Remember like, a month ago when art ran amok? Well its reign of terror continues, this time in the Piano Lounge, where last week's wall against prejudice has taken up temporary residence. It's worth a walk-around, and the fact that the piece dominates the once-roomy lounge is probably symbolic, or something--Bwog finds it a bit incongruous, but maybe that's the point.

And at 120th and Broadway, Columbia's most prominent dental fetishist has debuted his latest work--a vertically-oriented and vaguely primitive composition that signals a break from his earlier smattering of Bob Dylan lyrics and introverted cries for help. One could speculate endlessly as to what the figures in the painting are supposed to represent--about, for instan ce, the significance of the apparent opposition between the white-outlined man in the bowler hat, and the humanoid black splotch directly above him. There's undoubtedly an element of social commentary here, which could add much-needed context to the still-enigmatic tooth symbol.

But y'know what's even more interesting than tiresome and probably pointless exercises in art theory? The fact that this one is signed, or at least named: the word "MAINLINE" is written on the bottom left of the piece, although Bwog suggests that the broken-off dental mold on its opposite side is the real signature. The mystery continues!

-ARR

Professor Sarah Phillips, in Politics of the American Environment, trying to prompt commentary on the painting at right, after cautious musings about "closing" and "movement":

"Does pink have a gendered element to it?" [silence].

"This is kind of awkward, but I think we need to see this as a virginal landscape."

Class squirms. Then she really does it.

"I think we need to see an opening. A rosy opening."

Bwog announces the return of Thursday Room Hopping -- now on a new day!

Jessica's room in Claremont is probably the best place on campus to sit pretzel-style on the ground with some milk and cookies for a read-aloud.

The artistic senior spent the week of down-time before school began bringing the outdoors inside of her spacious single.

Clouds float and birds soar on her light green walls.

A tree, lovingly cut out of cardboard, sheds some of its leaves as if a squirrel had just disrupted some branches.

"New York can feel like a harsh, overcivilized place," she said. "I wanted to make it feel like I could have a picnic in my room."

The room has a beach-house feel to it -- Claremont's signature wood floors, the art on the walls, the beige throw-rug, the white canopy over her soft white bed. Books sit not on a shelf, but in a wicker basket on the floor, and a mug hangs delicately by its handle from a hook on the wall.

She has adorned her walls with art -- even the light switch has something to say.

-SEV

Too busy to make it to the Met? Butler displays are a poor substitute, but will do for a few minutes' distraction. Bwog rookie Rob Stenson critiques the latest.

It's exhibition installation season at Columbia, with first year MFAs in Schermerhorn (from high-art pornography to cable TV), and a senior thesis show in Dodge (exhibition highlight: an electrical cable in a bucket of water). But of all the new destinations for art-connoisseuring on campus, none is as accessible or relentlessly contemporary as what has replaced the Joseph Urban stage model exhibit in the third-floor display cases at Butler. Accessible, because the installation is timed right for reading week cellphone breaks. Relentless, because the new show, titled "Preserving the Libraries' Collections," embraces an object-fetishist aesthetic equal parts Hard Rock Cafe, natural history museum exhibition, and contemporary art-is-just-stuff-ism of trash on display.

The exhibition, a richly-illustrated, richly-accompanied, six case primer on how information disappears and how we can save it, does not disappoint. Janet Gertz, Director of Preservation at Butler and sole curator of the third floor display, has pulled off something artistically unique: a show that subtly critiques not the institution but us, its visitors. Full of placards that gently scold library patrons—e.g. "YOU CAN HELP"; "Please be careful when replacing books on shelves"; "If you see vermin, report the problem to staff"—the whole thing becomes a catalogue of our library-going sins. Here are the books you have killed, it says: Dostoevsky with a crushed spine, coffee-stained sociology, one "unfortunate specimen" eaten by a dog, an encyclopedia destroyed by an untutored photocopying technique.

