You'll recall the digitally altered photograph that was circulated by the PR department of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Agence France-Presse (and other outlets). That photograph was subsequently retracted, but not before it inspired Oliver Laric to consider the international incident in terms of its ramifications for the authenticity of the image.

Oliver Laric, Versions, 2009

A video piece, pew pew pew! It's part of a show called "Image Search", which wins out in the category of group show titles this year.

On the rally image, the Ahmadinejad administration must be doubling down on domestic audience. At this point any image they file is going to be scrutinized by image nerds, but the benefit at home must outweight the cost abroad.

I picked up my copy of Infinite Jest at Kramerbooks the other day and it cost significantly more than $10—my cover must have been a misprint. Also, every cover along the new-books promenade featured the same float-y, PowerPoint, 3D script.

My feature review of Maggie Michael's solo show from a while back appears in the issue of Art Papers that's currently on newsstands (I think). Finding a permalink to the review online was tricky, so you'll have to click here for the Google cached version. There's a lot of discussion of text and "text" as those things work in painting today. Here's a snippet:

In the end, Michael's recent work references uprisings: found objects, text-as-markmaking, proto-Pop strategies, and New Wave cinema. The works cite pivotal discoveries in abstraction, the uprisings that ushered the transition from the modern to the contemporary period. Michael has redirected these upheavals toward her own formal concerns: symmetry and coherence. It's a conflict theory of contemporary painting, with one formalist urge supplanting another, which makes for a sort of progress with an uncertain exit strategy. A Farewell to Arms, 2008, provides a bare-boned, bleak assessment of the state of abstraction. Like To Make a Long Story Short, it features text as a transparent window through which we see a veiled composition, whose features barely register through the narrow pane of the letters. The outer abstraction is textured but featureless, rendered in foggy gray.

So anyway. When I was writing this story, I had an interesting conversation. I'd mentioned to someone who'd asked me what I was up to that I was working on this feature. He replied (and I paraphrase) that of course Maggie Michael would warrant this kind of larger review spot in a magazine—the sort of slot that not many D.C. gallery shows receive. I don't remember what I said at the time, but thinking on it now, I think yes—that's right.

I don't hold to a hierarchy of media and have done stuff (and hope to continue to do stuff) for magazines, newspapers, Web enterprises, this blog, whatever. But I wouldn't think about doing the same things for all those places. Let me refer you to Jeffry Cudlin, praising this think piece by Blake Gopnik:

Blake did something really fabulous in this piece that made me want to jump out of my chair and applaud him. Did you notice? In laying out these practices, Blake examined international/Biennale artists, and offered them as a context for both what's happening in D.C. museums right now—including what Vesela Sretenovic's doing at the Phillips with this is not that Café, a project I am terribly remiss for not discussing here—and what's going on in local galleries, with a mention of Chan Chao's recent show at G Fine Art.

I'm happy to officially make it known that I've been accepted to participate in the 2009 International Arts Journalism Institute in the Visual Arts, a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. State Department and hosted by American University. This institute — which brings together 12 U.S. critics with 12 critics from abroad for a two-week conference — follows in the mold of journalism institutes for dance, music, and theater.

This year, the Institute is based in Washington, D.C., which means specifically for me that I will be decamping at American University for two weeks, just miles from my home (and bed, and fridge, and dog). A regular work staycation. Over the course of the Institute (June 12–26), we fellows will travel to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; meet with various cultural workers, attend lectures, and participate in workshops; and otherwise share our work and our opinions.

Here are the participating writers from the States:

Gretchen Giles (California)
Leanne Naase Goebel (Colorado)
Kriston Capps (DC chillin', PG chillin')
Janina Ciezadlo (Illinois)
Doug MacCash (Louisiana)
Kent Wolgamott (Nebraska)
Phillip Harvey (New York)
Rachel Wolff (New York)
A.M. Weaver (Pennsylvania)
Michelle Jones (Tennessee)
Gaile Robinson (Texas)
Jen Graves (Washington)

Adisa Basic (Bosnia)
Kathleen May (Colombia)
Giovanni Mosquera (Colombia)
Amira El-Naqeeb (Egypt)
Heba El-Sheikh (Egypt)
Vinayak Parab (India)
Ilham Khoiri (Indonesia)
Bambang Widjanarko (Indonesia)
Maria Sharon Arriola (Philippines)
Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez (Philippines)
Bongani Madondo (South Africa)
Milagros Socorro (Venezuela)

Take a look at that vry srs article on Iran again and then read these reviews from the Dallas Morning News. First up, I try to explain to a print audience what a YTMND means, an effort to catch up with a 2001 meme that leaves me entirely out of breath. (I've so been punk'd by And/Or Gallery.)

Further, I wrote up a retrospective of the graphic artist Charley Harper, a show I enjoyed almost in spite of myself. It's tempting to dismiss it as something that it's not. Neither a great painting show nor a stellar print show, it was instead a terribly fun and surprisingly tight little design exhibit.

While the judgments have been discussed in the news at length, they were brought to the fore again by reports in Iranian state media that Iran's Ministry of Culture refused a loan request from the National Gallery of Art for a Gauguin painting. The National Gallery of Art neither confirmed nor denied the story, expressing that the museum could not comment on future exhibition planning.

