C-MONSTER.net

The Digest. 03.10.10.

Published by c-monster on March 10, 2010 in C-Monster, Photography and The Digest.

Bunny Bread. (Photo by Alex Gaidouk.)

Chile, nine days later. (Coudal.)
An unofficial ad campaign for the New Museum highlights the institution’s ethical challenges.
Speaking of which, the NuMu has a forum about art museums, private collectors and the public going down this Saturday…that costs $10 per person to attend.
“You must ask him to get down. I know better than anyone what that is like, and even I can’t take it!” Marina Abramovic to a New Museum curator, on Pawel Althamer’s sculpture, Schedule of the Crucifix — after a performer’s legs began to turn blue while hanging on a makeshift cross in the galleries. (@ARTnewsmag.)
Jerry Saltz seems to love anything as long as he’s featured in it. (@TylerGreenDC.)
Obligatory Whitney Biennial round-up: Christian Viveros-Faune is ambivalent — likening parts of the show to Tylenol PM and others to the bitchslap of a new beginning, Paddy Johnson is a like, and Kriston Capps is of a mixed view. (Modern Art Notes.)
Tino Sehgal, a kid’s take. (Art Fag City.)
Yosi Sergeant talks about the out-of-touch NEA.
Elisabeth Eaves on the gaps in Patti Smith’s memoir.
This looks super-cool: Felix González-Torres pieces grace billboards in Texas. (Modern Art Notes.)
Annie Liebovitz’s new creditors. (@russelltrombone.)
L.A.’s Brody art collection worth big bucks.
Ansel Adams’ photographs of Japanese internment camps.
Jörg Colberg describes the art fairs as a place “where your soul is not only crushed, it’s actually slowly and steadily ground into a fine powder.” Yup, sounds about right.
A visual summary of The Big Lebowski.
Nice online piece from the Guggenheim for their Contemplating the Void exhibit, which examines the architectural/installation possibilities of the museum’s atrium. Can someone please scrape up some budget to let Arne Quinze build a stilthouse in the rotunda? Also digging the proposals by Andy Goldsworthy, Mass Studies, Martha Rosler and Amanda Levete’s rotunda reflection.
Today’s Street Art: Jan Vormann’s Lego fixes in New York City. (@russelltrombone.)
Extinction outpaces evolution.

1 Comment Tags: alex gaidouk, bunny bread.

Kayaking the Ten Thousand Islands.

Published by c-monster on March 9, 2010 in C-Monster, Florida, Nature Break and Travel.

Above: Me. Pretending to be a badass. (Photo by Zach Stovall; borrowed from Florida Travel + Life.)

Last December, I escaped the art fairs in Miami early to spend several days camping and kayaking in the Ten Thousand Islands on assignment for Florida Travel + Life, where I serve as a semi-regular contributor. It was pretty awe-inspiring . By day, we explored the mangrove isles that make up much of the southwestern Florida coast. At night, we camped on small beaches, carbo-loaded and admired the stars. It was the perfect antidote to the overload of shiny baubles I’d just gorged on at the art fairs. I’m also pretty dang proud I managed to survive the physical demands of the trip (blogging doesn’t do much in the way of developing stamina), but I’m also pretty excited about the story that came out of it. I’ve been spending the last few years making regular Everglades pilgrimages and I’ve developed a real affection for it. It kind of bums me out that the many Miami types who live right on top of it rarely show it much appreciation.

You can find my story on this journey in the April 2010 edition of Florida Travel + Life (available at Barnes & Noble) or you can cheat and read the PDF version here. Though if you could support the mag — which helps support me, I’d be deeply appreciative.

If you’re interested in doing something similar, I would like to heartily recommend the wonderful folks at Everglades Area Tours, who not only organize some mighty fine kayaking excursions (there are day-trips in case you don’t do camping), but are super cool folks to boot. And if for some reason, you spend any time at all in South Florida (be it for art fairs or because you like to get butt facials), consider Michael Grunwald’s The Swamp required reading. No ifs, ands or buts.

10 Comments Tags: everglades area tours, florida travel + life, kayking, ten thousand islands.

Calendar. 03.09.10.

Published by c-monster on March 9, 2010 in C-Monster, Calendar, Galleries, New York and Painting.

Untitled (Opium Den), 2009, by Rosson Crow. Part of the exhibit Bowery Boys, at Deitch Projects, through March 27. (Image courtesy of Deitch Projects.)

