Screengrab AFC

• Dan Cameron’s latest curatorial project looks like a pretty big deal. Prospect.1 a Biennial for New Orleans appeals to me for a number of reasons, some of which have to do with the art and the rest relating to the food, the jazz, and rich cultural history of the city. Of course, the most exciting aspect of this exhibition, are its prospects to bring wealth to New Orleans again. From the website;

Prospect.1 New Orleans has been designed to help reinvigorate New Orleans following the human, civic, and economic devastation left by Katrina in 2005. The long-term primary goal of the biennial exhibition is to redefine the city as a cultural destination, where the visual arts are celebrated and can once again thrive. Prospect.1 New Orleans aspires to initiate a new category of cultural tourism for the city, on a scale normally seen during Mardi Gras and the city’s celebrated Jazz-Fest.

If this piques your interest at all, Director and Chief Curator of Prospect.1 and former Senior Curator at the New Museum Dan Cameron moderates a discussion on the revitalization project, at Cooper Union May 15th. Artists on the panel include Janine Antoni, Jacqueline Humphries, Wangechi Mutu and Nari Ward.

• In rumors, ArtInfo reports an overheard conversation at a New York gallery amongst several “top art world figures” suggests Frieze copublisher and art fair cofounder Matthew Slotover is ranked high on the Dia Art Foundation’s list of nominees for director. In what may amount to less interesting news the other unofficial rumor I’ve heard floating around is that Frieze will be getting a new New York office space.

• “Sotheby’s auction house called it the “most important collection of contemporary Chinese art to ever come to market”…runs the lead sentence in a rather gross New York Times story about the sale of Estella Collection, now the center of much controversy. Many of the artists, dealers, and curators say they were duped them into thinking a rich Westerner was putting together a permanent collection and would eventually donate some of the works to leading museums. Some claim they deeply discounted their work as a result. As it turns out, the Westerner, is group of investors who cashed in by selling the works last August to dealer William Acquavella, who is now selling them through Sotheby’s.

• In social networking news, Artreview.com introduces ArtBuzz, a new service that allows users to instant message, post events and exhibitions, and send in text message updates from your phone. It’s basically ARTtwitter with greater capabilities. I hope people use this, because it does seem like it will be useful.

• The most talked about subject in the art blogosphere has to be the no photo policy of 303 Gallery, which now extends to requesting that bloggers remove photographs they’ve taken of their booth at art fairs. Barry Hoggard has the original letter of request, c-monster bestows the gallery with the honor of their first ever douchebag award, Libby and Roberta weigh in, and Heart as Arena posts this great photo essay in response to 303’s email. Thanks to Joy Garnett and Barry Hoggard for pointing me to The Freedom of Expression Policy project which indicates the gallery exceeds its legal rights in asking bloggers to remove these images from their site. More on this to come.

Left: Larry Gagosian (image nymagazine) Right: Jeff Koons, Hanging Heart, 1994 - 2006, one of five versions, each uniquely colored, high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating and yellow brass, 106 x 85 x 40 in. Image copyright Sothebys.com

• MoreIntellegentLife features a great profile on mega dealer Larry Gagosian, rounding up a number of observations by art world personalities on the man,

“I have one word for him: fearless,” says Irving Blum, an LA collector and one-time dealer.

Another collector who would not be named qualified that judgment a little: “I don’t know that he’s fearless. What I would say is, he is a person impossible to insult. You could say anything: he’ll call you again. He’s determined. He’s incredibly tenacious.”

Even if Gagosian is the art world’s best businessman, “he’s not a salesman,” says Jerry Saltz, art critic at New York magazine. “You don’t see him working the floor. He’s like a visitor from another planet, an extraterrestrial trying to communicate with our species.”

Even if he is an opportunist, “his opportunism is transparent,” says Peter Schjeldahl, art critic of the New Yorker. “It’s not underhand: it’s all overhand. He is not complicated. He’s like a shark or a cat or some other perfectly designed biological mechanism.”

Even if he is a dealmaker, he is one with rare panache: “Larry enjoys these different types of transactions, that type of energy,” says the artist Jeff Koons. “It’s kind of like a sexual energy.”

Brilliant.

• Anyone checked out the number of gallery openings this week on ArtCal? There’s too much to see. My own list will include checking out the weird plastic chair at Sikemma Jenkins and contemplating whether I like Liam Gillick’s new show at Casey Kaplan this Thursday. Friday recommends are new media based; Rhizome’s New Silent Series in which Trevor Paglen will discuss his work at the New Museum, and Vertexlist’s, Blankly Perfect Summer, an exhibition showcasing emerging talent from Krakow.

