Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
— Mark Twain

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
— Edward R. Murrow

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavor—we're more like celery as a flavor.
— Mike Myers

We have art so that we shall not die of reality.
— Friedrich Nietzsche



Friday Overture: "I robbed both lords and ladies bright and took the gold home to my heart's delight..."


NOTE BENE: It's an old Irish folk song that I came to know about because Bob Dylan covered it in his live performances and I thought this rollicking rendition by Andrew Anderson was worth noting. It's a great song in which the narrator is a self-styled badass who would like us to believe that he chose a life of crime for the sake of love. But it's a more complex song than that and I've always presumed the narrator was not especially full of regret. There are lines in the song that suggest a dark glee lurking beneath, punctuated at the end when our callow narrator declares "And when I'm dead they will speak the truth / He was a wild and wicked youth."


SAM VAN AKEN: I AM HERE TODAY...
in the gallery thru June 4
gallery hours Tues to Fri 11am to 6pm, Sat 11am to 2pm

Sam Van Aken appears courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.

Read Colin Dabkowski's preview interview with Sam Van Aken here.

Sam Van Aken Website

@ Hallwalls TONIGHT 8pm
Precious Cargo: And Evening of film and Live Multimedia Performance

"In conjunction with UB Art Gallery's exhibition Precious Cargo, guest curator Paul Sargent presents Time Machine: a multi-media performance by Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat. Hacking a variety of interfaces and collapsing digital/analog signals, the artists will guide us through a parallel universe."


@ Hallwalls Mon, May 24, 6pm
2010 MARK Artists Public Slide Presentations

incl. Amanda Besl, Bruce Bitmead, Lily Booth, Oreen Cohen, Dorothy Fitzgerald, Timothy Frerichs, Brian Kavanaugh, David Merkel, Kate Parzych, Gary Sczerbaniewicz, Kathleen Sherin, Catherine Schuman Miller



@ Hallwalls Thurs, May 27, 7pm
Food Matters: A Monthly Film Series—King Corn

"Documentary film has become a powerful medium when exploring controversial topics or making a point about a particular subject. In recent years filmmakers concerned with the state of our food supply in this country have done well exploring, exposing, and initiating dialogue on this critical subject. The Lexington Cooperative Market and Edible Buffalo magazine have joined forces to present Food Matters, a monthly four-film series. The films selected for the series are some of the most critically acclaimed on the topic of food production, food supply, and the overall state of our food economy."



The rest of April/May 2010 @ Hallwalls



Opening Elsewhere
• Flooded @ The Vault (702) Main, curated by Jonathan Barcan, Fri, May 14, 6-10pm
• Catherine Parker's paintings with poetry by Peter Siedlecki and msuic by Roland Martin @ St. Joe's University Curch (3269 Main) Fri, May 14, 7pm
• Extraordinary Forms II: 40 Years of Craft Media @ Kenan Center op Sun May 16, 2-5pm
• Amy Greenan @ Betty's op Mon, May 15, 7pm


BFLO PINK 1,): THE BUFFALO PUNK DOCUMENTARY PROJECT

@ Squeaky Wheel Sat, May 15, 8pm
Squeaky Wheel BFLO PUNK



Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929)

FREE SCREENING @ Sugar City Wed, May 19, 8pm



Used Without Permission:
Copyright, Fair Use, and the Visual Arts

Tues, May 25, 6pm, Market Arcade Conference Room
"In the age of the internet visual artists are uniquely positioned at the forefront of these kind of copyright issues. Work once created for a small audience in now "beamed" out to the entire world, with that comes great opportunity, but also a greater risk that you may find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit from someone you have never met. Most recently artist Shepard Fairey found out what can happen... using a protected image to create his now infamous Barrack Obama "Hope" poster, Fairey found himself battling Associated Press in court in a very serious case of copyright infringement. Hosted by Photographer Michael Mulley's Queen City Gallery this one night discussion will take place Tuesday May 25, 2010 at 6pm in the conference room at the Market Arcade (617 Main Street) It will feature Buffalo- based intellectual property lawyer Steven Fox. Mr Fox, an artist himself he has had years of experience working with copyright issues for artists'. The night will feature a short talk and then what we hope will be a lively discussion with an extensive Q&A. Artist's can submit images of their work, that they may have copyright question on for possible discussion to queencitygallery@yahoo.com. There is a $5.00 admission for starving artists and $10.00 for ones that aren't...which will go toward defraying the cost of hosting the event."


DEADLINE JULY 5




Nice to see John Marriott up to his old public art tricks...

