Faye Wang

75th Whitney Biennial

2010-02-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
General Information: (212) 570-3600
info@whitney.org

This year marks the seventy-fifth edition of the Whitney’s signature exhibition. While Biennials are always affected by the cultural, political, and social moment, this exhibition “simply titled 2010” embodies a cross section of contemporary art production rather than a specific theme. To underscore the idea of time as an element of the Biennial and to demonstrate the influence of the past on 2010, familiar and less well-known artists from previous exhibitions are brought together in Collecting Biennials, an accompanying installation drawn from the Museum’s collection on view on the fifth floor. Balancing different media ranging from painting and sculpture to video, photography, performance, and installation, 2010 also serves as a two-way telescope through which the Whitney’s past and future can be observed

Broadway Boogie Woogie

2009-04-15T20:19:00.000-07:00

Me with Mondrian, "Broadway Boogie Woogie"

Musuem of Modern Arts
11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019

A little History of Mondrian
Born in Holland in 1878, Piet Mondrian painted traditional subjects in an increasingly abstract style. By 1920, he adopts a totally abstract motif, employing an irregular checkerboard drawn with black lines, and with the spaces paints mostly white or sometimes in the primary colors of blue, red and yellow.

Escaping in 1940 from a Europe at war, Mondrian spends the last four years of his life in New York City, where he is fascinated by the exuberance of its city life. His paintings of that time express that exuberance. In his final painting, Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-1943), below, the checkerboard lines, previously black, are now painted blue, gray, red and yellow. (The yellow was apparently inspired by New York’s Yellow cabs).

In Broadway Boogie Woogie, Mondrian represents the restless motion of the city.

efa - Never Late than Better

2009-04-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

efa Project Space
323 West 39th Street
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018

Starts in 2 days
At EFA Project Space
Media: Painting, Installation, Video installation

print
On the centennial anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto, "Never Late than Better" (Trong Gia Nguyen, curator) contends with the questionable boundaries of space, time, and reality. Re-appraising the past and re-fashioning the present, the exhibition foregrounds a “bizarro universe” that counters the time-honored day-to-days of war, speed, and misogyny that F.T. Marinetti forecast in the Manifesto, published in Le Figaro in 1909. he Futurist Manifesto Is Whenever, a supplementary guide, will evolve with the duration of the show. Altering the traditional audio-tape guide, a selection of curators, critics, artists, and musicians will walk through the show before it opens and record their immediate responses, speaking into an old-fashioned cassette recorder. Each side of the tape will contain the voice of a different ‘critic.’ The audio-guides will be available for checking out, and viewers themselves are also encouraged to record their own take on the show, which will be left behind for subsequent viewers. At the exhibition’s conclusion, the collection of tapes will together form the ‘exhibition catalogue.’nyartbeat.com

Enough with the introduction. It was a great opening with a great amount of people coming to see the new works. Especially when they are serving free beer bottles.

The crowd

The bartender serving free beers

The Beer

Marc Ganzglass, Trojan Horse Idea, 2008, Ink jet Print, 72x40

Mike Womack, 8 Bit Blip, 2008, Cinder Block, Motor, Light, Steel, Aluminum, Plastic, Mirror

Christopher Chiappa, Windshield Wiper 2005-2008 Volvo station wagon rear windshield wiper and mechanism with a 13.8 volt transformer 35x17 1/2 inches

Peter Belyi, 15 Watts, 2008, Welded metal and mized media

Laura Nova, Wailing Wall, 2009, Installation/Tissue Boxes, 7x2 1/2 feet

David Maroto, Disillusion, Work in Progress, Installation/Boardgame, mixed media,
4x15 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches

Happy Trees

2009-04-07T20:31:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday, I went to a Bob Ross tribute at Gallery Bar located in lower Eastside by Delancey. The place started at 8pm and I was there a little bit early and boy, it was packed. There was a lady in the front that was teaching us how to paint like Bob Ross - quick and happy trees. I love the vibe especially I didn't know there were people that appreciate Bob Ross like I do. I grew watching his show when I was 5 years old. I wanted to be an artist because of him. He was my imspiration and I was happy to be there.

Beginning stage

Middle stage

After 15 mins, she was done

Andrew Wyeth, 'Christina's World' painter, dies

2009-01-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- Andrew Wyeth, the American painter perhaps best known for his painting of a young woman in a field, "Christina's World," has died, according to an official with the Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania.

Andrew Wyeth received the National Medal of Arts from President Bush in November 2007.

Wyeth, 91, died in his sleep Thursday night at his home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to Lora Englehart, public relations coordinator for the museum.

The acclaimed artist painted landscapes and figure subjects and worked mostly in tempera and watercolor.

He was widely celebrated inside and outside of the art world. President John F. Kennedy awarded him a Presidential Freedom Award and President Richard Nixon held a dinner and a private exhibition at the White House, according to a biography on the Ask/Art Web site.

Wyeth, who lived in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Maine, "has been enormously popular and critically acclaimed since his first one-man show in 1937," according to a biography in InfoPlease.

His main subjects were the places and people of Chadds Ford and Cushing, Maine.

"Christina's World," painted in 1948, shows a disabled Maine neighbor who drags herself through a field toward her house in the distance. The painting, displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, has been regarded as Wyeth's most popular.

"His 'Helga' pictures, a large group of intimate portraits of a neighbor, painted over many years, were first shown publicly in 1986," the InfoPlease biography says. Those were painted in Pennsylvania.

Wyeth, the youngest child of painter N.C. Wyeth, formally studied art with his father as a teen, "drawing in charcoal and painting in oils, the media of choice for N.C. Wyeth. It was during the family's annual summer vacations in Port Clyde, Maine, that Andrew was able to experiment with other media to find his own artistic voice," according to a biography in the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine.

Halloween Special

2008-11-08T21:23:00.000-08:00

...well 8 days later.

The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill
89 7th Ave S
(between S 7 Ave & Barrow St)
New York, NY 10014
http://thevillagepetstoreandcharcoalgrill.com

I went to the Village Pet Shore and Charcoal Grill to see what's all the hype was. Right when I got there, I encountered many visitors already flooded the area. It was right next to Sushi Samba, a over-priced Japanese restaurant in a trendy setting. In my notion, I thought it was a real petshop but to my realization it was an art show by Banksy. Saw moving hot dog, swimming fish sticks, chimpanzee watching money porn, little chick nuggets eating and more. It a small shop which takes a 360 turn to complete the tour. The displayment can be seen outside as well. It was a fun interesting experience. The show ended by October 31st.

Racking up for Bikers at Wall St

2008-08-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/bike_racks/index.php

TRUE GENIUS

David Byrne and the New York City Department of Transportation, in conjunction with New York art gallery PaceWildenstein, have unveiled nine unique bicycle racks designed by DB and installed in various locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. An avid bicyclist for almost 30 years, Byrne was invited to join the panel of jurors selected by the DOT to judge a design competition for outdoor and indoor bicycle racks. Inspired by the city's initiative, he submitted some original design ideas of his own named after specific locations and neighborhoods, which the DOT enthusiastically agreed to install for a period of 364 days.

Villager, 2008 (Location: LaGuardia Place)

Olde Time Square, 2008 (Location: 44th and 7th Ave)

The Wall Street (Location: Water St and Pearl St)

Ladies' miles (Between 5th Ave and 57th/ 58th in front of Bergdof)

The coffee cup (Location: Amsterdam between 110th and 111th St, near the Hungarian Pastry Shop)

The Chelsea (Location: 25th St between 10th and 11th, front of Pace Wildenstein Gallery)

The Moma (Location:53rd St , in front of Moma-of course)

The Hipster (Location: Bedford and North 6th Street, Williamsburg Brooklyn)

The Jersey (Location:9th Ave and 39th St)

Erin Patrice O' Brien's

2008-08-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth, 15

Maria 18, with Kimberly and Summer

On Saturday, Fort Greene photographer Erin Patrice O'Brien unveiled her new exhibit at Brooklyn's Corridor Gallery. The images on display were not that of her normal clientele (she used to take portraits of celebrities), but of the young mothers living in New York. She told the Daily News, “I was interested in someone who never gets their story told as opposed to someone who always has the limelight."

Erin visited Bellevue Hospital in 2006 where he met the young girls from age 14-18, mostly from Mexico. This experiment gave him an understanding of their stories as a young pregnant girls and the struggle they dealt with.

This wasn't the limelight that Diablo Cody gave pregnant teens in Juno, these photographs put a different story on the statistics--teen mothers, from the ages of 14 to 18, spending most of their time home alone while their husbands work 70 hour weeks. The exhibit, titled Mamás Adolescentes: NYC 2006-2007, is on view through the 24th.

By Jen Carlson in Arts and Events www.gothamist.com

Shen Jing Dong

2008-08-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

SHEN JINGDONG
Curated by Eric C. Shiner
On view from August 5, 2008
Reception: August 7, 2008 / 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
China Square
545 W. 25th Street
Chelsea Arts Tower 8th fl.

Do not think that I'm promoting communist. I rather slit my wrist than praise on China's communist. I love the style Shen Jing Dong. I love the playfulness that he created. The mix of ideological and consumerist subject matter definitively places Shen's work, alongside works by Takashi Murakami (How hot is that?)- in the post-pop period, attempting to digest the nation's transition into a consumer-driven society. His plastic toy characters have the reflections of the light that is pure genius. The smiles in the three panels of people with different ethnicities shows a connection in Yue Minjun's smily characters but less jovial. I'm happy that he has his one man show at this gallery since I was in awe of his work last year.

ChinaSquare is pleased to present SHEN JINGDONG: Hero, curated by Eric C. Shiner. The exhibit will be on view August 5th to 30th with an opening reception on Thursday, August 7th, from 6 to 8 pm. Born in Nanjing in 1965, Shen Jingdong received his masters degree from the Nanjing Institute of Arts in 1991. He was then conscripted to the Military Drama Troupe until 2007. Shen Jingdong's work taps into the vulnerability of the venerable by examining heroes of China's Cultural Revolution – most notably, members of the military. Serving in the military drama troupe for 16 years provided the artist ample exposure to military life and time to consider soldiers as sentient beings, rather than mere emblems of Communist thought. The plastic, manufactured soldiers Shen paints is in contrast to the observed humanity from his experience, but allows one to view these cultural icons as government play things gazing out with placid, unquestioning expressions. The mix of ideological and consumerist subject matter definitively places Shen's work -- alongside works by Takashi Murakami - in the post-pop period, attempting to digest the nation's transition into a consumer-driven society.

Not surprisingly, such critical examination of the validity of Communist ideals has not gone unnoticed by China's central government. Just two years ago, one of Shen Jingdong's installations grouped Chairman Mao with political dictators of other countries and was promptly banned from a major Beijing international art festival.Despite the controversy surrounding his work, pieces have already been collected by the China National Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Retreat Museum in Singapore. Well-received both critically and at auction, there is every reason to believe Shen Jingdong's talent will
continue to unveil itself.

Eric C. Shiner is an independent curator and art historian specializing in Asian contemporary art.
An assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennial in 2001, Shiner is an active writer and translator, a contributing editor for Art Asia Pacific magazine, and adjunct professor of Asian art history at Pace University in New York City

Dali Dali

2008-08-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

Dalí: Painting and Film
June 29–September 15, 2008

Bringing together more than 130 paintings, drawings, scenarios, and films by Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), this exhibition explores the role that cinema played in the artist's work. Both an inspiration and an outlet for experimentation, film was Dalí's passion, and cinematic vision became a model for his own work. Collaborations between Dalí and legendary filmmakers are displayed alongside his paintings and other works, illuminating the ways in which ideas, iconography, and pictorial strategies are shared and transformed across mediums. Among the provocative works on display are Un Chien andalou, a film made with Luis Buñuel, which features the notorious, almost unwatchable sequence of an eye being slit by a razor; L'Age d'Or, another collaboration with Buñuel and one of the landmarks of Surrealist film; projects undertaken in Hollywood with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney; and such important paintings as The First Days of Spring and Illumined Pleasures. In conjunction with the gallery exhibition, a series of screenings in the MoMA theaters presents the classic and avant-garde motion pictures Dalí treasured, films on which he collaborated, and examples of his legacy in contemporary cinema.

True genius. His works plays in your eyes as in optical illusion. It's amazing to capture his work since it was sold out when I was in Philly 2 years ago and now I got the chance. He has prove that he is the greatest surrealist. He will always be known as the one who did "The persistence of time".

His work awed the viewers at MOMA. It was pretty crowded on a Saturday. It's difficult to stay for more than 15 second on one work until someone is so close to you reading the small summaries.

My favorite is the small clip he did with Disney. It was so creative and dreamy. Your mind keeps wandering on very little details. It was awesome.

Lucian Freud's $33 Million Painting Sets Sale Record for Living Artist

2008-05-14T17:34:00.001-07:00

At Christie's Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale last night, "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" (1955) by Lucian Freud (Sigmund's grandson), went for $33 million. It beat the record auction price for a living artist—the last record was set by Jeff Koons' "Hanging Heart" sculpture, sold for $23 mil at Sotheby's last November. (P.S.: Fat- and appearance-mockers will be executed!)

