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Congratulations to Sue de Beer, Cory Arcangel/BEIGE, and James Siena for getting picked for the Whitney Biennial this year. Other names I appreciated seeing on the list were Erick Swenson, Yayoi Kusama, and Richard Prince, although you couldn't find a more unrelated group of artists. I had a longer post written with my thoughts on this year's lineup, but I just don't feel comfortable second-guessing the choices. Well, yes I do, to the extent I don't understand the inclusion of Robert Mangold, Paul McCarthy, Robert Longo, or Elizabeth Peyton. The institutional politics and horse-trading that go into such a high-profile project weaken it considerably, and one always wishes it would say more. Sometimes the curating's just bad: Larry Rinder might have pulled off his "high tech/primitive" duality last time if he'd picked more compelling art. Anyway, I was glad to see some people in it this year whose work I really like.
UPDATE: Someone asked to see a list of the artists; it now appears in the comments to this post.
F-Factor 2, MSPaintbrush painting, ink on paper, 55" X 50" (rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise)
(the "Xtreme detail" .gif is perversely titled "The hiphop years." If you don't see it in the larger piece, don't worry, it's very small and cut off by the top edge.)
Entertainment Industry Goober of the Month: Tom Rosenberg
One of [The Human Stain]'s producers, Tom Rosenberg, of Lakeshore Entertainment, said the trick was to translate a complex novel into film terms while deploying a cast that could draw moviegoers. Would audiences accept any white actor as an African-American? Or was a British-bred actor somehow harder to accept in the role? Mr. Rosenberg insists that in research screenings, few moviegoers questioned the casting.previous goober (actually the award isn't monthly, just when something especially dorky leaps out at me) / newer goober"When I read the book, Anthony Hopkins was who I thought of from the beginning," Mr. Rosenberg said in October. "I needed an actor who was very accomplished and who meant something in the film marketplace. I have a friend in Chicago who could be Anthony's fair-skinned cousin, whose parents were both African-American. I knew casting Anthony was grounded in reality." (via NYT)
Instead of "gook" our soldiers are using the term "hadji" to refer to an enemy combatant (sorry, liberatee) in Iraq and Afghanistan. (As in "killing some hadjis" or "mowing down some hadjis.") This article spells it "hajji" or "hodgie" and says it refers to the Arab term for "pilgrim to Mecca," but the writer is either over 60 or grew up in a country without TV because any fool knows Hadji, the Calcutta orphan with occasional mystical powers, who was Jonny Quest's sidekick. I mean, duh. The show has been in endless syndication since the '60s so it's not just a boomer thing. A semi-educated guess is the trend started in Afghanistan and spread to the Iraq theatre; maybe that's wrong, but it seems a lot more likely than appropriating "pilgrim to Mecca" as a derogatory term.
--from Bartcop. The site serves up heaps of unsubtle, sometimes verging on Hustler-style humor aimed at the pious thieves who control all three branches of government and the media. Lots of Photoshop gags, many gut-busting funny. Nazi references abound. If you are consumed with the newly identified (by conservatives), supposedly irrational trend known as "Bush hatred," this is the place for you. Laughing makes you feel better and helps release the accumulated poisons that build up watching greedy fake Christians destroy the country.
1. kelly's world of cheerleading (hat tip to paper rad); 2.-4. tien's ultimate dbz dimension; 5. homestar runner (sweet cuppin' cakes); 6. tien's ultimate dbz dimension; 7. krystal ishida; 8. lugia pokémon (artist unknown); 9. artist unknown
Steve Mumford wrote a nice review of an Albert Oehlen show a few years back for an art mag called Review. Quite unlike Oehlen's multilayered, idiosyncratic work, the paintings Mumford was exhibiting at the time--thickly-brushed renderings of classic American automobiles--were blandly illustrational. The drawings he's sending back from Iraq, part of his Baghdad Journal on artnet, continue the tradition: they are as lifeless as courtroom sketches. A bunch of these sepia-toned watercolors are on exhibit at Postmasters right now, and based on what's been shown on artnet, one could be forgiven for not making the hike to Chelsea. Being able to draw is cool but art isn't just observation. At some point anger or joy or sorrow--or an idea--should travel from your insides to your arm to the page. Mumford's losing energy somewhere along this drive train. Or maybe it's not there to begin with. Anyway, those pictures are dead, people. I'll stick to reports from Robert Fisk and photos from the foreign press--I don't need to see the Art Students' League turning the slaughterhouse into tastefully smeared contour studies.
Soldiers Host Orphans in Mosul
"[...] Each child was also given a lunch of hamburgers, french fries, soda and ice cream. The restaurant on the CMOC (Civil Military Operations Center) grounds provided the meals. The restaurant also provided many of the decorations on the grounds.
"Another event of the day was face painting. A local caricature artist painted designs on the children’s faces and colored the skin of a few soldiers as well.
"Soldiers interacted with the children, swimming with them, playing soccer and simply being a friend.
"The children each received a gift bag when it was time for them to leave. The bag contained items such as a t-shirt with the 101st insignia, a beanie baby, a soccer ball and personal hygiene items."
While troops are being killed and wounded all over Iraq, that's the kind of stuff being posted on the Centcom website. What is Centcom, exactly? The U.S. Central Command is essentially the military governor of our newest colony, a region including "25 culturally and economically diverse nations located throughout the Horn of Africa, South and Central Asia, and Northern Red Sea regions, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq." According to the Centcom site, "the entire Central Region is larger than the Continental U.S., stretching more than 3,100 miles east-to-west and 3,600 miles north-to-south." If you're looking for news at the website, though, forget it. The press releases come out of Florida, and it's one story after another about schools, rebuilding schools, paying for schools, helping children, entertaining children, and getting toys for children.