Deborah Kass, After Louise Bourgeois, 2010. Neon and transformers on powder-coated aluminum panel, 66 x 68 x 5 in. Photo: 16 Miles
Deborah Kass’s opening at Paul Kasmin was packed last night. Thankfully, her work is big so it was easy to get a good look at it. The quotation inside the neon work above comes [...]

Detail view of the Lost Art of New York Map. Click to view the map in Google Maps.
Reading Greg Allen’s post about Jeffrey Deitch’s big plans to turn MoCA’s annual gala into a full-fledged happening called The Artist’s Museum Happening (or We, depending on whom you believe), it seems clear that Deitch is enjoying his [...]

Jana Leo performing “Some Like It Cold” at Invisible-Exports, New York, on September 18, 2010. Photo: 16 Miles [more]

Edward Winkleman points out that reviews of the (universally reviled) Dan Colen show at Gagosian have treated the gallery like a museum. The Monet, Manzoni, and Picasso shows were great, but Winkleman reminds us, “It’s a private [...]

Installation view of Tetsumi Kudo, Garden of the Metamorphosis in the Space Capsule, 1968. Painted wood, artificial flowers, fabric, black light, 138 x 138 x 138 in. Courtesy Hiroko Kudo and Andrea Rosen Gallery, © ADAGP, Paris & ARS, New York

Interior view of Tetsumi Kudo, Garden of the Metamorphosis in the Space Capsule, 1968. Painted [...]

Will Cotton, Consuming Folly, 2010. Oil on linen, 72 x 96 inches. Courtesy the artist and Mary Boone Gallery, New York
Will Cotton, the art world’s greatest baker and perhaps the leading painter of American pleasure, is speaking tonight at Christie’s at 6:30 p.m. Cupcakes and wine are also said to be on the agenda. [...]

Partial installation view of Marcel Broodthaers, Dites partout que je l’ai dit, 1974. Parrot under bell jar, audiotape, two framed works, at Michael Werner, 2010 Photos: 16 Miles
Little by little, New Yorkers are being given the opportunity to see and explore the work of the late Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers. Last year, Peter Freeman showed [...]

Richard Prince’s CV from the mid-1970s. Courtesy Specific Object.
Paul Taylor: Let’s talk about the late 1970s.
Richard Prince: I didn’t like the work I did ten or so years ago.
Paul Taylor: What did you do with it?
Richard Prince: I think everything has been, you know, destroyed.
– Flash Art 142, October 1988
The interview excerpt above comes from [...]

Michael E. Smith, Untitled (mlkw/blkvelcro), 2010. Plastic milk jugs, industrial foam, Velcro, milk jug left: 10 3/4 x 6 1/2 x 7 in., milk jug right: 10 3/4 x 7 x 7 3/4 in., Velcro: 39 x 1 in. Photos: 16 Miles [more]
You may remember Michael E. Smith’s work from the “BLOOD DRIVE” show that [...]

Installation view of Patrick Jackson, “Tchotchke Stacks,” at Nicole Klagsbrun, New York. Photos: 16 Miles [more]
Patrick Jackson’s sculptures, currently on display at Nicole Klagsbrun, are horrifyingly fragile, modestly sized, hilarious, and just a little bit sad. (They represent, to put it another way, the exact opposite of Richard Serra’s sculptures.) “With longing eyes, offers of [...]

Installation view of Zilvinas Kempinas, “BALLROOM,” at Yvon Lambert. Photo: 16 Miles

Conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute shares the following: “Many in the art world cling to the myth that financial gain does not motivate artists. This is not only bad economics, but bad art history.” Let’s set aside the AEI’s larger agenda and [...]

Barnett Newman, Broken Obelisk, 1963–69. Cor-Ten steel, 24 ft. 10 in. x 10 ft. 11 in. x 10 ft. 11 in. Photo: 16 Miles
The Museum of Modern Art acquired its copy of Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk (1963-69) in 1971 from an anonymous donor. The Rothko Chapel has one too, but it only came to own [...]

Dan Colen clearly doesn’t need any more press than he already received in the New York Times today. However, now that we have all enjoyed photographs of him making a “grass” painting and audio of him discussing his practice, can we pause for one minute and talk about how weird it is that he is [...]

Installation view of fierce pussy, Get Up Everybody and Sing, 2010. Photocopy on paper, tape, dimensions variable. On view in “ACT UP NEW YORK,” at White Columns. Photo: 16 Miles

Martin Bromirski shares Ed Ruscha Says Goodbye to College Joys, an advertisement that first appeared in the January 1967 issue of Artforum, whose square layout Ruscha [...]

Installation of Cody Critcheloe & SSION, “Boy,” at The Hole. Photos: 16 Miles [more]
The new gallery run by Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman down on Greene Street, The Hole, has a new Web site! It is fresh and clean, thoroughly stocked with information and pleasing to the eye. Sadly, they decided not to cart over [...]

Barry McGee and Josh Lazcano, mural at Houston and Broadway, New York. Photos: 16 Miles [more]
I have no real interest in street art or graffiti, but I have to admit that the new mural at Houston and Bowery in New York, recently completed by Barry McGee and Lee Lozcano, is a stunning piece of work. [...]

Yoshitomo Nara, White Ghost, 2010. Photos: 16 Miles [more]
Yoshitomo Nara’s show at Asia Society doesn’t open until Thursday, but his outdoor installation on Park Avenue is already in place. The work, White Ghost, comprises two 12-foot-tall sculptures made of fiberglass and steel that face each other from pedestals on the median that runs along Park. [...]

Olav Velthuis’ Talking Prices: Symbolic Meanings of Prices on the Market for Contemporary Art, 2005, published by Princeton University Press
One of my great joys this summer was reading Talking Prices, journalist and sociologist Olav Velthuis‘ detailed study of how primary-market art dealers set prices for the art they show. To write the book, Velthuis interviewed [...]

Left: Sonny Smith and Chris Leon, Sonny’s Cosmoramic Jukejams. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

It took a decade, but someone has finally put together a collection songs that makes Stephin Merritt’s 69 Love Songs look a little bit underdeveloped. The man responsible for that feat is Sonny Smith, leader of the group Sunny & the Sunsets. Smith [...]

Thomas Houseago, Untitled (Red Man), 2008. Bronze, 156 x 60 x 48 in. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

Thomas Houseago, Untitled (Sprawling Octopus Man), 2009. Bronze, 101 x 84 x 60 in.
Ten giants currently fill the lawns and walkways of Manhattan’s City Hall Park. They are made of bronze and aluminum, colored pink, green, silver, or gold. [...]

Martin Creed, Work No. 878, 2008, at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. Photo: 16 Miles
“It is bad form, however, to cut in while the artist is doing a snow job on a potential buyer, buttonholing a critic or curator or licking the shoes of a more important artist.”
– William Grimes, “When Art Puts on a Party Hat: [...]