• Frieze asks artists, critics, and curators to cite books that influence them in a new web series titled Ideal Syllabus, and manages to get, Nicholas Bourriaud author of Post Production and Relational Aesthetics is their first list maker. Probably the most interesting books included on that list to me were Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and Ubik by Philip K Dick — both incredibly dude-y novels, and very easy reads relative to his own work. As a side note, I find it amusing that Post Production and Relational Aesthetics, two of the most influential texts to the art world, have virtually no reader reviews on Amazon.

• In other random news, I was on the Charles Cowles website yesterday, an activity of note only because the site sucks.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled 255, via cindysherman.com

• Paul Hasegawa-Overacker felt his identity was subsumed when dating artist Cindy Sherman, and made a documentary that tackles this subject and more titled Guest of Cindy Sherman. It’s a fascinating story line, though not with out note, that it’s mostly the gender reversal that makes it interesting. Typically women dating famous men don’t break up with them — they’re happy for their success.  Of course, this issue is more complicated than I’ve made it out to be since it’s also much more socially acceptable for a woman to take the less dominant role.  An interview with Paul H-O at Salon.

• Of all the controversy Grand Theft Auto IV seems to inspire, I’m surprised I haven’t read more from Serbians upset about the portrayal of the main character, as a Serbian immigrant, assassin, prostitute fucker and murderer, and just all around asshole. The debate that has thus far inspired the largest Wikipedia entry began in September 2007, when Jack Thompson filed a suit against Grand Theft Auto IV, claiming that the assassination target of a mission in the game was a lawyer character based on himself. It’s possible he had a point — the man had previously campaigned against other Grand Theft Auto games, and had stated he would take various measures to prevent the sale of the game by Rockstar to minors — though the court didn’t think so, and the man has been barred from suing to block the sale or distribution of any future games published by Take-Two or any of its subsidiaries.

Meanwhile, the women hating aspects of this game remain largely in tact. This from Feministing (originally via boing boing),

If you get through the trailer you will notice that not only are the sex scenes very real looking, most of the women are killed shortly after forcibly performing sex acts. So, many young men are going to have their first (or already have, as this is not new content for GTA) sexual experiences via GTA and then they are going to kill the women they are sleeping with. The implications of that are mind-blowing. It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular? How is that acceptable?

I haven’t played the game, so I can’t speak to how it compares to the last, but from a youtube video originally circulated by Ladies of Liberty City (no longer available) there’s no disputing that the game isn’t full of warm fussy feelings towards women. Admittedly, I’m slightly relieved to be more or less disinterested in the aesthetics of the game due to the problematics of the game itself.

• In other unrelated non art stories, I’m vaguely disturbed by the amount of woman hating permeating celebrity blogs lately. In as much I read about how good Madonna looks for her age, there’s almost always someone who’s creeped out by the fact that she’s almost 50, so any amount of sexuality she exhibits is therefore inappropriate. As annoying a personality as she may be, I’m happy that she continues to control the way in which her body is used to promote music sales. Just because you’re 50 doesn’t mean you’re dead.

Jo Mitchell, Photographing Girl on a Motorcycle, 1999/2007

Maybe it’s the rain, but I haven’t been dying to weigh in on today’s art news stories. If you can forgive the late start, a few links of interest below.

• Jerry Saltz reviews the Dan Colen Nate Lowman collaboration Wet Pain at Maccarone accusing it of looking too much like other shows and calling it flippant, which is precisely the problem with this kind of ticky tack art. Certainly you can identify those who have some skill in arranging objects, but even the good work looks a little too much like everything else.

• Despite a miss leading post title reading Paris Journal, A Break From Music, ArtsBeat the New York Times art blog, will be reporting on music when they return home from Europe. An observation worth remark: Between the New York Times and the NYTimes magazine, the publication hosts three art blogs, none of which feature significant coverage of Fine Art. You’d think between The Medium, The Moment, and ArtsBeat a little more energy could be devoted to the field - there’s certainly a lot more to talk about than art fairs, biennials, and the occasional highly priced auction item.

• Speaking of The Medium, Virginia Heffernan writes Sepia No More for New York Magazine, discussing the flickr style photograph. “While pretty and even cute, these images are also often surreal and prurient,” says Heffernan, going on to describe the digitally manipulated photographs of Rebekka Guoleifsdottir, one of the sites most popular members. Of course, once you see the work being discussed, it’s hard to stay too interested. Amateur art has its merits, but I can’t imagine a less engaging genre than the sentimental pony photograph, or the bright commercial signage landscape that apparently dominates the site. Surely there’s more engaging activity going on there.

• Speaking of photography, VVork links to a Jo Mitchell [pictured above] I quite like despite the fact that it’s flanked by seemingly countless robo-women torsos.

• I meant to link to this last week and then lost track of it: Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett. Thanks to Greg.org and Steven Stern for that link.

