Latest Poll Results

So, our latest poll was about deciding how to name the new genre of trashy novel/chick lit for guys. Boy, was it animated! 7 of you, meaning what probably constitutes my entire readership voted, but there was no clear winner, between "Lad-Lit" (my own personal favorite, I think it sounds vaguely like some new porn lingo), "Boy-Boy 'Ture" (fun, though it sounds vaguely gay and we do not want to exclude the few stray heteros wandering on this blog) and "real men don't eat at the Ivy" which is very long, and in fact I was thinking about the London Ivy, though the BH outpost would qualify too.

Anyway, if you have some new suggestion send them here at FBC! In the meantime I'm going to scratch my head about the next poll. Since it seems our writers-in-arms cousins are going to be on strike soon (Hi Annie, Jonathan and Mike! Let me know if you need cheap soup recipes!) maybe they can help me out with a new poll idea, with all the free time they will have when not picketing the networks/studios.

The picture above is by Florence Trocmé , found on her blog.

Debout Les Damnés De La Terre!

If you, like me, live in Los Angeles, you cannot escape the daily headlines about the upcoming-or-not WGA strike. For those of you who don’t live here, the looming strike concerns all the screenplay and TV writers around, whose collective contract is set to expire tonight, thus ensuring a Happy Halloween to our brothers and sisters the slaves working in the Other Cultural Industry. My understanding (which is very vague, sorry to my 3 non-art readers-cum-writers Annie, Jonathan and Mike) is our cultural workers-comrades-in-arms cousins have been screwed at the previous negotiations, and this time their union (the WGA) is hell-bent on striking if the studios and networks and other Powers That Be on the other side of the bargaining table don’t make tiny, tiny compromises to their humongous profits, so the people who come up with your daily entertainment ideas are not starving.

It seems the bone of contention is reality TV (you know, these shows were supposedly *normal* but often apparently deeply retarded people utter *natural*, *non-scripted* dialogues in between poor singing, dancing, house-flipping, cat-petting and other decorating activities), and residuals.
For my art readers, let’s assume residuals are akin to royalties, because I am not sure myself what it is and how our friends get those, if they do. Writers have been screwed on residuals in the past and for apparently as long as The Other Cultural Industry beached on our sunny California shores. So now our cousins-in-arms are trying to get residuals on the stuff they created, you know all this content that ends up on YouTube, DailyMotion, and the new one with the silly name.
Now, given how thin my 3 non-art writers-readers friends are, I assume they, and by extension all the writers in this town, already don’t get enough to eat, and if they are to go on strike tomorrow, I can’t imagine how they will NOT starve. I’ll post more cheap soups and pasta recipes for them if the strike happens, so at least they can make whatever pennies they still have left last as long as they can. I’m all for solidarity with people screwed up in any type of cultural industries.

I‘m also all for a swift resolution of the contract issues because:

a) I don’t want my friends to end up looking like ordinary anorexic Benetton models
b) it seems lots of other Industry-related services and businesses would suffer, therefore we would all in the end see some bad fallout (how many visual artists works on production design, special effects, etc.)
c) TV and movie programs coming up during and immediately after the strike will more than likely be über-mediocre. There’s so much Canadian-Australian-Brit content that can be imported, or worse even more silly reality-shows. On Craigslist they are trying to hire cats to do reality TV. As much as I love my Pomme, I can’t imagine something sillier and more yawn-inducing to watch.
d) I’m looking for a job myself, and if a recession comes (how much lower can the Feds go with interest rates?) I cannot fathom how I could compete with all these super-smart people also looking for a job outside of their branch. I don't enjoy starving myself, even though I could do with a bit of a width reduction. I don't want to resort to silly reality shows to feed my cat either!


Though, now that I think of it, maybe we could start an advice business on how to survive in times of economic depression? What do you think, Annie, Jonathan and Mike? There’s a market, with all the real estate agents and mortgage lenders out of jobs around, maybe there’s an idea. I know ! We could produce a reality show on poor writers, ex-mortgage lenders, chic Frenchies and former real-estate agents growing potatoes on their balconies, creating a giant cooperative/commune to roommate in with our various pets and share survival tips! I’ll do the cooking, if someone else doe the cleaning!


