TABLE OF CONTENTS

PRINT February 2000

February 2000

PRINT February 2000

TOP TEN

Rob Pruitt

Rob Pruitt’s “Psychic Predictions for the New Millennium and Things to Do with Lemons” is currently on view at the Cabinet Gallery in London. His most recent show in New York, “101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself,” was up last year at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.

  1. POLAND SPRING WATER (20 OZ. BOTTLE, $1)

    The consumer culture that polluted the planet has created an antidote by branding nature. As Coke/Pepsi was to the Pop ’60s generation, bottled water is the lifestyle beverage of the present. A fashion accessory, the simplest elixir, and a symbol of purity, each bottle of water purchased elicits reflection on nature and its fragility.

  2. CELEBRITY CAUSES / CAUSES CÉLÈBRES, NOW AND FOREVER

    Linda McCartney vegetarian frozen dinners, Paul Newman chocolate bars (all proceeds to charity), Ben & Jerry, The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (on Rhino Home Video: “Five days that changed the course of television,” featuring on-air phone calls to strangers to say “I love you, pass it on” and macrobiotic cooking with Black Panther chairman Bobby Seal), Ellen DeGeneres, Lisa Simpson, farmer Jose Bove bulldozing a new McDonald’s outside of Paris before billions could be served, Sinéad O’Connor tearing up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live, Pamela Anderson Lee’s implant redux.

  3. “UNMISTAKABLY MACKIE,” FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, NEW YORK

    Seeing in person all the gowns hazily recalled from a childhood spent in front of the TV was for me like a religious experience. Highlights included Carol Burnett's Eunice dress and a pyramid of Cher gowns (I got thrown out of the exhibition when a guard caught me trying on the “nude dress” that she wore on the cover of Time).

  4. “EPIDEMIC! THE WORLD OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE,” MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, NEW YORK

    A fascinating journey through the myriad germy worlds of microscopic psychedelia—a cold sore doesn’t look so bad when you examine it very, very closely. Immediately after the exhibition, I went to the nearest drug store and bought a bottle of

  5. LYSOL ANTI-BACTERIAL HAND GEL,

    which, without water, “kills 99.99% of germs that may cause illness in under 15 seconds.”

  6. ANNIKA STROM’S “WINDOW PILLOWS”

    Elbow rests that soften the sill to provide a more comfortable perch for voyeurs. A tradition in her native Sweden, these craftsy cushions frame the outside world as an ever-changing work of art.

  7. JONATHAN HOROWITZ’S UNIVERSAL CALENDAR

    A new and improved version of the Gregorian calendar, the Universal calendar excises religious and political ideology. The birth of Christ is replaced by the birth of earth, and months are renamed for real things like air, sport, sex, and money. According to Jonathan's system, this issue of Artforum was published in the month of “animal” in the year 4700006235.

  8. DRAGON NATURALLYSPEAKING VOICE-TO-TEXT SOFTWARE (DRAGON SYSTEMS)

    turns your computer into a stenographer for around $200 and i’m using it right now hey rob what are you doing oh hi jonathan i’m just finishing my list for that dumb magazine oh perfect timing am i on it you sure are i’m no welsher and i already spent the money you gave me rob remember you told danny mcdonald you’d put his mended veil jewelry line on the list yeah i know but there are so many things i love and admire plus so many drunken promises that i made at parties that i don't know how i’m going to fit everything on like for instance alex bag’s drug gift basket and amy gartrell’s edible alien autopsy and hiroshi sunairi elizabeth peyton and everything she does rob don't forget rachel harrison’s collection of remote controls and lucky debellvue’s pipe cleaner sculptures and ricci albenda’s portals and lily van der stokker’s old people making spectacularly experimental art i know i know i love those things and lucy barnes’s new store too and gavin’s bar and my sister's new baby duncan oh well what can you do.

  9. BRUNO MUNARI, MY FAVORITE ARTIST

    This little-known artist was a pioneer of aesthetic diversity and humanist conceptualism. Starting as a Futurist in the ’30s, he went on to originate entirely new concepts of artmaking, including the series “Unreadable books” in the ’40s, public fountains and Fossils of the year 2000 (useless machines) in the ’50s. Xerox art in the ’60s, and leading children’s workshops in museum in the ’70s. Every time I’m at a loss for artmaking ideas, I take his catalogue raisonné off the shelf.

  10. HSING-HSING, R.I.P.

    Black-and-white and subsisting only on green (bamboo), Hsing-Hsing was a majestic emblem of natural and political harmony. Along with his mate Ling-Ling, he led the martyred public life of a celebrity on view, sacrificing his private natural habitat to become a symbol of international diplomacy, wildlife preservation, and cuddliness.