Archive for the 'Incisive Reportage' Category

¡Art World Smackdown! William Powhida does a diving elbow drop on the New Museum.

Published by c-monster on November 3, 2009 in C-Monster, Drawing, Incisive Reportage, Museums and New York.


See it at its most splendorous: LARGE. (Image courtesy of William Powhida.)

Brooklyn-based artist William Powhida takes down the New Museum’s super cozy, highly-questionable relationships with some big-time collectors and gallerists in the upcoming cover of the November Brooklyn Rail. And C-Mon gets a passing mention for being “ethically outraged”!!! (In the future, Mr. Powhida, if you ever want to draw me, here’s what I look like. As you’ll see, I’ve got a much better rack than Tyler Green.)

Sorry I’m not in town for the NuMu pile-on (I’m working on cultivating a veritable constellation of bug bites here in Costa Rica), but you can read all about the brouhaha here, here, here and here. At posting time, I was waiting for the NY Times Artsbeat blog to get on the case. C’mon dudes: this is home turf. Come out swingin’!!

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The C-Monster.net Taxonomy of Art.

Published by c-monster on August 9, 2009 in C-Monster, Incisive Reportage, San Suzie and Sublime ridiculosity.


Click on image to supersize.

As part of our ongoing mission to make art more accessible to a wider audience, the staff here at C-Mon recently went into mind-meld mode to produce this handy new taxonomy that categorizes all art into one of two easy-to-understand categories: stoner and douche. So the next time you find yourself at a high-falutin’ Chelsea cocktail party and someone makes a tangential reference to Fluxus, you’ll be able to add to the discussion by stating, “Hey, that’s stoner and douche!”

Special thanks to Ben B, El Celso and San Suzie for their contributions to this important scholarly project.

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What I did During Spring Break: The American Academy in Rome.

Published by c-monster on May 1, 2009 in C-Monster, Incisive Reportage, Italy and Travel.


In recovery at the Academy.

If there is one recommendation I can make to anyone in the art industry at this moment of global doom, it is: Become really good friends with a fellow at the American Academy in Rome so that you can stay there. Located on a hilltop, above trendy Trastevere, the Academy houses more than two dozen fellows, who live in a McKim, Mead and White building and dine on a local foods menu inspired by Alice Waters. After long days of work and study, they retire to the well-tended garden, where they reflect on the day’s drinking thinking. It’s like a 19th century sanatorium for the nervous children of the well-to-do. I kept expecting to see a nurse rearranging patients in wicker wheelchairs on the patio. 

I made it into the Academy as a free-loading guest of San Suzie. For a whopping seven days I hung out in what is effectively academia central, a geek’s wet dream of artists, architects and writers (many with advanced degrees) working on ambitious projects and thinking deep thoughts. There were recitations in Latin. A speech-laden meal that celebrated Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. And a champagne cocktail party for visiting artist Jenny Holzer. Party on, dudes! Any other spare moments I may have had were spent drinking cappuccinos in the company of a barista who told me I looked like Salma Hayek. Clearly, the Academy is an oasis from reality. Kinda like a Canyon Ranch for Ph.D.’s, but with open bar. All I gotta say is that it’s the bestest, smartest hotel I ever stayed at. Though some alum really needs to think about funding a hot tub. 

Grazie, Academy and San Suzie! (And to Brad and Dona for loaning us their space.)

xox,

C.

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The Sounds of Swine Flu. Or why I heart Latinos.

Published by c-monster on April 30, 2009 in C-Monster, Incisive Reportage, Music and Sublime ridiculosity.

My people are so enterprising. Or they just have an incredibly morbid sense of humor. There’s already a slew of influenza-related Latin songs out there, and they are all delightfully low-brow. The above video, for example, has a reggaeton vibe, lots of amateur booty shaking and an inexplicable shot of a rapping guy dressed as Osama bin Laden. (WTF???)

