Image Via; exhibition Via

This is an excerpt from a longer post by John Perreault on what may be my favorite art-critical blog (or one of them):

Jeff Koons: Having It Both Ways [Excerpt]

 [...]

Up on the Roof

When you step out on the roof, there is a "no photography" sign that no one pays any attention to. It was difficult to get a shot of Balloon Dog, Yellow (1994-2000) sans tourists. Singles, couples and groups took turns posing in front of the obscene Koons Dog made out of stainless steel sausages or penises.

So I concentrated on the Sacred Heart (1994-2007), a stainless steel representation of a chocolate heart wrapped in foil, but in spite of its jab at Catholicism, it is a lesser work. Like the Dog, it is an Oldenburgian blowup of a popular object. Still lesser is Coloring Book (1997-2005) -- the coloring book outline of Winnie-the-Poo's Piglet, with scribbled-in colors. Unlike Dog and Heart, the Piglet is not singular enough to have much impact, though it could pass for a good joke about abstract painting.

So here's another question: How come almost anyone can tell that these blowups are not Oldenburgs?

Claes Oldenburg is never nasty. And there is always a little something that lets you know that you are not looking at a straightforward blowup, some kink or glitch. On the other hand, a Koons is bland, seems unmediated and immaculate, as if untouched by human hands -- which is not really the case. We have a friend whose artist-nephew is thrilled to work in the Koons studio, polishing stainless steel, for hours and hours, day after day.

 

     

Vote With Your Camera

While waiting for the Balloon Dog to be clear of tourists exposing frozen smiles, it dawned on me that the number of students and other art fans posing in front of the Dog indicated that this was the hands-down favorite. It is iconographic. It is photogenic. And somehow it says: I am here. I am in New York on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. No one, I swear, was having his or her picture taken in front of the Sacred Heart (I did imagine that some nuns might appear at any moment), and no one was posing in front of Piglet.

As everyone knows, the snapshot is a better voting mechanism than the museum postcard. Postcard images are preselected.

The public and I agree that Balloon Dog is the winner.

But it took me awhile, because...

I once had an art administrator friend who was dating a clown. He was actually an actor who did clown work to pay the rent, specializing in making balloon figures at kiddie birthday parties in Ringling Bros. drag. I thought he was both handsome and quite jolly. His good looks notwithstanding, my art administrator friend and her Bozo soon parted ways. She didn't like it when, out of clown drag and back in mufti, he would sometimes wear his clown shoes in the streets of Soho -- to embarrass her, she thought. I fantasized that perhaps it was because he had really big feet and his clown shoes were more comfortable than his wingtips or his sneakers.

Once I rose above that particular memory, I was able to look at Balloon Dog for what it really was: a beautiful monument to bad taste.

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For Immediate Release        Curated by NAYLAND BLAKE                June 12 – August 1, 2008 Opening reception: Thursday, June 12, 6 - 8 PM It has become a gallery tradition to invite an artist to guest curate the summer exhibition each year. This year Monya Rowe is exceptionally excited to announce Nayland Blake will curate the summer show titled The Guys We Would Fuck. "For the past year or so I've been working on a book called "1000 guys I would fuck" It's just what it sounds like: a compilation of pictures and descriptions of the men I'd go for given the chance.  A while ago Monya Rowe asked me if I would be willing to organize her summer exhibition.  We talked it over and came up with the idea of inviting lots of people to submit "Guys".  I've asked a wide range of people, friends, artists, former students and more.  I'm hoping that it will sprawl beyond the boundaries of my own peer group, in the spirit of other mail art projects." - Nayland Blake For this exhibition, a computer, chairs, printer and zine kit (available for .50 cents) will occupy the gallery space. Visitors are invited to print a different artwork each day to create a zine from works in the exhibition. More pages can be added to your zine as the show progresses. A new original artwork will be on view in the gallery - and a new jpeg on the gallery website - each day. For instance, at the opening reception, one work will be on view. The exhibition features works all in the same format of  8.5 by 11 inches on paper by Nayland Blake, Aaron Cobbett, Angel Colon, Robert Crouch, Joy Episalla, Karen Heagle, Julia Jacquette, Nina Katchadourian, Marlene McCarty, Nelson Santos, Dominic Sowinsky, Carrie Yamaoka and many other invited artists to be announced each day of the exhibition. Nayland Blake is an artist living and working in New York. He is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. The gallery will resume normal hours throughout June and July: Tuesday – Saturday 11 to 6 PM We will be closed from August 2 - September 4, 2008 and will reopen with a solo exhibition by Larissa Bates.

