Jerry Salz in a quick note on his Facebook page: "MoMA's dreary Marlene Dumas show establishes that she is a sensationalist with no original ideas about painting, color, or photography; she hasn't developed as an artist; is merely a later day Neo-Expressionist; is more connected to Andreas Serrano than to any painter."... [more]

Lazy Sunday (2005, 15.7MB, 2:22 min.) “watch this video because it’s really, really funny.” post by t.whid [more]

As promised.Here's a roundup of some of the things we missed over the holiday break:The LA Times's Diane Haithman spoke with MOCA's new chief executive, Charles Young, and reported that one of the things he will do is "oversee the museum’s cooperation with the California attorney general’s office, which is looking into the museum's finances following news reports that MOCA had used restricted funds to cover general operating expenses. 'I talked to some of the members of the board about the s... [more]

The piece above was created by Pablo Sánchez Herrero and David de la Mano. [more]

Currently there are a number of excellent blogs that cover various aspects of internet marketing. I thought it would be worthwhile to put together a list of some that stand out as being among the best sources of content. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend subscribing to all of them because of information overload. I would recommend subscribing to those that cover topics that interest you most, and areas where you’re looking to learn more. I’m sure there are others that could have been in... [more]

Congrats to Huntington Beach based painter Sherie' Franssen for making Kenneth Baker's Top 5 List for 2008. As always it's nice to see an OC based artist get this kind of recognition.... [more]

Over the holidays I reflected on what I thought might be next in contemporary art, what will happen now that the market is no longer driving things...no longer "the story" of contemporary art. In doing so, I should note, I considered "contemporary art" as a dialog between artists, curators/museums, critics, collectors, fairs, and yes even galleries, although clearly artists are the raison d'etre for the rest of us. With that in mind, I'll save my thoughts on how any of this applies to artists until th... [more]

click here for prostress and here for han's headquarters... [more]

My Desk at Work Today is the first day back to work for many people. Not me! Since I've accumulated so many vacation days and my boss is out of town this week, I decided to pad my holiday with three extra days. I've been off since December 19th and it's been heavenly!In three days I plan to do ALLLLL of the chores and tasks that I was supposed to complete during the holidays....mundane stuff like laundry, dusting, a bit of de-cluttering, re-stocking the fridge with healthy food, etc. Larry's birth... [more]

OK, I'm resigned to MOCA's trustees out-raising MAN readers. But y'all still donated $2,887 to 16 public school arts education projects, helping to provide arts education to at least 1,255 kids. That's almost double what you gave last year. (And there's just $156 left on our last project...)Thanks to: Anonymous (6), Anonymous in honor of Mrs. Sheila Bisenius, Greg Albers, Roberta Bloom, Kathryn Cornelius, Franklin Einspruch, Anne Farrell, Tony Fitzpatrick, Suzanne Fredericq, Samuel Freeman, Heathe... [more]

What a year: The Melvins Comic Book, Comic Strip Poems, Igloo Tornado show, first radio interview, BEASTS! Book 2, American Illustration #27, a few group shows and plenty of traveling to several comic conventions... and Obama won!Of course, the best thing that happened was getting married to Anna! And going on our honeymoon to Belize.I've got a lot of things planned for 2009: a new graphic novel that I'm working on, a book of my paintings and other non-comics artwork, more traveling, maybe a new dog... who knows what else?But I'm starting off 2009 by training for... [more]

Interesting post at NPIRL. I will provide a link to the article along with some of the key points for me. (I need to separate them from the text to facilitate my thinking due to ingrained self taught short attention span) (I was reading Bob Dylan’s bio last night and he talked about forcing himself to read long poems and memorize passages to offset or wean himself away from the tv, 45rpm, 3 min song lazy thought pattern.) The Work of Art in the Age of Computational (Re)Production *** Posted by Alpha Auer… Key points... [more]

Today's the first day back to work of the New Year, with all of the frenetic pacing I'd expected, and the best news is that I have no news to report. I was fairly exhausted by December! I took a few days off last week and the effects were positively rejuvenating, and I'm delighted to be here now, as my hippie friends say. I am starting 2009 with a wildly imaginative and ambitious new project that I'll announce formally later this week, so I'm off to work on that for a while. Tonight I'm very mu... [more]

