.John Haber on New Museum controversy. Is our Dear Leader still talking about this on facebook?"The museum is doing a fascinating project" argues Jeffrey Deitch. Deitch is also curator of the Joannu collection.Deitch employee (and artist) Kathy Grayson requests "a little respect for the inderdisciplinarity we all celebrate", lauding Jannou's brilliance and the "obvious coolness of the most important artist of the last few decades doing a curatorial project"."If Louis XIV was alive today he'd own a... [more]

silk 1940s dress––long, $375 from New Orleans' Trashy Diva  How To Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood–– $28 in bookstores   Rose Noir–– $195 from Byredo Parfums   Scented Talcum Powder, Rose–– $40 from Santa Maria Novella guitar–– $215 from Gibson Collier de Chien bracelet––$1000 at Hermes... [more]

  I do not know why I bother posting images.  Any picture I have seen has not done Alex Grey’s work justice.  Grey is far more than the commercial, psychedelic artist he may appear to be; he is a master figure painter, educated anatomist, and a perfectionist-he was touching up one of his paintings during the opening reception.  And, yes, he did the album cover for Tool’s 10,000 Days. The Art of Alex Grey at the Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion at Orange Coast College showcases the various styles Grey has explored... [more]

The new issue of e-flux/journal is up online and I am giddy over it.  This is their tenth episode as the journal, which makes it nearly a year old, as they publish monthly. Though the journal is a relatively new application of the e-flux program, e-flux.com has been around since January 1999 beginning with an email announcement about a small exhibition in a Chinatown Holiday Inn hotel room.  A decade later e-flux is still based out of New York with far reaching out posts in Berlin, and the corneal recep... [more]

Opportunity for ArtistsDeadline: February 15th, 2010Wanna be in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Art Library?We’ll send you a lined Moleskine journal. Fill it up with a narrative of some sort and send it back to us. It will be shown at the exhibition and then permanently reside at the Brooklyn Art Library for the public to see.Details here.... [more]

For many, gifts with a three-figure price tag make a generous offering, but this year Yatzer upped the ante with their guide of gifts for the ultimate in luxury and the pinnacle in price points. CH picked a few of the gifts that may just be worth saving up for—providing you have a very large piggie bank. Hasselblad's H4D medium format DSLR features a 60 Mpixel MF sensor and a new True Focus technology, an attribute built to provide outstanding focus throughout the entire image. The camera w... [more]

Noting that Jeane-Claude has died, I was reminded of the strange way that the female partners (in more senses than one) of male artists suddenly got themselves acknowledged as co-creators. Anyone who was interested in the work of Christo before the nineties will remember that he was just 'Christo'.Jeanne-Claude Dies After Brain Aneuyrism - ARTINFO.comUntil 1994, the pair worked under the name Christo, only then officially changing the name to "the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude."Then question is... [more]

Terence Koh captured mid-lecture during his performance “Art History: 1642-2009″ at the National Arts Club, New York via Zimbio Last night ArtObserved was on site at New York City’s National Arts Club to witness a performance,”Art History: 1642 – 2009,” from Terence Koh.  The performance was curated by Stacey Engman, the National Arts Club’s Contemporary Art Chair and Chief Curator and was in conjunction with Performa 09. Indeed, the theme of the night – a tour through the great canon of Art History – was set from the beginning of the night as guest... [more]

Terence Koh captured mid-lecture during his performance “Art History: 1642-2009″ at the National Arts Club, New York via Zimbio Last night ArtObserved was on site at New York City’s National Arts Club to witness a performance,”Art History: 1642 – 2009,” from Terence Koh.  The performance was curated by Stacey Engman, the National Arts Club’s Contemporary Art Chair and Chief Curator and was in conjunction with Performa 09. Indeed, the theme of the night – a tour through the great canon of Art History – was set from the beginning of the night as guest... [more]

Terence Koh captured mid-lecture during his performance “Art History: 1642-2009″ at the National Arts Club, New York via Zimbio Last night ArtObserved was on site at New York City’s National Arts Club to witness a performance,”Art History: 1642 – 2009,” from Terence Koh.  The performance was curated by Stacey Engman, the National Arts Club’s Contemporary Art Chair and Chief Curator and was in conjunction with Performa 09. Indeed, the theme of the night – a tour through the great canon of Art History – was set from the beginning of the night as guest... [more]

