I was recently at the Tate Moden in London and the Modern Design Museum about 10 minutes away - and honeslty; they actually must be on an inside joke by making all these "cultured" art freaks ooh and ahh over RUBBISH [LITTER, STREET CRAP, WHATEVER YOU CALL IT] to make us commeners have a good snigger at them

There was also this one exhibit where naked people danced like jesters around a giant penis [on video] as well as rode horses bareback and such things - i being the immature tyke i am [as did all my friends] burst out into raptures of laughter. Then went back to do it again

What? It was boring a shit - i dont come to art galleries to see a man with 4 penises or a big room of....rubbish - or more importantly, a big triangle designed to ....represent a vagina.

It was fucking awful. Bring on the Lovure i say.

I get that people are trying to make symbollic statements with what they are doing - but art is about emotion over symbolism any day. Yet there was a "natural" area of the tate modern that was quite interesting.

Heh? I hate the Louvre. What a horrible place. There are many ways to botch art, but all of them have one comon thread, and that's the assumption that art is inherently valueable because it is art. The Louvre makes this mistake just as much as any contemporary art museum. I still believe in such lovely things as art informing discussion, and the inverted triangle vagina might have had potential (I don't know, I haven't seen it). I don't think its just about visual pleasure. Whats pleasing to the eye changes, and often making works that are intentionally discomforting can be quite smart. They have to be done right though. I've been to the Tate Modern....I thought it was terrible when i was there too. They believe their work is worthy of viewing in much the same way the Louvre does. I hate shoddy curation. Anyways, there are great spaces too. I know Mike and Dkmuto said it was neat and for walking through, but if that be the case, I highly recommend going down to Pittsburg to The Mattress Factory. Now that's a space that does some very intelligent installation art and its over four or more floors, so plenty of interactive aspects. The sound garden was being updated last I was there, so I can't speak for it. Go to the Louvre Michael, I did, just to get it out of your system. Hehe. There are mch better classical museums in Europe that are not as decontextualized, or just literally cram so much stuff randomly onto walls. There are more palatable museums in Dublin and Edinburg for sure, and as far as the U.S. goes, I really think for large art museums that smartest ones are Philly and Boston. For smaller collections I really liked some of the wealthy estate ones with tons of gardens, etc. Like the Huntington gardens in L.A., and the Frick Collection in N.Y. I'll shut up now because I could go on forever...Mike, nice cartoon, that's hilarious. Toilet papering the house...

Big article in this week's Newsweek about the Dali show in Philly!

I wanna go....

Mike, buy me a plane ticket. Thanks.

*Bwahahahaha!

With $3.50 and a Dream, the 'Anti-Christo' Is Born

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 18 - You've seen Christo's "Gates" in Central Park. But what about Hargo's "Gates" in Somerville, Mass.? Sure, Hargo is unabashedly riding on the coattails of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. But it did take him some time to make his gates: 0.002 years, he estimates. That's a good chunk of a day. You may as well take a look:
not-rocket-science.com/gates.htm.

Just who is Hargo? Is he some kind of genius wrapper? His name is Geoff Hargadon, he is 50 and, in a telephone interview, he would only say, enigmatically, "Art is not my profession." His last installation was a studio full of discarded ATM receipts. The show was called "Balance." It was about "people, privacy and money," he said, adding: "You want to know how much people have? Here it is."

Like Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Hargo used recyclable materials for "The Somerville Gates." Unlike them, he accepts donations to defray the cost of his installation, which was $3.50. The mayor of Somerville did not come to the unveiling, on Valentine's Day.

Does Hargo have a Jeanne-Claude at his side? His cat, Edie, is a redhead, like Jeanne-Claude, he said on the telephone. But his partner in art is his wife, Patricia La Valley. Together they installed "The Somerville Gates" at their home on Monday night, while watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on television. They took pictures, posted them on a Web site and sent the link to 30 friends by e-mail. Within 24 hours, the site had 99,000 hits.

"The Somerville Gates" has now become, Mr. Hargadon said, "the anti-Christo."

Each saffron-colored gate that makes up "The Somerville Gates" is a 3.5-inch-high structure made of wooden dowels, cut-up roof shingles and clear corrugated plastic, all painted with orange tempera. (Hargo made 16 individual gates and moved them from room to room, following Edie's footsteps.)

On the Web site, the installation begins with the Door Gates, then moves on to the Poopatorium Gates, the Fridge Gates, the Table Gates, the Feeding Gates, the Tub Gates, the Fluffy Rug Gates, the Desk Gates, the Media Gates and finally the Stairway Gates.

There are some obscure parts to the installation, at least as it appears on the Web. You can't really see where you are when you approach the Poopatorium Gates. The sinuous path of the orange flags seems to run alongside a bed, or perhaps it is a hallway. What is that black thing looming in the distance? Where is the kitty litter?

A few passages of "The Somerville Gates" sound as if they're going to be repetitive. Did Hargo really need to have Fridge Gates, Feeding Gates and Table Gates? But if you spend some time on the site, you will see that each passage has its own aura. The Fridge Gates have an airy feel while the Feeding Gates have a finality to them, dead-ending at a blue bowl and a hungry cat. The Table Gates passage is ominous, with dark table and chair legs dwarfing the little orange structures.

For pure beauty and rhythm, you can't beat the Stairway Gates. But the Media Gates are the most suspenseful and loaded with meaning. At the tip of a V-shaped arrangement of orange gates sits a television screen. On the screen is a baleful looking dog. (He was one of the contestants in the Westminster dog show.) You can see Edie the cat looking over the gates and staring down the dog. The situation cries out for a mouse to run the gates' gantlet.

Mr. Hargadon said he had told his friends not to call him Geoff or Mr. Hargadon anymore. It is just Hargo. But he doesn't go for bombast. "I like the idea of 'The Gates,' but maybe something smaller, something more subtle." Something more like "The Somerville Gates."

"There are no invitations," Hargo says at the Web site. "There are no tickets."

"If anyone tries to sell you a ticket, do not buy it," he continues. "The Gates are not for sale. Neither is the cat."

"Signed photos, however," he writes, "are available directly from the artist in limited editions."

There is no wind blowing these gates, no matter what the weather. So you don't have to pick your viewing date. And the Web site will stay up for a long time. The Somerville installation itself, though, is ephemeral. It goes down when "the cleaning lady comes."