Seo-Bo Park

2008-05-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

Seobo Park 2008
May 1, 2008 - May 31, 2008
Reception: May 1, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Arario New York is pleased to present Empty the Mind, a solo exhibition of new works by Park, Seo-Bo, the father of Korean abstract painting. The exhibition will be on view from May 1 through May 31, 2008, and a reception for the artist will be held at the gallery on May 1 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Since beginning his artistic career in the 1950s, Park, Seo-Bo has been at the forefront of contemporary Korean art. He is considered his country’s preeminent artist, credited with introducing Modernism to Korean art. Park’s innovative combination of traditional Korean sensibility with the Western abstract art movements of Minimalism, Art Informel, and Color Field painting has made him an influential figure to generations of Korean artists.

Empty the Mind will feature the brightly-colored, monochrome abstract paintings for which Park, Seo-Bo is best known today. Through a labor-intensive, multi-step process, the artist creates Minimalist paintings with complexly textured surfaces. Several layers of mulberry paper – known in Korea as hanji – acrylic paint, and ink are built up onto each canvas. Before the layers dry, Park uses a pencil or a narrow bamboo stick to incise thin parallel lines across the entire surface. In each painting, rectangular spaces are strategically carved away, revealing a vivid under layer of paint and creating what Park calls “Breathing Spaces” amidst the sea of lines. In keeping with Park’s understated style, these new works juxtapose pattern and emptiness, restrained form and exuberant color, and Eastern and Western aesthetics.

Park, Seo-Bo’s work has been on view throughout Asia, Europe and the U.S. for more than fifty years. Among his retrospective exhibitions is, Park, Seo-Bo’s Paintings: Its Forty Years, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul in 1991. He has received numerous awards, such as The National Medal of Korea (The Medal of Seokryu) in 1987, The Order of Cultural Merits, Korea in 1994, and the Seoul Metropolitan Cultural Award in 1995. His work is in the collections of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; The Seoul Museum of Art; The Contemporary Museum of Hongik University, Seoul; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, France. In 1994 he founded the Park, Seo-Bo Art and Cultural Foundation. He lives and works in Seoul, where he was a Professor at the College of Fine Arts, Hongik University. This is the artist’s first exhibition at Arario Gallery New York, though he has previously shown at Arario Beijing.

My first impression of pretty colors. I came close and saw the artist's work. The textures were amazing. It plays well with the two monochrome colors. It revolutionized what Mondrian's abstraction works. I got to speak the artist. He had a translator but I managed to use the little Korean I learned in college. I sort of impressed the translator. After a great champagne later, I bought the autograph poster.

James Lahey - Skulls

2008-05-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

James Lahey: New Works
May 4, 2006 - June 4, 2006
J. Cacciola
531 W 25th St
New York (Chelsea)

I love James' skulls and the concept of "You want to start over" Its has a playful theme of having to think about your life and self esteem. For me, it makes me contemplate how we will live life regretting in the end. Do we want to start over? Yes. Or no. What would happen if we could change, then what would happen next. Would it be better or not. Then would we want to start again until we are satisfied. When will we ever be happy?

I stood next to my own reflection with a text says "This will make you beautiful". Does it help standing by the mirror? Will the people standing next to me will think that I possessed a low self esteem standing in front of it? It helps that the artist understand a person's self image.

Ye Yong Qing

2008-05-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

China Square
545 W. 25th St.
8th Flr. Chelsea Arts Tower
New York, NY 10001

May 1st - May 31st
Opening:
May 1st 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Through Ye’s clever stroke, the poetic impression of his birds unites the dreams and mythologies
the world over. Recreating the immediacy of his sketches, in large sweeping gestures, Ye develops
a style that is both traditional and anew. This series of paradoxical structures curve the frames
of birds: depicting stillness and movement. His ephemeral stroke shows a studied knowledge of
form and gesture. Like the scholarly art of calligraphy, his exacting movements breeze through
the picture plain. Unlike literati art, his stroke stands formed yet fragmented, elegant yet rough,
controlled yet whimsical, thick yet thin. These distorted frames of Ye’s create the image of birds
and the expansive connections of mythologies. Birds symbolize the power of spirit and are found
throughout legends, both east and west. His birds breathe reality and fantasy, living a world of
paradox.

Nest
2005
acrylic on canvas
110 x 150 cm / 43.31 x 59.06 in.

Joy No.2
2008
acrylic on canvas
200 x 200 cm / 78.74 x 78.74 in.

Bird
2006
oil on canvas
200 x 300 cm / 78.74 x 118.11 in.

Egypt
2007
acrylic on canvas
300 x 200 cm / 118.11 x 78.74 in.

Changing Faces

2008-04-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

Dirty Car Windows

2008-04-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

Chihung Yang

2008-04-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

ChinaSquare New York
545 W 25th Street 8th Fl.
Chelsea Arts Tower
New York, NY 10001
Tel: 212.255.8886

On View from April 1, 2008 / Opening Reception on April 3, 2008, 6:00-8:00 pm
ChinaSquare is pleased to present CHIHUNG YANG : Recent Paintings, curated by Eric C. Shiner. Chihung Yang’s new abstract paintings will be on view April 1st through 26th with an opening reception on Thursday, April 3rd, from 6 to 8 pm.

Chihung Yang’s deeply complex abstractions and sweeping brushwork transports the viewer into a universe ruled by the Chinese tradition of the ephemeral “floating clouds and flowing waters.” In standing before Yang’s work, it seems as if the universe has come to a standstill, that his clouds and rivulets of paint have been frozen in time. Yet, his balanced compositions hint at the grandeur of nature, or perhaps chaos unleashed and then reigned in. Mixing subtle monochromatic hues with bright bursts of paint, the fleeting appearance of color results in a feeling of life breaking through soil, or rays peeking through clouds. Organic structures emerge from the otherwise abstract nature of Yang’s painting in the form of buds, roots and veins. As abstract painting, Yang’s oeuvre stands its own in comparison with the great names of the tradition, whether Western or Chinese.

Chihung Yang, a graduate of the National Taiwan College of Art in Taipei, has been extensively exhibited throughout the world. Yang was awarded a year’s residency at The Clocktower in New York City by The Institute for Art and Urban Resources in 1985 and has since been living and working in New York City. Yang’s work is included in significant museum, corporate, and private art collections in Western Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Eric C. Shiner is an independent curator and art historian specializing in Asian contemporary art. An assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennial in 2001, Shiner is an active writer and translator, a contributing editor for Art Asia Pacific magazine, and adjunct professor of Asian art history at Pace University in New York City.

The Sea Inside
2007

Song of Spring
2007

Odyssey of Darkness
2007

Liu Fenghua - Decorated Warriors

2008-04-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

China Previews Gallery
511 West 25th St.
RM #809
New York, NY 10001
April 3rd - April 26th
Opening:
April 3rd 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Since the terracotta warriors were discovered in 1974 by farmers digging for a well in Xian, this lifesized and lifelike army has become an icon of China's past, instantly recognizable all over the world. The terracotta warriors were the 8,000 strong underground army buried in Emperor Qin Shi Huang Ti's tomb (221 - 207 BC), to protect him in his afterlife.

Li Feng Hua's sculptures is a wry, witty look at his country's history and future post-Cultural Revolution direction. Two thousand years separate China's first emperor and Mao. But Li's modern ceramic warriors can be seen as an artistic statement of the morally complicated legacy of these two leaders - both great revolutionary leaders and yet, both great criminals, who have left a lasting legacy on China.

Liu Fenghua graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, China with a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts

My favorite warrior - Marilyn Manroe warrior

Terracotta
Ceramic
h: 60 x w: 18 cm / h: 23.6 x w: 7.1 in
Price : $11,000

Catching the Sun

2008-04-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

Biennial 2008

2008-03-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

Whitney Biennial 2008
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
3/6/08-6/1/08
1(800)Whitney
www.whitney.org

It's the Biennial at the Whitney. It's supposed to be the best event. All the artists from all over the world come together and displayed their new works.

The strongest works are videos, including Omar Fast's "The Casting" (2007), a look at psychological fallout of the Iraq War.

What I love of his work was his two different perspectives of interpreting his story in Iraq. One video was Omar Fast speaking to the interviewee. Two split screens - Omar fast and other screen a man with a glasses. The other video was most popular from the viewers. It was supposed to be a still shots of his stories in Iraq and his girlfriend. I mean it was true genius. It was supposed to be serious but when looking at his still shots of various clips of his stories - it was amazing. It was a video but the characters stood still trying so hard not to blink or move. It's like when you were young and playing red light, green light, 1,2,3 and trying not to move. Definitely have to see it.

Kinetic Pneumatic Subway Bear

2008-03-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Wooster Collective recently featured video of a piece of street scultpure by Joshua Allen Harris. It could be describe as kinetic pneumatic art, and features an inanimate pile of material attached to a subway grate. When a train passes in the tunnel beneath the grate, the upward flow of displaced air fills the material and produces a medium-sized bear. The continued flow of air makes it appear as if the bear is actually animated, like it's shaking off some arctic water. When the train is gone, the bear retreats to its former state of hibernation, waiting for the next train so it can rise again.

By Dave Hogarty in Miscellaneous

PIcture with many images

2008-03-15T22:29:00.000-07:00

Another train sketch artist

2008-02-24T15:43:00.000-08:00

I came across a section in my daily metro on February 12. Cully Thomas, a freelance set designer, find his love sketching subway riders in the train. It started two years ago when he landed on a job and moving to New York city where he decided to show us the life in the train. Using his 3x5 and a ballpoint pen and sketch it away. Few people made feel awkward and then ignored the fact that a man is sketching them. All his works are in www.childoatom.com and his blog.

Christie's sued over stolen art

2008-02-24T15:22:00.001-08:00

Martin Lawrence Galleries has sued Christe's auction house and a Brooklyn resident in an effort to recover a $100,000 Andy Warhol painting that the gallery reported stolen nearly 10 years ago. Warhol's "Dollar Sign" was reported stolen in 1998. In 2006, a "dollar Sign" series painting sold in London. In September 2007, Jason Beltrez tried to cosign the artwork to Christie's for sale, but the auction house uncovered that it had been stolen.

Rihanna loves art

2008-02-24T15:15:00.000-08:00

Rihanna, pop singer with her number 1 hits with "Umbrella" and "Can't stop the music" loves art AND fat boys!

Rihanna bought $35,000 worth of art from Todd Goldman as a birthday present to herself.

The Umbrella diva is sending half to her New York apartment and keeping the other half in her Los Angeles home.

She bought several paintings. They are:

"Fat kids are harder to kidnap"
"Goodbye kitty in a microwave"
"Gold digger like a hooker just smarter"
"My mom says not to run scissors"
"Barbie is a slut"
"A salt with a deadly

Cai Guo-Qiang Suspends Disbelief, and Cars, at the Guggenheim

2008-02-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

Everyone's bursting with anticipation for the opening of Cai Guo-Qiang's new exhibit at the Guggenheim; the site-specific installation serves as a mid-career retrospective and is now just four short days away from being unveiled.

The NY Times has a lengthy profile of the artist (who has lived in New York since 1995) which begins with this insight: "his favorite artistic moment is the pregnant pause between the lighting of the fuse and the detonation of the gunpowder." Thus a partial explanation of his use of ancient Chinese gunpowder in his work; Cai further explains, "One reason I chose gunpowder is that I had the good luck in my environment to be exposed to gunpowder. The other reason is I was always looking for a visual language that goes beyond the boundary of nations, and so I found gunpowder.”

That's not all you will take in at his show, however, The Post reports that "other mind-boggling works feature 99 life-size, stuffed replicas of wolves charging over viewers' heads headlong into a glass wall." Another piece, titled "Inopportune: Stage One," acts as a centerpiece -- illuminated with LED lights as it dangles above the fragile onlookers below.

With more than 80 works, the installation -- which takes up most of the museum -- is called "I Want to Believe," something Cai says is a nod to suspending disbelief. See how the large pieces were installed here, then see them for yourself -- the show runs through through May 28.

Jasper Johns Comes Back to New York

2008-02-09T21:57:00.000-08:00

Jasper Johns, a South Carolina native currently residing in Connecticut, first came to New York City in 1949 when he (briefly) attended Parsons School of Design. In 1954 he painted his first flag picture, and by 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery. Today, The Met's director Philippe de Montebello states fact as the artist's new exhibit at the museum opens, saying "Without question, Jasper Johns is one of the greatest artists of our era."

The show, Jasper Johns: Gray, opened on February 5th and runs through May 4th. It's comprised of 119 of the artist's works, including paintings, reliefs, drawings, prints, and sculptures; covering much of Johns career, you'll see works from 1959 to 2007. While the artist is best known for his work with bright colors, some say this exhibit is showing his true shade. The NY Times took a look at it and concluded that "it amplifies gray into a color spectrum all its own. And it illuminates 50 years of a life saved by, and lived for, the incessant pursuit of art."

Jen Carlson, www.gothamist.com

Meanwhile, The NY Sun's art critic, Lance Esplund, wasn't a fan of the exhibit, though he did recall a quote from famous playwright Samuel Beckett, who praised his friend Johns by saying, "No matter which way you turn you always come up against a stone wall. Hail to the master of the stone wall."

Subway Sketch

2008-02-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

Amitai Plasse has been sketching his fellow straphangers for 11 years now, and has just begun getting his portraits online. His goal, he tells us, is to "try and capture the characters and scenes I encounter every
day on my travels." These remind us of faster-paced versions of what Marvin Franklin, the late subway track inspector/artist, had been creating all of his years underground.

