Category: ARTIST NEWS

Follow Up: The OLEK Saga Unwinds

MLK, ala Olek, autobio is not for pussies.

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...and it’s a nightmare!

The way Olek tells the story on her blog:

  • First a big drunken asshole sexually harasses her.
  • Rebuffed, he taunts her obscenely.
  • Doused with her wine, he threatens her.
  • Then when she strikes out in fear  (um, admittedly, she punched him in the face while holding her wine glass…) she’s arrested.
  • Then they drum up charges based on her carrying a small scissors that, as we all know she uses for her work. (I mean, like: duh!)
  • Then she gets strip searched and harassed some more.
  • Then THEY CONVICT HER and make her wait forever for her sentencing.

Meantime she’s in a foreign country where she has no connections and does not know the rules; her english is not top-notch;  they put her in holding for three days; and she can’t call anyone because she doesn’t remember anyone’s telephone number by heart.

She also could not talk to the press, could not defend her good name, could not make clear how badly she needed help, nor explain exactly what her justifications were.

Her sentencing has now been moved to November 15th.

What’s the take away? When in England, never make a huge drunk angry no matter how angry he makes you. If he threatens you, wait till he takes his weapon out and messes you up. And put your glass down; it’s all fun and games until someone puts an eye out.

Read her harrowing tale and reach out to her here.

HENNESSY YOUNGMAN, AKA CURATOR

THIS YA BOY, HENNESSY YOUNGMAN, AKA MR. AKA's, AKA THE PHARAOH HENNESSY, AKA HENROCK THE MONARCH AKA THE PEDAGOGIC PIMP

Critic, performer, painter, and lecturer,  Jayson Musson has made a splash on YouTube with his alter ego, Hennessy Youngman. In a series he calls ART THOUGHTZ, Youngman sits in an “alabaster alcove” and delivers laugh out loud funny art critical patter to his audience which he addresses as “Internet.”

The videos which pretend to dispense advice to novice artists and lay people, but which contain a meta-level of art (and art world) criticism, have launched him from relative obscurity to courted celebrity. Recently he has been much sought after for lectures and tours at universities and cultural centers.

So it should be no surprise that, having just begun, he is already “giving back.”

Invited by fine art photographer Marilyn Minter to show work at FAMILY BUSINESS (opened in February by Larry Gogosian, Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni) Youngman has turned curator, deciding to open the floodgates and let all of his fans rush on into the sacred white cube.

Any and all who bring work to 520 W. 21ST ST in Chelsea, NY will be in Hennessy’s  “IT’S A SMALL, SMALL WORLD”  show; no exceptions.

“IT’S MY WAY OF GIVING BACK TO/ AND THANKING THE INTERNET FOR SUPPORTING AND WATCHING MY SHIT.”

Drop Off Dates:
FRIDAY 3/30 – SUNDAY 4/1
10AM- 7PM
Artwork in every media will be accepted and Mr. Hennessy himself will be there to take them from you.

IT’S A SMALL, SMALL WORLD:
OPENING RECEPTION TUESDAY: 4/3 at 6PM.
CLOSING 4/16

Maybe it’s MGM’s Banana?

Everybody Has a Sticker on This Banana! Graphic by Cat Weaver :)

Following up on the Velvet Underground v The Andy Warhol Foundation story, Hollywood Reporter speculates similarly to The Art Machine that the famed fruit’s copyright may belong to the record label.

Hollywood Reporters’s Eriq Gardner, wondering why the Velvet Underground hasn’t used a more fail-proof strategy of claiming the copyright for themselves (instead of opting to claim trademark protection on an image in the public domain) says,

“According to the facts in record, MGM Records paid both the band and Warhol $3,000 to furnish the image for use on the 1967 album cover. If the record label paid the money as a work-for-hire agreement, the true “author” of the image, under the law, would be the record label. We asked Universal Music Group, the seeming successor to MGM Records, to comment, but so far, we haven’t heard anything.”

It is an interesting speculation and one we may wonder about: is MGM silently planning its own little coup? And, if so, was it inspired by the Velvet’s bold but transparent strategies, or by press speculation about the Warhol graphic being a “work for hire?”

Or, maybe MGM has secret plans prompted by questions from sites like Hollywood Reporter asking them questions about the graphic? How meta would that be?

Mike Kelly: “I see all art as being kind of a materialist ritual.”

f06pco1yMike Kelly’s work appealed to me.  For composition, for color, for nuances of meaning, and for being, as he put it “reactive” — a feedback loop to our zeitgeist. He was funny and sad and intellectual all at once.

He was discovered dead this Tuesday in his South Pasadena home. Those close to him suspect suicide but this is unconfirmed. He was 57.

Watch Memory on PBS. See more from ART:21.

“I knew by the time I was a teenager that I was going to be an artist. There was not doubt about that. There was nothing else for me to be.” ~ Mike Kelly

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