One of the things that always troubled me about Andy Warhol’s legacy was the matter of people who got elevated and left behind. It is quite one thing to sign your name to a found object, but a whole other matter to treat people as found art.Warhol could be quite mean...
If anybody reading this is looking for a topic for an art book, I would like to suggest La Fura dels Baus. Although they are well known in Europe (they designed the opening ceremony for the Barcelona Olympics, and have had other pieces performed before audiences of...
» Now that binge-watching is officially a thing, it’s getting easier to convince people to sample Jacques Rivette. A three-hour film by Rivette is considered average to short. His longest film (Out: One) runs over 12 hours. The length of his films is more than a...
There’s something wonderful about the idea that one of Japan’s most avant-garde films was originally intended to be a second feature for a double bill from a studio that was famous for cranking out formulaic Yakuza B movies. Seijun Suzuki began his stint at Nikkatsu...
By the late 1960s, whatever fun The Art World had promised with pop art was settling back into something more serious and denim-clad. Glamour was once again a dirty word, and the less there was to see at an art show, the more profound the art was deemed. If one was...
If you asked beginning art students to name a living artist in 1998, the most frequent reply would be Thomas Kinkade. Given the art world’s fascination with popularity and money, this is hardly surprising. By this point in his career many upscale malls had galleries...
Five years ago, when news spread that Harmony Korine was shooting a feature on VHS, it was hailed as an ingenious use of a retro technology. More recently, the band Prodigy was lauded for shooting a music video on VHS. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams)...
In a recent documentary called $ellebrity, we are treated to the spectacle celebrities face every time they try to leave their abodes. If a good shot of a celebrity can fetch a high price, there might be 50 photographers yelling insults to get a dirty look. Such an...
A search of William Burroughs on Amazon turns up 3,976 items. If you add the word biography to your search, it narrows down to 135 items. Barry Miles wrote a biography of him in 1993, and released a revised version in 2002. He has also written books about Allen...
It is often the case that an artist who creates a lifetime of strong work will be known for a single piece. One of the shorthand images that denote surrealism is a fur teacup. More people know this image than the name of the artist who made it (Meret Oppenheim). In...
There is a popular stereotype of the 20th-century artist as a hard-living bon vivant who lives to paint and leaves a trail of broken hearts. Most current versions this type have a brand to maintain. The last thing you can imagine such a person wanting is privacy....
Now that musicals are getting popular again, it’s a good time to revisit the work of Jacques Demy. Although he is considered part of the French new wave, most of his work owes more to Hollywood musicals and live-action fairy-tale films. His first musical (The...
With all of the recent excitement about the NSA it seemed like a good time to feature the work of The Surveillance Camera Players. Since 1996 this group has been staging plays for security cameras. Their productions have included Waiting for Godot, 1984 and Ubu Roi....
Forty years after his death, Henry Darger remains one of America’s most polarizing artists. Given that he died unknown and virtually friendless, it is a testament to the power of his work that people are still arguing over what it all means. The very reason we know he...
In a world where art is purchased to display as trophies, it can be hard to remember what a real art patron looks like. While researching my new favorite television station, I stumbled onto somebody who might qualify as the best art patron ever. The station is Classic...
In the late 1960s and into the ’70s an odd confluence of events made for some very curious cinema. Many stars that had become famous in the studio system were suddenly at loose ends to fend for themselves. At the same time, Hollywood was trying to get down with the...
The most interesting thing about Mexican superheroes is that the super is short for supernatural. Where such people in the English-speaking world might inhabit a science fiction, their Mexican counterparts exist in the realm of Magical Realism.
If I had to pick a filmmaker whose output might consistently be described by the term film-as-art it would be Jean-Luc Godard. Even in his 80s he is pushing the experimental window. When he was recently convinced to try something in 3D, he used cellphone cameras. He...
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