By Jen Carlson in www.gothamist.com

http://amiunderground.blogspot.com/

New Woes Over Stolen Warhol

2008-02-06T11:42:00.000-08:00

Everyone is abuzz about the latest art world scandal, and here's what is known about the life of the Warhol painting at the center of the controversy.

1981: Andy Warhol creates a number of his "Dollar Sign" pieces, using the same theme with different colors and sizes. Medium: polymer paint and silkscreen ink on canvas.
February 14th, 1998: One of the two "Dollar Sign" pieces measuring at 16 by 20 inches is reported stolen from the Martin Lawrence Gallery in SoHo.

Mid-1990s: Brooklynite Jason Beltrez purchases a "Dollar Sign" for $180 at an open-air market in New Jersey, claiming he didn't know it was a Warhol.

February 2006: One "Dollar Sign" is sold for $4.5 million in London.

September 2007: Beltrez brings his Warhol to Christie's after a friend tells him it might be by "the Campbell's Soup guy."

The NY Times is painting Beltrez darker than most papers, mentioning his hard-knock life, unemployed status, and recent rehab stint. Apparently Christie's was suspicious when he brought the Warhol in, saying there was "something about this particular art lover."
Christie's accepted the painting and contacted the Art Loss Register immediately. The databank of lost and stolen art confirmed it was legit, and now Martin Lawrence Gallery is suing Beltrez, who in turn has gotten himself a lawyer. Beltrez says he's an honest man and is employing the law of the street: "finders keepers, losers weepers." For that, we sort of hope he wins. The law seems to be against him though (experts say the law protects the gallery), and there are some unfortunate coincidences that aren't going to make it easy for him to win. For one, Beltrez was raised near the gallery the Warhol was stolen from, and records show he was still at that address at the time.

No criminal charges have been filed yet but the NYPD is still investigating. Mr. Beltrez speaks out saying, “This country is only fair for people lined in green. I know I’m the good guy.” He also told The NY Post, "This is a civil case, not a criminal case. They're trying to smear me. It's a classic case of a conglomerate trying to screw the little guy." For now Christie's, who say they are a disinterested third party at this point, is holding the painting as the question of ownership goes to the courts.

Our favorite "finders keepers, losers weepers" story about stolen artwork involves the Manhattan woman who found a valuable piece of artwork on the street.

By -Jen Carlson

Paper Art

2008-01-24T19:38:00.000-08:00

There was a contest at Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery in DC recently. The rule was that the artist could use only one sheet of paper.

Thieves steal Picasso painting in Brazil

2007-12-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

By STAN LEHMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 20, 5:05 PM ET

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Armed with nothing more than a crow bar and a car jack, it took thieves just three minutes to steal paintings by Pablo Picasso and Candido Portinari, worth millions of dollars, from Brazil's premier modern art museum.

Authorities said they hit the Sao Paulo Museum of Art just before dawn Thursday — a time when the city's busiest avenue is deserted and the guards inside were going through their shift change.

Jumping over a glass partition, they climbed an open concrete staircase leading up into the entrance of the two-story modernist building, which hovers over a large plaza on stilts of steel.

For a short time, they could have been seen from blocks away. But the thieves worked quickly. A few jabs of the crowbar, and they were able to slip a common car jack under the metal security gate. A few more cranks and they squeezed inside.

Hazy images from a security camera shows three men going in at 5:09 a.m. They smashed through two glass doors, ran to the museum's top floor and grabbed the two framed paintings from different rooms, somehow avoiding nearby guards.

The alarm never rang, and by 5:12 a.m., they were making their escape.

"It was a professional job; it was something they studied because the paintings were in different rooms," said the lead police investigator, Marcos Gomes de Moura.

Picasso painted "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch," in 1904 during his Blue Period. It is among the most valuable pieces in the collection, museum spokesman Eduardo Cosomano said.

They also took "O Lavrador de Cafe" by Portinari, a major Brazilian artist.

"The prices paid for such works would be incalculable, enough to give you vertigo," said curator Miriam Alzuri of the Bellas Artes Museum of Bilbao, Spain.

Jones Bergamin, a Sao Paulo gallery director, estimated the Picasso at about $50 million and the Portinari $5-$6 million.

"I talked to friends at Christie's and Sotheby's and made the estimate based on the last Picasso that sold, "Garcon Avec Pipe," which is from the same blue period," Bergamin said.

But Bergamin disagrees with the police theory that the thieves are professionals, since they ran past many other valuable paintings, including a very important Renoir, a Raphael, and paintings by Rembrandt and Degas.

"I think they took the Picasso because it was so small and the Portinari because it was hanging by the door," he said.

The Picasso measures 26 by 21 inches and the Portinari 40 by 32 inches, the museum said.

Police believe there a fourth person may have acted as a lookout because they found headphones near the museum's entrance.

Thieves attempted a robbery at the same museum in late October but were foiled by the alarm system. This time, the alarm failed. Moura said he believes Thursday's robbery was carried out by the same gang.

Police were interviewing 30 museum employees, but none of the guards had fewer than 10 years on the job, Moura said. They also alerted Interpol and airport police to try to stop the paintings from leaving Brazil.

And while Moura doubts the paintings are being held for ransom, police are ruling nothing out.

"Everything indicates they were sent to do it by some wealthy art lover for his own collection — someone who, although wealthy, was not rich enough to buy the paintings," Moura said.

"O Lavrador de Cafe," which depicts a coffee picker, was painted in 1939 and is one of the most renowned works by one of Brazil's most famous painters. Portinari (1903-1962) was an influential practitioner of the "neo-realism" style. His best known works outside Brazil are the "Guerra e Paz" or "War and Peace" panels at the United Nations in New York.

The museum said this was the first robbery in its 60-year history, but art thieves also hit Brazil last year, when a gang of five men used a carnival street parade to cover the theft of four paintings by Dali, Picasso, Monet and Cezanne from a Rio de Janeiro art museum. Those works, valued at around $40 million have never been recovered.

With the museum closed Thursday as police searched for clues, a handful of visitors were frustrated and perplexed.

"Who could imagine that someone could enter a museum and walk out with two paintings? It's inconceivable," said Deborah Regina Fernandes, a 37-year-old housewife who came with family and friends.

___

Associated Press Writers Michael Astor in Rio de Janeiro and Harold Heckle in Madrid contributed to this report.

Only China

2007-12-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

...can make something like this.

Got this from http://artblogbybob.blogspot.com/

In Harbin of Heilongjiang Province, China, snow sculptors from around the globe have gathered for the 20th International Snow Sculpture Art Expo. One of the design is Romantic Feelings (shown above and below), the 115-foot-high and 656-foot-long snow sculpture believed to be the largest in the world.

All I can say...awesome.

Will Ryman

2007-12-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

Tuesday Afternoon
November 8, 2007 - January 5, 2008
Reception: November 8, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Will Ryman
Marlborough Chelsea
545 W 25th St

The sidewalk: Man Collecting Cans, 2007
PVC pipe wire, resin acrylic paint, wood
129 x 92 x 48 in., 327.66 x 233.68 x 121.92 cm

Will Ryman
The Sidewalk: 3 Card Monty (2007)The Directors of Marlborough Gallery are pleased to announce the opening of of an exhibition of new work by the young American sculptor, Will Ryman. This exhibition will take place on the first floor of Marlborough's new Chelsea gallery, 545 West 25th Street, and it will be Ryman's first New York show with the gallery.

The Bed, 2007
Papier mache, magic sculpt, resin, acrylic, wire mesh, wood, cloth
96 x 180 x 330 in., 243.84 x 457.20 x 838.20 cm

The exhibition will show Ryman's most ambitious work to date. Entitled Tuesday Afternoon, it will be comprised of two installations which are conceptually interrelated as happening at a concurrent time on a particular day. Before devoting himself to sculpture Ryman, always interested in the theater of human emotions, wrote plays. In the installations at Marlborough he creates a setting in time, Tuesday afternoon, in a similar way that a playwright might structure a play. The first installation is entitled Bed; the second, The Sidewalk, and both works are made of mixed media materials - steel, paper mâché, epoxy resin, acrylic paint, PVC tubing, wire mesh, Styrofoam and wood.

The Sidewalk: Man with Umbrella, 2007
Aluminum, PVC pipe, copper, resin, acrylic paint, papier mache
55 x 48 x 48 in., 139.70 x 121.92 x 121.92 cm

As described by Edward Leffingwell in the essay of the exhibition catalog, “The monumental bed (15 x 27 x 8 feet) bisects the gallery in what amounts to middle distance. With one arm dangling from the bedside, the recumbent figure occupies a dream-filled moment just this side of waking. Ryman speaks of these yards of rumpled sheets as a landscape of rolling hills and mountains, telegraphing the installation's scale to the vernacular urban landscape of the sidewalk and the street. A floor lamp towers above a scattering of ale cans, a Moleskin journal and pen, some keys and a watch, a half-eaten bag of Doritos, cigarettes, matches, and slippers tucked neatly at a corner of the bed. An emblem of fidelity, a dog, rests at his side, tail raised in the laziest of wags. With the ominous presence of an alarm about to ring, a burning cigarette dangles from the dreamer's hand signaling the approaching interruption of his reverie where half asleep he awakens from the dream.

The Sidewalk is composed of twelve different groups of figures which are conceived in the artist's imagination as a slice of New York street life. The Sidewalk is positioned in the gallery to run parallel to its front windows, thus creating an echo of the sidewalk outside. According to Leffingwell, both works “are conceived as objects and ideas fixed in a single moment of stopped time, the bustling population of a side walk on an active urban street and a massive dreaming figure sprawled on a mass of tangled sheets.”

Ryman says his works “explore the bare bones of emotions, of human frailty, the bare bones of vulnerability, the rawness of psychology, and conditions that are human,” and he wants the viewer to see each piece as an act in a drama. He states his mission is to break subject matter down to its truest form, and he wants to do that with emotions and relationships. As he puts it, “I am trying to turn the conditions within us into the three dimensional.”

Commenting on that motive Leffingwell concludes his essay by saying, Ryman's “tableaux venture beyond the theatrical and performative, their stilled activity eliciting the capacity for discovery and surprise, the impetus to look and the capability to recognize a common humanity.”

Before joining Marlborough Ryman had five solo shows: two in New York, one in Seattle and two in Munich. From 1990 to 2001 he studied writing in various workshops and wrote two plays and thirty one-act plays. Since 2001 he has devoted himself completely to sculpture. He lives and works in New York City.

China Square NY

2007-12-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

REVOLUTION

ChinaSquare ﾃ贇｢ﾗ｢ｾ・br>545 W 25th St. 8th fl.
Chelsea Arts Tower
New York, NY 10001
Tel. (212) 255-8886
Cell (908) 358-2454
carrie@chinasquareny.com
www.ChinaSquareNY.com

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Curated by Fang Lei & Jonathan Goodman

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Cao Xiaodong, Jing Kewen, Li Luming, Shen Jingdong, Su Xinping, Wang Yiqiong, Yang Qian, Yin Zhaoyang, Zhang Hongtu, Zhao Nengzhi, Zhong Biao

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December 4th - January 12th, 2007 / Opening Reception: December 13th, 6.30-8.30 pm
ChinaSquare is pleased to present Revolution, a group show curated by Fang Lei and Jonathan Goodman featuring Cao Xiaodong, Jing Kewen, Li Luming, Shen Jingdong, Su Xinping, Wang Yiqiong, Yang Qian, Yin Zhaoyang, Zhang Hongtu, Zhao Nengzhi and Zhong Biao. These artists, born during the Cultural Revolution, examine the legacy of Mao's socialism in ironic and allegorical ways. As Mainland China embraces late capitalism, monuments and leaders once revered are judged and deconstructed. The participants in the show pay homage mostly to another time, when politics was not so easily engaged or made fun of. The artists' nostalgic memories of youth are juxtaposed with the ideological revolutions that now take place everyday.

Fang Lei, a Beijing-based independent curator since 1998, has curated and organized a number of exhibitions and events including the Beijing Biennale, Guangzhou Triennial, and Shanghai Biennale, etc.

Jonathan Goodman has been writing about contemporary Chinese art for more than a decade. Based in New York, he is currently teaching at the Pratt Institute and the Parsons School of Design.

My favorite:

Shen Jing Dong
Navy/ Army/ Air Force, 2007
oil on canvas
120 x 180 cm / 47.24 x 70.86 in., for each piece

Jing Kewen
Dream 2006 No. 16, 2006
acrylic on canvas
200 x 300 cm / 78.74 x 118.11 in.

Li Luming
Aiming, 2007
oil on canvas
150 x 200 cm / 59.05 x 78.74 in.

Zhang Hong Tu
Ping-Pong Mao, 1995
mixed media installation, ed. 2/5
76.2 x 152.4 x 274.3 cm / 30 x 60 x 108 in.

Zhong Biao
Grandma's Sky, 2007
acrylic on canvas
400 x 280 cm / 157.48 x 110.23 in.

Banksy coming to New York

2007-11-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

Banksy, the Bristol-born graffiti artist, has a show opening December 2nd at the Vanina Holasek Gallery in Chelsea. If you've been to Angelina Jolie's rumpus room recently you might have seen his work hanging on her wall (she bought one of his paintings at his LA show) or you might have bought one of his books at Urban Outfitters. Either way, you must have been struck by all the issues he raises in his work like...um...um....who the fuck pays £200,000 for spraypaint-and-slogan sophomoric crap? (To be fair, it did feature a white family having a picnic and African orphans, two things the Jolie-Pitt household loves.) But Banksy's art isn't just issue-based, it's also a god investment, as per a press release for the show: "His art has escalated in value faster than pretty much any substance known to man." Also, "Banksy images are even being used to sell 900k condos in Williamsburg." Suck on that, Andy Warhol!

