Graffiti has always been a declaration of independence and individuality; it’s the big I AM, designed to disrupt everyone else. Large Graf throw-ups, or wall pieces, may show off the artist’s skill and message, but they are also considered vandalism—incurring maximum...
In early 1972, the Rolling Stones headed out on tour after the No. 1 worldwide release of their 12th album, Exile on Main Street. Also known as the “Stones Touring Party,” the raucous, star-studded and drug-fueled tour featured 48 shows in the US and Canada. The...
Thrift stores are potentially the end of the line for any object on sale therein; after that, it’s either ref-use or reuse. Consequently, there’s a poignancy to the purchase of any artwork from a thrift store, whether by an ironic hipster being or a sincere abuelita....
In the 1970s, The East Los Streetscapers promoted the idea that graffiti muralism was part of the struggle to claim urban space. This concept was shared by the Los Angeles Fine Art Squad, a group of artists also taking art to the street using murals. This activist...
The Andy Warhol Diaries, 2022 Netflix Limited Series “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” —Andy Warhol In his 1987 LA Times obituary of Andy Warhol, William...
A meme is unit of cultural information, such as an idea or belief, transmitted from one person to another. The word is an alteration of the Greek mimeme, meaning something that is imitated, not duplicated. The difference is important, as each iteration of a meme...
The Chosen Few: Aesthetics and Ideology in Football Fan Graffiti and Street Art By Mitja Velikonja 176 pages DoppelHouse Press Graffiti and street art are often considered synonymous since they affect the urban environment in similar ways. But graffiti is...
Los Angeles is a city best seen at 30 miles per hour, when its squalor and splendor even out to create a neutral grandeur; it’s at the slower speeds that our angels’ dereliction becomes evident. Pedestrians know this and that’s why nobody walks in LA—like the Missing...
Artists can make the invisible become visible, but that doesn’t mean they have to. Photographers in particular find it necessary to provide visual confirmation of a chosen moment; in the case of some Pulitzer Prize winners, their captured image has become the official...
My cultural quarantine began on March 28th, 2020, when I arrived at a huge building in the Fairfax District housing The Zone: The Britney Spears Experience. I was there to cover what was promoted as a massive “immersive retail experience” for Artillery Magazine, and...
On April 8th of this year, Fox News reported that Pennsylvania’s famed Graffiti Highway was being completely covered with truckloads of dirt. The one-mile stretch of Route 61 was abandoned in 1993 after an underground fire in the nearby abandoned mining town of...
Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1771, the Serrano and Paiute indigenous people of Southern California created outdoor parietal rock drawings called petroglyphs in an area of the southern Mojave Desert known as Victor Valley. This once-remote desert is where the...
Looking to do something other than Netflix and Chill? We got you. One of our funniest, most-loved & recognizable writers, Cat Call columnist, Anthony Ausgang, shares his ten favorite books on art. 1. The Recognitions, by William Gaddis 2. The Apes of God, by...
On June 19th, 2018, Tumblr user deadbefordeath posted a photograph of a white cat with a confused expression sitting in a chair in front of a plate of vegetables, titling the post "he no like vegetals." According to the Literally Media database, the post gained over...
In May this year, a Millennial identifying himself as the You Tuber Reckless Ben Schneider entered a Los Angeles gallery and told the art dealer there that he had a Banksy painting with him. The LA Art Dealer said he’d like to check it out, so Schneider pulled a...
There is a myth, subscribed to by all ambitious but unsuccessful artists, that they will be discovered posthumously, and their work revered by future generations. That may be cold comfort, but when it comes to fame, the SoCal artist Robert Williams doubles down with...
There aren’t too many equalizers in today’s stratified society; in fact, one can say that the act of waiting is the only inconvenience that’s shared by everyone, rich and famous, or poor and anonymous. Consider a traffic jam on the Santa Monica Freeway; the CEO in the...
The color green has had many connotations throughout history: Pope Innocent III declared it the official Church color for the “ordinary time” between holy days; Frau Minne, the 12th Century German personification of courtly love, wore a green dress, and the color was...
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