Guillermo Vargas “Habacuc”

• Gawker reports Yale art major Aliza Shvarts repeatedly inseminated herself, while taking drugs to induce miscarriages. Her graduating exhibition will be made up of the documentation of these forced miscarriages, including video footage, and preserved blood. It, of course, sounded like fairly standard undergraduate work to us, particularly once we read that the goals for this piece ran something the lines of sparked conversation about art and the human body. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you need to see this work in person to really evaluate it. Originally via: Yale Daily News. UPDATE: Via M.River, “Word on the street is, Gawker got punked.” This solves a number of questions about how she would be inducing the miscarriages.

• Anyone heard of the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008? Apparently it’s the location where artist Guillermo Vargas “Habacuc” will, for the second time, starve a dog to death in the name of art, though no website for the “Bienal” can be found. In all likelihood this is some kind of web meme/art project that collects signatures in the name of either art or meme experimentation. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what this project will prove, past what we already know; people sign their support for causes almost blindly. Snoops on the veracity of the story.  Edward Winkleman here.

• Related: Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson’s ROM Bomb hoax in Toronto as performance art, 2007, and Jesse Power, an OCAD student skins a cat alive in 2001, as means of demonstrating the hypocrisy of eating meat.

Image via: Boing Boing

Dan Proops and Boing Boing Nation:   Yet another Boing Boing artist producing art pablum for readers who can clearly handle more.  Says Mr. Proops,

I believe the influence of Cubist philosophy on the graphic user interface (ie operating systems like Windows’ XP/Vista) has never been properly looked at. In my work I seek to set strong arguments for the connections between the many “viewpoints” set up in cubist paintings and the way PC and Mac operating systems set up multiple “windows” to allow the computer user to see and use and assimilate information.

Who knows how Proops examines these connections — the only image I’ve seen on his website and reproduced on others that has anything to do with this concept is “Painting downloading now”, which pictures exactly what you think it does [see above].  It’s hard to imagine a more lightweight investigation than what we’ve seen.  Proops latest series censors the private parts and whatever else the artist decides to obscure, largely by pixelating the crotches of classical paintings.  “His style of painting has been seen as anarchistic” says CR Blog, “but Proops sees the pixellated censor, usually associated with obscenity, as a humorous reaction to the shock values promoted by young British artists of the 90s: by censoring something that does not need to be censored points to the unnecessary”.   And yet, the artist has not censored a single middle finger; an oversight to be sure.

Image copyright Tellus 

Now available on Ubuweb: Tellus #20, “Media Myth”, 1988. Curated by Joseph Nechvatal. Undoubtedly my favorite noise-art label of the 1980’s, produced by Tellus, an arm of Harvestworks Digital Media Center. Track recommends include #1, 2, 7, 9, 13, and 16

Image via: TED 

TED, The True Face of Da Vinci. Admittedly, the fact that this lecture comes through TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) worries me despite the rather compelling evidence Siegfried Woldhek gives in the hopes of identifying Da Vinci’s face. Of course the crucial information not presented here is how this advances our understanding of the man’s work. I’m not saying Woldhek’s findings aren’t important, I’d just like to know a little bit more about why I should care.

Screengrab AFC 

Rhizome The Good News:  Ed Halter, who is easily amongst my favorite critics working today, now writes for Rhizome.   This means I’ll be reading him every day!  Also in Good News:  Rhizome has opened comments up on their blog, a great advance, since it is, in my opinion, the best way to foster discussion and create an invested online community.  The Bad News:  The comments have a few nasty bugs in them, including the one where it can take hours before the comment count for a particular post becomes visible on the front page.  They also don’t show up on the main page when the jump function is enabled on a post.  All in all these are very annoying quirks, that make it difficult for the comment threads to grow.

The Armory Show 2007, Image copyright of The Amory 

• More bad news about the Art Market: Artnet reports Pulse London and Photo-London have canceled their 2008 fairs, (via Grammarpolice,) and I’ve heard rumors of several gallery closures in smaller markets recently.  Don’t worry though,  The Armory Show’s Executive Director Katelijne De Backer told me last month that the fair expects an increase of visitors this time around, so at least one fair won’t be suffering. Indeed, the $30.oo admission is sure to be a real draw to visitors since we all know the 10 dollar increase from last year will mean a much higher quality of show.  After all the fair’s over crowding issues have all but been solved; “We have now added a new entrance for VIPs” she explained last month, “and, instead of having museum groups all show up at a set time, they can now come in at any time during the fair”.  Yes, Thank God the VIP’s have a new entrance — that will really clear up the congestion.  If you’re doubtful of course, you can always visit MoMA instead…for a mere 20 bucks.

