In Brief: Nick Cave to Present Turner Prize

So much news. So little time. Enter our new “In Brief” feature, a round-up of stories from other sources that we find intriguing but will (attempt to) spare from our characteristic verbosity and adjectival flare. Suggestions? We’re just an e-mail away at unbeige AT mediabistro.com. You can also use the anonymous tips box (in the column at near right), which also supplies us with a steady stream of epistles from deposed African royalty seeking our assistance in recovering their purloined fortunes.

⇒ Come December 1, a Bad Seedless Nick Cave (pictured at right) will present this year’s Turner Prize to one of four shortlisted artists: Goshka Macuga, Runa Islam, Cathy Wilkes, or Mark Leckey. Having savored his kooky-brilliant “Cinema in the Round” talk at the Guggenheim back in the spring, we like Leckey to win.

⇒ Behold the majesty of Carleton Watkins‘ photographs of a young, colossal tree-studded California, on view at the Getty Center through March 1, 2009. “Watkins doesn’t preach, injecting religiosity into the natural landscape the way so many painters among his Hudson River School predecessors did,” notes Christopher Knight in today’s Los Angeles Times. “And he isn’t a blowsy tree-hugger, either.” But he was awfully good at photographing them.

⇒ Don’t panic. Let magazine covers do it for you. Folio looks at the best and worst of recession ’08 covers (you decide which is which!). Note the move from cliched bears and bulls to slithering snakes and even a snail; we always knew The Economist had a thing for mollusks.

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