Catching Up

I've been away a long time now. On vacation, seeing family and old friends, but not, as it happens seeing much art. I'm catching up on my google reader now and coming across all kinds of good things though:

• I would like my holiday decorations to somehow channel this.
• An always funny literary agent blog. Writers, take note of what not to do.
• Theory: great male artists have more sex.
• My [awesome] [wonderful] donation-based yoga studio, Yoga To the People, is being sued by Bikram for teaching hot yoga. This is ridiculous. Sign the petition.
• More gorgeous, luminescent Chinese illustrations like the one above.

And, now, tis the holiday season and New York remains an almost balmy 55 degrees and sunny. Pandora is set on the Christmas station, I've already done all my holiday shopping, and now if I can just catch up on my reading, art viewing, blogging, and writing, I'll be all set until the New Year.

Holiday Movie Rec: The Maiden Heist

It is still the holidays, right? Well, if you are scrounging around for something to do with all your free time before the New Year begins, may I suggest:

Art + Crime + Christopher Walken doing comedy=
The Maiden Heist.

Obviously, I quite like the elements both separately and together. It's a fairly good film, certainly passable holiday entertainment, but you probably won't hear about it because the financing company had a bit of a hiccup and poof went the money for promotion.

The Maiden Heist stars Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken, William H. Macy, and Marcia Gay Harden in a comedy centered on three museum security guards who devise a plan to steal back their favorite artworks before they are transferred to another museum. It's a labor of love, and the characters get into all the trouble you might expect and then some. It's really worth it just to see Christopher Walken in a snorkel mask at the end. Just a thought if you don't know what to do with yourselves over the break.

New Year's Resolutions to Keep

My Resolutions:

1. I will live it up (take long weekends to new places, socialize with new people, learn a new skill, etc)
2. I will write more and with greater focus
3. I will take care of myself, e.g. sleep, exercise, and eat
4. I will stay far away from the bedlam of Times Square
   

People always make difficult or unpleasant resolutions and then lament not keeping them. Mine are lovely, pleasant resolutions. I can hardly help sticking to the third one, to some extent. What I resolve for myself in 2009 is to be fun, productive, healthy, and happy.

Sounds much better than losing 10 lbs. or being organized.

A Scrinch Lurks Deep Inside

This is a Scrinch. It combines a Scrooge and a Grinch. A Scrooge is miserly and a Grinch is miserable; both are the opposite of the Christmas spirit infusing the web and the world currently.
What does every other website have up right now? Holiday cheer, from photos to kitchen tips. What does this website have up? A Scrinch--his name is Ratter.

With the exception on one highly amusing Christmas party footage on this blog, I have not yet given it over to photos of snow angels. It's because a little Scrinch lives in the cold cockles of my blog, doling out seriousness and stress rather than merriment. He's the little voice crying, "Too much to do, must keep working." He does not yet have the Christmas spirit.

So I hugged the little Scrinch and tried to squeeze him into the Christmas spirit. He cried 'bah humbug' and bit my nose. So I stuffed him with fruitcake, but he only burped on me. I rubbed him with mistletoe, and the little bugger sneezed on me with evil glee. 'Hah!', Ratter cried.

But it's a precarious thing for a Scrinch, however unmerry, to live in a blog. I couldn't get rid of Ratter, and I couldn't make him feel the Christmas spirit. But I could dress him up and surround him with hearts and elves! Ratter's been very quiet every since I gave him a present. Gifts soften the meanest little quibbles...

Happy holidays to Ratter and to all a merry Christmas Eve!

Holiday Party Footage

Well, Reader, you missed a great time at the Art Ravel's annual holiday party last night. All the greats were there, from Chuckie Baudelaire to that wild Mr. Oscar Wilde. Lord Byron's lame foot hardly bothered him as he cut a rug. And then a surprise guest came, old Willie Shakespeare!

That's when the party really got started. Everybody shook their groove things! Now it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas here at Art Ravel's blog. Check out some of the amazing dance floor footage of the festivities here.

Hint: you really want to click on that link.

'Tis the Season Already?: Murakami's Overt Commercialism

Walking to work on 57th St. in Manhattan, I cross 5th Avenue and with it, a slew of the gorgeous shop windows remind me that the holiday season is upon is. (It's useless to protest that its not even Thanksgiving yet.) Tiffany's glistens in a classically elegant way, while Loius Vuitton exuberantly flashes.

If you want to combine art and fashion in your luxury gift giving this year, why not get that special someone a Murakami Loius Vuitton purse. As a purse, I find it beyond tacky, but the artist behind the new and exclusive print is a marketing genius, and his flat pop art tackles Japanimation and kitsch with a flatly sardonic flair.

To the left is Murakami posing in front of some of his flower images. I first became aware of his work during his summer show at the Brooklyn Musuem of Art, where in a unusual gesture a Loius Vuitton botique was installed in the midst of the gallery space. He's often called Japan's Andy Warhol, and his flat and colorful images loose some of their big-eyed innocence once once you throw in nuclear disaster and a creepier side to anime figures, like the one below.

If any of you yearn for the old-fashioned days of sweaters and fruitcake, instead of neon-lit luxury goods featuring creepy anime beings, well, you're not alone.