Let me pull out my digital chalkboard to explain: Glenn Beck recently showed images of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson rendered in an artistic style reminiscent of…
…the Obama/Hope poster…
…which was created by Shepard Fairey…
…who was influenced, artistically, by Constructivism…
…a movement that was born in Russia, just after the Revolution…
…which was led by Lenin, who once reportedly said, “a lie told often enough becomes the truth” — which makes Glenn Beck a…
…a card-carrying big-C Commie.
There you have it, folks. Now everybody run around like chickens with your heads cut off.
Image credits, top to bottom: Screengrab by C-M, Thomas Hawk, Strifu, Alki1, LLlyxep, Délirante bestiole, John McNab.
Surfer Blood at the Brooklyn Bowl. (Photo by timnyc.)
Orange Crush, 2009, by Jessica Mallios. Part of the exhibit 31 Women in Art Photography, organized by the Humble Arts Foundation, at the offices of Affirmation Arts, through April 10. (Image courtesy of the Humble Arts Foundation.)
- In NYC: Barnstormers Group Show at Joshua Liner, opens today at 6pm.
- In NYC: Anthony Lister, How to Catch a Time Traveler, at Lyons Wier, opens Friday at 7pm.
- In NYC: Aurora Robson, Sarah Frost and Portia Munson, Debris, at PPOW, opens Saturday at 6pm.
- In NYC: Shaun O’Dell at Susan Inglett, opens Friday.
- In NYC: Valerie Hallier, Screened Calls and Slow Portraits, at MediaNoche, opens today at 6pm.
- In NYC: Mike Nelson, A Quiver of Arrows, at 303 Gallery, through April 10.
- In NYC: James Rosenquist at Acquavella, through March 19.
- In NYC: Norman Mooney, Wallflowers, the inaugural show at Causey Contemporary in Brooklyn. Opening reception on Friday at 6pm; RSVP required.
- In Philadelphia: Michael De Feo lectures at the University of Pennsylvania (200 College Hall) this afternoon at 2pm.
- In Pittsburgh: Nothing is Impossible at the Mattress Factory, opens Saturday.
- In Chicago: Matisse: Radical Reinvention 1913-17 at the Art Institute of Chicago, opens Saturday.
- In Houston: Shannon Taggart, Portraits, at Thom Andriola Gallery, opens Saturday.
- In San Pedro, Calif.: Sojung Kwon, Planning a Year, at Angel’s Gate, opens Sunday. Reception at 2pm.
- In L.A.: RETNA, Desaturated, at New Image Art, opens Saturday at 7pm.
- In London: Quilts, 1700-2010, at the Victoria & Albert, through July 4.
- In Paris: Lucien Freud: L’Atelier at the Pompidou Centre, through July 19.
- In Amsterdam: The Hoerengracht, by Edward and Nancy Kienholz, at the Amsterdam Historical Museum, opens Saturday.
Nice Pants, by Landon Nordeman. (Image courtesy of Jen Bekman and 20×200.)
Late update: The WNYC/Whitney Biennial Twitter tour is on NYT Artsbeat. If you’re in NYC, you can sign up for the tour here. It’ll be good, geeky fun.
- Chat Roulette Piano Improv with Merton. (Coudal.)
- In his screed against critics of the NuMu’s Skin Fruit show, “art collector, heir” Adam Lindemann forgot to disclose that he’s a big-time investor in Urs Fischer’s work and that he supported Fischer’s solo at the museum. Now that’s a typo!
- “The show looks like a yard sale of pushed buttons, or more to the point, given the emphasis on grotesque figuration, like the cantina scene from Star Wars.” That’d be Time Out New York’s Howard Halle on Skin Fruit. Daaaaaang.
- Speaking of which, what happens when you show up at the NuMu with an over-sized, stuffed pink penis and stand in the lobby? You get thrown out, natch. (@russelltrombone.)
- MoCA is gonna be doing a fundraiser at a gallery. And Christopher Knight ain’t happy.
- Richard Lacayo’s top three Whitney Biennial faves. (Art Fag City.)
- Brent Burket provides Twitter-esque reviews of every last work in the Brucennial in one and two parts, with more on the way. Best line: “The color. The line. Purple mountains majesty, motherfuckers.”
- Dubai art fair, like the emirate, not as hot as it once was. (Arts Journal.)
- Wow! ArtInfo is now linking off their site. Welcome to the new millennium, guys!