Music blog Sound Taste, run by an esteemed colleague mine, has the scoopy scoop on all the latest Latin music tributes to the swine flu, including a trombone-laced Duranguense bit (video #4), an acoustic ballad set to the tune of the Cure’s Monday, I’m in Love (video #5) and a punk corrido that channels Iggy Pop, with accordions (video #6). Sublime!

If humanity is left standing after this little pandemic, I’m hoping that Time-Life will be thoughtful enough to issue these as a compilation.

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MAXXI Padding: San Suzie’s preview of Zaha Hadid’s upcoming Rome museum.

Published by SanSuzie on April 3, 2009 in Architecture, Incisive Reportage, Italy, Museums and San Suzie.


The smart museum comes with louvered ceiling panels that open and close automatically with changes in the sun’s position. (Photos by San Suzie.)

Ever since the Guggenheim and Frank Gehry managed to turn a not-particularly-interesting regional capital into a must-see art destination, cities major and minor have been clamoring for their own contemporary art palace designed by a starchitect. Rome’s contribution to the trend is the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, or MAXXI, a colossus of glass, steel and concrete designed by the prima superstar del momento, Zaha Hadid. Several weeks ago we were fortunate to horn in on architecture writer and Rome Prize winner Cathy Lang Ho’s tour of the unfinished building. The 20,000 square meters of exhibit space (more than 200,000 square feet) were still full of forklifts, cables, and bellissimi Italian construction workers; nonetheless, we have to admit that we were head over heels for the clean, open spaces, curved walls, and louvered ceiling panels of Ms. Hadid’s “Cultural Space for the [sic] 21st Century Arts.”

The only problem, as we can see it, is that the museum doesn’t have much 21st century art. Or much art of any century for that matter; its collection is tiny. We are hoping that the €80,000,000 price tag (that’s $108 million greenbacks) of the building hasn’t eaten up the entire art budget. If it has, they might consider turning the museum — chock full of graceful ramps — into the world’s most spectacular skatepark.

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Lehman Bros. CEO a top art collector. For a few more minutes.

Published by c-monster on September 19, 2008 in Art, C-Monster and Incisive Reportage.

Richard Fuld
You gotta know when to Fuld ‘em. (Image courtesy of Forbes.)

In addition to having a multi-million dollar Greenwich, Conn. mansion with 20 rooms and a squash court, it turns out that Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld, and his wife Kathleen, regularly make ARTNews’s Top 200 Collectors list for their “works on paper, especially postwar and contemporary.” Which leads me to believe that there’s gonna be a bunch of postwar and contemporary works on paper hitting a local auction house sometime soon. If they don’t get shredded by p.o.’d Lehman traders first. In the meantime, Fuld’s fall should presumably open up a slot on next year’s Top Collectors list.

(Thanks to Todd Kessler for the heads up!)

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Art Merch: David’s Pee Pee Edition.

Published by SanSuzie on September 16, 2008 in Art Merch, Incisive Reportage, Italy, San Suzie and Sublime ridiculosity.

David's Pee Pee
But what does the backside look like? (Photo by San Suzie.)

Just off the Piazza Venezia, where the biggest, blingiest monument in all of Italy — the memorial to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy — looms over a traffic circle that puts any L.A. freeway to shame, I was halted in my tracks by this admirable piece of local art merch: men’s boxer shorts featuring the salsiccia belonging to none other than Michelangelo’s David. There is a raging debate among local art historians as to whether this fine dong truly belongs to David or is simply a knockoff from some other statue. (I’ll be investigating as soon as I get to Florence.) In the meantime, we report, you decide.

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Damien Hirst’s diamond skull: $24.95 edition.

Published by c-monster on September 10, 2008 in Art, C-Monster, Design, Incisive Reportage, Sculpture and Sublime ridiculosity.

