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The Shabbiness of Today’s Art Criticism
As a longtime art critic, and as the Senior Curator for the Riverside Art Museum, one would assume Peter Frank would know the difference between “Social Realism” and “Socialist Realism,” they may sound alike to those unfamiliar with art history, but Frank should know better. In his June 28th LA Weekly review of an exhibit of paintings by Armenian artist,…
Right here – Get set – Point – Fire!
May 4th, 2007 marks the 37th anniversary of the shooting deaths of four students by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. It seems few remember those who were felled by bullets during national anti-Vietnam war protests triggered by President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The killings represent a monstrous crime… and we must never forget the students gunned down…
Body Worlds: The Art of Plastic Corpses?
In 2004 the California Science Center in the Exposition Park of Los Angeles, presented Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies. In the words of the museum, “Thanks to the breakthrough process of plastination, more than 200 real human specimens are displayed to reveal an extraordinary new look inside the human body.” As a realist artist I naturally…
Eco-vandals indicted for attack on National Gallery of Art
On May 24, 2023, the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a Grand Jury indictment against two members of the American eco-extremist group “Declare Emergency.” Timothy Martin and Joanna Smith, both 53, were charged with “willfully” committing “an offense against the United States,” by injuring an object of art and an exhibit “within the National Gallery of…
The Builders & The Destroyers
Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was one of America’s greatest African American artists – but you could just as easily say that he was one of the preeminent artists of the 20th Century. There’s no doubt that his narrative style, a blend of social realism and flattened abstract picture planes, was to influence legions of artists – myself being one of them….