, at Coleman Bancroft and Gallery Schlesinger, through June 13.
- Hudson, N.Y.: Andrew Dunhill: Sculpture, at John Davis Gallery, in Hudson, opens on Thursday at 6pm.
- Lincoln, England: Silent Witness: Graphic Novels Without Words, at The Collection, Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire, opens Saturday.
- Paris: Impossible Photography: Paris Prisons, at the Musée Carnavalet, through July 4.
- Berlin: Minimalism Germany 1960s, at the Daimler Contemporary, through May 30. (Art Fag City.)
- Milan: Paul McCarthy, Pig Island, at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, through July 4. (See images here.)
Drift Fence Carnival, an installation produced by R.L. Croft, with Michael Anthony, at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. The pieces were constructed entirely out of debris found on the beach. Most of the wood is stacked and pulled nails were used to stabilize some of the structures. (Image courtesy of R.L. Croft.)
- My take on PS1′s Greater New York at WNYC: words and audio.
- Microsoft versus Apple: On the issue of sustainability.
- Incredible: David Bates’ Katrina Paintings. See them at the Kemper in Kansas City City through Aug. 22.
- The Whitney allegedly wants to move downtown and lease the Breuer building to the Met. Let’s see if this one ever makes past the status of gossip item.
- Plus: More works stolen in France. This time, from a museum in Marseilles. (Arts Journal.)
- Miami collector Craig Robins still blackballed by Marlene Dumas. Stories like this make me laugh laugh laugh.
- Juicy late addition: How Marina Abramovic’s red-velvet rope at MoMA works. Some public is more important than other. (For the record: It took me two days to be able to sit with her, but only after getting snaked in line by people from Abramovic’s gallery holding places for patrons, a.k.a. buyers.)
- On the Barnes Foundation’s move in Philly — along with a good chunk of background on the man that created it. (Arts Journal.)
- Houston and Broadway, Joseph Kosuth, 1979.
- The Day in Art Merch: Spiral Jetty IPA.
- Pianos are coming to the streets of New York. (Eyeteeth.)
- The Hipster-Friendly Subway Map.
- Today’s Street Art: A hydra from 1010 in Poland.
- Shepard Fairey gets the smackdown from the New York Times‘ Roberta Smith. Ouch.
- U.S. suburbs are getting poorer as professionals migrate to cities. Plus, nerdy fact: More babies are born in traffic in Atlanta than anywhere else in the country.
- A rare Manhattan condo project that looks vaguely cool. This pic has a good angle.
- The world’s strangest buildings. And one that makes you go whoa.
- Mountain majesty, 1800s edition.
Untitled, 2010, a red felt sculpture by Robert Morris, part of a solo exhibit at Sonnabend Gallery in NYC, through July. Absolutely worth checking out. (Photo by C-M.)
- Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. (@russelltrombone.)
- Every year, for 50 years, Shell Oil and other companies have spilled the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez in Nigeria. Plus: The Gulf oil spill — from space. (Cool Green Science.)
- Another sign that the world is ending? Foucault’s pendulum snaps; is damaged beyond repair. (Kottke.)
- Have I told y’all how much I dig The Rumpus? Now they have a book club.
- Thief steals Picasso, Braque, Modigliani and Léger from a Paris museum. It’s a bad one.
- Just what is post-modernism these days? Ben Davis debates: “So, where, finally, are we at? On the level of theory, you have the waning of something, but an inability to articulate anything that actually sounds like an alternative.” Sounds like hipster post-industrialism to me. (@gregorg.)
- Greg.org parses Jeff Koons C.V. and finds that not everything adds up so neatly.
- The New York Times reviews the new Leo Castelli bio (which apparently takes “forever” to get off the ground.)
- Things not to buy: C-prints from the early ’90s, which apparently fade super fast.
- NatGeo has a Tumblr featuring plenty of photography. This pic should get the urban decay types salivating. (Coudal.)
- Pix from the Os Gemeos show in Lisbon.
- Steve Powers (aka ESPO), on graffiti and painting signs in Coney Island.
- Today’s Street Art: 2501‘s unusual creatures in Berlin.
- For the Graff Nerds: A spraycan app for the iPhone, complete with spraycan rattling sound.
- Interesting how street artists roll through town and put up work when they’ve got big shows or a movie screening. One could almost call it…advertising. (Arts Journal.)
- This week woulda been André the Giant’s 64th birthday.
- Like a churning piston: The Agua Mineral Aonni building in Punta Arenas, Chile. Wow.
- Must. Get…a container studio-office.
- Because graphic design never rests: A Pantone hotel.
- Gettin’ groovy to a little Hank Jones, R.I.P. (@destinationout.)
Artist-decorated Eames chairs in the windows at Barneys. (Photos by C-M.)
Operation Design is holding a benefit fundraiser, organized by street artist Billi Kid and photographer extraordinaire Luna Park, to raise funds for their mentoring program for New York City teens. Want to help out? Bid on one of the street art-decorated Eames chairs currently hanging in the window at Barneys. You’ve got ’til June 1st.
All of the designs, along with links to the e-Bay page, are featured right here.
Phnom Penh graffiti, by Andrew Pope, as featured on his blog, Primitive Nerd. (Image courtesy of Pope.)
Congrats to Elizabeth for winning the Street Art New York Giveaway Extravaganza! I hope your class enjoys it.
- James Franco, author. (@giovannigf.)
- Must-read: A writer’s search for journalism in the age of branding. (@nicknotned.)
- Foreclosures lead to a pool skating renaissance in Fresno. (Coudal.)
- Disaster tourism. (Eyeteeth.)
- A David Lynch short in which Marion Cotillard is stalked by a Dior handbag.
- But will it include olfactory elements? CBGB’s graff-covered bathroom to be recreated by artist Justin Lowe at a Connecticut museum. (Arts Journal.)
- The future of the Jersey City Museum: Not so certain.
- The BP Grand Entrance at LACMA not looking so grand, reports the L.A. Times, using a pretty awesome art juxtaposition.
- On the other hand, LACMA’s Art of Two Germanys wins curators group award. Congrats to Stephanie Barron for putting on one bad-ass show.
- Arcimboldo, hot hot hot. (Modern Art Notes, which coincidentally, has a new RSS feed.)
- Sweet. God. Posh and Becks now an “art power couple.”
- Franz Kline’s booze bill and Leo Castelli’s to-do list. The Morning News has an excellent photo essay on lists. (Art Fag City.)
- Embroidered Wonder bread. (The Rumpus.)
- A Tumblr devoted to animated album covers. This Joy Division one is stonerrific. (Flaming Pablum.)
- Today’s Graff: Woaow getting geometric in Mexico.
- A fascinating story in New York Magazine about the complexity of building at the former World Trade Center site: “Everyone always says it’s like doing open-heart surgery on a marathon runner in the middle of a race.”
- Starchitects now doing set design.
- Don’t tell Kermit. Frank Gehry not into being green.
- Looks like Santiago Calatrava’s Chicago Spire is dead as a doornail: The development company that intended to build it has closed its sales office.
- A super-twisty airport tower in Berlin. Trippy.
- An app that de-Biebers the internet. Handy. (@destinationout.)