Robert Rauschenberg, American Artist, Dies at 82
by Michael Kimmelman
The New York Times
May 14, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died on Monday night at his home on Captiva Island, Fla. He was 82.

The cause was heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the Manhattan gallery that represents Mr. Rauschenberg.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. All became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he helped obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged, during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role. (more…)

From New Right Australia / New Zealand Web site:

The New Right is organised throughout Europe and beyond. We are strongly opposed to liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism and fight to restore the eternal values and principles that have become submerged beneath the corrosive tsunami of the modern world. The New Right has an interest in the various strands of thought connected with the Traditionalists, the Revolutionary Conservatives; the Nouvelle Droit; and the Eurasianists.

Humour as a Weapon
by Andreas Gaust
New Right Australia / New Zealand
May 8, 2008

This article has been researched and compiled for the purposes of educating New Right and N-A activists in the use of humour as a political weapon. There is a paranoid feeling amongst many on the New Right that the mass media is our greatest enemy. Not so. This article looks at the ways in which activists can use and manipulate the media, rather than the other way around.

As an example: mention the 1932 opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to any older Australian, and the first image that will spring to their mind is a man on horseback, galloping forward to slash the ribbon with his sword, before the ‘official’ representative could get to it. The swordsman was a member of a political group called the New Guard. And while this stunt was not especially humorous, it was certainly eye-catching – it remains in the mass mind to this day. In that same city in 2007, the crew of television show The Chaser made world headlines when they infiltrated the APEC forum (one of them dressed as Osama bin Laden), making a complete mockery of the forum’s expensive security measures.

In general, the media doesn’t give coverage to alternative politics (the recent 9/11 Truth Forum in Sydney was completely ignored, even though one of the speakers was a prominent Japanese MP). But ‘fringe’ views can get past the editors if they are presented by means of some humorous prank or stunt. (more…)

This Column Is Real, But Not All Authors Stick to the Truth
Deja Vu, by Cynthia Crossen
Wall Street Journal
April 7, 2008

A popular choice for ladies’ book clubs in the early 1940s was a slim volume of poetry by a 10-year-old girl named Fern Gravel. Fern had written the poems about her Iowa hometown in 1900 and passed them along to someone who had preserved them. In 1940, Fern Gravel decided to publish her nostalgic rhymes under the title, “Oh Millersville!”

Two snippets: “My Sunday-school teacher/Is Miss Minnie King./She is not of any use as a teacher/But I love to hear her sing.” “The soap they use in the Commercial hotel/Is awful; it has a horrible smell./Sometimes we have our Sunday dinner there/And the smell of their soap I can hardly bear.”

Critics were enchanted. The Des Moines Register praised the poems’ “warm feeling of validity.” Time magazine called the author a “precocity in pigtails.” The St. Paul Dispatch said “Oh Millersville!” was marked “for immortality.” And the book became the profit center for its small Iowa publisher, Prairie Press.

Six years later, Fern Gravel confessed: She was really James Norman Hall, co-author of the “Bounty” trilogy. In a 1946 article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine, Mr. Hall described himself as “shame-faced and apologetic,” but claimed that Fern had come to him in a dream and dictated her poems to him.

Literary hoaxes are almost as old as literature. Some have been inspired by poverty, others are simply pranks. (more…)

Pranks.com is one year old today!

Many, many thanks to all the supporters, contributors, readers, and friends who have made it such a great success!

images: party balloons, zombies

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia
The Moment Art Changed Forever
At the Tate Modern, London
Now through May 26, 2008

From the Tate Modern Web site:

Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia were at the cutting edge of art in the first half of the twentieth century, and made a lasting impression on modern and contemporary art. Duchamp invented the concept of the ‘readymade’: presenting an everyday object as an artwork, Man Ray pioneered avant-garde photographic and film techniques and Picabia’s use of kitsch, popular or low-brow imagery in his paintings undermined artistic conventions.

Their shared outlook on life and art, with a taste for jokes, irony and the erotic, forged a friendship that provided support and inspiration. At the heart of the Dada movement and moving in the same artistic circles, they discussed ideas and collaborated, echoing and responding to each other’s works. Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia explores their affinities and parallels, uncovering a shared approach to questioning the nature of art.

via artdaily.org

This is a 2 hour and 27 minute documentary produced by Alan Graham and edited by Don Alex Hixx as a tribute to the legendary Andy Kaufman:

You can also view it on Google or on Best Free Documentaries.