Laughing all the way to the Banksy. Think you haven't heard of Banksy? Think you don't know who he is? Let us remind you; whilst others spray their names, Banksy paints pictures, pictures that have made Banksy a household name. He is the most controversial and downright interesting graffiti artist at large in the UK today and the chances are that you have already heard of, or seen some of his work, smiled and moved on. Variously described as a "guerrilla artist", an "art terrorist" or - by those of a more prosaic turn of phrase - as a "prankster" Banksy is someone for whom celebrity is anathema. So much so that he has never let the world know his real name - and he has never even posed for a photograph.
And yet everybody is talking about him...he is unknown but his work is unmistakable.
He's the maniac who got on the news for managing to smuggle one of his pieces of art into Tate Britain and embarrassed everyone because nobody seemed to notice...He's the wit behind the stencilled "Mind the Crap" writing that appeared overnight on the steps to Tate Modern. He is the prankster who smuggled 500 alternative copies of the Paris Hilton CD into record stores. He is the subversive who placed a life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee in Disneyland. He's the jester who gave LA a painted elephant. He is the trickster whose hoax cave painting of a man pushing a supermarket trolley sat in the British Museum unnoticed for three days. He is the infiltrator who disguised as a pensioner hung his perfectly framed pieces in the Metropolitan, MOMA, Brooklyn Museum and his "dead beetle with glued on sidewinder missiles and satellite dish" had pride of place in the Museum of Natural History NYC. Get the picture, get this. Banksy images are even being used to sell 900k condos in Williamsburg.

Is Banksy the new Warhol? Following record auction sales of both Warhol and Banksy, critics have examined the similarities in both aesthetic and content between the two artists, their interest in celebrity culture, and their examination of social values. Like Warhol, Banksy has become a darling of the stars, with his works gracing the homes of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jude Law, Damien Hirst, Kate Moss, Robbie Williams. Banksy is undoubtedly a major player in terms of advancing the envelope of what art is with the result that over the past several years, his art has escalated in value faster than pretty much any substance known to man.

He is a visionary, the leader of a new artistic movement and the anonymous poster boy for free speech. Come and see what all the fuss is about.

Vincent Van Gogh's letters in Morgan Library

2007-11-16T22:54:00.000-08:00

The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
September 28th - January 6th

Painted with Words is a compelling look at Vincent van Gogh's correspondence to his young colleague Émile Bernard between 1887 and 1889. Van Gogh's words and sketches reveal his thoughts about art and life and communicate his groundbreaking work in Arles to his fellow painter. Unseen for nearly seventy years, and never before exhibited, the twenty letters document the close, vital friendship of the two artists.

Van Gogh's letters to Bernard reveal the tenor of their relationship. Van Gogh assumed the role of an older, wiser brother, offering praise or criticism of Bernard's paintings, drawings, and poems. At the same time the letters chronicle van Gogh's own struggles, as he reached his artistic maturity in isolation in Arles and St. Rémy. Throughout the letters are no less than twelve sketches by van Gogh meant to provide Bernard with an idea of his work in progress, including studies related to the paintings The Langlois Bridge, Houses at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Boats on the beach at Saintes-Maries, The Sower, and View of Arles at Sunset.

To complement the letters, more than twenty paintings, drawings, and watercolors by van Gogh and Bernard are on view. These works document their dynamic exchange of ideas—among them are paintings and drawings discussed and sketched by van Gogh in his letters to Bernard. The works of art are drawn mostly from collections outside of New York, and feature numerous works not recently shown in the U.S.

Jacqueline Rosenberg - Tripping the light Fantastic

2007-11-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

Tripping the Light Fantastic: The Fine Art Photography Exhibition
Reception: Thursday, November 29, 2007 6-8 PM
Exhibition Dates: 11/20/2007 - 12/11/2007

Agora Gallery
530 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Shut Down, Self Portrait
Mixed Media Print on Canvas, 23.4" x 15.6"

Lips
Mixed Media Print on Canvas, 46.8" x 31.2"

“The beauty of people in photography goes beyond the reality,” Jacqueline Rosenberg states, “but that's why we love it.” Rosenberg’s two decades as a fashion photographer served as a sort of vocational training for her artistic career; and her trade has now been fully converted into passion. She takes as her subject matter women of varying types—but all strong, all emancipated in their femininity. Before transferring her photos onto canvas, Rosenberg superimposes upon them images of beads, jewels, geometric figures, out-of-proportion body parts from other photos—a practice that results in framing the internal discourse of each piece, allotting a viewing experience that is more than the sum of its parts.

Her approach reminds one of Picasso and how his distortions were always meant to convey information, to guide the encounter. If there’s a message Rosenberg hopes to convey, it’s that we should accept people of all kinds, and that we ourselves should be* *independent and free in our self-expression, our passions, and our joys.

Alyssa Monks

2007-11-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

November 1st - December 1st at DFN Gallery
210 11th Ave. 6th Floor
New York, 10001 USA

ALYSSA MONKS
NEW PAINTINGS

DFN Gallery is pleased to present “New Paintings” by Alyssa Monks. This exhibit includes large-scale paintings derived from old photographs of her family at play, as well as a series of small, abstract, partially submerged figures on panel.

In Monks’ familial images, children swim alone or interact with family members. Her use of photographs casts her as creator and observer, veering away from the abstracted forms seen in her small works. These more straight forward interpretations of bodies in water are reminiscent of David Hockney’s pool series. Together, the large scale paintings speak of personal relationships and underlying currents found in every family.

Monks small paintings are ambiguous, self portraits with compositions evocative of JoAnn Verburg’s cropped, black and white photographs of swimmers. Bodies appear angled, cropped, and distorted by reflections in the water and by the form breaking the surface in the panel pieces. Some figures are seen from an underwater perspective creating an almost unreadable form. The distorted body becomes abstract and reveals Monks visceral enjoyment of touching paintbrush to ground. Her love for color and luscious paint evokes the work of as Jenny Saville and Lucien Freud. According to Monks,

I’m challenging myself by using photographs that aren’t so clean and perfect because it forces me to be more painterly, to look at the abstract forms more and to become more free with the paint. I use the paint to create the water surface instead of drawing it in. It saves me from an almost photorealistic look because when you see them up close, they are actually loose and the paint is quite visible.

A MFA graduate of the New York Academy of Art, Alyssa Monks has trained with Vincent Desiderio, John Jacobsmeyer, and Deane Keller. She received her B.A., cum laude, from Boston College in 1999. The artist’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and can be found in many private collections. This is Monks’ second solo show at DFN Gallery.

An opening reception for the artist will be held on
Thursday, November 1st, from 6-8 pm.

Georges Seurat: The Drawings at MOMA

2007-11-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

Georges Seurat: The Drawings
October 28, 2007–January 7, 2008

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street,
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
New York, NY 10019-5497

Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive exhibition—the first in almost twenty-five years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings—will present over 135 works, primarily the artist's incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. Surveying the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training through the emergence and elaboration of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases (such as the renowned A Sunday on La Grande Jatte), the exhibition will also present important new research on his artistic strategies and materials.

In bridging description and evocation, Seurat masses tones to abstract figures, weaves skeins of conté crayon to test the limits of decipherable space, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, illuminating urban types, revealing the ever-expanding industrial suburbs, and offering a tour through the world of nineteenth-century popular entertainment. Most of all, his dramatization of the relationship between light and shadow resulted in a distinct body of work. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of pointillism, this exhibition will demonstrate his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and the significance of his working methods and themes for the art of the twentieth century.

Kara Walker - My Complement, My Enemies, My Opressor, My love

2007-11-16T22:31:00.000-08:00

Kara Walker Exhibition at The Whitney Museum of American
Art

October 13th - February 3, 2008

Kara Walker, Darkytown Rebellion, 2001. Cut paper and projection on wall, 14 x 37 ft. (4.3 x 11.3 m) overall. Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg. Photograph courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

At her New York debut at the Drawing Center in 1994, Kara Walker unveiled a daring reinvention of image-making in which she incorporated the genteel eighteenth-century medium of cut-paper silhouettes into her paintings. Since that time, she has created a poignant body of works that addresses the very heart of human experience, notions of racial supremacy, and historical accuracy. This exhibition presents a comprehensive grouping of the artist’s work to date, featuring more than 200 paintings, drawings, collages, shadow-puppetry, light projections, and video animations that offer an extended contemplation on the nature of figurative representation and narrative in contemporary art.

Drawing her inspiration from sources as varied as the antebellum South, testimonial slave narratives, historical novels, and minstrel shows, Walker has invented a repertoire of powerful narratives in which she conflates fact and fiction to uncover the living roots of racial and gender bias. The intricacy of her imagination and her diligent command of art history have caused her silhouettes to cast shadows on conventional thinking about race representation in the context of discrimination, exclusion, sexual desire, and love. “It’s interesting that as soon as you start telling the story of racism, you start reliving the story,” Walker says. “You keep creating a monster that swallows you. But as long as there’s a Darfur, as long as there are people saying ‘Hey, you don’t belong here’ to others, it only seems realistic to continue investigating the terrain of racism.”

About Kara Walker -

Kara Walker was born in Stockton, California, in 1969. At the age of 13, she moved to Atlanta, Georgia, when her father took a teaching position at Georgia State University. The move from an integrated California to a part of the country with pronounced racial divisions had a profound effect on the artist. “I became black in more senses than just the kind of multicultural acceptance that I grew up with in California. Blackness became a very loaded subject, a very loaded thing to be—all about forbidden passions and desires, and all about a history that’s still living, very present . . . the shame of the South and the shame of the South’s past; its legacy and its contemporary troubles.” After receiving a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991, Walker moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to pursue an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Since that time, she has created more than 30 room-size installations and hundreds of drawings and watercolors, and has been the subject of more than 40 solo exhibitions. She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award (1997) and, most recently, the Deutsche Bank Prize (2004) and the Larry Aldrich Award (2005). She was the United States representative for the 25th International São Paulo Biennial in Brazil (2002). She currently lives in New York, where she is associate professor of visual arts at Columbia University, New York.

Woman Convicted of Kissing Painting

2007-11-16T22:26:00.001-08:00

AVIGNON, France (AP) — A woman who left a lipstick kiss on an all-white painting by the American artist Cy Twombly was convicted Friday of "voluntarily damaging a work of art" and ordered to do 100 hours of community service.

The court in Avignon, southern France, also ordered Rindy Sam, a 30-year-old artist of Cambodian origin who lives in France, to pay damages. She must hand over $1,465 to the painting's owner, $730 to the Avignon gallery that showed it and $1.50 to the painter.

The owner, Yvon Lambert, had asked for more than $2.9 million in damages, which included the value of the painting and the $47,000 restoration cost.

During the trial, Sam argued that she had committed an "act of love" — not vandalism. "I didn't think," she said last month. "When I kissed it, I thought the artist would have understood."

Sam was taken into custody after she kissed the painting at an exhibit in Avignon on July 19.

Twombly is known for abstract paintings, some of which use repetitive lines, graffiti, letters and words. Born in Lexington, Va., in 1928, Twombly has lived in Italy for nearly a half-century. He won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale in 2001.

One Person’s Trash Is Another Person’s Lost Masterpiece -Rufino

2007-10-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

By CAROL VOGEL
Published: October 23, 2007

It’s hardly a place you would expect to find a $1 million painting.

But one March morning four years ago, Elizabeth Gibson was on her way to get coffee, as usual, when she spotted a large and colorful abstract canvas nestled between two big garbage bags in front of the Alexandria, an apartment building on the northwest corner of Broadway and 72nd Street in Manhattan.

“I had a real debate with myself,” said Ms. Gibson, a writer and self-professed Dumpster diver. “I almost left it there because it was so big, and I kept thinking to myself, ‘Why are you taking this back to your crammed apartment?’”

But, she said, she felt she simply had to have the 38-by-51-inch painting, because “it had a strange power.”

Art experts would agree with her. As it turns out, the painting was “Three People,” a 1970 canvas by the celebrated 20th-century Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo that was stolen 20 years ago and is the subject of an F.B.I. investigation.

Experts say the painting — a largely abstract depiction of a man, a woman and an androgynous figure in vibrant purples, oranges and yellows — is in miraculously good condition and worth about $1 million. On Nov. 20 it is to go on the block at Sotheby’s as one of the highlights of a Latin American art auction.

Ms. Gibson said she did not suspect that the painting had any commercial value when she found it. “I am not a modern-art aficionado,” she said. “It was so overpowering, yet it had a cheap frame.”

The painting had been missing for so long that the owners, a married couple whom Sotheby’s would not identify, had long since given up hope of ever seeing it again. The husband, a Houston collector and businessman, had purchased “Three People” at a Sotheby’s auction in 1977 as a birthday present for his wife. He paid $55,000 for it.

Ten years later, when the couple were in the midst of moving from a house to an apartment in Houston, they put the painting into storage at a local warehouse. It was there that it disappeared.

The couple reported the theft to the local and federal authorities, and an image was posted on the databases of the International Foundation for Art Research and the Art Loss Register. They also offered a $15,000 reward to anyone who could help them recover it. But no credible leads surfaced.

