© MURAKAMI at MOCA

October 29, 2007–February 11, 2008
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90013

One of the most internationally acclaimed artists to emerge from Asia in the postwar era, Takashi Murakami effortlessly navigates between the worlds of fine art and popular culture and is best known for his cartoon-like, “superflat” style. This major traveling retrospective includes key selections spanning the artist’s career, from the early 1990s to the present. The installation at MOCA will include more than 90 works in various media—painting, sculpture, installation, and film.

Piotr Uklanski: Summer Love at the Whitney

October 17 - December 9, 2007

Summer Love (2006), the first feature film by artist Piotr Uklanski, appropriates one of American popular cinema's most classic genres -- the Western -- to create an allegorical movie. Uklanski shifts the Wild West frontier of America's past to the present of post-Communist Eastern Europe. Shot in southern Poland with a mainly Polish cast (dialogue is in English), the film's stock characters are instantly recognizable to viewers for whom the myth of the American West is ingrained by the Westerns of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Yet Uklanski's film is "a copy of a copy", referring to the European spaghetti Western as much as to the American 'original'. As Uklanski explains, it exploits cinema's most codified genre to address issues of cultural authenticity. With its impressive cinematography and strong performances, including an appearance by Hollywood star Val Kilmer, Summer Love functions not only as a conceptual statement, but also as a genuine Western, adding to the grand tradition of the genre.

Richard Prince

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
NEW YORK
Through January 09 2008

Richard Prince has in recent years become one of the inescapable artists of our time—a fascinating development, given that for years his work seemed to appeal to only a coterie, whereas some of his Pictures peers quickly secured critical approbation and visibility. Prince now reigns as one of the most influential figures for young artists drawn to his cunning amalgams of grunge and glamour, conceptual spark and pop-cultural savvy. This retrospective includes some 175 of the artist’s works, among them his “Gangs” photographs, “Nurse” paintings, and “Hoods” sculptures. The catalogue includes essays by curator Nancy Spector and Jack Bankowsky and interviews by Glenn O’Brien with Phyllis Diller, Kim Gordon, and other cultural luminaries, who allegedly form a composite adumbration of Prince’s themes with regard to mass-cultural connoisseurship.

Miranda July - Learning to Love You More

In 2002 artists Harrell Fletcher and artist/writer/filmmaker Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know” and the recent story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com ) founded a website that gives art “assignments” to the public and posts the resulting photographs, drawings, videos and texts.

Five years, sixty-three assignments, and more than five thousand reports later, http://learningtoloveyoumore.com has become that rare site that actually inspires you to step away from the computer and into your life.

Fletcher and July have carefully selected the most extraordinary entries from this vast and growing archive and collected them in the new book, Learning to Love You More. Over 200 kisses, banners, public acts, arguments, and imaginary phone calls are collected here.

The result is by turns hilarious, moving, inspiring, and always thought-provoking—a challenge to the traditional idea of what and who makes art. A paperback priced low enough to be accessible to all, this collaboration is a complex and poignant look into the way people really live, think, act, and love.

Christian Holstad

Jeff Koons "Hanging Heart"

The record price set earlier this year for Damien Hirst’s Lullaby Spring piece is already being challenged. Jeff Koons’ sculpture "Hanging Heart" from his Celebration series is on view at Sotheby’s in New York awaiting their upcoming Contemporary Evening sale. The published estimate of $20 million creeps just above the price paid for Lullaby Spring, $19.3million, which set the record for highest auction price for a living artist. The brilliant magenta heart and gold undulating bow, which took ten years from conception to completion, is one of five uniquely colored versions. Executed in high chromium stainless steel and coated with ten layers of paint, itweighs over 3,500 pounds, measures almost nine feet tall and took over 6,000 man hours to produce. The other sculptures in the Celebration series include Cracked Egg and Balloon Dog.
The hammer price for Hanging Heart will likely far exceed another of Koons’ sculptures, Blue Diamond, which will be presented at Christie’s the evening prior. That piece boasts a still impressive $12 million estimate, more than doubling the price paid for the Michael Jackson and Bubbles sculpture in 2001.