Continuing Elsewhere
• ALBRIGHT KNOX • Fletcher Benton (July 5), Guillermo Cuitca (May 30), The Automatiste Revolution (May 30) Buffalo News
• BIG ORBIT • Hyeyoung Shin (May 29)
• BUFFALO ARTS STUDIO • Dennis Maher, Kyle Butler (May 29)
• BURCHFIELD PENNEY • Park School Students (Mar 28), Charles Cary Rumsey (May 30), Surreal Inclinations (July 11), Charles Burchfield: Heatwaves in a Swamp (May 23)
• CARNEGIE ART CENTER • Tom Holt & Brian Milbrand, Scan Lines (May 15)
• CASTELLANI ART MUSEUM • Felice Koenig (May 23), Surrealism and the Museum of Dreams (May 30), BSA Catalog Exhibition (Sept 5)
• CEPA GALLERY • Sally Rebl, Edgar Heap of Birds, Biff Henrich (May 29)
• HALLWALLS • Sam Van Aken (June 4)
• SQUEAKY WHEEL •
• UB ANDERSON • Paul Jenkins (Aug 22), Annette Cravens
• UB ART GALLERY • Alberto Rey & Precious Cargo (both May 15), Marc Tomko, Jason Seeley, Timothy Scaffidi, Ellen Rogers, Shasti O'Leary Soudant, Carolyn Kaser, Carrie Firman, Caitlin Cass, Heather Brand, Katrina Boemig, Jonathan Barcan, Alice Alexandrescu (May 15)
• Julian Montague @ B&W (NYC) thru May 28
• Adele Cohen @ WNYBAC (May 15)
• John Fleischer, Arjan Zazueta @ Dog and Pony Projects (561 Forest) (June 29)
• Beth Pedersen, Susan Copley @ Indigo (June 6)
• John Pasquarella @ College Street Gallery (May 30)
• Wes Olmstead @ Buffalo Big Print (June 1)
• Joan Fitzgerald @ Art Dialogue (May 28)
• Amanda Besl @ Lyons Wier (NYC) op May 25 (June 20)

"Nor can Obama’s repeated paeans to civility move the needle much. Try as he does to set a civil example — as have most recent American presidents and vice presidents of both parties with the conspicuous exception of Dick Cheney — no political figure can ever be a credible leader of a civility crusade. An American politician preaching restraint in partisan battle inevitably comes off like a liquor distiller lending its imprimatur to a public-service campaign against drunken driving."

NY Times Rich

If You're Not Fond Of The Oil Spill, Please Enjoy The Gates of Hell

Huffington Post Slide Show

"That figure was a record for the artist at auction, and well above the painting’s high $15 million estimate. Before the sale, many had speculated that it would set a record for a work by a living artist."

NY Times Vogel

"At first sight, the monumental artwork being installed at the Park Avenue Armory suggests nothing so much as a crane claw, the frustrating arcade game in which a player tries to pull a stuffed animal from a pile of many, and to hold on to it, with a grapple controlled by a joystick."

NY Times Spears

James Franco and Marina Abramovic

"Jeanne-Claude proudly boasted that she and her husband never took a dime of nonprofit money. What they did do, however, was expertly manipulate the very same people who head these nonprofit foundations into participating in the Christos’ own for-profit schemes!"

artnet Finch

"Folk music, particularly collegiate folk, was surging in popularity, and the Highwaymen, as they called themselves, gathered momentum, with robust voices, acoustic guitars, a banjo and other instruments."

NY Times obit

"Born in the Matanzas province, Mr. Aguabella received instruction as a child in playing the sacred double-headed batá drum, often used in Santeria ceremonies."

NY Times obit

"Considered an icon by some local residents and an eyesore by others, Spindle became a widely recognized piece of roadside art. It was featured in guidebooks and made a cameo appearance in the 1992 film Wayne’s World."

NY Times obit

“Paperback publishers have been known to buy one of his paintings for use as a cover, then commission a writer to turn out a novel to go with it,” The New York Times reported in 1977, the same year that a collection of his drawings, “The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta,” sold more than 300,000 copies.

NY Times obit

“Her work has changed the perception of not only Warhol’s films and video but every aspect of Warhol’s art,” said Donna De Salvo, chief curator at the Whitney. “It has helped people understand this material and this period, which forms the basis for so much contemporary work.”

NY Times obit

"She might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early: she languished at MGM for years because of her race, although she was so light-skinned that when she was a child other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a 'white daddy.'"

NY Times obit

"They were former waitresses, farmers’ daughters and office workers who had dreamt of becoming part of Ziegfeld’s own grand dream of “glorifying the American girl” (preferably with exact measurements of 36-26-38) in splendiferous spectacles."

NY Times obit

For Your Netflix Queue...

(1962, dir. Roger Corman) You really haven't fully appreciate William Shatner until you've seen this brilliant film where Shatner brings all his melodramatic moxie to the fore in his portrayal of a wily bigot trying to incite racial prejudices in a small town. Released under other titles, including I Hate Your Guts!, the film is a terrific example of low-fi filmmaking convincingly done. Even in his first film role, Shatner is occasionally over the top, but that's suits the disturbed character he plays, who is part hustler, part preacher, demented and charismatic, a man who is all fucked up with no place to go. It's not a happy film, with no tidy resolution and more than a little moral ambiguity, but arguably Corman's finest hour as a director.

Here's a short clip of Corman discussing the making of the film:

Something I listened to this week...



















What can I say, I've been in a Ry Cooder mood lately. I've been on quite a tear and have just kept adding more Cooder to the iPod I vowed would be a more lean, mean song selection machine. I think I'm kind of interested in the fact that I can't find any Ry Cooder that I don't think is great. He's kind of uniformly excellent. If you want to hear one of the most beautiful songs ever, go to iTunes and spend 99 cents on the song Across The Borderline by Ry Cooder from the album Music By Ry Cooder, vocal by the late Tex-Mex great Freddy Fender. (no. 15 in the iTunes queue for the song listings under that title) Spend your 2nd 99 cents on Cat and Mouse from the album My Name is Buddy, sung by a cat about a mouse he meets in a snowstorm.And if neither of those work for you, you have a heart of stone.

Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an over-dose of fluoride as a child which caused her to suffer from chornic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.
— Winning Sentense, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest