WALL-E

If you haven't already done so, meet WALL-E, the latest animated superhero from Disney/Pixar. Released only three days ago, WALL-E shot straight to the top of the North American box office chart with takings of £31.3m ($62.5m), which isn't bad going for a trash-compacting robot in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of people. This is Pixar's ninth consecutive number one hit film, so it can safely claim to have cornered the market in popular art. Pixar shows up the Brit. Anti-art Establishment as pathetically corny, clueless and out of date.

Tube's XTP Displays

London Underground has installed high-definition colour projections and LCD screens in five of its tube stations - Piccadilly Circus, Euston, Bank, Liverpool Street and Bond Street - following a successful trial at Euston Station. This new XTP technology will be rolled out across another 30 stations at least, replacing old advertising posters. Yes. You didn't think London Underground was doing this to keep its punters happy, did you? It will get its share of the advertising revenue. Meanwhile, something as low-tech as air-conditioning won't be introduced for another decade - if then -, leaving passengers to swelter and faint!

Tate Britain Fiasco

The latest nonsense at Tate Britain - Work No 850 - is a runner sprinting through the Neoclassical Gallery every 30 seconds. I refuse to name the non-artist who claims this daft arrangement as his "art installation". Hint: he's a former winner of the Turner Prize. Groan! Twerps who claim to be artists and who produce tripe like this should be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act, not given costly awards. It's a disgrace.

Coxsoft Art Wins Award

Coxsoft Art's website has won another award: the Carpe Diem Award Bronze (CLICK). As the award comes from foreign parts - Brazil, which I'm told speaks Portuguese - and my carefully centred English text looks a mess whenever the AltaVista Babel Fish translator is used, I'm pleased to have won a bronze. The criteria are tough, almost as tough as those for a Coxsoft Art Silver Surfer Friendly Award (CLICK). Carpe Diem? It's a Latin phrase from Horace in Odes Book I, translated as "seize the day":

"While we're talking, envious time is fleeing: seize the day, put no trust in the future" (CLICK).

I must admit my philosophy tends toward planned procrastination, which is the thinking man's "When I get a round tuit". Somebody gave me a round tuit yonks ago, but I still haven't used it....

Dalí at MoMA

How's this for a visionary glimpse of the future back in 1929? It's Salvador Dalí's Illuminated Pleasures, with TV/computer screens everywhere! Dalí: Painting and Film, an exhibition organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation and first shown in London, opened today at MoMA in New York. As this is the most interesting exhibition Tate Modern has put on in years, it should go well in the Big Apple. Find it in the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, on the 6th floor, until 15 September. CLICK for my preview of this exhibition at Tate Modern.

GreenPix Lights Up

As the technical aspects of contemporary art become more demanding, architects are muscling in on the world of visual artists. This is GreenPix, a zero-energy media wall designed by Simone Giostra & Partners Architects for the Xicui Entertainment Complex in Beijing. By day it harvests whatever solar energy breaks through the Beijing smog; by night it uses that energy to illuminate a huge LED display which can show digital art. GreenPix is a "photovoltaic system". It's planet-friendly, but how good is the art: Space Invaders or The Rokeby Venus? And will her bum be censored?

Syd Barrett Tribute

Press release today: The City Wakes is the first official tribute to Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, who died in 2006 from diabetic complications. A series of events, including an art exhibition, a concert, guided tours and workshops, will take place in Syd's home town of Cambridge in October before moving to London. Click the title link to visit The City Wakes website. Be warned, it attempts to invade your PC with a ridiculously high number of cookies, all of which I rejected. Tickets for the concert will be available soon.

Frampton's Peter Pan

Sir George Frampton's bronze statue of Peter Pan was commissioned by J.M. Barrie in 1912 and secretly installed in Kensington Gardens at night. Barrie's announcement appeared in The Times the following morning. "There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the south-western side of the tail of the Serpentine they will find a May-day gift by Mr J.M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree, with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived."

Richard Prince in UK

Bad news, punters: a limited edition of 96 prints of Richard Prince's Dude Ranch Nurse (above) is already sold out, and his show opened only yesterday at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London. Richard Prince: Continuation ... er ... carries on until 7 September. The best time to visit this show would be after 20 July, the day Frank Gehry's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008 opens. Then you can sneer at both on the same visit. Two sneers for the price of one can't be bad. Don't forget to visit the bronze statue of Peter Pan sculpted in 1912 by Sir George Frampton, a real artist.

The Courtauld Cézannes

In the Somerset House e-newsletter for July, the Courtauld Institute of Art proclaims "75 years opening minds to art" with an arrogance which only the Brit. Anti-art Establishment could assume. To celebrate 75 years of patronizing the masses in London, it is displaying for the first time its entire collection of works by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) including rarely seen drawings and watercolours. The Courtauld Cézannes opened yesterday and continues until 5 October. Running in tandem is French Prints From Manet to Picasso. Admission is steep for third-rate art.

Kung Fu Whoopsie!

Whoops! Another cock-up from Coxsoft. Earlier in June I posted this graphic from DreamWorks Animation's Kung Fu Panda and referred to the little fellow cocking his leg as Po (title link). The animation movie had its UK premiere in London yesterday evening. So I found out that this is Shifu, Po's comedy sidekick. Po is a giant panda, not a red. (I did have my doubts about a US company making a film starring a red panda!) By the way, the delectable Lucy Liu did some origami at the premiere (CLICK). Wow! Wish I'd been there.

Vilhelm Hammershøi

On 28 June the Royal Academy of Arts opens the first ever UK retrospective of Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) with over 60 paintings gathered from around the world: Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence. The fanciful title refers to the quietude of his works with their empty spaces and sombre tones, evocative of silence. You can't help wondering if a dose of anti-depressants would have perked up his pallet. The RA's pricing structure is ridiculously complex. So I'll just type "adults £8 and silver surfers £7" and leave you to click the title link. If any mum fancies dragging a 6-year-old child round this sombre show, the kid gets in free. Aw, thanks, RA.

Baby's Bum Censored!