• I’m not convinced Bert Rodriguez’s art therapy sessions at the Whitney Biennial are all that interesting as an artistic investigation (I’ve heard several unimpressed accounts of their appointments,) but C-Monster’s reflections on Richard Lacayo’s Blog are worth the read.  Speaking to the subject of appointment;  “art-induced agita—the twitchy, nervous condition that comes from poring through impenetrable museum catalogues and blustering exhibit reviews”, she goes on to beautifully sum up her experience inside the installation

All the while, outside Rodriguez’s perfect white cube, passersby were straining to understand what was happening inside. People tapped and even slammed on the door in frustration. Rodriguez had had to install a lock early on in the process because a number of visitors were barging in (despite the sign on the door asking them not to do so). It was a perfect metaphor for the art industry. Inside, was a simple conversation between two people. Outside, with all the added layers, everything was distorted, incomprehensible and inaccessible. Just the way the art industry likes it.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

*Artworld Salon’s András Szántó runs down a number of statistics indicating that critics have no effect on the secondary market, and by extension, not much power. Of course, critics do have power, particularly in the primary market, (a case Szántó was not arguing against), it’s just that as Jerry Saltz indicated last year at the CAA conference not enough. In the case of artists like Damien Hirst or Banksy, it would seem no amount of negative press will derail the sale of a grossly overpriced product. Szántó also praises “Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today” at the Museé des Beaux-Arts. I haven’t seen it, but I can’t resist plugging my favorite Museum.

* More on the censorship of Wafaa Bilal: By the time I wrote my first post on the subject of Virtual Jihadi, a video game which casts its designer Wafaa Bilal, as a vengeful citizen seeking to kill President Bush for the loss of his family members in the Iraq war, it had already been forcibly removed from venues twice. We can thank the FBI and The Department of Public Works for this; The Sanctuary for Independant Media which provided the game’s last space, is now shut down for code violations, the worst of these being a narrow door needing expansion. Just earlier this month artists living at 475 Kent were forced out of their apartment for similar concerns, a suspect move by the city, since they had been living there for years and nobody seemed to care until the real estate became valuable to developers. It seems code violations are to artists what tax evasions are to gangsters…except you know, we’re not criminals.

Look to Martin Bromirski for a timeline of the events, and read the Troy City Paper for your morning outrage. The Sanctuary for Independent Media was shut down Tuesday, but four days later you’re still allowed to be mad about it. I know I am.

Fia Backstrom at the Biennial, Let’s Decorate and Let’s Do It Professionally!

• Holland Cotter’s piece in the New York Times is generating quite a bit of response, both in conversations I’ve had offline and amongst online bloggers. I haven’t said too much on the show, since my review will go up at the L Magazine shortly, though I will say much of Holland Cotter’s review doesn’t match up with what I saw. “Art’s Economic Indicator” reads the title of a piece which puts forth the idea of a Biennial reflecting a recession-bound time. Cotter cites fewer participating artists and the use of humble materials as proof, though if anything I thought this year’s Biennial looked more like an art fair than any other. It’s particularly hard not to draw those connections at the Park Armory, each artist being assigned their own ill-suited room, the same way you’d experience art hung around a bunch of light fixtures in a hotel suite. Needless to say, I don’t think this is a good direction for the Whitney, even though it’s clearly modeled after the more successful Venice Bienniale which also has a separate space for the larger works.

• I know I’m more interested in Robert Smithson in light of the recent flurry of discussion about Spiral Jetty and proposed drilling nearby, so perhaps Behind the Enantiomorph: A Biographical Key to Robert Smithson’s References to Doubling-and to Death, a lecture given by Suzaan Boettger at Nurtureart. The talk will take place Saturday March 22nd at 4 pm. Link tip: Christopher Howard

• I suppose this is old news, but I went to the eyebeam reblog to see if there might be anything worth linking, and realized I had entirely stopped reading the site. Also, I got to the reblog by clicking on one of the four quadrants on their splash page, which reminded me how badly the site needs a redesign. I really do hope the organization addresses their web presence because new media artists really need to have effective organizations working on their behalf. After all, how many net artists did we see at this year’s Biennial? Zero. That’s how many.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Abakan Red (1969)

• Following MAN’s lead, I note Leslie Camhi’s piece at the Village Voice on P.S.1’s WACK! exhibition. She hits a few good points, but misses many others. Why for example, she chose to highlight a film program that would take several days to view as proof of “curatorial running-on” is beyond me. The problems of exhibiting film in museums aren’t new or unique to museum shows on feminism, and these curators, unlike many at least took the time to set up a viewing schedule. Also contrary to Camhi, I felt the exhibition was exceptionally well organized, and that the work made sense viewed thematically as opposed to chronologically. I understand her point of course — typically I too prefer a more narrative viewing experience from such survey shows — but since the point of this exhibition really seemed to be about showing the breadth of practice it really seemed a more logical means of communicating that idea.With that said, Camhi also wisely observed a “rickety case” made in the field of feminist abstraction, and wins the quote of the day, closing her piece with, “…But some things almost never change: It’s nearly impossible, for example, to imagine this show being staged across the river, at P.S. 1’s Manhattan affiliate, the Museum of Modern Art. Instead, the artists of “Wack!” remain in the schoolhouse. But their contemporaries might well take a lesson from them.”