Also, in solidarity with our writers-comrades-cousins the artworld should go on strike too. Because, you know, come to think of it, we don’t have residuals either. Not. At. All. I’m not even thinking of curators and critics whose work is more often than not plagiarized, ripped off and underpaid 3 years after being completed, but of the artists.

Imagine yourself, my dear artist reader. You’re in your early to mid- 30s, struggling to make ends meet, slaving away as an assistant to someone more established, teaching with no benefits, or doing part-time graphic design, working your a.. off in your studio that’s little more than a rented a converted garage in sweltering Highland Park. That is, assuming you’re not a trust fund baby, because if you are I may respect your work but you’ve already lost my sympathy. Go ask Daddy for the rent money, OK?

Anyway, back to our friend, the poor deserving artist. You make this great artworks, and ta da, stroke of good luck! You get a show. Your new but savvy art dealer gets some smart collectors to buy your things while you’re young, and cheap, and those $4,000 to $6,000 a piece seem like a lot to you. There are maybe a dozen works, and lucky you! They are sold out, and you’ll get 50% of the sale money (minus the 10 to 15% discount the smart supportive-of-your-work new collectors always ask for and get) ! Life seems good.

Except, except, 3 or 4 years from now, you will have attained a reasonable degree of success. Your work will sell in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, the same collectors regularly buy a piece or two at your shows, some of your stuff may end up in regional museums’ collections, you may have had a few good reviews already in either Frieze or Artforum. The market is starting to heat up, like it does every decade or so. You regret you didn’t keep at least ONE work from your first show, but hey, you so desperately needed the money at the time, what with your car that broke down, some health-related issues (couldn’t afford health insurance) and your rent was increasing.
And then suddenly, wow, first real museum show! In a highly visible institution! Or, even better, an appearance at the Whitney Biennial, or the Venice one (more prestigious!), in one of the places that count. For your career. Never mind art history, this can wait for after your death.

Now the market is absolutely crazy, and somehow your work starts to appear at auctions, that edgy Phillips de Pury in the beginning, then maybe at Christie’s London First Open, around the time of the Frieze art fair. And then, that first painting that was sold to that oh-so-dedicated and oh-so-savvy collector, is flipped there and then (hic et nunc, to use pedantic Barthesian Latin).
Low estimate, $50,000. Your art dealer should try to go buy it, but he has too many fishes to fry what with his hot stable of young artists, besides he privately thinks it’s good prices are out of control, it gives him a good reason to raise them the next time he sells a piece of yours.
Shocker! At the auction, the painting goes for $95,000, over the $70,000 high estimate.

And what do you get out of this fantastic surge in value from $4,000 to $95,000 ? Nothing, nada, rien de rien, macache, walou. Rien du tout!
Why is that? Because, because visuals artists are not unionized, are not informed of the intricacies of copyright laws, and no one speaks for them. Certainly, my non-art readers are going to ask me, there are enough artists (yes, probably about between 60,000 and 100,000 of them in the United States, if you include everyone who has at least a part-time practice) to create a union?
Yep, but the majority is self-employed and therefore cannot strike against themselves. What could be done? Well, organizing would be a smart start. Something art schools could participate in, for example, rather than release into the wild a bunch ill-prepared youngsters only armed with rudiments of critical theory but no political, business or administrative training. CAA (not that one, this one) would be a good platform to get the debate going, and I have a feeling those universities that have both famous art schools and law schools (Yale, anyone ?) should set up a think thank. For a start. Then let's revive the Art Workers Coalition!

