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 ]

from the UK Guardian

Van Sant on board for Acid Test

Gus Van Sant will reunite with Milk writer Dustin Lance Black to make a film of Tom Wolfe’s chronicle of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters

• Ben Child
• guardian.co.uk, 
• Tuesday October 28 2008 10.44 GMT
• Article history

Well-travelled … Ken Kesey pictured in 1997 with Further, a descendant of the famous vehicle that carried him and his Merry Pranksters on the trip immortalised in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Photo: Jeff Barnard/AP

Gus Van Sant is to adapt Tom Wolfe’s 1968 cult book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for the big screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In the book, considered one of the most famous documents of 60s drug experimentalism, Wolfe tells the story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they drive across the US in a DayGlo painted school bus dubbed Furthur, taking gargantuan quantities of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.

Wolfe was interested in documenting the personal and collective intellectual and quasi-religious “revelations” reached by the Pranksters on their journey. During the trip in Furthur, they attended a number of Grateful Dead concerts and travelled to Mexico.

[ click to read full piece at the Guardian ]

from the New York Times

Picasso and the Masters

Photo: Jacques Brinon/Associated Press

[ click to view read and view slideshow at NYTimes.com ]

from the Washington Post

Paying Snarky Homage to Cinema’s Worst

By JEN CHANEY
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008

You know that friend who loves to make loud, sarcastic comments while watching terrible films? Congratulations. You just found his holiday gift.

And that present would be “Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition,” the DVD box set ($62.98) that contains four 90-minute installments of the B-movie-trashing cult TV series. The show — about a guy stranded in space and forced to watch some of the worst motion pictures of all time with a pair of sarcastic, remarkably pop culture savvy robots — ran for eleven years, first on a Minneapolis cable channel, then on the Comedy Channel (which eventually became Comedy Central) and the Sci-Fi Channel. Its appeal was not quite mainstream; after all, only a person with a certain constitution can sit through a stinker like “Werewolf,” even when the “Mystery Science” crew lobs comments like, “That jacket makes him look like a werewaiter.”

That riffing not only made some colossally pathetic flicks about ten times more entertaining, it also turned “Mystery Science” into a cultural pioneer of sorts. Long before the Internet turned pop culture snark into a daily ritual, the folks at “MST 3K,” as it’s known in shorthand, had already molded it into an art form. Everyone who has ever posted a smart alecky comment on a movie blog — not to mention every picture-in-picture DVD commentary track — owes the Emmy-nominated show a serious debt.

[ click to continue reading at WaPo.com ]

from Art Review

In the doghouse: Oleg Kulik’s zoophilia photos seized by police at FIAC

Posted by artreview.com on 27 October 2008 at 11:30am

By Christopher Mooney

“Circulez!” shouted a wiry man with a shaved head as he fixed a piece of electrician’s tape across the entrance to the booth of Moscow’s XL Gallery, barring access. “Ce n’est pas un spectacle!” But indeed it was.

It was day two of the FIAC art fair in Paris, around 4.15 in the afternoon, and visitors to the small two-storey section at one end of the Grand Palais were witnessing a public performance rarely seen in the contemporary art world. At its centre was From the Dustbin (2007), an installation of unframed photos by Ukrainian artist Oleg Kulik. As is often the case with Kulik’s work, many of the photos depicted simulated acts of zoophilia – naked men, usually the artist, pretending to couple with sheep, dogs, and, in one photo, a guy in a monkey suit, the latter in behind the crouched-over Kulik, whose face is contorted in a feigned rictus of rectal pain or pleasure.

[ click to read at Art Review ]

from The UK Guardian

Things really must be bad – AC/DC are No 1 again

• Alexis Petridis
• The Guardian, 
• Monday October 27 2008
• Article history

Angus Young (r) and lead vocalist Brian Johnson of AC/DC. Photograph: Joerg Koch/AFP/Getty images

Those keen to draw wider inferences from its success might note that the last time AC/DC made No 1 in Britain, the country was on the brink of recession. Back In Black, the album that marked their commercial breakthrough and went on to become the second biggest-selling of all time, was released in 1980, just as inflation had reached 20% and unemployment inched towards 2 million.

When the economy recovered, AC/DC’s popularity receded.

AC/DC’s appeal in unpredictable times is straightforward. People crave something uncomplicated and dependable in a time of uncertainty, and rock music has never produced a band so uncomplicated and dependable as AC/DC.

For 35 years, they have done exactly the same thing – which in guitarist Angus Young’s case involves dressing like a naughty schoolboy – unaffected by changes in fashion or band personnel.

Not even the death of lead singer Bon Scott could stop AC/DC cranking out hard-edged, wilfully basic blues-rock, decorated with lyrics in which the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll” figures heavily, but not as heavily as sniggering innuendo about scrotums.

Western capitalism might collapse but at least Young can be relied on to perform a song about either rock and roll or testicles while wearing shorts, blazer and cap. Alas, what he can’t be relied on to do is support those who delve into the sociological implications of AC/DC’s appeal. “What we do, you’re not going to look into it with depth, y’know,” he suggested recently . “Because if you look into it with depth, you’re not going to get it.”

Highway to hell

1973: AC/DC form in Sydney, Australia.
Economy: Start of the oil crisis, which saw the price quadruple

1980: AC/DC release breakthrough album Back In Black
Economy: Inflation in UK reaches 20% and unemployment nears 2 million

1990: AC/DC score comeback with The Razor’s Edge
Economy: Recession in UK imminent

2008: AC/DC top UK album charts
Economy: Biggest world recession in decades looms 

[ click to read at Guardian UK ]

from the LA Times CULTURE MONSTER

Thomas Kinkade, power artist

3:30 PM, October 16, 2008

The other day, Britain’s ArtReview magazine issued its Power 100 list, a ranking of artists, dealers, collectors and assorted others who ostensibly “run the art world.” While most attention focuses on who is at the top — artist Damien Hirst, dealer Larry Gagosian and Museum of Modern Art associate director Kathy Halbreich came in at Nos. 1, 2 and 3 — way more interesting is who brings up the rear.

Number 100 on the list is Sacramento-born Thomas Kinkade, 50, self-described “Painter of Light,” whose treacle-plenty pictures of bucolic bliss have been cranked out by the hundreds over the years.

A joke from across the pond? Or a simple sign of the inescapable silliness of all such lists?

Either way, Kinkade seems to nicely bracket the Power 100.

— Christopher Knight

Photo credit: Los Angeles Times

[ click to read at CULTURE MONSTER blog ]