I'm not posting this as a work of art, although it's arguably more artistic than a lot of the tripe in Tate Modern, but as a work of censorship. When Gail Jordan gave this old photo of her son David to staff at Asda to print on David's 21st birthday cake, she was shocked when they refused to process it because of David's bare bottom, which they claimed was pornographic! So a star had to be placed on his bum to hide it. Note the sexism of the decorations: booze and a football on blue icing. (Pink for girls and no football?) It's no wonder so many young people in the UK think it's normal to get drunk. If we need censorship, let's ban Asda from promoting booze on its birthday cakes. Alcoholism and drunken disorder pose a far graver threat to our society than babies' bare bums.

Art Forgery Book

This book is so new it hasn't been released yet, but an advert for it appeared on my blog and Amazon.com is taking orders already (title link). The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren by Jonathan Lopez looks a must for curators of museums and art galleries. For the rest of us it might be worth ordering a copy from our local library. As the only prices I can find are in US dollars, it looks as though it will be published in the USA first and, according to public response, may be released in the UK later.

Biofuel Crime

To put Freddie's toast-popping success into perspective and to complete today's trilogy of posts on the alimentary canal (loosely speaking), here's another headline from BBC News: Biofuel use 'increasing poverty'. In a new report, Oxfam calls on the EU to scrap its biofuel targets (title link). A year ago, Coxsoft Art pointed out "There isn't enough arable land on our planet to grow crops for both machines and people" (CLICK). And see my Gordon Brown Wanted poster (CLICK). It is now estimated that the criminally irresponsible rush to produce biofuels has pushed an extra 30 million people worldwide into poverty and potential starvation. The aid agencies can't cope. And here in the UK we're gaily popping food into the air to win a Guinness record!

The New Damien Hirst?

Suspend your disbelief again! This is what they teach them at art college in the UK. To open the Royal College of Art graduate show, art student Freddie Yauner set a new Guinness World Record for popping toast into the air from a toaster! One of his slices of toast attained a height of 8 feet six inches (2.6 of those Euro metre thingies). Coxsoft Art can safely predict a bright future for Mr Yawner ... whoops! ... Yauner. At the tender age of 26 he has twigged what the art lark is all about: novelty, gimmicks, publicity, bullshit and doing daft things that media editors think will amuse the populace. His talent for headline-grabbing toast-popping virtually guarantees his acceptance as a Royal Academician. You can see the rest of the tripe at the Royal College of Art in London until 5 July.

Enema Monument

If you missed this news last week, prepare to suspend your disbelief yet again. The Mashuk Akva-Term Sanatorium in Zheleznovodsk, southern Russia, commissioned sculptress Svetlana Avakina to create the world's first Monument To The Enema (2008) at a cost of $42,000. The bronze syringe bulb weighs 800 pounds. Rather you than me, squire. If the cherubs look rather good, it's because Svetlana based them on Botticelli cherubs. At the unveiling on Wednesday, a banner on the spa wall proclaimed "Let's beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas". I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried! Click the title link to read China Post's version of the story.

Monet Breaks Record

This evening, at auction at Christie's in London, Claude Monet's Le Bassin Aux Nympheas (1919) fetched a new world record for a Monet: £40.9m. That's £36.5m top bid plus tax. Ho hum. Into a vault for another 80 years?

Huang Yong Ping: Frolic

It has been claimed that the art of writing fiction lies in winning the suspension of the reader's disbelief. I'm beginning to think that this applies to art reviews as well! Take Huang Yong Ping's Frolic, which opens tomorrow in The Curve at The Barbican, London. The title comes from the name of an opium ship, and Ping's installation focuses on the 19th Century Opium Wars between Britain and China. The centrepiece is a statue of Lord Palmerston - the Prime Minister credited with starting the Opium Wars - on an opium bed smoking a huge opium pipe. Can you believe all this tosh? Even the names don't ring true. You have until 21 September to establish the truth for yourself. Admission is free.

National Insect Week

Here's one of the most artistic and effective logos I've seen in yonks: the National Insect Week logo, artist unknown. The Royal Entomological Society's National Insect Week 2008 began yesterday, launched at London's Chelsea Physic Garden. The week-long programme of events continues until Sunday 29 June. Click the title link to find a bug near you. And take a look at a first-class website. There's a photo competition too.

Barnaby Furnas

How's this for garish? It's by US artist Barnaby Furnas - Rock Concert (Slayer) 2007 - one of his ongoing Rock Concerts series. You'll find his latest solo exhibition in the East End of London at Stuart Shave/Modern Art. Its new website was "under construction" at the time of writing. Why do they do it? Keep the old website running until the new pages are finished, for Goodness' sake. And construct your web pages offline. The Furnas show is on until 27 July. Try the title link. No? Then CLICK.

Fourth Plinth Lunacy

Today new London Mayor Bouncy Boris had fun at City Hall trying to unveil the winning proposals for something or somebody to mount the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. The joint winners are Yinka Shonibare for his Nelson's Ship in a Bottle and Antony Gormley for his daft idea of having volunteers stand on the plinth for one hour at a time. "Living artwork" indeed! He'll need 2,400 volunteers. Both winners are full of bull and neither of their proposals is art. Yinka claims his ship in a bottle shows the "ethnic" wealth of London. Oh yeah? Where's the gun and knife crime then, the crack houses and cannabis farms, the white slave trade and the bear-bile products? As for Gormley, click the title link to read his bull. I can't be bothered with it. "Art is what you can get away with" (Rodney Pople 2008, CLICK). No kidding.

NZ Body Art Update

For those of you who don't bother to read the comments on my posts, this tongue is real. Carmel McCormick's model Levi kindly e-mailed me to answer my question (title link). He used blue food colouring on his tongue. Talk about suffering for your art! A very well deserved award for best performance by a model. Thanks, Levi. Congratulations.