Of course to start regulating the unregulated, a certain dose of government wouldn’t hurt. What better way to involve Uncle Sam than include a tax proposal. Say, a 3% to 5% residual on the added value (I’ll let you do the math, I suck at it) after (the various) resale(s) should go back to the artists. Maybe a non-profit set up by CAA and the Artist Pension Trust could be in charge of the redistribution.
The added value, that is, the final $95,000 minus the $4,000 of the initial price minus the commission/buyer premium.
The residuals could be taxed at about 20% and still the artist would get something for his early pains, and Uncle Sam could redirect these taxes, say, to a universal health care system that could benefit our artists friends as well as everybody else.
Almost every single art worker I know doesn’t have health insurance, and art dealers and auction houses don’t set up a general fund for them, thank you very much.
Of course our friendly art dealers, auctioneers, appraisers and auction house owners such as French billionaire Francois Pinault would cry misery and explain how it would *hurt the business*, blah-blah-blah.
That’s true, they would get 3% to 5% less. But you know, they’ll make up for it on the buyer’s premium, and the buyer being amongst the 0,1% assholes rich people who owns 20% of the planet’s total assets, well I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel sorry for them. Not really. Plus, we’re pretty sure they will bargain for only 3% anyway.

How do we start fighting for the cause? Well, let me tell you my artist friends. If tomorrow our writer cousins find themselves on strike, let’s go on strike ourselves. Miami Basel is only in a month, and your various shipping deadlines are approaching. Just. Don’t. Deliver.The. Artworks.
Simple, no? Everyone stops making, showing, selling works for a couple of months. Postpone your museum shows. Un-suscribe to Artforum or whatever else -you’ll be able to buy coffee instead!
Don’t show up at openings. You’re going to tell me, yes, but maybe then all the green artists who don’t have galleries yet are going to be acting like strike breakers, etc.
Well, maybe, though I don’t know how dealers are going to be able to do it that fast, and there are only so many ill-conceived group shows you can curate at the last minute. And given how generally liberal-leaning the artworld is, it’s hard to imagine how museums, curators, and even collectors will dare openly do business until the strike issues are solved.
And, I have to confess, my little Frenchy self gets homesick sometimes, and it does include street demonstrations. Please?

Tomorrow, let’s show solidarity with our WGA-cousins! Let’s chant “C’est la lutte finaaaaaale, groupons nous dès demaiiiiinnnnnnnnnn l’Internationaaa-aaale sera le genre humain!”

Thanksgiving In October!

It’s that time of the month again -no, not the one when your boyfriend makes stupid sexist remarks about this being that time of the month again- the time of the month when my devoted readership gets to discover the Thanksgiving In [Insert Month Here]™. It’s October and I figure I should post it on Halloween day, just to confuse everyone.
Anyway, after La Maison du Pain, my Distinguished Literary Correspondent and Mariah C. I’ve decided to devote this month’s installment to my very old friend, Alexis V. Alexis is French, and like all French people named Alexis, he is male, so if you wonder why I refer to him as« he » all the time, for once it is not the result of a flagrant oversight of copy-editing (but don’t worry, all the other typos are, as usual).

Alexis and I met years ago while attending school, in a venerable institution that at the time offered the only contemporary art history classes in France, and was also home to a Museum Studies graduate program which we duly attended together, after finishing the undergraduate thingy.
Now my memories of these early years are very murky, and I don’t recall much of it. I think at the time Alexis and I didn’t really hang out together, and when we met it was probably with loads of other people. I was also attending another school in addition to our common one, and I think so did Alexis, which meant both of us skipped lots of classes and were in the same classroom only for the huge amphitheater lectures.
So I didn’t really know Alexis, except I was vaguely aware both of us chose the same artist for our respective Master theses, and we were fairly critical of our program when we occasionally met at parties. In Museum Studies, you see, there’s no talk about the art itself but only about the way you handle it, and it was geared more towards archeological artifacts than contemporary art.
We were both well aware of Robert Smithson’s appropriation of Nabokov’s quote: “the future is the obsolete in reverse”, but considering contemporary art as future archeology was a meager consolation during our excruciatingly boring classes: “a great museum, it’s a cafeteria, a few restrooms, plenty of audioguides, not too much sitting or the crowds become too dense. It’s better to show only reproductions so the art doesn’t degrade, and keep the original in climate-controlled storage”.

