Tuesday, December 13 2011
A Slice of Berlin in Los Angeles
Time takes away the meaning of an object. But then again, it also imbues an object, such as fragments of the Berlin Wall, with another.
Monday, December 5 2011
Subversive Sexology!: A Conversation with Annie Sprinkle!
With a pure heart and a heavy dose of body politic rebellion, Annie Sprinkle re-invents ecology in the age of eroticised digital culture.
Monday, October 31 2011
Art from Protest
From the art inspired by America's Civil Rights movement to today's Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Everywhere demonstrations art, like taking to the streets, is a form of rebellion -- and expression.
Tuesday, October 18 2011
Pavement Art: When Destruction Is as Important as Creation
While some celebrate art through its destruction, we can ponder the impetus to buy, sell, own and store art away.
Monday, August 29 2011
On Costumes, Video Games, and the Art of Pretending
A little nostalgia goes a long way. Sometimes, you get so lost in looking at a thing that you forget that it's not real. Or at least, you want to forget that it's not real.
Wednesday, August 3 2011
In With the Old in Bucharest: When There’s No New Space for Art, Find an Old Mansion
In its most recent transformation, Bucharest is striving to become a regular European capital, with office jobs, historical buildings, monuments, hipsters, and an art scene: it's a new world squeezing into old spaces.
Friday, July 22 2011
No One Is Untouchable: Not Federico Garcia Lorca, Not Ai Weiwei
Governments tend to take on their worst form, to devolve to their most horrific manifestation, when they kill artists. Artists look out into the horrors of the world, and inevitably, the horrors sometimes reach back.
Tuesday, June 14 2011
The Changing Nature of the Nature of Art
As artists have become less concerned with telling stories and more concerned with creating emotional connections and mimicking experiences, art has shifted from creating beauty to expressing the heady nature of 'truth'.
Wednesday, June 1 2011
Street Art: From the Frying Pan Straight into the… Museum
Los Angeles seems to be on a mission to make street art/graffiti old news. And fittingly so, since it may be the city that hates it the most.
Thursday, May 12 2011
The Civil War and the Uneasy Fabric of American Identity
America's obsession with the Civil War reveals not-so-invisible wounds that linger to this day in the landscape and the nation's psyche.
Tuesday, April 19 2011
Thomas Doyle’s Dreams and Nightmares: Captured in Bell Jars
Thomas Doyle’s miniatures are very carefully constructed, extremely well preserved versions of murky memories. He likens them to the images one is left with after waking from a dream: singular, isolated scenes, without reference inside a larger narrative.
Tuesday, April 12 2011
Form and Function: Art from Another Point of View
It is the inexactitude in defining "art", let alone "good art", that leads to controversy, and no demographic group has elicited more protests and controversy than LGBT artists.
Monday, April 11 2011
In the City of Friction and Frisson: Street Art and Urbanism
All the illegal art, if taken as a combined unstable code and signature, are like short-lived tattoos on the municipal skins of cities.
Wednesday, October 27 2010
The World’s a Mess: It’s in My Art
Cruz Ortiz blends spastic and Aztec in his art -- rich cultural legacies and body-fervor -- this is Chicano, this is street politics glocalized, this is honest country music in irony-laden times.
Friday, May 14 2010
Happy Mondays, the Court Jesters of Madchester
The Happy Mondays were the court jesters of Madchester, infusing the unfettered carnival spirit of rave culture into their own craftily disheveled music, lyrics, and sleeve designs, while simultaneously leading the sweating masses into a new and vibrant artistic renaissance.
Monday, April 5 2010
Artist personalizes Noah’s Ark
New Jersey artist Susan Vosburgh can make a niffy piece of art out of any animal and anyone's name.
Friday, March 19 2010
Six Years in the Life of Post-Blackness (Or Not)
If the 'black' in 'post-black' means “the last 40 years or so”, black folks are clearly moving beyond that; but to the extent that 'black' means “having to deal with the same-old same-old when it comes to racial attitudes,” then we ain’t post-nuthin’.
Thursday, March 18 2010
The Naked Truth of a Nude Art Exhibit
I was rather self-conscious while crossing the threshold, despite it being the two women in the doorway who weren’t clothed. I felt I was naked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Wednesday, March 10 2010
Diorama-Rama: Can Playtime Produce Art?
Are toy photography "dios" a new art form, a different breed of fan fiction, or nothing loftier than playtime for the stunted?
Thursday, December 3 2009
Tim Burton Exhibit at MoMA: Publicity Ploy or Actual Art?
With over 700 works on display spanning his artistic life, MoMA's Tim Burton career retrospective is more than a commercial appeal, but an example of art for popular culture.