The couple later moved to South America, and the husband died. It is his widow who is putting the painting on the market.

How “Three People” got from a Houston warehouse 20 years ago to the streets of New York remains a mystery. The painting’s disappearance so troubled August Uribe, an expert at Sotheby’s, that he volunteered to appear on “Antiques Roadshow” in a “Missing Masterpieces” segment in May 2005.

Ms. Gibson had hung the painting in her living room, but remained curious about it. She had gone back to the Alexandria the day after taking it home and asked the doormen there if anyone could tell her who had put it on the street.

“No one remembered anything,” she said. “All they said was that 20 minutes after I took it, the garbage truck arrived. This was truly an appointment with destiny.”

It took three years for her to realize that she possessed a stolen painting.

A few months after she hung it in her apartment, she said, she called a friend who had worked at an auction house and described the painting to him. “He asked me if it had a signature,” she recalled. It did. In the upper right-hand corner the artist had signed it “Tamayo 0-70.”

But her friend did not seem very interested in her discovery, she said.

More time passed, and one day she removed the painting from the wall and examined the back. There she saw several stickers — one from the Perls Gallery in Manhattan, now closed; another from the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris, where it had been exhibited in 1974; and a third from the Richard Feigen Gallery in Manhattan.

She called the Feigen gallery and told someone there about all the information on the labels. Days later, she said, the gallery called back to say it had no record of the painting.

A year or so after that, she said, she told another friend about the painting. “He showed me a Sotheby’s catalog where a Tamayo had sold for $500,000,” she recalled. He also went to the library and came back with a pile of books on the artist. One — a 1974 monograph of his work by Emily Genauer — had her painting on the cover. “I was stunned,” Ms. Gibson said.

She made an appointment to do more research at the Frick Art Reference Library, at the Frick Collection on East 70th Street. A librarian there directed her to the nearby Mary-Anne Martin gallery, which specializes in Latin American art.

She walked three blocks to the gallery, where she says she was told by someone that it was a “famously stolen” painting. “I was in a state of shock,” she said.

Realizing that she might have something very valuable, Ms. Gibson built a false wall in her closet to conceal the painting, carefully wrapping it in old shower curtains. After Googling the artist’s name, she discovered an image of “Three People” at the “Antiques Roadshow” Web site in reference to the “Missing Masterpieces” segment.

Searching the Web in May, she discovered that the episode would be rebroadcast the next day in Baltimore. She traveled to Baltimore by bus and checked into a hotel to watch the segment.

“It was very nail-biting, but the moment I saw it, I knew it was my painting,” she said.

Upon returning to New York, she immediately called Sotheby’s and made an appointment to see Mr. Uribe. “Just call me a Mystery Woman,” she says she told his office, not wanting to reveal her story until she was face to face with Mr. Uribe. She asked a minister from her church, the First Church of Religious Science, to accompany her and introduced herself as Mrs. Green.

“I asked her to describe the painting,” Mr. Uribe recalled. “And when she said it had a sandy surface, I knew it was the painting.” (Tamayo frequently ground sand and marble into his paint.) She also told Mr. Uribe about the stickers on the back, which offered further confirmation that she had the real thing.

Mr. Uribe visited Ms. Gibson’s Upper West Side apartment, and she began dismantling the false wall. “I saw only a corner of the canvas, yet I knew it was the painting,” he said. “The colors and surface were unique to Tamayo.”

Ms. Gibson will receive the promised $15,000 reward from the seller, as well as a smaller finder’s fee from Sotheby’s, which the auction house declined to disclose.

Sotheby’s informed the F.B.I. that “Three People” had been found. James Wynne, the agent in charge of the case, said that because a criminal investigation was continuing, he could not discuss whether the agency had any clues to who stole the work years ago.

“Finding a $1 million painting in the garbage is very unusual,” Mr. Wynne said. “It’s a real New York story.”

Frank Stella

2007-10-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

On view is an installation of recent works in stainless steel and carbon fiber by the prolific American artist Frank Stella (b. 1936). Since his first showings in New York in the late 1950s, Stella has occupied a prominent place among leading artists and has continued to expand the boundaries of what abstract painting and sculpture can be. This exhibition, in tandem with Frank Stella: Painting into Architecture, on view through July 29, marks the artist's first solo presentation at the Metropolitan. It is set in the most dramatic outdoor space for sculpture in New York City: The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, which offers spectacular views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline.

Christie's and the Bogus Basquiat

2007-09-19T12:57:00.001-07:00

One would think that dropping some serious cash at a high end auction house would be a safe bet. Today it's being reported that an art dealer in Chelsea did just that and ended up with a counterfeit piece! Christie's is now being faced with a $7 million lawsuit that charges them with knowingly selling the art dealer a fake Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. Page Six reports:

Tony Shafrazi, who was Basquiat's primary dealer, says he bought the 1982 untitled piece from Christie's in 1990 for $242,000, and resold it a year later to collector Guido Orsi.

In his suit filed this month in Manhattan Supreme Court, the Iranian-born dealer, who has a gallery on West 26th Street, claims Christie's knew the painting was a fraud - having been told so earlier by the artist's Haitian father, Gerard Jean-Baptiste Basquiat - but sold it anyway.

The Brooklyn-born artist's pieces are worth a lot these days, and recently an untitled 1981 work sold at Sotheby's for $14.6 million. The case arose after a Basquiat authentication committee rejected the piece...so we sort of wonder if they got some ideas from the Warhol committee.

Christie's and the Bogus Basquiat

2007-09-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

At The Art Parade

2007-09-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday, we headed to the 3rd Annual Art Parade, an event that manages to make West Broadway a little more colorful for a few hours each year. The scene is one that hearkens back to 19th century surrealism while overflowing with modern day statements.

Almost doubling in size from its first year, the parade on Saturday boasted about 800 contributors. The Village Voice has more on the history of the event, and one main difference this year was that the usual post-parade party on Wooster Street outside of Deitch didn't take place. The police and mysterious parade officials quickly cleared the block, and the after-party was held at the Delancey.

More photos (by John Del Signore) after the jump...

Art of Latte

2007-09-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

I came across this video on Youtube.com. I never knew you could have so much fun making cafe latte.

Daisake Yamamoto - 1 week project

2007-08-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

The Encampment: Roosevelt Island's Past, Illuminated

2007-08-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

This October, artist Thom Sokoloski will build 100 white tents on Roosevelt Island, and the public will be able to see the illuminated tents at night as well as explore what's in them. The project is called The Encampment and here is a description the website:

The Encampment is a large-scale public participatory art installation. 100 - 19th century luminous tents will be erected as a work of optical art on Roosevelt's Island Southpoint. From 7pm to 7am each night, New Yorkers will be able to view the luminous symmetries of the tents from both sides of the East River, as well as visit the actual site and experience the installations in each of the tents. It proposes an archaeological dig as its metaphor; the search for artifacts is replaced by the search for a collective memory of Roosevelt Island.
Sokoloski told Metro that Roosevelt Island's past, filled with hospitals, lunatic asylum and other facilities, inspired him, "When you go deep the history is so fascinating. This will be a kind of digital archaeology, a model of exchange where the community will uncover the stories of the island’s past.” He also calls it "a metaphorical, archaeological dig into the history of mental health."

On his website, he is asking for both patrons to sponsor the project ($250 per tent) and other people to collaborate. The project will run October 5-7, during Open House New York. [This is also a good time to mention that this year's Open House New York is looking for volunteers; for more information, go to their website.]

And Sokoloski is also working on a 2008 project for Governor's Island. Called Babel Symphony, it would "re-discover that one language of humanity and to re-build the Tower of Babel through a choral and symphonic arrangement of New York City’s spoken languages."

By Jen Chung in Art

New York Artist Elizabeth Murray Dies at 66

2007-08-13T22:25:00.001-07:00

New York artist Elizabeth Murray (who split her time between Tribeca and Washington County, NY) died yesterday after a battle with cancer at the age of 66. Her husband (with whom she had several children), Bob Holman, is the founder of the Bowery Poetry Club.

Moving to New York in 1967, she was inspired by work of many artists including Richard Serra. By 1973 she had her first solo show at the Paula Cooper Gallery in SoHo, with many accomplishments to follow (the NY Times has a good recap here). In 1999 she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant; and just last year there was a retrospective at MoMA covering her 40-year career, something not many women have been honored with.

Murray "reshaped Modernist abstraction into a high-spirited, cartoon-based, language of form whose subjects included domestic life, relationships and the nature of painting itself." In the '80s and '90s she brought her brand of art underground when she designed two large murals for the subway system, one at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue and the other at the 23rd Street-Ely Avenue Station.

Photos via t_a_i_s's flickr

From girl to anime

2007-08-10T21:45:00.000-07:00

I this from www.animedesho.animeblogger.net/?p=2150 - awesome

Judith Supine Takes Over The Manhattan Bridge

2007-08-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

Our sources on the Manhattan Bridge report that at 11:40am, Judith Supine dropped a massive 50' piece over the side facing south. This might be the biggest development in NYC bridge graffiti since Sane/Smith tagged the outside of the Brooklyn Bridge in the late-1980s! The best place to view the piece is from Empire State Park in DUMBO.

Artist Jeremy Blake's Body Identified

2007-08-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

Late last month, after the death of his girlfriend Theresa Duncan, witnesses saw Jeremy Blake walk in to the water around Beach 102nd Street. The 35-year old East Village artist left a suicide note (along with clothes and a wallet) under the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach. His body was found on July 22nd off of Sea Girt, NJ, five days after he was last seen. Yesterday the body was identified as Blake's.

Police spokesman Paul J. Browne says the cause of death was presumed to be suicide. Duncan had also committed suicide just one week before, on July 10th - something Blake referenced in his final letter. While some are calling this a modern day Romeo and Juliet story, others are saying there is more to be unearthed, namely that the couple was adamant in their belief they were being stalked by Scientologists. This may sound "out there" until you read some of Duncan's blog entries documenting their encounters.

Blake asked Glenn O'Brien to write a final post on his girlfriend's blog after her death, which has now been published. Meanwhile, a new work in progress by Blake and Malcolm McLaren called “Glitterbest” was to be shown at an exhibit of his work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington this fall. As of now, the older pieces will still be shown and it's unclear what will happen to the new collaborative piece.

Photo by Autumn de Wilde.

Kanye West And Takashi Murakami - oh mind

2007-07-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

KANYE WEST AND MURAKAMI TEAM UP

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has teamed up with hip-hop star Kanye West for a variety of projects centering around West’s upcoming album Graduation, due to be released on Sept. 11, 2007. The first two singles from the album, Can’t Tell Me Nothing and Stronger, already feature Murakami artworks as covers -- the former a grimacing head made of neon coils, and the latter a rendering of West’s bear mascot with two helmeted robots floating nearby (representing the band Daft Punk, which is sampled on the track). West told MTV.com that Murakami also did a three-minute animation for one of the songs on Graduation.

Though he’s living the life of a Grammy-winning hip-hop star, West seems to have a real admiration for Murakami’s lifestyle, describing him as "a god in the art world." During a recent tour of Japan, West visited the artist’s Kaikai Kiki studio and took his own souvenir snapshots of Hiropon, Murakami’s life-sized sculpture of a bosomy anime pinup. The two men had their photo taken posing in front of the work, an image that is part of an illustrated report by Akiko Kato on the Kaikai Kiki website.

"Murakami, his work has been stunning to me," said West in an MTV interview. "Every single that’s coming out for my album, he did the artwork for the covers. . . . And all the merchandising for the new album is Murakami."

The admiration, apparently, is mutual. During his stop at the studio, West showed off a diamond-encrusted crucifix that he had designed himself -- "Breathtaking," wrote Kato, "Christ’s eyes shined blue" -- and then went on to sketch an idea for another amulet design. West asked Murakami to add eyes to the drawing, and "an unexpected collaboration was born!" The sketch was clearly the inspiration for the neon creature from Murakami’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing cover, and the necklace West wears in the Can’t Tell Me Nothing video looks like the Kaikai Kiki drawing.

"We think that he [West] and Takashi share this eerie ability to concentrate and approach everything with utmost seriousness," Kato concludes. The report also hints at another common interest between the two superstars -- Louis Vuitton, whose brand Murakami famously revitalized several years ago. West entered Murakami’s studio wearing a colored Vuitton pouch. Both of the rapper’s new singles refer to the luxury handbag maker (Can’t Tell Me Nothing includes the words "And what’d I do? Act more stupidly/Bought more jewelry, more Louis V;" and Stronger includes the lyric "I’m caught up in the moment, right?/This is Louis Vuitton dime night.")

New Public Art for the Pier

2007-07-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

In December the Hudson River Trust announced two new pieces of art being installed at an (also new) northern Chelsea park (at Pier 66), one being a giant waterwheel. The wheel is currently installed at the end of Pier 66 near 25th Street and was inaugurated at a ceremony yesterday. It uses the river's changing tide to power an odometer which has been functioning since April.

Paul Rimirez Jonas is the mastermind behind the wheel, which is about 30-feet in diameter and serves as "a reminder of the Hudson River’s milling history." Jonas is a local artist who explained, "although it was created with the improbable goal of marking the duration of our lives, species, civilizations, and even the planet, its more immediate intent is to place human existence within a geologic time frame." The time frame to make his creation a reality has been seven years! He began in 2000, working with marine engineers and a whole lot of imagination.