Class outings were spent looking at wall labels, lighting implements, particle accelerators, how to make sure the blind people/vision-impaired were not forgotten when putting together visual displays (I kid you not) and other essential topics.
I remember going to a field trip to some archeological digs where we were ushered to a classroom and lectured on how the acidity of the soiled made for bad preservation of the swords buried under the hill of a famous Gallic defeat. But it was great for porcini ‘shrooms growth, and there were some fairly impressive toadstools there too, something I discovered when I decided to skip class to wander in the forest.and I never, never found my way back home, boo hoo
Anyway, most of the classes failed to make an impression on me, and since I had some hands-on experience in museums before, everything at school felt rather redundant, so I skipped too many classes to really get to know Alexis. Missed opportunities…

Then Alexis and I got similar and parallel professional experiences. We both went abroad to work, curated our first shows, published essays, and came back to France at the end of the 1990s. At some party I went to, someone mentioned Alexis and how he wanted to meet again. Alas, being plagued with a really bad memory for names* I didn’t have the foggiest notion who this Alexis person was, especially since the acquaintance who mentioned him couldn’t tell me at which school we had been together. Then Alexis and I met again at another party and ta da! I could totally place him, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as they say.


Of all curators I’ve met over the years, Alexis is one of the few who has a comprehensive vision about his practice. It is firmly anchored in questioning the existence, meaning and function of the exhibition space itself, without blaming it (Institutional Critique-like) for all the ills of contemporary art. Alexis always has a very fine-tuned approach to the history of the particular space he is going to work with/in, and he deeply questions modes of display, curatorial choices, and all the everyday compromises people working inside the institutions have to deal and content with.
He’s also a very collaborative art worker, co-founder with the lovely Eva Svennung of Toasting Agency, a curating platform that exists as a legal and administrative structure (non-profit like) to set up publications as well as exhibitions, and open to outside projects.
I know, it all sounds very serious, and his work is serious, but Alexis in person is one of the most hilariously funny guy I know in the whole universe, always bursting with ideas, open to lots of suggestions, while remaining elegantly critical of all the brouhaha and white noise that passes for the daily going-ons of the artworld.

He’s always one of the first persons I call when I get back home, however jet-lagged I may be, because I know every one of our coffee breaks or evening drinks encounters will be exhilarating, exciting and mind-blowing. Alexis always encouraged me to get crazy in my writings or my curating projects and he practiced what he preached by publishing some of my most outrageous stuff, something I find a bit masochistic given I’m always 6,000+ words over my limit and 3 months past my deadline. At least.
He’s been a very patient, long-suffering editor who allowed me to find in Pacemaker an outlet for my mad review of a show on porphyry at the Louvre, with an atrocious Latin title.

Not only this but Alexis kept me afloat financially when I was in dire straits, by commissioning translations and essays that probably could have been done cheaper and better elsewhere. In addition to being a great friend, and by this I mean someone who is there for you, doesn’t judge people’s idiosyncrasies (indeed, he encourages those), Alexis is a curator I deeply admire.
I’m rather reactive and instinctive in my curatorial practice myself, whereas Alexis is deeply analytic, but always in a fun way. He’s very good at including avant-garde fashion designers where you don’t expect them, or,say, underground fiction writers. He has worked with his fab’ partner Nadia L. on scenography (and on producing a beautiful offspring, Max) when he co-curated the Voyage Interieur show with Alex Farquharson. When asked to co-curate the IX Baltic Triennial in Vilnius a few years back, he and his co-curators decided to call it Black Market World (BMW), and they really questioned what it meant to be among the umpteenth regularly occurring contemporary art biennials/festivals/events, set in a Baltic state that had just joined the European Union, all of this done in a fun, exciting way.
The catalogue was gorgeous, like most of the publications Alexis has been working on. I love when I run into Alexis and he shows me one of his recent published endeavors. Whatever the format and the content it is always cleverly designed and more often than not uses gorgeous typeface and paper (BTW, you famous, fashionable and ethereal NYC artist who borrowed my copy of Le Voyage Interieur, I want it back. Thanks).

Alexis is a bit obsessed with alternative mode of viewings and display, so with Toasting Agency he curated a show in a driving school. French driving education includes a theoretical exam (yep, we’re French, we like our theory) for which you view slides (maybe they do Powerpoint now?) and write down questions and answers in the dark, something very much akin to traditional art history classes. He’s been preparing a publication in the form of a fashion shoot at Portmeirion, the *Village* in the Prisoner series, and a Luna Park project (I think in Spain). One of Toasting Agency's past show was at a hair salon in Paris, where artists were commissioned to propose “This Month’s Haircut”, and real client were encouraged to try them. Haircuts ranged from commercial logos died and cut on your scalp to Clyde-inspired hairdos (as in Clyde, the Clint Eastwood monkey), or to seat under a real Van Der Graff generator. Fun, fun, fun!

