C-MONSTER.net.

Art spill on aisle three: Pastoral landscape at CostCo.

This weekend I had the honor of hanging out at a CostCo in Orange County, which is serious Andreas Gursky-Land. Not only can you buy a palette of toilet paper and a crate of tequila, you can also pick up a coffin—and, more importantly, art! (They have every stage of your life covered.) These are no giclees, by the way, they’re real “hand-painted” paintings. And I have no doubt that they were produced somewhere in the vicinity of Da Fen. But who cares, when you can pick up a hand-painted painting (in “premium wood frame”) starting at $117.99. All I know is that one of these babies is gonna look sensational over my new couch.

See more pix on my Flickr.

Posted by C-Monster.

The Murakami Louis Vuitton boutique at the Brooklyn Museum. (Photo by Jason Lujan.)

• Video of Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded for the August issue of Vanity Fair: “It’s a smothering feeling as well as a drowning feeling.” (Via Kottke.)
• For the artspeak crowd, a little Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” (Via Eyebeam.)
• Art Video of the Day: Signs of Life by Freddie Yauner.
• Keeping the lawyers employed: The details on that mind-boggling lawsuit that some art collector filed against L.A.’s MoCA over what is essentially paperwork.
• A round-up from the London auctions, where there were some big sales, but no sell-outs. More here. Related: high art prices on the top end may disguise malaise at lower levels (via A.J.).
• The French are all worried that Jeff Koons will kitsch-ify Versailles. Um, isn’t Versailles already pretty kitschy? Doesn’t it just reek of gaudy wealth? Koons will fit in perfectly…
• MoMA buys photographs by contemporary Chinese artists.
• All Vermeer, all the time. (Via Coudal.)
• Gary Panter has a blog.
• A fascinating work by Tuur van Balen that explores all of the pharmaceuticals which end up in our water.
• Humans as sculpture.
• Some artist green-screened a Mariah Carey video so that viewers could add their own backgrounds. Sounds an awful lot like Stephen Colbert’s Make McCain Interesting Green Screen Challenge.
• Kerry James Marshall on his art.
• A round-up of photography books.
• Graff of the Day: Saner in Mexico.
• Os Gemeos in the streets of NYC. Plus: a video interview.
• Multi-colored architecture of the day: Izola housing in Slovenia.
• Calatrava’s response to changes in his WTC design.
• A visual classification of the many subspecies of douchebag. (Via Animal.)
• And just in time for the Fourth of July: Your moment of the greatest best country on the face of the Earth.

Visible from the entry hallway: A detail from Smoke, by Tony Smith. (Photos by C-M, unless otherwise noted.)

I finally got to wander around the newly renovated LACMA and it’s flashy new sister museum, BCAM, which still has that new-car smell. (Or is that formaldehyde?) Anyhow, I spent some quality time checking out the spaces and the art, though I was unable to photograph much of what I saw because, as usual, no photography was allowed inside the galleries. (Not that this matters, because far-flung correspondent San Suzie already got all the illegal flicks we needed back in February.) All of this was fine with me, because it allowed me to roam around and soak up the offerings. Herewith, a short, highly-annotated tour of some of what I saw.

Click on images to supersize. More after the jump.

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Here’s to good times: Old Crow in S.F. (Photo by RFullerRD.)

• Hot shit on a shingle! C-Monster.net got a plug in today’s NY Times on the topic of Gallerie Pulaski!! My quest for world domination continues…
• Espo (a.k.a. Steve Powers) wants to waterboard 50 lawyers. Why stop at 50?
• Trippy trees by Anelia Lazaroff.
• In the wake of Cheech Marin’s Chicano Visions: LACMA should abandon one-collector shows because it shows no curatorial spine, says the L.A. Times. (I can’t help but opine on this: I agree that the Chicano Visions show is weak in many ways. But I think it’s a show that is still worth seeing—though the museum sure coulda done a better job hanging the thing, and Knight is right, it coulda used some serious context. But seeing as the museum is showcasing art from a single collector on the three giganto floors at BCAM, the small corner that Marin gets (next to the kid’s activity center) doesn’t seem like much in comparison. Moreover, BCAM shows the same globalized stable of artists that you see in contemporary institutions everywhere: Warhol, Koons, Hirst, Sherman, Holzer, blah blah blah blah blah. Is Chicano Visions comprehensive? No. But I’ll venture to say that Marin’s show does more to further knowledge of art in L.A. than BCAM does. The exhibit presents artists—Gronk, Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz, Patssi Valdez, Los Four, and many others—who are an integral part of the city’s fabric. And not just the piece of it that lies west of the 405.) Stay tuned for a report on my LACMA visit later this afternoon…
• A Renaissance-era sculpture by Andrea della Robbia fell off its perch at the Met and shattered.
• Former Met director Thomas Hoving to contribute to ArtNet.
• BYU’s art collection: Not very well managed. (Via MAN.)
• Very Vegas: Peter Greenaway does a light show on Da Vinci’s Last Supper (includes video). More here.
• Photo Essay: Tamir Sher’s Mars-inspired shots of Tel Aviv.
• A video profile on Mika Rottenberg, the sculptor and video artist who created that bizarre goat-shed video installation at the Whitney Biennial that was totally Matthew Barney meets Big Love.
• There’s douche-y-ness afoot at Pace Wildenstein.
• This explains everything about the art industry: Your imagination affects your visual perception. (Via Eyebeam.)
• Graff of the Day: Run and Dem in Livorno, Italy.
• From the Department of Making-an-Ass-of-Myself: A clip from a documentary series called Wet Heat (not what you’re thinking), in which I yammer on about getting therapized by Bert Rodriguez at the Whitney. Far more worthy of everyone’s time: the interview with Vito Acconci.
• Santiago Calatrava’s roof at the PATH terminal in downtown Manhattan will remain closed due to budget constraints. Previously, the roof was to open and close.
• Photos of architecture from the London Festival of Architecture. (Follow the link to the photo essay.)
• Eero Saarinen building at the University of Chicago is restored. (Could someone at the Trib’s website have thought to include a picture with this story???)
• Great photos of Zaha Hadid’s Zaragoza bridge pavilion.
• Designer glasses make you artistic.
• Your moment of Sam Cooke singing with Muhammad Ali.

