Patricia by Patricia

Patricia by Patricia
Patricia by Patricia

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Best Tidbits for the Twelve Months of 2010

Here is our picks of the best of the Tidbits that were recorded over the entire year of 2010 for you to re-digest and enjoy. These were first posted in our RAW gossip column.

Dec: "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade, MONTEREY, CA, loved and hated for his cutesy home and hearth paintings will go to jail in June for drunk driving. Read about his other debaucheries in the full article in ArtInfo. PS. Did you know that his production company declared bankruptcy? How the mighty have fallen.

Eyes in the back of your head department: Professor Wafaa Bilal had a digital camera implanted in the back of his head, in New York. Bilal, a performance artist, was commissioned by the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar and the work is titled The 3rd I which is on view from December.

The ultimate conceptual Christmas tree has been created by Giorgio Sadotti for Tate Britain The work, entitled Flower Ssnake, is an unadorned spruce with a bull whip coiled at it base. On 5 January 2011, the spell of Christmas will be dramatically whipped out of the tree in a performance art finale.

Nov: For the category of why can’t we have this in San Diego Harbor: Now in its second year, DRIFT is staged by Illuminate Productions with installations include waterfalls at two locations on the river which feature words from live news feeds falling through a curtain of water. The amazing technology used to create “bit.fal”l allows words to be displayed in mid-air in the droplets.

Oct: Documentary film, Waiting for Hockney is a mesmerizing true story about an artist who spends 10 years working on a portrait and wants David Hockney to have the honor of discovering him. As the documentary unfolds it weaves between the stories of how/why the artist spent 10 years making this portrait and his attempts to meet Hockney.

Sept: They are Eating Their Art Out in a big way in London with The Cake Britain exhibition. Held at The Future Gallery this show is sponsored by Tate & Lyle Sugars and produced by the Mad Artists Tea Party.

Aug: Young vandals are tipping 600 pound sculpture cows over in Burlington, Vermont. Those colorfully painted cud chewers are hitting the dust, but one of them managed to hit back and broke the foot of its attacker. The town has organized bartenders to watch out for the cow’s safety. They call them ‘cow tenders”. How come we find ourselves rooting for the vandals on this one?

July: Charles Saatchi just gave his $37 million dollar collection to the British government and his museum will be re-titled the MOCA London. Also from London: five members of the art activist group Culture Beyond Oil poured non-toxic black oil around the British Museum’s world famous Easter Island sculpture, in protest at BP’s sponsorship of the museum. They were careful not to get any oil on the art.

June: Marilyn Monroe's "Blondes" Dress Heads to Auction and the superstarlet's gown from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" carries an estimate of $150,000 to $250,000. Is this where Art Meets Fashion? Princess Diane’s racy black dress has already sold for $275,000.

May: Peter Schjeldahl (Man of the World, New Yorker, Dec 21, 2009), reminds us, “Pleasure is the only trusty teacher and guarantor of seriousness in art.”

April: The EyeWriter has been chosen as the winner of the first FutureEverything Award, a £10,000 prize set up to celebrate the creative imagination that will shape our future. The EyeWriter is a pair of low-cost eye-tracking glasses that allow artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes. Inspired by Tony Quan, a graffiti writer, social activist and publisher who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (AML) in 2003, The EyeWriter is the result of collaboration with five other artists and a production company. Tony Quan comments: ‘Art is a tool of empowerment and social change, and I consider myself blessed to be able to create and use my work to promote health reform…”

March: Check out these paddy fields in Japan that have been planted with various colored rice to create living murals. Definitely worth a click. Thanks to Deanne Sabeck for feeding our souls with this tidbit. When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination

Feb: Alberto Giacometti’s L’homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) sold for $104,327,006 and is now the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction which was reported by Sotheby’s.

Jan: Take a look at the really fun digital show at the Victoria and Albert Museum as reported by the BBC in London.The Digital Design Sensations Exhibition includes “eyes” that look at the viewers and gestures that result in flung paint.