Where High Gets Low.
A screengrab from Francis Alÿs’s 2002 video, When Faith Moves Mountains (now on view at MoMA). In which volunteers shoveled pieces of a Peruvian dune. The line across the dune is the advancing row of shovelers. Naturally, this brought to mind…
…the 1987 Cheech Marin flick Born in East L.A. — in which all the Mexicanos storm the border to a Neil Diamond soundtrack. ¡Orale!
The Friends With You installation at the High Line in NYC bears an uncanny resemblance to…
…the Nickelodeon Hotel in Orlando. Where I once spent the night in the Danny Phantom suite. (Photos, from top, by C-M and Kim+5.)
A while back, Edward Lifson and I were riffing on what L.A.’s High School #9 — designed by the fancy pants Coop Himmelb(l)au — looks like. After my most recent visit to SoCal, I’ve changed my mind from my original stance that it resembles a watchtower…
…’cuz what this thing really looks like is Godzilla on a train-munching rampage!!!
The design schematic for Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. (reportedly conceived by the Dark Lord Foster, the same architect who was ready to mar a pristine stretch of the Bulgarian coast with a luxury resort)…
…bears a striking resemblance to an inflatable hemorrhoid ring. Available for only $13 at Able Healthcare DME. Starchitect not included.
Donald Judd’s Untitled, wood boxes from 1976, at the Dia: Beacon. (Image by the Dia Art Foundation, via ArtInfo.)
A boutique display window in SoHo. Making me think those Judds in Beacon would look smashing with some slutty heels on them. (Photo by Ben V.)
El Schnabel, in Sydney Pollack’s Sketches of Frank Gehry.
The Dude. (Nabbed from Zeck Zone.)
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Telle mère tel fils, 2008 by Abdel Abdessemed at David Zwirner. (Photo by C-M.)
Airplane, 1980. Thank God it’s only a motion picture!
Such a ‘k Hole: Urs Fischer’s You, 2007 at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. (Image courtesy of Gavin Brown.)
In New York Magazine‘s end-of-the-year wrap-up-of-everything-in-the-NYC-universe issue, critic Jerry Saltz wrote that seeing Urs Fischer’s giant hole-in-the-ground at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Chelsea was “transforming and shocking.” He added:
Fischer had torn up a gallery, forcing us to look into his own “hole.” But presciently, it was just as much a precipice for us and for the art world, since this was going to be the state of the world for the year to come: We’d all be poised on the edge — politically, psychically, financially, and aesthetically. The stark gesture was simultaneously surreal, loving, violent, and audacious. Fischer shattered perceptual space, destabilized our relationship to art and art galleries, overturned ideas about the market, and made us understand that all that is solid melts into air, that something momentous was coming.
Last fall, in his original review of the piece, Saltz described it as “Herculean,” “splendid” and “brimming with meaning and mojo.” He added that this “bold act” would make the viewer “look at galleries in a new way.”
I gotta be honest: I wasn’t convinced then, and I’m not convinced now. But one thing’s for sure: Fischer’s hole felt a lot less prescient when I discovered that it has a predecessor. Last month, when I rolled up to L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, I got to ogle a 2008 redo of Chris Burden’s 1986 installation, Exposing the Foundation of the Museum, a series of three holes in the museum floor that the MOCA lit describes as “a critical response to the institution of art itself.” Looks like Fischer was out-holed. By some dude in L.A. — 22 years ago.
Exposing the Foundation of the Museum, 1986/2008, by Chris Burden, at MOCA, as part of the Geffen Contemporary’s Index: Conceptualism in California from the Permanent Collection. Today’s the last day to see this piece, by the way, so get over there! (Image courtesy of MOCA.)
Here’s a story you’ll never see on C-Monster. And thank god.
If you’ve been reading C-Mon for the last 24 hours, you know that the L.A. Times just debuted a brand spankin’ new arts and architecture blog called Culture Monster, which needless to say, smarts. In thinking about the whole ridiculous situation this morning, I realised that either one of two things happened:
Culture Monster, the L.A. Times’s new blog.
Proving that there’s no such thing as an original idea, the L.A. Times recently debuted an arts and architecture blog called, ahem, Culture Monster. It’s been around for approximately five minutes.
I mean, really, people. I know you’re just hoping to ride C-Monster’s coattails out of dead-tree obscurity, but did you have to be such flagrant biters? I’ve been toiling for more than a year now. I’ve even covered stuff in your home turf. So, don’t even try to tell me that you didn’t know C-Monster.net didn’t exist. Besides, my Statcounter tells me that there’s someone over there at the Times who Googles “C-Monster” on a semi-regular basis and then reads the blog. And I’m sure it’s not the mail guy, because if you’re anything like the rest of print media, corporate has already fired them all.
All I know is that if this isn’t remedied somehow, I’m gonna go all Sarah Palin on your asses. And you guys are gonna be the moose.
xox, C.
Unfortunate discovery made via Modern Art Notes.