C-MONSTER.net.

Chihuahua With Cheeseburgers by William Hundley. See a full set of Hundley’s cheeseburger photos. (Photo courtesy of albino_octopus.)

• Not a story about art writers: Art boobs. (Via AFC.)
• A workshop on how to get illegal advertising removed from your neighborhood. Also: The City of L.A. wants to crack down on murals, but seems pretty happy to do absolutely nothing about illegal advertising. Plus: Transforming crap-ass video ads into stained glass.
• Christie’s gets into the gallery business in London, with a new spot coming soon in N.Y.
• Guggenheim in Guadalajara ain’t gonna fly, reportedly because the Krens-master refused to scale down costs. In not-really related museum-building news: Herzog & de Meuron to design a modern art museum in Calcutta and Morphosis to design the new OCMA in Costa Mesa, Calif. (Via architecture.mnp.)
• LACMA seems to have a history of sticky relationships with its donors.
• The New Republic on nihilism in today’s art, as illustrated by Hirst, Koons and Murakami, and the institutions that aid and abet them: “What there is to discuss is not visual experiences so much as visual stunts, which are frequently mind-boggling in their size and complexity.” Plus: “At the Guggenheim, the staff no longer curates exhibitions. They simply invite an artist to come in and rape the place.” (Via A.J.)
• In a related story: The Viktor & Rolf show at London’s Barbican is one big ad, says the Guardian: “…the curation of the show is so adoring, so breathlessly admiring, it might as well have been done by a Vogue junior stylist…”
• Newsgrist runs a factcheck on comments by Frank Stella in The Art Newspaper, on the subject of orphan works. (Via AFC.)
• A trailer from Herb and Dorothy, a documentary about the Vogels, a librarian and postal clerk who amassed one of the most significant collections of modern art in the U.S. (Via WaPo.)
• Photos: Weegee’s Manhattan.
• New York Water Taxi now offering tours of Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls.
• Update: chashama is having a pirate party pig roast benefit tonight in NYC, weather permitting.
  
• “Shepard Fairey’s image problem.” (Via Eyebeam.)
• Photos: Skullphone at the Riverside Museum of Art.
• Is the Splasher back?
• Architecture and authoritarianism. In related news: Paul Goldberger writes about architecture in Beijing.
• Midwest Flood News: Frank Lloyd Wright house hit in Charles City, Ia.
• The NYT covers the fate of Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School in Sarasota. See my pix here.
• Shelters for threatened species made of recycled materials.
• The Lego Death Star. (Via NotCot.)
• Your moment of Jim Carrey as Vanilla Ice.

A collage composed of found stickers, by Tom Fruin at the Buia Gallery in New York in February ‘08. A few of the street artists represented include: Royce Bannon, Over Consume and Ambusch. (Photos by C-M unless otherwise noted.)

For the purpose of this blog, I spend much of my spare time photographing just about everything the art industrial complex sees fit to churn out: paintings, sculpture, video, and totally weird breakfast buffets. In the past six months, I’ve noticed a small, but growing trend: studio artists (including the late Robert Rauschenberg) incorporating street and graffiti art into their work.

This takes various guises. There are painters who incorporate graffiti art into urban landscapes, assemblage artists who use elements of real-live street art in collages and sculptures, and art photographer types who go out and document all of the beautiful decay. It’s one of those interesting art world conundrums: on its own, most street art and graffiti isn’t thought to have much artistic or monetary value. But clearly there is some potency residing in this imagery if studio artists are remixing and reconfiguring it for the pristine walls of commercial galleries.

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Trompe l’oeil painting of popcorn on found metal by Michael Fitts at Fraser Gallery, from Bethesda. (Photos by C-M.)

Yesterday I took a quick gander around the Affordable Art Fair in Manhattan, where 75 galleries from a dozen countries were all exhibiting pieces priced under $10,000 (with most going for between $100-$5000). Here are a few pix of some of the work that caught my eye. The fair runs through Sunday, June 15th. General admission is $17.

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A sculpture made with discarded plastic bottles by Aurora Robson at Lumen House.

I donned my tightest pants and my saucer-sized sunglasses for the Great Hipster Migration this past weekend, a.k.a. Bushwick Open Studios. There were a whopping 94 galleries, studios and alternative art spaces represented. I made it to a whopping three. The weekend was filled with the sight of dazed-looking, map-clutching art folk shuffling around in the mind-melting heat. I swear I coulda fried an egg on my head.

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Collage on wood by Bäst. (Photos by C-M.)

The Brooklynite Gallery, a new space in Bed-Stuy, just opened its doors with a solo show by Bäst called Nose Candy. There was plenty of collage—all in color—as well as some pretty incredible animal heads decked out in rhinestones. (Blinding, in a good way.) If you see the show, don’t miss the Crack Beach Guns, on the back wall, all made with found objects (aka trash). They’re quite cool.

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A whole lotta Hype. (Photos by C-M.)

Ad Deville and Ali Ha opened up their brand spankin’ new space in a former Brooklyn bodega last Friday with a packed opening night party. The gallery featured an installation of paintings and sculptures by Skewville that pay tribute to pop and urban culture. The works take their cues from the indoor space, in this case, a defunct grocery: there are crates of hype, a supermarket-cart-turned-lounge-chair and silkscreens of grocery circulars filled with bogus slogans and clever wordsmithing. The exhibit also includes elements of Skewville’s long-running themes: visual plays on urban architecture and industrial settings, plenty of slang, and various two-dimensional salutes to their wooden sneaker series. It’s a damn fine show from the shoemakers from Queens.

Stay tuned for more from Factory Fresh at the end of June, when the gallery unveils its first group show, Un Named Rottens, with Beau Velasco, Daniel St. George and Jeremiah Maddock.

We have a winner! Congrats to Bucky Turco, of NYC, who won a Skewville ‘Fresh’ crate, for writing, “I will honor it always (or until it skyrockets like a Banksy).” It was an answer worthy of Skewville.

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