Jenny Dubnau and Elena Sisto at the Bucheon Gallery:



Sidney Brown and Sheila Cohen, whom I adore:

(I re-found my mind in San Francisco this weekend.)

"One does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them."

--Gabriel García Márquez

"I am learning all the time. My tombstone will be my diploma."
--Eartha Kitt

The Big Brown Clouds in China (click here)

Chris Burden's Exposing the Foundations of the Museum:





(When I was in LA this weekend, I was thrilled to see this iconic piece of conceptual art reinstalled at the Geffen. It also rocked my world way back in 1986--the only other time its been exhibited.)

My favorite Charlie Roberts watercolor at the Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica:

(I can relate.)

Marco Brambilla's rolling and writhing video extravaganza at the Christopher Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica:

Robbie Conal lectured about his work today at the Track 16 gallery in Santa Monica:




(His iconic "Men Without Lips" images rocked my world when I was an art student in the 80's.)

Tony Labat's video Day Labor: Mapping the Outside:

Marco Rios' installation Vanishing Intent:

Pato Hebert's installation Text Messaging: 1000 Points of Might:

(A few highlights from the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum today. In general, the sculpture, installation and video was better than the painting in this show.)

Barack Obama won the election because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens.

(On the eve of the election, this detail of a painting by Jim Torok is worth reposting.)

Some excerpts from the Center for Land Use Interpretation's photo-essay on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in this month's Artforum:

Insects in Art History:



(Classical Maya, 18th C. Japan, and 17th C. Dutch)

Track 16 Gallery (click here)

“Art doesn’t lose its emotional or artistic value. That doesn’t change no matter what the economy.”

--Michael Govan, director of LACMA

Jeffrey Vallance (click here)

Good Spin (click here)

Yet in this last nationally televised encounter between the candidates, passivity may have been enough. Mr. Obama’s main goal was to calmly deflect the attacks, sit on his lead, not make any mistakes and not give voters any reason to second-guess their increasing support for his candidacy.

Even if Joe the Plumber still won’t vote for him.

(I've always been a sucker for seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish art. I'll be teaching this stuff to my painting students tonight.)

Anatomy studies from my life drawing class. (We also visit the cadaver lab on campus, which is as much an existential experience as it is an artistic one.)

(Some images of Big Holes my dear friend Dave sent me last night.)

The Bingham Pit Copper Mine in Utah (I've been to this one):

The now-defunct, dug-by-hand Kimberley Diamond Mine in South Africa:

The Diavik Mine in Canada:

This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics. On Thursday, it all went sour. The people boosting Palin’s triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country.

--Gail Collins

Diego Rivera's enormous hands rising up in anger at the Greedy Capitalist Conspiracy that enslaves the workers of the world:



Though kind of politically heavy-handed, these Depression-era frescos certainly have resonance now. I'm going to show these to my students tomorrow.