By purchasing both Andre Emmerich Gallery (NYNY) and Haunch of Venison in europe, as well as teaming up with Jeffery Deitch to organize shows. As far as to what something like this might cost, The terms of the Christie's-Haunch of Venison deal have not been disclosed, but the London rumor mill had Pinault paying 100,000,000 (pounds) for the gallery.

Labels: international

Ok, I broke down and bought a few tubes of "the good stuff" as they say and here is what I'm thinking. Yes, this is great paint. It is highly recommended as well. and no, I wont be buying much more of it.

Here's why. I'm too cheap. (partially)

The real reason is that even though it brushes and flows amazingly, I use "a lot" of paint - with a lot of mediums on my paintings and it just isn't cost effective. It really is a fine product and worth the cost if you are painting with a more traditional approach (ie. thinner mediums like turpentine and stand oil).

For more information, follow this link

Labels: Painting

"Exposure" is a difficult record. I'm not going to lie to you, but it is well worth listening to - even now as the retro-eighties sound is pumping through what is being called indie rock, this record is still sounds current, even though it was made in 1979. The reason I write about this record is two fold;

1. it's an amazing record that deserves a wider audience.
   
2. it's approach to collaboration, experimentation, and it's artistic community

Robert Fripp, is best known as the brain behind "King Crimson" and in the traditional music story, he gets screwed by the record industry. After taking some time with an ill-fated trio, he becomes a studio musician, David Bowie and Brian Eno call and the next thing you know, Fripp is playing on David Bowie's "Heroes", and Fripp is in the game again.

However this time there is a bit of a twist, he teams up with unlikely collaborator. Daryl Hall (of Hall and Oates).

But wait, one of the most remarkable things about this record is the music. Ideas are floating in and out of this disk with every track. Multiple viewpoints in some songs to open abstraction in others, however Hall becomes the unknown hero of "Exposure". His vocals are everywhere on this record - in ways that you would never imagine; sounding like a seventies metal god to emulating a film noir detective. While Hall is singing, Fripp is reaching out to the New York music community - playing along is: Brian Eno, Phil Colins, Barry Andrews, Peter Gabriel, Terre Roche among others. In fact, Fripp says the greatest thing about this record was the artistic community around it. People would drop in and give opinions or play a part and then continue with the day - one night Fripp and Blondie play together - performing Donna Summers' big hit, "I Feel Love" as well as Bowie's "Heroes". What we are really talking about here is a true artistic community. I think that is really exciting and this recording is only stronger for it. Chris Stein (Blondie, TV Party) and Amos Poe (TV Party) would end up doing photography and video for the cover art bringing this community full circle.

"Exposure" in my mind is backwardly titled - its really about exposing the listener not the artist. In a way its similar to one of those paintings that just continually open up to the viewer pulling you in deeper - giving you more every time you look. In a world too full of artworks that might as well be pictures of Elvis on velvet, "exposure" delivers in a very rare way.

Labels: 80's, music

I am of course referring to the newly published book by Kirk Varnedoe. I would have been blissfully unaware of said book if it had not been for a well known blog (see Green, Tyler). Anyway, I spent the weekend reading it and I'm sure I'll spend even more time with it later. The amazing thing is just how dead on this book (based on his lectures) is.

Some things have to be said upfront, this is not courseware - there are going to be people left out and I'm sure you can make cases for reasons not to include certain artists over others, but you can always do that. What I'm floored by is the way he presents abstract art - regardless of approach in a thoughtful and compelling way. It's the little details he gets right that are so compelling;

• the "breaking" of abstraction after the Abstract Expressionists
  
• the blue collar work approach of Richard Serra
  
• the snarkiness of Roy Lichtenstein
  
• the understanding of what painting is, and more importantly is not by Robert Ryman
  
• the folly of abstraction as "pure"
  
• And the true experience of Walter De Marias "Lightning Field"

I could go on at some length about this book, however I think I'll end it here with just one thought. I do believe that to really see art you have to see it in real space. I also know that most people see most art in reproduction. The key element that Varnedoe quietly insists throughout this book/presentations is that the less there is to see, the more you need to look, but also to understand the dialog around the art itself.

