This week newly appointed Art Czar Rusty Krust found himself perplexed by his staff’s apparent lack of enthusiasm during the newly formed U.S. Artland Revitalization and Development Office of the federal government’s Creativity Rehabilitation Project ribbon cutting ceremony. Holding up an obviously recycled plastic wine glass at his office welcome party, Krust was quoted,

“Sure, I have begun some cost cutting measures, for example, this instant wine being one. A little tap water, a spoonful of dehydrated Chardonnay Powder, and a dash of Splenda and you have yourself one scrappy little White.”

Sensing a pall of gloom cloaking the group gathered to inaugurate his staff’s new digs, this reporter noticed a flicker of  momentary panic in his eyes. But like a true denizen of the bureaucracy, Mr. Krust was quick to spin it for the best. He spouted, “Take heart, we won’t always be domiciled in the back parking lot of the Dept. of Agriculture. These  FEMA trailers get a little getting used to, but once the Louisiana mud is hosed off and the rust holes duct taped, they won’t be half bad. There are jobs in the arts to be had, our office plans to put artists to work painting logos on forest service utility vehicles.”

He went on to explain that in these times of cost containment all unnecessary frills have to be curbed in order to get the nation’s economy back on Track. Pointing out that most of the recent stimulus package has gone to the banks, he said, “Artists have to be patient, needn’t be so greedy, their turn will come.”

“We need our bankers to be happy so they will be kind to us.”

The room was nearly empty by this time, most of the staff having departed for their cars, leaving a a trail of footprints made visible by Louisiana mud.

Doan Bleevit,  for Faux Art News, reporting all the news thats fit to fake.

Long simmering tensions erupted in the normally quiet seaside community of Santa Barbara, California, playground to the rich, near rich, and wannabe rich, which played host to the National Art Writers and Critics Annual Conference at the posh Red Sail Yacht Club. Tempers flared as the conservative monosyllabic faction of the conference entered a motion to have the word juxtaposition removed from the organization’s list of officially sanctioned words to be used in critical reviews. With echoes of the convening gavel still reverberating down the corridors of the Red Sail Inn, Thor Hammertoss the newly elected president of the writer’s group called for a special amendment to the charter condemning the offending word and asking that ten dollar words such as these be stricken from use in any and all critical articles written henceforth.
Speaking on a live satellite feed from his Texas Ranch, President Bush fueled the fires by siding with the mono-syllabics.

“Heh heh, Juxt-sopishin, juxtrapsishin, is, a, hard, word, I, am, for, not, using, hard, words.” Bush said speaking extemporaneously to the writer’s conference.

It was left to a very pregnant Destiny Moonchild of Big Sur, spokesperson for the hastily formed progressive Literacy Defense League to stem the onslaught. Ms. Moonchild, somewhat nonplussed by Bush’s impassioned support of the conservatives, spoke up saying,
“J U X T A P O S I T I O N, is so pretty, where else can you use J, U, and X in the same word, and use it over and over”.
Destiny’s melodic voice quieted the throng, a reverent hush came over the assembly as she managed to juxtapose beauty, art, freedom, Jesus, and the First Amendment, in a soliloquy for the ages. She was met with thunderous applause there in the Sunset Room, in the end the voice of reason prevailed and pedestrian mono-syllabicism was defeated in favor of esoterica. Emotion spent, they all sat in silence and finished their crab cakes.
By Reilly Knott Truman, Faux Art News

Postscript: Destiny Moonchild has given birth to a 7 pound 6 ounce baby boy, juxtaposed next to him is his twin brother.
Congratulations from the staff of Faux Art News.
Thor Hammertoss resigned as president of the Art Writers and Critics Association

Opposing sides in one of the art world’s most colorful court cases in years traded verbal barbs outside a Cumberland County courthouse in New Jersey.

Pent-up anger snapped its fragile leash as a white-hot argument darkened. Theodore Morehouse Fleen lashed out at the legal pitbull tormenting him. Avril Snype attorney for the plaintive, maker of a line of gray colors, suing Fleen for patent infringement was visibly shaken when Fleen had to have his fingers pried loose from the neck of the now pallid barrister.