Three years ago, Marty and Jake LaSalle said they didn't plan on making juggling a career (then doing film and pre-med respectively, they're now listed as majoring in economics and anthropology). From their website, it appears that the twins have gone professional already. Be warned: you may not want to open this site in front of your grandmother.

But they're not just performers, they're Columbia students, which means they have to talk about being performers. An excerpt from the extensive "Our Work, Our World" section:

"Most fundamentally, it's the desire to understand people, the desire to connect, in widest capacity, with the range of perspective and passion that animates the continuum of human experience, that encourages us to practice every day, that motivates us to move. it is through the universal language of physical movement, through the expressive potential of the bodily form, that we hope one day to be able to create that dynamic vision that penetrates, through its truth and beauty, the barriers we internally construct against feeling, understanding, and life. It's the destabilizing of these barriers--these internalized constructions of artificial hierarchies, of discursive rankings and gradings, of random systems of inclusion and exclusion--that, we believe, has the most productive potential to affirm the humanness that underlies, and that continually surges to threaten, the forces operating against harmonic existence..."

Stick to what you do best, guys.

Last night, Columbia poli-sci professors Robert Jervis and Richard Betts tag-teamed Mount St. Vincent's College's Joseph Skelly on the situation in Iraq and Bwog artist Rachel Lindsay was on scene. This one was begging for a cartoon.

The second in a series by B&W artist Rachel Lindsay--for all those mired in Kant right now.

The first in a series of pieces by B&W artist Rachel Lindsay:

Bwog doesn't have the cash to "pimp your room," and we certainly don't want to raid it and then date you. So we bring you the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Kendall, C'08 rejoices in the "glue dot" (box at right). She has used this modest adhesive from Kate's Paperie to collage the walls of her sizable Wallach single with photographs, magazine pictures, maps, and original artwork.

"I hate white walls," she said. "You know that first night you spend in the room..." She shuddered.

The room wasn't intentionally divided into zones, but every area of the room has a different scheme. Magazine models make a ceiling border, she has a zone for ticket stubs, snowy scenes of her native Colorado, and a photo shrine to her friends.

More stuff you shouldn't have saved on a public computer.

However, only the artists know the intentions that lie behind these choices. Since they are dead, we will never know but can guess.

These artists seem almost the equivalent of psychologists in that rather than telling us what is important, they depict it through the use of geometry, color, light, contour lines, and the placement of figures, and they devise many ways for our eyes to be guided to a single place, the Madonna and the child. Some questions remain.

Bwog doesn't have the cash to "pimp your room," and we certainly don't want to raid it and then date you. So we bring you the semi-weekly Thursday feature, the "Cribs-esque" Room Hopping, continuing with...

Kyle (right) and Jesse C'09 say they are glad to be out of the "beehive" that was John Jay.

"My room was like a shit-hole last year," says Kyle. "I decided to clean up my act this year."

Clean their Nussbaum double is. And perhaps one of the most tranquil, artistic, and creative spaces on campus.

"We have no flatscreen TV to show you," Jesse says, "but we have paintbrushes."

Art on every wall (much of it graffiti) reflects their politics as "thinking human beings as opposed to not thinking," Jesse says.

They've even painted their refrigerator.

In which Julia Butareva engages with Postcrypt's "Exhibition" exhibition.

Bwog correspondent Justin Gonçalves spotted some guerilla art in front of Butler this evening. It reads, "give me a podium to spread my hate" on the left hand and "i'm a racist, sexist, homophobic supporter of physical/mental/economic violence. i am made of wood," on the right.

Interpretations?

Bwog always thought there was something high art about the lurid yellow and blue of MetroCards. In the token booth of the116th st. B/C subway station on Frederick Douglass Blvd., a geometric genius has made numerous tiny sculptures (twin towers, a crucifix, subway cars) all out of the little subway passes. They're super cute.

More photos after the jump.