Alexis is not naïve either, and when invited with a bunch of youngish French curators to show in a Big And Unnamed But Very Recognizable Parisian Institution, he thought about it and saw that:

a) it was going to be another pretext for the said institution to pretend to be open and generous when in fact they were just trying to co-opt, swallow and tame rebellion into their fold
b) it was going to be a cacophony of several curators choosing several artists and the thing was never going to look like *a show*
c) I’m sure he also realized they were lots of other super important and interesting issues involved which I am not smart enough to even begin considering.

So Alexis decided to go against the grain by commissioning Mrzyk and Moriceau to do a kilometer-long wall drawing which in effect ended up by not only unifying the entire space (the other curators should have thanked him for this) but by also giving Alexis’ choice prominence in contrast to everything else in the show (and I’m sure they are NOT thanking him for this).

Anyway, I miss Alexis here in LA, where there isn’t much of a critical AND fun discourse going on.
[Typical LA art day: “did you see blah-blah-blah at [insert Chinatown or Culver City gallery here] last week, oh so-and-so have signed up with Blum & Poe, where will you eat after the Hammer opening? Hip Person is opening a new gallery space. Culver City is almost over, oh, but everybody thought so about Chinatown 4 years ago, etc”. Yawn.]

Alexis has been a huge inspiration for many of the things I’ve done, a great friend, and shall I say it again? A very, very patient editor. I cannot resist saying yes each time he asks me to write something, even when I KNOW I will have trouble to find the time (also discounting the many unforeseen instances of "when shit happens" which I seem to attract like Britney Spears the paparazzis. No, I do not know how to spell "paparazzis").
I should kick my own butt when I accept, and I always feel guilty each time, but hey, Alexis there should be a downside for being so cool. Thanks for being so great. You can’t complain if people always agree to work with you. Can’t wait to hear bout your next and new projects, and please send me your corrections, I didn’t check anything, as usual on FBC! Happy Thanksgiving in October! I hope to see you around Christmas time.








* I still do, so please don’t be offended if I look startled when you say hi to me. Please be kind and re-introduce yourself; and if you could be even more generous and retell the circumstances of our acquaintance I will eternally bless your good manners. I am not offended if you don’t remember me either or mispronounce my name, as it happens I mispronounce all non-French names, after all.


Picture above is a drawing my Mrzyk and Moriceau, I don't have the date.

Julie Lequin Totally Deserves To Be Your Neighbor Or at Least Cubicle Mate

A while ago I posted a couple of "fake" New Yorker cartoons by Mark A. Rodriguez, which are in fact a conceptual art project*. Those had been forwarded to me by a common friend of Julie Lequin, who advised I asked Julie to see her work.
I diligently complied (I totally trust Da Best Curator In Town's advice) and Julie forwarded me links to two older videos she had made. I clicked on them and truly enjoyed them, first of all because it's refreshing to see video (as opposed to, say, narrative figurative painting), then because they were hilariously funny and did remind me slightly of an artist I adore, Michael Smith.

I love the self-deprecating irony of the artist as procrastinator, and the speech/accent reduction lesson is a) very Hollywood and b)something I totally relate to as a French-speaking expat. I'll be able to pronounce "th" when my US friends will be able to pronounce "r" and "u" correctly (not to mention when they stop pronouncing "t" as a "d").
What I like in Julie's work is how it doesn't take itself too seriously. After seeing her work I can't imagine Julie uttering statements such as " After MY death, I want museums to show MY WORK only the way I WANT" and "The Museum owes ME this because I AM the artist". I've heard this in real life and I really wonder how people can say this without feeling ridiculous and pompous. Seriously folks, being artists doesn't dispense you from being human, even if you are very, very successful, as in *straight-out-of-grad-school-successful*. It's not an excuse for behaving like self-absorbed egomaniacs. Honest.

