Barbara Levine displays the few pieces of ephemera by one of the biggest names in Mexico’s Modern art history here.

The findings include: “16 small oil paintings, 23 watercolors and pastels, 59 notebook pages (diary entries, recipes, etc.), 73 anatomical studies (some dated prior to Kahlo’s disfiguring 1925 trolley accident), 128 pencil and crayon drawings, 129 illustrated prose-poems, and 230 letters to Carlos Pellicer, the Modernist poet and Frida’s close confidant, many adorned with sketches — skulls, insects, lizards, birds… a small box holding 11 taxidermy hummingbirds. There are pistols, such as an ornate 1870 Remington; a tricolor Mexican flag, its central white panel altered to celebrate Leon Trotsky (“Troski”) and the Communist Party, to which Kahlo and Rivera belonged; hotel bills; photographs; receipts for sales of Rivera paintings; an embroidered huipil, a traditional Mayan blouse; an intimate diary, with one entry expressing Frida’s intense (and unrequited) erotic attraction to lesbian ranchera singer Chavela Vargas; a French medical text on amputation, painted over with blood-red pigments; and more.”

I’m a bit bored by the conversation that was sparked after this about the value of art and how art made by women sells in auctions compared to how art by men does.  Saltz concludes that if we can’t rely on an institution and space like MoMA for refreshing art, it’s up to the little guys, the smaller galleries throughout New York to bring unknown artists into the scope of “good art.” As Saltz used Facebook as a venue for this discussion, we’ll use this blog to display the treasures of art created by women mined from the internet and local galleries.  Stay tuned.

On one hand, the photographer seems like publicity hound, and by posting this we’re playing right along with his plans. The lawyer’s statement: “There are nude sculptures and paintings all over the museum. It’s the height of stupidity accusing a live model of showing the same thing in a house of art” is spot on, except that Hyman has also posed his nude models in subways, so the “but there’s naked ladies EVERYwhere in a museum!” defense loses some credibility.

But look: fuck em if they can’t take a joke.

It’s a truism, but we’ll say it anyway. The history of art includes a long line of radicals challenging conservative tastes, often using sex and bodies. See: Lolita, Last Tango in Paris, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Manet’s Olympia, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, and Sargent’s Madame X, which was considered so prurient in its day that the artist painted over an earlier version in which the model’s dress strap dangled from her shoulder. Oh, and Madame X hangs in–you guessed it–the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The fact that Neill is facing charges of public lewdness is disappointing. Will she have to register as a sex offender because of this? Come on, Met. You can do better than this.

A photo of Madam X as she originally appeared (1881)

In related news, the Gorilla/Guerrilla Girls’ take on female nudity at the Met:

“In 1995, a “weenie count” done by the Guerrilla Girls at the Metropolitan Museum showed that 85 percent of the pieces that depicted nudes depicted naked women while only five percent of the displayed artworks were created by women. This statistic prompted one of the Guerrilla Girls’ critiques, a poster asking, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”

Madame X as she appears today, with strap on shoulder (1883-4)

So the question is, do women have to be naked images to get into the Met?

Those investigating how the building packed with unique cultural treasures collapsed, killing two people, heard on Friday night that the ground underneath the building had started letting water into the foundations last September – and the building was shown to be subsiding in February.

That’s some sad shit, let’s hope it doesn’t happen to the world economy.

(our mention of the archives collapse a few weeks ago)

Here are some wonderful factoids:
+ Dust ain’t dust if it’s diameter is more than 500 micrometers
+ Much of indoor dust comes from skin cells — and your body sheds its entire outer layer of skin once every two days!
+ According to the German Environmental Survey, approximately 6 mg/m²/day of house dust is formed in private households
+ Nearly 1000 dust particles per square centimeter settle on domestic surfaces every hour
+ If dust gets airborne its categorized as an aerosol–which we just figured out means a solid thats in the air! Brill.
+ Space Dust! The zodiacal light seen in the dark night sky is produced by sunlight reflected from particles of dust in orbit around the Sun
+ Most obviously awesome and gross, dust mites: they are everywhere, in all dust, and they eat it and poop it out, creating even more dust. Yum.

Much to our delight, we discovered there’s even an online Museum of Dust, with some really, really cool posts. Huzzah!

See also, Kipple, and the Fun Science Gallery’s dust scans.

Oh, and good luck getting this approved by Bobby Jindal, who will surely want to rebound from his Kenneth-the-page rebuttal speech by funding a PETA museum. Oh, funding, we forgot, he’s rejecting $98 million for the unemployed in government stimulus funds. Way to bring it home, Bobby. What a mensch!

An extra tip to New Curator for the highly literate “this reminds me of Artaud” reference.

Oh, we’ve tried so many times to be a veggie. But bacon…tastes…so…good.

*Tonight*
Nonprofit Happy Hour
Thursday, March 12, 2009, 6pm – 8pm

Revival Bar, near Union Square

We know it’s not easy times for nonprofit organizations right now.
And that means it is not easy times for those of us who work for nonprofits.

Come find out about starting a UNION at your workplace.
Strategize with nonprofit workers about how they are using their UNION to address job security, layoffs, hiring freezes, transparency, and workload issues that are affecting all of us right now.

For more information about unionizing at CWA 1180, visit http://www.cwa1180.org/organize/nonprofit.shtml