reblogged via Visual AIDS >blog, June 9, 2008:

Strike II - Wrap Up

Yoko Ono and Tony Feher
photo: courtesy of Stephen Lovekin / Getty Images (c) 2008

The numbers are in and STRIKE II, the third annual Visual AIDS Vanguard Award ceremony and spring benefit broke records in fundraising, attendance and artists' participation! A resounding success on all fronts, we raised over $68,000, which will directly support our ongoing work utilizing the visual arts to keep an emphasis on the AIDS pandemic, as well as offer direct services to artists living with HIV/AIDS.

Amy Sadao, Executive Director Visual AIDS, Yoko Ono, and Jeffrey Deitch
photo: courtesy of Stephen Lovekin / Getty Images (c) 2008

This year, Visual AIDS was thrilled to recognized artists Yoko Ono and Tony Feher. We offer special thanks to presenters Jeffrey Deitch and Joy Episalla and  for their touching introductions to both honorees, our Co-Chairs Anthony Meier Fine Arts, Cassie Rosenthal, Jack ShainmanPavel Zoubok, as well as this year's Benefit Committee. In addition, we would like to thank DJ Little Jukka (Nayland Blake) for keeping the party rocking.

Yoko Ono, Nayland Blake, Nicholas Weist
Photos above: courtesy Aaron Cobbett (c) 2008


Click here for more information.   

via email, The Drawing Center:

Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities installation view. Exhibition design by nARCHITECTS. Photo by Cathy Carver.  Join us this Wednesday, June 11 at 6:30 pm for a free tour of the exhibition Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities by curator João Ribas in the Main Gallery.       Learn about architect, artist, designer, and theoretician Frederick Kiesler, the man Philip Johnson called "the best-known non-building architect of our time," as you tour this incredible exhibition illustrating Kiesler's theories of Correalism, Perception, Endless Architecture, and Exhibition Design.     Also on view in the Drawing Room until 10pm: Drawing on Film  ____________________________   This event takes place as part of SoHo Night, an evening of extended exhibition viewing and special programs by 7 not-for-profit visual arts institutions in SoHo!

Free gallery talks, exhibition tours, previews, screenings, and more!   6 pm to 10 pm (some institutions close at 8 pm, check program for details)   apexart Art in General Artists Space The Drawing Center Location One Storefront for Art and Architecture Swiss Institute   Click to download a PDF of the SoHo Night program

________________________________________ More information about Public Programs Learn about Current Exhibitions Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities and Drawing on Film   ________________________________________

Mark your calendar: As part of the Drawing on Film exhibition, The Drawing Center will present a rare screening of 16mm films by   Stan Brakhage Friday, June 27 at 8:30 pm and Dieter Roth and Amy Granat Saturday, June 28, 6:30 PM

Image via

Posted here are two pieces: the first, an excerpt from today's Op-Ed by NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman, offers a view of the future of technology with (uncharacteristic) optimism; the other is a press release about several major record labels currently suing Spain's own P2P pioneer, Pablo Soto. An interesting juxtaposition. The money quote is about litigation not being a particularly "valid business model".

Bits, Bands and Books
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 6, 2008

Do you remember what it was like back in the old days when we had a New Economy? In the 1990s, jobs were abundant, oil was cheap and information technology was about to change everything.

Then the technology bubble popped. Many highly touted New Economy companies, it turned out, were better at promoting their images than at making money -- although some of them did pioneer new forms of accounting fraud. After that came the oil shock and the food shock, grim reminders that we’re still living in a material world.

So much, then, for the digital revolution? Not so fast. The predictions of '90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected -- but the future they envisioned is still on the march.

In 1994, one of those gurus, Esther Dyson, made a striking prediction: that the ease with which digital content can be copied and disseminated would eventually force businesses to sell the results of creative activity cheaply, or even give it away. Whatever the product -- software, books, music, movies -- the cost of creation would have to be recouped indirectly: businesses would have to "distribute intellectual property free in order to sell services and relationships."

For example, she described how some software companies gave their product away but earned fees for installation and servicing. But her most compelling illustration of how you can make money by giving stuff away was that of the Grateful Dead, who encouraged people to tape live performances because "enough of the people who copy and listen to Grateful Dead tapes end up paying for hats, T-shirts and performance tickets. In the new era, the ancillary market is the market."