Big Teddy Fleen as he is known to locals in his home town of Buckshutem is the self-proclaimed inventor of a new color he calls Dark White. An amateur artist of some repute, he is known for his renderings of the Eastern Snow Dove esteemed for its unique white coloration.

” I had been searching for a way to render the Snow Dove in its natural habitat, snow. I soon realized I had to come up with a new color to describe my subject,”

said Mr Fleen in an interview with the New Jersey Bird magazine in their feature Giving you the Bird.

Being from New Jersey, Teddy was also a chemistry Whiz, and soon came up with an artist pigment he felt fit the bill. With a beaker full of Dark White he shopped it around only to be given the brush off. He soon came up with his own product line Fleen Dark White.

Fleen White Took the art world by storm but raised the hackles of another color maker. Interviewed in his neutral toned office high atop Gray Towers in Manhattan, President Virgil Slurry head of Slurry Artists Colors said, “No rogue interloper is going to take market share away from gray, beige and sage as long as my heart beats.” He then went on to make some off color remarks that are unprintable here.

A despondent Fleen now in Cumberland County Jail on assault charges was unavailable for comment. Daisy Scrude president of the local arts council said about the affair,
“BigTeddy ran with the rough crowd in our club.”

Skip Stuntzmueller Faux Art News

Anther case of art rage occurred earlier this month when a remark by diminutive eighty six year old oil painter Ada Flick touched off a melee at a community art club in Load, Kentucky.

“She smeared my begonias and proceeded to call them derivative drivel by an overblown hack,”

sniffed portly Blaine Slatt, long considered one the tri-counties premier floral artists. ” No one insults Blaine W. Slatt especially an upstart like Ada Flick!”

According to Constable Axel Mote, Slatt in a fit of rage allegedly poured paint thinner on Ms Flick’s epic master work Sherman’s March to the Sea. Long simmering tensions erupted among the art club members. It was brother against brother, daughter against mother, oilist against watercolorist, value painter versus colorist, even the pastelists threw chalk. There was a pall of charcoal dust in the air.

Cooler heads prevailed when members of the poetry club across the hall restored order by repeatedly reciting selections from Walt Whitman’s the The Leaves of Grass. Soon the artists were quietly dozing.

Chastened club president, Nancy Swett, wringing her hands went on to recount the carnage. “General Sherman was completely wiped out as well as Sheridan’s horse. As For Gen’l Jubal Early, well let us just say the South will not rise again. The human toll? Ada Flick has yet to regain speech and Blaine Slatt has been banned for life from the Tri-County Culture Center.

Faux Art News

Hartley M. Withitt, forty two, noted plein aire painter found himself the center of attention last month when apparently out of the blue, colored spots began to appear on his head and hands during his outdoor painting sessions. At first it was suspected that he was spilling his pigments but a careful check of his equipment put that explanation to rest.

This lead medical art experts to Painters Stigmata, a rare ailment that has afflicted the likes of Vincent Van Gogh, Goya, and of course the famous paint flinger Jackson Pollack. Samples of Mr Withitt’s purple spots were sent for analysis to esteemed institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, Famous Artist School of Minneapolis, and Cheap Joe’s Art Catalog. The consensus among all respondents was this was something close to Dioxazine Violet but the mysterious appearance on Hartley’s body still remained a mystery.

This only fueled the fires of the curious who queued up at the artist’s studio hoping to be touched by the magic bestowed uopn this modest landscape painter. They came from all over with their paintings in hand hoping have  Mr. Withitt dust them with the ethereal enchantment that seems to been gifted to him alone.

Nationally known skeptic Doan B. Leavitt threw a bucket of reality on the apparent phenomenon when he  noted that the spots only seemed to appear after the artist would paint under a ripening mulberry tree.

Jen Nettick-Throebach Special Report Faux Art News

Watercolorists across the nation
are relieved to see an El Nino weather pattern setting in this winter bringing fears of a wide spread drought to an end. the western
forest fires and shriveled rangelands are a thing of the past as are the handicaps imposed on this country’s aquarelle artists. Gone
are the restrictions on water intensive color washes and the wet into wet painting techniques. The over dependence on dry brush
techniques during this period had alarmed artists and critiques alike, there were widespread rumors that watercolor as we know it was
gone forever.

