World will not end without a fight!

Just in case you were wondering... I'm in the middle of a gigantic struggle fighting the dark side in an epic fight to save the world today!

Battle is still going on, but so far nothing is looking shimmery, like Marty McFly does every time that he's about to be eliminated from the future when he's in the past.

Struggle on!

Score one for the Mayans

Since tomorrow is the end of the world, I'm gonna be saving big bucks, because the day after tomorrow is my wife's birthday, and since tomorrow is the end of the world... do you see my logic?

Of course, no one wants the world to end, except maybe those mutant Ayatollahs in Iran, but there's that whole "present-buying" angle to work...

Hirst leaving his dealer...

But “these superstar artists are self-propelled machines,” said Tobias Meyer, director of Sotheby’s contemporary art department worldwide and its principal auctioneer. “Just as actors left their studios in the 1950s, artists have become bigger stars than their galleries. The world is their oyster, and they know it.”

Read the NYT story here.

When modern art baffles

"If you've ever stared at a piece of modern art and felt you just didn't "get it," you're probably among the majority.

The Smithsonian is trying to change that. The American Art Museum has begun hosting discussions aimed at helping museum-goers grasp the meaning behind some of the museum's more enigmatic works."

Read the whole story by WTOP's Madeline Tallman here.

Wake effect continues

Remember me harping about the "wake effect" of art fairs?

Review: The "wake effect" is akin to the wake that a ship leaves behind as it sails through the water. In artfairese, it is what happens (sales, contacts, articles, etc.) after an art fair is over.

Since Aqua ended, we've closed a deal for four 30x40 photographs by the amazing Dulce Pinzon - all to be sent to a major private collection in NYC which although "private" is open to the public.

And ballsy Cuban photog Cirenaica Moreira will be the focus of a profile article in VOGUE magazine.

And yours truly has been offered his first museum solo!

Yay!

Blake Gopnik Laid Off at Newsweek

Former WaPo art critic Blake Gopnik, who escaped the sinking ship known as the WaPo's Style Section for Tina Brown's nearly submerged Newsweek, has been fired ; according to NY Magazine:

Also leaving Newsweek/The Daily Beast amid substantial layoffs is art and design critic Blake Gopnik, he confirmed to Daily Intel. Gopnik joined Tina Brown's magazine from the Washington Post in 2010, along with Robin Givhan, the first and only fashion writer to win a Pulitzer Prize. Givhan was let go in the downsizing as the company kills its print edition. "It's been a wild ride, and a strange one," Gopnik said.

Before he left, the Blakester had this great article on the coming explosion of the art market bubble... I sorta agree with him. Read that here.

Yoga

In this work, the digital imagery completes the narrative of the visual image. 

We see the woman’s mind begin the effort to clear the mind of all things and achieve the perfect state of a blank mind. 

Her struggles are followed through the digital imagery of food, drinks, candy, space, Mr. Spock and other images before settling on a perfectly blank mind. 

Furthermore, the buyer of this piece has the option to request to have me add some specific “distracting” digital images to the piece, if so desired, and thus become a “contributor” to the work.

Yoga

Charcoal and Conte on Paper with Embedded Electronics

© 2012 F. Lennox Campello