Z Gallerie
Buy this and save $99,000,075 million

Want to “give your home an edgy look with some serious pizzazz?” Well, look no further. Because “lifestyle retailer” Z Gallerie has just the home design trinket for you: a bling-a-rrific metallic skull that bears an uncanny resemblance to Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted sculpture, For the Love of God — only this version is almost $100 million cheaper. The best part: gift wrap is only $4.25 (shipping not included). Which means that you can purchase this fine piece of home design for yourself and more than a hundred of your closest friends — and still not come close to reaching the original’s price tag (which is almost seven times the GDP of Tuvalu). Act now. Or until Lladro comes out with a $19.95 version of Jeff Koons’ Michael Jackson and Bubbles.

(Many thanks to Ryan Frank for the link.)

Update & Correction: Paddy Johnson over at AFC rightly points out that Hirst’s skull is now valued at £150 million (or about $263 million) — roughly the GDP of Micronesia.

Further Update: See what a pal of mine and I made with this fine piece of home décor merch.

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Adbusting: New Firefox plug-in replaces ads with art.

Published by c-monster on May 15, 2008 in Advertising, Art, C-Monster and Incisive Reportage.

Add-Art.org
Before: The Guardian’s art and architecture blog page with advertising.

Add-Art.org
After: That same page with art. So soothing!

How to put it delicately? Advertising sucks. And thankfully, there are mad-genius artist types in the universe who are working on dealing with this scourge. Brooklyn-based artist Steve Lambert, a senior fellow at Eyebeam, has, for the past year, been developing a Firefox plug-in that replaces Internet advertising with images of art.

The widget is based on a popular ad-blocking software, with added layers of coding that allow websurfers to see art rather than ads. Lambert, who has worked on other anti-advertising projects in the past, including Budget Gallery in California, and the Anti-Advertising Agency in NYC, came up with the idea three years ago. But he didn’t begin serious work on the project until about a year ago, when he got the hackers at Eyebeam to help write code. (Here’s the list of people who have contributed to the project.) In addition to the Eyebeam folk, other tech types have also been involved. “I’ve had groups of people get together every week or two weeks and we have pizza and beer and work on this,” explains Lambert. “There’s a guy at Bank of America who works during the day but then he comes over at night. He really has a great spirit about it.”

The plug-in is still in the beta stages, but I’ve been testing it out for several days and am happy to report that it kicks ass. (All of the screengrabs in this post are from my websurfing travails.) Seven out of ten times, the widget, formally known as Add-Art, effectively replaces all advertising with images of art. At other times, it just leaves ad spaces blank. The art, unfortunately, does not click through to an arts site. But no matter, Add-Art vastly improves the visuals on any websurfing experience. Ultimately, Lambert is seeking to create up-to-date galleries by guest curators that will be rotated in and out of selection every two weeks. “Right now, the plug-in replaces most ads and sometimes it leaves things blank,” he says. “But that’s fine with me. At least you’re not seeing ads.” Hallelujah to that.

Lambert will formally “unveil” the plug-in next Thursday, May 22nd, at 7:30 p.m., at the New Museum. In the meantime, you can download Add-Art here.

Click on images to supersize. More before-and-after pairings after the jump.

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Joke going around Baghdad.

Published by c-monster on May 10, 2008 in C-Monster and Incisive Reportage.

Pay phone
(Photo by C-M.)

Heard this from an Iraqi acquaintance who lives in Baghdad:

An American, a Brit and an Iraqi arrive in hell. The American goes to the pay phone and calls his family in the United States. He talks for 15 minutes. Satan charges him $10 million for the call because “it’s long distance.” The American grudgingly pays. The Brit makes a phone call to his family in England. The same charges apply: $10 million. Finally, the Iraqi goes to the phone and calls his family in Baghdad. He talks for hours — to everyone he knows. After he hangs up, he asks Satan, “How much?”

Satan replies: “Five dollars.”

The Iraqi says, “How can that be? I talked for hours.”

Satan says: “Hell-to-hell. It’s a local call.”

Posted by C-Monster.

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