AUSTRALIA - A NEW BOOK ABOUT THE ART OF THE STREETS

I’m bored with graffiti. Actually that’s not entirely true - what I'm really bored with is the constant inane debate over art vs. vandalism that comes with graffiti. Let’s settle it here and now, and never be so boring as to speak of it again; graffiti is art as long as it’s not done on my roller door. Ok? ok!

MICKI AND HIS MINIONS

I have a fearful reaction when I hear the phrases "performance art" and "experimental theater." I've spent many a conversation about my school days trying to gloss over my theater background--I don't want to be outed. Not that I even earned that despicable title of Theater Person while in high school; I spent more time backstage listening to Tool with the techies than preening for my breakthrough appearance as a maid in A Tale of Two Cities. My brief career did, unfortunately, extend beyond school property. I starred as Alice in a community theater production of Through the Looking Glass. I remember pissing off my director when I buzzed off most of my hair immediately after getting cast. But it was one of those experimental productions, so we worked it in--I got to be a post-modern angsty Alice...and I shudder when I remember how in the opening scene they made me talk to a Tamagotchi instead of a kitty. Ah, late-90s technophilia.

NETHERLANDS - YOU ARE ONE SICK MOTHERFUCKING MOTHERFUCKER

When we talked to Dutch artist Tinkebell a couple years ago about her “Save the Males” campaign, a project that involved throwing baby chicks through a woodchipper at a flea market, that piece garnered a lot of angry comments by anonymous blog commenters. So imagine the shitstorm of hate mail she received when she made a handbag out of her cat and posted a how-to manual about it online. After that flood of hate mail, she teamed with Coralie Vogelaar and looked up as much personal information about those people they could possibly find. Together they made a book out of it. A lot of people who thought they sent anonymous hate mails lost their anonymity that day…

SCANDINAVIA -A PEEK AT LARS KRANTZ

Lars Krantz is one of those geeks you bullied all the way through high school for playing Dungeons and Dragons and listening to heavy metal. Now he’s turned out to be one of Sweden’s most promising comic artists. Since Charles Burns is near and dear to his heart, he makes really scary pictures with one foot safely planted in reality and the other one in the grave. If you live in Scandinavia, you should pick up his debut comic album Dödvatten (Death Water) before the hype hits-–otherwise you’ll be left without, standing alone like you just dropped your ice cream cone on the sidewalk. Here are some illustrations he did for us of Josef Fritzl, a series called Prisoner of Decay.

SCANDINAVIA -A PEEK AT HANNALEENA HEISKA

Fine arts oil painter Hannaleena Heiska is part of that new wave of Odd Nerdrum-type painters, who are both skilled and good, as opposed to skilled and boring. Intricacy is traditionally something that dudes try to lay claim to, but contrary to a lot of the young painters graduating from snazzy London schools that're all about Vermeer and perfect light, Hannaleena seems to have stepped right out of a teenage girl’s fantasy. If you were wondering where to go next with this whole unicorns and wolves motif thing, here's your answer. We asked her to pick some of her current favourites, and tell us a little bit about the things her pretty, naïve, slightly disturbing images might mean to someone who’s actually been to art school. 

NEW YORK - GO SEE RENE RICARD TONIGHT

Rene Ricard is one of the art world's sharpest critics and brightest luminaries. Once a fixture in Warhol's Factory days, he's been largely responsible for ushering people like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, and Francesco Clemente to success and universal acclaim. Rene is also a distinguished artist himself. His poetry and paintings (which, these days, are usually one and the same) have been quietly lauded by the more tasteful among us as an example of how to properly combine words and imagery. You'll find an interview with him, plus a bunch of photos of him by his friend Mirabelle Marden, in our next issue real soon. Tonight from 6 to 8 Rene will peek his head out of his permanent room at the Chelsea Hotel to exhibit a new assemblage of work at Half/Gallery. He's calling it "The Torturer's Apprentice" and we bet you $1,000 in counterfeit bills that his work will exude such a high level of quality it will make you feel dignified just for being there.

AUSTRALIA - JOHN WEST WADEYE PHOTO EXHIBITION TONIGHT

We ran a story about our visit to Wadeye, the remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, last year that was accompanied by amazing photos by John West. We'll be showing you the documentary we made during the trip on VBS.tv in good time, but in the meantime, you can see more of John's Wadeye photos at an exhibition which opens tonight at the Convent Gallery in Melbourne.

NEW YORK - IN WHICH I SEE ART AND I CAN'T HANDLE MY SHIT

Somehow it happened that in all my years of living in Brooklyn, I'd never been to the Upper East Side. But when I heard that there was a place called "The Metropolitan Museum of Art," I decided it was as good an occasion to venture beyond Houston as any. I loved art. Art was one of my favorite things! I'd loved art ever since I saw a Takeshi Murata video piece on Vimeo, and this noise show at Goodbye Blue Monday last year only made me more excited to visit an entire non-warehouse building full of "art." Little did I know the horrors that awaited me.

BRAZIL ISSUE EXTRA - GREAT, BUT WHAT DO THE BUILDINGS LOOK LIKE?

Hold up there, not so fast. You did read our featured story today about Oscar Niemeyer, the man who built a city out of curves, and probably you watched the extended remix of the interview on VBS—and perhaps you even read the shitty reason why Santiago Fernandez-Stelley, who conducted the interview, did so in his swimsuit. While that’s all well and good, probably you’d like to see what these buildings look like, right? Assouline is releasing a massive book of just that, and by massive we mean big enough to build a house out of itself--the thing is like three-by-five...feet. It costs something more than $500, which, even though the photos are beautiful enough to make those of us who are as concerned with architecture as we are with Arsenio Hall’s cricket bat collection actually consider wanting it, is insane unless you’re some kind of shah. So. Go ahead and click down-theresly for a preview of some of the images.

NEW YORK - MAGGIE LEE'S FIELD TRIP MIX

The Martin Kippenberger show at the Museum of Modern Art has a larger-than-lifesize installation that takes over the whole first floor of an egg, sunny side up, alongside office desks of opportunity and failure. You can also see it from the sixth floor, where his large flyers, monochromatic film still-esque paintings, airbrushed paintings, abstract geometric paintings, sculptures, recordings, books, and other miscellaneous installations take over like 11 rooms. When I went there on a field trip it was a little too much so I had to sit down... excessiveness was his steez. It ends today, so please go check it out, but "The Printed Picture" is up till mid-July. It shows the matrices of prints from etchings of the Renaissance to contemporary photocopy technology. Here, I even made you a mix for your trip...