Crack that whip. Give the past a slip. Brooklyn is whipping it, whipping it good, thanks to a new group show of "art, adventure, and music" inspired by everyone's favorite red ziggurat-hatted New Wave pop sensation: DEVO. On view through June 1 at Williamsburg's 3rd Ward Gallery, "The Super Thing: NYC goes DEVO" features 20 "Postcard Diaries" prints by DEVO co-founder and multi-tasking musician extraordinaire Mark Mothersbaugh, who began illustrating postcards to send to friends and family while first touring with the group. Another room is given over to DEVO-inspired (or at least DEVO-compatible) interactive art, including Mike Dee's layered music videos, Michael Robinson's ingenious stealthy logos, and Yuliya Lanina's indecent robotic mechanical dolls. Want to see photos of the work from the opening on Saturday? Go forward, move ahead, and check out Maro's shots over at The Village Voice. (After the jump, we couldn't resist this opportunity to post the "Whip It" video.)

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Alice Fisher has an interesting story up over at The Guardian, "How the Tate Got Streetwise." It's about London getting so crazy for street art (see: stenciled spray-painted artwork and the big checks made out to Banksy) and how it must really be a viable art medium, now that the Tate Modern is giving its day in its hallowed halls with its aptly-named, upcoming exhibit, "Street Art." If you're like us and you're at all interested in reading and then repeated re-reading how these pieces suddenly went from things you'd pass on the street to stuff selling in galleries for millions and millions in just around a decade, with the real push coming over the last couple of years, Fisher's piece serves as a pretty solid primer. So go forth and educate yourself. Then either start cutting out stencils to see if you can get yourself on the street art gravy train or saving your pennies to buy something one day.

We like art and all, but sometimes we have to groan a bit. Such is the case after we saw Peter Gronquist's new exhibition in LA popping up on a few blogs here and there. The showing, entitled, The Revolution Will Be Fabulous, features things like guns and chain saws re-designed to include shiny surfaces and the logos of high-end fashion designers like Louis Vuitton and Prada. And while we appreciate the effort and think Gronquist did a spectacular job with the general look and feel of the pieces, really successfully recreating the imagined style guides that would be involved should high-end fashion ever get into the weapons market, but it feels so deflated, like something we've seen this sort of thing a million times before, that pitting glossy Western consumerism against something dangerous and violent. But hey, in a world where Damien Hirst can put a dead shark in the Met, then what do any of us know about anything, right? (we know the two are in no way related, we just still can't get over the weirdness of that damned shark)

Back in January, we told you about Chicago's Museum of Modern Ice, which was more a month-long outdoor festival than an actual museum, and now the Windy City is continuing with the theme, this time bringing an icy exhibition to The Field Museum. With a title that we suspect represents the top three finishers in a 'Name the exhibition!' contest, "Melting Ice -- A Hot Topic: Envisioning Change" features works by 26 contemporary artists from 10 countries. Ranging from photographs and paintings to sculptures and video installations, the works all focus on climate change, specifically melting ice caps and their effects on the planet. The exhibition, which runs through September 1, is presented in partnership with the Natural World Museum and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Among the artists represented are Chris Jordan (who led off February's Greener Gadgets conference with digitally-manipulated images of trash), digital media artist Andrea Polli, sculptor David Nash, and a collective known as the Icelandic Love Corporation, which sounds like a Reykjavik-based ABBA cover band but is in fact three artists who produce performance and video pieces. Dalibor Martinis contributes "Circles Between Surfaces" (pictured above, at left), an installation in which a drop of water falls from the ceiling and briefly disturbs both the surface of the water and the electronic image projected above it. But it's not all Zen dripping and Bjork-like ice fairies. Asked by the Los Angeles Times to reflect on the show's intentions, artist Philip Pastor said, "The purpose is to shock people -- shock them into fear."

Earlier this month, we told you that Christie's will auction off the legendary Richard Neutra-designed Kauffman House on May 13, as part of its major evening sale of postwar and contemporary art. For those planning on bidding, the house is Lot 42--sandwiched between a 1987 Richard Prince joke painting and a Damien Hirst butterfly canvas (and my, but those dead butterflies would look smashing in Palm Springs).

In last weekend's Financial Times, the front page of the House & Home section was given over to Edwin Heathcote's piece on the Kauffman House as art and the burgeoning market for modernist architecture. He rolls around the issue with the help of the Kauffman House's current owners (Brent and Beth Harris), Pritzker Prize jury chair Lord Palumbo, Andre Balazs (who recently bought a Maison Tropicale by Jean Prouve), and Avanti Architects' John Allan, an experienced conservator of modernist buildings:

[Allan] raises reservations about buying houses as if they were art-objects: "The issue is to do with houses as collectors' pieces, as distinct from the value of the land they sit on," he says. "My only reservation is that if these houses are sold as art they may cease to be functioning buildings. . . An attic full of houses that no one sees or uses is a bad thing." And does he see art/architecture as a burgeoning market? "The demand for these houses is fairly limited, but so is the supply. The issue is connecting the right buyer to the right house."

