One unintended consequence of David Ross’s appearance on the Colbert Report last year has been the misunderstanding of intention. …more

Allen Ginsberg claimed that his reading voice was an imitation of the voice with which William Blake spoke to him in his visions and dreams.  Once you hear Ginsberg read, you are stuck in his dream forever.

Javier Marias, the prolific Spanish author who blends wit and private conspiracies in unparalleled ways, was on KCRW’s Bookworm yesterday. As one would expect from the lengths of the provocateur’s written sentences, the interview went on so long that they had to split it up into two shows; the second one airs in a week. New Directions used my quote from a SFBG review as a blurb for the newly released third volume of Marias’s Your Face Tomorrow trilogy. I say that he is “sexy, contemplative, elusive, and addictive.” But I’ve never heard his voice. I’m about to. I’m kind of afraid.

The group exhibition Amor Fati (Love of Fate) opens at the Joyce Gordon Gallery in Oakland tonight.

Curator Lian Ladia has put together a potent mix of artists who aren’t afraid of politics and aren’t afraid of the subconscious. Highlighted by a “visual anthropological sculpture” by SFAI instructor and Bay Area gem Carlos Villa, the show includes work by Malaquias Montoya, Kwatro-Kantos, Faviana Rodriguez, and painterly duo MIJU, to whom I once wrote a letter as a review. Whether you love or hate your fate, this is a show to be reckoned with. The reception is from 6-8pm. The show runs through February 8th.

On the other coast, Brooklyn gallery Jack the Pelican sees the opening of A Space Exodus, a smart and irreverent show by Larissa Sansour featuring, among other things, “the first Palestinian on the moon.” The opening lasts from 7-9pm tonight, and the exhibition runs through February 7th. It’s fitting that Sansour’s show is opening while viewers have around 24 hours left to see the Wallace Berman show at Nicole Klagsburn in Chelsea. Exhibiting videos that took way too long to make, the two artists share an essential sense of humor, an aesthetic calm, a pained delight.

Larry Sultan is dead. The photographer behind Pictures from Home passed away from cancer on Sunday at the age of 63. The SF Chron, NY Times, and LA Times have similar obits. In 1990, Catherine Liu (yes, that Catherine Liu) talked to Sultan for BOMB about his home movies project; in the interview, Sultan says: “I want to measure how a life was lived against how a life was dreamed.” …more

The 2009 music release schedule is winding down, so people have started making their arbitrary top-whatever lists.

While such rankings might be more potent some years from now, when we see which albums are actually still in rotation (like tomorrow’s Leonids meteor shower, where “trails laid down by the [meteor's parent] comet in 1466 and 1533 are expected to be the chief contributors to whatever happens”), some late-season releases and tours guarantee that this presidentially revolutionary year will be known as the year of the resurrected voice. …more

Writer and artist Alasdair Gray is his own best nightmare. It took the modern Scottish bard twenty-five years to finish Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), his fat, strangely inspirational novel of urbanism gone awry. …more

At BushwickBK.com, Mimi Luse reports on a one-night-only multimedia Lil’ Wayne-related show, curated by Audrey Berman and Pete Deevakul. With Claude Léveque and Bruce Nauman squaring off at the Venice Biennale, Studio Von Birken’s Louis Vuitton-meets-Lil’-Wayne parody is as potent as a neon spliff.

It’s hard to look at some of Nauman’s work and not think about the fonts that haunt us, and it’s hard to think about that without visualizing the fabled Twin Peaks letterjobs. Now, writes LENSCRATCH, David Lynch is a “photographer,” too.

At Frieze.com, politics and kitsch at Akram Zaatari’s solo show.

In Cabinet, rhythmic role playing: “As far as­ we know, onl­y one man took him up on the proposal, an expat American card-carrying communist jazz trumpeter and polyrhythmic prodigy named Conlon Nancarrow.”

At what point does the viewer start seducing the artwork?

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I keep the first picture in mind, but I frame each new picture as if it’s its own composition, bearing in mind that it is related to what came before it and what’s coming after it.

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“And he came to interview me and suddenly I felt like he was trying to corner me. ‘Oh, what’s it like being a terrorist,’ and ‘You’re just doing it for shock value so people will buy your records.’

“And then he said, ‘When I was young…’ and I was like, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘Oh, when I was young, before I formed my political opinion, I used to think John Lennon was cool.’

“And I was like, ‘So that means after you formed your political opinion, you didn’t think he was cool, because you thought they were all, like, wanky left-wing liberals. And that means you’re a right-wing conservative, so you’re going write me up as a terrorist.’”

- M.I.A. talks to Negar Azimi in Bidoun

Sometimes, in the work of German-Danish artist Christian Lemmerz, a “child’s christening is symbolised with a baptismal font in white marble with the inside shaped as a baby coffin….[A] wet grave filled with Kölner Wasser, to dampen the stench.”

