Walter De Maria

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/arts/design/walter-de-maria-artist-on-grand-scale-dies-at-77.html?from=homepage&_r=0

Modernist model in progress

Working on this piece.  It's labor-intensive due to the fact that each "beam" is made up of six sticks glued together. Progress continues!

Who wants $5,000,000?

Tony Smith's "Smoke" at LACMA

Tony Smith's monumental sculpture 'Smoke' will not disappear from LACMA; multimillion-dollar purchase finalized

Archive of Archigram projects

http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/index.php

International Art English

For this blog entry I'm just going to post links to fascinating articles about the language and vocabulary used to describe contemporary artwork, the lingua franca of the artworld: artspeak, aka "International Art English."

The use of this language is a form of pretension.

If you're interested in "artspeak", where it came from, why it's so impenetrable, and the agenda behind it, please read these articles:

http://hyperallergic.com/66348/when-artspeak-masks-oppression/

http://canopycanopycanopy.com/16/international_art_english

And this article, which makes great observations, until the end when I disagree with the author's final conclusion....

http://frieze-magazin.de/archiv/features/auf-der-zunge/?lang=en

Ultra Ever Art!

I just saw this video demonstrating a new superhydrophobic (water-proof) and oleophobic (hydrocarbons-proof) coating called Ultra Ever Dry. The best part of the video is when they show some green liquid trapped in the middle of a pane of glass because the outside has been treated with this new miracle water-repelling stuff (just watch the video, you'll see). Like many products intended for industrial use, there are surely some art applications that could be pretty amazing. I'm already imagining what Vik Muniz could do if he chose to use this material to  continue some work similar to his Pictures of Chocolate series. See an example of his work below this video. 

Vik Muniz "Sigmund Freud" 1997

It would be interesting to see what an artist could do with the superhydrophobic and oleophobic properties of Ultra Ever Dry. You could paint it on a canvas, or screenprint it, and then apply paint or ink. The paint or ink would stick wherever the Ultra Ever Dry was absent. There are many possibilities... If you can afford it, that is. It costs about $150 a quart.