As watercolor jitters subside, oil painters are anxious over the current unrest in the Middle East fearing a crisis may lead to cutbacks in the Impasto Community.

Faux Art News Service

Despite intense lobbying efforts by the interior design and art lobby, Congress is considering reducing the color wheel by one hue, blue. Fiscal conservatives are quoting studies that show there would be substantial savings across the board in inks, dyes and pigments of all kinds. Millions could be saved in the government printing office alone.

Air Force officials in the Pentagon are raising a great hue and cry, declaring that it uniformly neutralizes one complete branch of the armed services. Not to mention it makes a mockery out of the air force theme song, “Into the Wild  Blue Yonder”.

“Why we would have to sing Into the Wild Yonder!” blustered an obviously apoplectic unnamed Pentagon staffer.

Art experts say the elimination of blue will result in the overall warming of the color wheel. That has alarmed environmentalists who are already worried about the effects of global warming on this blue orb.

House and Senate sub-commitees are meeting to discuss options available to them. The head of the National Endowment for the Arts has been called to the Hill to testify. There are already calls for the compromise on the ban on blue.

One anonymous source is quoted as saying,”Maybe we could just lighten it a bit. ”

Alarmist voices across the aisle say this potential legislation may lead one day to Monochromaticism, where there may be the elimination of all color.

Bobby Leadscrawler, Faux Art News 

Faux Art News visited Wingnut the Art Dog’s studio in California to get some background information on this famous but enigmatic painting dog.

We interviewed the studio cat who able to interpret Wingnut’s native Arfin/ Ruffin language. With some sensitive meowing, ear movements, urine markings and tail vibrations here is what we were able to glean.

Wingnut was born on a ranch in remote northern California one of a litter of eight. Being  the sensitive one, he puzzled at the rough and tumble antics of his litter-mates as they vied for dominance in the pack. His artistic leanings showed themselves early as he would horde old soup bones to use in making interesting designs. His doggy bed was always arranged neatly  to suit his aesthetic  sensibility with color coordination his foremost concern.

Later as Wingnut was studied by veterinary scientists at the University of California, Davis he became famous for their findings that dogs really are not color blind. He would join the ranks of such heavy weight dog subjects as Pavlov’s Dog and that other Soviet dog that got shot into space. Also in this category by virtue of its diet is the late chihuahua from the Taco Bell  commercials, may he rest in peace. They say it was something in the sour cream.

One by one his brothers and sisters left to work on neighboring farms and ranches until one day he found himself alone and wondering what life had in store for him. Early one morning “Big Man Rancher” came to his pen and snatched him up in his big burly arms and tossed him into the big noise machine he called a pickup. Off they went bouncing down man paths until they came to the main one with a yellow strip down the middle. Here there were many many noise machines whizzing back and forth.

Finally Rancher man made his noise machine lurch out onto yellow line path  toward the cluster of giant dog houses he called town. The trip turned dark when he was let out of the pickup at a concrete block bunker that barked with the voice of a hundred dogs. ANIMAL CONTROL DEPOSIT DOGS HERE. If Wingnut could have read “man” words he would have been afraid, very afraid.

Forlorn and alone Wingnut spent many a day and night among the howling crowd down at the dog pound, he was the very definition of hang dog. As had happened with his litter mates,  one by one his cage-mates left him but not to work they went to the bad room and never came back.

Finally one day a man with a kindly face came and picked him up, held him in his arms. Wingnut licked him on the face. That lick turned out to be the luckiest lick he ever made. Kindly man laughed and scratched him behind the ears and swooped him out the door and into an old faded noise machine. Kindly man was Argus T Huespredder a local artist who took him home to be his friend.

The rest is history. Wingnut rose through the ranks of artist  animals, surpassing in fame the chain-saw sculptor monkey, the abstract expressionist elephant, and a whole cadre of canine painters even Thomas Kincaide’s Painting Poodle of Light. Eclipsing even his master, Old Gus, Wingnut reached his apogee when he became the subject of the Wingnut Art Dog Cartoon.