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Retain and restore those buildings that can be salvaged. Due to damage from contaminated water, extensive measures will be required to deal with mold. Gut-rehab will be required for many of the estimated 80% of the city’s 200,000 homes that have been damaged and, of course, many homes will not be salvageable. Building codes should address resistance to non-catastrophic flood damage—for example, the most flood-prone lower floors of houses should have no paper-faced drywall, no ductwork, no air handlers, no wall-to-wall carpeting, and no electrical service boxes. Retaining the character of New Orleans, which is defined in part by its vernacular architecture and its diversity, should be a high priority.

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radical painting group chronology

marcia hafif beginning again

gallery artists charlotte jackson gallery SF NM


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-- let’s elude to the new exhibition at Francis Naumann Fine Art on East 80th Street, where Mike Bidlo has installed 16 erased Willem de Kooning drawings of women, all of his own making -- the drawings and the erasures -- framed and matted, with a black-and-white photograph of the now-obliterated drawing taped to the back, and mounds of eraser shavings, or "ashes," displayed nearby under glass domes. Purchasers of each drawing get some residue of the destruction in a glassine envelope. The drawings are priced at $10,000 to $22,000.

Is Rauschenberg’s original avant-garde gesture, so shocking in its disrespect for art, and so Freudian as an esthetic Oedipal revolt, ever considered a blow against male chauvinism and its construction of woman as a devouring monster? It seems so here -- but the drawing isn’t so much eradicated as given a lighter touch.

Rauschenberg obliterated his de Kooning in 1953, during the dramatically avant-garde decade in which he also made empty white enamel paintings (designed as surfaces for cast shadows, in 1951) and painted the more-or-less identical Factum I and Factum II (as a poke at "Abstract Expressionist" authenticity, in 1957). For his "Not Robert Rauschenberg: Erased de Kooning Drawing" series, Bidlo drew copies of de K’s Surrealist portrait of a bug-eyed Elaine de Kooning from ca. 1940-41 through the "Women" series of the 1950s to a late Screaming Girls from 1967-68.

Rauschenberg’s de Kooning is now of no consequence, a mere generic marker. But Bidlo’s de K’s are all canonical, well-known, iconic. Before he proceeded, Bidlo sought Rauschenberg’s okay for the project. The master of Captiva, Fla., who turns 90 next month, sent up his sage advice: "All artists take their chances."

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Warhol made the point himself : "So on one hand I really believe in empty spaces, but on the other hand, because I'm still making some art, I'm still making junk for people to put in their spaces that I believe should be empty : i.e., I'm helping people waste their space, when what I really want to do is help them empty their space" (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol). And again, quoted by Alan Jones in Art Press n°199 : "I think every painting should be the same size and the same color so they're all interchangeable and no-one should think he has a better or a worse picture than anyone else. And if the 'original picture' is good, they're all good."

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[Q] From William B McMillan: “Do you know the origin and spelling of the police slang word pronounced skel (often heard on ABC’s NYPD Blue TV show in the USA) which seems to be used to refer to street crooks, thugs, or con men.”

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