This week, new Banksy, artists/writers design money, early Christian art, talking to Gabriel Orozco, catalogue raisonnés, modern art toilets, globalizing art history, design criticism and political photo trends.
Banksy
This week, Occupy art, Picasso abodes, an artist on Iraq, UK art blogs, lo-fi pics and working as a culture industry serf.
Just over two weeks ago, a story about an excavated Banksy in Berlin ricocheted across the global media. Most of the coverage featured closely cropped smiley faced riot police and the name “Banksy” screamed in the media coverage. From the tone of the coverage and the emphasis on the discovery of a lost Banksy most people probably assumed it was another case of an opportunist commercial gallery swiping a street art work and displaying it in order to make a potential profit. What many people — and news outlets — didn’t realize was that the glimpse of the Banksy was only part of a much larger work by artist Brad Downey.
Evacuated from my Lower Manhattan apartment and hiding from Hurricane Irene, I find myself thinking about anonymous street art and what it means to art-viewing practices. Different from traditional art and even graffiti, the anonymous works that are found on construction walls, corners of the street and shop grates pose a difficult yet exciting problem for the street art or historian enthusiast that comes across them.
If LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art thought street art was a panacea to all its attendance wooes they may want to think again. Sure, there were often lines around the block for the show but the LA Times‘s Culture Monster blog crunched the numbers and came up with this …
This week’s Required Reading … Banksy on UK phone-tapping scandal, Hirst-a-palooza at Gagosian Galleries worldwide, affordable Warhols, what do you do with a stolen art work, Sam Maloof, Hans Hoffmann as art teacher, how the “Mona Lisa”‘s became famous and the problem with “minorities.”
This week’s Required Reading explores the restoration of earthquake-damaged Haitian murals, an archeological mystery in West Asia, the 18th C toilette tradition, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on pandrogeny, connecting the dots on Mona Lisa, the Banksy app, the year’s worst first sentences, cool iPhone cases and even Death has a generational divide.
Banksy on Bin Laden – http://j.mp/mHtzEM #streetartless than a minute ago via web 
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RJ Rushmore
vandalog
Vandalog’s RJ reminds us about a Banksy piece from last year … also, Osama’s compound already on Google Maps … and links to street art about Osama.
![Post image for Required Reading [UPDATED]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rbkitaj-ashbery-HOME.jpg)
This week on Required Reading … responses by William Powhida and Tom Moody to two Hyperallergic posts, poet Elizabeth Bishop’s other art, John Ashbery on R. B. Kitaj, a conservative’s opinion on street art, contemporary art as Mannerism and megalomaniac Zahi Hawass interviews himself …
Remember one of Banksy’s recent pieces in Southern California titled “This Looks A Bit Like An Elephant,” which was removed and is now for sale. Well, according to Vandalog, Tachowa Covington (aka Rollerball) has lived inside the tank for about seven years. He says that he saw Banksy paint the tank and he is now homeless. [via Vandalog]