- Meditating with Marina. Not. (A Flower Every Day.)
- Free museum podcasts, in iTunes’ Museum Room. (@museumnerd.)
- Artists never to hire as a keynote speaker: Kiki Smith. (Modern Art Notes.)
- Art Merch: The R. Crumb Wallet.
- The NYT gives William Kentridge’s production of The Nose a thumbs up. I gotta be honest, as much as I love Gogol’s story and I dig Kentridge’s animations for the opera — as well as the giant papier-mâché nose (complete with pimple) — the staging felt kinda flat. In a related piece: a video report in which Kentridge talks about the opera, and his funny chat at the New York Public Library about what it’s like to carry a giant nose.
- Vintage tornado pix.
- Tempt1, an L.A. graffiti artist afflicted with ALS, “tags” by using special eye-writing glasses.
- Today’s Street Art: ReFreshInk in Italy.
- The carbon emission toll generated by a single page-view of Tree Hugger. Extrapolating that figure against the page views Perez Hilton gets makes me realise that he is, indeed, going to be the death of us all. (Cool Green Science.)
- Yes, it’s pointy: Daniel Libeskind’s new Dublin theatre.
- Paul Goldberger on rebuilding at NYC’s World Trade Center. Basically, he tells us it’s gonna be the same shit (offices), different look. God forbid someone in New York do some innovative urban planning.
- Waterfalls.
The Wall, 2009, by Marlene Dumas. Part of the artist’s solo exhibit, Against the Wall, at David Zwirner Gallery in NYC, opens Thursday at 6pm. (Image courtesy of Zwirner.)
- In L.A.: Mark Grotjahn, Seven Faces, at Blum & Poe, through April 3.
- In L.A.: Judy Fiskin, Guided Tour, at Angles Gallery, through April 3.
- In NYC: Sounds from the Black Box: The Music of Philip Miller for the Films of William Kentridge at the World Financial Center, starting this Sunday at 8pm.
- In NYC: Eva Hesse at Hauser & Wirth, opens today at 6pm.
- In NYC: Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography and Paris, at the ICP, through May 9.
- In NYC: The AIPAD Photography Show, at the Park Avenue Armory, opens Thursday.
- In NYC: Nature, Once Removed: The (Un)Natural World in Contemporary Drawing, at the Lehman College Art Gallery in the Bronx, through May 4.
- In NYC: Franck de Las Mercedes, Marc Baptiste, Betty K, and many others, in a group show and charity auction to support the Edeyo Foundation and the Harlem Academy, at the French Consulate, this Thursday at 7pm.
- In London: Barti Kher, inevitable, undeniable, necessary, at Hauser & Wirth, opens Saturday.
- In Liverpool: Mark Rothko, the Seagram Murals, at the Tate Liverpool, through March 21.
- In Paris: Sex, Death and Sacrifice in the Mochica Religion, at Musée du Quai Branly, opens today.
- In Paris: Crime and Punishment, at the Musée de Orsay, opens today. (The Art Newspaper.)
Draper style. (Photo by F.Trainer.)
- You too could be the proud owner of a giant Canadian beaver. Inflatable, of course.
- It’s all about performance. At least in NYC’s major museums. Plus: An audio slideshow devoted to the female artists of the genre.
- The Marina Abramovic cam. In related news: I stared at Marina Abramovic and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. And: Audio of Abramovic’s press conference, earlier in the month. (@gregorg.)
- Child performers at the Gugg’s Tino Sehgal show didn’t get paid. Instead, they got a hat, a bag and a museum membership. What, no key chain? Sehgal’s performers also report that American college students are the rudest of all museum-goers.
- Could be interesting: The Tate is inviting producers, poets and hip-hop musicians to react to Chris Ofili’s work.
- Christopher Knight likes Luc Tuymans, he really really likes him.
- Nazi-looted Corot to go to auction.
- A biennial grows in Denver. ‘Cuz what the world really needs is another biennial. (Though I have to confess, I’m digging the North/South America angle on this one.)
- Kathy Grayson, a director at Deitch’s gallery, to take on a bunch of the soon-to-be MoCA director’s artists.
- Alexandra Peers goes to the NY Observer. (@russelltrombone.)
- Art by telephone: authenticating Andy Warhol.
- Please don’t lick the art. Shit, I coulda used this shirt on Saturday night. (Eyeteeth.)
