Monthly Archive for October, 2011

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Calendar. 10.13.11.

By c-monster on October 13, 2011 in C-Monster, Calendar, Illustration, Los Angeles and Museums. Closed


Aztlan Rifa, 1977, by Gilbert “Magú” Luján. Part of the exhibit Mapping Another L.A.: The Chicano Art Movement, at the Fowler Art Museum. Opens Sunday at UCLA. (Image courtesy of the Fowler.)

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Miscellany. 10.12.11.

By c-monster on October 12, 2011 in C-Monster, Installation, Miscellany and New York. Closed


CCTV/Creative Control, an intervention by Marcos Zotes in Brooklyn. (Image courtesy of Zotes.)

Congrats to James, Michael, Rosa, Daniel and Antonio for winning the five copies of Graffiti 365 — for the latest C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza.

  • American executives: Paid to fail. This is pretty gross.
  • Progress: human civilization’s big mistake. (@jmcolberg.)
  • Steven Pinker thinks that humans are less violent than ever.
  • Sherman Alexie on the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
  • A taxonomy of taxonomies: A Historical Timeline of Systemic Data and the Development of Computable Knowledge. Or, how humans have created ways of sharing information. A good one for the information geeks. Find the explanatory blog post here.
  • A guide to character archetypes in women’s romantic comedies. My favorite: “The Woman Who Works in an Art Gallery.”
  • Procrastinate by reading this essay about how procrastination is tied to our relationship with time. Interesting fact: “Victor Hugo would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he’d be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing.”
  • Flashback: Hunter S. Thompson’s 1965 Hell’s Angels story for The Nation.
  • John Perrault breaks down all the shows about Fluxus that seem to be popping up in institutions all around the Northeast.
  • Beautiful story: Love in the time of Stonewall, one of the models behind George Segal’s iconic West Village sculpture writes about how she met the love of her life.
  • Michael Kimmelman’s debut outing as New York Times architecture critic. It’s nice to see public housing get ink, but I would have loved a little context on how these structures fit into the  immediate landscape and how they might compare with other public housing efforts, past and present.
  • I’m totally late on this, but this Studio 360 piece about the TV show Dallas is all kinds of excellent. Thing I never knew: The show was HUGE in Romania.
  • Relentless Self-Promotion: In which I interview Work of Art judge/New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz about art reality, his fantasy green room demands and what it’s like to party with the Housewives. Bonus: Audio of Jerry imitating Simon de Pury.
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Over at ARTnews: The art of comics.

By c-monster on October 11, 2011 in Announcements, Books and C-Monster. 1 Comment

Hey Folks:

If you’re into art and you’re into comics, check out this month’s ARTnews. I have a cover story on the growing overlap between the worlds of fine art and comic books, featuring established talents such as Gary Panter, Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes (that’s his illustration above) — among many others.

You can find the story online. But if you want to see it with all its graphic goodness, be sure to pick up the October issue of the magazine.

xox,
C.

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Photo Diary: de Kooning: a Retrospective, at MoMA — the black and whites.

By c-monster on October 10, 2011 in Calendar, Museums, New York, Painting and Photo Diary. Closed


Painting, 1948, by Willem de Kooning. (Photos by C-M.)

As I’m sure you’ve well read by now, the Willem de Kooning retrospective at MoMA is all kinds of gangbusters. I’m not going to get into some dissertation about what he and his work signified, because I think there have been plenty of those — among them, the comprehensive 500-page catalogue. But I did want to highlight one of the aspects of the show I really dug: the black and white paintings from the late 1940s — mainly because I’m a sucker for black and white, but also because they seem to revel in a certain gritty New York City-ness (that seems to no longer exist). They also look like a type of proto-graffiti, what Jed Perl describes in New Art City in the following way: “De Kooning’s nitty-gritty New York was all knock-you-in-the-teeth actualities, all surprising particulars: the dramatically contrasted sizes of adjacent buildings, the abandoned lots and demolition sites, the oil stains and graffiti on the pavements, the reflections of neon signs on wet streets.”

This is also an opportunity to pimp my podcasts on New York City in the time of the Abstract Expressionists. Many more pictures after the jump.

de Kooning: A Retrospective is on view through January 9 at the Museum of Modern Art.

Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: de Kooning: a Retrospective, at MoMA — the black and whites.’

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Calendar. 10.06.11.

By c-monster on October 6, 2011 in C-Monster, Calendar, New York and Sculpture. Closed


In One Piece At A Time, artist Jonathan Brand has recreated a Ford Mustang entirely out of paper. And since my first car was a banana yellow ’75 Mustang sedan, well, I couldn’t resist featuring it here. The paper auto is on view at Hosfelt Gallery through October 29 in New York City. (Image courtesy of the artist.)

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Ask the Art Nurse: One word, plastic.

By SanSuzie on October 5, 2011 in Ask the Art Nurse, Conservation and San Suzie. Closed

DEAR ART NURSE:

We have several Arman Lucite boxes with objects suspended within layers. Many of the “boxes” have yellowed. Is there someway to restore them to remove the discoloring?

Yours,
Mellow Yellow

Dear MELLOW:

I take it that you are referring to one of the sculptural “accumulations” produced beginning in the early 1960s by the French-born American artist Pierre Armand Fernandez who went by the moniker Arman. These compositions of objects were placed by the artists either into acrylic (Lucite being a brand name for cast acrylic, much like Plexiglas) or cast directly into polyester resin.

The question here is which type of object do you have? If it’s the acrylic variety, there’s a good chance that the yellowing is a surface discoloration or even an accumulation of dirt that a conservator might just get lucky enough to be able to reverse. If it’s polyester, it’s more likely to be an irreversible photochemical condition caused by exposure to light or poor catalyzation (as in: Part A was not mixed correctly with Part B and it didn’t set right when it was made) — or any number of other factors. A pro might have a chance of reversing it, but my guess it’s more or less a snowball’s chance in hell since polyester resins, like ladies from Beverly Hills, aren’t exactly known for aging gracefully.

In any case, I don’t recommend you taking a stab at this yourself.  Chances are you’ll stain it or make the plastic cloudy or sticky — or poison yourself in the process.  This one calls for a professional.  You can find a live and willing Art Nurse in your area on the website of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

Cool looking as they are, plastics are tricky materials to safeguard. Though there are no hard and fast rules for maintaining them in museum-quality condition, one thing that always helps is keeping them away from sunlight. And heating ducts, extreme cold, dog hair, cat hair and commercial cleaners not specifically tested for the plastic in question. And whatever you do, don’t ever smoke around them, no matter how good the bud.

Rx,
San Suzie

Have a question for the Art Nurse? E-mail her at suzie [at] c-monster [dot] net.

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Over at ARTnews: Pacific Standard Time.

By c-monster on October 4, 2011 in Announcements, C-Monster, Los Angeles and Sculpture. 2 Comments


Vacancy/No Vacancy, 1972, by Lili Lakich. Featured in the exhibit Doin’ it in Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building, at the Otis Ben Maltz Gallery, through January 28 — part of the Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions in Los Angeles. (Image courtesy of the Ben Maltz Gallery.)

Pacific Standard Time seems to be roaring along quite nicely, with exhibits opening up all over Southern California to celebrate the region’s post-War art. I’ve got an overview story in this month’s ARTnews about the project — which includes anecdotes about how curators were able to track down pieces in Kansas bank branches and parking lot shipping containers.

You can read that story here.

And be sure to click over even if PST is not your realm of interest. ARTnews has a new website that is all kinds of snazzy. Worth checking out!

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C-Mon Giveaway Extravaganza: Graffiti Edition.

By c-monster on October 3, 2011 in C-Monster, Giveaway and Graffiti. 44 Comments

Hey Folks:

This is a good one. The kind folks at Abrams have given me five (yes, five!) copies of Jay Edlin’s Graffiti 365 for giveaway on the blog. This is a hardback doozy (it retails for $32.50), clocking in at more than 700 pages and weighing as much as a small boar. It’s an excellent compendium of graffiti and street art: an exhaustive alphabetical gathering of the movement’s players, large and small, with lots of pictures to boot.

Leave a comment below and you could be one of five very lucky people.

xox,
C.

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