According to the Telegraph, more than 13,000 people applied to be living statues on Anthony Gormley's project for Trafalgar Square's empty fourth plinth, one hour each, night and day, for 100 days. Titled One & Other, it opens July 1 with 613 participants.The Telegraph was wrong about one thing. A fork-life truck will lift not just a "mixed bag to Britons" to temporary glory. Applications were accepted from around the world, including one from Seattle artist Ellen Ziegler. After her name came up, she raised funds for her trip via … [Read more...]

Shake 'em up, Al. NYT story here. … [Read more...]

From Extreme Craft: In case you sit up nights worrying that the Chinese aren't quite grasping the whole capitalist thing, let this photo reassure you. These are Terra-cotta warrior shaped packets of chili sauce.Unregulated capitalism in a totalitarian state might be good for packaging. But deprived of the dream of the common good without gaining anything resembling human rights, the people are a bit adrift, don't you think, Li Wei?Li Wei: … [Read more...]

I love Fail Blog, a visual record of society's signs and symbols gone horribly wrong. Sometimes, however, its lust to find fault mirrors of its faults. Why is this kid's slide a fail? Children come out of the body. They are not likely to be scandalized by an orifice mash-up that functions as playground equipment.It's not a scandal, but unless it's by Niki de Saint Phalle, it's a rip off. Her Hon (through her sex), from Moderna Museet Stockholm, 1966: Her idea, her colors. … [Read more...]

It's the art object you will never see, unless you are an initiated Australian Aboriginal male. Nor can it be photographed. The only thing can be noted is its location - no longer at the Seattle Art Museum.Although SAM has owned the object since museum founder Richard Fuller purchased it in 1970, the museum says it has never been shown. (Fuller retired in 1973.) Not even Australian Aboriginal elders who are pressing the issue around the world knew of its existence.SAM is not only returning the object, it volunteered to do so without being … [Read more...]

Airing tonight on HBO, Liz Garbus' documentary, Shouting Fire, has as its subtitle, Stories From the Edge of Free Speech. (Preview via NYT)While I haven't seen it, she didn't need to explain the title. Oliver Wendell Holmes' metaphor is so rooted in the American imagination that her two-word contraction carries the day.Holmes:The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.Makes sense. The elegant image, however, supported a bad judgment and helped Holmes ride into … [Read more...]

Carol Milne, opening July 2 at Gallery IMA: … [Read more...]

Drawings from the hospital. Baker - comedian, performance artist and good cook - here via the Guardian. … [Read more...]

Tutankhamun's come-back is coming up empty. Following a nationwide consensus, he's now racking up bad reviews in the Bay Area, including a key one from Kenneth Baker:Among people with a professional interest in the arts, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," which opens today at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, will merely deepen the tarnish on the reputation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.More here. The first Tut wave in the U.S. in the 1970s reverberated in the art of the time. This time, the only response worthy of … [Read more...]

From Lila Ghobady, Iranian artist-in-exile - why she didn't vote in the latest elections and why Mousavi is not a real alternative to Ahmadinejad. No matter who is the president of Iran, the state, she writes, would would stone her.As a journalist and filmmaker, I am called upon by the Islamic Republic of Iran to respect the red lines. These "red lines" include belief and respect for the Supreme Leader and the savagely unjust rules of traditional Islamic law in my country. I am expected not to write or demand equal rights. I am not allowed to … [Read more...]

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Video via George Chacona. Go here.  … [Read more...]

Shirin Aliabdai and Farhad Moshiri, We Are All American from Operation Supermarket Series, via New York Times.To Aliabdai and Moshiri, add Sonny Assu.Sonny Assu again, via.Jack Daws, TWO TOWERS, Chromogenic print of artist-made construction from McDonald's French fries and Heinz ketchup.Ross Palmer Beecher, 7-Up QuiltRoger Shimomura, The Asian MindShimomura again, EBay Citizen No. 1François van Reenen, memories of a white childhood in South Africa, Crying Cowboy #1Rashid Johnson, Shea Butter MountainJohn Feodorov, New Age Native American … [Read more...]

With Michael Jackson dead at 50 and Elvis at 42, the unlinkable Bay Area painter Rooney O'Neil wondered what John Lennon, who didn't make it to 40, might have looked like had he more time and (fork in hand), had he chosen to emulate the eating habits of one of his root sources. Via … [Read more...]