• Dear Leader hosts a mildly grating two part interview with blogger Jörg Colberg of Conscientious. Sycophantic questions include speculation as to whether the blogger is “tight” with photographer Alec Soth (who cares), how much a posting on Conscientious can help your career (possibly good to know, but why not cite the anonymous photographer who was placed at the unnamed blue chip gallery), and how it feels to be so powerful (a question possibly asked in jest, but still annoying). Part two of the interview improves, even if it runs on.

• Greg.org observes that the Associated Press erroneously reported Bush’s resignation over plagiarism. The first screen shot features the headline Bulletin Kill, and text describing the story to be removed. Two minutes later Greg Allen captures a more urgent sounding text Bulletin Kill: White House Plagerism, with the below text reading “A kill is mandatory. Make certain the short headline is not published.” It couldn’t have been a good day at the AP last Friday.

• Edward Winkleman has temporarily changed the name of his blog to Edward_Hussein Winkleman in solidarity with democratic nominee Barack Obama. He also does a great job of parsing through Allen Strouse’s article on ArtInfo about Barack Obama’s comments on the support of arts funding. Strouse does indeed sound paranoid writing, “Linking political interests with artists, aestheticians, bohemians, and subversives in general could unleash a monstrous arts-industrial complex comparable to Eisenhower’s feared military-industrial complex.”

Antony Gormley, proposal for Trafalgar Square’s fourth empty plinth

Spoutblog reports Barack Obama may have lost the support of at least one blogger and horror movie fan. The site Bloody Disgusting appears to have removed an odd post complaining about the Senators belief that “it would appropriate to “work with the industry” to address issues of sex and violence, including the marketing of violent films in TV shows,” but that “parental control, not government control, is the best response”. Longworth has posted her transcription of Obama’s response pointing out that he hasn’t said he will do anything.

I mention this non-news only because entertainment is about the closest thing we’ll see in the debates that resembles discussion of the arts –admittedly there are more pressing issues to address–, and it’s still a discussion about public morality. Is there no chance of getting beyond this?

An ad agency accuses Tracey Emin of plagiarizing E.ON’s 2007 campaign, featuring 20 or so meerkats standing on different boxes. Emin wants to put four meerkats on Trafalgar Square’s fourth empty plinth. I tend to think Emin came up with that bad idea all on her own — after all, why steal something so vacuous, when there’s so much more substantial material out there to lift — but I suspect such speculation will ultimately mean little. There are five other proposals being considered, and the Guardian seems to think at least one of them is better.

Murakami likes Augur & Revok enough to remove his tagged billboard for his own collection. I’m not convinced this is the most awesome of awesome tags in the world, but I suppose it’s news. Via greg.org.

Art and entertainment undeniably merge as one today, as evidenced by the scads of fine art links coming gossip blogs and entertainment magazines. Let the linkage begin below!

Image via: People

Variety/Gawker reports Sarah Jessica Parker’s Pretty Matches Productions will partner with Magical Elves to create a reality show for the art world. Why these people are still working with failed ArtStar concept of pitting a dozen aspiring artists against one another however continues to mystify me. Artistic practice is simply too diverse to build a competition around whose sculpture beats whose painting. Why not find a group of aspiring curators, or gallerists and pit them against one another? Magical Elves, Pretty Matches Productions, I am available for consultation.

To view video click here. Screengrab AFC

Sean Young, probably best known for her role in Blade Runner heckled artist and Diving Bell and the Butterfly director Julian Schnabel at the DGA’s (Directors Guild of America) Saturday night. Admittedly he was taking a long time delivering his speech, but it really didn’t take too much time before Young had had enough and told him to get on with it. Tuesday, she admitted herself into rehab. Via Anaba.

In art related trivia, it may interest art nerds to read that Schnabel was amongst the early students at the Whitney Independent Study Program. Apparently the program has changed a lot since he attended the program in 1973.

Image via: DailyMail

Oprah in Gold. Our favorite sculptor Daniel Edwards, has placed Oprah in a gold tomb which he calls “.” Another landmark piece…along with the “educational” Paris Hilton with diseased innards, and Britney Spears birthing celebration. Via: Dlisted.

Vanessa Beecroft, White Madonna with Twins, 2006, Digital c-print, Galleria Lia Rumma

Time to play a little catch up around here. A few news points I’ve missed over the last couple of days as a result of various freelance jobs:

• For the few readers I have who don’t also read Kottke everyday, two important links from since he returned to his laptop this week: Those who want to read The Atlantic online can now do so without having to be a subscriber. As of this week the pay wall went down.

• Also via Kottke: A double blind peer review shows women more likely to get book deals if gender of the the author is unknown.

• Apparently W.H.D. Koerner has replaced Tom Lee as the president’s favorite artist. He’s not much of an improvement. Via Conscientious.

• Charlie Rose is now old enough to contribute to 60 minutes.

