Amanda Mae was fired as a security guard at the Seattle Art Museum last week. Story here. I doubt there's a museum in the country who would embrace her interventions, especially if said museum employed her.On the other hand, I think it's possible in the future she'll be esteemed for other reasons. Below, her restaging of an Egon Schiele drawing. What is out-of-control in the drawing becomes self-possession in her girl-in-charge self-portrait. Schiele's figure wears her nerves on the outside of her body. Mae is solid. If she were a boat, … [Read more...]

Note: Seattle artist Matthew Offenbacher publishes a quarterly newsletter titled, La Especial Norte, now at issue #4, featuring essays by Seattle artists and reprinted essays from artists from elsewhere. It's free but not online. Offenbacher likes print, although by the next issue, he promises to have an article archive on the Web.His essay titled Green Gothic is in the current issue, reprinted by permission. Emily Carr's and Gretchen Bennett's images from the article. Other images (and the links) added by me. I saw Twilight the other day, the … [Read more...]

(Note: The image after the jump is not safe for work.)Some things are certain. Night follows day, summer gives way to fall and Tyler Green will disapprove of art collections owned by banks on view at art museums. (New York Times' story, And Now, An Exhibition From Our Sponsor, here. Green's well-reasoned enlargements on the theme here.)Green also disapproves of museum's hosting exhibitions featuring work from a single private collector, arguing that such displays give too much of a market boost to their owner as well as undercutting curators on … [Read more...]

Double yellow don't-cross blooms on a wall. Via … [Read more...]

Robert Yoder's exhibition at Howard House is a declaration of a frustrated sense of disconnection, both with his work and what he's seeing from others. "I'm not feeling it," he said last Saturday, cleaning up after a workshop in the gallery.By the late 1990s, Yoder's calligraphic collages made of wood scraps, appropriated street signs and/or Legos were a certifiable hit in the region and beyond. From clunky materials he created magisterial abstractions, visual symphonies whose sheet music came from castoffs.(Union Bridge, 2000, wood/road signs, … [Read more...]

Elizabeth SandvigRita Ackermann … [Read more...]

LA crime, the documentaryHe who digs Los Angeles is Los Angeles - Alan GinsbergSeattle crime, the artistsChris CritesGrant BarnhartJack Daws, CECI N'EST PAS UNE BONGNew York crime, the singerRoy Zimmerman, Dick Cheney Sample lyrics:"When it's late at night we can go back to my place, where he can tap my phone and shoot me in the face ... Dick Cheney, ain't he, the sexiest man alive ...." … [Read more...]

ViaThe compressed space of the surveillance society, with barren implications extending past the frame. … [Read more...]

Via … [Read more...]

Susana Raab, The Unfortunate Result of the Demise of the Public Phone Booth, Metropolis, Illinois, at Dean Jensen Gallery through Aug. 29.Gilles Barbier, The Hospice, (detail)Mark Newport, BatmanDan Webb, Knight in (non-shiny) duct tape armour. No rescues on the horizon. … [Read more...]

Carrie Marill at Howard House through Aug. 29. Christian WeihrauchOr, saving babies, one tree trunk at a time.Andrew Keating … [Read more...]

New York Times story here. … [Read more...]

Tim Eitel Tyler CufleyEvan HecoxChristian Martin HoffRachel MaxiMaxi continues at Grey Gallery through Oct. 3. … [Read more...]

Plot summary: An aging monster who feeds on chaos beached itself on suburban shores. As Satan said, surveying hell, "What do mine eyes with grief behold?" Godzilla feasts on cities, adding its havoc to havoc. In Bellevue, the shopping capitol of the region, the orderly flow of commerce had a soporific effect. The beast staggered into Open Satellite, curled its 50-foot-long, 10-foot tall body around the pillars and fell asleep, breaking into soft, rumbling snores.SIMPARCH's exhausted is a rough-and-ready construction devoid of get-up-and-go: … [Read more...]

Business was not brisk at Nobody's Hero Tattoo in downtown Boise, which is why tattoo artists Brian Basabe and T. J. Mahoney  fooled around with the idea of painting shoes. They bought some plain white Van's and started to experiment. (Via)These would be good shoes to wear in a coffin. Who could ask for more? Bob Dylan on speakers and The Big Lebowski on your feet. The right one's chill, dude, but the left is the haunted Viet Nam vet, a variant on the character who went screaming down a hallway that's on fire, pumping a shotgun and … [Read more...]

They do the same thing in different media.Photographer Thorsten BrinkmannPainter Christian van MinnenPhotographer Magdalena BorsPainter Michael Brophy … [Read more...]

Duffy opens at Vermillion  Sept 1, 6-10 p.m. … [Read more...]

