Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the free market; profit is distributed to owners who choose to invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses.

MY FAVORITE CAPITALISMS

Anarcho-capitalism, consumer capitalism, corporate capitalism, creative capitalism, crony capitalism, democratic capitalism, eco-capitalism, finance capitalism, global capitalism, humanistic capitalism, inclusive capitalism, late capitalism, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, merchant capitalism, mixed economy, monopoly capitalism, neo-capitalism, philanthrocapitalism, technocapitalism, regulatory capitalism, rentier capitalism, social capitalism, social market economy, state capitalism, state monopoly capitalism, welfare capitalism.

Yesterday, we read in The New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat that the City of Helsinki has commissioned the  Guggenheim Foundation to undertake a feasibility study to examine the possibility of building a Guggenheim franchise. The foundation charges the city of the study $2,5 million.

Many of my Finnish art world friends celebrated this on their Facebook profiles. I remember them also having been excited when Louis Vuitton opened a store in Helsinki. And I know that their biggest dream is to drink Starbucks vanilla lattes in my hometown. Do we really want to franchise our culture from food to art? Is that a positive idea of globalization? I would call it shoppingmallization.

Guggenheim is the McDonald's of Art - reliable, easygoing and extremely unsurprising. Ronald McDonald serves us comfort food and Sololon R. Guggenheim shows us comfort art.

Ainhoa - a young artist based in Bilbao where they have a Guggenheim outpost - told me that to her the museum means nothing. No artists go there. And no local artist even dreams about showing there ever. She said that the museum had never nothing to do with art but land use planning, construction business and politics.

A curator friend asked me if would turn down an exhibition opportunity at the Guggenheim Helsinki. Let's put it this way: If you bring me a BigMac I eat it but that doesn't mean  I want to have a McDonald's here in Cervera de los Montes.

Would it make any sense to make a list of people with List as surname? Maybe it's not a brilliant idea but I collected some material about fascinating Lists.

Georg Friedrich List (1789-1846) was a German economist. He is considered the original European unity theorist whose ideas were the basis for the European Union.

Guido von List (1848-1919) was an Austrian occultist and one of the most important figures in Germanic revivalism, Germanic mysticism, Runic Revivalism and Runosophy.

John List (1925-2008) was an American murderer. He murdered his wife, mother, and three children in and then disappeared.

Maximilian List (1910-1980) was an architect in Berlin who became an SS officer, involved in the operation of a number of Nazi concentration camps.

Painting is not always fun. When Michelangelo was painting the Sisitine Chapel he wrote:

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place — I am not a painter.

Michelangelo wasn't a Painter. He was sculptor, architect and engineer - an uomo universale. I'd like to feel a Renaissance man too but sometimes I have a feeling that I'm nothing because I try to do too many things: drawing, painting, conceptualizing, collecting, constructing, writing... And I don't mind if my painting is dead, because then it's dead the like a killer zombie.

Actually, I'm not suffering as much as normally of painting. I'm slow but I don't have a deadline. I'm clumsy but the errors look good. I decided not to use the modules done last summer for a one huge painting but as single canvases or diptychs or triptychs. Amor (Artificial) diptych will stay as it is, just kind of superficial pop art. Capitan Corn will be a Somali pirate. Kool-Aid needs some more mixed drinks. The Meiji Cola figure will have a Molotov cocktail in his hand.

By the way, if you do a Google image search of "Molotov cocktail", the picture of my LVMH Molotov Cocktail appears 10th.

The list drawings, that some people consider my most powerful works, are unusually economic - they are fast and easy to execute and the cost of the material is close to zero. The more difficult part is to invent them and collecting and elaborating the data takes hours or even several days and in occasions I need months before a vague idea becomes a list on paper.

Some days ago I did a list of almost all prestige cuveés I found on Wikipedia and several champagne related websites. I titled it My Favorite Bottles for Molotov Cocktails. In 2008, I did a series of Moët and Chandon Molotov cocktails, then one in a Louis Roedere Cristal bottle and another in a magnum sized Moët bottle decorated with Swarovski crystals in the form of the word Molotov. One of my basic tools is combining something elegant and bourgeois to something homemade and subversive.

After writing the list I realized that champagne is related also with my other important theme - the prostitution. It was enough to add the word room to the names of the champagnes and change the title to My Favorite Rooms, obviously connotating now with champagne rooms - a private room service offered by strip clubs where a customer can purchase time to spend privately with an exotic dancer.

Would yo prefer to spend a half an hour in a Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame room, a Vranken Demoiselle room or a Paul Goerg Cuvée Lady C room?