from AdWeek’s AdFreak.com

Viewers rise up against ‘Saved by Zero’ ads

The murderous hatred being directed toward Toyota’s “Saved by Zero” ads has been building for a few weeks now, and it’s become semi-official with this Associated Press story. A number of Web sites—Esquire, Best Week Ever, Consumerist and Jalopnik among them—have been hosting rants about the ads, which feature the admittedly awful 1983 song “Saved by Zero” by British new-wave group The Fixx. By and large, viewers feel an urge to end their own lives and/or other people’s when the ads come on: “It makes me want to kill someone/never ever buy a Toyota.” “Marketing 101, don’t piss consumers off, don’t get on their bad sides, don’t cultivate contempt.” “I CAN’T EVEN EXPRESS MY OUTRAGE WITHOUT USING CAPS LOCK.” Clearly it’s the feel-bad campaign of the year, and from a company (and industry) that doesn’t need any extra help in hurtling down the crapper.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

[ click to read at AdFreak.com ]

from the New York Times

Hard Body Plays an Old Softie (Himself)

PeaceArch Entertainment

Jean-Claude Van Damme in “JCVD,” in which he plays a washed-up, aging movie star named Jean-Claude Van Damme.

by DENNIS LIM

ON the phone the other day Jean-Claude Van Damme, the martial artist and action hero known in his heyday as the Muscles from Brussels, was sounding anxious and apologetic. He had canceled a trip to New York — missing a host of engagements, including an in-person interview with this writer — to remain in Bangkok, where he recently finished shooting a movie. And he wanted to make clear that he had a very good reason.

“I adopted seven dogs here, and one of them had a heart attack,” Mr. Van Damme said. “I’m sleeping with him every night at the clinic. If I leave him, he’s going to go back into a coma. He’s a very sensitive dog.” The others — all strays, some disabled (he built “a little wheelchair” for one of them) — have been sent to his home in Belgium.

It might be odd to think of Mr. Van Damme, a veteran of steroidal exploitation cinema and a virtuoso of the bone-crunching split kick, as an old softie, but it is also perfectly consistent with the image overhaul implicit in his latest vehicle, “JCVD,” which opened on Friday. Directed by the French filmmaker Mabrouk El Mechri, it allows its namesake to reveal new facets to his screen persona basically by playing himself. A jokey hall-of-mirrors movie with a melancholic streak, it stars Mr. Van Damme — who turned 48 last month and whose last film to open theatrically in the United States was the 1998 flop “Knock Off,” — as Jean-Claude Van Damme, a washed-up middle-aged movie star.

Thanks in part to a widely circulating online trailer “JCVD” has garnered more attention for Mr. Van Damme than he has received in years. (The last time he made even a remote impact on pop-culture consciousness was when he appeared on “Friends” as himself in 1996 and boasted that he could crush a walnut with his buttocks.) “JCVD” was a word-of-mouth hit at Cannes, and it had its North American premiere at a raucous midnight screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

from The UK Guardian

Schoolchildren too big to squeeze into chairs

Classroom furniture designed for pupils of the 60s is too small

• Polly Curtis
• guardian.co.uk, 
• Tuesday November 04 2008 13.48 GMT
• Article history

Schools need to upgrade their furniture because today’s children have outgrown the tables and chairs designed to meet the needs of 1960s pupils, experts say.

Pupils are so much bigger in height as well as girth that many no longer fit into standard school furniture.

There is also a much larger variation in the size of pupils meaning furniture needs to be redesigned to meet a wide range of shapes and sizes.

The recommendation is made in a wide-ranging report from the British Educational Suppliers Association, backed by the former education secretary Charles Clarke, which sets out the changing needs of schools.

It warns that schools are creating a generation of children who could suffer from back problems as the result of squeezing into ill-fitting furniture for hours every day.

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

A surrealistic short by The 25th Frame

from The Times South Africa and AFP

from the Financial Times

Art sales face acid test amid credit crunch

By Deborah Brewster in New York

Published: November 3 2008 02:47 | Last updated: November 3 2008 02:47

The art market, which has enjoyed a robust six-year boom in prices, faces a big test over the next two weeks as it finally shows signs of faltering amid the global financial crisis.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two main auction houses, expect to sell up to $1.7bn in artworks in New York’s two-week sale season which begins on Monday and which has traditionally been a key barometer of fine art prices, setting the tone for the coming months.

The sales come two weeks after markedly weaker contemporary art auctions in London, as buyers finally resisted paying the top prices that contemporary works have come to command.

The Mei Moses All Art Index, which measures the value of works sold at auction, has fallen by 5 per cent in the 10 months to the end of October.

It had risen by 5 per cent is the first six months of the year. The Postwar and Contemporary art index has fallen by 10 per cent in the year to date.

Dick Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, and his wife Kathy are among the sellers at the upcoming sales, although their consignment to Christie’s was made before Lehman Brothers hit trouble and filed for bankruptcy this year. The couple are offering 15 abstract expressionist drawings for an estimated $20m.

