C-MONSTER.net » Street Art

Miscellany. 05.22.12.

c-monster — Tue, 22 May 2012 08:20:35 +0000

From a mural by Veng and Sofia Maldonado for Art School Without Walls in Alphabet City. (Image courtesy of Niborama.)

Things you need to know: In Carthage, Missouri, there is a Precious Moments Chapel. And I’m supremely jealous that Chris Albert has been there.
Mitt Romney was a Soc.
How Yahoo killed Flickr. (Kottke.)
Because art made from Google Street View has been beat to death: I’m currently at work on a series of images drawn entirely from TripAdvisor.
California’s resale royalties act is struck down on the basis that one state’s law cannot govern commerce in another state. (@KellyCrowWSJ.)
On the new Barnes Foundation: Roberta Smith likes. Christopher Knight, not so much.
Culture is Collage: Jonathan Lethem’s very interesting 2007 essay in Harper’s explores that very fine line between inspiration and appropriation and the cultural limitations of copyright.
Related: Joanne McNeil interviews Lethem for Rhizome, in which the author discusses books as physical objects, as well as the issue of appropriation.
Even more related: Federal judges hear oral arguments in Richard Prince’s appeal of the Cariou v. Prince copyright case. My favorite bit is the defense being used by Prince’s lawyers: “The works’ value and originality, they posited, was proved by the sky-high market for the works.” Thank goodness I wasn’t in the courtroom or I may have been ejected for audibly snort-laughing.
Pictures by the Prague secret police. (@thebookslut.)
“We can expect art booms whenever income inequality rises quickly.” Will Brand at Art Fag City has put together an all kinds of essential quote guide that examines the idea of art as investment.
Related: A talk on income inequality is too hot for TED.
Think gentrification is light-speed in Brooklyn? Try China.
Hot Authors. Seriously.
Narchitecture, Serbian edition: Because nothing says “arms dealer” like a gilded bidet. Not to mention fur and a gun. (Hyperallergic Labs.)
For the typography nerds: a video game in which you shoot down serifed fonts.
A brief history of John Baldessari, as told by Tom Waits.

Miscellany. 04.23.12.

c-monster — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:20:20 +0000

Not on Sale, by Skewville. Outside of Woodward Gallery on the Lower East Side. On view through April. (Image courtesy of Skewville.)

Brian Droitcour has been reviewing galleries on Yelp and it’s fucking hilarious. And I’m burning with jealousy that I didn’t think of this first.
Pundit tracker. They should have this for art writers. I’m sure I’d be toast.
Alan Turing and his tragic end: A stunning Radiolab piece about the man who conceived of computers.
A couple of weeks back I was reading Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner and publicly wondered on Twitter why so much contemporary American fiction is peopled by adolescent man-children. @tejalrao responded with this excellent essay.
Nuanced bit on Thomas Kinkade versus the Art Industry, by Doug Harvey. (Even if the white type on black background seems designed to leave you half blind.)
An informative wrap-up on a couple of panels at New York Law School about the boundary between appropriation and plagiarism.
Speaking of which, a fascinating sidebar related to copyright: who owns the text of our laws?
Welcome to my new timesuck: the ICAA and the MFAH in Houston have put all kinds of tasty Latin American art documents online. (@tylergreendc.)
Wish I was going to be in Peru in time to see this: A group of artists is going to be painting murals at Cerro de Pasco, a polluted, high-altitude town that sits alongside an open-pit mine producing zinc and silver. The mining company is trying to relocate the city (which has more than 100,000 residents) so that it can expand its operations.
Speaking of which: the organizers of the Cerro de Pasco event should invite Elliot Urcuhuaranga. His stuff is beautiful.
Restoration Hardware goes graffiti. (@notrobwalker.)
Helpful tip for the art media: If you want to get the press office at the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art to actually return your calls, tell them you want to do a spread on Jeffrey Deitch’s house.
Exit Art and its final show. I’m gonna miss this scrappy space. (Hyperallergic.)
Saving brutalism: not so easy.
20 arts institutions on Tumblr.
On biophony, the sound of all living organisms.
Sort of related: Cage on Cage — Nicolas does John. (Thank you, Will Brand.)

Calendar. 02.15.12.

c-monster — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:07:49 +0000

Aakash Nihalani at work. Pieces by the artist will be on view as part of the group show All Talk, with Destroy & Rebuild, Jesus Saves and many others, at Pandemic Gallery, opening this Friday at 7pm. (Image courtesy of the artist and Pandemic.)

