New photo auction record set

A rare print taken by US photography pioneer Edward Steichen has set a new world record for the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction.

The photograph (titled Pond-Moonlight ) was taken in New York in 1904 and was auctioned by Sotheby's for $2.9m, more than doubling the previous record.

It was put up for sale by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has another copy in its collection.

Two in, two out

Two paintings from Warsaw's Royal Palace collection are now confirmed to be by Rembrandt. See them here.

And two Rembrandts at the Faro Municipal Museum in Portugal have been shown to be fakes. Read that story here.

Borf Support

Online here.

Assimilation/Dissolution

There will be an artists' talk (Jeffry Cudlin, Christopher Hoeting and Jefferson
Pinder) and reception for Assimilation/Dissolution this Thursday, February 16th. from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at Flashpoint.

Sugimoto Opens at the Hirshhorn

Gimp

If you see me limping around, it is not from having worn my knee out from giving someone that once promised and well-deserved ass kicking.

This story is nothing compared to Tentacles but...

Today as I was getting dressed, I was barefooted, and as I have hardwood floors, managed to pick up a huge sliver in my left foot.

Luckily, I was standing next to my bed, and so I collapsed on top of it while holding my foot aloft, as one of the key things to do in the event of a sliver attack, is to isolate the attacked limb, lest we break the sliver and have to resort to emergency needle surgery.

So I managed to preserve the sliver intact on the bottom of my foot.

Next, what is needed is good light, and good vision, in order to extract the attacking sliver.

So, holding my foot aloft, I hopped over to the bathroom, and turned the lights on.

I then lifted my left leg, in order to do the acrobatic act of remaining balanced while exposing the sole of my left foot.

I however, failed to account for the bathroom door handle, and smashed my kneecap on the handle as I lifted the leg up, while attmepting to balance on the other foot.

Now I am really hopping on one leg and screaming bloody murder, as my knee complains bitterly at the unwarranted smash-up.

Eventually I manage to settle down, and to my relief the splinter is still whole and sticking out of my foot. Luckily, in a paradoxical way, it is a massive splinter, which is bad for the pain that it is delivering to my foot, but good for the fact that I can just grab it with my fingers and not spend several hours looking for the tweezers.

And so I grab it out, and I think that I performed a clean extraction.

Pheeew!

However, this is a massive rain-forest sized chunk of wood, and some blood begins to seep out. Since I do not know what sort of postmodern germs are now ferociously attempting entry into my blood stream, I decided to put some first aid cream on the wound.

Half an hour later and I still haven't found the cream, so I decide to use that bottle of iodine that has somehow managed to stay with me since it came with my first aid kit in Navy bootcamp eons ago.

Do they even make iodine anymore?

So I open the small bottle of iodine, and this bottle is so old, that the little plastic tip that dips into the iodine just falls off as I open it, landing squarely on top of my pants, after caressing my suit jacket on its downward spiral.

So now I have an iodine track on my jacket and on my pants; and a ruined suit, as iodine (as far as I know) does not come off.

I eventually put some of this prehistoric stuff on my wound, and as everyone knows, iodine stings like a M@#$%^&*^er.

I pretend it is the pain from all those germs being killed by whatever uberchemical makes up iodine (isn't iodine an element by itself?).

I think that I got all the wood out, but now my foot still hurts like crazy.

A day in the life of a gallerist.