Indeed, it turns out that the Dead were business pioneers. Rolling Stone recently published an article titled "Rock's New Economy: Making Money When CDs Don't Sell." Downloads are steadily undermining record sales -- but today's rock bands, the magazine reports, are finding other sources of income. Even if record sales are modest, bands can convert airplay and YouTube views into financial success indirectly, making money through "publishing, touring, merchandising and licensing."

What other creative activities will become mainly ways to promote side businesses? How about writing books?

[read on...]

via PRWeb, June 5, 2008:

Major Record Labels Sue Spanish P2P Pioneer Pablo Soto, MP2P Technologies, Suit Seeks $20mm USD

Lawsuit, Believed to be Unprecedented, Claims "Unfair Competition"

Madrid, Spain (PRWEB) June 5, 2008 -- MP2P Technologies (http://www.mp2p.net/) announced today that it has been served with a lawsuit from what remains of the four major record labels. The lawsuit, WARNER MUSIC SPAIN S.A., UNIVERSAL MUSIC SPAIN, S.A., EMI MUSIC SPAIN, S.A., SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, S.A., PRODUCTORES DE MUSICA EN ESPANA (PROMUSICAE) v. PABLO SOTO BRAVO, OPTISOFT, S.L., PIOLET NETWORKS, S.L., MP2P TECHNOLOGIES, S.A. (filed in Madrid Court for Commercial Matters # 2807910001898), seeks $20mm in alleged damages from the technology upstart.

"We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against this shake down attempt by the major label cabal," said Pablo Soto, founder and CEO of MP2P Technologies. "Rather than embracing technology, they have chosen a path that will ultimately lead to their own demise, as evidenced by the labels consistent decline over the past decade. Litigation is in itself not a valid business model for them, however, it has been a dogged and futile pursuit of theirs since the advent of P2P."

"PROMUSICAE (Spanish branch of the IFPI; international arm of the RIAA) tried to proceed with civil suits against users of P2P networks in Spain and, after being halted by the Court of Justice of the EU, it has now decided to go against a neutral communication tool such as P2P technology," added Soto.

MP2P Technologies innovates technology offerings including Piolet (http://www.piolet.com/), Omemo, (http://www.omemo.com) and Blubster (http://www.blubster.com).

Pablo Soto is considered one of the pioneers of P2P, together with other distinguished luminaries such as Justin Frankel (Gnutella) and Shawn Fanning (Napster). He is a frequent panelist at national and international forums and serves from time to time as a visiting professor at the University of Valencia and the University of the Basque Country. His progressive accomplishments in technology have garnered worldwide press recognition, including CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, AP, USA Today, C/Net, Rolling Stone, CBS News, San Jose Mercury News, among many others.

About MP2P Technologies
MP2P Technologies' software offerings have been downloaded millions of times by scores of people from around the globe. Founded by renowned technology developer Pablo Soto in 2000, MP2P Technologies today remains a leader in the P2P sector and consumer technology. MP2P Technologies is headquartered in Madrid, Spain. For more information, visit http://www.mp2p.net.

For more info, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Music_Economy

reBlogged via Minneapolis City pages, june 3, 2008:

Bedside nursing, firearms and doll repair: welcome to the Reanimation Library.

Filed under: Uprooted

UPROOTED is a series of profiles of Minnesota-raised artists, writers, politicians and musicians who are doing what they do in some place that is not Minnesota.

From the catalog of the Reanimation Library. For a slideshow of images, click here.

When Andrew Beccone left Minneapolis for New York City in 2003, he had pretty much exhausted the rock band thing. He had traversed the country by van a dozen times or more, sweating and stinking and drinking and being broke playing drums with beloved locals Mickey Finn and Capital!Capital.

On the eve of his departure, Beccone took his drums to a friend who managed a warehouse. The drums were shrink-wrapped to a pallet and fork-lifted high onto a shelf for storage. He was a drummer retired and free to pursue a most unlikely path: He was headed to New York City to start a library.

But first: library school.

"Many people who go to library school, myself included, think that open access to information is a vital component to democratic society and that being a librarian is a noble profession," he says. "At the same time, I was incredibly attracted to these strange images that I was finding in old, outdated books." He told every student and professor he met at the Pratt Institute of his plan: to open a library of unusual images plucked from decades-old reference books, technical manuals, and other such genres of specialization. The library would be called the Reanimation Library.