In “Corpus Delicti” at the Copenhagen branch of Gallery Faurschou, the lifesource is in the details. The gallery has posted a slide show of the dark, luminous exhibition.

Established by artist David Buckland in 2001, Cape Farewell coordinates cultural responses to climate change. One dope thing they do is send groups of artists, musicians, educators, writers, and scientists into the arctic–not forever, just for a trip. Past expeditions have included Feist, Amy Balkin, Vikram Seth, Jarvis Cocker, and Gary Hume, creator of the Hermaphrodite Polar Bear, below. …more

Back in Santa Cruz, I marveled at Ukulele Dick and Oliver Brown, maestros of ukulele songsmithing and quirk. But sometimes a song is not just a song. Sometimes it’s an extended, operatic adventure, more like an urban folk ballad, played by San Francisco musician Annie Bacon. Bacon’s Folk Opera debuts tonight at the Noe Valley Music Series and then travels around the country. She composed it entirely on ukulele, with parts for upright bass, fiddle, trumpet, and multiple voices. The voices will take you to another world, one that just happens to be this world.

Shirin Neshat is consistently astonishing. In Art in America, Eleanor Heartney talks with Neshat about her ongoing project of lyrical short films, and now a feature, based on Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur’s magical 1989 novel, Women Without Men. Cabinet presents “Deception as a Way of Knowing,” a conversation between D. Graham Burnett and Anthony Grafton: “Sometimes you are just reading along in an old book and wham, it’s like you sat on a cat!” At Art Basel, Paddy Johnson wonders if there will ever be an economy so poor that it “completely eradicates bad art.” Bidoun blogs the Venice Biennale. Tyler Green waxes on The NGA’s so-called America. People still collect the Beats. And LACMA on Fire would like you to know that there’s a big scary vase at the Getty.

You look at a John Wesley picture and you feel a thousand things at once. As a part of the Venice Biennale, Prada, or the Prada Foundation, is presenting a retrospective of the American pre-pop master’s vivid work (The Daily Beast has posted the online gallery). But “blockbuster” retrospectives aside, you look at a John Wesley picture, or a bunch of John Wesley pictures, and the world is a sweeter, harsher place. Wesley must dream in skin-tones. His lines always billow, his vision is extraordinary. Let’s just pray that his increasing recognition doesn’t end up in a commission for an animated vampire film.

The Juan MacLean finally have a new album out. A much-anticipated garden of electronica songsmithing, The Future Will Come is tremendous, careful, and sleek; it will blow your little mind-feet! The Juan MacLean is touring with The Field (What’s the deal with band names that demand the definite article? Is it related to the demise of newspapers?), starting tonight in Los Angeles, hitting San Francisco on Saturday, and then taking off all over the world, including a stop at (!) The Montreux Jazz Festival. Mosi Reeves has a dope article about The Juan Maclean in The San Francisco Chronicle this week, where frontman/producer John MacLean says that the band’s sound is “a consequence of making electronic/dance records for predominantly indie audiences.” I have such an indie crush on DFA Records, it’s ridiculous.

Was Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster mad at DC Comics–or even his own creations–for betraying him? Was he taking some sort of delight in putting his characters through this alternate world? (NSFW) …more

“Excluding men and showing only women is a revolutionary gesture of affirmative action. But the museum is avant-garde. It’s part of the Centre Pompidou culture to do things differently. And we like a lot of drama. This is going to be dramatic in a big way.” The Pompidou is preparing for a year without men. The LA Times reports.

Sir Richard Bishop is a lot of things to a lot of people. He’s a gentleman! He’s a post-punk Guitar God! Now the half-Lebanese indie instrumentalist is about to release an expansive little record on Drag City called The Freak of Araby. It’s somewhere between the energized peacefulness of Yair Dalal and the teasing kitsch of 3 Mustaphas 3 (video), with a slight hint of Fairuz’s boldness. Veering from the meditations of “Entra Omri” to the spastic yelps of “Blood-Stained Sands,” the songs are miniature epics. It’s gonna take me awhile to place this record, but I know it’s good. Bishop’s on tour, starting tonight.

