The acorn never falls too far. At age 12, an enterprising artist stood in front of White on White, the Kazimir Malevich painting at MoMA NY. She tugged on her father’s sleeve and asked the surgeon, “What does it mean?” His answer inspired Kimberly Shlain Brooks toward...
Eponymous Black is a stout, surly fellow with bad breath and a death drive that rivals Ophelia. His only friends are the pigeons in Central Park, and even they have their reservations, as often he’s deliberately stingy with the dissemination of the most coveted heels...
Maroon is unmoored, untethered, unhinged and completely undone by the weight of isolation, marooned as she is on an unnamed island somewhere in the South Pacific. Alone, she communes with phantoms that include the likes of Oscar Wilde, Salome, Kierkegaard and of...
Mostly you hear him coming long before the bright and flowing flourish which is his body floats across the speedway. Being that he is a dandy from Kensington, he much prefers the moniker Budgie, to the more pedestrian Keet. An avid smoker of Players and Dunhill’s,...
Digital Art Happening In April there was a moment when Yours Truly realized we were finally, at long last, emerging from the pandemic that has shut us in for over a year. It was Saturday night, and we were lured downtown by “LUMINEX: Dialogues of Light,” a one-night...
The digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million in cyptocurrency at Christie’s auction in March, 2021. The media treated this grotesque sale as if it revolutionized the art world, but if we separate reality from the hysterical hype, it clearly has not....
Since the theme for this issue is “Private Property,” I assume someone besides me will be tackling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and their sudden rise to collectibility—I’ll leave that to someone who can talk about them in some sort of intelligent, technical way and...
What makes some spaces private and others public, if not rituals? In Los Angeles, a complex series of rituals reify our belief in private property. Property deeds, for instance, give physical form to a political notion; signing a deed a symbolic ritual that shapes...
If you’re under 40 years old, it might be hard to understand the passion some boomers have about the evils of socialism. Scandinavia seems like a cool place to live. For all of its socialism, Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the United States, and even attracts...
Dear Babs, My spouse stopped making art after getting her BFA in painting 10 years ago and hasn’t touched a brush to canvas in the five years we’ve been married, but the pandemic got her painting again, and I’ve never seen her happier. I know nothing about art, but I...
Miranda Garno Nesler earned her PhD from Vanderbilt University and serves as the director of Women’s Literature & History for Whitmore Rare Books in Pasadena. ARTILLERY: How did you get started in dealing with rare books? GARNO NESLER: Books have always been there...
I’m preoccupied lately with appearance and disappearance; the motions that simulate appearance and disappearance. It’s the sort of simulation that dates back to childhood for many of us—say, hide-and-seek for starters. I remember my brother and I trying to make...
It’s true. Boorish Beige is quite ubiquitous with not much to say and one hell of a tan. He holds a monopoly on wall space in all the commercial buildings downtown and in many of the drab and dreary houses in the suburbs. It doesn’t seem to matter which country you...
Former President Donald Trump left office in disgrace, having incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021, the day Joe Biden was to be certified by Congress as the winner of the 2020 election. Trump made a speech to his crowd of MAGA misfits promising, in the style of...
So I was making the usual—you know: one part cherry juice, one part club soda, two parts peach juice—and thinking about how artists are eccentric. Balzac supposedly drank 50 cups of coffee a day, Grant Wood replaced his door with a coffin lid, and Paolo Uccello would...
Art Fairs Aren't Giving Up Delays, delays, and more delays. Last year Art Basel rather optimistically thought it would proceed with its Miami edition in December. That was finally cancelled when they came to their senses. I think there were online viewing rooms and...
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