Now up at WNYC. Complete with proprietary Marina Abramovic Heads Rating System™.
Happy New Year, everyone. And thanks for reading.
xox,
C.
Monthly Archive for December, 2010
Spied on our cross-country sojourn: A pick-up truck, outside of Austin, Texas.
It’s been a weird year. I drove back roads across the U.S. Threw a fish across state lines. Stared at an artist in a museum atrium. Taught art yoga. Spent the summer watching a “reality show” about art. Rowed around Randall’s Island in a handmade boat. And joined a religious procession in the Andes. I’ve covered most of these activities here on the blog (or over at WNYC). But a few things have eluded me — either because I just haven’t had time to get them down in pixels, or because I hadn’t quite sorted out my thoughts.
So, in lieu of a year-end listicle (I produce enough lists throughout the year), a little bit of stream-of-consciousness ruminating instead:
Thanks for tuning into C-Mon over the course of the year. Hope y’all have a great holiday and a prosperous, art filled New Year! (Photo by MnGyver, via This Isn’t Happiness.)
Huellas del silencio, 2003 by Paulina Ortiz, in the spa at the Four Seasons, Costa Rica. (Photo by C-M.)
- A history of words and language, via Google Books. (@stevesilberman.)
- Virgencita.
- On surveillance. A fascinating episode of Studio 360 — which includes a segment with Trevor Paglen.
- AA Bronson asks to have his work removed from the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek exhibit in the wake of the Wojanrowicz controversy. The NPG says no way. Tyler Green has an interview with the artist.
- Related: Hyperallergic reports on yesterday’s protest in NYC against the censorhsip. And Modern Art Notes has a helpful links round up on the latest surrounding the controversy.
- Blu, on the removal of his mural from MOCA in L.A. The museum’s board members don’t appear too concerned about the whole fracas. Related: Ayatollah Deitch.
- The European Commission has ruled that Dan Flavin’s art isn’t art. It’s “light fittings.”
- The Best in Food-Art, 2010.
- Speaking of which: Steak sandwich à la Richard Wentworth. Looks tasty.
- Bad at Sports has an interesting audio interview with Julio Cesar Morales, talking 19th century food and California history, among many other interesting things. Set aside an hour for this.
- Want to understand that Paul Thek show at the Whitney? Read John Perreault’s informative essay.
- Jeff Koons, shopping.
- Play chess with Marcel Duchamp. Or at least his bot likeness.
- The Day in Art Merch: a Josef Beuys-inspired Cape Coat — as worn by a hot chick. And Tracey Emin stationery.
- Vogue magazine, in abstraction. Weirdly fascinating. (ackackack.)
- Today’s Street Art, anteater edition: Ovbal and Sego in Mexico City.
- 3-D animated graffiti. Very Transformers. (The Smithian.)
- “I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists.” — Frank Gehry, on everything.
- Mies’s Farnsworth House, filled with butterflies.
- For Sale: Slightly Used Apocalyptic Warning Sign.
A detail from Rosalyn Drexler’s Home Movies. (Photos by C-M.)
There are paintings with balls. And there are paintings with tubes. You’ll find the latter at the Brooklyn Museum’s show Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists 1958-1968. And thank goodness. This ably assembled little show makes you realise just how much the art world is dominated by sausage, because there’s no other explanation for why I haven’t seen more of these talented ladies, some of whom have some wildly acerbic views on men, the art world and their own bodies. (No earnest vag art here.) There’s been some debate among the critical set about how ‘pop’ many of the works in the show truly are. But, honestly, who cares? The exhibit contains some underseen, underappreciated, totally twisted gems. If you’ve OD’d on ’60s go-tos like Warhol, Lichtenstein and Oldenburg, then hit the Brooklyn Museum for fresh kick-you-in-the-ass perspective.
Seductive Subversion is on through Jan. 9. Check it out.
Continue reading ‘Seduced by Subversion at the Brooklyn Museum.’
Finally made it over to see the Anselm Kiefer show at Gagosian (which closes after Saturday). It’s kind of a hot mess, stuffed to the rafters with too much of everything — namely, a series of massive-ass vitrines full of ashen decay and stuff made with lead. Amid all the clutter, however, are some paintings I found quite compelling: a series of jagged mountainscapes made of thickly-piled paint.
Perhaps these appeal to me because I just spent several weeks in the Andes, where staring at a forbidding, vertical landscape is part of daily existence. But I wasn’t the only one. A kindly security guard told me that his favorite piece out of the entire exhibit was the painting at bottom. “If you stand back and look at it, it’s like you could be on a horse looking at that mountain, wondering how many days it will take you to get there,” he explained. “And then when you get close, all kinds of wonderful things happen.”
Photos by C-M.
I’m out today, but you can find my New York City arts Datebook over at WNYC, complete with references to blowjobs and tampon cakes.