The other piece of public art now on display is "Two Too Large Tables" by artists Allan and Ellen Wexler. Their stainless steel and wood pieces resemble a community table (with chairs) and a pavillion - all of which are larger than life. In total the Trust has commisioned seven works of art for the new parks, and promises more to come.

Faye's Random Summer Picks

2007-07-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

Ladies, check out www.lovemyshoes.com. I found this in the newspaper-I think. It's cheap and fabulous.

The hottest eco-friendly "I'm not a Plastic bag " canvas bag this summer designed by Anya Hindmarch. It's only like 15 bucks. I went to get one last Wednesday but the was sold out. Apparently, a lot of people were waiting outside all night in the rain for the bag and it was sold out like in 30 mins. It's limited edition. It's already banned in China because people in Hong Kong were trampled over just for the bag and they don't want that to happen in China. Craziness. They should just write, "I'm going to die for this bag".

For all you outdoor people that love to go out for picnic with friends and love ones. www.picnicfun.com is a fun website. It's lightweight and it's waterproof on the exterior part.. This metrobag costs only 30 bucks.

I found this cutesy ring at www.elsewares.com. I wouldn't buy it but I thought it was cute.

I want this tshirt "I have a body of a god" in babytee. I saw this ad on Myspace when you sign out..an addicitve site. I'm trying to find the shirt that says, "I'm so excited, I'm so scared" with an image of a pill - priceless.

My co worker, Miho's art works

2007-07-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

Artist Presumed to Have Killed Himself After Girlfriend's Suicide

2007-07-22T21:14:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Blake, an artist whose works have been shown at the Whitney and on Times Square's Jumbotron, is presumed to have killed himself by walking into the ocean at the Rockaways on Tuesday. On July 10, Blake discovered the body of his girlfriend, filmmaker Theresa Duncan, in their East Village apartment; he had planned to attend Duncan's memorial service, which is being held today.

According to the NY Times reports that Blake was seen "taking off his clothes and then walking into the water at Beach 102nd Street" Tuesday night and was not seen coming out. A wallet and a suicide note were found amongst his clothes, and police divers have not found Blake's body.

Duncan and Blake were both artists: Duncan, who had a blog, The Wit of the Staircase, developed video games and made films, while Blake created lush paintings, photographs, and digital animations that "mix visual narrative with abstract forms, as Modern Art Notes explains. Blake was represented by the gallery Kinz, Tillou + Feigen (more about his work here), and Lance Kinz told the Daily News, "They were extremely intelligent, talented, creative, ambitious people...As a couple, they were extremely close, very much in love. They worshiped each other, and collaborated on projects together, as if they were one."

The NY Times' art critic Roberta Smith said that Blake's work had "given the stream-of-consciousness narrative, so long a part of modern literature, a time-based visual equivalent." In 2003, Blake's work Cowboy Waltz was shown as part of Creative Time's 59th Minute series, where artists' videos were show on the big Panasonic TV in Times Square (it was recently replayed as part of Creative Time's 59th Minute retrospective). Blake's work can also be seen in Punch Drunk Love, where his animation is used to punctuate scenes (see some clips here).

Photograph of Blake and Duncan from PatrickMcMullan.com; still from one of Blake's sequences in Punch Drunk Love

Japanese "Ganguro"

2007-07-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

Ganguro (ガングロ), literally "black-face", is a Japanese fashion trend among many Japanese girls which peaked in popularity from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, an outgrowth of chapatsu hair dyeing. The Shibuya and Ikebukuro districts of Tokyo are the centre of ganguro fashion.

The basic look consists of bleached hair, a deep tan, both black and white eyeliners, false eyelashes, platform shoes (usually sandals or boots), and brightly colored outfits. Also typical of the "Ganguro Gal" look are cell phones covered with purikura stickers, tie-dyed sarongs, mini-skirts, hibiscus flower hairpins, and lots of bracelets, rings and necklaces.

Extreme trend followers further bleach their hair up to a platinum blond shade, get even deeper tans, wear white lipstick, multicoloured pastel eye shadows and tiny metallic or glittery adhesives around the bottom rim of the eye sockets (See Yamanba). Popular Ganguro magazines include: Egg, Popteen, and Ego System.

In an interview with Tony Barrell, Creator of FRUiTS magazine, Shoichi Aoki, stated: "Ganguro was a phenomenon that was specific to Shibuya, about 1km away from Harajuku - which we have been talking about - and they were totally different so FRUiTS as a rule didn’t really take them up. Only a few times we’ve covered ganguro in our magazine. Where they came from is actually a mystery, no one really knows but there is some speculation that they were girls who were infatuated or fascinated with Janet Jackson or black American musicians or perhaps Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, but it’s still a mystery what their origins were."

There is some dispute surrounding the etymology of the word "ganguro." Many claim the name itself, "Black face" support this. This also goes against Ganguro itself, because many people are seeing it as racist and comparing it to the Blackface of early 1900's culture in America.

I guess it's one of the coolest style in Japan but I have worst pics of them. Bad and the Ugly. Why???

Takashi Murakami

2007-07-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

Deal or No Deal

Takashi Murakami’s show is nakedly commercial; “Underdog” strikes an opposite pose, to much the same effect.

Takashi Murakami’s That I may time transcend, that a universe my heart may unfold (2007), at Gagosian.
(Photo: Acrylic and silver gold leaf on canvas mounted on board. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York. © 2007 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved)

The New York gallery scene being as incredibly overpopulated and overmoneyed as it is, deep conflicts and contradictions aren’t hard to find. Still, it’s a little strange to find two shows side by side in a single gallery on Madison Avenue, throwing those contradictions into high relief. But that’s happening at the artplex known as Gagosian, often called the most powerful gallery in the world.

On the one hand there are the superslick, super-flat, superexpensive, and to me superficial paintings of the Japanese entrepreneur–Energizer Bunny–artist Takashi Murakami. On the other, there’s the seemingly insurrectionary but clubby group show of what could be called the “boys and girls in black and silver,” organized by two leading downtown artists, Adam McEwen and Nate Lowman. The two shows, the first flashy, the second self-consciously disheveled, couldn’t be more different. Their juxtaposition at Gagosian, however, points up disconcerting similarities; under its combative surface, the group show is as buddy-buddy as the Murakami is self-satisfied. Still, seeing the two exhibitions back-to-back suggests that a shift in aesthetic sensibilities is under way.

The Murakami show is the latest twist from an artist who in the nineties excelled at ultrathin surfaces and magically vapid images of sex and consumerism. Drawing from the realms of manga—the radically distorted creatures that populate Japanese comics—and anime, Murakami painted Mickey Mouse–like characters, sunny mushrooms, and abstract splashes that were part Pop Surrealism, part Hokusai’s Great Wave, and part porn. Murakami is a craft-master whiz of cuteness, razzmatazz, and adolescent male fantasy; he once made a life-size sculpture of a big-eyed girl with shaved pudenda who squeezed her phallic nipples and jump-roped over a money shot of milk spurting from her gigantic breasts. He also curated several crackerjack exhibitions that elucidated the Japanese penchant for mirroring the West back to itself, and shed light on how Japan is insular and xenophobic yet simultaneously open and adaptable. If Japan is like the android that finds life (a common anime theme), Murakami is one who breathed life into contemporary Japanese art.

Unfortunately, since around 2001 Murakami has been so set on merging fine art with commercial product that by now all he’s doing is moving merch. The best that can be said about Murakami’s new work is that he’s making pretty money. Or pretty empty money. The main attractions of this exhibition are 50 little happy-faced flower paintings and six large portraits of a haggard-looking Zen patriarch. The flowers are insipid. So are the portraits, although at least with them Murakami is up to his old extreme stylization. But the real content of Murakami’s art is money and marketability. Hence, each of the 50 silly flowers reportedly goes for $90,000; the portraits, about $1.5 mil per unit. Four better larger flower paintings run about $450,000; two boring pictures of severed hands, about $400,000. Needless to say, the gallery reports everything is sold.

Not bad for paintings that have the visual oomph of screensavers and are only placeholders for gullible collectors, who buy them hoping today’s feeding frenzy lasts long enough to fob them off on subsequent happy patsies. Or they’ll keep them as trophies. Either way, it’s a foul feedback loop. While we’re laughing at them for being servile and cynical enough to make, sell, or buy these gewgaws, they’ll laugh at us for missing out on this payday.

It’s wonderful that more artists are making more money from their work. Without the market, the art world would be a pretty boring place. But this is a complete acquiescence to a world where gamesmanship, money, and hype are measures of success; where advisers sell art over the phone from JPEGs to collectors who imagine they’ll enter art history by spending exorbitantly. Meanwhile, auction houses cheer them on. Tobias Meyer, worldwide head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, says of the mad prices, “It’s a new world.” Actually, it’s just the old one of cash, carry, and entitlement, speeded up.

Murakami’s supporters call him “the Japanese Warhol.” They say he’s enacting Warhol’s deal-making dictums that “good business is the best art” and “business art is the step that comes after Art.” He has his own “factory” where assistants make his paintings, his Kaikai Kiki company represents a brood of Murakami clones, and he’s engaged in product design. To his credit, Murakami’s eagerness to outmarket everyone makes artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons seem decorous by comparison. But Murakami has fallen into his own trap. He didn’t heed one other Warhol bon mot, “Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market, it really stinks.” Murakami is no longer playing the market; the market is playing him—and so many others.

An installation view of the “Beneath the Underdog” show at Gagosian. In the foreground, Barry Le Va’s One Edge, Two Corners; On Center Shattered (Variation 13, Within the Series of Layered Pattern Acts) (1968, re-created 2007); on the ceiling, Michael Joaquin Grey’s Orange Gravity (California) (1992).
(Photo: Robert McKeever/Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery, New York)

Which brings us to the gritty, intergenerational group show at Gagosian. “Beneath the Underdog” features 53 artists who seem to be railing against the type of hype Murakami represents. Of course, a number of “Underdog” participants are very hot, overtouted artists themselves. The curators claim the show is about “the individual’s relationship to the towering vertical landscape of late capitalism.” Perhaps. But it’s disingenuous not to address the fact that this show’s being at Gagosian means “Underdog” is about as deep in this landscape as it’s possible to get.

There are a number of excellent pieces in the show, among them Jessica Diamond’s hand-painted buy a condo or die sign (in re-creation, originally from 1987), Michael Joaquin Grey’s orange 1992 rendition of Rodin’s Balzac hanging upside down from the ceiling, and Barry Le Va’s 1968 shattered-glass sculpture (also re-created). Best of all, in this context, is Monica Bonvicini’s smashed-to-smithereens Sheetrock floor. This piece runs throughout the entire show, and infuses everything with a subtext of raucous anger, destruction, and vulnerability. It also saves the show from itself, offsetting the irksome impression that too much work in “Underdog” is either beholden to a predictable list of au courant males (e.g., Warhol, Richter, Smithson, Matta-Clark, and Kippenberger) or just trying to signify radicalism and resistance. By now the messiness, appropriation, and abstraction of “Underdog” are so common and system-approved that they’re beginning to signal emptiness and cliquishness instead.

In some ways, “Underdog” is simply what frustration and ambition look like now. The show is so up-front about its in-groupness and back-scratching, however, that you begin to understand that these conditions are effective ways to draw polemical lines in the curatorial sand, to circle the wagons against dubious tendencies. “Underdog” will seem dated in a year, but right here, right now, its polemics, tribalism, and gang tactics—as cynical and annoying as they threaten to become—are what it may take to move beyond the pranksterism of artists like Murakami.

Hello Kitty Laptop

2007-07-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

OMG...why??

New IPhone

2007-07-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

Is it really worth it? Spending 500-600 bucks for internet, phone, emails, organizational functions. I couldn't believe people waited over night in the rain for the new gadget. I mean, other companies were promoting their name by giving out freebie stuff. Some people actually bought the Iphone just dissect it.

I remembered back in the days, there were pagers and beepers. Now laptops. digital cameras. Ipods. Now Iphones. What is going to be next? Irobot for Lazy people.

Updating my Website

2007-07-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

I finally update my website. Hope this is more professional look and contains functions for my viewers, if I do have one.

Peter Max's advice to me

2007-03-26T22:07:00.000-07:00

I went to Barnes & Noble at 7pm to see Peter Max. At the moment, I was debating if I should go straight home and I just said to myself - Oh what the heck - It's Peter Max. In his 60's, he still looks very young looking. He came to the front with a big smile. He talked about his life in Shanghai and Tibet and how he became an artist. He talked about his woodstock art project, Statue of Liberty, Central Park flyer.

He talked about his friendship with Andy Warhol. Everytime when their artworks were purchased, they would go to an antique shop and purchased cookie jars. Apparently, Andy Warhol picked the cookie jars Peter Max wanted, so he would pick different jars. After Andy Warhol's death, Andy's assistant told Peter that Andy always thought Peter selected the best cookie jars. Crazy-huh?

As I was waiting on line to get my book signed, I've met a lot of interested people. After 20 mins passed, it was my turn to meet Peter Max. I asked him one advice he could say to an aspiring artist. He said...

..." Keep on drawing. Making silly drawings. That's what bring out the best work "

I will cherished it advice. Thanks, Peter.

OK Harris

2007-03-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

At my NYU class, we went to OK Harris to meet the pioneer Art Dealer, Ivan Karp. He was a humorous man with straight forward introduction and answers.