When I heard that artist Jeanne-Claude had died, I went back to the blog post I wrote last year about her visit to American Art with her other half, Christo. Together, as husband and wife and as artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been reinventing the contemporary art landscape for more than fifty years with their installations such as wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris, and of course, Running Fence, their monumental project in Northern California from the 1970s. Christo and... [more]

from the press release BOOKMEAT - The silent auction of a one-night-only library http://www.sidestreet.org/bookmeat Saturday, November 21, 2009, 6pm-10pm Event to be held at-- "The Brick Building" 8870 Washington Blvd. (between Robertson & National, next door to the Royal/T) Culver City, CA 90232 Side Street Projects PO Box 90432, Pasadena, CA 91103 626.798.7774 jon@sidestreet.org www.sidestreet.org Join LA's most intriguing & celebrated artists, writers and curators for a most unusual sile... [more]

10.29.09-12.24.09 Freymond-Guth & Co., Zürich, review written by Quinn Latimer [more]

My friend Stephan Walter along with James Ramsey and Tracey Ryans put this exhibition on. Art of the motorcycle 2?... [more]

This is the Thanksgiving edition of Vintage Photo Friday!At the head of the table, Grandpa Sam, Aunt Mae (standing), Grandma Freda, Cousin Marilyn, Cousin Janet, Uncle Bob, Aunt Celia, Mom (closest to the camera), Me, Cousin CarolynEvery year since I was a tiny girl, my Aunt Mae and Uncle Marvin have hosted our family Thanksgiving. Aunt Mae is my Mother's older sister. Here we are in 1956 at Mae's and Marv's duplex on Spalding Drive in Beverly Hills. After Dinner!L-R: My brother, Ken, Dad, Grandpa,... [more]

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I just dashed together Small Oil Abstractions, a place to purchase some of the small paintings from earlier this year. I will be updating it this weekend with better images. Thanks to Tracy for organizing the Fine Art Department.... [more]

Tomorrow, it is the 25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl. More info here. There is an interview with the creator of Sketchcrawl, Enrico Casarosa and after reading it, i hope you will be as inspired as i was. The act of drawing, seeing, looking, being aware of the moment is not only meditative, it makes me feel alive. I only heard about this event a couple of days ago and would have joined a group or make one of my own. Perhaps, i can do a solo sketchcrawl.Tonight - College Night at the deYoung Museum... [more]

Clarida and Bernstein on the recent Schrock decision (mentioned earlier here):"[T]he cases appeared to diverge as to three fundamental questions: (1) Is a photograph of a copyrighted work a derivative work at all? (the 'Definition Question'); (2) Must such a derivative work exhibit a higher level of originality in order to qualify for copyright protection? (the 'Originality Question'); (3) Must the creator of such a derivative work obtain separate specific permission to register his or her copyright, ov... [more]

Christian Marclay: 2822 Records (PS1), 1987-2009 [more]

From Raquel: "After painting big size with many artists (mainly boys), I am beginning a serial of collaborations with women that don´t work on the streets or whose regular lives are very far from art circuits. First one: with a girl that makes everything you can imagine with crochet. And the second one with my mother. She is recycling materials around the house to build headdresses for my surmas. She is a regular spanish housewife ,that is beginning to discover street art because she want... [more]

Currently in the heartland, celebrating my father's 70th Birthday (Happy 70th, Dad!!!). Regular blogging to resume next week. [more]

Artists Write: Thinking While Making Things Jackson Pollock and Piero della Francesca Ride Lonesome, Part 2 -- David Reed The alternation s in this film between day and night both marks time and shows changes of mood. Day is for moving; night is for contemplation and conversation. These scenes are 'American night,' shot during the day with filters. Thus, although supposedly 'night,' there are strong, eerie shadows in the darkness, making night look like darkened day, daytime with an... [more]

I'm taking a Friday off. I'll have two more posts on Edward Burtynsky next week, plus I'll kick off our 2009 DonorsChoose.org drive. (Last year you gave $3,000 to help provide art education to 1,300 students!) [more]

