Danger! Annette Messager's Body Parts

Annette Messager's art can be provocative, and it certainly was so 25-30 years ago, but it hardly counts as "dangerous". Until the current one-woman show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

In an off-shoot of her hybrid stuffed animals she's dangled huge stuffed body parts from winches bolted to the lobby ceiling. The winches release regularly, dropping an ear or a foot or a hand through the open stairwell into the basement, catching right before it hits the ground. Kids love it. Check it out on the Centre's web-cam (click on "webcam3").

The Centre's cordoned off the basement "strike zone" (and its piles of pillows), but this week widened the zone and posted prominent "DANGER" signs. Maybe the kids love it a little too much.

Monumenta-l Question - Why Anselm Kiefer?

Paris' newly inaugurated "Monumenta" exhibition is an annual one-man show specifically designed for the gigantic, recently renovated Grand Palais off the Champs Elysées. The tepid, if courteous, French press coverage seems to imply this question: Why spoil the place with Anselm Kiefer's work?

Kiefer's depressing, brooding large-scale paintings and sculpture certainly don't seem like the right opening note for a series of gala shows in this airy, glass-roofed Bell Epoque pavilion. So the newspapers and magazines are devoting much of their stories to explaining who Kiefer is-- an Austrian artist-- and why he matters-- because his overriding theme is history, especially the ruinous effects of 20th century European fascism and nationalism, and history, after all, is kind of important. Regular reference is made to Kiefer's move to the south of France 10 years ago, implying this played a role in the Monumenta choice. And just to let us all know things will only get better, Monumenta's next two shows-- Richard Serra in 2008 and Christian Boltanski in 2009-- are mentioned nearly as often. Beaux-Arts magazine even took the step of inviting two critics to write "for" and "against" reviews on facing pages. We doubt they'll do the same when it's Serra's turn at bat.

An Art Marketing Coup

Over the past four or five days, the news sites and art blogs have been chattering about the same artwork unveiled last week. I'm piling on, I guess, but as a test to readers I'll name neither the artist nor the work. If you've been reading any contemporary art sites, or even just mainstream news sites, you know what it is. If you haven't, it won't take long to sniff it out with a few keystrokes.

I can't think of a greater art marketing success from the recent past.

Okay, for those in a rush, try here, here, here or here. And even back here again...

Google's nod to Ed Ruscha

Google Map's new topographical search feature, "Street View", offers sequential photos of buildings taken along various streets in major U.S. cities. That's basically the principal behind Ed Ruscha's 1966 fold-out book, Every Building on the Sunset Strip. The book-- which unfolds to an impressive 27 feet!-- fell into the black hole of contemporary art. Google's effort, on the other hand, is getting all sorts of attention since it debuted this week. Some people scour the photos for curious details-- the passing lunatics and lovelies, or punctums, as Barthes might have quipped-- while others decry them as an invasion of privacy.

If Google continues its homage to Ruscha's deadpan photo projects, we can't wait to see their Gasoline Stations and Parking Lots series.