Bad At Sports

This week: Duncan and Richard are extremely excited to talk to legendary cartoonist Chris Ware! They discuss Chris's work and career and much, much more. Duncan pokes fun at Richard for being a dork! Much mirth, music, and mayhem is had by all. This show is not to be missed!!! Photo by Tom VanEndye.

This week the San Francisco Bureau continues their series of critics round tables. Patrica and Brian are joined by the curator Joseph del Pesco, as they take a look at the early exhibitions of 2009 in the Bay Area. During the conversation they discuss Dave Lane, Heny Darger, Mads Lynnerup, Paul McCarthy, Coulter Jacobsen, and more.

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This week: Duncan and Richard talk to artist, professor and musician Jim Lutes about his work, his career, and his recent show at the Renaissance Society."Chicago-based painter Jim Lutes is often considered heir to the Imagist tradition. This, however, is only part of the story. Having come to artistic maturity in the late 1970s, Lutes exemplifies a larger and more complex historical narrative that entails the emergence of figuration and regionalism under the declining influence of Abstract Expressionism. This would be born out over several bodies of work in which Lutes would vacillate beween a populist mode of figuration and a painterly abstraction, the combination of which produced a style along the lines of Picasso in the 1930s or Guston in the 1970s." 

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This week: Duncan acts like a lunatic in the intro, Richard gets annoyed. Duncan talks to Stephanie Brooks about poetry, her work and her show at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Then Duncan talks to the fine folks at Mess Hall about their 5 year anniversary.

This week: Patrica and Brian round-table with Apsara Dequinzio and Alison Gass, Assistant Curators at SFMOMA about the 2008 SECA award. Apsara and Alison let us in on the unique curatorial process of the SECA award, including leading tour buses of museum patrons through rapid-fire studio visits. SECA, the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, is an auxiliary group of SFMOMA and has honored bay area contemporary artists since 1967. The 2008 winners are Tauba Auerbach, Desirée Holman, Jordan Kantor, and Trevor Paglen, who's work will be on display at SFMOMA begining February 12, 2009.

This week we welcome Dan Wang as a new Chicago Correspondent!  He sits down to talk with the University of Chicago's Wu Hung about the Smart Museum show "Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art." It is an excellent and interesting interview, however and unfortunately the last 10 minutes or so of this interview has same sort of technical glitch that created noise on the audio and makes the dialog difficult to hear, Bad at Sports regrets the problems. Wu Hung (as lifted from the U of C website) Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, East Asian Languages & Civilizations, and the College; Director, Center for the Art of East Asia; Consulting Curator, Smart Museum of Art. Wu Hung specializes in early Chinese art, from the earliest years to the Cultural Revolution. His special research interests include relationships between visual forms (architecture, bronze vessels, pictorial carvings and murals, etc.) and ritual, social memory and political discou

This week, Kathryn sits down with Olga Stefan, editor of CAC's Prompt Journal, and Jason Foumberg, Arts Editor of New City. Together, they discuss/debate/debunk the recent talk about the Chicago art scene being dead and accusations about a lack of discussion in this city. Kathryn whips out the math, proposing that if the Chicagoland population comprises 1/700 earthlings on the planet, aren't we adequately represented in the global art world market?   Jason also discusses the Chicago Art Critics Association group project coming up at Ispace. Richard continues the official campaign of contrition for Duncan's crimes against Lauren Vallone. Lastly, our low-impact pledge drive continues, please help out if you can!!!

This week: Brian and Patricia sit down with Southern Exposure's executive director Courtney Fink. Courtney describes how one of San Francisco's oldest non-profit art spaces evolved during its many recent relocations around the mission district. Southern Exposure is a 34 year old, non-profit, artist-run organization dedicated to presenting diverse, innovative, contemporary art, arts education, and related programs and events in an accessible environment. Southern Exposure reaches out to diverse audiences and serves as a forum and resource center to provide extraordinary support to the Bay Area's arts and educational communities. Activities range from exhibitions of local, regional, and international visual artists' work, education programs, and lectures, panel discussions, and performances. Southern Exposure is dedicated to giving artists—whether they are exhibiting, curating, teaching, or learning—an opportunity to realize ideas for projects that may not otherwise find support.ALSO: Mike Benedetto reviews Tw

This week: THE AMANDA BROWDER SHOW!Amanda talks to Nick Lucking and Tim Ivison about www.spcmkr.com and their various projects.SPCMKR facilitates and documents space exchanges, providing a site through which to organize a gift-economy between users. The web-based component of the project provides an interface for locating and contributing resources, arranging for temporarily inhabiting surplus spaces, and documenting both the exchange and the activities that occur while in residence. SPCMKR is a way in which to proliferate small everyday surpluses, allowing for flexible, friendly opportunities, rather than engaging with government or institutional power structures. SPCMKR should be understood not as a residency to which you apply but rather as a network in which you can contribute and benefit from the exchange of resources.

