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Art and the Global Economic Meltdown
An unavoidable political topic is on the lips of everyone in the art world these days, I am not speaking of the U.S. presidential election – but of an international economic meltdown the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. No matter what “new” political circumstances we wake up to in the aftermath…
The Pervasive Ignorance of Westerners
Starting this January 6th, the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles is holding an exhibit of photos by Tseng Kwong Chi, and reading from the press release the show presents “tongue-in-cheek images of the artist posing as a Chinese Communist dignitary or ‘Ambiguous Ambassador’ in a world utterly alien to his persona, complete with the classic Mao suit, dark glasses…
Feedback on “Withered Arts Journalism”
When I wrote a critique of the March 25th Whither Arts Journalism in LA? public forum, I didn’t expect it to strike such a deep chord with people. My analysis of the event stirred dozens of working artists, gallery owners, curators, educators and art lovers to send me encouraging e-mails. Of the dozens who have wrote to me, none were…
NoHo Art Wave: Hello Gentrification
The following account of a community being gentrified, is now so commonplace a story across America as to hardly merit attention. While this chronicle concerns a district in the City of Los Angeles, the dynamics apply to cities everywhere. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and North Hollywood is a district in the north-western section of L.A. known…
Street Art & The Splasher Manifesto
During the last few months in New York City, someone has taken to destroying the illicit stencil graffiti art and wheat-pasted posters of that city by splashing them with brightly colored daubs of paint. Nicknamed “the Splasher” by the media, the perpetrator has for the most part ignored the majority of street art, preferring instead to purposefully target and deface…
Auctioning Mao: The Party’s Over
China’s most famous portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong is to be auctioned off by the country’s state-controlled auction house in Beijing. Commissioned in 1950 to celebrate the first anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, Zhang Zhenshi’s oil painting of Mao became a world famous image. The portrait of the communist leader was published in poster form, with untold millions…