• Think the art entries on Wikipedia suck? You should. The Art Wikimarathon seeks to correct this problem on January 26th by collecting a bunch of art volunteers to pull an all nighters fixing a few of those write ups. Via Facebook and MTAA

• Art Star and the Sudanese Twins a film capturing Vanessa Beecroft’s fascination with herself and Sudanese orphans, lets the artist hang herself says Vulture. A rather large quote below:

Beecroft says her adoption [of the twins] will be “not just fetishization of the blacks. It will be a beginning of a relationship with that country.” The film documents the significant gap between Beecroft’s theory and her actions.

Upon her arrival in the Sudan, Beecroft hurries to set up a photo shoot, hiding the cameras from the orphanage’s sisters, calling the babies “these poor creatures.” Which baby should she photograph? “Either one or the other,” she says, “it doesn’t matter.”

Repeatedly, Beecroft claims that she “loves this culture” — but, in the film’s most disturbing scene, sisters from the orphanage try to stop her from stripping the children nude inside their abbey for an elaborate photo shoot. Beecroft refuses, complains, starts shooting again, and eventually loses a physical confrontation with one of the sisters, who takes the children away from her, furious that Beecroft is stripping children naked inside a church. “Christ, these people,” Beecroft moans, as she barricades herself inside, pushing a pew up against the door to keep the sisters out of their own abbey.

Um, ew! Beecroft shames the fine art profession with her racist and self involved behavior.

Ralf Hütter, Kraftwerk logo

We’re basically on vacation here, which means you’ll be looking at a lot of link lists until I return to New York. Featured above is a fantastic Kraftwerk logo via Pictograms and Drawn! More stuff found via other blogs below.

• Fimoculous released his list for the best blogs you might not know in 2007, which consists of a bunch of sites you probably know and a few you won’t. Blogs you likely already read include Drawn! FourFour and Jezebel, surprising jewels consist of Kanye West’s blog featuring gold toilets, and expensive cognac, Smashing Telly, which posts long form videos and documentaries, and Serious Eats, a food blog, I might actually read due to the combination of good pictures and editorial content designed to appeal to foodies and no-nothings such as myself.

• WFMU’s best of lists are now being posted, a must read segment of their blog programming. These compilations include music, film, and other random cultural stuff.

Richard Prince, Untitled Cowboy, 1989, Chromogenic print, 50 x 70 inches

We’re only a couple days away from a month of seemingly endless Best and Worst lists for the year, but other than that anticipation there isn’t a whole lot going on. Surfing the net yesterday yielded these worthy posts.

• An early but great start to the aforementioned lists “Things from ‘07 that I don’t want to deal with in ‘08. Thank C-Monster for that post.

• Tom Moody notes the difference in critical stance Roberta Smith takes on Richard Prince’s mid-career retrospective at the Whitney in 1992 and now at the Guggenheim in 2007. Smith takes a much softer tone the second time around while Moody in a post that follows observes weakness in virtually all of the later work. I too see the weaknesses Moody points out, and rather wish I’d seen a review by a mainstream critic who felt this way, particularly because Prince’s car hoods, joke paintings and master inspired works so obviously lack the substance of his earlier rephotographed advertisements. Schjeldahl wrote negatively about the exhibition as well in the New Yorker, largely getting it right, though by the end he criticizes a deKooning rip off for not being executed well enough, which even if correct, misses the point, and sounds awfully conservative. As an intellectual exercise this kind of practice just isn’t engaging, (though I have been known to make exception for his Britney Spears deKooning portraits.)


Loshadka, A group surfing blog noted by Ivan Lozano in Glasstire


• Glasstire’s Ivan Lozano provides a good overview of where to find Net Art and Net Art discussion. In light of the recent Wall Street Journal article on the like, it reminded me that the WSJ would benefit from the ability to post more jpegs, gifs, videos etc. I know it sounds like nitpicking, but Net Art looks more like itself when there’s a lot of it. (Here’s to not biting the hand that feeds me: Thanks to Mr. LaVallee for writing the article and speaking with me at length on the subject)

• In Internet news, according to a new study, Internet advertising works better than television ads. Nate Anderson of Arc Technica thinks this is a good thing for television networks sharing their content online as well. (via: Slashdot.) On a related note, Felix Salmon observes that television ad rates remain fairly constant as viewership decreases. There’s a bunch of easy math in his post likely to make readers like me a little uneasy, but Salmon sums up his observations nicely for the more obtuse: “On a cpm basis, then, I reckon TV ad rates are going to continue to rise for the foreseeable future. In turn, that will be good for newspapers and websites, whose ad rates will look increasingly attractive in comparison. Everybody wins - except, maybe, the advertisers.”