Aspire

What will be Britain's tallest free-standing public work of art is taking shape on the Jubilee Campus of the University of Nottingham: Aspire (a spire, to aspire; get it?). The red and orange steel girder tube will tower 60 Euro metre thingies above the campus when completed, taller than Nelson's Column (52 Euro metre thingies) and Tyneside's Flasher of the North (a mere 20 EMT). Its £800,000 cost has been donated by an anonymous benefactor. It strikes me that England has been going through a period akin to the Italian Renaissance, when merchants were flush with spare cash and city states vied to own their own unique works of art. With recession starting to bite and the European Union jackboot poised over our necks, I wonder how much longer the English Renaissance will last.

Artlaw & Artquest

Did you know that if you're a professional visual artist or craftsperson living and working in London you can obtain free legal advice from Artlaw? This is an e-mail service only. Subjects include: copyright, contracts, licensing, moral rights, image rights, censorship, import and export, health and safety and any other element relating to a professional artist's or craftsperson's career. But first check out the Artlaw website (title link) which contains over 200 legal articles written by Henry Lydiate - barrister and art law specialist - for Art Monthly magazine. As these articles are freely available online, they could be of help to UK artists who don't qualify for the e-mail service. Artlaw is part of Artquest (CLICK) the online advice centre for London artists, covering everything from seminars to studio space. If you're an art graduate embarking on your professional career, Artquest is a must.

Matthew Carr

If you like monochrome, Marlborough Fine Art (London) will be showing Matthew Carr: New Works from 24 June to 19 July. This artist works with conté pencil on prepared charcoal paper, as in his Nude (2008) shown here. The title link takes you to an online gallery of Carr's exhibits. Despite his obvious talent, I must admit I find it all rather grey and depressing.

London Architecture Fest

The London Festival of Architecture 2008 also began yesterday and runs until 20 July, one month filled with over 600 exhibitions, lectures, public space installations, guided walks, bicycle rides, boat tours of the city's river and canals, parties, design workshops, street dances and debates. Click the title link to see if you can find anything of interest. For the opening installation, hauled into place today, CLICK.

60s British Pop Art

Another exhibition which opened yesterday is a retrospective of Brit. pop artist Colin Self: works from the 60s at Delaye Saltoun in Saville Row, London (title link). Isn't it amazing how old-fashioned Pop Art looks nowadays? Yet it's influence is still with us. The exhibition continues until 2 August. If you fancy a blast from the past....

Turmoil and Tranquillity

The latest exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in London is Turmoil and Tranquillity, which opened yesterday in the Queen's House and continues until 11 January 2009, admission free. Seascapes by masters Jan Porcellis, Simon de Vlieger, Ludolf Backhuysen and Jacob van Ruisdael, all from the museum's huge collection of 16th- and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish maritime paintings, will be on display, ranging from tranquil coastal scenes to dramatic battles at sea. This is a must for any budding sea scout over the summer holidays.

Koons in St James's

Google UK reminds me that today is the first day of the British summer. So it's on with the wellies, pullovers and plastic macs to see Jeff Koons’s 10ft high Balloon Flower (Magenta) worth about £12 million in St James's Park, London. Don't delay, because it goes under the hammer at Christie's on Monday 30 June. Click the title link for Coxsoft Art's preview.

Komodo Dragon Wins

Meet Levi, modelling for a double x 3 win at the recent New Zealand Body Art Awards in Auckland, theme Welcome to the Jungle. Make-up artist Carmel McCormick won the top prize - the North Shore City Supreme Award - for the second year running (Double No 1) with her Komodo dragon, and her model Levi won an award for best performance by a model (Double No 2) after spending the evening on all fours with his tongue sticking out! Or is that a false tongue? Carmel, please let Coxsoft Art know. Carmel also tied with herself to win the New World Victoria Park Hand Painted Body Art Award (Double No 3). Congratulations. Click the title link for all the winners and an online gallery.

Monet's Waterlilies

It's now Christie's turn to have one of its auctions advertised by BBC News. Claude Monet's Le bassin aux nymphéas (1919) has been shown in public only once in the last 80 years. It's now on display at Christie's in London as an appetizer for the auction on 24 June. Note that the photographer has taken Coxsoft Art's advice: when in doubt, stand a pretty girl in front of the painting. No wabbit? you quibble (CLICK). Come on, you can't expect Professor Wabbit every time (CLICK).

Rembrandt Laughing

This Rembrandt self-portrait Rembrandt Laughing (ca 1628) which was bought last year for £2.2m at the Moore Allen & Innocent auction house has been validated by Ernst van de Wetering, head of the Rembrandt Research Project, and is now estimated to be worth at least £15m. The auction house originally estimated it to be worth a mere £1,500. Whoops! Congratulations to the anonymous buyer. It just goes to show what bargains are to be had when somebody knows his art.

Honen Festival, Japan

If you think this sculpture carved from the trunk of a Japanese cypress tree looks rude, you're right. It's a giant sacred phallus on display in the inner shrine of the Tagata Shinto Shrine in Komaki. It's there to be worshipped, ladies, as part of the annual Honen or Penis Festival. Quite right too. Pray to it if you want a baby. If not, do suggestive things with a willy-shaped hotdog sheathed in pancake as the young woman on the right is doing. (I'll leave you to figure out what that symbolizes!) Twelve men all aged 42 (don't ask) carry the phallus along the streets, through a Torii sacred Shinto gateway and into the shrine. Twelve older men carry a smaller upright phallus with a ribbon tied round its business end (don't ask). What rude fertility rites those Japanese have. Why don't they follow the English custom: get their prettiest children to dance round a phallic maypole and pretend it has nothing to do with sex or fertility? Click the title link for more photos. No? Prude!

AFI Top 100 US Movies

Film buffs building a collection of all-time greats should check out the latest American Film Institute (AFI) list of Top 100 American movies (title link). It divided US feature films into 10 categories, then selected the best from each category to arrive at a Top 10. Not surprisingly, Walt Disney dominates the Animation category. Last year, a poll of 6,000 people in the UK named Walt Disney as one of the Top 5 "Art Heroes" of all time (CLICK). Looking at the other categories, British master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock comes out as top director with four movies in the Mystery category. Hitch even outguns the great John Ford, who has only two movies in the Western category. I didn't spot any other director with more than two movies in the top 100. Correct me if I'm wrong. Art critics who witter on about Picasso or Hirst being the greatest artist of the 20th Century show how narrow their view of art is. Top artists of the 20th Century in my book are Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford. As for actors, it looks to me as though James Stewart starred in more great movies than any other actor. This is my reason for illustrating this blog with a poster for Rear Window (1954), a Hitchcock/Stewart movie.

