Timothy McSweeney, de man naar wie Dave Eggers het literaire tijdschrift annex website en uitgeverij heeft genoemd, is op 64-jarige leeftijd overleden. Eggers haalde voor de titel van zijn opmerkelijke initiatief inspiratie bij een man die het gezin Eggers zonderlinge brieven schreef. Eggers noch zijn moeder - wier meisjesnaam McSweeney was - kende de briefschrijver, ook al beweerde die dat hij verwant was. Soms kondigde McSweeney een bezoek aan, en stak in zijn brief ook een uurschema van de treinen. Soms stuurde hij tekeningen. Maar nooit zagen ze hem echt.

Guerrilla art is one of the coolest forms of art mainly because it happens around us and usually blends in with our daily streetscapes to the point we might almost miss them. Probably the most famous of this band of guerrilla artist has to be Banksy but just about every great graffiti artist can be consider as one of the band.

Courtesy of Elms Lesters Two works by the artist Adam Neate: left, “The Concert Pianist,” 2009; and “Family Circle,” 2009.

LONDON | Down a back alley in Soho, in the middle of London’s theater district, the gallery owner Paul Jones is showing recent paintings by Adam Neate, a former street artist, in a space converted from a set-painting workshop, the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms.

Stars like Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel used to come here to prepare their London shows, Mr. Jones said. Now Mr. Neate has taken over, with dramatic works mixing spray paint and acrylics on cardboard, textiles, wire, perspex and steel.

Mr. Neate started leaving free cardboard paintings on the street 10 years ago and quickly developed a cult following. One night last year, he and Mr. Jones left a thousand signed screen prints on the streets of London. Within hours they were changing hands on eBay at over £1,000 each.

He has come a long way since then. Of 22 works in this show, produced in the past three years, several have already sold at prices up to £40,000.

16. Oktober 2009, 00:39 Uhr

Day three and am struggling. Struggling with time, wishing it would stand still for 12 hours so I could have a quick nap, read one manuscript, eat something and generally chill. Right now I'm in a calm cab, on my own, en route to the Frankfurterhof to meet up with Oscar van Gelderen, a great publisher and even better friend, who is throwing a small party for the brilliant Niccolo Ammaniti who we publish together along with about forty other publishers around the world.

It's not often that we have authors at Frankfurt but this year I am delighted that three versions of nicholas will be here. Niccolo from Italy, Nikolai from Siberia (or Transnistria to be more precise) and Nick from Australia. Or Ammaniti, Lilin and Cave to give them their other names. They also share qualities as writers, exploring the darker sides of humanity through exceptionally powerful and distinctive tales.

It was in Frankfurt in 2003 that Oscar, Niccolo, Halfdan Freihow and I bonded in an extended session that resulted in Nic being published by Oscar in Holland. We were already publishing him at Canongate but this night forged a deep friendship between the three of us and tonight feels like an overdue reunion.

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A year after giving away 1000 pieces of his artwork on the street, Adam Neate has returned to the gallery.

The Ipswich artist is exhibiting new works at the Elms Lesters gallery in London, featuring a mixture of media.
"For as long as I can remember I've been working with cardboard and paint," said 31-year-old Neate.

"I thought I'd try different materials such as plastic, metal and fabric. It's been a new learning process and like starting again, which is really nice."

Adam Neate: A New Understanding showcases what he's been working on since last year's joint exhibition with Ron English, and more recently his one-night quest to leave his art on the streets of London.
Life and death, religion and over crowding are themes covered in the new exhibition, but they're not what define it.

Adam Neate, The Family. © Adam Neate. Courtesy of Elms Lesters Painting Rooms.

LONDON.- 31 year old Adam Neate’s trademark cardboard works have become one of the iconic symbols of the UK street art generation, avidly collected worldwide. A New Understanding marks a significant step in the young artist’s career, setting a new level of artistic growth and witnessing a significant development in Neate’s technique and innate sense of composition, use of colours and movement.

Millionaire gets young rival banned from galleries after taking exception to prank played on him

How much is a box of pencils worth? Fifty pence? £3.99 if the pencils have rubbers on the ends? Well, if they're part of a Damien Hirst art installation, the value is £500,000. That is what 17-year-old graffiti artist Cartrain discovered when he pilfered some pencils from Hirst's sculpture Pharmacy. And that wasn't all – he was arrested, released on bail, and is waiting to find out if he will be formally charged with causing damage to an iconic artwork worth £10m.

Graffiti: kunst of geklieder? Het is een oeroude discussie. In Bristol in het Verenigd Koninkrijk mogen de inwoners het zeggen. Het gemeentebestuur heeft plannen voor een online stemming op de eigen website. Aan de hand van foto’s  van graffiti mag het publiek kiezen welke muur wél en welke níet wordt schoongemaakt, zo meldt The Guardian vandaag. De conservatieve kunstcriticus Brian Sewell heeft het idee al gekraakt: ,,The two words ‘graffiti’ and ‘art’ should never be put together”, aldus Sewell.

Away We Go (Sept 18) Mr and Mrs Dave Eggers’s first script is an inventive comedy about a couple who go in search of a suitable place to have their first child, looking up old friends and finding out en route what “love” and “home” mean. The film featuresJohn Krasinski, fresh-faced star of the US Office; it’s directed by Sam (American Beauty) Mendes.

