Land of Retinal Stimulation: Mark Ryden’s The Creatrix is the painting at center, with Carlee Fernandez’s Buffalo-7200 in the foreground. (Photos by C-M.)
If you took a little Hieronymus Bosch, added a dash of R. Crumb, a pinch of California car culture, and folded in a heaping stack of late-night sci-fi, you’d end up with the Laguna Art Museum’s latest show, In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor. This all-encompassing two-story survey takes a look at the fast-rising genres of pop surrealism, lowbrow and street art/graffiti as covered by Juxtapoz mag since its founding by painter Robert Williams in 1994. Featuring the work of 150 artists (including some fake dookies by Paul McCarthy), it’s an apocalyptic vision of America’s pop culture sausage factory turned inside out, revealing lots of gory, nasty innards.
The show is up through October 5th.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: In the Land of Retinal Delights at the Laguna Art Museum in O.C.’
Dia you understand me? (Photo by ricksterbot.)
Roving correspondent Mlle. Connasse finds herself stateside this week, so she popped in for a day-long visit of the Dia: Beacon over the weekend, where she encountered some terrific artspeak while admiring the Beuys, the Smithsons and the Serras. She was so moved by the mind-boggling quality of the prose, that she couldn’t resist cabling in some of the more eye-crossing delights. The following bits refer to a single artist:
In each of his works, [the artist] relentlessly examined issues of similarity and difference, likeness and identity.
The recognition of the specificity of each element informs the viewer’s appreciation of the relation of the individual to the collective, of the singular entity to the larger series, and of repetition to order.
Anyone want to venture a guess on which artist the writer might be describing? Get the list of artists here. No cheating.
Posted by C-Monster.
The Murakami Louis Vuitton boutique at the Brooklyn Museum. (Photo by Jason Lujan.)
Posted by C-Monster.
Visible from the entry hallway: A detail from Smoke, by Tony Smith. (Photos by C-M, unless otherwise noted.)
I finally got to wander around the newly renovated LACMA and it’s flashy new sister museum, BCAM, which still has that new-car smell. (Or is that formaldehyde?) Anyhow, I spent some quality time checking out the spaces and the art, though I was unable to photograph much of what I saw because, as usual, no photography was allowed inside the galleries. (Not that this matters, because far-flung correspondent San Suzie already got all the illegal flicks we needed back in February.) All of this was fine with me, because it allowed me to roam around and soak up the offerings. Herewith, a short, highly-annotated tour of some of what I saw.
Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: Livin’ la vida LACMA.’
Sixeart and JR on the side of the Tate. (Photo by Neloboix.)
The Tate Modern’s street art show went up in London last week, with pieces by Sixeart, JR, Blu, Faile Nunca, and Os Gemeos. The London Evening Standard wonders why the exhibit doesn’t include Banksy. It woulda been kinda funny to see a giganto rat on the side of this venerable institution.
See more pix by Neloboix on Flickr. See video of some of the installation here. The show is up until August 25th.
Posted by C-Monster.
Mystique of the X-Men: Ladies, this is what happens when you don’t moisturize. You become a shape-shifting supervillain with perky tits and an attitude.
Badass photographer Sam Horine (who, coincidentally, has a coupla pix in this month’s L Magazine photo issue) was at the media preview for The Met’s new animated hero/sartorial extravaganza, Superheroes Fashion & Fantasy. (Can you say crowd-pleaser?) Sadly, he was unable to secure any multi-million-dollar images of TomKat, J.Lo or Plastic Woman (and if he did, I have a feeling he wouldn’t be giving them to C-Monster.net). He did manage, however, to slip us a few good pix of the show, which looks like a sci-fi-meets-fashion-meets-museum wet dream. Though there does seem to be one glaring curatorial omission. Two words: Edna Mode.
The show is up through September 1st, 2008. See Horine’s full set of photographs at villagevoice.com.
More money shots after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photos: Superheroes Fashion & Fantasy, at The Met.’