Boring 'Art' News

Boring "art" news in brief. Picasso's Sylvette (1954) fetches a record $6.9m Aussie dollars (£3.32m) in Sidney, making it the most exorbitant art rip-off ever to be perpetrated at auction in the Land of Oz (title link). Yawn. Back in Blighty, Moneybags Hirst is to flog his latest load of tosh at a Sotheby's London auction in September. The main lot is The Golden Calf. You guessed it: a calf in formaldehyde crowned by a solid gold disc. Yawn. (CLICK if you must.)

BBC Art Sale Pics

BBC News is promoting an Impressionist and Modern Art auction to be held by Sotheby's in London on 25 June. I'm not sure why Sotherby's has been favoured in this way; the corporation isn't supposed to advertise. Nine artworks up for grabs at insanely high prices are shown. Claude Monet's La Plage a Trouville (above) is the best of a bad bunch. An early Magritte and Cezanne's Verre et Poires are worth a look, but the rest are awful tosh for clueless fat cats (title link).

Snail Mail 'Art'

British snails Muriel, Austin and Cecil are an integral part of Bournemouth University's "slow art" project called Real Snail Mail, which will be on show at the computer graphics conference Siggraph in Los Angeles from 11 to 15 August. Each of the three snails is fitted with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip that allows it to collect an e-mail from a transmitter and take it to a reader at the other end of its tank ... at a snail's pace. Great fun, it you're patient, but I fail to see where art comes into it, unless it's the tongue-in-cheek website. Click the title link to send an e-mail via Austin or Cecil. (Muriel is still tucking into her/his lettuce.)

Fresh Faced Friday

Somebody at the National Portrait Gallery enjoys alliteration: Fresh Faced Friday. This is an evening of fun and frolics to celebrate the BP Portrait Award 2008, coming up next Friday 20 June from 6.30pm to 10pm, admission free. (Note to foreign revellers: 10pm is considered "late" in London!) Arts pub quiz, speed-sketching Jason Atomic, whoever he is, and music from students of the BRIT school are all part of the fun. Look on the bright side: you might score with an arty type. Oo-er.

Simon Sainsbury Sale

Grab your cheque books, folks. Today's the day the late Simon Sainsbury's collection goes under the hammer at Christie’s in London: Simon Sainsbury: The Creation of an English Arcadia. This spotty effort by Paul Signac Collioure Les Balancelles (1887) will set you back £2m.

Craig Wylie Wins BP

I must say the judges of the BP Portrait Award 2008 know what they're doing. They've selected Coxsoft Art's choice as the winner (CLICK). For his portrait K - partner Katherine Raw - Craig Wylie wins £25,000 and a £4,000 commission from the National Portrait Gallery. Student Peiyuan Jianga took the BP Young Artist Award for Untitled, an unusual portrait framed as landscape. Simon Davis's Amanda Smith gained the £8,000 second prize, and Robert O'Brien came third with granny Hannah O'Brien and receives £6,000. My one quibble is that the BP Young Artist Award won by Peiyuan Jianga is only £5,000. Financially the BP Young Artist is in fourth place, despite painting the second best portrait! Last year's inaugural BP Young Artist winner, Hynek Martinec, was outstanding (CLICK). Judging by the quality shown in its two-year history, I think the BP Young Artist Award should be ranked as second place financially.

Six Degrees Wins

How's this for cataclysmic book-cover art: Big Ben washed aside by a giant tidal wave? Author Mark Lynas has just won this year's Royal Society prize for Science Books, worth £10,000, for his book on global warming: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Mark explains how each degree rise in temperature (maximum 6, one assumes) will change our planet: droughts, floods, mass extinctions. It's "compelling and gripping" stuff, according to Professor Jonathan Ashmore, the chair of the judges. Why not send a copy to President Bush before he leaves office? On second thoughts, send him the National Geographic video. He can view it on TV while he's adding to global warming by jetting round the world.

Darwin Canopy Chosen

A fortnight ago I posted news of Darwin's Canopy, project and exhibition (CLICK). You'll be pleased to learn that the Natural History Museum gave proposals by Turner Prize winners Mark Wallinger and Rachel Whiteread the bum's rush. The commissioned work is Tree by Tania Kovats. This 17-metre-long cross section of a 200-year-old tree will be installed in the ceiling of the mezzanine gallery in time for Darwin's 200th birthday on 12 February 2009. It will be one of the largest specimens in the museum. Great idea, inspired by a diagram in one of Darwin's transmutation notebooks. CLICK to see all 10 proposals.

Heritage At Risk

Lowther Castle, now derelict, is one of six additions to the English Heritage "at risk" register, published next month. The others are: Uxbridge Lido in west London, Birkrigg Stone Circle in Cumbria, Newbury Battlefield in Berkshire, Pindale lead mine in Derbyshire and Salcombe Cannon site off the Devon coast. For the first time the register will include monuments, archaeology, landscapes, places of worship and maritime wrecks, as well as Grade II listed buildings.

Bloggers Beware!

The annual World Information Access (WIA) briefing booklet for 2008, compiled by Philip N. Howard at the University of Washington, reports a growing trend to arrest bloggers. At least 64 people have been jailed for using blogs as a means of protest since 2003, but there could be hundreds more as sources cannot always be verified. More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, but in the last four years British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested. The average prison sentence for politically incorrect blogging is 15 months, the longest sentence eight years! The good news is that repressive governments are scared of bloggers. The bad news for Brits is that the UK Government is one of those regimes. Note the graphic. At the weekend three pensioners wearing protest T-shirts with the message Stop Airport Expansion were cautioned by police at Heathrow Airport for wearing "inflammatory" garments and were escorted from the premises under threat of arrest if they returned. In State Britain, not only must bloggers beware, but also law-abiding pensioners!

