In large part this is a personal account of how MacArthur Park has been a continual background setting for my life in Los Angeles. When I viewed the July 7, 2025 video of MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, being swept by officers from ICE to enforce federal immigration law—all I could think of was the 1968…
On June 19, 2025, three members of the eco-extremist group known as Last Generation Canada (Dernière Génération Canada), vandalized an oil painting by Pablo Picasso on exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada. The radical group identified their vandal as Marcel—age 21. Sometime around 10:30 am, the three extremists entered an exhibit hall where Picasso’s 1901 oil…
You might be dismayed to learn that many contemporary statue makers are cheaters when it comes to fashioning sculptures from bronze or marble. Even individuals involved in the arts might be shocked to discover that present-day “sculptors” have never touched clay or marble, let along cast a statue in bronze. I believe that’s the case with Grounded in the Stars,…
Trendy Bricklane in London’s East End is awash with lowbrow graffiti “art.” It is the perfect ugly urbanscape for a father & son “street art” duo known as “Grow Up.” They recently plastered the spray-painted walls of Bricklane with a new poster series they call—The Turd Reich. I’m uncomfortable posting Nazi imagery, but it’s important not to sanitize the hateful…
In 2023 the singer Mehdi Yarrahi was arrested in Iran for releasing a song inspiring women to take off their hijabs. In the Islamic Republic of Iran wearing a hijab is compulsory for women. Yarrahi spent a year in prison for his “crime.” On Mar. 6, 2025 he was given 74 lashes by his tormentors. On his X account (@yarrahimehdi)…
Some years ago under the auspices of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Afghanistan, an art teacher from the UK lectured bewildered Afghan women on a conceptual artwork by Marcel Duchamp… a porcelain urinal he titled “Fountain.” The foundation was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The scene was captured in “Bitter Lake,” a documentary film about Afghanistan…
After his January 20, 2025 inauguration, President Trump addressed the nation in a speech he delivered at Emancipation Hall in the US Capital Visitor Center. If you watched the oration you may have noticed the huge sculpture in the background—what does it portray? Allow me to share the details. Today, many think the statue depicts a Native American, that’s close…
On Sept. 17, 2024, a maniac used construction equipment to destroy The Angel of Harmony statue that stood outside the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in Missouri. The 14-foot-high sculpture of welded stainless steel was created by Polish-American artist Wiktor Szostalo (born 1952). The sculpture had been on public display for 25 years before the goon knocked it from its pedestal…