This week Patricia and Brian chat with Lawrence Rinder, currently the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Previously he was the Dean at California College of the Arts, curated for the Whitney Museum of American Art, and founded the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art at CCA. He has curated numerous exhibitions including the 2002 Whitney Bienial. In this conversation, they discuss BAMPHA's new building, arts education, the future of the museum, and the Bay Area art community. At the end Larry agrees to come back on the show in the future to discuss all the curatorial projects in his past thay didn't have time to discuss.

It's our annual Holiday extravaganza. Now with even more Hanukkah content than ever before! Enjoy the show, have a safe and happy holiday!

Mark Staff Brandl, the Central European Bureau and EuroShark, is in Central Illinois this time, interviewing Prof. John Jennings and Damian Duffy, curators of the traveling exhibition "Out of Sequence: Underrepresented Voices in American Comics," which originated at Krannert Art Museum in Champaign. Jennings and Duffy discuss their curation of several shows, their own art and writing such as the graphic novel The Hole, their teaching, the extension of sequential art beyond the "Masters of American Comics" notion, theory, the socio-political, African-American culture, impurity, art history and more. Hey Kids, Comics, Fine Art and Filosofizing! Big fun for one and all

This week a sick Duncan MacKenzie bumbles his way through a dramatic and sweeping discussion with Mark Napier.  They speak of "Net Art," its less then stellar critics, and how we think about these new kinds of cultural products.Napier was an early pioneer of net art and is still charting it's future at Potatoland.org.  His interview is followed by Terri and Joanna discussing the new book "Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex" by Ellen Sussman.  The intro is a gem.

Duncan "the fieldmouse" MacKenzie interviews Mark "The EuroShark" Staff Brandl, theorist, writer, professor, artist, and contributor to Art in America, Sharkforum and Bad at Sports.Richard expresses concern that Duncan is off his meds. 

This week: Gallerist, blogger, straight shooter, and tough-love proponent Edward Winkleman. Ed tells it like it is and gives some much needed advice for the young artist. Edward Winkleman is vastly different than Babe Winkleman, although both are highly respected in their fields.

This week, guest host James Yood and Duncan interview Derek Guthrie, co-founder of the New Art Examiner for an illuminating history lesson.New Art Examiner was a Chicago-based art magazine. Founded in October 1973 by Derek Guthrie and Jane Addams Allen, its final issue was dated May-June 2002.At the time of the New Art Examiner 's launch, in October 1973, Chicago was "an art backwater." Artists who wished to be taken seriously left Chicago for New York City, and apart from a few local phenomena, such as the Hairy Who, little attention was given to Chicago art and artists.Called in Art in America "a stalwart of the Chicago scene," the New Art Examiner was conceived to counter this bias and was almost the only art magazine to give any attention to Chicago and midwestern artists (Dialogue magazine, which covered midwestern art exclusively, was founded in Detroit in 1978, but it has also ceased publication). Editor Jane Allen, an art historian who studied under Harold Rosenberg at the University of Chicago, was i

This week the blogosphere unites!  Duncan checks in with Paddy Johnson the author of the wildly popular New York art blog, Art Fag City.Art Fag City is as relevant as Eric Fischl. New York art news, reviews and gossip.Trivia of note. This week Duncan asks a question that shatters all prior records for length clocking in at a breathtaking 2:51!Guinness will be sending people to confirm the record.

Episode 166: Meg Cranston at He Said She Said.This week Pamela Fraser of He Said She Said joins Duncan in interrogating Meg Cranston about being cool, getting punched, smashing sculptures and the substance of air.  From Wikipedia...Meg Cranston (born 1960) is an artist who works in sculpture and painting as well as a writer. She has exhibited internationally since 1988. She received and M.F.A in Studio from California Institute of the Arts in 1986 and a B.A. in Anthropology/Sociology in 1982. She also attended the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, The Netherlands in 1988. She is on the Faculty at Otis College of Art and Design. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including a New School of Social Research Faculty Development Grant, an artist grant from the Penny McCall Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship,a faculty research grant from the Center for Asian American Studies at UCLA, Architectural Foundation of America,  Art in Public Places Award, and a C.O.L.A. Individual Artist's Grant from Los