In L.A.: Art Against Empire: Graphic Responses to U.S. Interventions since WWII, at LACE, opens Wednesday.
In L.A.: Andreas Gursky, at Gagosian, in Beverly Hills, through May 1.
In S.F.: Inaugural Group Show at Guerrero Gallery, through March 27.
In Miami: Cory Arcangel: The Sharper Image, at MoCA, in North Miami, opens Thursday.
In Fort Lauderdale: Edward Steichen: The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937 at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, through April 11.
In Philly: Timothy Buckwalter, Imitation of Life, at the Green Line, opens Friday at 6pm.
In NYC: Landscapes of Quarantine, at the Storefront for Art & Architecture, opens tonight at 7pm.
In NYC: Stokenphobia, drawings by Gore-B and other works, at Pandemic Gallery in Brooklyn, opens Friday at 7pm.
In NYC: Duncan Campbell, Make it New John, at Artists Space, opens tonight at 6pm.
In NYC: The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis at David Zwirner, through Apil 24.
In London: Malick Sidibé, Unseen Work, at Lichfield Studios, opens Thursday.
In London: Subodh Gupta, School, at Hauser & Worth, through March 27.

0 Comments Tags: bowery boys, deitch projects, rosson crow.

Photo Diary: The Armory Show 2010.

Published by c-monster on March 8, 2010 in Armory-palooza, C-Monster, New York and Photo Diary.

Joanne McNeil of Tomorrow Museum and I model the latest in fashion-forward footwear at the all-yellow Nicole Klagsbrun booth at Armory Show 2010. Many more pix to follow. (All photos by C-M.)

Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: The Armory Show 2010.’

2 Comments Tags: armory show 2010.

The Digest. 03.08.10.

Published by c-monster on March 8, 2010 in C-Monster, Installation, Sculpture and The Digest.

Evening Cocoon, by Kate Browne, in Cragsmoor, New York. Beginning today, Browne will be building a large cocoon in the Plaza Tlatelolco (sight of the infamous 1968 massacre) in Mexico City. It will be lit on March 21st, the first day of spring. (Image courtesy of Kate Browne.)

The Holy Land Experience.
El Museo del Barrio’s Julián Zugazagoitia to head up the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City. See a video of him talking about the move. (@museumnerd.)
Art21 interviews Alec Soth.
Five things you didn’t know about Ansel Adams. Interesting fact: he and Georgia O’Keeffe were friends, but dissed each other’s work. (@russelltrombone.)
Sea and sky.
A new book says that conflict over climate change will create a new world order: U.S. and Europe vs. China and Russia. (Cool Green Morning.)
A special multimedia feature on Jonathan LeVine’s fifth anniversary. Profile here.
Today’s Graff: Esco in Sao Paulo.
The Guardian profiles JR.
The Glass House, Maira Kalman version.
Rush Limbaugh home décor. He has a way with the baby blue.
Honest movie titles, Oscars 2010 edition.

4 Comments Tags: cocoon, kate browne.

Art Yoga. And the very many cool happenings at #CLASS.

Published by c-monster on March 6, 2010 in C-Monster, Conceptual, Galleries, New York and Sublime ridiculosity.

The Art Yoga tribute to Marina Abramovic: Yoga in lab coats. Later, we sat around and stared at each other. (Screengrab taken from the live webstream.)

There’s all kinds of goodness going down at #CLASS this weekend and in the coming week, starting today with a panel on the art world’s shade of pale, organized by An Xiao, the motivational stylings of Rod Verplanck, and through the weekend, with working sessions and a contemporary art wake. This will be followed, mid-week, by balloon-popping with Man Bartlett, a feminist tea party with Suzanne Stroeb and Caitlin Rueter, a merciless Q&A with art dealer Magda Sawon of Postmasters, and a lecture, on Friday, by Yevgeniy Fiks, on Communist Modern Artists in the Art Market.

I attended Fiks’ fascinating guerrilla tour of MoMA early this week, in which he led us through a number of the works in the permanent galleries created by communists and sympathizers. (See my Tweets from that event here.) The history nerd in me (I have a thing for Cold War-era politics) was totally loving it. You can see reports on the tour at Bloggy and jameswagner.com. Fiks’ totally wonderful Russian accent just brings it all together.

Find a full schedule of events over at the official website. And I’ll see you in #CLASS.

2 Comments Tags: #class, art yoga, winkleman gallery.

Enough with Art Fairs: The Top 10 Biggest Oscar Snubs in History!

Published by Yvonne Connasse on March 5, 2010 in Film and Yvonne Connasse.

The 1988 Academy Awards — when John Huston’s The Dead and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket didn’t get nominations, but Fatal Attraction did. (Photo by Alan Light.)

We love the Oscars. The glitz, the glam, the flicks, the bawling starlets and on-air fuck-ups. Even when the awards plow on, past midnight and into the next morning, we nonetheless cling to our TV sets (and our empty bottles of vodka) to see who picked up the award for Best Picture — despite the fact that this honorific has a spotty track record. To be sure, on many occasions, the Academy has gotten it right: bestowing awards on the silent movie masterpiece Sunrise, the comedy classic It Happened One Night, Gone With Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Godfather I and II, and, more recently, Schindler’s List. But sometimes, they get it horribly, horribly wrong: handing out awards to atrocious pictures, such as the stilted, early talkie Cimarron, the cloying Rain Man and Forrest Gump (which are basically the same movie), the treacly Titanic, the bus-wreck of Crash and the vastly overrated Slumdog Millionaire (which is basically a retread of Millions).

