Archive for the 'The Digest' Category

Deck Unit, 2008, by Matthias Merkel Hess. This sculpture was disassembled after its display and pieces of it were reincorporated into Merkel Hess’s piece in Wet Paint 2, at Steve Turner Contemporary in L.A., currently on view. (Image courtesy of Merkel Hess.)

• A brief history of art.
• Christopher Walken, radio host. (I love the part where he says he hates other people’s punctuation.) Plus: David Itzkoff interviews Walken on what it was like to be on the other side of the mic.
• From the Department of Me: Talking about the unnamed television show that is destroying art in America, and climbing Big Bambú. Plus: I also write about strollers. White strollers.
• On a sorta related note: Infant stool illustrations. (I was excited to see that Martin Bromirski is tangentially connected to at the center of this.)
• An atlas of anatomy.
• Okay, here’s a trippy one: a lost Warhol that isn’t really a Warhol, in Queens.
• The latest in crowd curating, of sorts. (Arts Journal.)
• What we talk about when we talk about art. A lengthy but worthwhile essay by Tom McCormack, on the dilemma of art — an area of human production from which we demand purity but suspect corruption. Highly interesting. (Art Fag City.)
• Sorta related: William Powhida’s significantly more rambling #workoFart rant, in which I am name-checked in a not-good way. (In my defense: Yes, I’ve watched and covered the show with the same prurient interest typically reserved for a car crash. But the program is in keeping with my abiding fascination with art merch, a way of seeing the art industry reflected in the funhouse mirror of mass culture. Also, to be clear, I’ve also said that Work of Art would be much better if it employed Chuck Barris and a gong. I mean, seriously, just think about that…)
• Even more #workoFart: Judge Bill Powers is giving contestant Miles Mendenhall a show. The announcement of which generated the following message from my friend Marshall Astor: “It’s like a Deepwater Horizon of bad art. Even though the leak stops with the end of the season, the tarballs will be washing up on our shores for years.” (@KnightLAT.)
• Speaking of which, THE END IS NEAR, or so says The Prospect, which reports that we are in the dustbin of art history. (Thank you, San Suzie.)
• Pulp fiction meets Robert Motherwell.
• Slideshow: The ‘60s Brazilian sex comics of Carlos Zéfiro. Read more on him here.
• Art as dog park. (Modern Art Notes.)
• The scrawl says it all: Post-Katrina graffiti in New Orleans.
• “Graffiti writers need to start using bit.ly.” (@fi5e.)
• Today’s Street Art: Futura and Os Gemeos paint a school in NYC. See photos of the finished mural here. (@PD_Smith.)
• Shepard Fairey’s last campaign.
• I don’t know about y’all, but I think these electrical tower design schematics look totally Wicker Man.
• Concrete wallpaper.