Bits: 02.15.09

Huang Xu's Fragment No.26, made from tattered bags from Chinese dumps, via Arts & Ecology.

• As the art industry's bubble bursts, there's hope for a return to, y'know, art. That's the gist of Holland Cotter's New York Times piece today. While he gets nostalgic for scrappy '60's NYC art, he makes some quoteworthy points, like: "It’s day-job time again in America, and that’s O.K. Artists have always had them — van Gogh the preacher, Pollock the busboy, Henry Darger the janitor — and will again. The trick is to try to make them an energy source, not a chore."

• Modern Art Notes' Tyler Green tweets that Cotter can't "see past the trading floor. He thinks market equals art, artists equal retail. (Groan.)"

• Régine reports that an exhibition that documents the practices of butchers in rural Mexico has been postponed. The show by Abdel Abdessemed at Italy's Fondazione Sandretto Rebaudengo includes a work that shows six videos of animals at slaughterhouses -- raised specifically to be turned into meat -- being killed with sledgehammers. When the work, Don't Trust Me, was shown at the San Francisco Art Institute, it was shut down after four days, following death threats against the artist and gallery staff over what they termed "animal snuff films."

• Hoopla, the "world's most revolutionary craft zine," is looking for submissions.

• Kick(gr)ass! Our own Snarkmarket says that the entire "American Experience" documentary on Walt Whitman is available online.

• Yes, that really is John Cleese tweeting "with all the other... twats."

• Eat your heart out, Lakoff! "GOP votes against biggest tax cut in American history."