My friend Margaret has some good ideas, like DJing a monthly night of Northern indie pop. She might call it Nordic Track. That’s a perfect name, indicating how we would skate to Jens and Beyond. Maybe it will happen someday. For now, we have the San Francisco Popfest 2009. They’ve invited poppy folks from all over the place to come play in SF, starting tonight. The bands have names that would make Jonathan Lethem proud: Suburban Kids with Biblical Names, The Hidden Cameras (who’ve had to cancel their appearance due to visa problems…), My Teenage Stride. The Popfest has put together a sweet video pastiche of many of the artists that will be performing. Here are some highlights and extensions. …more

The future and the past converge in this month’s art coverage. Fecal Face interviews Damon Soule about having multiple dreams at the same time.  Gene Moreno and Ernesto Oroza tell e-flux about Little Haiti. In Cabinet, Aaron Schuster writes about The Cosmonaut of the Erotic Future. Nick Cave’s transcendent politics leap off the page, via Natalie Bell, in Art Papers. Jim Jarmusch talks to Amy Taubin in Artforum, and for Nafas/Universes in Universe, Omnia El Shakry takes on the controversies surrounding the jury selections of Egypt’s 20th annual Salon El Shabab.

Sébastien Tellier recently toured the States, bringing a spacious European balance to “sex music” from this side of the pond, such as the brilliant, raunchy new Peaches album, I Feel Cream (which imeem is streaming for free, thanks to XLR8R). Tellier proves that sexiness and emptiness are never far apart. (pics and video after the jump) …more

“I got the idea to exchange each word in a poem I’d written with an emotionally equivalent sound. When I had exchanged all the words, I had made an electronic composition without even knowing it. After that I’d found my technique and no longer had the need for words.” Vice interviews intergalactic musical mastermind Ralph Lundsten.

She always knew it would come to this. A screaming horde of bucknaked smutcrazed rapists banging on her glass ticket kiosk. She crossed herself and with a single prayer commended her soul to the Lord’s Everafter and consigned her flesh to the Devil’s own Here and Now.
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Kindle, iPhone, Stanza, “media pads,” whatever. Sick of news about things you can’t afford that do things you don’t need done? Head to the Donna Seager Gallery and put your little mits and screen-numbed eyes on the dope selection of treasures at the “Fourth Annual Exhibition of Handmade and Altered Artist Books,” The Art of the Book, which runs through May 31st. Seager is a gem in the art world, and this is why. Artists this year include William T. Wiley, Victoria Bean, Tor Archer, Erin Sweeney (dress book!), and Richard Lang of Electric Works, who has written some Museum Stories!

Having been delivered by a (former) Merry Prankster in a Santa Cruz hospital, I was especially enthralled to learn that Gus Van Sant has received Ken Kesey’s blessing to make a film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Please, Lord, may it not involve Jack Black. [via Galleycat; thanks, Ron!]

Tonight in Berkeley, Donald Richie comes all the way from Tokyo to talk about his life in Japanese film and the arts in general. He’ll be chatting onstage with Telluride Film Fest co-founder Tom Luddy. The event is being put on by Berkeley Arts & Letters. I’ve been looking forward to meeting Donald since I began working at Stone Bridge Press some years ago. Whether scribbling about the Inland Sea, Truman Capote’s mysterious visit to Japan, or sensual divinities (in Erotic Gods: Phallicism in Japan), his writing is both authoritative and deeply personal. Susan Sontag wrote that “his lateral view opens up fresh perspectives on many human gestures and ways of doing art and society.” In the East Bay Express, Anneli Rufus has a nice take on Donald, as a prelude to the event; in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Johnny Ray Huston also has a thing or two to say. Want a preview of Donald’s voice? Check out this curious 2005 interview with Michael Krasny.

There are a number of reasons I wish I were in London today. Most of them are aesthetic. Take photographer Chino Otsuka’s Imagine Finding Me series, where the Tokyo-born, London-based good-kind-of-manipulator morphs together images of her former and current selves doing those portraity things that selves are bound to do. The Daiwa Foundation Japan House is showing the 2005 series through June 5th (Wallpaper has the scoop). Like to listen but not to watch? Here’s some (totally unrelated) London grime for your clean little ears.

I hate agreeing with Harold Bloom. Hate is a strong (or, in these days of media saturation, strong-ish) word, I know, but when you’re overeducated and pretend to be cool, you end up having heard such scoffs and guffaws, zealous sneers and pointless jeers at the mention of the critic’s name enough times that the (anti-)snobbery rubs off, even if, as I do, you happen to fall easily and oddly and often (if sceptically) into Bloom’s spells of (“particular”) historical illumination and (annoying) lucidity. …more

Despite–or maybe to spite–bitter winds, spring is in the air. The art world and its rags are responding in kind. In Oslo, rabbits are about to do funny things with humans. Vartan Avakian investigates his (heroic!?) namesake for Bidoun. With an eye for natural light, Hiroshi Sugimoto plays dress up with lightening and the Kyoto Costume Institute in Modern Painters. In frieze, Diedrich Diederichsen illuminates the erotic epiphanies of architecture. Marcel Dzama, whose Dracula shivers me timbers, talks to the Tate about his spooky new video for Department of Eagles. In Art on Paper, Santi Moix takes a road trip with Cervantes. And The Art Newspaper reports that the recent major art theft in Syndey included a number of fakes!