"Most of my professors and fellow students just gave me a blank stare," Beccone says. One professor pulled him aside after class. "This is really interesting," said the prof, "but you're not actually going to do this, right? I don't know how you're going to do it."

Long story short: he did it. He started a library. Which, by the way, almost nobody does.

The shelves of the Reanimation Library (Photo: Andrew Beccone)

Beccone, who is the librarian for the art world powerhouse Marian Goodman Gallery by day, rents space for "a reasonable rate" from the Proteus Gowanus gallery in Brooklyn. He's been invited to speak about his library to classes at NYU and Rutgers. The library's carefully curated catalog of roughly 600 books is browsed with frequency by artists, designers, videographers and, not too long ago, seven blindfolded playwrights.

The latter was part of a project called "Dewey's Nightmare" wherein seven playwrights were blindfolded and led into Beccone's library with the assignment of picking a book at random. With whatever they selected they had seven days to write a short play to be performed together at a fund raiser for the McSweeney's affiliated youth-writing center 826NYC.

When Eric Sanders, the project's creative director, met with Beccone about the project, Beccone warned him: "You realize there aren't any novels here?" he said. "And you realize that you might end up with a play called Atlas of the Human Brain in Section, right?"

Exactly, came Sanders' response.

A few other titles, to give you a sniff of the collection:

Sex Lives of Animals Without Backbones (1976)
Swine Science (1970)
A Guide to Gymnastics (1968)
The Gun Digest Book of Exploded Firearms Drawings (1982)
Bark Structure of North American Conifers (1954)

A blindfolded playwright selects a book for the Dewey's Nightmare project. (Photo: Andrew Beccone)

You don't have to go to Brooklyn to see it--you can browse some of the collection online. A listing of the books is there with a selection of some of the many thousands of images. The image gallery won him a hat-tip from the internet curiosities blog Boing Boing, which won his website 100,000 hits in 24 hours.

"Beccone's collection is so unique and odd I thought it would be perfect," says Sanders, who was impressed with Beccone's quality-control. "There has been a sort of junk shop curiosity movement over the last 10 years in indie culture--with things like Found Magazine--and I think there is a misconception that Beccone is just taking random trash and calling it a collection, but he's vetting everything and treating his library like its the rare books collection at Harvard."

An image from the collection. For a slideshow of images, click here.

There is a guru for "outsider" libraries like Reanimation: Rick Prelinger. The Prelinger Library in San Francisco is the ultimate outsider library. Prelinger didn't go to library school before starting his library of 40,000 items organized in a system of Prelinger's invention, intended to force the kind of browsing you just don't do too much of in modern computerized libraries.

Prelinger visited the Reanimation Library recently and liked what he saw: "It's not huge but everything is there for a reason." He speaks of the "gestalt experience" of libraries like his and Beccone's--browsers come to get their hands dirty and to experience the collection, not merely grab and run.

For the gestalt-types, Reanimation provides a reading room with two scanners. Visitors are encouraged to connect the scanners to their laptops and take what they want. For the lo-fi, there's a photocopier.

Sure, Beccone says, you'll find all the oddball images you can stomach spending a few minutes on Google. But there are still people out there who long for the labor of the hunt. And from that hunt have come paintings, visual art, poems, video animation and at least seven plays.

"What he's doing," says Sanders, "is making you reconsider the notion of what value is. If you treat something not just as a curiosity but as a valuable tool, then is becomes a valuable tool--because Andrew afforded it his respect."

For your browsing pleasure:

- The Reanimation Library Online
- Our slideshow of Reanimation images
- The Prelinger Library blog
- Beccone recently came out of rock retirement and joined Nature Music

Posted by Jeff Severns Guntzel at June  3, 2008  7:26 AM

via Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

May 21st, 2008      

B-24 Liberated!

Posted by Corynne McSherry      

Last month we told you about Lockheed Martin's effort to use trademark infringement claims to cause the removal of digital images of classic military aircraft from TurboSquid, a stock images site. The central mark at issue was the term "B-24," which Lockheed managed to register as a trademark for use in connection with scale models of airplanes. We sent an open letter to Lockheed’s licensing agency, demanding that they withdraw their improper objections. We're pleased to report that Lockheed has decided to withdraw its claim, and TurboSquid is putting the images back up forthwith.

