Portraiture has been a constant in art-making since the waning Middle Ages, and really since art first appeared (though they wouldn’t have called it that), which may extend back into prehistory. I would further conjecture that such early art itself encompassed a kind...
We are supposed to wish upon them when we see them fall. But however sentimentalized shooting stars may be, they are merely rocky debris skimming the atmosphere — all their mythology is manufactured by those of us watching in awe from our Earthly confines. In the five...
As I wrote to preface ARTILLERY’s 2021 “Top Ten” compilation, there could have easily been a parallel list of 10 or more shows and exhibitions approaching the level of the ten I selected. At one time, the magazine designated a few “honorable mentions,” usually, as I...
Belief – whether you call it religion, spirituality, or anything else – is as vital to our lives as shelter or sustenance. Myth-making is how lessons are passed down, how mysteries are explored, and how home is remembered. These...
We have abandonment issues lately/forever – desolate, disconsolate and a bit fragile. In Henry Taylor’s painting, that fragility coexists with an incongruous durability – a hard thing that cracks against identity or classification or simply swallows it up. Taylor’s...
I have a confession. At some point between Graduation and 2010 or 2011 (whenever he last recorded with Katy Perry), I lost track of Kanye West. Yes, of course I was peripherally aware of what he might be doing, whether in terms of his own planned record releases or...
The L.A. art industry never rests (as if awol ever needed proof of that!); but tradition dies hard, and art galleries and museums break out the new season alongside other arts and cultural venues. Matthew Barney had already screened his not-so-new (2014 – and six...