Ching Chong China Girl launch

I launched the memoirs of former ABC China correspondent Helene Chung, "Ching Chong China Girl" - at Asialink, Melbourne University March 2008

`Totem Maker' Tom Bass -

interviewing veteran sculptor, Tom Bass at his retrospective, Sydney Opera House Nov.2006

with pianist Michael Kieran Harvey after Hartley Newnham concert, Daylesford Vic. 2006

Crooked Members

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's most controversial leader since Mussolini, has blocked plans for a dramatically curving skyscraper designed for Milan by one of the world's most original architects, Daniel Liebskind - on the grounds the tower is not `manly' - ie. erect - enough.

According to The Art Newspaper Liebskind hit back, calling Berlusconi `abominable', while Italian cultural guru Umberto Eco's view on the building was: " Milan is full of people with crooked members, there will simply be one more in need of Viagra".

NOT Paying Tribute to Robert Rauschenberg

it's brave to speak ill of the (recently) dead but writing in The New Republic, Jed Perl opines that like "contemporary con-artists such as Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, and Jeff Koons - Rauschenberg put a high-art style price tag on the ordinary. . As for his art, it stank in the 1950s, and it doesn't look any better today." read more here

Art: the Best Place to Park Your Millions?

While the GP puzzles over just what is art and experts make perilous judgements over whether it's `good' or `bad' - the art market's gone ballistic, with Christies' breaking the record auction price for a living artist, $33,641,000US for Lucian Freud's portrait of a fleshy naked woman: "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping".
(Freud has a penchant for painting either very thin or very large bodies, eg. the Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery) .

$348 million worth of art was sold at Christies' New York, & interestingly, Americans bought 70% of it .

Meanwhile, over at rival auction house Sotheby's, Mark Rothko's "White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) set a record for any contemporary work at auction - selling for $72.84 million! more

Polar Bears & Publishing

You have to love the literature-savvy Jessa Crispin for founding a site titled Bookslut.com

Recent features include a look at the proliferation of polar bears on eco-book & magazine covers .

It all started with that little cub Knut; check out Annie Liebowitz's cover shot for Vanity Fair's Green issue of the particularly irresistible bear on a melting ice floe with Leonardo di Caprio: view


Meanwhile, fellow Booksluts will enjoy the editor's entertaining account of being at the London Book Fair; three days of earnest discussion on the future of the book, or how to make publishing sexy, in between her desperate search for a cup of coffee for less than four pounds, or a stiff drink. more