With the Academy Awards just around the corner, our esteemed chief, C-Monster, asked us to compose a list of the best classic flicks that failed to earn a Best Picture Nomination. So, we set down our martini long enough to flip through our movie memory and present you, lucky reader, with the official list of Best Movie Classics Snubbed by the Academy. Like Nixon’s Enemies List, it’s an esteemed and vivacious club, whose members include everyone from Fritz Lang to David Lynch.

Don’t forget to tune into the Oscars, this Sunday at 8pm to find out if, this year, the Academy will get it right. We’re giddily chilling our bottle[s] of Grey Goose in preparation. À Bientôt!

Find the full list of biggest Academy Award snubs (dating back to the ’20s!) after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Enough with Art Fairs: The Top 10 Biggest Oscar Snubs in History!’

7 Comments Tags: academy awards, best picture snubs.

The Digest. 03.05.10.

Published by c-monster on March 5, 2010 in C-Monster, Installation, San Francisco, Sculpture and The Digest.

Anti-Mass, 2005 by Cornelia Parker a the DeYoung Museum of Art in 2008. (Photo by C-M.)

Today is Art Yoga with C-Mon Day at Ed Winkleman. You can participate via the live web stream at the official #CLASS website, starting at 2pm ET.

A history of blackouts.
Roberta Smith tears the New Museum’s Skin Fruit a new one. In the lead graf: “The project did not sound like a good idea when it was announced last fall. Seeing it up close does not change that.”
Me me me, on my three favorite pieces at the Armory Show over at WNYC. Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win a Jen Bekman art fair survival kit, which includes this print by William Powhida.)
Art21 explores the ethics of using live animals in art.
The Smithsonian rejects O.J. Simpson’s acquittal suit. (World’s Best Ever.)
Artwork from Michael Crichton’s collection, including pieces by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, is going on sale.
Snow art censored in Jersey. Hilarious.
The trippy sculptures of Andrea Myers.
Hrag Vartanian is looking for art industry secrets.
Ostrich egg shell fragments reveal 60,000 year old graphic design tradition. (Hyperallergic.)
Marina Abramovic and her big ass homes.
Customized Eames chairs.
Will it be truly possible to have wild bison repopulate the American plains?
The Big Picture: Chile, three days after the quake.
The Art of Graffiti Beefs: Banksy versus Robbo versus Banksy versus Robbo versus… (Arts Journal.)
Today’s Street Art: Lister in Brooklyn.
Slideshow: Contemplating the Void at the Guggenheim. My favorite here. On a totally unrelated note, thinking about the Gugg’s void for some reason gets me thinking about the Pizza Cone.)
The police stations of Georgia, as in the former Soviet republic. (@thornburgh.)
Herzog & de Meuron do a parking structure in Miami Beach.
Asian carp threaten Chicago architecture tours.
In case somebody wants to build me a writing studio, here’s some inspiration.

2 Comments Tags: anti-mass, cornelia parker, DeYoung Museum.

Art installations with mirrors are handy…

Published by c-monster on March 4, 2010 in C-Monster, Photography and Sublime ridiculosity.

…’cuz you can fix your hair in them. (Photo by C-M.)

0 Comments Tags: chelsea, stefan bruggemann, yvon lambert.

Calendar. 03.04.10.

Published by c-monster on March 4, 2010 in C-Monster, Calendar, Museums, New York and Photography.

Camera No. 1 by Miroslav Tichý. Photo by Roman Buxbaum. Part of the exhibit Tichý, at the International Center of Photography in NYC, through May 9. (Image courtesy of ICP.)

In NYC: A month-long screening of Helen Leavitt’s 15-minute film, In the Street, on the anniversary of her death, at Laurence Miller Gallery, starting today.
In NYC: Boris Hoppek and Alex Diamond: Damage Control at Factory Fresh, opens Friday at 8pm.
In Philly: Dead Flowers, a group show, at Vox Populi, opens Friday at 6pm.
In Portland, Ore.: Melody Owen, Letters from Switzerland, at Elizabeth Leach, opens Thursday at 6pm.
In L.A.: Ali Prosh, Travelers’ Suite, at The Company, opens Saturday at 6pm.
In L.A.: Rachel Whiteread: Drawings, at the Hammer Museum, through April 25.
In L.A.: A signing with Uglydoll creators David Horvath and Sun-min Kim, at Giant Robot, this Saturday at 3pm.
In Toronto: Ryan Dineen and Jacques Oule, Cityscrapes, at Show & Tell Gallery, opens Friday.