• My favorite public bench of 2007 removed by New York’s DOT.Via Matt Lucas

Image via The Jersey City Museum

• Those who can’t get enough of AFC will have the rare opportunity to hear me speak in first person at the Jersey City Museum this Thursday at 7. I will be discussing how my artistic training and background led into and informs my writing here at Art Fag City with artist and curator Michelle Loughlin. Loughlin will also be discussing her practice, the Internet, and support for emerging women artists.

• Conceptual composer and artist Jens Brand will perform tonight at Experimental Intermedia as part of their thirty-ninth anniversary series. Quoting directly from the website, “An evening composed of three pieces that have nothing in common … 1: “music” and music video, based on what Madonna (Madonna Louise Ciccone) thinks it is (or a respirator sounds like); 2: A vinyl based topographic scratch around the world on behalf of the one and only TWV - the black beeliner with grooves - and 3: HCAT-MPIGS a piece for trombone, violin and annoying light; at the end of a questionable evening, questions can be asked and products can be bought at discount prices” Related: The Little DiVA That Couldn’t, and The G-Bee, and G-One.

• Even Boring Blogs Are Things of Beauty in Some Artists Eyes reads Andrew LaVallee’s headline for today’s issue of the Wall Street Journal. The piece surveys a variety of net art works produced over the last few years including surfing clubs like Nasty Nets, Supercentral and Double Happiness. LaVallee also quotes yours truly on the subject.

• A sampling of enjoyably good and bad quotes uttered by art professionals throughout the year now appears at the L magazine courtesy of me. The best/worst of them all goes to gallerist Javier Peres who managed to incredibly managed to contribute two sentiments that made our list in the space of one interview on artkrush. “I am interested in many different things in the world, and artists who share those interests and address them in their work in original and thought-provoking ways intrigue me. If they’re hot — or simply sluts — then that’s even better.” Later, Peres describes his relationship with artists as being “…all about trust — very much like a master-servant relationship; except in our case, we never make clear who is who.” Yea. Awesome.

We’re doling out a handful of links and events to carry you into the weekend this morning, so this post will probably be the last you hear from us until Monday. There’s a fair bit to list, so bear with me.

Times Square Gallery

450 West 41st Street

(between 9th and 10th Avenues)

Here’s an event I always like: Hunter College Graduate Open Studios and Silent Auction. The studios are open tonight from 6-10 pm and Saturday afternoon 3-6, (though I’ve never known anyone who attended the afternoon event. ) There’s usually at least five studios that make the trip worth while, and well, a lot of beer. Tip via: Rachel Ostrow, Studio 504

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“MFA Open Studios” at Columbia
W 125 street, 632, 2-430pm at 632 W 125 st, 4-6pm at 612 W 115 st, 6-8pm at 310 Dodge Hall on 2960 Broadway

Place your bets on which ivy league student will become New York’s next art star! The event is actually a little gross because of hype around the school, but such is life. Like it or not there are more good artists that go to Columbia than most places.

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Momenta Art: Air Kissing
Reception: Friday, November 16, 7-9 pm
Curated by Sasha Archibald.

Self loathing artists and outspoken activists make art about working in a world they hold in low regard. Artists include: Alex Bag, Conrad Bakker, Brainstormers, Lizette Kabré with Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrea Fraser & Jeff Preiss, David Hammons, Jason Irwin, Lee Lozano, James Mills, Elena Nemkova, Carl Pope, William Powhida, William Bryan Purcell, Mira Schor, and Amanda Trager.

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Canadian artist Daniel Barrow screens his new animation “Artist Statement” at Mixnyc.org 5 pm Saturday. For Pygmalion’s Children: Queer Animation Inventions, Barrow uses antiquated computer software to animate his “gratuitously honest” manifesto.

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Culturegrrl lamented some time ago that she wasn’t able to take pictures of the Damian Hirst shark installed along side many older and “inappropriately” juxtaposed shark paintings at the MET. I recently saw that show and though I wouldn’t use the same words, she’s right about the relationships between objects not working. There’s some small enjoyable aspects to the palette relationship between the older paintings to the tones of the actual shark but that’s about it. Also Culturegrrl covers more auctions. Looks like Sotheby’s contemporary auctions performed well.

Diana Kingsley, Blue Ribbon, 2005, 42″ x 40″, lambda print. Image via Tom Moody

I’ve written a round up of links for ArtCal Zine this week, which includes some discussion on why the above photograph was recently removed from gallery walls. Since it’s just links there’s no teaser below, just the promise of wit, and reasonable reporting.

I’m still up in the great white north witnessing the bizarrely warm and balmy weather. There are a number of events and news stories I haven’t been able to cover though, so here’s a recap of a few:

Screengrab AFC 

Bloomberg news reports that Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Philippe de Montebello recieved the highest compensation among top executives at U.S. nonprofit institutions last year, earning 4.56 million. This bests MoMA’s Glenn Lowry, who was paid $1.32 million. Now, I’m all for people making buckets of money, but since this sort of pay inevitably means that other employees within the institution aren’t compensated fairly, I have few problems reconciling the figures. Canadian Author Naomi Klein speaks covers this topic in No Logo. Her most recent book The Shock Doctrine is also worth picking up.