War Reporters Memorial

Shock statistic: on average over the last decade two war reporters have been killed each week. Spanish artist Jaume Plensa won an international competition to gain the BBC commission for this memorial to war reporters, including their drivers and translators, who are killed doing their job. It's called Breathing. Made of glass and steel, the 32ft (10m) high work of art on top of BBC Broadcasting House in central London will be illuminated every evening at 10pm, shining a beam of light and remembrance into the night sky. I'm not sure why the word GIN features on the memorial.

Emma For Coco

Recognize this beautiful young lady? Does tousled know-it-all Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films ring a bell? This is the new Emma Watson, groomed by Chanel to replace Keira Knightley as the face of Coco Mademoiselle. Emma has signed a two-year contract worth £3 million to promote the fragrance. Chanel certainly knows what it's doing. Care to name another 18-year-old actress who could sell perfume in buckets to young and old? Even this image smells good. An expert portrait photo.

Sao Paulo Heist Update

Here are the two Picasso's stolen from the Estacao Pinacoteca gallery in Sao Paulo, Brazil (title link):
Left: Minotaur, Drinker And Women (1933)
Right: The Painter And The Model (1963).
The three robbers paid 4 reals (£1.25) to enter the gallery, promptly went to the second-floor gallery and overpowered three unarmed guards at gunpoint. They put the framed artworks they wanted into a bag and walked out of the gallery. A 10-minute job! Easy.

Che Guevara Statue

Yesterday thousands of people turned out in the Hipolito Irigoyen Park in Rosario, Argentina, for the unveiling of a four-tonne bronze statue of Ernesto "Che" Guevara by Andrés Zerneri. This is the first monument to "El Che" in Argentina, his country of origin. He was born in the city of Rosario and would have been 80 years old yesterday, had he not been killed. The statue faces northeast to link symbolically with a statue on the Santa Clara memorial in Cuba, where his mortal remains are kept. The plaza where the new statue stands has been renamed Plaza del Che.

David Shepherd CBE

Congratulations to wildlife artist David Shepherd, who received a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for services to charity and wildlife conservation. By sheer coincidence, last Thursday I posted news of his latest exhibition in London: David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation: Wildlife Artist of the Year 2008 and Three Generations (CLICK). The title link takes you to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation website.

Irish Stuff Brussels

And congratulations to voters in the Republic of Ireland for having told Brussels where to stuff its Lisbon Treaty. What is the European Commission? At best it's another layer of bureaucracy we can't afford. At worst it's a hierarchy of corrupt fat cats looking after themselves. Either way, it is anti-democratic, a Jerry goose step toward Totalitarian Europe. Given the chance, anyone with any sense would tell Brussels to get stuffed; but arrogant twerps like Gordon Brown won't give us that chance, because they know what's good for us!

Gerald Scarfe CBE

Congratulations to political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe for receiving a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list 2008. If you want to download the full honours list from the Cabinet Office, CLICK, but be warned it offers you one of those monstrous PDF files: 352KB, 97 pages. The title link takes you to the official Gerald Scarfe website, a much better choice. Any other artists honoured? Don't ask me; I refuse to waste my time and my computer memory on pesky PDF files.

Emin Broody

I can imagine the headline in the Telegraph's arts section: TRACEY EMIN SOX IT TO 'EM IN FOLKESTONE. She's gone all broody and has left a trail of painted bronze baby clothes around the seaside town in Kent. Organisers of the first Folkestone Triennial have proved themselves to be a bunch of Philistines by wasting £2.25m on gimmicks by Big Names in the Brit. Anti-art Establishment. BBC News gravely points out that the Triennial is "to be held every three years". Surprise, surprise. I wonder if the Telegraph's art critic will pick up on that.

Latest Brazil Thefts

Meanwhile, back in Brazil, armed robbers popped into the Estacao Pinacoteca gallery in Sao Paulo and stole two Picasso engravings and works by Brazilian artists, total value £308,350 ($600,000). Picasso's Minotaur, Drinker and Women is one of the stolen works. Click the title link to see the robbers on video. No masks, just another casual criminal shopping expedition in Sao Paulo, the second I've covered in a year plus two in Rio de Janero in 2006 (CLICK). I'm surprised any firm is prepared to insure works of art in Brazil. Note: the Picasso drypoint I've used for illustration isn't one of the stolen works.

Operation Rize

In raids on 7000 safe deposit boxes in London beginning on 2 June, Metropolitan Police officers seized three paintings by 17th Century Dutch artists and a 20th Century portrait by a Russian artist amidst a treasure trove of international criminal loot: jewellery, gold dust, gold bars, heroin, cocaine, counterfeit foreign currency, hand guns, passports, documents for human trafficking, images of child sex abuse and £53.5m in stolen cash. Officers are still searching safe deposit centres in Park Street, Hampstead and Edgware, which are being guarded by armed police. If any international criminal would like to claim his or her loot, please telephone the Met. on 0800 030 4613. (Information from Met. Police Crime Bulletin 0000000881, 2 June, title link.)

David Shepherd Award

If contemporary art depresses you, cheer up. One of our finest and most popular living artists, David Shepherd, will be exhibiting at the Mall Galleries in London from 24 to 28 June, together with family members Mandy Shepherd and Emily Lamb. Their artwork is just part of the exhibition: David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation: Wildlife Artist of the Year 2008 and Three Generations. Hundreds of wildlife artists from around the world entered this competition in its first year, and the results will be on display. Admission is free!

Rogues' Gallery

Today's news item about U2 putting up for auction some tripe - a "masterpiece" of course - by Jean-Michel Basquiat (CLICK) offered a link to In pictures: Art's record-breakers (17 May 2007). It looks more like a Rogues' Gallery than art. Even the Banksy is one of his worst. Damien Hirst's Four Elements (shown) is the best of a very bad bunch! Click the title link to be dismayed.

