Visual Arts

Bob Dylan’s Art Is Best Served Naked

Bob Dylan’s Art Is Best Served Naked

As Bob Dylan learned, only through baring of one’s soul does one show the way forward, providing both a glimpse into the other and perhaps the shape of things to come.

Patrick Bringley’s Exquisitely Rendered ‘All the Beauty in the World’

Patrick Bringley’s Exquisitely Rendered ‘All the Beauty in the World’

As there is an art to memoir writing, there is an artfulness to describing the power of the visual arts. Patrick Bringley’s ‘All the Beauty in the World’ is exquisitely rendered.

‘Conflict Graffiti’ and the Artists That Use Public Spaces for Public Discourse

‘Conflict Graffiti’ and the Artists That Use Public Spaces for Public Discourse

Situating his study at sites of conflict and interviewing artists, scholar John Lennon’s Conflict Graffiti gives readers new perspectives for interpreting the graffiti and street art they encounter.

Too Powerful to be Merely Entertainment: Video Games and the Work of Nicholas O’Brien

Too Powerful to be Merely Entertainment: Video Games and the Work of Nicholas O’Brien

Video game designer Nicholas O’Brien creates and curates in a medium starving for critical conversation.

Patti Smith’s ‘A Book of Days’ Captures Much More Than Her Instagram Posts

Patti Smith’s ‘A Book of Days’ Captures Much More Than Her Instagram Posts

Patti Smith’s A Book of Days creates an ironic loop of parasocial relationshipping, generating a kind of intimacy through photographs of objects.

Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Severance’ Paints Sublime and Subversive Art

Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Severance’ Paints Sublime and Subversive Art

More than just corporate propaganda, the subversive artworks in Severance hold a strange place in Lumon Industries’ ideological fabric.

Why Is There Still So Much Nostalgia for Nuclear Apocalypse?

Why Is There Still So Much Nostalgia for Nuclear Apocalypse?

The popularity of nuclear apocalypse is nostalgia for a time when our worries were wrapped in a single nuclear package, and all we needed was a bunker and a dream.

Barney Bubbles’ Labours of Love

Barney Bubbles’ Labours of Love

The brilliant and troubled Barney Bubbles wanted to inspire and did so through his remarkable litany of album covers. A new retrospective tells his tale.

How Moebius’ Psychedelic Fantasy / Surrealist Art Influenced Video Games

How Moebius’ Psychedelic Fantasy / Surrealist Art Influenced Video Games

French artist Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, inspired his peers and mass media. In video games especially, his psychedelic fantasy/surrealist art may live on forever.

Big Dada Kane: An Interview with Poet-Rapper Malik Ameer Crumpler

Big Dada Kane: An Interview with Poet-Rapper Malik Ameer Crumpler

Bestriding boundaries between hip-hop, poetry, and surrealism, poet-musician Malik Ameer Crumpler forges a strange and compelling work that is utterly and uniquely his own.

Alain Resnais’ Short Films on Art, Plastic, and Institutional Hypnotism

Alain Resnais’ Short Films on Art, Plastic, and Institutional Hypnotism

Icarus Films’ recent Blu-ray of Alain Resnais ‘short films ranges from footage of artworks with poetic narration to sensual color conveyed with a wink.

Is Animated Television on Par with the Best Programs?

Is Animated Television on Par with the Best Programs?

Animated television shows The Simpsons, South Park, and BoJack Horseman, are often base in their approach to controversial subject matter, but “going low” might be the very thing that elevates them.

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