So Channel 4's digital fund (for making new kinds of media, not for making telly on the web) announces it's first 'big' project. 'Central Station' is an online artists resource merged with a soap opera based in Glasgow School of Art. Oh, and there's a social networking element, "Central Station will make publishing original art on the web much easier and more commonplace". It's almost impossible at this stage to work out quite what sort of a beast this will be. There are plenty of venues for artists... [more]

Sorry for the seemingly random submissions all gathered under one umbrella but I need to clear my metaphorical palette.Strange things have been landing in my email box. I think because I joined the Facebook CGU Alumni group I received this announcement:I could be mistaken but I don't think I actually know Lisa Adams but there was a painting that really caught my eye when I went to visit her web site: Chris Rywalt, who as you may know is the mercurial Blogger/Painter/Facecracker, has tipped me off to two painters. Carolanna Parlato and Kathryn Nova Williams, respectively:Ok.I am totally... [more]

Joe Bradley, Schmagoo Paintings, at Canada - I saw it right after it had officially closed, but the stuff was still up... except one of the paintings was in Miami.Two previous mentions of this show have generated (and continue to generate) a lot of good comments... so I'm re-posting them all together... if you want your "comment name" switched to "anonymous" here in this more open posting just e-mail me and I'll fix it.First Post 11/10/08:Chris Sharp on Joe Bradley, at Canada - "it doesn’t get... [more]

Farewell Shoes for Mr. Bush is a shoe art exhibition open to artists of all mediums and from around the globe, who will have an opportunity to express their feelings on a shoe or pair of shoes. Participating artists are encouraged to explore innovative, evocative and genuine creations and to transcend the outside layers of the shoes. Shoes of all sizes (size 10 not required!) materials and provenance will be transformed into expressions of political, visual art, or simply a “farewell”.The selected... [more]

Hello Everybody, Happy New Year and very best wishes from FBC! I don't really know what to tell you ... except I hope you and I will have and keep our jobs in 2009, that you and I will be in good health, surrounded by friends and loved ones, that your projects will be fruitful, the art will be good and the senseless violence will cease. It doesn't matter who started it first, people. Please [more]

"FRONT CURTAIN" Richard Gleaves Opening Reception: January 10, 2009 / 6 - 9pm Art Produce Gallery 3139 University Ave. San Diego, CA 92104 619.584.4448 lynn@artproducegallery.com www.artproducegallery.com... [more]

Download audio file (Bad_at_Sports_Episode_175-Lucking-Ivison.mp3) download This week: THE AMANDA BROWDER SHOW! Amanda talks to Nick Lucking and Tim Ivison about www.spcmkr.com and their various projects. SPCMKR facilitates and documents space exchanges, providing a site through which to organize a gift-economy between users. The web-based component of the project provides an interface for locating and contributing resources, arranging for temporarily inhabiting surplus spaces, and documenting both... [more]

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where peoplemail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.-----Email Message-----Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 2:21 AMSubject: regarding picking your noseI almost broke off the engagement for that exact reason. I'm glad I didn't -- it turns out we're both closet nose-pickers and we've been blissfully married for nearly 4 years!-----Email Message-----Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 5:15 AMSubject: Afraid of handicapped childI also have a handicapped brother, and because of him I have no fear of having a handicapped child, because I know... [more]

It took Israeli director Ari Folman four years to create Waltz with Bashir, an unusual autobiographical animated film now in limited engagement across the U.S. that warns of the nightmares that follow in the wake of war. The movie opens with an unsettling vision, a pack of rabid dogs - twenty six to be exact, racing along wet streets under yellowy skies, frothing at the mouth and evidently [more]

Willoughby Sharp was a man of art, in the old fashioned sense Thomas Craven meant it. He was fully committed to every facet of a life spent waiting on the muse, wherever it would lead him, from the meanest squalor and confusion to the grandest scene of triumph. read more [more]

Yes. It is gonna get wacky. [more]

