paintings + drawings

Quote Of The Day

From Mary Elizabeth Williams:

"Turns out there's not a whole lot of difference between the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and the Cremaster cycle."

Like A Face Tattoo

The best comment I've hear about the NuMu controversy is from Sharon Butler:

"Calling an art space "New Museum" is like tattooing  your entire face: People expect you to act a certain way, and you'll have a harder time growing up than other kids."

Warhol's Michael Jackson Silkscreen On The Block

From the Thriller-era Jackson (1984), the painting's estimate was $700,000. Bidding closed at $812,500.

Meanwhile, Tunafish Disaster, a favorite of mine, did not sell.

I guess celebrity death still trumps corporate negligence.

I Should Be A Finalist For This

Or at least get a sympathy f*ck. 

The Ordway Prize.

Why? 

First of all, because I've never trash-talked the New Museum and their exhibition ideas (okay, maybe I did. But I didn't think it would stop me from being nominated. And I didn't really mean. Okay, sorry for groveling). Secondly, and more importantly, I should win this because the award is named after my street.

I need someone to get on this right away, and fix it.

Fail

During the first month of the Art In Storefront Project, a local project created to combat or cover over the economic downturn, one artist was already stabbed.

From the coverage on Two Coats of Paint: "San Francisco street artist Chor Boogie was working on a project on Market Street between Sixth and Seventh street (in image at right) when he confronted four people who were trying to steal his spray paint. They stabbed him and took off on a Muni bus, but he hopes surveillance cameras will help police track them down. Boogie's mural is part of San Francisco's Art in Storefronts project launched last month. The arts commission selected 20 artists to come up with art installations aimed at revitalizing Market Street and other neighborhoods.

"Chor Boogie along with all the other artists who were invited to the Art In Storefronts program were only paid $500 to help defray some of their expenses associated with these installations, so they're really providing a gift to the city," says Luis Cancel from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Naturally the arts commission hopes this was an isolated incident but recommends that artists painting murals for the city work in teams."

Nice -- "work in teams." That's kinda like saying "when gussying up our City you're on your own." More coverage is here.

On Ballard And The Arts

Jonathan Lethem in the NY Times:

"Every bit as striking as Ballard’s feeling for entropy is his engagement with arts from which literature too often seems quarantined: music, sculpture, painting, architecture. He evokes artistic creation with the passion of an exile for a lost kingdom. Like his scientific characters, Ballard’s overreaching artists glimpse seeds of doom at the heart of their endeavors. And in perhaps his most famous vision, the novel “Crash,” technology, sculpture, sex and death recede to the same vanishing point: the permanently contemporary site of the car crash."

Shameless Self-Promotion

..."it works for me on just the most basic level..."

That's me babbling like a brook about Franz Kline's Lehigh V Span for SFMOMA's Oral History Project. It's part of "Dispatches From The Archives."

You should definitely stop in and check it out (because I have more face time than seen here) and, of course, listen to everyone else who is included, since they are way more interesting.

Dave Hickey

"...Genius is an accident."

Art history according to Darwin (via Two Coats of Paints).

Embrace Of The Irrational, Trailer

The latest from John Herschend.

Attention. Your Attention, Please.

SFMOMA now has this beauty from Robert Motherwell on view. It's a stunner in person (the internet is not doing it any justice.) Get over there, check it out. You won't be sorry.