The Seattle Art Museum cut 17 staff members earlier this year, from a staff of 240. Every department is affected, although no curators were eliminated. SAM has also cut its hours. Beginning in September, it will be closed Tuesdays as well as Mondays. Exhibitions have been extended, which means fewer new shows on the schedule. Maybe that's a good thing. The installation crew is now down to the size it was before the 2007 expansion, which tripled exhibition space. That's not counting installation at the Olympic Sculpture Park, which also opened … [Read more...]

It's your genes. Case closed.Catherine Chalmers, from Genetically Engineered Mice series: … [Read more...]

Opening at Francine Seders Gallery on August 28, reception for artists August 30, 2-4 p.m.: Alison Keogh, Michael Howard, Sam Wildman and Gail Grinnell, collaborating with her son, Sam Wildman. (Images in name order.)Seattle: Time to show up. Seders has been in business for 40 years. That's a long time to be as good as she is. Painters are her core, and they include Jacob Lawrence, Guy Anderson, Michael Spafford, Elizabeth Sandvig, Robert C. Jones, Michael Dailey, Lauri Chambers, Pat DeCaro, Norman Lundin, Denzil Hurley and Juan Alonzo. … [Read more...]

Dance critic Apollinaire Scherr responds to my criticism (here) of dance criticism:In defense of Macaulay and me, a couple of thoughts: I do think there's a difference between Croce's not going at all (though if it were the time and I had the time, I would defend that action, given her reasons) and Macaulay not watching the bulk of these two dance competition shows. Don't TV critics, even, review a show after having watched only the pilot and a few shows in? I don't think a critic is obliged to watch every show to weigh in on the gist of it. Of … [Read more...]

Kenneth KochSomething there is that doesn't hump a stump. Brian Tolle, on the campus of the University of Washington:David EllisSteven HeinoLinda Beaumont, installation, Sea-Tac International AirportJeffry Mitchell … [Read more...]

At Greg Kucera Gallery, 6-8 p.m. Opening today, but reception for artists will be Sept. 3., 6-8.Mark Calderon:Anne Appleby … [Read more...]

Mapplethorpe once called photography a "perfect way to make a sculpture."(Apollo, 1988)He was always about perfection. The thing about Polaroids: Mapplethorpe, opening Oct. 24 at the Henry, is that he found it early and on the fly. Curated by Henry director Sylvia Wolf, it opened last year at the Whitney. … [Read more...]

Gottfried Helnwein: order overwhelmed inside a chaos... … [Read more...]

Seattle's Scott Lawrimore opened Lawrimore Project two four years ago in an understated piece of anonymous modernism updated by Lead Pencil's Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo. They added nothing to the outside except a steel-coated front door and a ribbon of hot pink paint, like wrapping on a gift.Inside, the first room sports a stained, concrete floor, four skylights and wallboard. Past the raw, there's elegance: a series of galleries with bamboo floors, including a video room, a parlor and a sculpture garden, bounded by chain link. Lawrimore's … [Read more...]

Mike Urban took this photo while on staff of the Seattle PI, before the photo staff was downsized to one and the PI moved to an online-only ghost of itself, no arts staff at all:It's a great shot, which is why it has proved popular on the Web. The only thing missing from this happy story is credit. Neither Urban's nor the PI's name appears here and here. Ruby Montana did the right thing here. As an art critic who relies on the Web, I'm constantly urging artists, galleries and museums to make their images reproducible. The prospect of being … [Read more...]

Web site heights and depths: Seattle happens to have starring entries in the museum Web site heights and depths department. The Henry Gallery is the height: easy to use, rich in institutional depth, generous with images, beautiful and fun. The Seattle Art Museum is its opposite. Not only does it skimp on info/imagery, its graphics are hideously annoying. Web life matters. Here are the region's top 10 museums arranged in order of Web merit.1. Henry. A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or at least until the update. Credit goes to Betsey Brock and … [Read more...]

Planned for 2012, Jeff Koons' life-sized replica of a motorized train will be suspended from a construction crane at the entrance of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Christopher Knight, LA Times, here)The price tag for "Train" is $25 million. I'd assume that's a ballpark guesstimate, because engineering and fabrication costs have a way of evolving over time. The steel-and-aluminum "Train" is a 70-foot replica of a 1943 Baldwin 2900-series steam locomotive, and the aim is to suspend it vertically from an actual 161-foot-tall construction … [Read more...]

Alastair Macaulay's essay about the kind of ballroom dance found on TV shows - Ballroom: More Sexily, Less Strictly - speaks to the radical divide between high dance and low:Not So Strictly On TV -- the British reality series "Strictly Come Dancing," which began in 2004, and the American "So You Think You Can Dance," which started in 2005 -- we see all the good-humored hard work that both sexes put into performing ballroom. In such a context I only occasionally pause to consider that their endeavor itself is gross....The little I see of "So You … [Read more...]