Pretty Boy Update

Collared! British Transport Police have arrested a 16-year-old youth. He's been bailed until 30 June while the Crown Prosecution Service ponders his case. So he's already back on the streets! You can see why foreign criminals come to London. The latest crime news is that up to £15,000 worth of drain covers have been stolen from roads in Harrow so far this month. BBC London News quotes Councillor Susan Hall: "These thieves are currently stealing gully grates faster than we can replace them" (CLICK). What a way to run a metropolis! The sooner we get out of Europe, raise the drawbridge and lower the portcullis the better. And bring back the oubliette!

New Arts Competition

UK arts magazine Aesthetica has launched an annual Creative Works Competition worth £500 to each winner of one of three categories: art, fiction and poetry. It's open to anyone anywhere in the world, but written work must be in English and there is a £10 entry fee. Images must be JPG, TIF or PDF files, at least 300dpi. The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2008. Click the title link for more information.

Pop Pyramid

Duran Duran has become the first pop group ever to perform at the Louvre Museum in Paris, in the Louvre Pyramid designed by I.M. Pei. The charity gig was a fundraiser for the restoration of a Louis XV drawing room in the museum's 18th century Decorative Arts Gallery.

Meet Piglet Boots

No, this isn't one of those Worth1000 image-changing jobs. It's a genuine photo of Piglet Boots, real name Cinders, a saddleback piglet from Yorkshire. She suffers from mud phobia. While the rest of her family frolicked in the glop, she stood primly aloof, never daring to dip a trotter in the mire. So the farmer's daughter suggested Wellington boots. Bingo! Cinders happily joined her siblings in the mud. Click the title link to see the video, if you don't believe me. Click it anyway.

Who's A Pretty Boy?

Londoners, do you recognize the most idiotic mugger in the capital? He steals a necklace and bracelet from a 16-year-old youth on the Underground - black on black crime, judging by the chunky jewellery -; then, having made good his escape, dons the stolen necklace and stops to admire his reflection in the nearest security camera! Who's a pretty boy, then? Somebody put this idiot behind bars, please.

Recycling Old Tyres

At first glance this looks like a furry caterpillar having a bad hair day. Come to think of it, at second glance it does too. Believe it or not, this is an alleged work of contemporary art by Chakaia Booker, using old rubber tyres and bits of wood. I'm all for recycling, but this is ridiculous. And the pretentious title: The Fatality of Hope (2007)! Are we sure that shouldn't be "The Futility of Hope"? Find it if you must in a recently opened retrospective at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri: RubberMade: Sculpture by Chakaia Booker. The price is right: free.

Jane Austen's Thomas

English artist George Engleheart used watercolour on ivory to paint this miniature portrait of Thomas Lefroy in 1798. Jane Austen is believed to have based the character of Mr Darcy in Pride And Prejudice on Lefroy. This should add to its price as well as to its interest: £50,000? It's up for sale at the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair in London from 12 to 18 June. Click the title link for further information.

UK Cannabis Hothouses

Contemporary art? Well, in a way. This image has been digitally altered to simulate a thermogram of a house which is being used for cannabis production. Thermal imaging cameras, used by police on the ground or from helicopters, are the means of detecting cannabis hothouses. BBC News Magazine has published a rather cosy piece on this criminal activity. What it fails to mention is that since last year Britain has been self-sufficient in cannabis production, thanks to Vietnamese gangs which also smuggle people into the UK and use them as slave labour. They evade massive heating bills by hot wiring straight into the electricity mains. Most of them are based in Ghetto London. Crime in the old metrop. costs us approximately £400 each per year!

Art On Remand

The Dulwich Picture Gallery in London recently opened an unusual exhibition: Kennington Kids: Raw Urban & Art on Remand. It's the fruit of one or two of those youth projects which try to keep kids on the straight-and-narrow. The art looks interesting. I can't tell you much more than this because the website has the details on a PDF file which I refuse to download. Why are those cumbersome Yankee PDFs so damned popular all of a sudden? Is Adobe bribing webmasters to use them or is a new generation of webmasters too lazy to learn HTML? The exhibition continues until 20 June and is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 1pm to 5pm. Pity it couldn't have stayed open for the school summer hols.

Kung Fu Panda

Meet Po, otherwise known as Kung Fu Panda. This work of art first popped up at the 61st Cannes Film Festival (CLICK). DreamWorks Animation's butch little fellow has just had a great weekend, taking £30.4m ($60m) and kicking hyped-up chick flick Sex And The City off the top of the US box office. If he looks a bit strange, that's because he's a red panda, not one of those black-and-white giants which get all the attention. Here Po tries out the one-legged-locust position. Ouch!

Book Sale Saturday

Local news: there's a BIG book sale this Saturday 14 June, from 10am to 3pm, in the foyer of Central Library, Clements Road, Ilford, London. There'll be novels, paperbacks, reference books, videos, CD's, talking books, junior fiction and non-fiction and old sheet music including miniature scores.

BP Portrait Award 2

When I posted news of the BP Portrait Award 2008 yesterday (CLICK) I forgot to mention that you could view the shortlisted entries on the National Portrait Gallery website. Click the title link, then click on the artists names to view their works. I've combined thumbnails of their paintings into a single graphic, from left to right:
Simon Davis - Amanda Smith at Vincent Avenue
Peiyuan Jiang - Untitled
Robert O'Brien - Hannah O'Brien
Craig Wylie - K.
My favourite is Craig Wylie's K: breathtaking detail and psychological depth. A real person. Superb.

Spare A Quid, Guv

Back in March, Tate Britain got its begging bowl out to raise £6m to stop Rubens' oil sketch The Apotheosis of James I (ca 1628) from being sold abroad. The sketch is worth £11.5m. King Charles I commissioned the work for the ceiling of the Banqueting House in Whitehall, London. I must admit I'm a bit jaded with pleas for cash to save English heritage, especially as we seem to be saving it for invading foreigners who don't don't give a fig for Merry Olde England. And the sketch doesn't show up well on a monitor. My guess is that I'm not the only one feeling jaded, because TV historian David Starkey has recently steamed in to back the campaign (title link). If you're flush and feeling patriotic, send your cheques to Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain, who will happily accept all the credit for saving the Rubens.