- From the Annals of White People Hijinks: Having chickens in NorCal is now a movement known as “femivorism.” In the rest of the world (and among the poor and in agricultural/rural societies), this important movement is known as “having chickens.”
- The rare black penguin.
- Rednecks and cars.
- Photo Set: New York in the ’60s and ’70s. (Flaming Pablum.)
- RIP photographer Charles Moore. Renowned for dramatic civil rights era photographs such as this. (Thanks for the heads up, Bill.)
- Today’s Graff: Arp in Naples, Italy.
- Jean Nouvel’s latest. Ourossoff describes it as having a “rough-edged sex appeal.”
- I love me some taxidermy. (Coudal.)
Supply and Demand, by Skewville at Factory Fresh. (Image courtesy of Factory Fresh.)
- The Art Industrial Average seems to be showing signs of life — at least when it comes to the old school stuff. Plus: Sotheby’s returns to profitability. (Arts Journal.)
- On the New Museum controversy, “art collector, heir” Adam Lindemann takes to the Observer to announce: Get over it whiners, it’s a rich person’s world — and y’all just live in it. A coupla things: One, Lindemann forgets to inquire how the Joannou show fits in with the New Museum’s mission of ‘new art, new ideas.’ (As far as I can tell the only thing ‘new’ in the show is the paint job on the museum’s walls.) Secondly, he says that as long as “the public gets a great show” then that’s all that matters. Um, except the show isn’t great. It’s kind of a hot mess. Top floor reminds me of standing in line at Universal Islands of Adventure…except I don’t get the joy of riding the Hulk roller coaster when it’s over. (@hragv.)
- ¡Celebrity Curator Smackdown! Jeff Koons versus Shaquille O’Neal. Thank you, Ben Davis.
- Marina Abramovic, the minimalist. Holland Cotter at the NYT reviews the show here.
- In related news: Jerry Saltz makes “genital contact.”
- Harry Benson totally annoyed to see one of his pix “appropriated” by Whitney Biennial artist.
- A profile of Christophe de Menil in W — aka Dash Snow’s grandma.
- Booby-trapped art work. (@KnightLAT.)
- Plus, in NYC: Sculptures that look as if they are about to leap to their death.
- Man Bartlett’s balloon pile.
- Abstract expressionist stamps.
- Create your own Chiquita Banana’s stickers.
- Photo Essay: Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta.
- Welcome to Your Parents New York. (Flaming Pablum.)
- Today’s Street Art: Stinkfish in Bogotá.
- RIP Bruce Graham, the architect who designed the Sears Tower in Chicago.
- Sorry Wallpaper, you have it wrong: This is not the world’s first artificial floating island. These have been around for hundreds of years.
- The Big Lebowski morality continuum.
Lethal Injection Gurney, 2008, by Robert Priseman. Part of the exhibit No Human Way to Kill at White Box, in New York, opens Monday, March 15. Book signing and artist talk on Tuesday, March 23rd at 7pm. (Image courtesy of White Box.)
- In Miami: Anna Gaskell at World Class Boxing, opens Saturday at 7pm.
- In Miami: Chained to a Creature of a Different Kingdom, at David Castillo, opens Saturday at 7pm.
- In Miami: Diego Singh, Pathological Liar/Stalker, at Fred Snitzer, opens Saturday at 7pm.
- In NYC: Lost Amazon: Nature’s Discontent, photographs and video by Andrew Garn, at A.M. Richard Fine Art in Williamsburg, opens Friday at 6pm.
- In NYC: Otto Dix at the Neue Galerie, opens today.
- In NYC: Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters, at the Japan Society Gallery, opens Friday.
- In NYC: Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H.A. Rey, and Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber and Gottlieb, at the Jewish Museum, opens Sunday.
- In NYC: Deborah Brown, Elisabeth Condon and many others, Ocketopia, at Lesley Heller Workspace, through April 18.
- In NYC: Leola Bermanzohn, Abby Goodman, Kristin Reed and many others, Water’s Edge: 12 Artists from the Brooklyn Army Terminal, at the chasham 461 Gallery in Harlem, opens Friday at 7pm.
- In L.A.: Jack Pierson at Regen Projects, opens Friday.
- In L.A.: Andy Freedberg, The Guardians, and William Steiger, Recent Drawngs, at Kopeikin Gallery, opens Saturday.
- In Gateshead, England: Jenny Holzer at the Baltic, through May 16.
- In Berlin: Emil Holmer, Dead Letters, at Michael Janssen, opens Friday at 7pm.