What is known is that a judgment to seize the Persepolis Fortification Archive—a collection of rote administrative clay tablets that provide an exceedingly rare glimpse into the daily goings-on in Persepolis under Darius, Xerxes, and their successive Achaemenid Empire rulers—can do disastrous harm to U.S.–Iranian relations. Which are, I'll grant you, not all that warm. But they show signs of improving, with President Obama's holiday message and President Ahmadinejad's motions on behalf of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi being examples of diplomatic overtures that would be unthinkable a year ago. Dividing and auctioning the Achaemenid tablets and other Persian artifacts would be a bad thing for improving relations, but also just a bad thing for world history.

It's tempting to pose that it's the judgments, not the fallout within the sphere of cultural lending, that pose the real block to relations. But the categorization of lending as a commercial transaction between sovereign nations is a new and mighty strained legal reading. Read on here.

I'm probably wrong about that, and it's in fact really dumb.

Tonight I'm taking off for a short East Coast tour to play in the backing band for a musician who is new and now dear to me. Sixto Rodriguez is a Detroit psychedelic-folk artist whose second (and last) album was recorded in 1971; he's become something of a legend in recent years, thanks to some wily Australian DJs and the nation of South Africa, where both Cold Fact and Coming to Reality found an enthusiastic audience in the 1990s.

The good people of Harvest Records put together a short East Coast lineup for Rodriguez and formed a backing band to follow him. I'm playing tenor sax, and you might also recognize Jon and Bob of Gestures on brass detail.

Let me tell you, without question, the preferred way to be introduced to a musician's catalog is to learn it and tour it. I'm not a professional musician; this is not something I do. I don't expect this to happen ever again, so I am totally thrilled at the opportunity.

Tonight, D.C. folks can see Rodriguez at the Rock n' Roll Hotel. On Thursday, Rodriguez is playing Johnny Brenda's in Philly, and then on Friday we play the Bowery Ballroom in New York. (Sheepishly thrilled to admit that my first visit to the Bowery Ballroom will be to play onstage. That is just silly.) Tomorrow, Rodriguez is also recording some tunes at WXPN for World Cafe, which is not broadcast live (enshalla)—look for that piece to appear over the next three weeks or so.

Such are the wonders of San Francisco that Rodriguez's instore performance at Amoeba appears online in a great interview/video segment. Here are a couple of Rodriguez's recording that you might also want to know:

» "I Wonder"
» "Sugar Man"

If you make it out to any of those shows this week, make sure to stop and say hi—I'll be the one shaking in my boots holding a saxophone.

UPDATE: The Going-Out Gurus mention the Rodriguez show opposite The Thermals tonight. Indeed, I had tickets to The Thermals myself! But priorities, people—those guys will probably play here three times this year.

MORE: Brightest Young Things and the City Paper pick up the show. I have some hope that Rodriguez will pick up some Thermals fans! Playing against the Caps game 7 is a little more daunting.

I'm pleased as punch to announce that I was invited to join the Culture Pundits network, an elite group of 25 (now 26) art bloggers. The advertisement you see on the right is one that makes sense for a network of cultural sites that together reaches a broad, niche audience, even if traffic per any individual site is small relative to other sites with ads. Having made it rain, then, we sit back, let the haters hate, and watch the money pile up.

Merely associating myself with these bloggers makes me to put more work into the site. A lot of those blogs are daily reads for me — please take a moment to click through and check out sites by contributors. There's a Twitter feed and all the rest, too.

I would go further than Scott Lemieux and say that not only should we expect a lot of wrangling to make the filibuster-proof Senate majority operate like a filibuster-proof Senate majority, it will be more difficult to arrive at 60 votes now that the Democrats ostensibly have them. The threat to take a vote away from an agenda is more palpable than the threat to refuse to support a piece of legislation. At 60 votes, the agenda is at hand. That means that Ben Nelson (D-CO) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) become less reliable votes, insofar as they can wrest more from the leadership for their compliance. And in the Democratic Senate, discipline seems to work bottom up, not top down.

But some votes are different than others. We have 60, let's pack some courts.

UPDATE: The Corner is mandatory reading today. Ramesh Ponnuru: "My initial reaction on hearing the news was that after generating a bunch of Democratic House seats, the Club for Growth has now produced its first Democratic senator." Mark Hemingway: "I read that he was switching parties, but I was disappointed to learn he's still a Democrat."

One thing that struck me during the Q&A afterward is that Brendan Canty made a point of saying that the people who worked on this film are largely or all from the District. As if he were making a point about labor law or stimulus funding. I love that artists here care so much about this city; it's easy to forget but in my experience it's really unique.

Bob Boilen was sitting right behind me in the theater! Here is what he twittered afterward: "Is Wilco the best band in America? after seeing Ashes of American Flags, I'm sure of it. watch a clip and decide." Indeed, click click.

The line belongs to Lawrence Weschler, writing in The Believer about an improbable debate between Robert Irwin and David Hockney that has taken place entirely through his writing. (Improbable, but not unbelievable: Weschler has just published two books totaling 30 years of interviews with the former artist and 25 years of interviews with the latter.)

A nice line, anyway! I believe we are now at "to determining who is permitted to do the seeing."