Twenty years before MTV aired its first music video, people were making short films of bands and singers performing their hits. The ones from France featured A-list acts and production values. Italy gave us the best film documentation of Screaming Lord Sutch. The...
Dear Reader, “Art about art is elitist,” my boyfriend in grad school used to tell me. But if that was the case we wouldn’t have AbEx, Minimalism and maybe even Conceptualism. I got it though: The art world with its various trends and movements could seem precious and...
It has long been the rule for nonprofits of all kinds to create and maintain paternalistic relationships with the causes and communities they claim to serve. Unfortunately, there are several arts nonprofits that fit this bill. So it’s refreshing to catch up with an...
In another sign of an unusually wet winter in Southern California, the desert and foothills of Coachella Valley are painted a lush green, the tops of the San Jacinto Mountains dusted with a few inches of stark white snow. It is against this startlingly serene backdrop...
Even when photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience. —Susan Sontag, "On Photography" Photographer Andy Freeberg has become something of an inadvertent cultural sociologist. Born in New...
“Can you smell the earth exhaling? I love the smell of moisture coming out of the ground,” exclaims artist Jessica Taylor Bellamy, inhaling the sweetness after the drizzling rain as we embark on our Sunday afternoon hike through the wetlands of South Los Angeles. As...
It began with marker on concrete: “Dear Zhina, you will not die. Your name will be a symbol.” Zhina was the Kurdish name of Mahsa Amini. On September 13, 2022, the 22-year-old was arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for wearing her headscarf too loosely. While in...
When stepping into Britt Ransom’s solo exhibition, you face an archway. This reproduction, created with 3D scans, prints and a CNC machine, revives a signature piece of the Tawawa Chimney Corner house in Wilberforce, Ohio. Today, only the arch’s stone pillars remain,...
The Hermès Birkin handbag is the stuff of legend. Named for actress Jane Birkin, each bag is hand-tooled in the finest leather or crocodile. The bags are highly sought out by the nouveau riche. Customers for new releases are placed on a waiting list and there is a...
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...
As I sit and stare out the window and contemplate human existence, my upcoming day and this overdue column, AI is endlessly cycling—solving problems, making systems more efficient, creating previously unseen connections, secretly planning world dominance and on top of...
Before the advent of online videos, the only way to take your moving images outside of the underground film and video art context was to get them on television. Chris Burden made commercials, and performance artists infiltrated The Gong Show, but the real hidden...
Congratulations to our winner, Maureen Vastardis, and our finalists, Maureen's photo is seen above and first in our photo gallery in the May/June 2023 online edition of Artillery. The following photographs are the finalists. Please see the info below on how to enter...
Dear Babs, Your last letter really pissed me off. You spent so much time talking about how great AI art is that you glossed over the more serious issues of copyright and intellectual property. What gives? —Pissed in Pasadena Dear Pissed, I only got so many words for...
Hammering is Done The Hammer Museum has been transformed, and it’s happened so gradually over the past two decades that we barely noticed it. Sometimes one section would be closed off, sometimes another, and every so often a new section would be unveiled. There’s the...
Reservoir You take the back lane, following the curve of street until it meets the steps to the reservoir. At the top, triumphant, you stop for a cigarette, puffing smoke in the face of legs and lungs. Let them burn this day before your cross- examination. In England,...
We tend to prize a certain class of “master” drawing above and beyond the no less essential sketches or more mechanical work; and we could probably put most if not all of the drawings in “Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist’s Studio”—a compact but gorgeous...
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