Saddam Execution **warning - graphic images**

"Saddam Hussein's execution was captured by cell phone. This appears to be an unedited version of the former dictator's execution." This definiately brings up lots of issues, both political and cultural. In the art sphere the immediate thought is "Society of the Spectacle." Questions of mediation, censorship and consumerism. We are witnessing this event via Google, courtesy of a cell phone. Compare this to other historic events. In some ways this is more acurate and real. It is unmediated, it is not the reinactment staged for photgraphers of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, or even of Saddam statues being toppled three years ago. It is the result of our new media world culture, etc. One person with a cellphone can broadcast it to the whole world. Even as people debated what the major news networks would show, everyone mentioned it would be available on the internet. We are getting used to the idea of newspapers as being obsoulete in terms of breaking news, but now TV is out of date.

i am still alive

I AM STILL ALIVE

I am still alive.

IN PRINT

Be sure to pick up a copy of this week’s TimeOut Chicago. It has a review I wrote of the excellent Gary Rattigan show at 65GRAND. So pick up a copy, cos there will always be something satisfying about the printed matter. You might even be able to read it, right here, and right now online, if you felt like it. Nice.

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FREE ADVICE

There seem to be a lot of “Holiday Art Sales” this year. If you an art gallery or artist selling work. And if you in any way take what you do seriously. And want to be taken in any way seriously. Please, please, please DON’T have a holiday art sale. And if you do, for the love of god, DON’T call it that. It is just so tacky and lame.

I realize you want to make sales, and that this is the time of year that people are dropping cash. But don’t turn your product, art, into cheap disposable holiday schlock. It diminishes the work, and it insults everyone involved. It is such a turn off. Yes, art it is a commodity, but it is something quite different than a new video game system, or a car, or clothes and so on. Having a holiday art sale says the work isn’t selling at its “list” price. It’s saying it is substandard because in order to move this merchandise we are slashing prices. It says all the disgusting things this time of year says: rampant and blatant money grubbing, crass commercialism, disgusting Disneyism and all sorts of other connotations that you don’t want to color the artwork, even if it's subject is a comment on those things.

The job of an art gallery is to present as blank of a context as possible for the art to do its thing. Galleries are about selling art. But in a tasteful way. If you are going to do the holiday art sale thing, you have to be pretty clever and savvy about it. And you really should just avoid it. Art you running a bake sale or an art gallery?