Thursday, July 9, 2009

Your Social Life



Hello everybody,

another short edition of YSL, to announce a few selection of art-related things I would attend, if I wasn't on a writing deadline.
First of all, tonight two competing things are going to require you to stretch your attendance between Mixtape Volume 1 at Federal Art Project, featuring FBC! super favorite Juan Capistran, and many others, and a special movie projection at Cottage Home (more below). All the information you need about Mixtape 1 can be found here.

There's a life after today, and you can delight in it with something a little bit more, er, *family-friendly* with the Public Art Party in Beverly Hills on Saturday organized by For Your Art around the Yayoi Kusama sculpture. In what other place than LA can you experience conceptual porn AND giant polka-dotted flowers on the same week? Rumors say there will be some Kusama-inspired cupcakes too, but yours truly is on a diet, so if by any chance I make it there I won't succomb to temptation.
After Kusama, I'd suggest you head down to Chinatown where you can attend the opening for the Summer group show organized at Cottage Home by China Arts Objects as well as the one curated by Thomas Solomon (with Marcelo Rios)

This is all very well, but what was this other thing competing with Mixtape 1 tonight? Tonight is also the premiere of Lawrence Weiner's movie "Water In Milk Exists" at 8 PM (so you can go to Federal Art Project first) at Cottage Home. There's no link on their page, so please check all the info on the Facebook event page. Lawrence Weiner will say a few words, and just in case you haven't heard about it yet, it is a conceptual porn movie. When was the last time you saw one? Exactly. So, have fun tonight!

Monday, July 6, 2009

Please Allow Me To Introduce My Friend


FBC! is please to introduce its HUGE readership (hi Pam! hi Nancy!) to the latest offering by special gal pal Theresa Papanikolas, the former Wallis Annenberg Fellow at LACMA and the current curator of European and American art at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
When at LACMA Theresa curated a great show, "Doctrinal Nourishment: Art And Anarchism In The Times of James Ensor", which did a great job of explaining Ensor's influences as well the artists he later influenced himself, and putting him in the context of the artists of his times, including FBC! favorite, FĂ©licien Rops.
It was a jewel of a beautiful show to look at, and I'm very happy that finally the catalog/book is out. You can purchase it on Amazon, where it is amazingly inexpensive, prior to visiting the current Ensor show at MoMA.





Another reason why you should buy this book? Yours truly is on a writing deadline, of the kind that pays the rent, unlike amateurish (if LA-centric) blogs, so I won't have time to write much for you guys before a few weeks, and I'm not sure I'll be able to post more stuff from Renee Montgomery, our current blogger-in-residence. It's OK, it's the Summer, what's better than a little Ensor to reflect on the spirit of our times?



Pictures:
1) the cover of the catalogue,
2.) James Ensor. Masks Confronting Death. 1888. Oil on canvas, 32 x 39 1/2" (81.3 x 100.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund,
3) Artwork: Baron James Ensor (Belgium, Ostende, 1860–1949), The Doctrinal Nourishment (Alimentation doctrinaire), 1889–95 (detail), LACMA, print, etching printed with tone and hand-colored with white gouache and with red, yellow, and blue chalk and watercolor, image: 9 3/8 x 7 1/16 in. (23.81 x 17.94 cm); sheet: 9 1/4 x 11 5/8 in. (23.5 x 29.53 cm); mat: 16 x 20 in. (40.64 x 50.8 cm), purchased with funds generously provided by the Joan Palevsky Bequest (M.2007.6). © James Ensor Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SABAM, Brussels, and 4)