Art News

By Charles Kessler

Screen shot of L.A.MoCA’s Land Art exhibition website showing Robert Smithson's Spirial Jetty, 1970.  

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974 (until September 3, 2012) has a website that uses Google Maps to display the most well-known sites including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, the Christos’ Wrapped Coast and Claes Oldenberg’s The Hole.

How to Make It in the Art World is a list of 18 “rules” written by Jerry Saltz and other critics and contributors to New York Magazine. Some are fun and interesting; others will test the tolerance of any "ilunga" (see below).

This has nothing to do with art, but it’s a nice break — 25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist In English. Some of my favorites:
Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude.
Gigil (pronounced Gheegle; Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.
Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.
Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

Finally, this weekend is the biggest art event of the year in Bushwick — Bushwick Open Studios. This year there will be more than 500 studios (this is not a typo!) as well as many concerts, dances, performances and other events. Best bet: begin at 56 Bogart Street (across from the Morgan Street L train) where most of the galleries are located, and work your way south and east.