Hrag Vartanian

Gawker’s Mom & Popism party in Nolita

• More Intelligent Life – When Novelists Sober Up
  After I read this I really really wanted a drink: —  “Of America’s seven Nobel laureates, five were lushes—to whom we can add an equally drunk-and-disorderly line of Brits: Dylan Thomas, Malcolm Lowry, Brendan Behan, Patrick Hamilton, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, all doing the conga to (in most cases) an early grave. According to Donald Goodwin in his book ‘Alcohol and the Writer’:’Writing involves fantasy; alcohol promotes fantasy. Writing requires self-confidence; alcohol bolsters confidence. Writing is lonely work; alcohol assuages loneliness. Writing demands intense concentration; alcohol relaxes.’This is also fascinating: —  “The radiance of late Carver is so marked as to make you wonder how much the imperturbable gloom of late Faulkner, or the unyielding nihilism of late Beckett—like the cramped black canvases with which Rothko ended his career—were dictated by their creators’ vision, and how much they were simply symptoms of late-stage alcoholism.”
• Art Theft Central – Unsolved Art Theft at Brooklyn Museum, c.1933
  Am I the only person who never knew that a major robbery at the Brooklyn Museum in 1933 resulted in the theft of works by Rubens, Cranach, Van Dyck, Fra Angelico, and Luini that were never returned.
• DLK Collex – How Many Photography Collectors Are There?
  I don’t quite see how these numbers are arrived at (for instance, how can you assume out of 60,000 Artforum subscribers, 10,000 are photo collectors) but they’re fun to read. The skinny: there are 5,000 active photography collectors.
• Joanne Mattera – Looking at “The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women” at Cheim & Read
  “The curatorial conceit at Cheim & Read is to counter the notion of the male gaze by providing a group of works in which ‘the artist and subject do not relate as ‘voyeur’ and ‘object’ but as woman and woman.’ In this beautifully curated show, which spans over a century, 40 female artists–many from their own roster–turn the conventional male gaze inside out. Here there’s pleasure in equality versus the longstanding idea of power over passivity.”
• Wooster Collective – Regina Holliday’s Art Artivism
  “…Regina’s story is that she’s using street art as a primary vehicle to tell her story and to bring attention to the problems of our current health care system.”
• Greenjeans – Etsy’s Luster Tarnishing
  Amy breaks it down for us: —  “Etsy’s visionary young founder, Rob Kalin, ‘quietly took himself off the payroll’ citing that the site ‘was very incomplete and not up to my standards.’”       Also: —  “Another red flag is the fact that a major investor in Etsy is also on the board of Wal-Mart.”
• C-Monster – Photo Tour of Banksy’s Bristol Museum Show (photos)
  The British street art jester’s institutional remixing draws big crowds in Bristol. But is it good? Well, it is certainly clever. You’ll remember some of the pieces from his Pet Shop show in NY last year.
• NY Times – Roberta Smith Reviews Os Gêmeos’ Houston Mural
  Smith seems at a loss when writing about this mural. The whole “review” seems to painstakingly describe the wall as if the rest of us can’t see the obvious…so where exactly is her review? My favorite line: —  “And the storybook imagery is out of this world, yet not.” LOL
• Kottke – “Paris is Burning” (1990) Doc Now Online (video)
  A classic documentary that tells the story of the end of New York’s “golden age” of drag balls.
• Council for Secular Humanism – President G.W. Bush told French Pres. Jacques Chirac in 2003 That Iraq Must Be Invaded to Thwart Gog & Magog, Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse
  “It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.” (via Bloggy)