Incomplete houses, by David Goldblatt, at Haunch of Venison, in London. (Image courtesy of HOV.)

• In London: Home Lands, Land Marks, art by contemporary South African artists, at Haunch of Venison.
• In Monterrey, Mexico: inTENciones, the work of architect Enrique Norten, at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, opens Thursday.
• In NYC: Enrique Chagoya, Aaron Johnson and Miguel Luciano in Grotesque Histories at the Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn, opens tomorrow.
• In NYC: Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney, through September 21st.
• In NYC: Salvador Dalí, Painting and Film, at MoMA, through September 15th.
• In Miami: Shadows, Disappearances and Illusions at MAM, through September 21st.
• In S.F.: Yellena James at Giant Robot, through July 16^th.
• In Beijing: Media Art in China at NAMOC, through Thursday.

Self-portrait, by Paul Gaugin. (Image courtesy of lyceo_hispanico.)

• Interested in copying the chola prom look? Here’s a handy video with homegirl make-up tips. Perfect for the summer season. (Thanks, Vidalia, for the hook-up.)
• But do they come with a squishy caramel center? Paul McCarthy’s chocolate Santa butt plugs now on sale in New York! (I know what I’m eating as soon as I get back…)
• That’s a whole lotta frijoles: Triptych by Francis Bacon sells for almost $35 million at auction and Jeff Koons balloon dog goes for $23 million. More here.
• But they looked real: Ten of the Brooklyn Museum’s 30 Coptic sculptures are modern fakes.
• The Italian branch of the International Council of Museums has decried the practice of museums renting out their collections for money.
• Art Criticism of the Day: “Against all expectations, the first J.M.W. Turner survey to reach New York in 40 years has landed with a thud.”
• AFC reports that Jerry Saltz is gettin’ bloggy with it.
• John McEnroe on Andy Warhol: “He was this weird guy who was always at parties taking pictures. I was amazed when I was told that he was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.”
• I Heart Capitalism: Once-free tickets to visit Olafur Eliasson’s waterfall sculptures in NYC are being scalped on Craig’s List.
• Britain’s Tank Magazine is doing an open call for filmmakers for a competition in which directors will be asked to interpret the myth of the Three Graces. The deadline is August 25^th. (Good luck navigating the impenetrable film competition website.)
• How to respond to a rejection letter. (Via Reluctant Habits.)
• Movie studios trolling Flickr for free pictures to use as props in their movies. Otherwise, some producer might have to take a $100 pay cut.
• Pictures from PhotoEspaña, worth it for the pix by Florian Maier-Aiche.
• The photographs of Paul Outerbridge. (Via NotCot.)
• Graff of the Day: Webs, WKCR and AEC in the Ukraine. Many more here.
• Freestyling: Black Thought and ?uestlove, with Espo.
• Bring in the wrecking ball to make way for the McMansions: Westportnow.com has a handy interactive map that shows teardowns of vintage homes in that corner of Connecticut. (Via NYT.)
• In advance of the opening of his pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery, Frank Gehry says that England doesn’t love him: “I don’t think England likes me. The critics don’t, that’s for sure. I reckon I’ve got a couple of years in me, but I don’t count on making a career in England.”
• “Douchebag neck.” (Via Marshall Astor.)
• Your moment of hip-hop meets classical. (Thank you, Royce!)