Eliasson Waters NYC

Oh Olafur. So many people love you and love your work. Does that make you suspect? Some critics have sniffed a bit at the experiential aspects of your installations. Do they have big ideas, or are they just big? Is phenomenology an art idea or an art anti-idea?

The Weather Project caused people to lie down on the floor and bask.

Round Rainbow has a formal elegance and ingenuity that may not have a big idea, but is far greater than the sum of its parts.



Today's debut of your four waterfalls around the New York's East River waterfronts and bridges has inspired a lot of talk. In the New York Times, commentary was running towards the irate: a waste of energy, money, and yet not quite big enough or powerful enough. Some are even alarmed at the thought that it is spreading disease through wafting mists of polluted river water. Still, it seems pretty neat that you got to do it, even though you told the BBC "Waterfalls I love them because everybody has something to say about them."

Photo: Vincent Laforet for The New York Times

New York Times Slideshow
New York Times Art Review: Cascades, Sing the City Energetic
The New York City Waterfalls (Official Site)
New Yorker Profile: Seeing Things: The art of Olafur Eliasson

High Prices for Low Art

Christy's of London had a record setting auction price for a Monet painting today -- $80.4 million dollars for “Le Bassin aux Nymphéas." It is a pretty painting, but since Monet's work has been reproduced endlessly on everything from shower curtains to umbrellas to trash cans, it just doesn't seem like it's all that special.

Le Bassin aux Nymphéas

The auction of Impressionist and Modern Art included works from Signac, Bonnard, Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Chagall, Picasso, Kandinsky, Lipchitz, Leger, Gaugin, Cezanne, Pissarro, Magritte, Kirchner, and Miro. Another record was set for highest price for a painting by a woman -- $10,870,506 -- for "Les Fleurs" by Natalia Goncharova.

Les Fleurs

Lowest sale: "Environs du Faou" by Eugene Boudin (1824-1898) $61,438. Looks like a comparative bargain.

Environs du Faou

But the most interesting work was by Egon Schiele. A gouache "Liegende Frau mit grünen Hausschuhen" has echoes of Japanese woodblock and pillow book, perverse and beautiful. The bedroom slippers a nice touch. And only $4,264,746.

Christie's Auction Results
NYT: A Monet Sets a Record

Disappearing Polaroids

The polaroid is disappearing from our lives, fading away like itself in reverse. Another lost medium, becoming a ghost. A tiny blurb in the Times business section back in February, a lot of angst from the artists and devotees, an article here and there, a radio piece. To no avail...

POLAROID QUITS INSTANT FILM The Polaroid Corporation, the company that pioneered instant photography, is exiting the film business and closing plants in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands as it focuses on digital photography and flat-panel televisions. Polaroid will cut 150 jobs in Massachusetts by the end of the quarter, the chief operating officer, Thomas L. Beaudoin, said. Polaroid will make enough instant film to last into 2009, and plans to license its technology to third-party companies for diehard customers. (BLOOMBERG NEWS)
New York Times February 9, 2008

Last Stock Online, June 2008

Pre-digital instant pictures used by artists, anthropologists, teenagers, coroners, architects, designers, police, dermatologists, moms, dads, kids, living room pornographers, photo booths...

Collection of Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Untitled (Patti Smith),” a 1973 Polaroid

Beautiful Polaroid Slide Show On Flickr
Beautiful Polaroid Archive at polonoid.net
Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids at the Whitney
Coroners, Police, and Artists Hurt: Boston Globe, February 27, 2008
Top Photographers, John Waters Upset: New York Magazine, May 4, 2008
Farewell, My Lovely Polaroid: New York Observer, May 13, 2008
Artists Lament Polaroid's Latest Development: NPR, February 29, 2008
Artist Stefanie Schneider And The End Of Polaroid Film: Huffington Post, March 1, 2008
Sign the Save the Polaroid Petition
Planned Disappearance Dates on polaroid.com
Save Polaroid: collective action