U-bike-quitous Citibank Bike-Share

On the heels of Robert Lederman’s complaints that the new Citibank-branded New York City bike-share will take valuable real estate from legal street vendors, Bloomberg’s office unveiled this map of where the bike-share stations are expected to be installed. It looks like the stations will not only take real estate from street vendors, but from, uh, everyone. Seriously, these fuckers are going to be everywhere—and this is only 420 of the planned 600 vending locations. It’s probably good for the health of the city that people see bicycles everywhere; it could help bitter attitudes toward bike-riders warm up a bit. But it’s definitely good for the wallets of those at Citibank, who are pretty much blanketing Manhattan and North Brooklyn with their logo.

How Will Cotton Infected the World With the Pink Cloud Plague

How, oh how did this happen? Pop culture-inspired artist Will Cotton painted his signature maidens in pink clouds and mountains of candy, cutting out images of Katy Perry from magazines because her image itself was so “confectionary,” he explains.

And then, she found him. He agreed. He painted her faux-pin-up nakedness into the Teenage Dream cover and art directed her whipped cream ejaculating udders into the California Gurls video, thusly feeding his pop culture-inspired art back to pop culture. The imagery was so potent and so on-point bubblegum, but the intended sinister undercurrent — that which makes Cotton’s work interesting — was lost.

And then, it was the new hot thing — Cotton saw an “epidemic” of rip-offs/hommages in ads, fashion editorials gorging piles of cakes, hair color commercials buried in pink mist. So much of that was saturating commercial culture — it was like pop culture was vomiting his art back at him.

“When I paint Katy now, I feel like I’m stealing from myself,” he says. It should. It’s pre-chewed.

And so, the loop continues. Swallow that, spit that, swallow that sugarcoated poison!

Basquiat’s Biggest Auction Sale Yet

Last night at Phillips de Pury & Company, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled 1981 sold for $16.3 million with premium, outselling Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol. At the time of conception, a work like this would have sold for measly tens of thousands. Allegedly, private non-auction sales are wield price tags much greater than last night’s.

Flash to 2000, when surprised critics ooh’ed at Basquiat breaking half a million, urging collectors to hold on to the Basquiats: ”Once a blue-chip artist’s paintings begin to command more than $500,000, you may have more options than you think.” Oh, really.