This is a good outcome, but the problem remains. Because online communication and commerce often depends on intermediaries like TurboSquid, who may not have the resources or the inclination to investigate trademark infringement claims, it is much too easy for trademark owners like Lockheed to ignore fair use and shut down legitimate content. And not every target of improper claims is going to have the resources to push back.

One way to help prevent future overreaching claims is for trademark owners to learn that a trademark registration doesn’t give you a right to control everyday use of regular descriptive terms. Another is for large trademark owners to set up websites or email "hotlines" where the targets of trademark claims can seek review and prompt withdrawal of the claim if the takedown request was in error. Such a hotline won't stop real abuse, but will provide a relatively painless way for trademark owners to correct honest mistakes. Finally, service providers should institute a form of counter-notice procedure that would allow those who believe they have been accused unfairly to quickly determine the basis for a takedown, and request reconsideration. Real infringers won't bother to take advantage of such a procedure, but fair users could use it to show that their use is permissible (and therefore does not put the service provider at risk).

Related Issues: Free Speech, Intellectual Property

via BoingBoing:

WWII Bomber: "Trademark Infringement"

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, March 21, 2008  9:32 AM

John Macneill is a kickass 3D illustrator whose work frequently appears Popular Science and other national magazines. He also contributes to the Turbo Squid 3D model site. Recently In 2002 he uploaded his model of a WWII B-24 Bomber to Turbo Squid. Lockeed Martin came across it and yesterday it wrongfully (illegally?) used the DMCA to force Turbo Squid to remove the file.

A photographer can take a photo of any type of car and sell the photo; look at any car magazine. A painter can create a painting of anything and sell that, remember Andy Warhol's famous 1968 painting of a can of Campbell's tomato soup? But a CG artist cannot create a sculpture of a Ford Mustang and sell that, at least not on Turbo Squid. There is obviously a double standard here. So where does this leave CG artists? Until a stock company becomes willing to fight back against these takedowns, there seems little any individual artist can do.

UPDATE: Cory [Doctorow]has the following to add:

Turbo Squid, a large 3D stock image site, has been systematically removing models of contemporary and vintage vehicles, after their manufacturers sent in improper DMCA takedown notices alleging that publishing 3D models of old cars and airplanes infringed on their trademarks (this isn't true, but even if it was, the DMCA deals with copyright, not trademark). Yesterday, 3D artist John MacNeill had his model of a WWII bomber removed after Lockheed sent a letter to Turbo Squid, alleging that this 60-year-old plane infringed on its trademark.

A Turbo Squid spokesperson is quoted as saying, "The thing you need to keep in mind is that you cannot make money off someone else's registered Trademark." This is simply untrue. Trademark does not protect owners from others profiting on their marks -- trademark's purpose is to prevent vendors from misleading the public about the origin of goods and services. If you use someone else's trademark ("Charger works with Nokia phones!") you're totally in the clear, provided that the purchaser doesn't get confused about whose product he's buying.

Trademark law is clear: Turbo Squid can sell unauthorized models of cars, planes and other trademarked objects, provided that they make it very clear that these models weren't authorized, made or marketed by the manufacturers of the cars, planes and objects. [read on...]

I first came across BAST by accident online, and then later in the streets of Soho (above). He's having a show at Brooklynite Gallery, opening next Tuesday:

BAST: Nose Candy

Brooklynite Gallery
Williamsburg / Greenpoint / Bushwick

334  Malcolm X Blvd, 347-405-5976
June 10 - July 12, 2008
Opening: Tuesday, June 10,  7 - 10PM
Web Site

more via ArtCal (see map) :

Right off the bat, Brooklynite Gallery comes out swinging--- hitting a grand slam for its premiere show featuring new print works by the artist BAST. An opening reception will be held on Tuesday, June 10th 2008. The BAST print show will run from June 10th to July 12th, 2008.

The brand new Brooklynite Gallery is located in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. As pioneers in the area, nothing is better than introducing the gallery to the art world than with the cutting-edge work of BAST. Internationally renowned and always ahead of the curve, BAST juxtaposes a raw street-edge sensibility, an eclectic montage of pop culture "confusion" and the boundaries of sex in his work.

This time around BAST's new collection targets jewelry, or "bling" if you will, as he once again finds a new way to satisfy the eyes appetite for visual candy. As if his ironic pairing and displaced imagery wasn't enough, or even the infusion of vibrant neon color schemes, the bar is once again raised with the sparkle and glitter of ornamentation.