OK Harris' current exhibition is really great. My instrutor, Laura, explained to the class how the paintings are arranged in a way not to overcrowd the paintings. The smaller paintings are put in the back for the reason that it would not be a target of getting it stolen. I was intrigued with the baby because the wire is twisted and blended in a way that the light can shown to the wall of a baby crawling - that was amazing.

LEONARD KOSCIANSKI

TJALF SPARNAAY

ROBERT GINDER

Jhumpa Lahiri and Mira Nair talk about Namesake at Barnes & Noble

2007-03-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

3/12/07 - My sister and I went to Barnes & Noble at 6:30pm thinking that being there 30 mins earlier will be ok. Oh no - It was so packed. We ended up standing for an hour and a half but it was worth everything. I got three books signed: Namesake, Interpreter of Maladie, Namesake the movie. They were terrific ladies. Jhumpa Lahiri looked like she was so tired and didn't feel like she wanted to be there.

Now, I want to see the movie.

Here is a clip of the movie Namesake and Jhumpa and Mira interview each other about the movie.

A trip to MOMA

2007-03-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

I met up with a friend, Snow and her friend at MOMA on Friday. To those that don't know, it's free on Friday between 4-8pm.

I missed my chance to see Jeff Koon, a contemporary artist that will be discussing his artwork at MOMA. It was sold out and you had to pay for an admission.

It was my first time going to MOMA. I got the opportunity to see some of the greatest artists that aspired me to be an artist. I took pictures that interested me. My pictures show the size of the artwork by comparing to visitors.

Jeff Koon at MOMA

2007-03-07T22:01:00.000-08:00

Jeff Koon will be in MOMA at 7pm o Friday, March 9th.

Stolen Picasso Paintings - Worth 66 million

2007-02-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

By JEAN-PIERRE VERGES, 2/28/07

Maya and Doll

PARIS - At least two Picasso paintings, worth a total of nearly $66 million, were stolen from the artist's granddaughter's house in Paris, police said Wednesday.

The paintings, "Maya and the Doll" and "Portrait of Jacqueline," disappeared overnight Monday to Tuesday from the chic 7th arrondissement, or district, a Paris police official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said they were worth nearly $66 million, and that there were signs of breaking and entering in the house.

Though police only mentioned the two paintings, the director of the Picasso Museum, Anne Baldassari, said several paintings and drawings were stolen from the home of Diana Widmaier-Picasso.

"It was a very large theft," she said, without giving details.

"Maya and the Doll" is a colorful portrait of a young blonde girl in pigtails, eyes askew in a Cubist perspective. Another version of the painting hangs in the Picasso Museum. It portrays Maya Widmaier, the daughter of Picasso and Marie-Therese Walter, his companion from 1924-1944.

Maya married Pierre Widmaier had three children, Olivier, Richard and Diana Widmaier-Picasso, an art historian and author of a book called "Art Can Only be Erotic."

No other details of the theft were immediately available.

The Art Loss Register, which maintains the world's largest database on stolen, missing and looted art, currently lists 444 missing Picasso pieces, including paintings, lithographs, drawings and ceramics.

Among recent missing Picassos reported to the register was the theft of an abstract watercolor stolen in Mexico, said staff member Antonia Kimbell.

The number of missing Picassos is so high simply because Picasso was so prolific, Kimbell said. She said the Paris theft was "definitely quite significant."

"Anything of particularly good quality, with the provenance of his granddaughter, would reach considerable value on the open market," Kimbell said.

But major pieces, when stolen, usually sell for a pittance, if at all, on the black market because potential buyers are afraid to touch them.

"It's unlikely a legitimate dealer would purchase or acquire any of these pieces," Kimbell said.

David LaChapelle at Soho

2007-02-22T21:59:00.000-08:00

David LaChapelle signs at Store NY, February 22nd from 6-8pm.
The TASCHEN Store in New York held its first public event this evening with David LaChapelle who graciously signed copies of Heaven to Hell for every person waiting in line. More than 300 people stood patiently in the drizzling rain to meet David, but not without receiving a cup of hot chocolate and an invitation to party with David later that night at an exclusive Manhattan nightclub.

"My pictures are about getting as far away from reality as possible. Dreams should be part of our everyday life." -DLaC

Tupac Shakur, Becoming Clean

Naomi Campbell, Have you seen me? , New York 1999

Free Consultation, Surgery Story, New York 1997

Lil Kim Luxury Item

Kate Holden 2/13/2007

2007-02-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

I went to Barnes and Noble in Astor Place to attend Kate Holden book reading of her new book, In my Skin". My friend came along with me to listen to her story as a middle class female working as a prostitute to pay for her Heorin addiction. With her awesome Australian accent, she stood her head up without any embarassment as she talked in details of her lifestyle. She conveys her life as a prostitute and a heroin addict in a positive way compared to other books that demean these aspects. With supportive family, she managed to overcome the odds and graduated from college with a degree in literature related field and completed her masters in creative writing.

She read the first paragraph of her book as she described the many men she encountered, such as business men to married men. And how the men become needy and weak when they are with a female. She also stated the reason for going into the profession was the lack of self esteem they had developed. She had become a successful and lucrative female in the business.

Her supportive profession and her colleagues were the one that inspired her to write the memoir. And that is how "in my skin" was published.

I spoke to her a little bit and had my book signed by her. She is friendly and funny. I will start to read the book.

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Q&A with Kate Holden

Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin, a searingly honest and wonderfully written account of a life on the streets, on drugs and on the skids.

What made you decide to write so frankly about your experiences as a heroin addict and a prostitute?

I was aware of the amazing opportunity I was experiencing, in terms of working in a brothel and meeting people in a uniquely intimate way; it seemed like a gold mine for a writer. And then I felt very strongly that most people only receive distorted and negative media images of heroin addicts and prostitutes, and someone should write a more realistic depiction.

Was it difficult to make the decision to introduce yourself to the literary world by writing about that time in your life?

Don’t all writers like to talk about themselves? While I might have liked to begin with a novel, my own story seemed to be brimming in me, and the enthusiasm I had for writing it led the book almost to write itself.

Where do you stand on the prostitution debate? Do you think it’s empowering or exploitative (or neither)?

I think it’s simplistic to talk of ‘prostitution’ without distinguishing between the different types and situations. I cannot think of many things worse than forced or coerced prostitution, which too frequently occurs in the illegal brothels and on the street, but a safe and willing prostitute can have either a positive or negative experience, depending on her attitude and situation. I don’t believe prostitution itself is inherently exploitative, but it can be. I found my own experience, ultimately, empowering.

How do you think your experiences have affected the person you are today?

I am much less fearful of people. Having seen powerful men naked and needy, and humbled women proud, I understand, I think, that people are mostly good, if sometimes weak. Once I’d confronted the fact that there was darkness inside me I didn’t recognise, I also found new ways to be proud of myself. In a way, I’m more confident in the world, and at the same time, strangely, somehow more idealistic.

What are you reading at the moment?

I’m devouring Christos Tsiolkos’ Dead Europe, which is savage, compelling, and exquisitely disturbing. It’s the novel I wish I had written.

As a former bookseller yourself, what would you say to a customer who asked you why they should read your book?

Hah! If I had a customer with me (and it always depends on who the customer is), I’d say it’s a good read if you want an excursion into a darker side of Australian urban life, and that the author does a nice turn in the use of semi-colons.

What is your life like now? What are you working on?

At the moment I’m completing a Master’s degree in creative writing, for which I’m working on a novel set in England, trying to reconcile my interest in British folklore, ghosts, erotica, and the legacy of British culture in Australia. I live in Melbourne and have a social life that involves a lot of coffee.

Nikki S. Lee - Now in Motion Pictures

2006-10-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

Anyone know when is the next opening for Nikki Lee? It seems like everything I find her name New York Magazine or online, it's too late. She a awesome artist because I can relate to her style of work.

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Now in Moving Pictures: The Multitudes of Nikki S. Lee
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By CAROL KINO
Published: October 1, 2006
EVEN after a long face-to-face conversation, it’s hard to say for certain what Nikki S. Lee is really like. That’s partly because this South Korean-born artist has always trafficked in her unnerving talent for assuming different identities.

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For “Projects,” a series of photographs that won her notoriety soon after they were first shown in group shows and art fairs in 1998, Ms. Lee transformed herself through a blend of clothes, makeup, diets, hair extensions, tanning salons, colored contact lenses, dance lessons and sheer grit to infiltrate wildly different milieus — tourists, yuppies, strippers, rappers, schoolgirls and retirees, among others — and posed for casual snapshots with her new acquaintances.

For her “Parts” series (2002-4), she had herself photographed with one different man after another who was later sliced off the picture, leaving only a trace of his presence, like an arm or foot. While this put the focus squarely on Ms. Lee, it also implied that her identity mutated with each romantic entanglement.

As a result, said Ms. Lee, 35, who speaks English somewhat haltingly and with a heavy Korean accent, “When people meet me the first time, they are like, ‘Oh, you are different than I thought.’ ”

In her latest project, an hourlong film that is to be shown this week at the Museum of Modern Art, she makes ample use of that confusion.

Titled “A K A Nikki S. Lee,” the film purports to be a documentary about the real Nikki, a rather plain, serious young woman who is in turn making her own documentary about her alter ego, Nikki Two, the effervescent exhibitionist who appears in the photographs. Yet as the true Ms. Lee explained in an interview in her East Village apartment, “Nikki One is supposed to be real Nikki, and Nikki Two is supposed to be fake Nikki. But they are both fake Nikki.”

The movie opens as Nikki One is being interviewed in a book-lined studio. “In this documentary,” she says solemnly, “I create Nikki Lee based on what people think her character is.” The scene then switches to the more fashion-conscious Nikki Two, lounging in a Venetian water taxi on her way to stay with wealthy collectors and visit the Venice Film Festival. She is soon seen shopping at Missoni, hobnobbing with movie folk (most notably Jeremy Irons) at a reception at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal and padding around the collectors’ apartment in her nightgown, wearing an eyeshade that reads “Princess.”

To make the film, which she began working on in early 2005, Ms. Lee frequently traveled with one of two cameramen who were assigned to document her “real” life. Most of the events did in fact take place — a trip to South Korea to act in a movie called “The Girl Who Has Many Selves” (her bit part was edited out); a stay in Paris, where she staged and modeled for a fashion shoot for The New York Times; and a noisy afternoon with a big Jewish family on Long Island, where she plays with a bevy of babies and tries on over-the-top wedding dresses, one of which she uses later in the film.

Other scenes, however, are pure fabrication, most notably those that present Nikki One in her book-lined studio, a fake set that Ms. Lee constructed in a rented Williamsburg loft with leased furniture and borrowed books. Here Nikki One earnestly explains the direction of her faux documentary to an unseen interviewer and discusses her work with two visitors: RoseLee Goldberg, the performance art curator, and Leslie Tonkonow, Ms. Lee’s real-life dealer who discovered her in art school.

Ms. Lee also played fast and loose with the dates, just as she did with the camera date-stamps on her “Projects” photos.

In making the film, “I kind of followed real events,” Ms. Lee said in the interview for this article. “But I kind of arrange them.” For instance, she asked the collectors, Tony and Heather Podesta, if she could stay with them in Venice; she also set up the film’s final scene: a long, almost mystical tracking shot in which, seen only from the back, she marches determinedly down a pier at Manhattan’s annual Armory Show on the Hudson to the music of Philip Glass and drops off an envelope at Ms. Tonkonow’s booth.

No intervention was needed for the film’s most disastrous event, when Ms. Lee arrived at a Frankfurt gallery for her first German solo show only to find that her “Parts” photographs had been ruined by the framer. (He had decided to tidy them up by trimming off their borders.)

On screen Nikki One is seen wailing, “This is not my work,” and then trudging miserably around the city. The show’s pre-opening dinner unfolds as it actually did, with a slide projection instead of real artwork. Yet Ms. Lee sounded perky as she recalled these setbacks. “It was awful for the opening,” she said, “but really good for the film.”

Friends and acquaintances who took part in her faux documentary were sometimes told what to say but were also encouraged to be natural, Ms. Lee said. She said she tended to follow the other person’s lead in each scene, “but of course I act.” During the Frankfurt sequence, for example, she eventually took the gallery’s owner, Anita Beckers, into another room and explained off camera that her morose mood was feigned.

Ms. Beckers, who still represents her in Germany, recalls the situation fondly. “We had so much fun together,” she said. “I think for Nikki it was the best part of the film.”

T.F. Chen " Art for Humanity"

2006-10-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

October 19th, 2006 at 250 Lafayette Street - I visited T.F. Chen Cultural Center for their "Art for Humanity". It was a small opening for Art enthusiasts as myself to enjoy a new style of art. I was welcomed by the two hosts, Ted and president, Lucia at the front door. I was welcome with wines and snacks.

"Art for Humanity" promotes peace, cultural harmony and youth uplifting. T.F. Chen tries to strive for peace through his work of Art. His work convey direct messages to open our eyes to the viewers. His Van Gogh, "Do not smoke" is a good example to tell people to stop smoking and make a goodness in the future. With his five dimensional style of East, West, Past, Present and symbols; his innovated style of Art, which has created him a great artisit.

Working as an intern, he was always a great inspiration for me to strive for greatness. I tried to learn to become a good artist by understanding other influential artists.

I hope for the best for T.F. Chen and his team.