Julie is also publishing a book that's coming up soon, the one she's speaking about in the second video. You can see some pictures above.
Her work is a first-person narrative of what it's like to be a young artist trying to make work in a new adopted country and having to contend with post-graduate school realities. And visa and job issues.
After seeing the two videos I'm sure you will share my enthusiasm for Julie's work. She so totally deserves to be your neighbor, or even your cubicle mate, and to instill a much-needed dose of pragmatic humor in the overblown LA art egoslandscape.
But there's a catch. Julie is French Canadian and right now, she needs a part-time job so she can stay here in LA and extend her visa. So if you guys can help her by letting her be your office or studio assistant, please drop me a line and I'll forward it to her. It would be a pity if she had to go back to Canada and couldn't share her work with us. Come on you guys, don't let Canada get her back!






* The complete series is intended as a groundbreaking new feature of Artforum, to introduce funny pages in the print edition. The idea would be to curate funny pages with other artists once the initial series had run its course. If someone at Artforum listens, please drop me a line and I'll forward to Mark.

Things To Check Out Now

So the pinched nerve isn't showing any sign of unpinching itself by the sheer magic of laying flat on my bed for what was the duration of the entire weekend. I kind of foresaw that when the doctor told me to try this, but I couldn't really bend myself enough in the kind of suitable shape that's amenable to driving or even, more simply, get inside a car and get treatment NOW. Who knew folding one midget body would be so painful?
Anyway, I'll be busing my chic and diminutive Frenchy self to the chiropractor tomorrow Monday (on buses, you can STAND UP, yay!) and in the meantime, since typing is a bit difficult, I'll advise you to go see the Bruce Conner show at Michael Kohn (the movie is great) and the drawing show at Steve Turner, which is very, very good. Their website isn't updated unfortunately, but I can only urge you to go see it. If the chiropractor releases that nerve from its iron grip I'll write a review, but I'm late on the Thanksgiving In October post. I have a few pictures of both shows but will post them later as getting my camera now would mean some unnecessary acrobatics; and my lower back in its present state wouldn't thank me for attempting those.

Also, it is art too: Max Eider, one of the founding members with Pat Fish of my all time favorite band The Jazz Butcher [Conspiracy sometimes added here, and even once the Sirkorsky From Hell] has a new solo album out. Check all the info here.
Max Eider is also a Sex Engine! I'd love, love a re-release of the JBC albums Bath of Bacon and Fishcotheque, say for my B-Day?


I haven't seen the Murakami show at the the Geffen obviously. Paul, I think this obsession with Murakami is a little bit too much, really, but I'll check the show out as soon as I can move. And yes, that Vuitton store is tacky, and only shows how fashion has come full circle, it's the 1980s again and Vuitton is going to become vulgar all over again. Couldn't wait, save for the Marc Jacobs shoes, those patterns have always been atrocious, if you ask me.

Also, Andy Ouchi had an opening at China Art Objects on Saturday, ditto couldn't move.

Coming Up On A Blog Near You

Hello my devoted readership,

apologies for very light posting, I'm suffering from excruciating lower back pain. So unless I find a way to type standing up, you will have to wait for the post on Julie Lequin's work, the reviews of the Bruce Conner show at Michael Kohn and the drawing show at Steve Turner, the Thanksgiving in October post and the Revenge of The art Widows one. Check this space after the weekend, thanks!

The World Is On Fire

There is an end of the world atmosphere over LA today, the sky concealed by a dirty orangey layer of smoke. A fine layer of what is a powdery concoction of dust, ashes, pollens and soot covers the cars. The air is bad, bad, bad, and even though I live far from the fires the feeling of being encircled is claustrophobic. People are driving slowly, and no one is lingering outside.
Please go to the LA Times front page for all the information you need and click here for the San Diego Tribune.
The MCASD is closed. Meanwhile, I don't know where David Geffen houses his Postawr art collection, but I sure hope his Jasper Johns Target With Plaster Casts and the rest of his collection are safe.
Meanwhile, the economy (and the afferent art market) are not doing very well, and there's every possibility of a WGA strike happening, so all in all it's a depressing time in LA.

Painting above is Joseph Wright of Derby, one of his volcanoes explosion. I don't have the credit line.