I'm working on another complicated review and we have a major interview in the works... till then here are some more links to consider:

Francis Bacon's last painting is uncovered.... and it is purposefully dusty. Now Bacon is a bit of a toss up, is he overrated or brilliant. Both, but what I love about his work is the crushing self awareness he gives to his subjects, become a kind of liberty by proxy. I'm not always in the mood for it frankly but I do appreciate the way this work approaches death as both proceeding and receding... coalescing and atomizing. You have to care about such things to see it. One cant just cite a bunch of quotes about his genre, you really have to take his work personally to get or even see the better ones. That simply isn't always possible as not every one is good. Would love to see the last one in person to determine that. Western civilization in general isn't good at addressing death but a few painters like Rembrandt and Goya were fantastic at it.

Seattle's King Street Station will become a permanent cultural space. Portland needs to look at surplus space the city owns and could rehabilitate in such a way. I know of several great sites and we shouldn't waste the kinds of spaces that are under rent pressures.

In similar news Meow Wolf is doing interesting things in Santa Fe (Portland's Nathanael Thayer Moss has work in this inaugural exhibition). Here's more detailed information on Meow Wolf.

...and San Francisco has also seen the need for a kind of preserve for cultural pursuits as well with a large new building project. All of this is great but artists also need a kind of free range biome to live and grow within... if the community is too gated or simply founded on dull ideas it fails.