Editor’s note: Artist and pranks.com editor Joey Skaggs will be joining the online class the week of February 18. Check it out!

Tricksters and Pranks with R.U. Sirius - February 11 - March 23, 2008

Pranks and Pranksters, Tricksters & Tricks — the brilliant ones open up a space in the world for magic(k), ambiguity, and novelty. They encourage us to Question Authority and better still, they cause us to Question Reality.

In this course, we will discuss the history of pranks and pranksterism in the contemporary world. We will examine mythical and world historic tricksters like Coyote, Bugs Bunny, Crowley, Puck, Heyoka, Papa Legba, Lucifer, and more. And we’ll explore and discuss the role pranksters and tricksters play in cultures. I will also discuss some of my own pranks and tricks and legendary pranksters Mark Hosler of Negativland and Joey Skaggs will be dropping in on the course to answer questions.

Finally, we will plan pranks, make pranks, and maybe even leave the course with a dedicated prankster cabal. No fooling.

For more information visit the Maybe Logic Institute. If that link doesn’t work, go here.

Related links:

Writer, Destiny interviews RU Sirius about the online Pranks course he’ll soon be teaching:

On February 11 (Note new date), countercultural writer and historian RU Sirius is teaching an online course on Pranks, Pranksters, Tricksters, & Tricks for the Maybe Logic Institute, an online academy started by friends and supporters of the late Discordian legend Robert Anton Wilson. Sirius promises to teach trickster mythology and prankster history and to lead the class in planning and making pranks. Prankster legend/Pranks.com Editor Joey Skaggs, and Mark Hosler of Negativland, will both be dropping in on the course. I asked him a few questions about the upcoming class.

Destiny: Your course covers Pranksters and Tricksters. Is there a difference between them?

RU Sirius: There’s a lot of crossover, but yeah, they’re different. For starters, obviously the trickster is a mythological concept — or a series of mythological figures — and a prankster is a real flesh and blood mortal. Trickster activities generally take place among the gods. Tricksters prank powerful, otherworldly beings while pranksters prank schmucks who think they’re in control. (more…)

A comprehensive, alhtough theoretical, exhibition of the history of Alfred E. Newman, Alfred, We Hardly Knew Thee! continues through Feb. 7 in the Ford Gallery in Ford Hall at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. Ford Hall is north of Cross Street at the intersection of Normal Street. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mon. and Thursday.; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday. Information: 734-487-0465.

Mad for Alfred:
A new exhibit shows Mad magazine’s poster boy has a shadowy past
by Tahree Lane
The Toledo Blade
January 20, 2008

Mad magazine’s lovable poster boy is as emblematic of the last half of the 20th century as any cartoon character.

But the face we know as Alfred E. Neuman has a storied past that reaches back 200 years and has its roots in discrimination.

“The image is fluid and flexible and has been with us from George Washington to W. Bush,” says John E. Hett, publisher of the intermittent The Journal of Madness. (more…)

[Editor’s Note: Joey Skaggs will be dropping in to RU Sirius’ online class during the week of February 18, 2008 (Note new date). So, if you’re registered, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions and share comments with him.]

An invitation from RU Sirius: I’ll be teaching a 6 week online course at the Maybe Logic Academy February 11 - March 23, 2008 (Note new dates). Join us!

Pranks and Pranksters, Tricksters & Tricks

The brilliant ones open up a space in the world for magic(k), ambiguity, and novelty. They encourage us to question authority and better still, they cause us to question reality.

In this course, we will discuss the history of pranks and pranksterism in the contemporary world. We will examine mythical and world historic tricksters like Coyote, Bugs Bunny, Crowley, Puck, Heyoka, Papa Legba, Lucifer, and more. And we’ll explore and discuss the role pranksters and tricksters play in cultures. I will also discuss some of my own pranks and tricks and legendary pranksters Mark Hosler of Negativland and Joey Skaggs will be dropping in on the course to answer questions.

Finally, we will plan pranks, make pranks, and maybe even leave the course with a dedicated prankster cabal. No fooling.

Course texts:

Check here for information about the Maybe Logic Academy and an explanation of how their online classes work.

RU Sirius is co-editor of 10 Zen Monkeys and author of Counterculture Through The Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. He was a Yippie! in the early 1970s, Editor-In-Chief of Mondo 2000 in the early ’90s, and is currently hosting two attempts to create political organizations — QuestionAuthority and Open Source Party at MondoGlobo.net.