Islands of LA Part 2

The LA Times has a great photo gallery about Islands of LA, which I wrote about in a Citizen LA article…That Ari, so charming and fun. Ah, but when I spoke with him he wanted to keep his name secret for the project’s sake…I suppose he finally unveiled himself.

Exile and the Russian Front

From RadarOnline.com

With the recent inauguration of new president Dmitry Medvedev, how have things changed in Russia? Is the authoritarian freeze of the Vladimir Putin years starting to melt into a glorious new spring of freedom? Mark Ames, founder of Russian newspaper the Exile (and Radar contributor) will provide occasional dispatches in pursuit of an answer to that question … if the authorities don’t lock him up first.

Thursday morning, Moscow time, four Russian government officials came to the office of my English-language newspaper, the Exile, and conducted an “unplanned audit” of our editorial content. They are carrying out an inspection of my paper’s articles to see, in their words, if we have committed “violations.” And they specifically asked to question me, since I’m officially listed as the founding editor-in-chief.
I started up the Exile 11 years ago with a Russian publisher, and it grew into a kind of cult phenomenon, with an online readership of 200,000 visitors per month, launching the careers of Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi and the “War Nerd,” Gary Brecher, but ensuring that anyone who sticks with the paper is condemned to a life of poverty and paranoia.

In all my years I’d never heard of an “unplanned audit” of editorial content. The insiders whom I contacted all said, “It’s … strange.” That’s how my Russian lawyer reacted, it’s how an American official reacted, and it’s even how the head of the Glasnost Defense Fund reacted, even though his NGO focuses on problems between the Russian media and the Kremlin.

Fine Art Glass Goes XXX

 Fine Art Glass Goes XXX

Vandal Glass busts onto the market with creative toys

By: Saskia Vogel

SANTA CRUZ, Calif - Vandal Glass, makers of erotic glass novelties, have been crafting tattoo-inspired art objects for six months, showcasing the design talent of Josh Frager, fine artist and graduate of glass luminary Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuck School.

“I’ve always wanted to do it [create glass toys], but I didn’t have the time,” he told AVN Novelty Business. “When I got to the level where other people blew glass for me, I had the time. I enjoy making them, and I enjoy making people happy. I wanted to make a toy that was beautiful, functional, and affordable-and keep it under $100.” Read the rest.

Empire and Sexuality: A reading list

1. Empire and Sexuality:  The British Experience Ronald Hyam

2. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud Peter Gay

3. Reading Fin de Siecle Fictions Lyn Pykett

4. The Reinvention of Obscenity: Sex, Lies, and Tabloids in Early Modern France Joan DeJean

5. More as I stumble forth on the internet…

Oskar Fischinger, Early Abstractions 1946 to 1957

Psychadelic Animation

John Whitney. Permutations.1966.

GLBT Erotic Art in Amstelveen

Wolfgang Tillmans, Horse Meat Disco 1, 2001

Amstelveen, Netherlands

Cobra Museum of Modern Art

Dates: 14 Jun 08 - 21 Sep 08
Categories: Thematic Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Sandbergplein 1 Amstelveen 1181 ZX
Tel: +31 (0)20 547 5050 Website

Focusing on sexual desire, gender and identity in contemporary visual arts, this exhibition disregards heterosexuality to examine alternative lifestyles such as homosexuality and transexuality. The show features 35 national and international artists, including Wolfgang Tillmans, David Hockney and Deborah Kass.

Source: The Art Newspaper

Cypriot wall paintings get HIV test

 Check out this fascinating article from The Art Newspaper…

A 13th-century nativity scene at the Lampadistis monastery

LONDON. A scientific technique generally used in testing for the HIV virus is being utilised for the first time in the conservation of wall paintings in a remote Cypriot monastery.

Samples of the wall paintings of the little-known Crusader period monastery of St John, in Lampadistis in the Republic of Cyprus, the ethnically Greek southern part of the island, are being sent by conservators from the Courtauld Institute to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles for analysis.

The samples are then being tested with the immunological technique Enzyme-Linked Immuno­Sorbent Assay (Elisa), in which an enzyme is attached to a sample to detect the presence of an antibody.

In conservation this technique is useful in determining what type of organic binder (such as glue or egg) has been used in the painting and enables conservators to choose the most appropriate method of conservation. Read the rest.

Urban Art: Awesome or Lame?

I love it.

It’s baloney glorification of serious problems in ghettoized communities, irresponsibly not helping the issues on the street. 

It is significant.
I have my eye on this debate…Here’s an article about the legitimization of graffiti.

Graffiti finds its place in contemporary art

By Claudia Barbieri

Friday, May 30, 2008

PARIS: In the summer of 1998, Valentin Bechade, a young French graffiti artist who goes by the tag name Teurk, clambered onto the ruins of an old bridge and set to work with an aerosol can.

Graffiti artists are not usually popular when they spray-paint ancient monuments. Then again, this was no ordinary bridge. This was the ruin of the 16th-century Ottoman bridge of Mostar, destroyed by a Croatian tank bombardment in 1993 - since reconstructed in an iconic act of healing after the devastating Bosnian civil war, but then still on the front line of a bitter ethnic divide.

For Teurk, and a group of antiwar activists he had linked up with, painting the bridge was a political statement, an affirmation of creative power over vandalism. Read more.

More love for Richard Ferguson

Rich Ferguson, what can I say? Poetry and music, and that’s not a metaphor. His gig at Tangiers in Los Feliz was pretty extraordinary, reminding some audience members who would remember of the Beat scene in New York back in the day.