L.A.: Zefrey Throwell, Entropy Symphony: Movement III — Los Angeles, the 1000 car horn symphony. Today at 6:00pm, for five minutes, all over.
L.A.: Ansel Adams Los Angeles, at drkrm. Opens Saturday at 7pm, in downtown.
L.A.: Common Places: Printing, Embroidery and the Art of Global Mapping, at LACMA. Opens Saturday in the Fairfax District.
S.F.: Mark Bradford, at SFMOMA. Opens Saturday.
S.F.: Rineke Djikstra: A Retrospective, at SFMOMA. Opens Saturday.
Minneapolis: Punk Attitudinal: Film and Video, 1977-87, a video series, at the Walker. Thursday at 7:30pm.
Chicago: Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art, at the Smart Museum of Art, at the University of Chicago. Opens Thursday.
Pittsburgh: Maya Lin, at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Through May 13, at the Heinz Architectural Center.
Northampton, Mass.: Pursuing Beauty: The Art of Edo Japan, at the Smith College Museum of Art. Opens Friday.
Washington, D.C.: Ñew York: Latin American and Spanish artists in New York, at the Art Museum of the Americas, at the OAS. Opens Thursday at 6pm.
Miami: Michael Vasquez, Rites of Passage, at Fredric Snitzer Gallery. Opens Friday at 6pm.
NYC: Cake and Don Pablo Pedro, Inside Out, at Mighty Tanaka. Opens Friday at 6pm, in Dumbo.
NYC: Paul Chan: On Not Working, at the School of Visual Arts (136 W 21st St, 220F). This Friday at 6:30pm.
NYC: Matt Freedman, The Golem of Ridgewood, at Valentine. Opens Friday, in Ridgewood/Bushwick.
Plus: Get the rest of my New York recommends over on Gallerina and get a run-down of the pieces to see at the New Museum’s triennial…

Miscellany. 01.19.12.

c-monster — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:20:04 +0000

Billboard by French street artist Ox, in San Bernardino. Part of a billboard project on I-15 last month. Image courtesy of the artist.)

The New York Times has a story on Mexican narchitecture. And I’m supremely jealous I didn’t write it. Be sure to check out the splendiferous slideshow, complete with bullet hole façades and zebra-stripe furnishings.
Speaking of which: The house where Pablo Escobar was gunned down is for sale.
Bacteria as conservation tool.
KCET Departures has just launched a highly intriguing online series about the laws (starting with the Laws of the Indies) that have shaped L.A.’s landscape. The second essay is on how helicopter landing pad laws have resulted in the city’s boxy architecture.
It’s a bummer that Robert Smithson never got to build the land art pieces at DFW airport described in this essay. Would make landing in Dallas infinitely cooler. (See a design schematic here.)
Late on this, but still important: Jeff Weinstein reminds us that Helen Frankenthaler helped gut the NEA.
UNAM is putting the materials from their libraries and collections online. This is very cool.
Set aside 11 minutes for this: An animation of a talk by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist about the divided brain (with Andy Warhol/Banksy reference towards the end). Wow.
It all rests on transformation: Some discussions about the Patrick Cariou versus Richard Prince copyright case (in which Prince was sued by another artist for copyright infringement). The NYT has an overview. Hyperallergic also has an explainer. Anyone else think that both sets of works are not at all interesting?
Sort of related: Copying stuff is now a religion in Sweden.
SPIN Magazine now reviewing albums on Twitter.
Plus: Why authors Tweet.
Maria Bustillos, on what makes a great critic.
Which led me to this interesting Financial Times essay on literary criticism gone soft.
Tumblrs to Follow: Preservationist Ryan Gosling and Museum Ryan Gosling. (San Suzie.)
Today’s Graff: Would love to have Djalouz redo my bathroom.
10 pieces of trash-talking ancient graffiti.
The story of Chinese food take-out containers.
Ugly Renaissance Babies. (@rcembalest.)

Tahrir Square: Recent graffiti.

c-monster — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:20:29 +0000

My friend Baghdad Bobby is currently running around Egypt on assignment and he sent me a few pictures of the graffiti in Tahrir Square in Cairo that I find rather inspiring. Above: pawns defeat the king.

I like the digital reference on this one. It means “Power to the People.”