Any museum director (and plenty of curators) who leave the job to applause gets presents for the institution. Mimi Gates has earned her share.In her 14-year tenure as director of the Seattle Art Museum, Mimi Gates, 66, guided guided SAM through a major expansion as well as the opening of a waterfront sculpture park, what John Walsh, former director of the Getty Museum, called her "benign, beautiful land grab."  She came to Seattle after 19 years at the Yale University Art Gallery, seven-plus of those years as its director. With a doctorate … [Read more...]

Below, illuminations on a point made today in the LA Times by Ann Powers, logging in with the best (only good) obit: ...as a man whose physical presence was first androgynous and then seemingly cyborgian, forcing his astounded public to puzzle over their assumptions about race, gender and age. Jeff Koons: Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1998Christian Marclay: from Body MixesSamantha Scherer: Just his eyesAs he saw himself: Robot Head (1 & 2)  from Moonwalker:Another way to see Jackson as he saw himself: Turn him into a toy, a la Michael … [Read more...]

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Dec. 14, 2006 Ben Jackel, stoneware and beeswax, 2008 … [Read more...]

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Seattle's Dawn Cerny, as part of the exhibit at 4Culture. Her flags revel in local resentments, defunct businesses and crackpots.Jack Daws is into home craft. Below, he pickles old glory.Costa Vece - from the coffin of lost causes.Harmon de Hoop- red, white and blue product under a red, white and blue grid.Ed Templeton - American Pride for Sale. Looks like a good thing to me. … [Read more...]

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Spiegelman's  St. Louis Refugee Ship Blues is stellar. Nobody treads in the dark with as light a touch. Example, his final frame:He's referring to what Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen called his country's worst international crisis since World War II, here. In Seattle, only the Stranger ran the cartoons in question. … [Read more...]

To this post - In a dry season, what blooms out the back end? - Eric Fredericksen added the essential Naomi Fisher. Thanks, Eric! … [Read more...]

At the press preview for the Seattle Art Museum's small but choice Wyeth exhibit, Remembrance, exhibit curator Patricia Junker said Wyeth was the figure whom the international crew of artists featured in Michael Darling's Target Practice: Painting Under Attack (1949-78) had in mind.Both exhibits open tomorrow. (Target Practice reviews to follow.)Wyeth's admirers try to insinuate him into the thick of things. For the artists in Target Practice, however, he wasn't on the firing range. Rauschenberg erased a de Kooning. Andrew Wyeth? His name did … [Read more...]

Death does not have to hang heavy in your head for you to be a fan of Obit. (I'm a fan, and I'm singing a happy tune as I type this. Worms crawl in, worms crawl out...)Fellow AJ blogger, Jeff Weinstein, contributes to the site, most recently with a fine piece titled Hidden Memorials, on ephemeral Sufi shrines in the desert. All that is by way of saying Obit's Top 10 List of Stupid Death Tricks is not just anybody's death-trick list. Number 3, for example:A prop can still be a deadly weapon. Actors on Hollywood sets are routinely warned to be … [Read more...]

Who's the link, lifeline, thread and thing to be scorned? He opened the door for the grandiose and unruly, for those whose hearts have (Pascal's phrase) reasons that reason cannot know. The artists below are among many in his debt.Anne MathernMandy Greer Alison Brady Titus KapharDan Webb (Hold)Mike Simi (Self-Portrait)Christian Van MinnenThe answer is, of course,  Mr. Elaborately Ceremonial. Who admires an artist's work is one measure of reach. Another is who reflects, parodies and struggles against it. What Bobby Seale said about the … [Read more...]

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Grim report from the New York Times on the health of galleries, here. Going into the dry season, they're already dry. On the other hand, AJ blogger Judith H. Dobrzynski found a study that suggests the art market might have bottomed out and better days are ahead, here. Either way, art continues to bloom, even in unlikely places.Paula WilsonEllen AltfestAlison BradyJennifer Zwick … [Read more...]

And the ability of light fixtures to track your every move - surveillance by robotic florescence. More on Huang Hsin-Chien here. … [Read more...]

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Nathalie Djurberg, currently at the Frye.With a jet-stream jolt of girl-in-charge, Djurberg's puppets have a hard on for Manet as Travis Bickle. All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. Mel Ramos did his Olympia, and so did Rashid Johnson, here. Talk about pregnant with cultural possibility. … [Read more...]