Henry Kravis, the co-founder of the private equity group Kohlberg Kravis, is selling a work by Edgar Degas, “Danseuse au Repos”, for an expected $40m or more, which would set a record for a work by Degas. Mr Kravis bought it in 1999 for $28m, which was then a Degas record. The work will be offered at Sotheby’s on Monday night.

Other highlights of the same Sotheby’s sale include a 1916 work by Ukrainian expessionist artist Kazimir Malevich, “Suprematist Composition”, which is estimated to sell for $60m. Sotheby’s said it has received an “unrevocable bid” for the work, which is being sold by Malevich’s heirs after the work was reconstituted to them this year.

A Cubist work by Picasso, “Arlequin”, was going to be sold by Sotheby’s for more than $30m, but it was withdrawn from sale last week “for private reasons”, according to the auction house.

Christie’s will sell another Picasso, “Deux Personnages”, a 1934 portrait of his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter and her sister, for up to $25m on Thursday.

[ click to read full article at FT.com ]

from Artist A Day

William Hundley

Artist categories: Photographers

About William:

William Hundley was born in St. Paul, MN, earned a BFA in Studio Art from SWT, and now lives and works in Austin, TX. Hundley is a painter by training, and is formerly one half of the group Industry of Light. His video works mix intensely glitchy After Effects editing techniques with painterly textures and often focus on human physical movement. His work has been shown at many previous Digital Showcases, and other various local events and art shows.

[ click to visit artistaday.com ]

from the NY Daily News

Girl, 13, stoned to death in Somalia as 1,000 watch; charged with adultery after rape

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saturday, November 1st 2008, 3:05 PM

MOGADISHU, Somalia – A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery, a human rights group said.

Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.

Initial local media reports said Duhulow was 23, but her father told Amnesty International she was 13. Some of the Somali journalists who first reported the killing later told Amnesty International that they had reported she was 23 based upon her physical appearance.

Calls to Somali government officials and the local administration in Kismayo rang unanswered Saturday.

“This child suffered a horrendous death at the behest of the armed opposition groups who currently control Kismayo,” David Copeman, Amnesty International’s Somalia campaigner, said in a statement Friday.

Somalia is among the world’s most violent and impoverished countries. The nation of some 8 million people has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991 then turned on each other.

A quarter of Somali children die before age 5; nearly every public institution has collapsed. Fighting is a daily occurrence, with violent deaths reported nearly every day.

[ click to read full indictment at NYDailyNews.com ]

from the New York Times

ART REVIEW | JOAN MIRÓ AT MOMA

Miró, Serial Murderer of Artistic Conventions

By HOLLAND COTTER

Amputate tradition, torture the past, terrorize the present. The impulse to destroy was part of what made early Modern art the guerrilla movement it was.

Cubism sentenced illusionistic art to the Death by a Thousand Cuts. Dada unleashed an anti-aesthetic Reign of Terror: Beauty? Off with its head. Decay? Let’s have more. Surrealism, a slippery business, let the killer instinct run amok. Tossing manifestos, dreams and libidos like bombs, it aimed to bring Western civilization to its knees and keep André Breton in the news.

 So in 1927, when Joan Miró said, “I want to assassinate painting,” he wasn’t saying anything new. What was new was the way he carried out his cutthroat task. That process is the subject of “Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927-1937,” an absorbing, invigorating and — Miró would be mortified — beautiful show at the Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition illustrates, step by step, exactly how Miró stalked and attacked painting — zapped its conventions, messed up its history, spoiled its market value — through 12 distinct groups of experimental works produced over a decade. If, in the end, painting survived, that’s neither here nor there. The story’s the thing. Crisp, clear and chronological, the show reads like a combination of espionage yarn and psychological thriller set out in a dozen page-turning chapters.

In 1927 Miró was 34. He was a successful artist and an early devotee of Surrealism, working in a polished, fantastical-realist mode. But he had a restless temperament and lived in provoking times. The high-flying 1920s were winding down, the political climate was growing tense. Surrealism, he discovered, had limitations. He was ready for a radical change in art, but he realized that he would have to create it himself. He decided it would take the form of a crime. Painting would have to go. He would deliver the blow.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

Go to about a minute in for the music, and check the Playing For Change website for more information on this great charity building music and art schools around the world.

from the Gothamist

Christie’s Goes Punk

David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, Dorchester Hotel, 1972 Black and white, limited edition archival photographic print, signed and numbered 24/50. 20x24in. $1500-2000.

High-end auction houses aren’t very punk rock, but Christie’s is about to put some classic punk era memorabilia on the block. They announced the auction, which takes place November 24th, yesterday–and it will include more than 120 punk treasures from legends like the Ramones, the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, Blondie, David Bowie and more.

Christie’s pop-culture chief Simeon Lipman told the AP: “We understand that tastes change, tastes mature. Ten years ago, punk memorabilia probably wouldn’t be something we’d be auctioning here. But now, people of a certain age have a certain ability to splurge on this material.”

Too bad they didn’t do this a few years ago, maybe they could have auctioned off CBGB. Now, put on your best John Varvatos suit and get ready to drive another nail into the coffin.

By Jen Carlson in Arts and Events 

[ click to read and view more pics at Gothamist.com ]