In Scott Stark’s The Realist—fresh off premieres at the Toronto and New York film festivals, and screening later this month as part of a REDCAT nano-retrospective of Stark’s three-plus decades of tenacious experimentalism—a gaga pair of drop-dead gorgeous...
Steampunk is a recent Populist art movement that glorifies unique, handmade objects and fashion from the Brass Age, an era lasting from the first large scale manufacture of nautical brass around 1830 until the mid 1920s, when automobiles no longer used brass fittings....
Dear Readers, Suddenly, big is all around. Big, meaning huge spaces to create art in. Big, meaning large works to hang in gargantuan galleries. Big used to be considered vulgar but now it’s vogue. Big was garish, wasteful, decadent and dumb. Now it’s smart and...
While sagas of personal transformation are a staple of recent nonfiction filmmaking—from U.N. peacekeeper Roméo Dallaire’s inexorable drift into despair (and back) in the CBC’s Rwanda documentary Shake Hands With the Devil, to crack-mom Kirk White’s unexpected ascent...
Most stories about larger-than-life male artists and their girlfriends/wives share a familiar arc—he overshadows her. When Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner bought a house in East Hampton, Pollock got to work in the barn, Krasner painted in the bedroom. It was only...
Richard Hell swaggers up the side-walk, as if in a private movie that is being played out for the pleasure of others, as if he is being watched—which he is. Full of himself. Happy: yes, I suppose that’s another word for it. And why wouldn’t he be happy? He is about to...
Artillery was always skeptical about the selection of Jeffrey Deitch as director of MOCA. In 2010 we did a cover story musing on the idea of Deitch at the helm. Preposterous! was our first reaction. And we backed it up with interviews from Los Angeles and New York...
Not so long ago on a return flight to LA, I was sitting next to a young Boston couple who had never been to the West Coast before. I asked them what the first thing they wanted to do was when they landed. They said they wanted to eat at Del Taco. I tried to hide my...
Last year’s James Franco–curated “Rebel” show at the Joel Cohen/MOCA space included a collaboration between Hollywood’s polymathic heartthrob and indie enfant terrible Harmony Korine, in the form of a video entitled CAPUT. The rooftop rumble between bare-naked gang...
Gerard BYRne works from the premise that what constitutes the historic is constantly shifting and that there are a series of presents. In his artistic practice the interview and conversation become scripts to be performed in order to open up a number of critical...
My previous column ended with a quote by French graffiti artist Tilt: “The pop culture war is over. America, you won,” along with my wish “Let’s just hope we lose the street art war.” Far from being a Francophile (I don’t love Paris), I harangued against the sameness...
Ever since 1912, when Picasso and Braque first collaged actual newspaper clippings and trompe-l’oeil woodgrain fragments into the first Synthetic Cubist oil paintings, the confusion between mass media and fine art has been one of the central engines of contemporary...
BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN WATCH THE GENerally hit or miss online content of MOCAtv you'll have to navigate through a bombardment of commercials and pop-up ads conjured up by Google and used as revenue for both the Internet giant and MOCA. The newly instated YouTube channel...
Dear Readers, I didn't get a chance in my last column to talk about art critic Dave Hickey's announcement about being fed up with the art world and "quitting." This is old news by now, but I feel compelled to continue the discussion. When I first read the...
ELI LANGER'S RECENT SOLO SHOW IS AN ENCHANTING LANDSCAPE of nocturnal emissions and conversations. Seemingly crafted out of countless late nights spent in furtive dialogue with self, nature and others, the show offers suggestions of urban influences and psychological...
AUSTRIAN FILMMAKER ULRICH SEIDL'S PARADISE trilogy takes an unflinching look at society, portraying the lives of three women: an elderly woman and sex tourist (PARADISE: Love), a devout Catholic (PARADISE: Faith), and a teenager who stays at a weight loss camp in the...
Dear Readers, In this issue of Artillery we’re featuring three stories on film. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t planned that way, but things just fell into place. Oddly enough, the three filmmakers represent a microcosm of hierarchical filmmaking. From acclaimed...
IF ANY OUTLIER SLEEPER CELLS OF AL QAEDA need further evidential motivation to make another terrorist strike against the decadent West, they need look no further than Bravo's new so-called reality series Gallery Girls. In a desperate ploy to further capitalize on the...
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