This looks like a great weekend of performance, curated by Chase Granoff and Chris Peck: LAPS: Live Sh-- Alternative Presenter Fair Saturday January 10 6-10pm & Sunday January 11 4-8pm FREE admission, homemade chocolate chip cookies and cheap drinks! The Chocolate Factory Basement 5-49 49th Avenue L.I.C., NY 11101 Directions Live Sh-- invites a number of independent presenters (including performance series, record labels, galleries, and collectives) to share video and documentation from... [more]

Before 2008 ends, in anticipatory celebration of an anniversary, I want to publish a paper I wrote in 1979 . “Aart and Obscurism: First Arguments” outlines a view of art and art making informed by conceptual art and seeking to advance its tenets. Of necessity, this theory of art was sub-cultural and germinated outside of the established “art world.” My personal position in the established art world at the time was that of “outsider,” and that perception obviously colored the tone of... [more]

Parisian band, the Cavaliers live at Regine's Club January 7th, promoting their self-titled debut album. (Video features them in a previous concert at the Nouveau Casino.) Regine's49, Rue Ponthieu 75008 Paris... [more]

Left: Georgia O'Keeffe, Ranchos Church No.1, 1929, Oil on canvas, 18 3/4 x 24 inches, CR 664, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Right: Ansel Adams, Saint Francis Church Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, c. 1929, Gelatin silver print, 13 5/16 x 17 9/16 inches, Collection Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, ©The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. I think of Ansel Adams as the Walt Whitman of American photography, creating "silent songs"... [more]

I was just in New Orleans in a futile attempt to view all the art at the myriad Prospect.1 venues. I'm working on a piece for ArtSlant, and will be posting from my seemingly endless stream of photos on Flickr, so stay tuned.FIRST IMPRESSIONS:• This could easily surpass the Whitney Biennial in the coming years.• If you are a famous video artist today, you are making elaborate works requiring huge casts and crews, hoping to conquer cinema.AND:• Every time I go to New Orleans I wish I'd planned... [more]

Daood interviews Dr. Maulana Karenga, the founder of Kwanzaa. Learn more about Dr. Karenga (who was named in 2002 as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans by scholar Molefi Kete Asante) and about the tradition he helped establish... Take us back to September 7, 1965 to the political climate that brought forth the Us organization? Us emerged in the wake of two critical and shaping events: ... [more]

As we approach the end of what many of us would say has been a year full of hardship, change and uncertainty - not least of all me, here's an excerpt from the current issue of tangent. I'm determined to end this horrible year on a note of rebellious hope, and celebrate the invincible spirit of artists everywhere: Waiting for the Credit Crunch to End? As anyone who’s recently been petrified to [more]

In 2002, I made a decision to drop graphic design from my double major in college. It was an inevitable decision and one a long time in the making. I had become cynical about the relationship between design and greed. I was too much of an idealist then, writing design manifesto's for change within the curriculum. Of course, radical change would never happen and I decided to leave. I would focus on other passions in contemporary art. Yet the language of design, and the love for it, stayed with... [more]

[more]

Daniel Rozin, Peg Mirror, 2007. The Milwaukee Art Museum is currently exhibiting a show called Act/React. I visited the show just over a month ago and have been meaning to blog about it for some time. It is coming down on January 11, so if you’re going to be in or passing through Milwaukee over the holiday break, take a moment to stop in and see the show. It is worth it. Going into the show, I was most excited to see the work of Cammille Utterback. Her piece, Liquid Time, is one of my favori... [more]

Before I begin my top ten, I want to say that 2008, for me, will always be the year Robert Rauschenberg died. We lost someone special. Rest in Peace. 1. Louise Bourgeois, The Guggenheim and MOCA: Her forms seemed to grow on the Guggenheim’s Modernist, reasoned interiors. Razors and flesh, trauma and tumbling bursts of creative energy, I became a Bourgeois convert instantly. I admit I want to [more]

LMCC Workspace Artist-in-Residence and Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grantee Ricky Sears will conduct a public art project, Pier 17 Hands-On Frottage: Recording History, at Pier 17 in the South Street Seaport. All are invited to participate in Ricky's project at the exterior entrance to Pier 17 Pavilion [map]. Please join him December 30 and 31, 2009 anytime between 9 am - 3 pm to contribute to a 10 x 10 graphite on paper rubbing of the wooden surface of the pier. Ricky will be present both days with paper and graphite sticks but this project will only succeed with participation from the public! Plans are in pl... [more]