Michael Waterman, Sound Circuit, 2004.  Image courtesy Ottawa Art Gallery

For those who happen to be in Ontario in the near future, Media Povera, an exhibition curated by Emily Falvey will be on view at the Ottawa Art Gallery through November 11th. The show examines the relationship between new and old technologies in the work of Alexandre Castonguay, William Eakin, Darsha Hewitt and Stephanie Brodeur, Calum Stirling, and Michael Waterman. Michael Waterman’s Sound Circuit holds particular interest to us; an instrument created to subvert the speed and invisibility of digital networks. Of course, you’ll have to view the exhibition to figure out exactly how he does this, since your guess is as good as mine.

Image courtesy New York Art Book Fair 

Printed Matter sent out press kits this week for the NY Art Book Fair, which runs September 28th through the 30th (with a benefit preview September 27th.) Long time readers of this blog might remember the extensive coverage AFC dedicated to the fair last year — we even named the fair the number one art event of 2006. Needless to say, we’re very interested in this years participants. Highlights include over 50 more exhibitors, 18 of which will be traveling from Canada and two from the Gulf Islands.  Also, the event is FREE.

Vanessa Beecroft. Image via: Artforum.com

Time for an old fashioned link dump! We’ve been remiss about this segment of our programming, but this should help put us back on track. A few items worthy of note which inspire more commentary than we like to see in our fresh link column.

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Good news for the ten cross over Gawker readers on this site: Editor Emily Gould is on vacation this week, which means surfers don’t have to sort through meaningless posts about her break up with her boyfriend and ridiculously lit good-bye swimsuit shots from her on a rooftop. Happily coinciding this, Choire Sicha emparts words of weight loss wisdom, which includes tips on an old favorite at AFC, photographer Vanessa Beecroft,

Also totally hot right now: exercise bulimia! This innovative form, pioneered by conceptual artist Vanessa Beecroft, is totally, utterly safe. After Judith Thurman’s 2003 profile of Beecroft in the New Yorker, Thurman participated in a Q&A extolling the virtues of this divine tactic:

Her bulimia –exercise bulimia –isn’t life-threatening. It isn’t like anorexia, which can lead to death. It isn’t even like the more conventional kind of bulimia, which involves vomiting, and which can lead to unpleasant physical conditions, such as gum disease, tooth decay, ulcers, etc. Her obsession does, of
course, “eat up” a tremendous portion of her life, daily and psychic. But it also apparently feeds her art. And she does see a therapist. As she says herself, she didn’t (and I think doesn’t) want to “waste herself” completely.

See? Totally harmless! And look at La Beecroft now! Thin as a twig. And not crazy at all.

There you have it future artists; let your obsessions get the better of you, see a therapist, and not only will you be skinny, but you just might get a gallery out it!

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Jane Kallir writes brilliantly about the perils of a collector driven market in the Art Newspaper saying,

For the past century or so, the art world has been supported by four principal pillars: artists, collectors, dealers and the art-historical establishment (critics, academics, and curators). […] Over the long term, art-historical value is determined by consensus among all four art-world pillars. When any one of the four entities assume disproportionate power, there is a danger that this entity’s personal preferences will cloud everyone’s short-term judgement. Put bluntly, the danger of a collector-driven art world is that money will trump knowledge. Great collectors should ideally become nearly as knowledgeable as the curators and dealers who help them build their collections. But not all of today’s collectors have the passion or the time necessary to develop this depth of knowledge.

The above quote is directly lifted from dealer Edward Winkleman who also ruminates on the contemporary art market expressing an interest in using solo shows for artists at fairs as a means of slowing collectors down a bit. Since collectors seem to favor purchasing work at fairs and auctions over exhibitions these days, the suggestion isn’t so far out in left field, but the practicality of it really depends on the fair and the installation. While Urs Fischer’s installation at Gavin Brown in Art Basel Miami might be an exception to this, fairs like ones in Miami create such a frenzied atmosphere amongst collectors that it’s virtually impossible to cut through that to actually see the work.

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The Brooklyn Rail talks with Barry Hoggard, James Wagner, and painternyc about the future of art criticism. The article makes a number of interesting points before getting to the interview, citing artists like Arshile Gorky’s expressed distrust of critics who couldn’t draw, to discussing the current valuations of a gushing review from one of New York’s top critics (that being 50,000.) The interviews themselves are quite good and worth the read. Painterpaparazzi expresses some concern about commenting saying, “The blog format is flawed, and the anonymous nature of posts a problem. I think it might evolve into something like TMZ.com, a celebrity stocking site, or perezhilton.com, where they just deal with celebrities.” James Wagner and Barry Hoggard discuss their blogs, beginning with their first posts, which had no pictures!