By the way, I do disagree with Varnedoe about the late paintings of DeKooning, with anything you will never agree 100%.

In the composition of Fontana Mix, John Cage utilized chance operations to suspend the flow of time. The sounds for Fontana Mix were determined by the chance intersections of lines and dots on a series of transparencies. Transparencies with dots and curved lines were superimposed with a 100 x 20 matrix, also on transparency. A transparency with a single straight line was then laid down in a way that 1) two dots were connected and 2) the line intersected both of the long sides of the matrix. The intersections of the straight line and the curved lines determined the taped sound sample to be used for a given sound event. The absolute horizontal distance between the points of intersection of the graph and the straight line determined the duration of a single sound event.

The "Fontana Mix" that is delivered from this blog (on a random basis, I might add) is named in homage to Mr. Cage. My "Fontana Mix" is simply random events under a single headline or posting.

Labels: Fontana Mix, general notice, thoughts

This bit of information comes to me from a most unusual place, my neighborhood newsletter. For those of us just joining the conversation, WTWTA has been on the docket of at least one studio for something like the last 20 years - and never being able to get made. Well long story short - working with the Sendak family, Spike Jonez has the "go ahead" to make this children's classic into a live action movie.

I have a neighbor who's daughter is married the Director of Photography, Lance Acord (Lost in Translation, Marie Attionette) for WTWTA. Ok sorry for the long build up, but the story is that the principle photography has been finished in Australia with release early next year.

Labels: movies

The 2008 Biennial will be a homegrown affair, the New York Times' Carol Vogel reports. Heading the group are two Whitney curators-Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin-with Donna De Salvo, the museum's chief curator, overseeing the project. Three outside advisers are also in the mix:

Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem
Bill Horrigan, director of the media arts department at the Wexner Center for the Arts
Linda Norden, a curator and writer who was the commissioner of the United States Pavilion for the 2005 Venice Biennale

The complaining begins now....

Labels: Bad Review, call for entries, Museums

Lisa Yuskavage. I'm watching a stupid teen movie this weekend "The Girl Next Door", and the three high school buddies that make up the movies core are shooting a movie on safe sex for teens and the female star is laying on a riser smoking a cigarette mostly undressed but just relaxed while the rest of the film crew is just bustling around her - and all I could think of was that this reminds me of a painting by Lisa Yuskavage. Recent writing about LY have stated that no one is painting like her right now - I could not agree more.

Jules Oltikski died. I'm reminded of the Bob Dylan quote. "people fade away until they are gone, and when they're gone, it's like they never faded away at all"

Modernism is the new "ism". I mentioned something about this last year after reading a column by Matthew Collings in Modern Painters last year. I thought that was interesting but I really didn't think that it was really the case. This year we saw the Brice Marden retrospective at MoMA, the Sean Scully at the Met, Jasper Johns at the NGA, and coming soon the Modernism show at the Corcoran. On top of this, I'm seeing more and more artists returning to reductive ideas of the late seventies/early eighties. With renewed interest in minimal/conceptual work recently I'm feeling this is a trend worth noting.

George 104.1 on your radio dial. This would be interesting if it was still 1980 and I was in high school, maybe.

Flavors Soul Food, Falls Church VA. I recently found out about Flavors and was dying to try it out for the last couple of weeks, and I could not be more pleased. I went for lunch with Harris and we tried a few of the dishes. The fried chicken is made to order which means thats it will take about 20 minutes - not a minute sooner. Add that to the list of great sides as well - we had macaroni and cheese, corn bread, yams, collard greens, and beans and rice.

We rolled out of there knowing we better not go back for at least a week or so.

Labels: Fontana Mix