The future of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is being decided as we speak. Two scenarios have been preoccupying the press — a LACMA-MOCA merger or a “bailout” by Eli Broad — and the final outcome may be a mix of the two, or something different. This is LA, a city of white knights and twisting plots. Events don’t always follow the predictable screenplay. (I have long been a fan of a Getty-MOCA combo, but that, apparently, is not in the cards.) Whatever happens, the art world... [more]

Almost Done... [more]

That's Portfolio's Felix Salmon and I on Bloggingheads discussing the art market: from Eli Broad and supercollectors to the Russian oligarchs to parallels between an art world in crisis today (Murakami, Koons, Hirst) and yesterday (Halley, Salle, and Fischl).... [more]

Click to Play Red shoes take a brisk walk in Boston. ... [more]

Every time I think about what has happened my body just shivers with emotions and my eyes well up. To think that what I've been through, my parents and grandparents, today is SO amazing and unbelievable. I remember traveling across the US by car as a child being forced to drive 20-30 miles out of the way in order to find a place that would rent us a room for the night, being denied service in restaurants for not being white, called names, being treated like unwanted stepchildren and, you know many... [more]

Symposium: Painting in the 21st CenturyOn Saturday, September 27, 2008, from 10 am - 5 pm The Phillips Collection in DC will host a Symposium titled Painting in the 21st Century.Participants:Yve-Alain BoisInstitute for Advanced Study, PrincetonSpencer FinchArtist, Brooklyn, New YorkJonathan FinebergUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-ChampaignBlake GopnikThe Washington PostSuzanne HudsonUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-ChampaignDorothy M. KosinskiThe Phillips Collection and Center for the Study of Modern ArtL... [more]

Over 250,000 euro cent coins are being used to create Sagmeister's sentence for Urban Play - which the public can then remix as they like. The work has been kindly removed by the police in order to protect it, as people were taking coins (as expected) and eventually modifying the installation. Stefan Sagmeister Urban Play project by scottburnham. Read More at http://scottburnham.com/... [more]

Self-taught Designer Max Lam started Owindo as an offshoot of his Hong Kong-based Moderne Interior Design firm a few years back. His 1960s and '70s-inspired lights now come in pendant, floor, wall, and table styles. He's recently introduced a new white finish in addition to the chrome-plated styles. A few of our favorites include (from top left, clockwise) the Prism Sixty, C.C.C.5.5P, Tube Complex and Diamond Complex. ... [more]

Tampa Bay Business Journal [more]

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not sure how the world works at all. But some lovely soul slipped my name on to a rather amazing list of writers and critics doing a conference in Rotterdam at the Witte de With Contemporary Arts Center in Rotterdam. The list of participants is startlingly good and I am really happy to be participating. Here's the press stuff below, if any wayward Europeans are looking to geek ou tover art criticism, this is probably the best conference I've ever seen of its... [more]

two friends, oil on board, 30 x 30 cm, 2008 A small painting that I finished today. [more]

Habib-o-llah Sadeghi + Mahmoud Shalooyee (previous and curent Presidents islamic fine arts department) "Rappers, youth, rock musicians, artists and freethinkers are all Satanists!!!!!!!!,"concludes an Iranian official news program on Iranian television.Just check out this new law which has been declared by the Iranian Ministry of Islamic Culture and Education’s Fine Arts Department: "All official and unofficial fine art shows, exhibitions, events and expos should have prior permission from... [more]

Life of Her Party, today's Op-Ed by Maureen Dowd, the last brain at the New York Times.... [more]

A short documentary on this great Brazilian artist whose work is currently showing at the San Jose based Anno Domini. [more]

The City of Upper Arlington Cultural Arts Division presents Latino Arts/OHIO 2008, a visual, performing and literary arts exhibition on view in the Concourse Gallery August 25 to September 19, 2008. The Concourse Gallery is located at the Municipal Services Center, 3600 Tremont Road, and is free and open to the public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.–5 p.m. The exhibition features a fine arts exhibit curated by Egle Gatins and Elena Osterwalder showcasing a variety of artwork created... [more]