The Island of Florida: A Revisionist HistoryFriday, November 20th, 2009, 8pmBack in 2006 the conquest-of-Florida-themed band Ponce De Leon (John P. Hogan, Greg McKenna, and Dave Reich) decided the appropriate showcase for their latest batch of material would be a rock musical to be written and directed by John and to be performed by Hogan, the band, and some friends. This musical, entitled The Island of Florida: A Foundation Myth, would be performed at CalArts as Hogan’s thesis project for his mas... [more]

If you live in LA, you can't have missed the hoopla about MOCA's 30th birthday and all the self-congratulatory stuff about the-museum-back-from-the-brink-celebrates-its-gala, with worldwide famous and famed art amateurs Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in attendance, to witness the Francesco Vezzoli orchestrated "performance" with no less than Lady Gaga. In case you wondered, tickets to attend the [more]

Auto Exposure and White/Black BGs (2009, 23MB, 3:53 min.) Educational video by Ian Parks. [more]

drawing by marguerita... [more]

© Henry Roy / Gottlund Verlag Henry Roy’s Spirit seems to live even as it lay open on my kitchen table. The cover image depicts a sleeping man in breathtaking color. The man’s rich, dark skin and the green of a plant in the background pop against the amorphous beige interior that surrounds the scene. Spanning the past ten years of his career, Spirit collects nearly 50 photographs and 6 short stories that capture a mystical energy. With the eye of a portraitist, Roy skillfully isolates his subje... [more]

This piece, along with 4 others, will be part of an art show called The 100 Euros Show in Stuttgart, Germany, opening this Friday.I think this is the first time my art has been shown outside of the U.S.If you're in Germany- GO CHECK IT OUT!... [more]

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jeff koons shows his new ab fab pieces @ gagosian beverly hillscongrats to jeff & respect! to the painters ;-) ... [more]

For great event ideas and destinations visit ExperienceLA.com. ... [more]

Gregg ChadwickThe River Dreams16"x11" oil on linen 2009I am reading WS Merwin's recent book of poems - The Shadow of Sirius - and thinking deeply about the mystery of our place in the universe. I had a chance to chat briefly with WS Merwin after his wonderful reading at the Hammer Museum on October 29th. We spoke of elephants and mystery and nature. Inspiring stuff.Professor Stephen Yenser is doing an amazing job with this series of poetry readings at the Hammer. And Mona Simpson's favorite writer... [more]

Date: Friday, November 20, 2009 7:00pm Location: BlueStockings 172 Allen St New York, NY Wu Ming is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors, "a band of guerrilla novelists" whom have collaboratively written several novels, including 54 (2002), Manituana (2009), and, under the pseudonym of Luther Blissett, Q (1999). read more [more]

11/18/2009 - 12/14/2009 4081021596_093359c966_o(2).jpg Uncommon Ground, Steve Lambert and Victoria Estok. Photo Christine A. Butler. Eyebeam is pleased to announce our call for next season's Residents and Fellows is NOW OPEN. Eyebeam Residencies are a 5-month opportunity for production and presentation of projects querying art, techn... [more]

Text by Kay Roberts - Opening tomorrow evening, Thursday 19th NovemberPURPLE DESK is a 30 part work, a series of 30 photographs, the offices of the cardinals in the Roman Curia, the Vatican City. Matthias Schaller was given access to these rooms, making portraits of place, but without the presence of each cardinal. The series was realised between 2004 and 2008 and is now a book published by Editions Steidl, this will be shown at the chapel, along with 2 other books by the artist published by Steidl. On... [more]

We’ve heard the business gurus: This is the age of creativity. Only the dreamers survive. The MFA is the new MBA. But hold on. Stefan Leijnen and Liane Gabora, researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada, point out that too much creativity may not be a good thing. Their argument boils down to this: Innovation–creativity–is necessary to introduce new ideas. But for any innovation to take root, it must also be copied. Society depends not just on creators but also on followers.... [more]

ART MATTERS ANNOUNCES 2009 GRANTEES William Cordova Support for travel to Peru, Uruguay and 35 US states to document historic landmarks associated with radical community activist groups. Simone Leigh Support for travel to Durban, South Africa, to research contemporary material culture in Zululand. Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere Support for travel to Castelfidardo, Italy to attend the 34th annual Festival Internazionale Fisarmonica and tour the Borsini factory. Marc Andre Robinson Suppor... [more]

