Articles
On different occasions I have been told that I am “cold,” “unemotional,” “apathetic” and other adjectives for not giving a shit. I reason that I was born with a hole in my heart or in my limbic system, remedying outbreaks of rogue feelings alone in the privacy of a...
Artist Ai Weiwei takes himself down a notch before you can with the title of his Haines Gallery show, “Overrated.” The works are largely reiterations or extensions of previous work for which he is already world famous; works in which he subverts the authority of...
One of Los Angeles–based artist Audrey Wollen’s Instagram posts features an undated 1890s painting in which a nude woman reclines, examining herself in a mirror she is holding up to her face. Red beads are wrapped around the woman’s neck and ankle, bringing to mind...
“I’ve been going the wrong way for a long time … it’s sort of a reverse commute.” This is said by Todd Gray at the start of his 2010 performance, Caliban in the Mirror. This seemingly autobiographical, storytelling piece has Gray on stage with a few props—a camera, a...
Two hundred years ago, the hierarchy of subjects taught to academic painters placed history and mythology at the top, with landscape and still life at the bottom. This ranking followed the scala naturae, the ladder or scale of nature derived from Plato: God, followed...
The first to grow up in an image-centric world where the mass-dissemination of images via film, print and television started to infiltrate American culture on scales never before seen, those of the Pictures Generation found themselves grappling with notions concerning...
Inside American prisons, thousands of men sequestered in tiny, dim rooms spend their lives waiting to die. Outside, this marginal population is hardly considered, except as a seamy abstraction. SoCal-based artist Amy Elkins finds inspiration in prisoners’ hermetic...
As soon as I entered the recent exhibition “Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), things took a turn for the worse. Or anyway, I did. Because it was the last day of the “New Photography” show that MoMA does every two years,...
Jeremy Couillard says that the pleasure of working with virtual reality (VR) is that he can move away from “a deceitful world I deeply wish did not exist. I need to create an alternative to that universe so I don’t go insane.” A video and installation artist, and...
The world of contemporary popular culture has largely left the biosphere behind, for a world of limitless extraterrestrial space. It is not so different from the contemporary avant-garde, which remains a cerebral, intramural phenomenon. It takes an extraordinary,...
Liberty Cabbage. Freedom Fries. Whenever a reactionary quorum congregates one can be certain no good can come of it. While our senate stages a work stoppage on judicial appointments, and a viable presidential candidate—best known for his government shutdown...
I recently overheard somebody make the observation that David Bowie’s death has “staying power.” It sounded like an idiotic remark at first but in this case it seems accurate. Sure, Bowie was one of the greats, an unfading star who provided an exhilarating soundtrack...
Ross Lipman, the legendary film restorationist responsible for preserving the cinematic legacies of Bruce Conner, Kenneth Anger, John Cassavetes, and a cluster of forgotten American neorealist gems including Killer of Sheep and The Exiles, has turned his attention to...
The “death of painting” is frequently traced to the work and writing of Donald Judd. In 1965's “Specific Objects,” the same essay in which Judd outlined painting’s limitations—above all, its inherent illusionism—he even more forcefully predicted the death of...
Land Art, also known as Earth Art, emerged in the period that was, with hindsight, clearly one of the most radical, innovative, experimental and groundbreaking periods in the history of art. The genre is part of a much wider trend that falls under the umbrella of...
Ceramics is again making a major splash in the world of fine arts. Way back in the 1950s Peter Voulkos pushed ceramics into that realm, with his Abstract Expressionist pieces of cut and contorted clay slabs, followed by the works of his students (among them, John...
The sculptures of Sergio Garcia contain an otherworldly essence. Like relics from an alternate dimension created by Salvador Dali, Henry Darger and Kaz Oshiro, Garcia’s surreal concoctions teeter on the brink of absurdity and play with the experience of living and...
As a student, seeking respite from the relatively hidebound painting department, I often retreated to the sculpture studios. There, the critical gaze of teachers seemed less intense; sculpture students did as they pleased. Around that time about a decade ago, I took...
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