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Bush & the 2007 Venice Biennale
It’s more than a little interesting that the most reactionary administration in America’s history would nominate an openly Gay conceptual artist to be a symbol for the “excellence, vitality, and diversity of the arts in the United States.” The Bush State Department has chosen Felix Gonzalez-Torres to represent the U.S. at the 2007 Venice Biennale, and what a wise pick…
Los Angeles in Paris: 1955-1985
The Centre Pompidou in Paris has mounted a major survey of art from Los Angeles, titled Los Angeles 1955-1985: The Birth of an Artistic Capital. The exhibit offers 326 objects produced by over 80 artists working in LA during a thirty year period, tracing the explosion of creativity unique to the city of my birth. The Centre Pompidou website describes…
The Best Picture in the World
In 1925 the famed English author Aldous Huxley wrote “The Best Picture in the World,” an essay about a fresco mural by one of the great masters of the early Italian Renaissance, Piero della Francesca (1412-1492). Piero’s mural titled The Resurrection, is recognized as one of the finest religious paintings in all of Christendom. With careful examination it becomes clear that…
Artists & The Vietnam War
April 30th, 2005, marks the 30th anniversary of the US defeat in Vietnam. As a twenty two year old in 1975, I commemorated the end of the war by creating a large oil painting simply titled, Vietnam. The preliminary sketch for that painting is reproduced at left. The Vietnamese peasant woman portrayed in my artwork glances at you with cold…
Neoism: “X” me out
What is Neoism? Just another permutation of postmodern entropy. An incomprehensible and pointless muddle posturing as the latest avant-garde art movement. Best summed up by its founder, Istvan Kantor, when he stated, “We are the Neoists, do not listen to us.” German police arrested Kantor last November on charges of property damage. He had splashed a container of his own…
Drawing the Line: My Early Sketches
In 2005 I rediscovered a number of my old sketchbooks that had been packed away for decades. These sketchbooks contain hundreds of pencil and pen drawings created by me during my high school years. Most of the artworks were created in 1970 when I was only sixteen years old. The drawings were largely of my classmates and friends, and some…