Football Art

Despite BBC TV's desperate attempts to hype up a British audience for its coverage of Euro 2008, Coxsoft Art doesn't care less which gang of overpaid prima donnas scores more goals. However, here is something that might be construed as art: a giant football and football boots on display outside the Vienna Museum to celebrate yesterday's kickoff. CLICK for Wien Museum Karlsplatz.

BP Portrait Award '08

On 12 June the National Portrait Gallery in London will open its doors to the BP Portrait Award 2008. This year nearly 1,750 artists from around the world submitted portraits to the competition in hopes of winning the first prize of £25,000. The exhibition consists of 55 works, including those by the four shortlisted artists: Simon Davis for Portrait of Amanda Smith at Vincent Avenue, Peiyuan Jiang for Untitled, Robert O'Brien for Hannah O'Brien and Craig Wylie for K. Every visitor to the exhibition will have the chance to vote for his or her favourite. Click the title link for more information.

Gérôme's Corinthia 2

Yesterday I posted a graphic of the painted plaster model of Jean-Léon Gérôme's Corinthia (1903-04) which he completed just before he died. I thought you might like to compare it with a version made after his death (right). How do you prefer your courtesans: as hard-faced tarts painted with fashionable lipstick or as bronzed goddesses? CLICK for a 1024 x 756 graphic.

Lowrys Fetch £11.5m?

Yesterday's BBC News headline screamed "Lowry paintings sell for £11.5m", but its figures don't add up. It quotes a Christie's spokeswoman as saying the total amount of money raised from the sale was £11,592,163. Did she mean the sale of the Lowrys or the total of works sold at Christie's auction of 20th Century art? Oh, muddled reporting, Aunty. Or hype. This painting - Lowry's Manchester City vs Sheffield United (1938) - was sold after the auction for an undisclosed sum.

Babyshambles Art

"New Glasgow Boy" Peter Howson is exhibiting a number of drawings and paintings depicting Babyshambles shambles ... er ... singer Pete Doherty as dead. (The lad has been in and out of court lately on drugs charges and was briefly jailed.) Howson says the pictures are a warning against drugs. Flattering likeness, don't you think? And peaceful. More Babycham than Babyshambles.

Nice Art Robbery 2

In August last year I posted news of four paintings stolen from the Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret Museum in Nice (CLICK). French fuzz recovered them after a surveillance operation and collared the villains trying to sell them from the back of a van. "Bonjour, guv. Wanna buy a Brueghel?" Claude Monet's Falaises pres de Dieppe has been stolen once before. Alfred Sisley's Allee de peupliers de Moret has been stolen twice before! Security seems a bit cavalier at the Beaux-Arts.

Bill Henson Vindicated

The obscenity investigation into Bill Henson's photos of naked 13-year-olds - photos confiscated from the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney - has been dropped. Today the New South Wales Police admitted that the director of public prosecutions saw no reasonable prospect of a successful prosecution. Sense has prevailed, but Aussie PM Kevin Rudd refuses to retract the label "revolting" he applied to the photos. If he had any decency he would apologize to the teenagers involved. And their parents. Look at this photo which sensitively captures a quiet moment of intimacy between two young people. Obscene? Revolting? No way. Aussies, you've elected a clueless and insensitive Philistine. So what else is new? We do it in the UK all the time!

Gérôme's Corinthia

Grab your chequebooks, folks. Sotheby's Paris auction of 19th Century Paintings & Drawings on 25 June features this gem sculpted by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904): the original plaster model for Corinthia. Gérôme died before he could complete the marble version, which his assistant Emile Décorchement completed and showed at the Salon of 1904. Estimated value in Euro thingies? A snip at 200,000 to 300,000.

Tony Sees God

Catholic convert and ex-PM Tony Blair recently announced he intends to devote the rest of his life to faith (title link). He's going to bring all the world's religions together into one big happy family. Oh yeah? Has he tried walking on water yet? I couldn't resist a graphic.
"Cherie, I've seen God."
"Yes, I know, Tony. Why the frown?"
"He's got more hair than I have."
"It's only a painting, Tony, by Michelangelo."
"Who?"
To think we had a closet creationist in charge of Britain for all those years. No wonder the country's gone to the pit bull terriers.

Tracey Emin RA

A furore has already erupted over that zebra at the RA Summer Exhibition (next post down). It's an automaton by Mat Collishaw depicting his former girlfriend on her knees receiving the zebra's amorous attentions up the rear. (Safe to assume theirs wasn't an amicable breakup.) It was selected for the show by Tracey Emin RA (yes, RA!) who curated the room of "outrage". Her selections also include a photo of a woman's genitalia during menstruation and a video of a woman being lacerated by a barbed-wire hula-hoop. Why didn't someone have the sense to blackball Emin? Allen Jones's Derriere shown here is one of the more tasteful selections. Groan!

RA Summer Exhibition

According to BBC London News, the 240th Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition opened today. Not to the public it didn't. Aunty tends to get confused about press days. As soon as BBC cameras get inside, an exhibition must be open. According to the RA website, which crashed soon after I accessed it, the Summer Exhibition opens on Monday 9 June. BBC cameramen aren't the best of art connoisseurs; they tend to point their cameras at the most glaring tosh they spot. So, if the exhibition looked worse than usual, it could be their fault. The one eye-catching work I glimpsed before a nervous BBC editor cut away from it was a zebra with an erection mounting a naked human (bit early in the day for that sort of thing). All I can tell you from such a fleeting glimpse is that it wasn't a Greveys zebra.

Darwin's Canopy

Today the Natural History Museum in London opens a new art exhibition: Darwin's Canopy. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 2009, the Museum invited 10 artists to submit ideas for a permanent artwork to be installed in the ceiling of one of its galleries. Their initial sketches, drawings and mock-ups will be on display until 14 September. Entry is free. Click the title link.

