Bullied Bikes

While spending some weeks in Paris two summers ago, I had the thrill of my life jetting through traffic on a petit Velib bike amidst imposing architecture, crepe stands and marble sculptures. Today, the New York Times contained an article about the battered bikes which are facing a wave of vandalism and theft:

Many of the custom-made bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.
With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them.

...

“We miscalculated the damage and the theft,” said Albert Asséraf, director of strategy, research and marketing at JCDecaux, the outdoor-advertising company that is a major funder and organizer of the project. “But we had no reference point in the world for this kind of initiative.”
At least 8,000 bikes have been stolen and 8,000 damaged so badly that they had to be replaced — nearly 80 percent of the initial stock, Mr. Asséraf said.
JCDecaux must repair some 1,500 bicycles a day, which absorbs the efforts of 400 fulltime staff members. The company maintains 10 repair shops and a workshop on a boat that moves up and down the Seine.

...

It is commonplace now to see the bikes at docking stations in Paris with flat tires, punctured wheels, or missing baskets. Some Velib’s have been found hanging from lamp posts, dumped in the Seine, hidden in basements, on the streets of Bucharest or in shipping containers in Marseille on their way to North Africa. Some are simply appropriated and repainted.

...

Still, with more than 63 million rentals since the program was launched in the summer of 2007, the Vélib’ has established itself as part of Parisian life, and has been extended to provide 4,000 Velib’s in 29 smaller towns on the city’s edges.
So, despite the increasing costs, the city and JCDecaux are pressing on. The company invested about $140 million to set up the Vélib’ system and provides a yearly fee of about $5.5 million to Paris, which also receives rental fees for the bikes. In return, its 10-year contract allows it to put up 1,628 billboards that it can rent.

...

JCDecaux will not discuss money figures, but the expected date for profitability has been set back. But the City of Paris has agreed to pay JCDecaux about $600 for each stolen or irreparably damaged bike if the number exceeds 4 percent of the fleet, which it clearly does.
In an unsuccessful effort to stop vandalism, Paris launched an ad campaign this summer. Posters showed a cartoon Vélib’ being roughed up by a thug. The caption read: “It’s easy to beat up a Vélib’, it can’t defend itself. Vélib’ belongs to you, protect it!”


Joe Dassin - Les Champs-Elysees

Mixing it up at the MoMA

Ann Temkin, Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC

In a recent NY Times article about the MoMA's newest Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Ann Temkin, I was happy to read the following from a woman perhaps more knowledgeable than anyone else regarding modern and contemporary art:

In the year and two months since she succeeded John Elderfield in the job, Ms. Temkin, 49, has been working to break with the past herself — most surprisingly, perhaps, in her approach to the so-called permanent collection. Ranging from van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (1889) and Matisse’s “Dance (I)” (1909) to de Kooning’s frenzied “Woman, I” (1950-52) and Andy Warhol’s “Gold Marilyn Monroe” (1962), this collection — or rather a selection from it that has been on view for decades — has done more than any other to define modern art and shape the public’s understanding of its history. The 26 rooms of the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Painting and Sculpture Galleries, which have housed these highlights of the collection on the fourth and fifth floors of the Modern’s “new” building since it opened in 2004, might reasonably be regarded as sacrosanct: the heart of the museum and of modern art generally.

But under Ms. Temkin, the permanent collection display is quickly becoming less permanent. Galleries that once changed only when works were loaned out are now subject to frequent renewal. For the first time, media other than painting and sculpture appear frequently throughout the Barr galleries. Artists who never quite made it into official “schools” are getting more play, and schools that the museum once passed up are getting pride of place.

Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture “Quarantania I” (1947-53)

Even small changes, like swapping out a single well-known artist for another, can make for major shifts in the museum’s familiar and stately narrative of modernism’s progress. The fourth floor, covering the early 1940s to the early 1970s, used to begin with Jackson Pollock’s “Stenographic Figure” (1942). Now Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture “Quarantania I” (1947-53) sets the tone for the entire era.

Ms. Temkin emphasized that she was not pushing for wholesale change. “I want the visitors who come back again and again to encounter new work, but some of their favorites will be there. We want them to eat their cake and have it, too.”

But her larger point, she said, is an art historical one about how a familiar parade of greatest hits is misleading to viewers. “I want to be true to the collection and what really goes on in art — that there’s more than you can possibly know, rather than the falsely reassuring view that you can get your head around it all,” she said.

...

Despite the shifts, Ms. Temkin knows that some greatest hits, and some famous chapters of art history, are not optional.

Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” isn’t going anywhere. Room 2 on Floor 5, with Cubist works by Picasso and Braque, won’t be morphing radically. “This is pretty tightly choreographed,” she said. “We’re the one place in the world where you can see the development of Cubism all together. It would be perverse not to do that.”

But she is committed to a more experimental approach. “Some things may not work out,” she said, but “fear of failure” should not be an obstacle to undertakings like her unframing of the abstract works.

Watch

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

An amazing video of graffiti creeping across walls

Lightening McQueen?

Erwin Wurm "Fat Car" (2005)

Just discovered this sculptor today and I love the stuff I can find on google - really playing with form, texture and absurd ideas. That said, I couldn't help but think of Pixar's film Cars after seeing this piece...

Chop Sue

This morning I read an interesting article about the history of Chinese food in America. Atop the text sat this painting by Edward Hopper:

Edward Hopper (born Nyack, NY, 1882-1967), Chop Suey, 1929.

The painting brought me back to an American Art course I took a few years ago. In it, the Professor highlighted an odd fascination of early American artists (working before Ab-Ex in the years of 1900-1950) with the Chinese Restauarant. Most of these artists were working in New York, where, according to the article above, the first whiteys took a stab at eating the exotic cuisine. Here are some of the other works that revolved around the developing love for Chinese chow:

Max Weber (born Byalistok Poland, 1881-1961), Chinese Restaurant, 1915

John Sloan (born 1871, Lock Haven, PA -1951), Chinese Restaurant, 1909