14 augustus 2009 - Fans die niet kunnen wachten tot de twee nieuwe titels van Niccolò Ammaniti in de winkel liggen, kunnen ze op de Uitmarkt bij de stand van uitgeverij Lebowski aanschaffen.
Op de Boekenmarkt van de Amsterdamse Uitmarkt (29 en 30 augustus) zullen de nieuwe boeken van Ammaniti (Zo God het wil en Jij bent mijn schat) te koop zijn. Deze titels liggen vanaf 1 september in de boekhandel. Er zit geen strategie achter, zegt Lebowski-uitgever Oscar van Gelderen. ‘Het kwam toevallig zo uit. Toen hebben we het in de nieuwsbrief en op de site gezet.’

Wanneer een auteur overstapt moet je veel aandacht aan de backlist geven, vindt Van Gelderen. ‘Daarom hebben we voor Ammaniti en Dave Eggers aparte catalogi gemaakt.’ Daarin is niet alleen aandacht voor de boeken, maar ook voor andere projecten. Eggers schrijft niet alleen romans, ook filmscenario’s, bijvoorbeeld van de romantische komedie Away We Go die nu in de bioscoop draait. ‘We gaan ook groot met hem uitpakken op Crossing Border.’

Opvallend in de catalogus met de najaarsaanbieding van Lebowski zijn de paginavullende tekstfragmenten uit de aangekondigde romans. ‘We vonden het tijd om terug te keren naar de inhoud’, zegt Van Gelderen. ‘Heel veel aandacht in de media', dat is toch geen selling point meer? We vinden het leuk om een appetizer te bieden, zodat mensen kunnen lezen wat een auteur te bieden heeft. Dat geldt vooral voor Nederlandse auteurs en voor debutanten, zoals de Italiaanse Nicolai Lilin, waarvan we dit najaar Siberische opvoeding brengen.’ Mensen waarderen het, zo blijkt uit de vele downloads van de website.

Lebowski heeft de focus verschoven. ‘We concentreren ons minder op een nieuwe titel, maar doen branding op de auteur of op een thema. Er kan wel eens een mindere titel tussen zitten, maar Ammaniti is gewoon goed. In Lebowski Crime Classics presenteren we een mix van bekend en nieuw, met Urban Art idem.’ (RR)

He launched Banksy’s career, made millions from celebrity clients, and founded three chic galleries. He tells Luke Leitch how, despite grumbling critics, the subversive spirit of street art has taken the establishment by storm
Steve Lazarides’s latest gallery, his third, is a five-floor townhouse in Rathbone Place, barely a spit from Oxford Street. On the first three floors, carpenters are installing temporary walls for Vhils, the 22-year-old Portuguese artist whose show is about to open. On the fourth floor, Vhils and some of the gallery’s 12 staff listen to Dizzee Rascal as they tap at MacBooks in an office adorned with art by Banksy (Flying Copper, from 2003: price on application) and the Faile collective. And right at the top is Lazarides, head shaved, in jeans and T-shirt, a chunky silver watch dangling at his wrist, and with the suppressedly manic air of a man trying gamely, just for an hour or so, to ignore the multiple demands of a bulging pre-show to-do list.

The market is in meltdown and Ben Lewis is glad the days of hype and excess are finally over
I can see it 20 years from now. A room in Tate Britain, dedicated to the art of the first decade of the 21st century. The title of the exhibition is The Baubles of the Bubble Billionaires and on the wall an explanatory panel reads: “The first decade of the 21st century saw the greatest rise in the value of art in the history of the world. An unprecedented rise in global wealth, the availability of cheap credit and a widespread craze for art played a part, but speculation, secret deals and tax concessions for art collectors were equally important. ”

During good times, an auction is the obvious choice for any collector wanting to sell a work of art. But as the recession takes its toll, many collectors have changed strategies and retreated to the more hidden, and potentially less lucrative, world of private sales.

Nieuwe digitale technologie verandert uitgevers en boeken ingrijpend
Het medium is niet altijd de boodschap. In zijn best-seller, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, uit 2000 omschreef de Amerikaanse pop socioloog Malcolm Gladwell een  'tipping point' als 'het moment van kritische massa, de drempel, het kookpunt' waar verandering onvermijdelijk wordt

Today, after more than a year of planning, 2000 square meters of rooftops have been covered with photos of the eyes and faces of the women of Kibera. The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops. The idea being that for the split second the train passes, their eyes will match their smiles and their faces will be complete.

Even in the era of Banksy, some view the work of street artists as little more than graffiti: idle daubings on walls and bus shelters that councils have to pay people to clean up. But those who stumble across works they find littered around London later this week may well be in for a surprise.

05. September 2008 Ein sonniger Spätsommertag. Andrew Wylie, der unter dem Namen „der Schakal“ bekannte und mitunter gefürchtete Literaturagent, empfängt mich in seinem Londoner Büro in Bloomsbury. Er ist blendender Laune und strotzt vor Vitalität.

'De man in de straat‘ is in de politiek en de media een toverformule geworden, bang als men is om onvrede in de samenleving te onderschatten. Camera en microfoon zijn daardoor steeds vaker voor… de onderbuik.