Description below:

Please RSVP at chen@tfchen.org and come to our opening reception on Oct 12 6-8pm., at 250 Lafayette St . If you can not come to our Opening Reception, please visit us at a time convenient for you from October 11,12,13,14,and 17th at One East 42nd Street and from October 13th till December 10th at T. F. Chen Cultural Center .

Allow me to briefly introduce us to you. We have been engaged in art & cultural activities, business in Europe, America and Asia for over 30 years.

A: T. F. Chen Cultural Center is a 501C3 non-profit organization aiming to promote Dr. Chen¡Çs vision of a Global New Renaissance in Love, and East-West cultural exchange. Dr. Chen is a designated ¡ÈCultural Ambassador of Tolerance and Peace¡É and ¡ÈUnited Nations Global Tolerance Award 2001¡É recipient. We are organizing an ¡ÈArts For Humanity World Tour in partnership with the ¡ÈFriends of the United Nations to advance art education and a global cultural of peace through arts¡É and bearing the positive message of the UN over the next decade. Dr. Chen is graciously donating the proceeds, from sales of his artwork, to fund the $3.5 million dollars projected budget needed to tour 40 cities in 15 countries over 10 years. (*Please see our TV ad which is airing from Oct 9th-22nd on CNN, MSBNC, etc 600 times in major cities around the world or see it on our website at: www.artsforhumanity.org.)

B: The New World Art Center focuses on international art business (Primarily of Chen), including the following aspects:

The planning, exhibition, promotion and marketing of artworks
The publication and distribution of limited edition prints
Licensing, accord of copyright, and marketing of art gift items
Consultation on art investment and collection planning.

Enjoy www.tfchen.org. & www.artsforhumanitytour.org.

CAI GUO-QIANG

2006-08-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: First solo Met exhibition by a contemporary Chinese artist

Naomi Takafuchi & Elyse Topalian

Cai Guo-Qiang, the acclaimed Chinese-born artist known internationally for his elaborate sculpture installations and gunpowder projects, has created a site-specific exhibition for the 2006 season of The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The four works comprising Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument were inspired by the dramatic setting of the Roof Garden, an open-air space atop the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing that offers spectacular views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, and by the artist’s reactions to issues of present-day concern.

“Cai is, without doubt, one of the most inventive artists working today in New York and indeed internationally, and this exhibition will mark many ‘firsts’ for the Metropolitan,” commented Gary Tinterow, who is Engelhard Curator in Charge of the Museum’s Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art, and who invited Mr. Cai to create the installation. “Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof will be the first solo exhibition by a contemporary Chinese artist to be held at the Metropolitan. His method of combining traditional Chinese motifs and materials to comment on contemporary life makes his work particularly relevant in the context of an encyclopedic museum, and especially moving to anyone who has been touched by the September 11, 2001, attack on New York.”

Works on view will include the 15-feet-tall glass Transparent Monument, at the base of which lie replicas of dead birds. “Like a transparent sculpture or canvas,” says Cai, “the glass encases the city and park, fusing them with the work as one, and bringing out the relationship between the city, or civilization, and park, or nature.” A second sculpture, Nontransparent Monument, the antithesis of Transparent Monument, is a multi-part narrative relief sculpture in stone replete with vignettes depicting life after September 11, 2001, that range in subject from the tragic to the humorous. The installation will also feature Move Along, Nothing to See Here, a pair of life-sized replicas of crocodiles, cast in resin and pierced with several thousand sharp objects confiscated at airport-security checkpoints, that will loom over the Roof Garden space.

Finally, an ephemeral sculpture titled Clear Sky Black Cloud will consist of an actual black cloud appearing above the Roof Garden at noon on Tuesday through Sunday of each week, bursting like an inkblot in the sky and then dissipating slowly in the air. This recurring work, made from miniature black-smoke shells, will set a new and symbolic clock for New York City for the duration of the exhibition.

Born in 1957 – the son of a historian and landscape painter in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province – Cai Guo-Qiang (pronounced sigh gwo chang) developed a desire to become an artist at an early age. As a teenager, he was absorbed in the martial arts and even acted in some kung-fu movies. Educated in the traditions of Western art, Cai first encountered Western contemporary art as China entered an era of intense social change. Not able to find a school offering classes in contemporary art, he studied stage design from 1981 to 1985 at the Shanghai Drama Institute. He also experimented with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and to confront the suppression that he felt from his controlled artistic and social climate. At the end of 1986, when he moved to Japan, he began to explore the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that led to experimentation with explosives on a massive scale, and the development of explosion events, exemplified in his renowned series Projects for Extraterrestrials.

Cai achieved international prominence while living in Japan, and his works began to be shown widely around the world. His approach draws on a wide variety of symbols, narratives, traditions, and materials, such as astrophysics, feng shui, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, computers, vending machines, and gunpowder. Among his many awards to date is the Golden Lion Prize of the 48th Venice Biennale International. Cai moved from Japan to the United States in 1995, and now lives in New York with his family.

P.S. 1 - Su-Mei Tse

2006-07-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

P.S. 1
22-25 Jackson Ave

I went to P.S. 1 search for new Art ideas for my butterfly project. The gates opened at 12 pm. Three floors of artworks: Bruce Nauman, Andrea Fraser, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Patty Chan, Thomas Hirschhorn, Marina Abramovc, Gregory Crewdon, Shigeko Kubato, Milton Rosa-Ortiz, Frank Moore, Ana Mendienta, Mike Kelly, Chen Zhen, Kalup Linzy, ReginaJose Galindo, Dessin Jabuv and more.

I went to see Su-Mei Tse's works. P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is pleased to present Su-Mei Tse's first solo museum exhibition in New York. Ms. Tse, an artist based in Luxembourg and Paris, will present two new works—a video and a sculptural installation. Su-Mei Tse is on view in the Third Floor Archive galleries from June 25
through September 4, 2006.

Her installation piece Dong, Xi, Nan, Bei (E, W, S, N) (2006) merges text and the visual arts. Self-illuminating neon
sculptures suspended from the ceiling depict the Chinese characters for the four cardinal directions. At once literal and abstract, the work investigates language, place, and geography.

Her British and Chinese background has reflected on her point of views on cultural and personal role. A classically trained cellist, Tse creates work that investigates music, rhythm, melody, and dance. Informed by personal experience—her father is a Chinese violinist and mother an English pianist—Tse's art, which encompasses photography, sculpture, and video, combines the artistic and cultural traditions of both her parents.

As for me, I'm fascinated with comtemporary Asian Art. Se-Mei Tse created the installation to promote the relationship of East meet West. Modern object of a neon light has been a popular thing in US such as New York City, where businesses depend on neon lights to lure customers. As for Don Xi Nan Bei, it conveys us to understand the directional way of life; seek the road that is less taken (right, Robert Frost).

Takashi Murakami

2006-07-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

Takashi Murakami

The AI Interview: Takashi Murakami

by Magdalene Perez

NEW YORK, June 9, 2006—Takashi Murakami has been shaking up the art world since the early 1990s with his unconventional approach to both subject matter and artistic production.

The Japanese artist and curator first made an appearance on the global art scene with his controversial Randoseru Project, for which he constructed backpacks, of the sort typically used by Japanese schoolchildren, from the skins of endangered or exotic animals.

In the mid-’90s he provoked patrons of high- and low-brow art alike by creating life-size sculptures of ultra-sexual, anime-inspired characters.

Most recently his work has blurred traditional lines between fine art and the mass-produced object by pairing his signature, cartoon-like designs with a limited-edition series of Louis Vuitton handbags.

Never content to play the traditional role of the solitary artist, Murakami has moved into even broader areas of the art world, seeking out new talent among young Japanese artists and becoming a curator for shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Los Angeles and the Japan Society in New York.

For creating his own art, he has developed a unique factory-style production line in studios in Tokyo and in New York—that involves dozens of artists and assistants and runs like a well-oiled machine.

Working to promote those artists who have helped him build his KaiKai Kiki studio, Murakami established the semi-annual Geisai art fair in Tokyo in 2000. Now on the brink of the fair’s 10th edition, Murakami has announced a special sneak preview of the next Gesai fair at the Volta art fair that opens in Basel next week.

Some complain that the current art market has become too commercialized. As a market-savvy artist, what’s your perspective?

It’s always funny when people say this, because it sounds like they don’t understand what a “market” is. Isn’t it a place to buy and sell? Personally, I think that the more commercialized the art market, the easier it is to understand strategically. I do appreciate all different kinds of art, though; just like I appreciate all different kinds of people. There are some people who compete in the commercial arena and there are some who abide by more personal, spiritual or idealistic guidelines. If done well, both can be equally satisfying.

You’ve done work with Louis Vuitton and others that straddles the line between art and commercial products. Do you think there are dangers to mixing art with branding and merchandizing?

I don’t think of it as straddling. I think of it as changing the line. What I’ve been talking about for years is how in Japan, that line is less defined. Both by the culture and by the past-War economic situation. Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of “high art.” In the West, it certainly is dangerous to blend the two because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that’s okay—I’m ready with my hard hat.

Your work has a decidedly cartoon-like or anime-inspired aesthetic that is also quite common in other Japanese artists’ work. Why do you think there is this fixation among contemporary Japanese artists on the “cute”? Can you explain this sometimes creepy fascination among many young Japanese artists (i.e. Aya Takano, Mahomi Kunikata) with images that depict prepubescent girls in sexualized situations?

Anime is a big industry in Japan and is extremely widely and evenly broadcast, so that the majority of people grow up watching the same TV shows. You could go so far as to say that anime is part of Japan’s national consciousness.

The cute obsession is a complicated problem, but I think that it’s a pleasant and not-so-intimidating aesthetic ideal, so that is why it’s very popular. It’s good for people who are introverted, which many Japanese are. Cute is so fetishized in Japan that it’s actually also sexualized. It’s just like how Americans have a fetish with steroid body builders and breast implants. Personally, I think that’s creepy.

Tell me about how and why you developed the idea to create your own “factory-style” studio.

I was originally inspired by the Walt Disney Studio, Lucas Films and [Hayao] Miyazaki’s Ghibli Studio. I was interested in this kind of hands-on, workshop-style production space that even major film companies use.

Also, it might be a Japanese characteristic, but I’m not a solitary person. I like the dynamics of a group working together towards a single goal. The eclectic mash of individual egos, brains and wills leading to harmony and discord is an exciting force to work with, and it helps me be creative.

What’s your relationship with the artists in your studio? In addition to collaborating with you on your work, do they produce their own? How much inspiration do you receive from them? How much teaching/mentoring of them do you engage in?

The relationship is one of mutual inspiration. The artists in my studio help me work on my work, and I help them work on theirs. The extent of feedback that I give depends on the situation. Specifically, Kaikai Kiki represents the work of six exhibiting artists besides myself. These artists are all actively involved in their own work, although three of them are also regular employees of the company, which means they also have management positions.

Why do you do so much work promoting emerging Japanese artists—and as an experienced artist, what do you feel it’s important to teach them?

I like the gambling aspect of working with young artists. With the right combination of talent and guidance, you can really hit the jackpot. I would say that my biggest concern for young artists is their lack of know-how, and how that leads to them being taken advantage of by institutions and the merciless gears of the art-world machine. It is important for artists to know the facts about the market, the system, and to approach the business aspect with a clear-headed, confident attitude.

What prompted you to launch the the Geisai art fair in Tokyo? What niche does it fill on the Japanese fair calendar?

I wanted to increase awareness of art among everyday Japanese people. By making it a fun event—that everyone, regardless of funds, can enjoy—I hoped to turn a variety of people on to art. I also like that it is open-participation. This gives it a more egalitarian feeling than Western art fairs, which are really exclusive and oriented to the high-end consumer. Geisai has been a huge success. Every time, 10,000 people come to the site, and we are getting more coverage in international publications.

©2006 Rei Sato/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved (2)

Phyllis Bramson at Claire Oliver

2006-06-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

My favorite from Phyllis Bramson's collection

Diamond's light of an evening dream
82X60, 2002

Photoshop TV Guys

2006-05-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

Photoshop TV guys rock!!!

(l to r) Matt Kloskowski (Rockin-the-House-Ski), Scott Kelby(president) and Dave Cross (true Canadian)

www.photoshoptv.com

They helped me through my bad times. Thanks

Whitnery's 2006 Binnenial

2006-05-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

May 7th, Vince and I went to Whitney Museum on a sunny day. Location is at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, 10021. A ticket costs 15 dollars - it worth the money.

Four floors of new artists' works display at Whitney Museum. The museum was semi crowded but I managed to find the works I wanted to see.

My favorite artists that I thought was interested:

Marilyn Minter, Strut, 2005 and Stuffed, 2003
She shows close up pictorial image of female's faces and body parts. It shows intrique details of a female with heavy makeup and a sweats on a female's stilleto. It has a exotic and sensual prespective.

Angel Strassheim, Father and son, 2004.
A family tradition passed down from father to son.

Kenneth Anger, Mouse Heaven, 2005
A 10 minute film of Disney icons of Mickey Mouse and the rest of his friends. It wasn't any exotic form but the classic clips. The Disneyana would often rotate or move in whatever way it was designed to (blinking eyes, dancing, etc.) There was a lot of layering and simple video tricks. It ended with some shiny metallic Mickeys which seemed to evoke Jeff Koons.

Kenneth's fascination of Mickey Mouse shows an adolescence ego he possessed.