This week, Roger Ebert revisits one of his earlier pieces on conceptual artist Chris Burden, and turns it into a lovely meditation on the role of the artist in society:

Were these people all frequent visitors to the museum, or to art exhibitions in general?  Five years after the 1960s ended, were they now drawn to a man whose work seemed to negate love and music and flowers and—anything at all?  Burden was not of the Woodstock Generation.  His art perhaps said that art was a mockery.  That it was about the artist, who when fully committed was not engaged in life at all, but was on Pause.

One of Burden’s more infamous works was his possibly Vietnam-critical piece, “Shoot” (below).  In it, Burden was shot in the arm by an assistant standing five meters away.  After the “performance” was over, Burden was taken to a psychiatrist.

34 years later, on campus at UCLA, graduate student Joseph Deutch attempted a similar stunt.  The fallout lead, one month later, to the resignation of professor Chris Burden, who likened the piece to an act of “domestic terrorism,” and urged Deutch’s expulsion.

 
Bonus: Chris Burden’s Big Wheel

From Roger Ebert’s Journal: The Agony Of The Body Artist

 
And you think America spends too much time online?  Consider China, and the case of 14-year-old Pu Liang, who was often out all night playing games at a local internet cafe.  Seeking to cure Pu of his “addiction,” his mother, Li Shubing, shipped him off to a summer camp notorious for its “extreme methods.”  How extreme?  Well, as the LA Times reports:

Pu now lies hospitalized in critical condition with broken ribs, kidney damage and internal bleeding.  Removed from the camp by police last week, he told his parents he had been beaten by a counselor and fellow campers after he was unable to complete a rigorous regimen of push-ups.

Li remains as upset as she is baffled, “I never imagined they could be so cruel to treat a child like this.  I only wanted him to straighten out his life.”  Perhaps she should have more closely read the camp literature—or consulted the internet herself.  There are now roughly 300 such camps in China, many of them employing such, ahem, proven internet-weaning methods as enforced standing and shock treatment.

But Wu Yongjin, who runs the Chinese Unconventional Education Training Center, defends these methods, calling them, “more important nowadays when children are so spoiled.  It’s okay to beat them, just as long as you make sure they don’t really get hurt.” 

Hmm…they say excessive gaming desensitizes you to violence and diminishes your capacity for empathy.  Well, Pu, look on the bright side—once those kidneys heal, you’ll have no problem landing a job at the Unconventional Training Center!
 
In the LA Times: China’s Internet-addiction Camps Turn Dangerous

 
Poor Bob Guccione.  The Penthouse publisher and Caligula auteur had his Connecticut mansion seized last week and its contents put up for auction.  One of the items sold off was the golden calve below.  Leftover set dressing from Caligula, possibly, but still—how often does life reward you with on-the-nose symbolism like that?!  No stranger to Foster Kane-like ostentation, The Penthouser was also apparently fond of marble commodes and whale teeth.

Long on the losing side of the print vs. internet wars, Guccione is, though, donating the auction’s proceeds to Green Demolitions, an oddly-named non-profit that supports programs for people recovering from various addictions.  And for those of you still with me here on the “irony train,” yes, on the list of Green Demolitions’ treatable addictions, sexual addiction is listed 5th.
 

 
In the Huffington Post: Guccione’s Strangest Auction Items

In the NYT: On The Block, A Glimpse Of The Lifestyle Of Bob Guccione