When it comes to social media marketing you’ll hear some people say that it is best opportunity out there for bloggers and website owners, and others will tell you that it’s a complete waste of time. In my opinion, and from my experience, social media brings a lot of potential for getting exposure to just about any website, but it should only be part of the equation. Other types of traffic like search engine visitors, direct visitors, and those who come via links from other sites are mor... [more]

Robert Pattinson’s got nothing on Francis Bacon! Who needs fan sites and movie trailers when you have ArtsConnectEd.org? See the slideshow presentation created by a Twilight fan, who uses artworks by Bacon and others to illustrate an outline of this, uh, literary sensation. It’s not too early to get a start on next year’s Halloween costume: Take inspiration from this paper-crafted self-portrait-as-helmet by 3D artist Eric Testroete, inspired by “big-head mode seen in videogames” Se... [more]

Robert Pattinson’s got nothing on Francis Bacon! Who needs fan sites and movie trailers when you have ArtsConnectEd.org? See the slideshow presentation created by a Twilight fan, who uses artworks by Bacon and others to illustrate an outline of this, uh, literary sensation. It’s not too early to get a start on next year’s Halloween costume: Take inspiration from this paper-crafted self-portrait-as-helmet by 3D artist Eric Testroete, inspired by “big-head mode seen in videogames” Se... [more]

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where peoplemail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.-----Email Message-----I worked for Reuters my entire life and was one of their most senior, valued employees. I was laid off last year when Thomson bought them over. Thank you so much for sending this in. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.-----Email Message (pic)-----A designer friend told me that the secret inspiration for the new Pepsi logo was the Simpson's Comic Book Guy.-----Email Message-----My ex-husband and I left the court house the day of our divorce and spen... [more]

In 1977 I set some small wood stakes in the front yard of the house I rented on Mariposa Street near downtown Los Angeles and stretched yellow twine between them, forming two large X’s on either side of the walkway leading up to our front door. The piece was called I Stake A Claim In LA and had the supplemental component of a want-ad I ran in the Los Angeles Times for the duration of the week the piece existed.As initial announcement of my arrival in Los Angeles, the stake piece served as my address... [more]

Artist Peter Walsh is a writing fellow for Performa ‘09. He just let me know about the project Scoring Performa, which has a number of writers, well, scoring the annual performance art festival. The resulting document is a wide variety of takes on what the assessment of art can be: critique, summary, reaction, etc. From Peter’s own post (an excerpt): “Some Notes on Liveness: Part One” By PETER WALSH I’m addicted to the privilege of “being there.” In a society where the eyewitness testi... [more]

Guido van der WerveMarc FoxxThrough November 28(disclaimer: this essay is not to be confused with the review of the show to follow in next month's ArtReview)A favorite of mine is Adalbert Stifter’s children’s story Rock Crystal from 1853. Stifter is not a familiar name in America, mostly because other than a few anthologized stories and his novel Indian Summer, he is out of print and virtually [more]

20 years ago today East Germany acknowledged that the Berlin Wall essentially meant nothing. This historic moment was carried out in the aesthetic visage of massive crowds gathering on either side, helping each other climb the wall, champaign popping and finally hammers giving way to cranes in the removal of the barrier. It was a powerful signal that heartened many and was basically the point of no return in the fall of Communism. I took this photo while visiting this past summer. To the left is the... [more]

The trouble with Agreements and Contracts is that it attempts to state clearly, for however many parties are involved, responsibilities. This can protect all parties involved in business. Some however use it as a tool to trap innocent parties. This makes us wary when it comes to signing anything. Rightfully so and as an adult, you need to be aware and Read Everything you sign. If you read it completely and have questions you need to raise those questions Before signing contracts and agreements.... [more]

Two portraits of Vladimir Mayakovsky by Alexander Rodchenko, via paris.blog.lemonde.fr Amazon.com Widgets James and I have been listening to this excellent box set of vocal music from the former East Germany. The widget above plays a sample of Friedrich Schenker's "Leitfaden fur angehende Speichellecker" (Guide for bootlickers-in-training) composed in 1974. The text is based on a 1927 poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, in which the poet provides a satirical "guide for toadies" and at the end rips off the mask and says te... [more]