Rural Britain

There seems to be a competition going on to see who can invent the longest title for an exhibition. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge must be in the running with 'The field calls me to labour': Watercolours of nineteenth-century rural Britain by Robert Hills (1769-1844) and his contemporaries. Find it in the Charrington Print Room (Gallery 16) until 7 September. Cambridge is only a short burn up the M11 from Ghetto London, if you can still afford the petrol. Go on a sunny day and visit the Cambridge University Botanic Garden too (CLICK).

Fernand Léger in Basel

An imaginary conversation at the Fondation Beyeler in darkest Basel concerning the hanging of Fernand Léger's Les grands plongeurs noirs (1944), otherwise known as The Big Black Divers, for its summer exhibition Fernand Léger: Paris - New York.
"Here, guv, we got this the right way up?"
"Er...mm...yes."
"But their feet are in the air."
"That's because they're plongeurs."
"Eh?"
"Divers, man, divers."
"You sure, guv?"
"Of course I'm sure. That's the title: The Big Black Plongeurs."
"Why...?"
"Don't ask."
"Looks like an orgy, with their feet sticking up."
"You're not paid to be an art critic, Igor. Just hang the bloody thing."
"All right, guv. Keep your hair on."
(Click the title link to see if Coxsoft Art has indeed got the "plongeurs" the right way up.)

Dell Judgement

Coxsoft Art's spy in the Americas informs me that computer manufacturer Dell recently came a cropper in the New York Supreme Court. "Dell has engaged in repeated misleading, deceptive and unlawful business conduct, including false and deceptive advertising of financing promotions and the terms of warranties, fraudulent, misleading and deceptive practices in credit financing and failure to provide warranty service and rebates" (Justice Joseph Teresi). Nasty! I haven't heard of similar complaints against Dell UK. My main criticism of Dell UK is that it installs Windows Vista™ on its PCs as standard and wants to charge £50 for replacing it with Windows XP™. So it's forcing Microsoft's white elephant on the mugs and charging discerning punters for a tried-and-tested old platform. Sharp practice or does Microsoft have Dell by the balls? Dell UK will sell you an expensive high-end business computer with XP installed, thanks to a loophole in its contract with Microsoft. Sorry, Dell-boy. No sale.

Masako Natsume

If Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy in Journey To The West seem familiar (next post down), you may be old enough to recall this lovely young actress: Masako Natsume (1957-1985). She played Tripitaka in the late 1970s Japanese TV series Monkey, based on the novel by Wu Cheng'en. Masako died from acute leukemia at the age of 27. The Sunflower Foundation, a Japanese cancer organization, has been dedicated to her memory.

Pigsy For Olympics

The BBC has unveiled sample graphics from the cartoon opening sequence of its Olympics coverage, designed by Gorillaz boys Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. It features heroes from the classic Chinese tale Journey To The West: Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy. Here they are around Beijing's bedpan stadium. Pigsy is tucking into a hamburger! So much for promoting a healthy sporting lifestyle. The Olympics is a ridiculously overpriced way to keep couch potatoes entertained for a couple of weeks. For the rest of us, all that remains to be seen is which drug cheats cop it this year and which escape detection. And will the Muslim Council of Britain riot over the BBC's use of Pigsy? He's unislamic, Aunty. Tut, tut. Click the title link for more graphics.

Deckchair Dreams 2008

The Royal Parks Foundation, the charity for London's eight Royal Parks, has unveiled its new Deckchair Dreams collection for 2008. Various artists were commissioned to create designs for the Foundation. The Charity Auction takes place tomorrow, Tuesday 3 June. If you'd like to bid for one of these chairs, click the title link and send an e-mail.

Recycle Week 'Art'

To mark Recycle Week, which begins tomorrow in the UK, Robert Bradford was commissioned to make a 20ft high model of Big Ben out of cola cans. Here he is using a power tool to drive a screw into his erection on London's South Bank today! For Heaven's sake, Robert, what's wrong with screwing by hand? And why cola cans? If only we could persuade the world's teenagers to stop drinking the filthy stuff, this would reduce CO2 emissions far more effectively than recycling their cans. What do you think puts the fizz in cola? CO2! And anything that makes us burp or fart is bad for the planet. To view other pointless things Robert does with recycled rubbish, click the title link.

Universal Studios Blaze

A huge fire has blazed all day at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California, and this time it's for real. Three firefighters were injured while trying to bring the inferno under control. Historic back lots have been lost. Click the title link to view pictures of the inferno.

Pandemonium in UK

No, this isn't a Turner and those aren't sailing ships engaged in a sea battle; they're electricity pylons. This Mickey-taking daub is an exhibit from Pandemonium In The English Landscape ("a search for meaning in the land of the lost") by dynamic duo STOT21stCplanB. It opens at The Aquarium L-13 in London - a gallery with a sense of humour - and runs from 6 to 28 June. There's also a free live musical performance and "noise" on 24 June at 7pm. Click the title link for details.

Aussie Nude Teens Row

Art News Blog (title link) has published one of Bill Henson's photos of a naked 13-year-old which caused Aussie fuzz to go bananas and close his exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney (CLICK). Here it is, so you can decide for yourselves. I can't comment on seized photos I haven't seen, but this one is a sensitive, discreet, beautifully backlit photo of a pretty teenager. So her breasts are bare. Big deal. She would show far more of her anatomy when walking up the beach in a wet bikini. If this is what Aussie PM Kevin Rudd describes as "revolting", he's a complete plonker. So I'm tentatively with Kate Blanchett on this one. She and 42 other arty types signed an open letter defending the photos and commenting that the police action risks damaging Australia's cultural reputation (CLICK). One thought seems to have eluded everyone who's making hysterical accusations: Did the parents sign consent forms for these photo shoots? I'll bet they did.

Lightbox Wins Again

A week ago I reported that The Lightbox in Woking, Surrey, had won the £100,000 Art Fund Prize 2008 (CLICK). Now it's the turn of its designers: Marks Barfield Architects. They've won the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Award for the South East Region, which covers Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Guernsey and Jersey. This puts them in the running for the RIBA National Awards. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in the London Hilton on 27 June.