Recently on UnBeige:

We like to think that in some art-obsessed family, there are cherubic youngsters who delight in chanting the names of the 10 consecutive artists who have exhibited their work solo in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's roof garden. We bet they sing it to a catchy tune: Abakanowicz, Smith, Shapiro, Oldenburg and van Bruggen, Lichtenstein, Goldsworthy, Lewitt, Guo-Qiang, Stella! Now they can add "Koons" to their song. Starting tomorrow, the Met's 10,000-square-foot space will welcome visitors to "Jeff Koons on the Roof," an exhibition of three large, vibrantly-colored, chromium steel sculptures that have never before been on public display: the crowd-pleasing "Balloon Dog (Yellow)" (1994-2000), a translucent mound of multi-color squiggles called "Coloring Book" (1997-2005), and "Sacred Heart" (1994-2007), a gift-wrapped heart that stands--miraculously--on its pointed bottom tip.

"Harold Holzer [the Met's senior vice president of external affairs] just commented to me how it seems that everybody is here except the Pope," said curator and exhibition organizer Gary Tinterow, welcoming the ample crowd to this morning's preview event. "But we do have a sacred heart here for those who like to enjoy it." When Koons took the mic, he was his usual warm, calm, free-associating self. Calling the works "visceral" and "very strong in their effects here...with the control element of architecture and then the aspect of nature open behind it," he compared each to a historical antecedent, with the balloon dog relating to Greek sculptures, the heart to art of the medieval period, and "Coloring Book" echoing contemporary fare. In turn, added Koons, "these works make reference to the contemporary surface that everything downstairs in the museum also has."

But this trio of Koons sculptures has something that the works downstairs probably never will: their own specialty drinks. Through October 26, the museum's Rose Garden cafe will offer cocktails created and named after each of the sculptures on view. And if you begin to suspect that the Balloon Dog is walking toward you, it's time to lay off the work's namesake drink.

The rooftop of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is now home (at least through October 26) to three large sculptures by artist Jeff Koons. We got a sneak peek this morning and can confirm that Koons' yellow chrome balloon doggie prefers the view over Manhattan to canal-level Venice, where his magenta sibling spent the summer of 2006 perched on a platform in the Grand Canal guarding the Palazzo Grassi. More Koons news to come (including what the man himself had to say when not being monopolized by an astounding number of German film crews), but for now, click "continued..." for our photos of each of the works -- at least until you can get to the roof yourself when the museum opens tomorrow.

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While Nick Walker was busy driving around all over London last night, projecting his artwork onto famous British landmarks, Banksy was sitting back enjoying that he was not to be out done, as he effectively stole any and all UK thunder with his newest piece: a gigantic piece of street art, his largest to date, on a wall right next to the CCTV cameras he was mocking. By using scaffolding and passing as workers, Banksy somehow successfully pulled the whole stunt off, thus further securing his legacy and making all other street artist curse his name with big grins on their faces.

Yesterday the scaffolding gang returned to remove all evidence - again without the camera operator stopping them.

The work, above a Post Office yard in Newman Street near Oxford Circus, shows a small boy, watched by a security guard, painting the words: 'One nation under CCTV.'

Andrew Newman, 35, a businessman from Dulwich, who works locally, said: 'It was only on Sunday morning that the Post Offices guys realised what had happened.'

Last week, we'd talked up all the various happenings and goings-ons surrounding the LA Art Weekend, including mention of the Pop-Up Storefront. Now the LA Times has heard a bit of the buzz surrounding the limited-time-only gallery and put together a pretty interesting piece about it. In it, they describe what's being shown there out until May 17th, as well as Steven Holl and Vito Acconci's work on the space itself, but also some good background on how a gallery from one coast happened to find its way over to another. Here's a bit:

The idea is to expand the influence of what Grima calls "a unique space, one of the first where the concept of merging art and architecture was addressed and explored by means of radically experimental shows on a shoestring budget."

"Built into Storefront's genetic code is the drive to reach beyond New York," he adds. "We are watched from a distance. When we were looking for a way to expand, we gambled on people wanting to see us in close-up.

Also of note, Storefront's Flickr collection with loads of photos from LA.

This is kind of a weird little story. In an attempt to "out-Banksy' Banksy himself, artist Nick Walker is going to hit the town this evening and cause some trouble. Which he announced by press release. Through his gallery. According to Bloomberg, tonight in London, Banksy's pal Walker will be projecting his street art onto famous British landmarks (using a very large and powerful projector we're willing to wager), which will hopefully lend some press to his new exhibit. Here's a bit:

He will be painting the town red -- and yellow, purple, pink and green. Instead of using cans to paint stencils on undistinguished buildings, Walker is thinking bigger than Banksy by using a giant laser beam to target some of the British capital's landmarks.

His light show tomorrow will project colored "paint," said Mike Snelle, director of the Black Rat Gallery in Shoreditch, which is staging Walker's next show, opening April 17. The locations of the displays are being kept secret.

We think it's a fun idea and all, but it's not really all that crazy, is it? Seems like you could almost even get a permit for something like that. Just seems like the worst that could happen would be some guard coming out and saying, "Hey, you mind turning off that light? It's pretty bright." But we could be completely 100% wrong and we'd like to see some photos, if you happen to be out and about, wandering around some famous British landmarks.