• Andrew Kuo’s “My Wheel of Worry, May 2010″ (Tiny Vices via TWBE)

• Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is screening in full at IFC through June 3rd 10th.

• Matthew Barney and Björk also had their pictures taken (opposite Marina Abramović, of course).

• Abramović fanboy Paco Blancas has sat with her 14 times (and counting), which is apparently enough times to get MoMA to interview you for their blog.

• Roy Lichtenstein at Gagosian

When we think of still lifes, we think of paintings that have a certain atmosphere or ambience. My still life paintings have none of those qualities, they just have pictures of certain things that are in a still life, like lemons and grapefruits and so forth. It’s not meant to have the usual still life meaning.

–Roy Lichtenstein.

Roy Lichtenstein
Still Lifes
Gagosian
555 W 24th St (at 11th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
212 / 741-1111
May 8, 2010 – July 30, 2010

• The new Banksy work in downtown NYC have already been, um, vandalized by the likes of IRAK and Poster Boy (supporters).

• Tag by China’s ABS Crew (NeochaEDGE)

• Hedi Slimane recently posted a series of photos of Jonathan from the Drums on his blog (alongside images of Johnny Rotten and Joe D’Allessandro).

• James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem—who has been getting mediocre-to-good (but mostly good) reviews for This Is Happening—answers fan questions for Opening Ceremony.

I love a shitty idea that you just totally go 100% with.

–James Murphy.

• Greg.org has a neat list of commonly mispronunced artist names.

• Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org present No Fun—click through for the amazing video. Their latest show consists of bits of famous work that they pinched from museums and galleries. (Animal) (UPDATE: Commentary, and an essay on the Mattes’ virtual reperformance from a year ago. Thanks Greg.) (Almost but not really related: art theft in Paris.)

Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org
Reality Is Overrated
Postmasters Gallery
459 W 19th St (at 10th)
New York NY 10011 [map]
212 / 727-3323
May 15, 2010 – June 19, 2010

• 2010 FIFA World Cup Official Art Posters! A well-executed, if predictable, promotion; check out the rest from the likes of Marlene Dumas, Julie Mehretu, and 14 others. (TWBE) Footnote: Kentridge’s show at MoMA is worth seeing as well.

• Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture (NYT)

• Surface to Air – Colder Front launch event at Oak

Surface to Air
Colder Front
Oak
28 Bond St (at Lafayette)
New York NY 10012 [map]
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 20, 7–10pm

• Plus, a spot of Ai Weiwei coverage for good measure:

His cultural and political footprint is unique in a country where people generally face a choice between thriving within the confines of the system or shouting from the shadows outside it. For the moment, he is attempting to do both, and nobody is at all sure where that leads. As Chen Danqing, a fellow artist, puts it: “He is doing something more interesting, more ambiguous…. He wants to see how far an individual’s power can go.”

Ai Weiwei is an evangelical believer in transparency: He chronicles his own life online and on film and, in particular, he has taken to documenting his interactions with officialdom with blunt precision.

–Evan Osnos, Ai Weiwei’s Transparent Life,
Letter from China blog on the New Yorker, May 17 2010

Osnos also suggests some recommended reading on Ai Weiwei.

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Optimo flyers via RA (linked below)

Optimogeddon: a seven-hour Fin-de-Siècle blowout mix for your next seven-hour Fin-de-Siècle blowout. (I’ve only listened to Part 1 of 5 so far…)

On April 25th, the greatest club night in either Glasgow, the UK or the world (depending on who you ask) finishes. Optimo (Espacio), the brainchild of JD Twitch and JG Wilkes, arrived quietly at Glasgow’s Sub Club in 1997, and set about blowing the cobwebs off a stale, self-congratulatory Glasgow techno scene through a simple core philosophy: If it sounds good and makes people dance, play it.

Now, after 12-and-a-half years of sublime, genre-straddling, how-did-they-do-that acts of weekly musical witchcraft, combined with a zero-tolerance approach to “DJ culture”… it will all be over.

–The Nights That Dreams Are Made Of: An Optimo Oral History, Resident Advisor

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GQ’s “Rock the Suit 2010” editorial anticipates forthcoming (/recently released) albums from a handful of indie superstars: MGMT (above), The National (below), The Walkmen, (surprisingly?) The Drums [previously], and David Byrne with collaborators St. Vincent and Santigold [previously] decked out in this season’s  (The notes about the designers read like Patrick Bateman’s internal narrative in Ellis’s American Psycho.)

The National performed and discussed their fifth LP High Violet at WNYC’s Greene Space on Monday (I made it out there for the live session, but honestly, the webcast is just as good as being there). In a potentially lucrative promotional move, the new album was streaming in full alongside a recent NYT profile of the band (only “Bloodbuzz, Ohio” is available now).

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Chuck Klosterman asserts that Beck’s “Loser” is the defining song of the 90’s because it illustrates how MTV was instrumental to the mainstreamification of alternative culture in the pre-Internet era. (Incidentally, Vice, which recently declared that it wants to be the new MTV, was founded that very same year.) (Spin)

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[I'm a little late on this one, but] blogosphere darlings Pomplamoose put the Indie Pop Fun back in Viral YouTube Sensation… or something to that effect. (NPR)

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New Holy Ghost! track; they’re opening for labelmates LCD Soundsystem for the four upcoming New York dates during the latter band’s current world tour.

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Flying Lotus’s forthcoming Cosmogramma streaming on his MySpace.

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Mister Cee’s Guru tribute mix for Hot97. (RapRadar)

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Oh My Gaga.

» The Drums – Let’s Go Surfing (2:54) – 3.9MB mp3 @ 184kbps

I first encountered the Drums last July, when my friend Sean* booked them for the Jezebel Music monthly showcase at Public Assembly. He convinced me to go with the simple claim that “They’re awesome.” Prior to seeing them, I had a vague notion that they might sound like the Liars, probably because I conflated their name (the only thing I knew about them at the time) with Drum’s Not Dead. I was dead wrong: the two bands fall on opposite ends of the rock spectrum (though both bands display a solid command of harmony), which I might have suspected when Sean mentioned that he liked the song with whistling. If the Liars specialize in making meaning from avant noise, the Drums achieve a pure pop aesthetic by channeling 50’s surf-rock with 80’s post-punk undertones.

In any case, Sean was right: they were awesome, putting on one of their much-hyped high-energy shows and I ended up picking a copy of the Summertime EP (which was available at the show before its official release a month later). It was as good as anything I heard last year.

The Drums at Bowery Ballroom on January 13th; Will Deitz for Pitchfork (click for full set)

They’ve played at least a million shows since last summer, mostly in NYC (including a sold-out show at Bowery Ballroom last Wednesday), and it seems that they are going to be quite buzzy busy in the new year.

Anyway, the Drums are featured in the latest issue of ‘Sup Magazine, which has an interview and a super-washed-out/overexposed photo shoot by Milan Zrnic. They’ve also been interviewed by Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan (more mp3s) in the past couple months.

Let’s hope they don’t get washed out or overexposed in 2010.

(Yes this post would have made more sense last week, before the concert at Bowery Ballroom.)

*Sean made a brief appearance in my adventures last Thursday; he had actually booked another Jezebel gig that very night, which was where he went after we ate at Vinnie’s.